Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

The tragic part was that in Joseph's case the feelings so obviously went much deeper. Of course they did: He was too sincere and decent for his affection to be anything but genuine, even if it was deluded. The deceptions those two pulled were obviously not his choice! The thing that really made Lynn sick was that Julieta was too self-preoccupied or stupid or whatever to treat him with the respect he deserved, and to-"Lynn?"

She startled at Joseph's voice and looked up from the fan of cards she'd been staring sightlessly at. She realized it was the second time he'd said her name.

"Your turn," he said, smiling. He chuckled and explained to the psychologist, "We're all a little tired, I think."

"Sorry!" Lynn forced a laugh as she picked up another useless card, the seven of hearts, and threw it down again.

Tommy's turn. He picked up her seven from the discard pile.

"How about you, Tommy? How do you feel?" Cree asked. "Tired?"

"Not so much. Pretty boring to sit around."

"Think you'll be up for spending time with me tomorrow?"

He made a frown. "They already talked to me. The headshrinkers at the hospital."

"You must be sick of it, huh?"

He smiled weakly, unsure how to answer, courtesy at odds with candor.

"It's okay. You won't insult me if you say yes-"

He shrugged, looking at his cards. "They didn't know anything." Cree nodded.

Sitting at Tommy's side, Lynn noticed that his leg had stopped bobbing. But down on the floor, his feet writhed in his socks. She tried not to make her reaction obvious as she darted her eyes down. It almost didn't look like human feet-the bumps that came and went as the bones flexed, the arching and tensing and twisting! And still the rest of him, everything above the tabletop, kept an artificial calm.

Lynn felt sick at the sight. It reminded her of just how bizarre this whole situation was. Between crises, it was so tempting to doubt the strangeness of what she'd seen. But she'd never forget that time she'd seen his arm moving, on its own, when he was dead asleep-the queer awareness it moved with. And she could still feel the marks of his teeth on her forearm, three double arcs of scab now set in purple-green bruises, that she'd kept hidden since last week. Julieta had been out of the room when he'd attacked her, and during a lull she'd managed to bandage her wounds and change into a long-sleeved blouse. The queen had been so distraught during that whole episode, on the verge of panic, that Lynn had hidden the biting in an effort to keep her boss from going to pieces utterly. The sight of the feet and their almost inhuman contortions brought back the horror of the other nights, and she wondered again just what Julieta hoped to gain from having this oddly blue-collar psychologist here.

"You believe in ghosts, Tommy?" Cree asked suddenly.

Joseph and Julieta froze again. The question caught Tommy off guard. His carefully maintained expression of mild boredom dropped away for an instant.

Tommy didn't answer. His eyes flicked to Julieta and Joseph.

"I guess your talking about your dad got me thinking about my father," Cree explained. "He died, oh, twelve years ago. I've never seen his ghost, but when I miss him a lot I sometimes wish I could. I wondered if you've ever felt that way."

"That's a Navajo superstition, ghosts." Tommy frowned. "Everything bad happens to you is ghosts. Bunch of crap."

"I'm not familiar with Navajo beliefs. Is that what people generally think?" The psychologist made a small, expectant smile. Julieta was looking at her with that stricken intensity again.

"I think if people look for supernatural explanations of their problems, they ignore the social and political stuff that really matters," Tommy went on. "Especially a disadvantaged socioeconomic group like the Dine."

A couple of points to Cree Black, Lynn decided. She'd finally provoked him into saying more than three words in a row, into showing that he had a brain. Even if his answer was probably quoted verbatim from Mr. Clah, his opinionated social studies teacher.

"That's a very mature perspective!" Cree sounded genuinely impressed. "From that, I can guess that art and horses aren't your only interests. Also that you're far too smart for the headshrinkers at the hospital. No wonder they didn't do anything for you!"

Tommy closed up again and shrugged off the praise.

But the psychologist was not going to be deflected. "Tell you what. I'll make a deal with you. I'll trade you. You let go of your fear and distrust of me because I'm a white stranger, and I'll let go of my condescension of you because you're only fifteen and have never been off the rez."

Tommy hunched his shoulders, a little shocked, resenting her.

"Look, Tommy, I could beat around the bush forever, and you'd know I was just trying to figure out what makes you tick. It's better if we just get there straightaway and treat each other as equals. We've got to get you feeling better. That's all I'm here for."

Her tone had been hard and the whole thing was confrontational. But it was honest, Lynn thought, impressed again. The woman was frank that she was here to work with him, not pretending this was just some social call out on the desert.

Tommy still didn't answer, but Cree didn't let up. She bored at him with her eyes.

"So is it a deal? The trade?"

"I guess," Tommy mumbled at last. Beneath the table, his feet continued writhing.

"I'm out," Joseph announced suddenly. He looked relieved to break the tension as he slapped down three queens, flipped an ace onto the discard pile, and mimed raking in a pot of money. "Read 'em and weep, ladies and gents. Another hand, or should we call it quits?"

The way he said it was so… sorrowful, somehow, and with the glow of firelight on his face he looked so resigned and handsome that Lynn almost reached out a hand to console him.

"Joseph is the rummy king," Julieta told Cree. "He murders us every time." She threw back her shoulders, stretching her elbows wide and arching her perfect breasts forward as she pulled her hair away from her face with both hands.

Lynn noticed the way Joseph's eyes lingered briefly on her body, a steady soft heat like coals. The sight made her stomach hurt.

— And too self preoccupied to show him the respect he deserves, to honor their past together by reciprocating his feelings, Lynn finished, hating her. The way any woman with anything like a human heart in her body would.

She begged off the next hand, claiming she had work to do. The others played another round in the dayroom while she went back to the office and began filling out a pharmaceutical requisition form. She heard their voices faintly through the half-closed door. Were they more talkative now that she was gone, more cheerful? The nicotine craving had intensified and was screaming in her veins now. Outside, the wind had picked up a little, whispering around the building.

Her face seemed to burn, scalded by her own acid thoughts and searing feelings. After a while she realized she couldn't concentrate on her paperwork. She fled to the bathroom, where the ventilator fan made a welcome white noise, a camouflage as well as a safe haven from the faint sounds from the dayroom. She locked the door and stood facing the brightly lit, merciless mirror above the sink.

Envious, she said to the face in the mirror. Jealous. All sick inside. Nasty. Hateful, spiteful creature. You're full of everything little and nasty. You're ugly and you have a crazy speck in your eye. You're festering with jealousy and resentment and you're all twisted up and repressed. Hateful, hateful, bad, bad.

She wanted to smack the cheeks of the awful, fleck-eyed face, slap at all the nasties there, so obvious.

At the same time, she felt like going out to the dayroom and telling the psychologist, Don't let her fool you! She claims to work so damn hard for the kids and for the school, and yet every other time you look for her she's out riding her horse at the foot of the mesa, ever so gay and devil-may-care, big hair blowing free on the wind. You'll fall for it just as I did when I first met her, but soon you'll come to look back on that feeling with disgust. She pretends she loves Navajos all to pieces, yet she won't acknowledge Joseph's love and give hers in return, even with everything that happened all those years ago. Because at bottom she's a spoiled rich white princess who thinks she's too good even for such a fine man. She treats him like he's a servant, has him come here for pro bono care with her students after his long workdays, even has him help shovel the horse manure like some stable hand! She acts so upright and forthcoming, and everyone believes her, but trust me, she's got dirty secrets in her past and it makesfor very strange relationships with some of the kids. Especially Tommy. And that's not right.