As an afterthought, Sam informed her that he was quitting, effective immediately.
He didn't have to explain why. Sam was forty years old, a reliable staffer who had served in the army, where he'd been trained as a paramedic, and he'd earned a bachelor's degree in social work from the University of Arizona; though he'd been born on the reservation he'd lived a good part of his life elsewhere. But like most Navajos of his generation, he hung uncertainly between the old beliefs and the view of the world he'd absorbed from white America. In Julieta's experience, even the most culturally assimilated Navajo believed that some truth lay beneath the traditional fears of Skinwalkers, Navajo Wolves, spirits of the dead, and the consequences of violating old taboos.
"Sam. You know I'll never be able to replace you." Julieta tried to keep the pleading out of her voice.
"I've had six hours to think about it. I talked to my wife. It scares her for me to be here anymore." He knew what his leaving meant and was clearly feeling bad about his decision, but he left her office with a resolute stride.
Only eight-fifteen in the morning, and she was already confronted with two pieces of very bad news. It was bad enough that she'd just lost a linchpin of her residential staff, a man both she and the students admired. But equally disturbing-no, worse, a sick, strangling fear that clotted in her chest-was that Tommy Keeday had been back only two days and already his troubles had resumed. Why Tommy, of all of them? The first time his bizarre symptoms had cropped up, they had passed quickly, and she and Dr. Tsosie had decided to let it go as some flu symptom, maybe, or a touch of food poisoning. But the second time, the attack had lingered and intensified, and Dr. Tsosie had referred Tommy for an exhaustive diagnostic workup at the Indian Hospital. The problem was that the symptoms had passed before they'd even completed the hour-long drive to Gallup, and after four days of testing that had included CT scans, electroencephalograms, comprehensive blood work, and a battery of psychological tests, the doctors had given Tommy a clean bill of health. He'd shown no cranial abnormalities, no detectable seizure activity, no sign of any illegal drugs in his system. In fact, he'd shown no symptoms of physical illness at all.
"Probably just dehydration," one smug intern had told her. "Sometimes its effects can mimic seizure activity. It's only temporary. Make sure he drinks lots of Gatorade."
Remembering his condescension infuriated Julieta-as if a lifelong resident of the area and principal of a boarding school wouldn't know the effects of the hot, dry climate of western New Mexico on teenagers! — and she mastered her anger with the hard pragmatism her position required of her. She had to think clearly, couldn't let her emotions get in the way.
That Tommy's symptoms had returned meant that he was a child seriously at risk. But how? The hospital couldn't find anything wrong with him. And what was she to make of Sam's claim that the… disturbance… had affected the other boys?
Two lights on her phone had begun blinking demandingly, and abruptly she realized she couldn't be bothered with whatever it was, she needed to get away from distractions and think this through. She left her desk, stopped briefly to tell the secretary that she was going for a walk, and hurried out of the administration building.
Outside, it was a perfect mid-September day. The strong north winds that had battered the school last night had died out. The sun was halfway up the eastern sky, its heat already a smart slap on her face even though a layer of cool air still hovered above the ground. Arms crossed, chin on her chest, she scuffed across the rear access road to the partial shade of a trellis she'd had set up as a place for staff to take lunch. A sunning lizard darted away as she sat on the picnic table.
It was a good vantage from which to look at the school. With everyone in class now, the complex was quiet: a little cluster of one-story buildings, a gravel-surfaced parking lot, a row of five stubby yellow school buses, a white water tower. The admin, classroom, and dorm buildings were new, built of concrete and surfaced to resemble adobe in gray and pink tones. A large hogan, eight-sided and built of logs, occupied a central spot between dorms and classroom buildings. Set farther back amid some cottonwood trees stood the little adobe bell tower and her own sandstone-block house, which now served as the infirmary until she could raise the money to build another unit.
The school stood alone and diminished by the vastness of its surroundings. To the north and south stretched sagebrush desert, rolling swells of bare soil and rocks in a red-brown, gray-green mosaic only rarely varied by the dark green of a pinon tree; to the west, the land rose and broke into the hills bordering Black Creek. Beyond the school buildings to the east, the view was cut short by a little mesa, its cliffs making a meandering wall that eventually curved out of sight. Far to the north, the horizon was capped by the rugged line of the Chuska Mountains' southernmost slopes. Above, the vault of clean blue sky, streaked today with thin, high clouds.
Not another human thing in sight. Beautiful.
And that's it, Julieta thought desperately. My life. The one good thing I've ever done. The only thing I've ever done right.
She looked at the place and loved it painfully, and it seemed the sun stung her eyes and brought tears. Starting this school had been a way not only to give something to the people of the region, it had been a personal crusade-redemption for a life of stupid mistakes, wasted years, squandered self. It was a line she'd drawn in the sand, the demarcation between past and future. Whatever neurotic hopes or submerged longings might have shaped her motivations, it had turned into a good thing.
Just starting its sixth year of operation, Oak Springs was the first privately run boarding school for gifted and talented Navajo kids, and it was now weekday home to sixty-seven high school boys and girls drawn from western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, most of them from the rez. Every Friday the buses returned all but ten to their homes in remote trailers and hogans and shacks scattered over an area of fifteen thousand square miles, and every Monday brought them back for another five days of instruction and, she hoped, inspiration. She'd spent all of the money she'd gotten in her divorce settlement, had campaigned hard for the rest from charitable foundations and state agencies, and she'd done it, she'd built it and certified it and staffed it and got it up and going. Every step of the way had been hard, and every step had been wonderful and worth it.
Except that now it was about to fall down around her.
Sam Yazzie's leaving would have ramifications far beyond the need to shuffle staff and advertise for a replacement. If Sam felt he had to get out, it wouldn't be long before other Navajo staff and faculty-virtually every employee at the school- started abandoning ship. And if Tommy Keeday's problem couldn't be solved, it was a much larger issue than the fate of one very bright, troubled boy. If word of his problem got out into the community, people would stop sending their kids. A vital opportunity would be lost to those who needed it most.
And Julieta McCarty would be left without a reason for living.
Again the jolt of intolerable fear hit her: the prospect of an empty life. She got up quickly and almost ran to the boys' dorm, hoping to catch Sam before he left.
She found him in his room, pulling things off his desk and stuffing them into cardboard boxes. With his barrel-chested build, brush-cut dark hair, and the downturned lips common among older Navajo men, he came across as stern and martial. The look was misleading; Sam was a sweet person, and it had always pleased Julieta to see that dour mouth smile so surprisingly and rewardingly.
She stopped at the doorway. He glanced at her, then opened one of the desk drawers and spent several minutes sorting through it in silence.