Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"So, this is the story a Navajo survivor told one of the Franciscans, thirty years later. A detachment of soldiers was down in the area where the school is now, and this one family group that lived near there was trying to escape. They're fleeing to the top of the mesa up that ravine, it's the only way up on the northern end. They're driving their goats and sheep with them. Two goats get loose, run back down the ravine. One of the sons goes after them, you can see why, they know they'll need the meat if they're gonna survive. Up on the top of the mesa, the family sees the soldiers coming, so the boy's sister gets scared and goes to call him back. The father and several uncles come down the ravine after her, but they're too late, the soldiers are there. There's a fight, both kids get killed, and the father and one uncle. The others got rounded up, sent to the concentration camp. Four years later, the surviving family members moved back to their home turf. They didn't resettle near the ravine, too much sorrow there, bad ghosts. After that they called it Lost Goats Mesa, don't ask me to say it in Navajo, sort of a testament to what had happened. Eventually, the first McCartys came, started mining, bought up the land. People moved away. A few generations later, the story was forgotten."

Despondent, Cree couldn't answer immediately. Lost Goats. One little accident, the goats running back. Then tragedy.

"So what can you tell me about them?" she managed at last. "Did they record the family's name?"

"Well, that's complex. It was the children's mother who told the story, thirty years later, right? She was called Yil' Dezbah, and she was of the Waters Run Together clan. Father Bryant says her name means 'Goes to War With,' a pretty common name. I know you'll be wondering if Tommy or Peter Yellowhorse is a descendant of that group, but tracing lineage'll probably be impossible. The clans mix up thoroughly, a lot of names got Anglicized, plus back then it was matrilineal, but for the last couple of generations people mostly use the father's name… Maybe the Keedays'll know the genealogy here."

"The boy-how old was the boy?"

"Older than the girl, that's all I know."

"Was his name Shinaai?"

"What? I lost that."

"What was the boy's name?"

"Doesn't say. I asked Father Bryant about shinaai-he says it just means 'my older brother.' Sorry." Joyce blew out a breath. "Think any of this'll help?"

"Absolutely. Great work, Joyce." It wasn't much, but having any data at all was like a tonic. Cree felt exhilaration rising in her. A moment later, her pulse kicked up still further as something flashed between the buttes to the south. Reflected sunlight. She tore off her sunglasses and squinted and after a moment saw what had caused it: about a mile away, the top half of a red pickup truck was just visible, skimming along above an invisible fold of ground. The county road! She'd been this close for the last half hour and hadn't been able to see it. At last she could find her way out of this godforsaken maze.

"Joyce, I have to tell you, you're the greatest!"

"Sorry, I didn't catch that. Say again?"

The phone was killing Cree, and the urgency of her mission had returned like gangbusters. She hurried around to the door of the truck.

"I said I love you, and please tell Ed I love him, too."

"Hey, Cree-I don't like the tone of final farewell here."

Cree heard it perfectly but opted to dodge: "What? Sorry, I think we're losing reception. Talk to you soon, okay?"

She shut the phone and slid it back into her pocket.

Finally getting Joseph's map right, she found the Keedays' driveway and drove the dirt track to its end. The grandparents' trailer and hogan were at the far end of a scattering of structures in a canyonlike area between the parched, sun-scoured buttes. The young man waiting for her came to the truck window and introduced himself as Eric, Tommy's brother, although Cree inferred that he was what most Americans would call a cousin. He was a slender Navajo in his late teens wearing jeans, jogging shoes, and a red sweatshirt with a UNM logo. His grandparents were gone, he said, making preparations for the healing ceremony that would be held in a few days. His mother and uncle and brother were taking care of Tommy; they'd had a hard night of it, everybody was very worried.

Eric looked worried, too, Cree thought. No-scared to death.

Cree parked and got out into a silence that stunned her. No wind down here, no long views. The derelict hogans and sheds enhanced the abandoned feeling of what was by far the remotest human habitation she had ever seen.

Eric noticed her reaction and managed a nervous grin. "Compared to this," he warned her, "sheep camp is really out there."

He led her to a four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. She got on behind him, snugged the straps of her backpack, and put her hands around his flat belly. In another moment they were away, bouncing across the rugged ground. Ahead, the dry soil showed wheel tracks snaking out into dozens of routes through the rock formations.

"So I take it you go to UNM?" Cree called into Eric's ear. It seemed odd to have your legs and arms wrapped around someone about whom you knew nothing.

He half turned his head to answer. "No. Just started at Dine College. Majoring in education."

"Have you seen Tommy since… he came back?"

"No. My mother won't let me too near him. That's okay with me."

In a few minutes, Eric had steered them up a rise to a larger plateau topped by gently rolling swells and more vegetation. He accelerated, and the engine noise precluded more talk for a while. The smell of the ATV's exhaust sucked up in the back draft, an oily tang.

When they slowed to navigate through a rockier stretch, Cree thought of another question: "Are you guys close, you and Tommy? You know him pretty well?"

Eric tossed his head. "Ever since he was a baby, yeah. But my folks moved us up to Burnham back when I was a kid, and I'm older, so we went to different schools. He's a real good artist, idn't it?"

Ever since he was a baby: didn't mean anything either way. Of course, Eric might not know. Cree gave up on it. She closed her eyes and just held on, feeling the jolt and sway of the ATV. Trying to charge up her batteries. She almost drowsed despite the jarring motion and the relentless wail of the engine.

The one thing she hadn't taken time to consider was just how she expected to survive. What would keep her intact, herself, when she surrendered to an entity this powerful, charismatic, invasive? What talisman could she hold for protection? It had to be simple and true. Love, of course, love's the only thing strong enough. Love endures, love perseveres. I know who I am because I love and am loved. Dee and the twins. Mom. Ed, Joyce. Loving Mike and being loved by him. And Pop, of course, my dear poppa. Paul? Not at that point yet. But love, that's what'll bring you back. Bring you home every time.

Cree caught her head starting to loll and forced her eyes open just in time to be startled by an explosion of movement off to the right. Two ravens had leapt heavily off a small rodent carcass, spreading their wings and flapping resentfully away.

She'd barely caught her breath when Eric pointed up ahead. A low tarpaper roof hunched just behind a rise a half mile away.

"Almost there," he told her.

Eric stopped the ATV a hundred yards from the hogan, wishing her a hushed "Good luck." Cree walked the rest of the way, carrying her backpack and a bag of food Eric had brought in the ATV's basket. She was very conscious of the silence here: There was only the crunch of her boots on dry soil, the silvery hiss of her own bloodstream. No sound of voices or human activity.

But she could feel it in the hogan. Saturating the silence was the shrill psi buzz she recognized now: the dissonance in Tommy, the radiation of the psychic war inside him. A prickle went up her throat and neck and into her scalp.