Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

Julieta looked dubious as she finished separating the hay, setting out two flakes for each horse. When she'd made three piles, she gathered up an armful and headed for the door. Cree took the rest and followed her past the munching animals to set out the hay near a water tank at the middle of the enclosure. As Julieta bent to fluff the packed flakes, she frowned up at the approaching figures of Dr. Tsosie and Tommy.

"I should tell you that even though he's the one who recommended we go to Dr. Ambrose, Joseph is having a hard time with this."

" 'This' meaning me."

"It's not personal. Joseph is Navajo. He was born on the rez and has lived here all his life except when he went to college. He's an excellent doctor, went to Johns Hopkins. He chose to come back to a job as an underpaid rural GP because he felt his skills were needed here. He wanted to help his people."

A man on a mission, Cree was thinking. Not unlike Julieta. So the three of us have something in common.

The black gelding had finished his grain and was coming toward them for the hay. A hundred yards away, Dr. Tsosie raised an arm to block the sunset light, watching them as he and the boy walked.

Julieta rubbed the glossy neck as the horse bent to pull at the hay with his soft lips. "It's a cultural issue. Joseph often has to deal with problems created by the old ways of treating sickness. He isn't opposed to a patient having a Way sung, or taking traditional herbs, as long as people also come to him early on. But too often he gets patients who've spent months doing ceremonials and other cures and have come to Joseph too late-after their cancer has spread too far, or they're dying of pneumonia or bubonic plague. Or they've got pregnancy complications that could have been avoided if they'd been caught early. The Navajo curing Ways usually blame sickness on ghosts or witches, or the victim's failure to observe some ritual or taboo. Joseph would rather his patients blamed poor nutrition or inadequate sanitation or alcoholism or neglect." She toed a mound of hay closer to the horse's tugging lips. "My point is, he's learned to be skeptical. And he's pretty hard-nosed about it."

"I can understand that," Cree acknowledged. "Are you telling me this so my feelings won't be hurt, or so I'll be nicer to him when he challenges me?"

Julieta leaned her head back, her face hardening. "You're very observant. But I sure hope you have something more to offer than hypersensitive psychoanalysis. Because I'm not the one on the couch here, and you're going to need something better, trust me." Immediately, she looked surprised at her own words. She looked as if she were about to apologize but apparently changed her mind. "Here come Breeze and Madie," she said instead. "I'm going to get their curry brush."

Cree waited with the horses as Julieta disappeared into the barn and Tommy and the doctor ducked through the fence at the far end. Tommy didn't look like a monster. In fact, he looked like a typical kid from Cree's neighborhood in Seattle: slim, bronze skinned, a round face that made him look younger than his fifteen years, big T-shirt embossed with images of the Wu-Tang Clan rap group, baggy jeans draped over basketball shoes. When he got closer, she saw that his buzz-cut hair had some kind of design shaved into the bristle.

"Hey," Julieta called from the feed room door. "Hey, Tommy. Hey, Joseph. We're just feeding the critters. Tommy, there's someone I'd like to introduce you to."

The forced lightness of her tone broke Cree's heart. Julieta had shaken the loose hay from her beautiful hair and dusted it from her shirt, and she wore a smile that would have done Miss New Mexico proud.

Doubleness, Cree was thinking. She stood with Dr. Tsosie, watching Julieta and Tommy curry the horses, trying to put a name to the feeling of this place, this moment, these strangers she found herself among. It was like swimming in deep water with your eyes just at the surface, she decided, one moment getting a view of the sky and sun and boats and people, then submerging only a fraction of an inch and seeing the blue depths and the vague shapes moving in them. Two planes of existence, hidden from one other yet moving restlessly against each other and separated by only the thinnest membrane.

When he'd first joined them, Dr. Tsosie presented a piece of rock to Julieta, and for a moment they bent their heads together to look at it. They argued briefly, and then Julieta broke away, laughing and shaking her head.

"It is!" he insisted. "I've brought you a valuable historical relic!"

"It's gravel," she countered. "And you know it. But thank you so much for thinking of me."

Joseph turned to Tommy. "What's your vote? Anasazi arrowhead or random chip of useless rock?"

Tommy just made a go away gesture with his hand, grinning shyly.

Joseph mimed dismay and betrayal, then smiled and tossed the rock over his shoulder. He joined Cree to watch as the others cared for the horses.

" So-are you an equestrian fan, too?" Cree asked him.

"Me? I've always hated them," Tsosie said. "They've got the brains and temperament of chickens. For pets, I like dogs and cats. As for vehicles, I prefer the ones with steering wheels and brakes."

"Don't go saying bad things about my kids," Julieta called. "Joseph's just down on them because he's a lousy rider and whenever he takes them out they sense his inexperience. So they never do what he tells them. They're sweeties and he knows it."

Tommy said nothing, just rubbed the big muscles in the gelding's shoulders.

The interplay among the three of them was deeply double and deeply touching. Julieta and Joseph were obviously good friends of long standing, and though both were very tense they were making an effort to create a simulacrum of a family for this boy. Tommy, at least the part of him above the waves, was reluctantly appreciative, willing to play along with it as much for their sake as his own. It was so compassionate and respectful, so fragile and artificial. A lance pierced Cree's heart.

On the individual level, each of the players was double, too. Beneath Julieta's roles as officious administrator and chipper surrogate mom was some other act, some part of her life hidden yet running parallel to the actions and emotions she expressed outwardly. The doctor, too.

And of course Tommy was double most of all. When he'd first been introduced to her, he'd shaken her hand, said a quiet hello, asked if she were another doctor, and gone with Julieta to tend the animals. Quite reasonably, he was a little dubious about meeting yet another stranger wanting to probe and scrutinize him. A pretty regular kid. But there was a parallel Tommy, a hidden unease and pressure below the surface. There was the Tommy you could see, the one who stuck his head above the waves, and there was the rest of him moving in a different and darker medium.

Julieta went back to the barn and returned with another handful of grain. She put it into one of the pans and held it out to the horses, rattling it temptingly. "Come on, kids," she called. "Let's take our evening constitutional. C'mon, Breeze. Spence! Shake a leg!"

The horses sashayed toward her. As Julieta coaxed them into a walk around the fence line, the sun drifted below the shoulder of a rise to the west. Only a dwindling strip of orange lingered at the top of the mesa, and a mercury vapor light came on at the corner of the house, gilding the near wall of the barn with a silver tinge. Julieta strode in front of the ambling horses, Tommy among them with an arm thrown over one or another. As they headed along the far fence, he slipped onto the back of one of the mares and lay comfortably along her spine. The horse ignored him. After a few paces, he slid off the mare and up onto the gelding, where he sat with one leg down the horse's belly and the other crossed over its shoulder, hands relaxed on his thighs.