Joseph felt a wave of nausea come over him, and when he spoke again it was if he were vomiting it out, an expulsive contraction that couldn't be resisted: "You're not seeing what it means! It would have all been different! If I'd given him her number, told him the truth, 'Yeah, she still loves you,' he'd have come back. Even if he'd left her again a couple months later, she'd have kept the baby! You see why I haven't told her?" You see why I can't be with her?
Uncle Joe took it like a slap, but then turned to Joseph with eyes that were incredibly sad and old, the lids twitching as alcohol withdrawal wrought havoc inside him. He'd neglected his cigarette and ash had scattered all over his clothes and the seat. Joseph felt fear strike him, that Uncle Joe was going to collapse or crash the truck. He'd seen withdrawal seizures before, and his uncle was not a good candidate for surviving one.
"Yeah," Uncle Joe wheezed at last. "Well, there's something I haven't told you, too. Another stop we have to make today."
And to Joseph's surprise, the old man turned the truck to the west-not back toward Uncle Joe's home and bottle but toward Highway 666 and Naschitti, into the dull red eye of the sun.
39
Cree waited until eleven and the school was quiet before she slipped out of the infirmary. Again the mesa was invisible in the dark beyond the school's lights, but she could feel it there, drawing and repelling her, full of secrets. A strange tremulous calm possessed her, and she wondered if this was what Julieta felt-the abject, willing surrender to whatever had to happen.
Julieta's admission that Tommy was not the first child she'd believed or imagined to be hers was deeply upsetting. Cree had held her for a long wordless moment. There was nothing to say. It was too complex and poignant. It wasn't until they'd started slowly back toward the school, arms around each other's waists, that she began to think about what it meant for the work she was charged with doing.
One clear conclusion was that, whoever Tommy was or wasn't, Julieta McCarty, as a witness caught in the disturbing emotional vortex that often accompanied paranormal events, was in far more fragile psychological shape than Cree had thought. Her perspective on who or what inhabited Tommy was therefore no more reliable than her longing for her lost child.
Just as clearly, her fragility meant that the outcome of this situation would have a profound and enduring effect on Julieta's life. The question, of course, was whether it would prove to be a catastrophic effect or an opportunity for healing.
So far, Cree had been proceeding under the assumption that the recognition Julieta felt, the reason for the entity taking up residence in the boy, had something to do with their genetic relationship and the psychic connections that would inevitably result. It made sense, too, in light of Tommy's state of mind: his desperate curiosity about his forebears, his yearning need for an anchor in the identity of his parents and ancestors.
But what did it mean if it turned out he was not her child? What did it imply about the theory that the entity was a revenant of Garrett McCarty? On balance, Cree thought, it weakened the hypothesis; probably, it increased the likelihood that the entity was the ghost of one of Tommy's actual parents.
The fact was that she didn't have enough information. All she really knew for sure was that she'd experienced an entity or entities out at the mesa, that the mesa had figured in her dreams and Tommy's drawings, and that his problems had begun not long after his visit to the ravine. The convergence of all those elements could not be coincidental. Which meant that the ghost of the mesa remained her only real lead and, until she could spend time with Tommy again, getting to know it her only available course of action.
They had parted at the administration building, Cree going back to the infirmary, Julieta to her duties. Edgar had gone back to Window Rock to compare notes with Joyce and spend the night. Cree had done yoga for an hour and generally tried to stay low-key, charging up for what promised to be a long night.
The most difficult part of the evening had come when Lynn Pierce returned from her day off. They spoke briefly, Cree very aware of the nurse's sliding eyes. Cree had cut short their conversation with the excuse she needed to catch up on her notes and reading; she hadn't yet figured out how to deal with Lynn and her treachery. Yet another problem.
At ten o'clock Julieta had phoned from the admin building to say that Joseph had called. "He said he met with the Keedays. They agreed to allow you and me to see Tommy."
"That's great news!" Cree said. "I'll go first thing in the morning. How can I find the place?"
"He drew a map and faxed it, I have it here. To the grandparents' place, anyway, I guess they'll tell you how to find Tommy when you get there."
"Me, but not you?" Cree was puzzled by her tone as well-the flat, frightened affect that came over the wire.
"I have administrative duties tomorrow. Stuff I can't get out of, a pair of prospective major donors coming to get a tour of the school. It takes the better part of the day, and hundreds of thousands of dollars ride on it. I have to… I have to do the charm thing."
"What else, Julieta? What's the matter?"
"The way the grandparents described Tommy, he's losing ground fast." Julieta's voice quavered. "And the way Joseph sounded. He was so distant. Like something had happened to him. I asked him what was wrong and he wouldn't tell me. I was so worried I called him back right after we hung up, but he didn't answer the phone. It was only about a minute later, where would-?"
"Julieta. He probably went to bed. You should get some sleep, too. We'll set it all straight tomorrow. You do your work, I'll do mine, okay? That's what I'm here for." Trying to sound reassuring, when in fact, as always, Julieta's frazzled anxiety and aching heart had leapt into her.
The night was cold and crisp, the sky slightly hazy so that only a few stars pricked through the velvet black. Cree had opted against wearing her down jacket because the nylon shell made too much noise. Instead, she'd put on a pair of sweaters, borrowed a denim overcoat from the horse barn, and wore tights under her black jeans. She had brought only a flashlight, a bottle of water, Joyce's can of pepper spray, and a blanket, all tucked into her shoulder pack.
No high-tech tonight. This wasn't about scientific proof anymore; it was about results in starkly human terms, Tommy's survival. Anyway, she wouldn't have dared to ask Edgar for the equipment. He and Joyce would be furious if they knew she was going out alone.
She walked silently along the foot of the mesa, feeling the mounting tension of anticipation. It swelled inside her and made the dark pregnant with latent movement and force. The beauty of the night, its sharp-edged silence, thrilled her. Its fearful glory and clarity exploded joyously in her heart, and she panted with sheer exhilaration. Oh yes, she could die out here or lose her mind and go adrift forever in a lonely cosmos of stars and ghosts. But it was worth the risk. Close to death, you felt your life acutely.
It helped to have seen the area in the daylight. This time, she recognized the ravine before she got to it, an angled slash of deep blue-black against the paler blue of the rock face ahead. Moments later, at its mouth, she found she could now interpret the dim outlines of its sloping floor, the shadowed boulders, the old rock fall, and the forking corridor beyond.
She took a deep breath and one last look around at the bare plain, banished a sudden onslaught of fears that included scorpions and Skin-walkers, and headed up.
Again, she found herself drawn to the area near the rock dam. This time she climbed up and over the tumble of slabs and boulders and stopped just above it, where she had a better view of the cliff faces and shadows of the upper end of the ravine. Again the breeze snaked past her and took her steaming breath with it. Grateful for the stealth her soft clothes allowed, she found a shallow shelf a few feet up from the ground and folded herself into its shadow. It felt strategic and somehow safer than squatting on the ravine floor.