Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"If it is Garrett's ghost, I need you to help me figure Garrett out. Tell me why his compulsion to hurt you would be so strong. That it would manifest as an urge to vengeance so enduring it would continue even in the absence of his body, so deliberate it could do anything as complex and devious as this."

Julieta's face was set as if indicating that she'd said as much as she'd intended to.

Frustrated, Cree briefly let go the reins, threw her shoulders back, and brushed her hair away from her face with both hands. The bandage above her brow pinched.

They rode on at a walk for another ten minutes in silence. Julieta showed no indication she was going to say any more.

"Whatever it is," Cree said at last, "if it's the ghost of Garrett or someone else, I don't kill it. I wouldn't know how to do that."

"Then what do you do?" Julieta said numbly.

"I figure out a way for it to come to terms with why it's there. And if you have any role in why it's there, I can only do that if you do the same-come to terms with why it's there. If you're part of its world or play a role in its compulsions, you're the one who has to let it free."

"If it's Garrett, I'd rather kill it."

Cree shook her head. "Can't. It's already dead. You've got to integrate it in some constructive way. Release it by somehow dealing with its impulse."

Julieta brought Madie's head up and angled her path toward the left, up a low rise. Ahead, Cree saw the tip of a huge derrick like the one she'd seen from the highway.

"I'd rather kill it," Julieta repeated quietly to herself.

They dismounted on a hilltop a hundred yards back from the edge of a cliff that marked a natural fold in the land. The broad, shallow valley ran several miles to the east and west and was full of activity: swirling dust, vehicles, and, tiny as ants next to the equipment, men. Mounds of mineral stuff lay heaped randomly, roads winding between them. Broad ramps led out of coal trenches and up both sides of the valley, giant trucks inching up or down. About a mile to their left, Cree saw a colossal orange cube surmounted by a towering crane like the one she'd seen from the highway, rotating as it dragged soil and rock in a bucket the size of a house. Closer, along the near side of the valley, a complex of yellow steel buildings stood surrounded by parking lots full of cars and pickup trucks. A rumble of engines filled the air, and diesel exhaust smothered the sweet scent of the desert.

Julieta took off her sunglasses, squinting against the glare and the distance. She pointed to a little sports car, incongruous among the pickups.

"Proof positive our industrious Donny is on the job today."

"He won't mind you being here? If you're such enemies-"

"I called him earlier. He gave me permission to trespass. We occasionally trade such little courtesies as part of our arbitrated right-of-way settlement. Not that I don't ride on McCarty property all the time anyway-this isn't their only mine site, Donny's here only on Saturdays. And nobody else would give a damn."

"Why did we come here today, Julieta? I don't need to see this. I need to hear your story."

"You want to see where Garrett died, don't you? The dragline-that's the huge derrick thing-has moved since then. I wanted to show you where it was when he died, so if the ghost had, whatever you call it, perimortem memories, you'd know where the accident happened. I don't know how this works-would its memories kind of cling to the dragline, or to the place where the dragline was? He fell off it when it was over there"-she gestured with her sunglasses to the east-" about where that spit of land sticks out above the valley. You can't see it from here, but there's a used-up pit there. The whole operation was-"

"Julieta. I've done the math, okay?"

"What math?" Julieta started to replace her sunglasses, but Cree caught her arm and held her gaze. Beautiful astonishing dark blue eyes, suddenly frightened.

"Tommy's age, your divorce. He's your child, isn't he? That's where we should begin."

Julieta's expression changed suddenly. It was the face of a person receiving an arrow-one that had been expected. Feeling it pierce deep, painful yet familiar from years of anticipating and imagining its stab. She dropped her sunglasses and shook Cree's hand away as she stepped clumsily back to sit on a slab of sandstone.

Cree took Madie's reins and tied both horses to a pinon tree before retrieving the glasses and sitting next to Julieta. Below, the mine ground away at its business. A solitary crow, flying above them out over the rim, seemed to change its mind when it saw the operation and veered away to the east.

"Is this how it's supposed to be?" Julieta said quietly. "The way you… do what you do?"

Cree was anything but certain, but some reassurance was called for. She arched her shoulders, took a deep breath, and swept her hair back with both hands. "There are a lot of aspects to it. But right now, yes, this is what we should do."

"Why do you do that?"

" Do-?"

"You're talking like me. You're acting like me. That gesture." Julieta took off her hat, shook her hair free, and then repeated Cree's movements. Only then did Cree realize she'd been doing it.

"I'm sorry. It's… unconscious." Cree nodded and tried to smile.

"It's what I do when I'm frustrated," Julieta went on. "Or getting down to business. To something that's hard but that has to be done."

"This is definitely one of those."

Julieta looked out over the mine. "I'm not the confiding type. I'm not the confessing type. I've never been to a priest or a psychoanalyst in my life, and I have no desire to."

"I'm not your psychoanalyst."

"What are you, then?"

Cree didn't know the name for it. Think of me as your mirror. Your echo. No, too solitary. Your sister. Your friend. Too presumptuous.

"I'm someone kind of like you," she said at last. "Different enough from other people that I don't often trust them to understand me. And not the confessing type."

Maybe that helped a little. Julieta nodded. Still, it took her a long time to begin.

She married Garrett in 1982, full of optimism. Twenty years old. She dropped out of the university to devote herself to her exciting new life. Oh, she had doubts-it had all happened so fast. Sometimes she wondered if what she felt was love; more often she wondered if he really loved her, if there was anything in it for him besides her looks and sex and having a young thing on his arm to impress his fellow rich codgers. For a while the answer she gave herself was that, if that were all he'd wanted, he could have had it with lots of women without bothering to marry. There were moments when he seemed to show real tenderness and appreciation. And she wasn't just some young thing, she reminded herself, she was the smart, presentable, well-mannered daughter of a good family.

Anyway, she swore, if she wasn't good enough, she'd work twice as hard to become good enough.

She got part of the answer within the first year. Patrick Kelly sold his new son-in-law his struggling heavy-equipment business, handing over several lots full of earth-moving machinery at fire sale prices. Julieta never knew exactly what the arrangement was, but it involved keeping the name Kelly Equipment and retaining her father as its boss. The deal was a rescue from likely bankruptcy, and anyway, as Garrett reminded them, it was all in the family now.

Within six months of their wedding, pressing duties obligated Garrett to spend most of his time at their house in Albuquerque, leaving Julieta alone at the Oak Springs house. Occasionally they did things together, but always in public settings-corporate events, charity balls, or political fund-raisers where Garrett needed a well-mannered beauty on his arm and where there was no chance to talk about their relationship.