Kachina

by Rada, J. R.

  “Davey, I could take care of you here at your apartment,” Marcy Purcell offered as she watched David walk slowly across the floor.

  David stopped walking and closed his eyes. There must be a gene in a mother’s chromosomes that made her worry about her children. David drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Time to say “no” for the one-hundred-and-first time.

  “Then who would take care of Dad, Mom? You know he can’t live without you.” David turned to his father and winked. Lewis smiled and settled into the armchair on the far side of the living room.

  Marcy wasn’t amused. “Your father can take care of himself. You can’t,” she snapped.

  “I don’t know, Marcy. Who would tell me to take out the garbage or to get ready for church or to take the car in to get the oil changed or to bring in the groceries?” Lewis said.

  David laughed, which only made his mother madder.

  “Keep that up and we’ll see what else I’ll be telling you when we get home,” Marcy warned her husband.

  David stepped in. “I already told you that I would manage fine by myself, Mom.”

  He moved over to the couch and sat down. As long as he was sitting, he wouldn’t have to worry about falling on his butt.

  Marcy walked into the kitchen, which was no bigger than the master closet in her house in Provo. As it was, she barely had room to turn around in it. She opened the door to the refrigerator and pulled out a half-filled jug of milk. She opened the jug, rolled her eyes, and began to pour the lumpy, spoiled milk down the drain. After the milk, she removed a rotten cucumber, a wilted head of lettuce, and a green block of what had once been cheddar cheese.

  “Looks like you need to go grocery shopping. How are you going to fill this refrigerator? You can’t drive. You don’t have a car. It’s still at the sheriff’s office. If you try to walk, you’d fall before you got a quarter of a mile away.” David turned and looked at her over his shoulder. “Did you think I didn’t notice how carefully you were walking?”

  His mother put her hands on her hips and smiled her smug smile. It was the smile of a woman who had no doubts she was right. The reason David hated it was because he knew she was right. Until he could walk with ease again, he was helpless at least in terms of defending himself against the Bow Clan.

  It was odd that his legs were giving him so much trouble. Could Dr. Haskell have been right about the recently healed breaks in his legs? David hadn’t believed him even when he saw the x-rays, but now he wondered if that was what was causing his pain.

  “I’ll manage,” was all he could think to say.

  Marcy grabbed his hand and held it between the two of hers. “Davey, I’m not trying to restrict your freedom or run your life. I just want to help you and despite what you think, you need it.”

  Why was he holding her back? He knew she was right, but something inside of him kept telling him not to let her stay. The Bow Clan would come after him again. If they had been willing to risk exposure and come to the surface to kill him, they wouldn’t stop until they were successful or dead. When they came after him, David didn’t want his parents anywhere around him.

  “Mom, I need to get back to doing things on my own. If I depend on you now, it’s going to be all that much harder to be on my own later. It’s not that I don’t want you around, it’s just that’s it’s better for me if you aren’t. I need to get used to looking out for myself again.”

  “But...”

  “Mom, please. I promise I’ll come see you next weekend. Really.”

  Marcy let go of his hand and shook her head. “I’m not sure why you’re fighting me, but I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.” She glanced at Lewis for a moment, then back at David. “We’ll pick up some of the basics for you at the store before we go home. You can call us if you change your mind about needing help.”

  David kissed his mother on the cheek. “Thanks. You’re an angel. You know I love you.”

  Marcy pushed herself to her feet. “If I’m such an angel, then why do I have a little devil for a son? You had better keep your word and come home this weekend, if you don’t, you’ll never hear the end of it,” she warned.

  David crossed his heart and held his hand up. “I promise.”

  Marcy nodded but didn’t say anything.

  After his parents had left to go to the store, David collapsed onto the couch again. He put his feet up on his coffee table. It was good to be home. It was comfortable. The food may have spoiled, and there may have been a layer of dust an inch deep on the furniture, but it was familiar. It was home. Not like the hospital. If he was going to have to defend himself, it was better that he do it in his own territory. A home-field advantage as it were.

  The red light on the answering machine next to the couch blinked furiously. He tried to count all his calls, but the light was blinking too fast. There must have been at least twenty messages.

  He leaned over and hit the button to listen to the messages.

  “David, this is Terrie. Where are you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago. Is this my birthday present, my late birthday present? Or did you forget again? The least you could do is be on time. I have something very important to talk to you about. Call me if you stop home before coming to my trailer.”

  She had probably figured he was on his way to her house when the answering machine picked up. She just wanted to yell at him about being late, but he hadn’t been around to yell at.

  No, at that time, he had been somewhere under Highway 191.

  Doing what?

  All he remembered was the utter blackness. There was no light at all, but they didn’t need it.

  They?

  Who was the “they”? The Bow Clan? The Sun Clan? The dark kachinas?

  The answering machine continued playing through the messages marking the end of each one with a beep. His parents had called three times. His boss had called twice. Various friends and clients had called about a dozen times. Four reporters had called. But only one call had been from Terrie and that one had been to complain.

  With all the calls that had been waiting for him, David wondered what the inside of his mailbox looked like. As he sat on the couch, he realized the point his mother had been trying to make. Going out to the road to retrieve his mail had been a task that involved no more than a minute or two of his time. Now, it would take considerably longer, and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t fall down the stairs.

  For at least the next day, he would be severely limited in mobility.

  That thought made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be a sitting duck for the Bow Clan. It was important that he walk now.

  It was time he learned to stand on his own two feet, pun intended. David pushed himself to his feet. His shins, knees, and thighs hurt, but he was not nearly as unstable as he had been in the hospital. He was already getting used to the pain. Either that or the pain was fading.

  David walked towards the door, his steps no longer than a foot apart. He moved more easily now, which he took as a good sign.

  As he stepped onto the outside landing, his toe caught on the metal strip that ran across the floor beneath the door. He started to fall, but managed to catch himself against the door frame before he hit the floor. He could understand why so many old people fell and broke bones now. The slightest bulge in the ground was a mountain to someone who couldn’t walk well.

  David smiled at his small success and continued onward.

  He looked down the stairs that ran along the side of the house and stopped. He faced a full flight of stairs down to the driveway of the house whose top floor he rented. The mailboxes were at the end of the driveway next to the road. He might as well have been standing on top of a mesa looking down at the San Juan River.

  David took a strangle hold on the stair railing. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to walk back up the stairs without holding onto the railing, but he would worry about that when the time came. Right now, he just wanted to reach the bottom of the
stairs standing on his feet and not lying on his face. He took a tentative step down the stairs and was surprised he felt confident.

  How could he have broken his legs and not remember it? Dr. Haskell had to have been wrong. He could remember running through the darkness. He could also remember the pain in his legs when he felt himself rising. If he had broken his legs, how had they healed so quickly? Or had all those memories just been dreams?

  David stepped onto the cement driveway and sighed. He had made it. Maybe he was getting better.

  He slid his foot across the cement as he edged toward the mailboxes. He noticed the oil spots on the driveway. Quite a contrast from the clean look of the hospital floors. He didn’t let himself become so enamored with the driveway, though, that he fell over.

  David reached the pair of mailboxes and opened the one with his name on it. The mailbox was about six inches tall, four inches wide, and a foot deep, and it was overflowing.

  Steadying himself against the mailbox, he pulled out the mail that had been crammed into the metal box. He noticed bills that should have been paid weeks ago, junk mail, a commission check from work, three magazines, and half-a-dozen letters from people whose names he didn’t recognize.

  David bundled up the pile and jammed it under his right arm so he would be able to hold onto the railing with his left hand. Going up the stairs back to the apartment seemed much less of a struggle than it had been coming down. He would force himself to be walking normally by tonight. No later.

  He would manage.

  He had to.

  The Bow Clan was coming for him.

  CHAPTER 21

  Sheriff Harding settled into the wobbly chair behind his desk. It creaked under his heavy weight. He spun the chair around so that he was looking out the window and his back was facing David. The sheriff’s hair was so thin at the back David could easily see his scalp.

  David squirmed in his own seat trying to find a comfortable position on the hard, wooden chair.

  He had managed to walk the mile to the sheriff’s office in Monticello in order to get his car. It had been towed from the Blanding office to Monticello a few weeks ago. The walk helped David regain some of his mobility, and getting his car back would help him even more. While he was filling out the forms to get his car, he saw Sheriff Harding walk in and asked him if it was possible to talk to the man who had found David in the cave. Sheriff Harding agreed and called Officer John Peterson into his office to speak with David.

  Officer Peterson seemed uncomfortable being in the room. The young officer shifted his weight from his left foot to his right foot, then back again as he stood in front of Sheriff Harding’s desk. His eyes kept darting back and forth between Sheriff Harding and David. John acted like he was delivering bad news to the state police chief instead of accepting someone’s thanks. David wondered if he were the cause of the police officer’s nervousness or if the man was just that way naturally.

  “Sit down, John,” Sheriff Harding said motioning to the chair next to David. The young officer did. “Loosen up, John. Mr. Purcell just wants to talk to you about the search and rescue.”

  John looked at David and David nodded.

  “So you’re the officer who found me in the cave?” was David’s first question.

  “Yes sir,” John answered stiffly.

  David noted that he was no older than John. In fact, John was probably three or four years older, in his early thirties. In the same circumstances, most people would not have addressed David as “sir.” The police officer almost seemed afraid of David.

  “Where was I?” David asked.

  John’s eyebrows arched, then drew together as he considered the question. “You were in one of the cave chambers about a half a mile from where you fell in.”

  David sat up straighter. “A half a mile?”

  John nodded. “That cave you were in is probably as big as a small town. Maybe bigger. At least that’s the way it seemed to me. It’s filled with pits and tunnels, almost like a giant ant farm,” John explained.

  David shivered. He imagined the cave as a set for a 1950s B-grade horror movie. Something with a campy title like “Radioactive Ants from the Underworld.” Ants the size of dinosaurs living beneath the earth until one man accidentally opens up their world to the surface. And that man had been him. Only it wasn’t ants he had released but the Bow Clan.

  “Were you working with the search-and-rescue team the entire five weeks I was missing?” David asked.

  “No, sir. I came in for the last two weeks. Brian Dalton was working with the search team, but he twisted his ankle something fierce when he fell into a small hole down there. His ankle swelled up to the size of a football and the doctor told him to stay off of it for a week. Anyway, by that time they had cut the search teams down to three men. Two would search and one would stay on top to listen to the radio, make reports, and keep people out. When Brian couldn’t do it anymore, they needed someone else to fill in for him.”

  David nodded, but he wasn’t looking at John. He was staring out the window over John’s left shoulder. What was he hoping to learn from drilling this scared officer?

  “I assume you had plenty of lighting while you were down in the cave?” David asked after a moment.

  John nodded and said, “Yes, sir. It’s pitch black down there without lights.”

  No one had to tell David that. It was one of the few things he remembered easily about the cave.

  “Everyone was probably calling my name, too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  David looked away from the window and stared at John. “And I never answered any of the calls, and no one saw me for five weeks?”

  John looked at his shoes as if he were afraid to meet David’s glance. “It would have been easy not to see you inside that cave. There were so many tiny tunnels all over the place I’m still not sure how many we missed. Even so, we were being as careful as we could because we didn’t want anyone else to get lost or hurt.”

  “Well, how did I look when you found me?”

  “You looked exhausted,” John said. “When I passed my flashlight over you, you looked sick. There was a moment when...”

  John paused.

  Sheriff Harding leaned forward in his chair. It tilted forward on a short leg and made a loud thud on the white-tiled floor. John looked across the desk at his boss and sighed.

  “There was a moment when I first saw you that you seemed to glow,” John finally said.

  “Glow?” David repeated in a strained voice.

  John glanced nervously at the sheriff as if expecting him to back up his story. Then he looked at David.

  “Maybe ‘glow’ is the wrong word. It’s hard to say. I only glimpsed you for a second, and I wasn’t expecting to find you at that time. You sort of surprised me,” John explained.

  “What do you mean you weren’t expecting to find me? You were part of a group looking for me.”

  “But you were in chamber four.” John let the statement stand as if it were self-explanatory.

  “Chamber four. What’s that mean?” David asked.

  “The room you fell into we called chamber one. From that chamber, the search team did a radial search going north and southwest of the chamber following the cave. The next chamber we searched we called chamber two, the third chamber was chamber three, and so on. We even marked the walls by the entrances and exits with the numbers. That way if anyone became lost all they would have to do would be to find out which chamber they were in, then find the next-lower-numbered chamber, and then the next, until they got back to chamber one. Anyway, the search team was exploring the chamber fifteen when I found you. I wasn’t searching. Howie Ply had just relieved me, and I was walking back to chamber one to get pulled out of the cave because my shift was over.”

  David’s lips drew together in a thin line. “So if I was in chamber four, why didn’t the search party find me when they originally explored it? It sounds like your search was not as thorough as you thought.
” David regretted the sharp tone of voice, but if the search team had found him quicker, he might not have to be coming to term with Hopi legends now.

  John rolled his eyes. David knew the young officer probably thought he was the most ungrateful person on earth, but if David was going to understand what was happening to him now, he had to first understand what had happened to him in the cave.

  “But we were thorough,” John said when he looked back at David. “You weren’t in chamber four when we explored it.”

  David slammed his hand against the arm of the chair. “Are you saying I was deliberately avoiding your search? That’s stupid! I wanted to get out of the cave!” David shouted.

  John closed his eyes and took a deep breath. David admired the man’s patience. He wasn’t sure he would have been so patient if someone who should have been grateful to him started yelling at him. He kept telling himself to calm down, but the thought that all this might somehow have been avoided kept nagging at him.

  “Calm down, Mr. Purcell. There’s no need to get angry. Why don’t you let the officer explain?” Sheriff Harding said.

  David nodded and tried to relax. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m trying to understand this whole ordeal and not having much luck.”

  John opened his green eyes and said, “I didn’t say you were avoiding the search, Mr. Purcell, but you were making it difficult for us. For instance, why didn’t you answer our calls?” John didn’t give David a chance to answer. “Why didn’t you approach our search parties? You had to have seen them at some point during the five weeks. And why did you run when I shined my flashlight on you?”

  David started to say something, and then stopped. He glanced toward the window then back at John.

  His voice was weak when he spoke, barely above a whisper. “I don’t remember. I can’t remember anything after falling into the cave. I can’t tell you why I did anything. All I know is that I wanted out of the cave. I was scared. That much I do remember. That’s why I’m here talking to you now. I was hoping that you would be able to fill in the missing time.”