But she couldn't let her thoughts be prejudiced by Julieta's longing. There were other possibilities to consider. One of Tommy's parents could have called out for their child at the moment of death. But the death was not at all what Cree would have expected if the entity was one of the parents. The person inhabiting Tommy had been hurt in the stomach and chest, not the head. He- she was sure it was male-hadn't died quickly at all, but had fought off the injury and pain for quite some time. The ghosts at the ravine were probably her strongest candidates; the father had just seen his children killed. He might very well have been calling out to one of his "babies" in his last moment.
She turned to Ellen, who was staring sleepily into the fire. "Are you up for talking anymore?"
"Sure."
"Can I ask what clan your people are?"
"I'm Black Sheep on my mother's side. Towering House on my father's side."
"Are there any Waters Run Together in your ancestry?"
"You're trying to figure which ancestor's in him? Sorry, I don't know. You go back a couple generations, you've got dozens of clans mixed in. Nowadays, people don't know their clans so much."
The impossibility of untangling Tommy's ancestry depressed Cree, but she gave it one more try: "So, Tommy… would he be Black Sheep as well?"
"Usually, he'd be 'born to' his mother's clan. We'd say he's 'born for' his father's clan."
"So what was his mother's clan?"
"Bernice? I don't know. She wasn't Dine-she was Jicarilla Apache. She had a lousy family, we never had anything to do with them. She and Tommy's dad met when they both worked at the lumberyard in Farmington."
An alarm went off in Cree's head, a connection being made. Abruptly her heart was pounding and she couldn't seem to catch her breath.
Ellen was looking at her strangely. "You know already, don't you?"
"Know what?"
"About Bernice and my brother. When you first came, asking about whether Tommy looks like his dad, whether he was adopted, all that."
"Tell me about Bernice," Cree said shakily.
"Oh, like I said, she was a wild one. She was already pregnant when she got together with my brother-that's what you figured out, right? My parents never accepted her, called her al'jil'nii-that means, oh… like 'loose woman.' But I always figured she was a good match for my brother, he was no saint, either, believe me. And Bernice, she turned out to be the steady one. I was always proud to call her my sister."
"Had she always lived around here?"
"She was born on the Jicarilla rez, that's about maybe seventy-five miles from here. But she'd lived in Farmington and then ran away to California. San Diego. Met some handsome Navajo guy who got her knocked up and then left her high and dry to go back to his true love. She never heard from him again. She came back when she knew she was pregnant. Her family was no good to her, they threw her out. But it worked out okay. When she met my brother, she wasn't showing yet. They fell in love, he didn't seem to mind about her having some other guy's baby, he said he figured he was old enough he should have had some kids by now anyway. And she settled down. They were pretty happy for some years. I always figured, you know, love will find a way." Ellen's face had grown warm with remembrance, but suddenly her lips pursed and turned down. "Unless you do something stupid," she finished sadly. "Like my brother getting drunk that time and getting them both killed."
Love will find a way, Cree was thinking. In Peter Yellowhorse's case, love was still trying to find its way. But he'd done something stupid, and then gotten himself killed.
She wondered how Julieta would handle it when she found out just which ancestor of Tommy's had entered him.
48
The endless night still hadn't given way to dawn when Tommy started moving again.
They had left the hogan's door open. The predawn stillness stole over the land with an eerie serenity as gray light filtered into the darkness. Lying on the floor, Cree could feel chill currents move through the door and roam the room despite the faint heat of the woodstove.
Just as she rolled over to look at Tommy, the eyes in his gaunt face popped open and shocked her. When he labored to sit up, she did the same, struggling to make her arms and legs obey. Her body fit her badly, like someone else's clothes.
Cree heard muffled movements just outside the door, Ellen and Ray keeping watch. She had asked them to stay nearby, or follow from a distance if Tommy still had the strength to walk. Now, watching him as the darkness paled, she doubted he'd even be able to stand. She wondered how soon they'd be able to take him down off the plateau, back to the grandparents' place, and begin the long drive to the nearest hospital. For a moment, she wondered distantly where Julieta was and whether she'd arrive in time. She wasn't sure that whenever she might arrive there'd be enough of Cree or Tommy left to help find the way through this.
Then she gave up on the problem as the ghost's world engulfed her and she surrendered herself to it.
Peter's heart surged with joy when he got out of the last car. Just south of Hunters Point, from here his old house was only a mile ahead. He knew the land to the east well. Walking it would take a couple of hours longer than when he used to ride Bird, but going overland cut ten miles off the distance, and he knew he'd likely have to walk anyway on the seldom-used back roads to Julieta's place.
The bus ride from San Diego to Flagstaff had taken forever, and from there he'd still had two hundred miles to hitchhike. He'd walked back to the highway and had felt lucky when a van pulled over right away. And full of Indians, too. But they weren't Navajos-some Midwest tribe he'd never heard of. They had punched him up a little and taken his last thirty-two dollars, a kind of half-serious mugging, more threat than hurt. The worst part was when they shoved him down the interstate embankment, because the knees of his good jeans burst as he somersaulted down the slope. Looking like some just-dumped rodeo loser, it didn't help get rides. He felt as bad as he looked.
I'm coming to you with nothing, Julieta. But I am coming to you. Back like an echo.
There was poetic justice in his humiliation. Starting again with nothing, from nothing-that felt right, too. All new. Leave the baggage behind. Plus, maybe she'd feel some sympathy for him, it might help ease them over what would probably be a rocky first few minutes.
Return of the prodigal Indian, he'd say to her. The stuff of which legends are made, yeah? Standing before her looking like hell, knees torn. Make her laugh.
This was not how he'd imagined it. When he'd first decided to come back, he'd conjured a vision of a tender and heroic homecoming: appearing at her door in crisp new clothes, full of tales of the coast, of dramas in the casting lots, of close brushes with fame and disaster. She'd be angry at first, but she'd see how much he wanted her, she'd be swayed by his passion. She'd forgive him, against her will. She'd be pretty pregnant by now, maybe only three months away, and she'd see how he had changed by how tender he'd be with her. He'd tell her he knew how wrong he'd been, that he'd left Bernice, that he was back for keeps.
The thought of Julieta stirred him and fired his resolve. He remembered her body against his, and it seemed the power of that memory would allow him to overcome anything.
He was close now, maybe eight miles overland. If he hurried he'd get there before dark. He'd ridden Bird this way a dozen times, winding between the hills near the road, then breaking through into the open country beyond. When the land smoothed into the endless miles of rolling swells, he'd let Bird find her own pace and it was always a gallop, that horse loved to run. He'd ride her like the wind in a straight line, shortest distance between two points, the heart line, straight east. He'd fly like an arrow. First he'd see the mesa standing clear of the surrounding land, and that would steer him to the house.