faces and felt their collective anarchic energy with a familiar mix of pride and sorrow.
He found another herb vendor whose face he thought he recognized. 'Yaateeh. Do you know where Joe Billie is today?' he asked.
'Maybe around back,' the man answered.
Which meant it could take him a long time to find Uncle Joe. If strung end to end, the meandering rows of stalls would stretch a couple of miles. The thought made him feel weary and he decided he'd better still the complaining of his stomach before going any farther. He stopped at a likely-looking concession, an Airstream trailer fronted by a tarp-covered sitting area with four picnic tables. The roast mutton wasn't ready yet, so he ordered a bowl of stew, a couple of fry breads, and a cup of coffee, and when he got the food took it to a table where he could look out on the lane as he ate. Several booths down, one of the music sellers turned on a boom box, playing a CD of some local country-and-western band, amateurish but full of vigor. Joseph ripped a piece from the huge disk of bread, salted it, and wolfed it down. Time to catch his breath and fortify himself.
Anyway, before he talked to Uncle Joe, he needed another few minutes to gather his thoughts.
Besides pleading with him to tell her whether Tommy really was her long-lost baby, Julieta had begged him to help keep the parapsychologist working with the boy, to intercede with the grandparents or the doctors to keep her on as a consulting psychologist.
Which required he make a decision about Cree Black. As Tommy's primary physician, someone the grandparents trusted, a doctor in good standing at Ketteridge, he could play Roman emperor, give Cree a thumbs- up or a thumbs-down. Thumbs-down: He could recommend against her having access to the boy, and there would be little she could do about it. Thumbs-up, and they'd probably assent to her seeing him.
Two days ago, it would have been an easier decision: good-bye Dr. Black. But the parapsychologist's methods were not at all what he'd expected. Every time they spoke, she articulated her perspective so clearly and compellingly. And yet it was like nothing he'd ever heard of.
Well, not quite, he realized. Surprisingly, some aspects of her approach resembled the traditional Navajo healing process. Her belief in spirits capable of occupying a human being, that was part of it, and the way real reverence merged with superstition in her personal cosmology. It was also her emphasis on the patient's social environment. By probing the interpersonal relationships around the sufferer, Cree Black made the group part of the process-not unlike the complex Ways the old healers performed, where the whole community came to give the ritual and gave the patient their support. It was one component of the traditions he'd accepted as both defensible and, for some afflictions anyway, effective.
And she had an impressive resume, too. During a break yesterday morning, he had looked her up on the Internet and found a surprising number of references: advanced degrees, significant publications, lecturing, a prestigious postdoctoral research prize.
Joseph chuckled cynically, surprised at himself. He couldn't decide which factor influenced him most, but on balance, he decided, he was impressed with her and wouldn't mind seeing what she could accomplish with Tommy. At the very least, arranging for Cree Black to keep working with him would soothe Julieta, maybe discourage her from raising legal challenges to the grandparents' custody, or waging a private, hopeless war against the health- care system. Or otherwise staking claims on the boy that she couldn't defend and that would rip Tommy's world, and hers, apart.
But Cree Black's approach also created potential problems. The first was simply that her methods might not hold any promise for Tommy. The woman could be chasing vapors. Despite the baffling strangeness of his symptoms, Joseph still had to believe Tommy was suffering from a neurological or psychological problem that would ultimately need a clinical remedy. Cree Black could do worse than nothing; she could delay or misdirect the treatment that Tommy really needed. In that sense, the very penuasiveness that made her such a skilled interviewer and confidante could make her dangerous. Already, Julieta had bought completely into the idea that Tommy was indeed 'possessed,' and that the culprit was the nasty ghost of a too-familiar enemy, Garrett McCarty.
The other big problem was that Dr. Black's delving into the past could unearth trouble that was best left alone. It could plunge Julieta into self-doubt and self-castigation and the dangerous instability that he'd seen too many times over the years. Worse, Cree might force to the surface secrets that would expose Joseph himself. Things he'd done that he couldn't forgive himself for, let alone ask Julieta to forgive.
Joseph's appetite faltered at the memories, but he made himself eat, scooping bites of stew with a chunk of bread.
He 'd done his best to help Julieta, but they'd both been so young, so naive. It had rapidly gotten so out of control-the progression of mistakes and deceptions that culminated in the decision to give up her baby. How stupid he'd been to think she could get over that! He should have put his foot down: Julieta, forget about what Garrett has done to you. Forget about fighting for a favorable divorce settlement. Don't accuse and defame him in court, don't try to hold on to any of his property. Don't give him one more reason to hate or resist you, or any more of a grudge to settle. Just get free of him, as fast and easy as possible, even if it means you end up penniless. Keep the baby, let your new life start now.
There are other alternatives, he should have said.
Like what? What other alternatives had there been? That's what he'd never articulated. That's where he'd really failed her.
But there were three words he'd had no right to say: You and me.
What could he have offered? Be with me. I'll claim I'm the father, I'll take care of you and the baby. I'll take the heat from McCarty and protect you from him with my life if I have to.
He had come very close, but it hadn't been possible. At first, she had been deeply in love with Peter Yellowhorse, and for all either of them knew Peter might have come back to her. She'd also been afraid, and blinded by anger and fear, and deeply disillusioned; he couldn't have offered himself without seeming to exploit her confusion and desperation. And then she'd been fighting free of two different but equally devastating relationships with men-the last thing she needed was another male making demands or claims on her. What she'd needed was a friend. And she'd looked to Joseph to be that.
It had been a simple choice, really. But in trying, he'd made some mistakes of his own. Terrible mistakes.
Anyway, he hadn't been free, either. When he'd first encountered the beautiful young volunteer at the hospital, he'd been still tangled in the emotional and situational coils of his own divorce process. In 1984, he was twenty-eight, married for six years, not long out of medical school and just beginning to come to grips with the way his years at Johns Hopkins had changed him. Wondering why he'd married Edith Blanco. Realizing that while she was a good person, they were too different; he'd married her during his last semester at UNM as much out of insecurity as affection, a young man intimidated by his pending leap into the unknown of the urban East Coast and desperate to anchor himself to his home place and people. When he'd first met Julieta, he'd already spent a year on the uneasy verge of ending it with Edith.
By the time he'd divorced and she'd divorced and they had each regained a vague semblance of emotional equilibrium, the habits of distance had set in. There were things he was afraid to tell her. He got the sense she was afraid, too-of her own mistakes, maybe, afraid to repeat them with him. In the intervening years, the occasional other relationships had come and gone, never feeling right for either of them, confusing and delaying. The timing never right.
He'd let eighteen years pass since he'd first met her. The worst mistake of all.
The boom box down the row went quiet for a moment and then began playing Navajo chants, sung by a ragged chorus of hoarse voices accompanied by a solitary drum. The monotonous wailing irritated Joseph and reminded him why he'd come here. He mopped up the remains of his stew, ate the last bite of bread, and drank off his coffee. He threw away the paper plate and cup and continued on through the market.
Joe Billie was unusually tall for a Navajo, but also unusually thin, as if his extra height had been attained by stretching a shorter man. He wore the standard uniform of men of his generation-jeans, cowboy boots, western shirt, and cowboy hat- and he had the gaunt, seamed face of a man who had spent a lot of time outdoors. He'd gone to college on the GI Bill and had worked as a rural livestock veterinarian until he'd etired at sixty-five, eight or ten years ago. Though he'd served in the marines during the Korean War, had studied modern medical theory, and had married a Catholic, he'd been drifting back toward a rediscovered Navajo traditionalism for as long as Joseph could remember, and after retirement he'd used his extensive contacts to build a part-time profession as an
