Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

Cree cut over to the central drive, the pain in her head a fading memory. X-rays had shown no skull fracture, and Dr. Bannock had concluded that it was safe to take painkillers. It felt good to move, to be outside. The air was dry and comfortably warm, just right. In the bright daylight, the school had a different aspect: isolated, but very much full of the fizz of bright energy Cree associated with young people. Like batteries, these buildings had been daily charged with their chatter, earnest effort, laughter, flirtation, passing hurts and worries, frustration, homesickness, and discovery. A rainbow mix.

Just east of the athletic field, the mesa presented a palisade of cliffs and fallen rock rubble. In the bright sun, it looked merely melancholy and anonymous, not threatening. None of the formations resembled faces in the slightest; the nightmare she'd had last night receded, and the pall of menace dissipated. In fact, the endless rolling desert all around seemed to invite her, to encourage big physical gestures, and she wished she could go running. A long one, out and out until she was alone in the circle of horizon.

Maybe tomorrow, she decided, when her bruised braincase had regrouped.

Where to start? She needed to call Edgar and Joyce, get Joyce going on some research before she came, suggest some ideas about diagnostic technology to Ed. And she should call Paul, too, just to check in. But most important, she needed to spend time with Tommy, feel him out when her head wasn't killing her. She should see his living space, too, look at his drawings or notebooks, his school essays, the things he'd brought from home, whatever he surrounded himself with. Somehow begin to answer the question, Who is Tommy Keeday?

She came around the corner of the gym building to see Tommy and several others taking turns batting a softball on the baseball diamond. Lynn Pierce sat on a bench to the left of home plate, watching. Cree assessed the state of her skull and decided that opportunity took precedence over discomfort.

Play stopped when she ambled over to the batter's cage, the weekend staffers and Tommy looking at her in perplexity. "Yaateeh!" she called. The truck driver had coached her on how to pronounce the Navajo hello, and it seemed to melt the ice. "Can I join you? Looks like you need a catcher."

In the role of pitcher now, Tommy looked dubious, but he said some few words of introduction in Navajo that made the others smile and relax. Cree took it as a welcome. She dropped her purse on the bench, rummaged in the equipment bag there, and came up with a glove that would do. Lynn caught her eye with a bronze-flecked glance.

The rules were like pickup goofing anywhere, she quickly determined, just like the neighborhood "games" she sometimes joined with Zoe and Hy and friends. Not enough people to have a real game, so you took turns batting and enduring the insults of the others until general consensus determined you'd embarrassed yourself enough and it was someone else's turn. Scattered rather randomly on the bare-dirt diamond, the fielders tossed each hit around before bouncing the ball back to the pitcher.

Besides Tommy, the other players were three men and one woman, and a pair of young teenagers, a boy and a girl. From behind the fence, Lynn explained that they were all staff; the teenagers were children of one of the men, visiting for the weekend.

"What did Tommy say when I came?" Cree asked quietly.

"He introduced you as a friend of mine and Julieta's. Very politely, I might add."

The batter who had just come up was a short, muscular man in his early thirties, dressed in the school's kitchen uniform of blue slacks and smock. He was wearing Nike running shoes, but he took up the aluminum bat and tapped the edges of his soles meaningfully, as if clearing his cleats. The fielders laughed, pretended to be fearful, and began yammering about long-ball hitters. That quickly evolved into suggestive puns about long balls and long bats until the teenage girl, scandalized, laughed and shushed them.

"It's better to have a catcher," the batter said over his shoulder. "Otherwise the batter chases it every time, you fall asleep out there, waiting. What happened to your head?"

Cree touched the butterfly bandage above her right eyebrow, grimaced, and told him, "A stupid accident with Ms. McCarty's horses."

He relayed the news to the others in Navajo, and they nodded commiseratingly.

Standing behind the plate, she savored the feel of the group. They had folded around her quickly, perfectly content to have this stranger among them as long as she was willing to play. Aside from the thump inside her head, it was very pleasant: the sun warm on her cheek, the air clean and sweet-spicy, the sky a vast dome of blue that set off the rust hues of the mesa.

Even Tommy looked okay. She watched him as he caught the ball and briefly inspected it. He appeared to have a problem with a muscle cramp in his left calf, and he looked less than pleased to have her butting in, but otherwise, outwardly, he seemed like a pretty normal kid, playing some Softball.

Tight-lipped, Tommy pitched, the batter swung and missed; Cree nailed it in her glove and flipped it back to Tommy as the fielders jeered the batter. As if to set them straight, he knocked the next pitch over their heads. It landed with a puff of dust well out in the desert, where the lonesome-looking outfielders had to chase it.

"Not too bad," Tommy called. "For an old man."

The batter watched with satisfaction as they retrieved the ball and tossed it around. "What's your name?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Cree."

He grinned back at her. "You don't look Indian."

"It's not after the tribe. Just a nickname."

He nodded and turned back to the field, then freed a hand from the bat to mime shaking hands in the air. "Ben," he told her.

He hit another two dozen balls and then it was Tommy's turn at bat. Coming in from the mound, the boy seemed to approach Cree warily. He traded his glove for Ben's bat and scowled as he took a practice swing off to one side.

"Don't worry," Cree told him quietly. "I won't hassle you. I'm off duty."

He made a small, tight smile. "Like I believe you."

"I never mix business with pleasure, trust me." It was a lie, actually. She wouldn't outwardly probe him, but with him standing only five feet away she found herself extending her senses toward him, straining to feel the thing that must be lurking in him. The best she could do was to note a tiny, ambiguous buzz of dissonance.

"I'm serious," she went on. "I can use some exercise. Outside, sunshine, some air in my lungs-it feels good. Being here is very exciting for me. It's so different where I come from. You're probably used to it, but for me it's beautiful and new."

He nodded as he set his stance, then swung at the first pitch and missed. Ben pitched hard, letting the ball go in a shallow arc after a fast bolo windup. Cree caught it with a smack, looked wide-eyed at her hands and yelled at him as she tossed it back, "Hey, take it easy! Wanna burn a hole in my glove?"

Ben grinned and underhanded another fast one, which Tommy slapped on the ground toward the left. The woman at third base fielded it badly, then made a wild throw to first, laughing at herself and earning the scorn of everyone. As Tommy watched them toss it around he rotated his left ankle, pointed his toe, leaned on it to stretch out the muscle cramp. Cree waited, hands on knees behind him.

Who are you? she asked in her thoughts. What do you want?

"Why did you ask me about ghosts last night?" Tommy whispered over his shoulder. "Is that what you do? Something with ghosts?"

He must have been thinking about that comment ever since last night, Cree knew suddenly, and she chided herself for her carelessness- for tossing that provocation at him, failing to realize how closely a very smart boy would inspect what had been said. How much it would frighten a confused kid, no matter how skeptical he claimed to be.