and taken his last thirty-two dollars, a kind of half-serious mugging, more threat than hurt. The worst part was when they shoved him down the interstate embankment, because the knees of his good jeans burst as he somersaulted down the slope. Looking like some just-dumped rodeo loser, it didn't help get rides. He felt as bad as he looked.
I'm coming to you with nothing, Julieta. But I am coming to you. Back like an echo.
There was poetic justice in his humiliation. Starting again with nothing, from nothing-that felt right, too. All new. Leave the baggage behind. Plus, maybe she'd feel some sympathy for him, it might help ease them over what would probably be a rocky first few minutes.
Return of the prodigal Indian, he'd say to her. The stuff of which legends are made, yeah? Standing before her looking like hell, knees torn. Make her laugh.
This was not how he'd imagined it. When he'd first decided to come back, he'd conjured a vision of a tender and heroic homecoming: appearing at her door in crisp new clothes, full of tales of the coast, of dramas in the casting lots, of close brushes with fame and disaster. She'd be angry at first, but she'd see how much he wanted her, she'd be swayed by his passion. She'd forgive him, against her will. She'd be pretty pregnant by now, maybe only three months away, and she'd see how he had changed by how tender he'd be with her. He'd tell her he knew how wrong he'd been, that he'd left Bernice, that he was back for keeps.
The thought of Julieta stirred him and fired his resolve. He remembered her body against his, and it seemed the power of that memory would allow him to overcome anything.
He was close now, maybe eight miles overland. If he hurried he'd get there before dark. He'd ridden Bird this way a dozen times, winding between the hills near the road, then breaking through into the open country beyond. When the land smoothed into the endless miles of rolling swells, he'd let Bird find her own pace and it was always a gallop, that horse loved to run. He'd ride her like the wind in a straight line, shortest distance between two points, the heart line, straight east. He'd fly like an arrow. First he'd see the mesa standing clear of the surrounding land, and that would steer him to the house.
He felt bone tired, bruised and sore, and the closer he got the more nervous he became. She had a lot to be angry about.
But he'd explain. She'd understand. His love would overcome her resistance. She'd see it in him.
Everybody had warned him it was not so easy off the rez, but he'd always dismissed that as the song of losers who didn't have the spark or good looks or willpower to succeed in a world without BIA housing and government handouts. But in fact it had been tough. He couldn't get a grip on L.A. at all. Down in San Diego there were more jobs, but coming into Southern California with bronze skin, you came into a labor pool overflowing with Mexicans, and nobody gave a damn whether you were a noble Native American or some newly arrived wetback. And as for having ambitions in broadcasting-hey, who didn't? Plus there was the unrelenting pace of things, and the crowded, controlled feel of the city. Hard rules. No slack. In aggregate, white people were crazy, drank too much coffee. It made them efficient but graceless. He had always looked at the typical Navajo way of doing things with affectionate superiority, but in San Diego he found he missed being around the People, the spacious gracious slow funky chaos of rez life. He missed hearing his own language spoken. On the rez, he'd grown tired of living where everybody was some kind of cousin, too claustrophobic, no privacy, the clan thing with every woman you met. But in white America, it went too far the other way, nobody knew anybody. Being an outsider in San Diego, you went around lonely and empty and unrecognized. Even whites who lived there didn't know each other. He missed Bird and their wild gallops over open land where there was no one to tell him what to do and his spirit took wing.
And most of all, he missed Julieta. Even when he met Bernice and they had a thing for a while, he'd think of Julieta and feel a rat gnawing in his stomach, the sense of missing her and fearing that he'd made a disastrous mistake.
But I'm back. Take two. I'll do it right this time.
Now the walk was taking forever. Early November, after six months on the Coast he wasn't used to the cold. But whenever he bottomed out, he'd picture an image of her: the breathtaking curve of her hip as she shrugged out of her jeans the first time they'd made love. Oh, man. Or the light in her eyes when he'd be at work with the other guys around and couldn't talk to her and she'd look a blue fire of love at him that set him ablaze from thirty feet away. Plenty enough to keep him going.
I'll do it right this time, he promised. Babies, they're not so bad. People have been having babies, raising families, for years. Decades, even. I'll try it, Julieta.
Walk, walk, walk. It took three hours to reach the last rise, about a mile from the house. He was aching and tired, but the instant he saw the place, the kinks and pains fell away. The last light of sunset painted its walls, the windows glowed with welcoming yellow. He laughed out loud for joy. He'd made it! There was warmth of every kind inside. There was starting new. Birth and rebirth.
If she forgave him. The thought shivered him. But of course it would be hard at first. He deserved it. He didn't blame Joe Tsosie for not talking to him, trying to keep him away-he'd screwed up royally. She'd be mad because she was hurt and scared. But he'd make it better.
He ran the last half mile.
As he came up to the door, he stood straight and brushed the dust off his clothes. He tugged his hair loose from its ponytail and shook it out over his shoulders, the way she liked it. He tried to catch his breath but couldn't. When he knocked, he was burning. He felt the love light come over him and knew it made him beautiful and strong, irresistible.
Garrett McCarty opened the door.
It was so unexpected that the best Peter could do was stammer, 'What are you doing here?'
'What am I doing here? I own this house.' Garrett McCarty looked him up and down and his eyes narrowed. 'I'd ask what you're doing here, but I think I already know.'
A big shape moved behind McCarty and Peter saw Stephanovic, the big Irish guy who everybody knew worked as a sort of enforcer type at McCarty mines. He came to the door, looked at Peter without expression, then swept his eyes over the driveway as if checking for cars or other visitors.
Garrett McCarty turned away and made a sharp gesture with one hand. 'Nick, invite this kid in, huh? And shut the door, it's cold out there.'
One of Stephanovic's huge paws whipped out and came around the back of Peter's neck and yanked him stumbling into the house. Peter cuffed the hand off and stepped away.
McCarty stood belligerently, legs braced wide, face red and full of veins. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a checked shirt opened a couple of buttons to reveal a mat of gray chest hair. 'You've got a lot of goddamned balls, don't you. Coming here, knocking on the door. I knew she had a brave in the woodpile. I knew it. Is this some macho rite, you want to lock horns with the old buck?' The thought made McCarty laugh. 'Or, what- you're the honorable type, looking for permission to take my pony for a ride? That it?'
'Don't talk that way about her,' Peter snapped.
McCarty threw himself at Peter. He was heavier, but Peter was younger and quicker and his first punch flattened the old man's nose. McCarty reared away, roared, charged again, and they reeled back against the wall, raging and pounding each other. McCarty's nose sprayed blood. Peter felt the power of his own anger, hate brewed from all the things Julieta had told him about the man. He hammered the red face with his forearm and knocked the old man reeling. McCarty staggered into the middle of the room and charged again like a wounded bull. They fell against a coatrack and went to the floor, rolling, tangling in it. Things were breaking, falling from the walls. Peter rolled on top of McCarty and punched the raging face.
Then something hard hit the side of his head, knocking him sprawling on the tiles. Stephanovic aimed another steel-toed kick at him and he barely got his arms up in time to protect his face.
Peter had just gotten to his hands and knees when the big man kicked him in the center of his chest. The force of it lifted him off the floor. He fell on his side and struggled to get his breath. Couldn't inhale. Couldn't move.
Still the rage and ardor burned in him. He wouldn't lose. He wouldn't give up. He would find Julieta.
Stephanovic was standing across the room, giving him a stay cool half smile and watching him as he got to his feet. Then McCarty appeared in the living-room doorway holding a kitchen towel against his nose with one hand and a big silver pistol in the other. Stephanovic's eyes went wide and he moved toward his boss, saying, 'Whoa, hey, Garrett-' but the gun exploded, sound and flash and impact all at once. Peter felt his insides blow apart. Then another huge noise and another detonation in his gut.
