Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

After a time, Joseph said, "Ask Julieta about Julieta."

His answer was not a dodge but a correct and courteous response, Cree realized. He was telling her that it was Julieta's decision how much to tell Cree, not his. And at least he didn't try to hide behind the "good educator" excuse. Cree was tempted to inquire if he'd answer questions about Joseph Tsosie but decided not to push her luck.

"So, based on your contact with him, can you tell me what kind of person Tommy is? I mean… what does he want? What does he like? What does he want to be when he grows up?"

"If I'd seen Tommy outside of the current situation, I'd describe him as a pretty normal Navajo kid from the rez in 2002. Aside from his high IQ-emotionally, I mean."

"Which means-?"

"Which means he's not sure who he is or what he really wants. All these kids, they watch TV and go to the movies, they walk around with their headsets on, listening to CDs. They think they want to be 'normal' Americans. Which means white. They don't know what it means to be Dine."

"So… what does it mean to be Dine?"

Joseph grunted softly. "To a lot of them, it means being a loser. Being a drunk. Being a hick with sheep shit on his boots and no future. If they hear any history at all, it sounds like a lot of superstition and whining and a bunch of illogical prohibitions and taboos."

He seemed to reconsider as he slowed the truck for a little flock of sheep that milled across the road ahead. Once the stragglers had made it safely onto the shoulder, he frowned and shook his head. "No, I take it back, Tommy's not typical. The typical kid comes from a government housing complex in a town and goes to public school-starts closer to the middle, the place where Navajo and white America are already mixing. Tommy comes from the extremes. He's gone to modern boarding schools, but he was raised in a traditional home. He's helped take care of his family's sheep, listened to his grandfather tell the old stories, lived without electricity or running water when he was little. So he knows more about the old way of life than the typical kid. Which is probably why he's trying so hard to get away from all that, dissociate himself from it."

"Most kids go through identity confusions at his age," Cree suggested.

"For Tommy it's worse. His parents are dead. He's got an exceptionally hungry mind. Look at his artwork and you can tell he needs to know where he comes from, how life works, what really matters. He can't get answers from his parents, and he resents them as much as he loves them. Same as with his Navajo heritage."

Cree thought back to the rap T-shirt, the close-shaved head. The pain behind her eyes was mounting, but even through the red throb she sensed from Joseph's intensity that she had touched upon something huge and troubling. Tommy wasn't the only one with a dissonant sense of his heritage; Joseph, for all his accomplishment and self-possession, was divided, too. Big forces came together here. What she felt was a tiny part of the great historical collision between Native American and European culture. Clearly that crash, though four hundred years old, was reverberating still in Dr. Joseph Tsosie. And in Tommy Keeday.

The thought sobered her, and she was suddenly aware of how little knowledge she brought to any aspect of this problem. She felt like asking what being Dine meant to Joseph Tsosie. Then, humbled, realized she lacked the insight to probe him any further.

They drove into the strip in Window Rock and dropped off their passengers at the parking lot where dozens of people had set up booths and racks to sell their wares. Continuing north on 12, they passed more of the lovely stone forms Cree had admired on her way in, and then veered away into open land again. They passed a cemetery with American flags flying on almost every grave-the Navajo Veterans Cemetery, according to a flaking sign. The graves were knee-high mounds of rock rubble, topped by festoons of plastic flowers, colorful trinkets, flags, and the standard government- issue white tab of a vet's headstone. Beyond the barbed-wire fence that marked the cemetery's formal confines, a bulldozer had pushed aside the brush, cutting a narrow red-dirt slash that was entirely filled by a single long row of graves, bright and forlorn as an abandoned circus.

As if the cemetery reminded him of something he'd been wanting to say, Joseph cleared his throat deliberately. "I want to be very clear about Tommy's status. I've generally agreed with Julieta that the IHS or state mental health systems may not know what to do with him, so I've been willing to take some risk and let him come back to the school. But I'm not as pessimistic about the system as Julieta is, and as his primary physician, I have to see he receives appropriate care. Which means one more crisis and he's got to go back to the hospital. I gave instructions to Lynn Pierce to that effect. She doesn't call me first. She calls an ambulance."

"And what happens to him then?"

"It's up to his grandparents. Personally, I'd recommend long-term treatment somewhere." He paused, then articulated his point: "You may or may not have access to him. The hospital probably won't let you treat him in any way. The grandparents, it's hard to say, but I'd guess not."

Cree thought about it, feeling headachy and overwhelmed. She agreed with Joseph, but she was also sure that no conventional methods would remove the invader from Tommy. If she and Edgar couldn't have access to him, he might never be freed of the thing. The whole situation put even more pressure on her investigation.

"Thank you for being candid with me, Joseph," she said at last.

He nodded, and they didn't say any more as he drove into Fort Defiance and pulled up in a new-looking hospital complex. There were trees here, Cree saw, and beyond the hospital grounds residential streets with actual green lawns and paved sidewalks. Joseph shut off the truck, and before Cree could gather her bag he'd come around to open her door. She let him help her down.

"We'll get you to the ER. I'll leave you there, but I'll check in later to make sure you're okay. Ask for Dr. Bannock, he should be on today. If you're released, you can rest up here until I can drive you back tonight. Or Julieta can come up and get you." He looked at her for her response, steady brown eyes, and she nodded.

Joseph had slept for at most three hours, and he was about to begin a long day of caring for others. Yet he looked fit for it, weary but capable and in command of himself.

Abruptly she knew why Lynn Pierce and Julieta took such comfort from him. She felt an almost overpowering desire to tell him how much she appreciated his help, his innate courtesy and restraint, his calm, his concern for Julieta and Tommy. But she didn't know him well enough to tell him. It would only embarrass him and possibly offend him.

Instead, she raised one hand and lightly took his arm. If he sensed any intent besides an unsteady woman's need for assistance, he didn't show it. They went up the sidewalk like that, and Cree saw their reflections in the hospital's big glass doors: one beat-up-looking Anglo parapsychologist looking very much out of her depth, shyly holding the arm of a tired but trim Navajo doctor who wore a bemused expression as he thought ahead to his day's rounds.

Cree made it back to Oak Springs at one o'clock, getting a ride with a grocery supplier who was bringing a load of mutton and eggs to the school's kitchen. Expecting the delivery, Julieta had called the company and arranged for her to be picked up, apparently a fairly common ridesharing procedure. The Navajo man who drove the refrigerated box truck was plump and talkative and a big baseball fan who probed Cree for everything she knew about the Seattle Mariners. She was surprised at how much she did know and began to suspect she'd inherited Pop's baseball gene after all. They parted as good friends at the cafeteria building's service entrance.