Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

She shook her head. "I'm off duty, remember? I really don't have you under a microscope. We should both just play and relax now. I think we both could use it."

"Is that what you're thinking is the matter with me?" Tommy persisted.

Ben caught the ball again and made an elaborate show of preparing to pitch. Tommy got set and when the ball came he whapped it over the first baseman's head, foul.

"The answer I have is complicated," she told him quietly. "Because I don't think of these things the way other people do. If you want, I'll be happy to explain later, when we have more time."

Tommy turned his back on the chattering fielders as they flipped the ball around. "Does that mean Mrs. McCarty and Dr. Tsosie think it, too?"

"The more important question is, What do you think?"

Tommy eyes were wide and desperate. He seemed to struggle with how to answer, and at last whispered hoarsely, "I have to fight it. All the time."

Appalled, Cree realized for the first time the terror that Tommy must be living with, and how bravely he concealed it. Take the fear anyone felt when struck by a severe illness, and compound it a hundred times with the fear of the unknown-the awful, sick sense of strangeness that so often accompanied the paranormal. That metaphysical terror. The fact that he was talking to her now showed how desperate this boy was. She felt her heart leap out toward him, an unbearable desire to comfort and protect.

"You can feel it? Now?" Cree was aware that Lynn Pierce was watching them closely. She wondered how much the nurse could hear.

In a tiny voice, he said, "In my calf. It's like a charley horse. This little ball that tightens up. Like it's trying to make my leg move by itself."

Ben pitched and Tommy swung and missed. Cree returned it and put her hands on her knees to wait for the next pitch. Ben wound up, slung it, Tommy fouled it far away east of first base, toward the mesa.

"What about when it gets bad? Times like last night?"

Tommy's leg was really bothering him now. He laid the bat down so he could use both hands to rub the calf fiercely. Cree caught only the briefest of glimpses when his pants leg hitched, but she was shocked at the striating bands and mounds moving under his smooth skin. He kept his face half turned to the field, barely moved his lips as if to conceal his urgency from the others: "I can't remember."

"Is it always the same?"

The bent head gave a shake. "Sometimes it's different. Sometimes it's fast, it just snaps, it catches you off guard. But the way it was last night, when it's coming it's like… when you're going to throw up. You try not to think about it, try not to let it get worse, but it keeps coming and coming until you can't help it."

"Oh, man, Tommy. That must be so hard!" Cree said. Tommy's brown eyes reconnoitered hers and seemed relieved not to find condescension there. Still, craning her senses toward him she felt nothing but that queer sizzle that could be a foreign presence or, she had to admit, the mind of a troubled teen with a psychological problem-some unconscious need so desperate that it had to seek this drastic, exotic form of expression. Her spine tingled at the thought: That was terrifying, too. She had to quell the urge to go to him, hold him, stroke away the tension in his face.

"Hey, batter!" Ben yelled. "Incoming!"

Tommy picked up the bat. He took a pitch, waited for the next, swung and missed. Ben kept at him until he swatted one into the outfield. They didn't talk for a time as he hit a few more. Each metallic pank! of the aluminum bat rang painfully in Cree's head.

"So what do you think is the best thing to do for it?" she whispered. "What would be the best thing for you?"

"Just to die. Not to feel that ever again."

"No! Not a good solution. Let's work on a better one, huh?"

He shook his head as he turned mostly toward her. "You don't get it. You don't know."

"I know I don't! That's why I need you to tell me!"

His eyes flicked at her, glistening with an animal quality. "One time our sheep had this thing. There'd been a big hatch of this kind of fly… You couldn't see it until after shearing, but then you could see these… lumps. On their backs, their stomachs? The lumps moved by themselves. Kind of… pulsing. It was the worms, the maggots, under the skin. Eating the sheep alive."

The image stunned and sickened Cree: the parasite inside, remorseless, growing, consuming its living host. Tommy's alert eyes reacted to her inability to respond, and she felt she'd failed him.

"Okay, Tommy," Ben called. His voice startled them both. For the last few moments, a suffocating, fearful intimacy had wrapped around them, isolating the two of them, closing them off from the big sky and brisk air and the warm camaraderie of the other players. "A few more and it's Judy's turn. Stop flirting with the cute bilagaana and let's go. She's too old for you, yeah?"

The others laughed shyly, watching to see how Cree took it. She made a smile that she knew looked forced. But Tommy managed some comeback in Navajo that got them all laughing again. On the next pitch, he connected hard and sent a level drive straight back at the pitcher's mound. Ben ducked under the ball as it hummed low up the middle and over second base. The fielders whistled appreciatively and then berated Ben for his arrogance and cowardice and general lifestyle: "Duck and cover, huh, Ben?" " 'Stop, drop, and roll,' man!" "Hey, no-for Ben, more like 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll.'"

Tommy put down the bat as the woman at third base began to come in. He jogged out into the field with only a slight hitch in his leg.

"What does bilagaana mean?" Cree called back to Lynn Pierce.

"White person."

"So what was that Tommy said to them?"

Lynn was looking after him with a proprietary pride. "He said something like, 'Yeah, I'm too young and you're too ugly.' And then a pun that doesn't translate perfectly-it's better in Navajo. Ben was making an indirect pass at you and Tommy was telling him to mind his manners." She turned to Cree with a prim, apologetic smile. "Make any progress, Doctor? I was… kind of listening."

"I don't know," Cree told her. "I really don't know."

"Cree!" She was walking back toward the infirmary, determined to lie down, when the voice startled her out of her thoughts. She looked back to see Julieta, striding toward her from the administration building. She walked quickly and wore a frown full of the angry determination of a prize-fighter coming out of his corner. "How's your head?"

Cree put her hand to her bandaged forehead. "I'm fine. Going to be headachy for a few days, that's all. What's going on?"

"I know who the ghost is."

Cree's jaw dropped: This was quite a shift for a woman who'd expressed so many reservations not so long ago. "Urn, that's terrific. Who?"

Julieta hesitated, making some decision as she looked at Cree through narrowed eyes. "Are you up for riding? I'll show you."

Cree assessed her weariness, measured the gas in the tank and found maybe just enough. "Sure," she said.

They saddled the two mares. Cree found she remembered most of the ritual of blanket and saddle, bridle and bit and stirrups; Julieta checked her work and needed only to draw Breeze's belly cinch tighter. The black gelding looked on curiously as they led the mares out the rear corral gate and mounted.

Astride her horse, Julieta looked ravishing. Her black hair floated around her head and over her shoulders as she sat straight and proud. Once they were on their way, she pulled back the thick mane and put on a cowboy hat that held it behind her, then slipped on a pair of sunglasses. In the shades and hat, leather jacket and snug jeans, she looked gorgeous and dangerous, a woman warrior.