C.E. Murphy - Mountain Echoes

“Hell if I know. I was aiming for home. I don’t know why we hiccuped. This is... I mean, this is...”

“Yeah, it is. About half an hour from now she’ll be dead.”

“What?” Morrison, who had been watching the younger me with fascination, came around at that. Little Joanie, undisturbed by any of our discussion, kept playing with bugs.

“She died in a car wreck,” I said when Dad’s silence drew out. “Right after Dad and I came to visit when I was about three. We left after the funeral and never came back until I was a teenager.”

Dad said, “I didn’t think you remembered that,” in an accusing tone.

I sighed. “I didn’t. I don’t. Exactly. I just...I got reminded a couple of weeks ago. It’s been a rough couple weeks.” I said that a lot. I hoped someday it would stop being true.

“I’m going to go stop her.” Dad walked away, his footsteps bending the patchy grass underfoot. I didn’t know how that worked, except this was real to us, even if we were ghostlike to our other selves. They couldn’t see us, but maybe we could affect them. Morrison and I both stared after Dad, not quite believing he really did intend to go stop my grandmother until he disappeared down the road. Only then did Morrison turn to me in concern. “ Can he?”

“No. I don’t think so. Probably not.” I thought about the sensation I’d had on the battlefield, the idea that the timeline in that particular place was still malleable, and worried at my lower lip. “Maybe.”

“What happens if he does?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are we going to stop him?”

“I don’t know.” My younger self was industriously digging a hole in Grandmother’s lawn. Her fingers were filthy, nails caked with dirt, and she looked as happy as a pig in mud. I had no memories of doing that kind of thing. I remembered playing cowboys and Indians at Little Bighorn, rolling down small steep hills and scrambling breathlessly up the other side, alternating between being a cowboy and being an Indian. “Bang bang bang!” as I finger-gun shot up one side, and fwipping imaginary arrows down the other. I remembered sticking my fingers into the scars bullets had left in those hilltops. I remembered kicking sand and dust up in Nevada, never knowing I was disturbing the remains of nuclear test sites. I remembered a lot of things, but none of them seemed to have the childish simplicity of digging a hole to China, which appeared to be my small self’s goal in life.

I would be a completely different person if I’d grown up on the Qualla. I was sure if we’d stayed here, my grandmother would have eventually worn Dad down, and I’d have begun shamanic studies at a much younger age. I might never have crossed paths with Coyote, and I almost certainly would never have met Morrison.

But it was my grandmother, my father’s mother, and it obviously still tore him apart that she’d died. Maybe he wouldn’t have stayed, anyway. Maybe the promise to my mother—to Shell, I’d never imagined Sheila MacNamarra with a nickname—maybe that would have kept him moving, especially if he thought he would lose the argument about my training. Maybe nothing would have changed, except my grandmother would still be alive. I said, “I don’t know,” again, and sat down in the grass with my hands covering my face.

After a moment a light touch brushed my arm. I spread my fingers to see little Joanne peeking at me. “Are you my momma? You look like me. We both has fweckles.”

“Have frec">rm. I sprkles,” I corrected automatically, then closed my eyes, because I couldn’t stand looking into my own interested baby face. “No, sweetheart. I’m not your momma, even if we both have freckles.”

“Are you sad? Is that why you hiding you face?”

I made a soft sound. “I’m a little bit sad, yes.”

She patted my arm. “Don’t be sad. I has a ladybug. Hewe.” She offered me the bug on a dirty fingertip.

I unfolded my hand to stroke its ghostly back. I couldn’t feel it, and wasn’t sure why she could pat me when she’d run through me once already. I suspected it had something to do becoming aware of me after she’d dashed through me, and let it go at that. “Thank you for sharing your ladybug. It’s very nice.”

“Is you happy now?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Thank you, Joanie.”

“You welcome!” She scampered off again, revealing Morrison watching me—us, I supposed—with an expression of wonder.

“You think I take things in stride, Walker?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve had a conversation with my younger self. This one was nicer than most. Usually I excoriate myself. Of course, I also usually learn something.”

“What’d you learn this time?”

“That she’s a nice little girl and probably deserves to grow up into somebody less messed up than I am. Maybe I should go help Dad try to save my grandmother.”

Morrison’s voice got very quiet. “Don’t.” I blinked up at him and he met my gaze, concern rising in his blue eyes. “You do that, Walker, and everything changes, right?”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I’ve never really changed anything. I don’t know what happens, but it seems most likely.”

“Don’t make me miss out on you.” He spoke so softly he sounded like a different man. “Don’t change our future before we get a chance at finding out what it is, Walker. We’ve come this far. I want to find out where this road goes.”

The part of me that didn’t know when to shut up almost pointed out he wouldn’t know any better, if everything did change. The part of me that occasionally said the right thing got there first, and said, “So do I.”

Morrison’s shoulders dropped about six inches, and I had the dizzying realization he’d actually been afraid. I got up and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do, Morrison. It’s my grandmother. I don’t even remember her, but I can’t blame Dad for wanting to try.”

“He must know better.” Morrison sounded shaken, which made me hug him harder.

“He does. He’s just not thinking. Or he knows more than we do. We’ll go ask. We’ll find out. Come on.” I moved half a step and bumped into something.

I looked down to find Joanie gazing up at Morrison with starry-eyed adoration. She tugged my pant leg and pronounced, “He vewy handsome,” in a stage whisper that would’ve been audible in the rafters.

I laughed out loud and said, “Yeah, he is,” as Morrison crouched and grinned at mini-me. “And you’re very pretty,” he informed her, which made me laugh again. Joanie skipped off, pink and happy as could be. I offered a half-hearted kick at Morrison’s shin as he stood. “Imprinting yourself onng er, which me young, are you?”

He looked horrified, then slightly uncomfortable. “She’s a cute kid, Walker. She— You— Ah, hell. I wasn’t thinking about her being you. I was imagining her being—” He stopped abruptly and his ears flushed red.

My eyebrows went up. “As being what?”

He said, “Nothing,” so hastily that I followed his train of thought and turned as pink as Joanie had.

“Oh. Um. Okay. Um. Let’s, um. Let’s go find Dad and tell him he can’t do this.”

Still hastily, Morrison said, “Good idea,” and we skittered off my grandmother’s lawn like a couple of guilty kids.

Dad hadn’t gotten all that far, really. He was about half a mile down the road, at what I suspected was the crash site. The road and sky were both clear, no standing water to make the old boat of a Pontiac slip or to create glare that might have blinded my grandmother as she drove. There were no fallen trees, no lurking deer, nothing to drive her off the road. I went up to him, hands in my pockets, and said, “Maybe she was just driving too fast.”