by Beverly Bird
Ricky shook his head. He didn’t answer. “You saw, too,” he muttered again, stubbornly.
“What?” Ellen asked Dallas.
“I don’t know what it was,” he muttered. “But I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have been Mary.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why not?” Ricky demanded simultaneously.
“Well, I don’t know much about ghosts, but I guess they need a reason to come back, huh? And what reason could she have for suddenly reappearing now?”
Then Ellen saw his face change. As soon as he spoke, there was a flash of panic, of pain...of guilt, as if he had answered his own question, and she knew intuitively what he was thinking. He was remembering what had happened between them earlier.
She spoke again without meaning to. “Oh, no, Dallas. No.”
He shot her a hard look and got to his feet again. “You want something to drink, Sport? You want me to go out and see if I can find a soda machine?”
“Okay,” Ricky said quietly. Already the tension was going out of him. Children were so resilient, Ellen thought.
“Do you mind staying here a minute?” Dallas asked her neutrally.
“No, I...of course not.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He threw the lock and dragged open the front door. He didn’t bother to close it behind him. A cool breeze wafted in, chilling her.
How could he think what he was thinking? But of course, she knew. She had known when he had held himself back, then had come in here to jump in his shower. She had known and hadn’t wanted to think about it, because it made this all so much more complicated and it was already tangled enough.
He hadn’t been with anyone else since his wife had died, she realized. He was only now healing and it was a painful transition, and he was doing it right in her hands.
Desperation welled up in her. No, don’t do this, don’t make me responsible. She couldn’t even handle her own misgivings about what was happening between them!
He came back inside, slamming the door behind him, handing Ricky a can of diet soda. Then he sat down on the bed beside him, helping him to slide down against the pillows again and tucking him in.
Ellen stayed where she was, watching pensively.
“Dad?” Ricky whispered.
“What, Sport?”
“I wanted to hug her again, but she scared me.”
Dallas flinched, then nodded. Ellen felt her throat close.
“Do you think she’ll be mad?”
“No, I think she’d understand exactly.”
Ricky nodded, finally closing his eyes, then they flew open again. “You know what was weird? She had on that frilly white nightgown you got her when she couldn’t come home from the hospital any more.”
Something flared in Dallas’s eyes, but it wasn’t pain this time. Panic? Ellen thought. Fear?
“Why’s that weird?” Dallas asked carefully.
“Because we sent her to heaven in her blue dress, remember? I kinda thought that if she came back, she’d still be wearing that.”
“Maybe...maybe she was sleeping in heaven.”
Ricky nodded and finally rolled over, burying his face against his pillow. Dallas watched him for a moment, his face tortured. Ellen ached inside for their loss, their sorrow, still lingering and so poignant after all this time.
She could understand that perfectly. Some wounds just didn’t heal.
She stood. When Dallas was sure Ricky was asleep again, he eased himself off the bed as well. She looked at him, taking a deep breath.
“Come to my room,” she whispered and his eyes got a little wild. “We need to talk,” she clarified. “Dallas, I know what just happened, and it isn’t what you’re thinking.”
Chapter 10
For a minute, she thought he’d refuse. Then he nodded curtly and went through the door between their rooms. She followed him more slowly, easing it shut behind her.
“Another wolfman?” he demanded tightly.
“No.”
Surprise altered his strong face for a moment. “What then?”
“Dallas, what did you see?”
His expression turned hard again. “I don’t know.”
“Then what do you think you saw?” she persisted.
He finally sighed and sat down on her bed. “Something white, just like he said.” Which explained why he had blanched at Ricky’s mention of the nightgown, she thought. “It was just a flash,” he went on, “then it was gone. Hell, I could have been dreaming. I was sound asleep when he hollered, and I woke up on my feet.”
She chewed on her lip for a moment, then she went for a glass of water, drinking deeply.
“What is this?” he asked harshly from behind her. “Are you in his camp? Are you trying to tell me I saw a ghost?”
She looked back at him and nodded. He came off the bed again fast.
“Beautiful. Just beautiful,” he muttered. “She’s been dead three years—it’ll be three years this July—and now all of a sudden she looks down from heaven and says, ‘Hey, Ricky and Dallas are in Vaughn. Maybe I’ll swing on by and say hi.’ That’s what you’re asking me to believe? Or maybe you think she caught our little act in here earlier and decided to make an appearance and nip it in the bud? Please.”
Ellen steeled herself against his disbelief, his horror. “No,” she said quietly. “You think she came back because...because of what happened earlier. I think it’s something else entirely.”
“What?”
She wondered how to explain. “The Navajo don’t believe in heaven and hell. We don’t believe in ghosts. We have chindis.”
“What the hell’s a chindi?”
Ellen rubbed her temples. “It’s sort of like a ghost. But we believe that when somebody dies, all their goodness just...vanishes. What’s left behind is all that was evil and bad about them. And it hangs around here, in this...I don’t know, in this dimension, I guess you could say. From what I understand about Anglo ghosts, they dwell on some different plane, right?”
“Beats the hell out of me. I’ve never run into one.”
“You’re being stubborn,” she snapped.
“I’m being practical.”
“Can’t you just accept that maybe there’s something out there that you can’t push around, that’s beyond your powers of persuasion and your experience?”
She was sorry as soon as she said it. It was as if he took a step back inside himself. Suddenly the eyes that returned her gaze were the blank eyes of a stranger.
“Dallas, please,” she tried again. Oh, God, she had to reach him! “If it’s a wolfman we’re dealing with here, then if only for Ricky’s sake, you ought to know as much about them as possible, whether you actually believe in them or not.”
It took a long moment and she held her breath, but Dallas finally softened. The tension seemed to drain out of him when he exhaled.
“Okay. Go on.”
She sighed and hugged herself. “The evil stays here, in this world,” she reiterated. “So it doesn’t take much to bring a chindi back again. Saying their name, trespassing on their grave...and wolfmen can raise them.”
“Mary didn’t have an evil bone in her body,” he said tightly.
How could she argue with that? “She was human,” she pointed out.
He shrugged stiffly, obviously not willing to concede the point. “So this badness hangs around and then what?”
“If someone sees the chindi of a stranger, it’s a safe bet that a wolfman sent it to...to try to do some harm to the person.”
“Ricky didn’t see the chindi of a stranger.”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “And that’s even worse. Because when you see the chindi of kin, it means you’re going to die.”
Whether he believed it or not, the idea was enough to drain the blood from his face. “What?”
“It means that there’s some threat so deadly, so vile,” she went on, her voice dropping to a wretched whisper, “that your kin h
as returned of his or her own accord to warn you, to try to save you.”
“That doesn’t sound evil to me.”
“No. That’s the point. Because in rare, desperate circumstances, love can transcend evil. Especially...especially the love of a parent for a child.”
He was quiet for a long time. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think these damned visitations have opened some atrocious can of worms.”
Her heart jolted. “How? In what respect?”
“Three weeks ago he didn’t see flying horses, he didn’t see his mother traipsing around motel rooms, did he? We started coming out here and he started getting—” He didn’t finish. Her heart hurt for him. He looked...helpless, lost.
“Dallas,” she said softly, “you’re just looking for something concrete to blame.”
“I don’t have to look. The connection is right there beneath my nose,” he muttered, running his hand through his hair, sitting again.
“Yes. Yes, it is. But it’s not what you want to think it is. I did talk to Uncle Ernie.”
His eyes narrowed on her. “And?”
“And he thinks Ricky knows...something. I don’t know what. But he thinks that somehow or other he ran into this wolfman—in his human daytime form, I guess. And he knows something, or saw something, that makes him a threat to whoever it is.”
“So that effectively blows your wolfman theory right out of the water.”
She blinked. “It does?”
“Until last weekend he never set foot on your reservation in his life. Where was this supposed to have happened? Are you trying to tell me we have Navajo witches running around Flagstaff?”
She shrugged stiffly. “I really couldn’t tell you that. Our shamen’s powers don’t work outside Dinetah, the land within our sacred mountains. Maybe it’s the same with wolfmen’s powers. But San Francisco Peak in Flagstaff is one of our mountains, so I would imagine it’s possible they could work there.”
It was his turn to look surprised. “Flagstaff is part of your country? No. It’s not on the reservation.”
She shot him a withering look. “It’s not now. Our people used to have a lot more land than we’ve been left with.”
There it was again, he thought, that almost militant anger, the staunch indignation for her people. It occurred to him that two hundred years ago, she would have been one hell of a power for the white soldiers to reckon with. He could easily imagine her picking up a bow and arrow and wading right in with the warriors.
But even that wasn’t going to help Ricky. “I honestly don’t see how he could have encountered anyone like that,” he muttered. “I take him to school, I pick him up at three-thirty. Sometimes he rides his bike over to Benny’s before dinner. What are you saying? That he ran into this guy on some street corner?”
She scowled, hugging herself. “He was never on the Res before?”
“He was born at University Hospital in Albuquerque. We got him when he was seven hours old.”
Ellen flinched. I know. “And he...you never took him—”
“No.”
She shook her head. “So how could he know anything?”
“You tell me. You seem to be the expert on all this stuff.”
She sank down on the bed beside him. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Suddenly she looked over at him. “When you get home, could you go through his room? Or would that be invading his privacy?”
He looked at her appraisingly, startled by her all over again. He knew few people considered children’s rights to be sacrosanct. He was one of the few.
“I’d do it anyway, if I thought it would make a difference,” he answered finally. “But why can’t I just ask him?”
“You can. But I don’t think it’s something he’s aware of. I mean, if he knew it was a threat or something bad, then he would already have told you, wouldn’t he?”
Dallas scowled. “Yeah. Almost certainly.”
Ellen blew out her breath. “So you’re left with snooping, looking for something he might have in his possession that he doesn’t know is bad.”
“Like what?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” she quoted him. “You’re the expert on what little boys might be expected to have in their possession. Anything...different, I guess.”
He nodded. “Okay. And what if it’s not something he has, but something he knows?”
We’re doomed. She didn’t say it, but it must have shown on her face. His expression turned a little wild, a lot scared. He got up to start pacing again.
“Do you want to skip Bosque Redondo?” she asked quietly.
He stopped to think about it. “No. That would be like making a big deal about what he saw—or what he thinks he saw. It’d be better to just kind of step over it and keep going, I think.”
She nodded. “Okay.” Suddenly she realized he was studying her face again, looking at her hard. “What?”
“You’re in awfully deep in this, more than you have to be.”
She swallowed carefully. “You’ve dragged me in,” she pointed out.
He shook his head. “It’s more than that. You care.”
“Of course I do. I...like him. He’s a good kid.”
“That’s all?”
Her heart started moving fast and hard. “Of course.”
He was quiet for a long time, then he shook his head. “It’s almost five o’clock,” he pointed out, changing the subject. “Maybe we ought to try to get a little more sleep.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to now.”
His mouth kicked up into a wry grin. “Me either, actually. Got any other suggestions?”
Many, she thought suddenly. She shivered and his gaze sharpened when he saw it. In that moment she felt alive, aware, poised on the brink of something wonderful all over again. Excitement prickled along her skin, but their previous encounter had clearly shaken him. She noticed that he was keeping his distance now and she wasn’t sure if she was sorry or relieved.
“Coffee?” she asked quietly. “Some of those fast-food places stay open all night.”
He nodded. “I’ll go.”
“No. You’d better stay here in case Ricky wakes up again.” Another strange look passed over his face. “What now?”
“I guess I just don’t like the idea of you running around this nowhere town by yourself in the middle of the night.”
And he wasn’t used to caring, she realized. It scared him. It scared her, too.
“I’ve been wandering around by myself for a long time,” she answered quietly, getting up.
“Have you? Why?”
She hesitated. “That’s just the way life worked out.”
He looked disbelieving. “No. If someone like you is alone, it’s by choice.”
She gnawed on her lip, looking away from him. “Okay.”
“The same choice that makes you afraid of me?” he asked.
She went to rummage deliberately in her overnight bag and found a pair of jeans. He noticed that she wouldn’t even look anywhere near him.
“I think we’ve got our hands full worrying about Ricky right now,” she finally answered. “Let’s take care of him before we worry about me.”
“We can try,” he murmured, “but I think we’re worrying a lot about each other whether we like it or not.”
He finally headed back toward his own room. He closed the door quietly behind him. Ellen stared at it for a long time before she finally pulled on her jeans.
Distance. I just need to keep some distance. But all she could think of was Uncle Ernie’s analogy about the ball of twine.
She felt as if it was spinning, twirling, unraveling faster than she could find the loose string to stop it, and she was frightened because she got the feeling that when it was gone she wouldn’t have anything left to protect herself with at all.
* * *
When Ricky finally woke up he seemed subdued but otherwise no worse for his strange experience
. He mentioned it only briefly when he opened his eyes. Ellen and Dallas sipped their coffee and watched him wake.
He looked briefly around the room. “No ghosts, Dad?”
Dallas swallowed carefully. “No ghosts.”
“Good.” And he was off the bed and into the bathroom. Dallas and Ellen exchanged looks, then they both shrugged.
They went to a diner for breakfast although Ricky argued pretty effectively for more fast food, Ellen thought. When they returned to the parking lot, Dallas held open the front door of his Cutlass for her. She hesitated, then she shook her head. Distance.
“I’ll drive my own.”
One of his brows went up. “That’s a lot of wasted gas for nothing. Don’t we have to come right back past here on our way to Isleta?”
“I don’t want to just leave my car here. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got.”
He finally shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Ricky scrambled into the Cutlass and he shut the door behind him.
“The turnoff we want is Route 220 south,” she told him.
He didn’t answer until he was at the driver’s side door. He leaned one arm on the roof of the car and looked across at her.
“It won’t work, you know.”
She didn’t have to ask him what he was talking about.
She followed him out onto the road, and they got to the park just as it opened. Ricky ran ahead to the metal gates that barred the gravel path to the historical area and Ellen waited outside while Dallas went into the ticket office. She watched him go, wondering what it was about him that left her no defenses when she was so good at defenses and how she was ever going to get past his to help Ricky. There was one response to the boy’s chindi scare that she hadn’t mentioned to him. She could get Jericho Bedonie or Uncle Ernie to do an Enemy Way or a Blessing Way for him. The first would make him stronger against a wolfman’s attack, the latter would free him of any lingering chindi evil. But she knew without mentioning it that Dallas wasn’t likely to spend the money required—probably a thousand dollars before everything was said and done—for a ceremonial cure he had no true faith in.