Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker)

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  The sight of the Village of Hotevilla, with its minaret-like water tower standing sentinel over the pile of rubble, was about as pleasant a prospect as a prostate exam. Over the stretch of centuries, Hotevilla was unchanged: a haphazard layout of narrow dirt streets lined with crumbling rock houses without utilities.

  When he climbed down from Old Betsy, the village’s stench of garbage and maybe a dead animal exploded through his nasal passages. Could he really leave a home with a/c, central heat, and modern appliances for this pre-Columbian world? For Janet? For a recovering alcoholic who likely had had a legion of lovers, who let them in the door then kicked them out. Stability wasn’t in her repertoire. But, damn’t, he had to give her this – she didn’t hide from life. Her hummingbird-sized body sucked it all in and used it all up.

  He started around the front of the pickup to join her and the kids -- only to come up short by a witch blocking his path. Wisps of corn-tassel white hair framed a raisin-brown face – and she rode not a broom but rather hobbled on an aluminum crutch.

  “Grace,” Janet said.

  Her wary expression warned Jack something was amiss. Then he recognized the old woman. She was the local medicine woman. At the world-famous annual Snake Dance, she had blocked his way and, pointing a bony finger at him, had uttered something that had certainly not been a greeting of peace, for which the Hopi were so named.

  The People of Peace. Hhumph! He has seen more mayhem and murder on this reservation than he had at any Lethal Weapon film.

  Grace and Janet were exchanging heated words in Hopi. When the old woman raised her crutch in a threatening manner, he made a quick move to step between her and Janet, but she held up a restraining palm. “Grace won’t hit me,” she reassured him, but kept her eye on the old woman. “She realizes I have the same powers my mother and grandmother had.”

  He gritted a polite smile. “You women and your mojo.”

  She didn’t respond but said something to Grace that sounded like a warning. The old woman’s rheumy eyes shot a virulent look at first Janet and then him. She pointed a hoary finger again, this time encompassing the four of them, and muttered gutturally, deep in her throat, almost without moving her lips. The fine hair stood up on the back of his neck.

  After the old woman hobbled from the dusty, tumbleweed-strewn plaza, he asked, “What was that about?”

  Janet wrapped an arm around Molly’s narrow shoulders, drawing her to her side, as if she could protect her from all adversity. “Grace holds us responsible for her son Lester’s death. She wanted to let us know that Evil has only just begun its work.”

  It was all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes. In the 21st century, the Hopi’s superstitious nature amazed him. He considered himself a man of science, and this kind of primitive thinking put him off. He wondered if, like many deeply religious Hopi, Janet truly believed there were forces of good and evil vying with one another to help or harm the individual.

  The Hopi world was completely peopled with spirits as real as – in fact, part of – the quartz rock Charley now held in his hand, and the Hopi believed that spirits of those who had passed on could readily move between the Ordinary and the Special world. Of course, the rock Charley held was special . . . at least, Jack believed it was, so maybe he was as loony as the Hopi.

  * * * * *

  Was Jack still in love with his dead wife? And, if so, then what did a consolation prize rate? Second place was mediocre. Mediocre. The word even tasted on her tongue like the floor of a horse stable. Worse. Adjectives came to mind like insipid or bland or wishy-washy. Ughh! She was either the best – or the worst, but she sure as hell wouldn’t be average or ordinary.

  Watching Grace Coochvella limp like Long John Silver down a shadowy side street, she couldn’t help but think she and Grace had that in common, at least. The best and the worst. Even the Navajo flocked to the old Hopi sorceress both to purchase her spells and secure her protection from evil spirits.

  Grace could certainly be a curse, Long John’s Black Spot, which could darken Janet’s life. For all her exposure to the sophistication of an elite boarding school and world travel, she nevertheless possessed enough esoteric mysticism to have ample respect for the Spirit World. “Yeah,” she muttered uneasily to Jack, “I have this feeling old Grace just evoked some evil spirits.”

  Flashing the stone tablet’s prized corner piece, Charley danced just outside the turquoise-painted door of Janet’s crumbling, centuries-old home. “No way! The force of good is with us. I present you with the Light Saber.”

  Molly jiggled on tiptoes around him, her arm stretched up for the quartz crystal. “Me, too. Me, too!” Her white sneakers with a picture of Simba from The Lion King on the sides performed twirls around Charley. With a lunge, she grabbed the crystal and piped a triumphant gurgle. “I’m Luke Skywalker!”

  A muffled pop spooked the reverie.

  Janet’s head swiveled in the direction of the sound. Simultaneously, out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the spray of crimson, Molly’s out-flung hands, her bird-like flight, her shooting-star-like fall to earth. Her little body sprawled in the dirt in front of the doorway at an awkward angle, one knee bent up beneath her hips, her left hand resting prayerfully on her chest, the other arm stretched out, the crystal chip clutched in one grubby hand.

  Janet’s scream was wrenched out of primordial time, when humanoid emotions weren’t capped by the morale of societal behavior ~ a chalkboard-scratching scream that reverberated around the plaza. “Noooo!”

  Lunging, she flung her body across that of Molly’s. Another ‘pop’ reverberated, its force whipping Janet’s billed cap off. She felt a sting above her ear. Around her, a blur of movement: Yelling. Shouting. A spray of sand. Jack, flinging himself atop her and Molly. Huddled against them, a stricken Charley curled on his knees. Beyond, a blanket wrapped woman with a basket of clothing balanced atop her head scurried into a darkened doorway.

  Frantically, Janet’s hand plunged beneath Molly’s sticky, blood-coated jean jacket. Searching. Faint, but Molly’s heart was still beating! Thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, thank you, thank you! She tried to focus on her efforts despite a dizzying ringing sound in her head.

  Then, a pair of SWAT-type boots coalesced in front of her. “Hand over the rock.”

  Her head rotated upward. A man with a shaven head trained a 40 cal. Beretta with a screwed-on silencer on them. From his lips dangled a toothpick. The empty eyes bore into hers. “Hand it over.” Knotted shoulders covered by a light thermal jacket shrugged. “It’s in the kid’s best interest.”

  Molly’s eyes were glazed. Pink frothy blood and phlegm-bubbled at her plump bow lips. Fumbling, Janet’s bloody fingers tried to pry the quartz crystal from the still-warm little palm, but her hands were shaking violently.

  The arctic voice reached through her disorientation. “Last chance. Hand it over. Or I pick you off one by one. Easy as shooting skeet.”

  She felt Jack reach around her, loose the crystal chip from Molly’s grip and chuck the now crimson-stained rock at the man.

  With the ease of a short stop, he caught it in his free hand, then backed away toward the alley behind her house. Through blurred eyes, Janet saw that his semiautomatic pistol was still trained on them, but Jack was already scooping up Molly against his chest.

  The next twenty-five minutes were a like a tequila-shot haze: Jack bundling the three of them into his pickup; its rocketing speed through the barren rock canyons toward the new Hopi Health Care complex outside Polacca; Janet’s palm pressed over the hole in Molly’s chest as if to keep her daughter’s life from escaping; blood seeping, pooling, on Janet’s jeans; Charley’s tight-throated gulp, “Is she gonna be . . .?” His dimpled chin, so like Jack’s, quivered.

  Janet’s thoughts were fuzzy. Her tongue found making words difficult. “Molly’s going to be okay, babe.” She knew she had said it as much to reassure herself as him.

  The young intern in the Emergency Room, a b
ahana – a White like Jack – was obviously paying off his Public Health Service loan by serving in the Rez’s doctor-deficient area. As a Hopi nurse whisked Molly away on a gurney, his expression was grim. He frowned, reached toward the right side of Janet’s head. “You’ve been wounded.” His fingers came away from her mass of hair coated with sticky blood.

  She realized her teeth were clenched, her jaws hurting with vice-like tension, her hands curled in rigid knots. Get a grip on yourself. Falling apart won’t help anything. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. My daughter?”

  “She’s being prepped for surgery now.”

  She glanced back at Jack, who was settling Charley into the tiny waiting room. She turned back to the intern, but he was already striding through a set of double doors. There was no one to ask how the hell did this happen? Where is the team of Arizona’s number one rated doctors? Can we air-flight my daughter to the best-equipped surgical unit?

  “Want some coffee?” Jack’s expression was anything but TLC. His flinty reserve said, I’ve been here at the abyss of pain before and never will you catch me here again.

  Feeling off kilter, woozy, she nodded. “Yeah, I could use a cup.”

  While Jack went in search of a vending machine, she slumped into the chair next to a frightened-looking Charley. His gaze seemed to be darting around in sort of a knee jerk action. She patted his hand, as big as her own. That was the most comforting gesture she could summon at the moment without falling apart. Blinking quickly, swallowing hard, she told herself she would cry later.

  It seemed most of her life had been based on the word ‘later.’

  She was eight when she had stood outside her door and watched with stony eyes her father drive away in his rattletrap Ford jalopy, abandoning his family. She had wanted to jump on its running board and plead with him. Stead, she had stood as still as a cold stone statue. Her father had worked at a good job at the Keams Canyon trading post, which meant a secure, regular income and continuous contact with the Whites. From them, she had learned to speak English early on. Her father had been handsome, and not just in her eyes. The Don Juan of the Rez, he eventually had run off with a Navajo woman. Janet had never heard from him again. She had told herself she would cry later.

  She was fourteen, when her white-shirt principal had entered the classroom with a single sheet of paper, her name on it. In order to achieve diversity, the exclusive Oram School in central Arizona had selected her over Ram to be its scholarship recipient, based on her scores on a series of thematic perceptual exams. Within weeks she had found herself at an isolated ranch where some of the world’s wealthiest offspring were boarded. She arrived in her brother’s ’52 pickup. Phillips and DuPonts and Rothchilds arrived in limousines. She brought her clothes in a trash bag. They had theirs packed in Gucci luggage. The kids had stared at her with condescending fascination. She had ignored them. She had told herself she would cry later.

  When her comrades-in-arms in the Afghanistan desert or illegal aliens in the Arizona desert had died on her watch, she had told herself she would cry later.

  When she had returned to the Rez from military service, she had run into Ram, home from college for the Christmas holidays. She had gotten pregnant with his child, with Molly – and had not even notified him of her pregnancy. His sense of duty would have terminated his dreams, his hopes, his plans.

  With enough from her military pay, she could have gotten by, for a while anyway. However, her occasional drinking had grown more frequent, so that one costly dozing-off period had resulted in little Molly getting entangled in her grandfather’s upright loom – and its thick woolen stands cutting off her oxygen supply. When the doctor had pronounced Molly was brain damaged, Janet had told herself she would cry later.

  When Ram went on a psychopathic decapitation spree, murdering her brother and life-long friends, she told herself she would cry later.

  Always later.

  Until the night she finally cried during orgasmic, star-shooting union with Jack. His non-judgmental attentiveness, his laser intensity, his focused intimacy had bulleted past her defenses to explode her vulnerability . . . which had been balls-to-the-wall distrust of the male gender. She attributed her melt-down reaction to their ballistic sex that evening more likely a result of the endorphin detonation that blinds reality. Now, she felt they were seeing each other more clearly through the masks they wore; and not enthusiastic about what they saw.

  Still, her knees went weak if he merely touched her in passing, her breath drew sharply if she caught the dark wanting of her in his eyes. How to explain that? Mere chemistry? The man was extraordinary, but so had been Ram. With the worst paternal guide for male relationships, she had consistently made poor choices in her partners. Partners who fucked and left. Too many one-night stands. Other partners who stayed and took and took. She distrusted them all – and distrusted her judgment even more. No, better she keep to herself. Better she depend only on herself. Better to keep her heart on patrol of her perimeters. She might be desperately lonely sometimes, but she suffered infinitely less heartache.

  Was anywhere safe? In one of the chrome-and-plastic beige chairs, a woman in a warm-up suit and draped with turquoise necklaces sat reading the Hopi weekly newspaper Qua Tokti, the Cry of the Eagle. Nothing to be afraid of there. She supposed her feeling of disorientation was the traumatic after-effects of Molly’s shooting. Nevertheless, Janet’s hand surreptitiously shifted to her ankle, feeling the familiar knife holster inside her left high-top boot.

  Jack returned with coffee and hot chocolate for Charley. Thirty more minutes passed. She and Jack along with Charley emptied their Styrofoam cups, refilled them. Another hour ticked by second by agonizing second. Charley fell asleep. Jack paced the floor. She sat as obdurate as stone while bees buzzed in her brain. Wired tightly, she awaited the death knell of her hope.

  Another thirty unbearable minutes.

  If . . . only . . . I . . . could . . . do . . . my . . . life . . . over. If . . . only . . . I . . . could . . . have . . . a . . . second . . . chance. If . . . only . . . I . . . could . . . press . . . reboot. What . . . a . . .fuck . . .up . . . I . . . have . . . made . . . of . . . my . . . life.

  Another fifteen slow, heart-ripping minutes.

  Something was wrong!

  Then the doctor pushed through the double doors. His green gown was blood-smeared. His surgical mask sagged from beneath his prominent Adam’s apple. She searched his expression. Not even grim. Just blank. He shook his head, then looked down at the chocolate-and-taupe tiled floor. “We’ve placed your daughter on life support”

  In her ears, his words sounded like stones dropping in a canyon at one-second intervals. “But she’s okay?”

  “She has Tension Pneumothorax – a collapsed lung. It . . . it doesn’t look good.”

  Brown coffee splattered the floor’s brown tiles. As she toppled into the canyon, she felt Jack catch her around the waist.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A coyote stared down at Janet.

  She closed her eyes, opened them again. Beneath the coyote-skin cape, a little, wizened old man sat on the back of his heels, perching over her. Between his bony knees was a drum. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets and his hair sprouted in a white Einsteinian tangle

  “Spider Man,” she whispered. The shriveled old Cacique of the Hopi, he was the last of the Hopi kikmongwis and a cross between a Native American Dali Lama and Danny DeVito.

  “Time to come back,” his breath rattled. His wily grin displayed yellowed teeth, some missing.

  Back from where?

  Her eyes roamed around, finally focusing above familiar latillas supporting a mud roof. She realized she was in her mud brick home. On its chipped linoleum floor. Not on Roy’s cot where Molly had been sleeping but in one of the three sleeping bags Jack had laid for them and Charley.

  One of Janet’s hands slipped inside her bag, searching for a wound, a tube, or a missing body part and encountered nothing but an overly-long T-shirt
and, thankfully, panties. Untattered panties by their feel. Nope, no ragged, days-old underwear for her. Since her days at Oram, panties, clean fresh panties, had become as essential to her as beer. Well, almost.

  And then she remembered. She had been traveling. To other worlds. In and out. Since . . . ? Since the heart-crushing moment at the hospital. Maybe heart-stamping was a better word, because that was how her heart felt, as if Riverdance had just performed a rigorous step-dance all over it.

  Vaguely, she recalled regaining consciousness in one of the emergency room’s curtained bays. Later, a more blurry memory of Jack’s drive back to Hotevilla, his expression hard yet anxious. Still later, his low, seductive voice coaxing her to drink, her friend Hilda’s round face of concern as she removed Janet’s bloody clothing. Even later, a fleeting glimpse of Charley’s tight, fearful, bewildered little face.

  “Molly?” Stealing itself for what it was afraid to hear from Spider Man, her body tightened liking a drying, shriveling sponge.

  “Between worlds still.” Raspy words falling like dead autumn leaves.

  Her lungs released their imprisoned breath in something between a squish and a sigh. “How long have I been traveling?” Her mouth tasted cottony, and her nostrils identified the nauseating odor of Spider Man’s bear root plant.

  His bony shoulders hunched. “Depends by which world time.”

  “Let’s start with this one.” She swallowed, trying not to throw up, but the bear root pervading her body was overwhelming. She choked by a gag.

  He shrugged again. “Half a day or so of traveling.”

  She remembered once telling Jack, that her specialty was tracking. That her tracking could only take them so far. Spider Man’s specialty was traveling. Traveling to other worlds. Well, this time she had been the one traveling to other worlds. The Underworld. Searching for Molly in its blackness. Demetrius searching for Persephone.

  And now Spider Man, wrapped in his coyote skin had come to bring her back. Coyote – the trickster, the teacher, the keeper of magic.