Peter curled around the pain. He felt as if he'd leapt off a cliff and plunged deep underwater. The air was thick and resistant, and the sound of the men's voices was a big rounded booming, slow. One rumbled, No Navajo punk… screw my wife… talk to me like that. The other said, Didn't have to do that… mess to deal with.. trouble.
Another man appeared at the inner door. Peter's eyes focused enough to recognize him: Donny McCarty, the old man's son, a pale clerkish nerd who Julieta had always felt sorry for. He swore at his father and boomed, Never think first… could have used it against her… cost yourself millions! Then both McCartys were giving orders. Stephanovic complained but gave in. Donny was already picking up the broken things.
Peter hated them with all his might. He couldn't make sense of anything. He pulled himself down to a secret cave under the water and wrapped himself into a ball. Inside, he found a place of resolve and fire and he knew it could not fail him, it was so strong he knew he could survive anything, find Julieta again.
A kind of empty space and then he noticed he wasn't in the bright lights of the house but outside, under the sky. It was dark and stars. The sharp wild lights gave him strength, too. Stephanovic and Donny McCarty had put him in the open back of Julieta's little workhorse Jeep. The Jeep started and then they were bumping. The metal bed pounded up at him and the pain came in bolts and blasts. Stephanovic was going to kill him, Peter knew, but he was going to surprise him because he had strength inside that no old white businessmen could imagine. He was smart and durable as a coyote. He was strong and young and had fire in him. He had love. Love would win. He'd wait until Stephanovic stopped and he'd kill him and then he'd kill both McCartys and he'd go to Julieta.
The jarring and bumping quit and the night was quiet. Stephanovic was opening the tailgate and lifting Peter out. It hurt. Peter stayed curled around his secret strength, husbanding it. He was barely breathing. He would explode suddenly from his stillness. His love would give him power.
Stephanovic was carrying him between walls of rock, and Peter recognized the ravine that came down near the north end of the mesa. The big man labored on the slope, working his way deeper in and higher up, stumbling and swearing. He dumped Peter onto the ground and then lit a flashlight. Peter opened his eyes into the impossible light, couldn't see Stephanovic but knew he was looking down at him.
'Aw shit!' the voice behind the light said. 'We thought you were dead. Son of a bitch!'
Peter willed his body to move. But he couldn't lash out and he couldn't stand up. All the effort did was bend and straighten him. He was aware that he was writhing on the ground as the big man stood over him. Back and forth, trying to straighten his body, then feeling the unbearable pain and curling back around it.
Stephanovic was grunting and swearing. He didn't want to do this, Peter could tell. Which meant he could be persuaded. Peter tried to find the thing that would convince him to disobey and to help him. He had to find the thing that mattered most in the world. That was Julieta. But he didn't want to say her name. Didn't want to use her to save himself. But she was pregnant, she needed Peter to be father to the baby. He had to be father to the baby. Any man would understand that.
Peter tried to tell him. 'Baby,' he said. 'Baby.' Regret tainted the pure clarity of his determination. He hadn't just been stupid, he had been cruel.
He heard Stephanovic's breathless swearing coming closer and thought he'd reached the man, but then a big rock landed next to him, bruising his shoulder.
No, Peter screamed inside. 'Baby!' he said out loud. Stephanovic's face was just a white blob in the darkness above him, but he tried to catch his eye, convey his passion. Still the big man didn't understand, so Peter made a gigantic effort: 'Don't kill me! I have to take care of her! I have to be with my kid.' But his meaning was changing, what mattered most was still deeper. What he really meant was, Let me live so I can do it right, fix the mistakes. Don't kill me with that undone. Don't kill a man who hasn't undone his cruelties.
Another rock fell, this one landing directly on his legs. 'I don't understand Navajo,' Stephanovic said. Then he was gone again. His swearing got distant and then came back.
The effort to shout had tired Peter. He needed to rest, gather his energy. He found the secret place of strength again and held himself curled there. He'd outwait Stephanovic. If he had to, he could wait forever. He'd curl up and hold himself still and come exploding back. He'd be with Julieta and the kid and set all the mistakes right.
An empty time later, he opened his eyes to find he was covered with rocks. But not entirely. He could see up into the sky in the gaps between them. The rocks were all over him, but they mostly supported each other's weight and weren't that heavy. There was no sound. Stephanovic had gone, left him for dead.
But he wasn't! He was alive, and he could move. One arm was pinned beneath him, but he was able to fight the other arm free. The rocks shifted slightly, allowing him to bring his hand up. He pushed at the big rock that lay just above his chest. It lifted, pivoted, dropped back down. He did it again. He could lift it, but then it just pivoted back and his arm gave way. Again. Again. The rock made a gritting noise as it lifted and a hard, final noise when it fell back. So now he'd rest again. Stephanovic hadn't killed him and hadn't even buried him deeply. He'd get out. He'd find his cousins over near Hunters Point and they'd take him to a doctor and then he'd go to Julieta.
Garrett McCarty would never stop him. Nothing could stop him.
Something was happening up in the sky. No, near the sky. Bright light washed over the lip of the ravine sixty feet directly above him. Red boulders and slabs, the crumbling undercut edge, sharply lit against the black sky. The shadows shifted. He heard motor noise. A Jeep up there. Stephanovic had driven around to the south end of the mesa, where the slope was not so steep. The lights eclipsed and shafted bright and the motor labored. Grinding, grating noises. Then all the rocks were moving, the whole section of cliff was falling, gathering other rocks and hurtling down.
49
Julieta rode the Keedays' horse as hard as the animal could stand. It was a tall, bony paint gelding, already getting shaggy for winter, out of shape from too much time in the grandparents' corral. She pushed him until he wheezed. The air was a harsh, crisp cold. A hundred feet ahead in the predawn light, Joseph sat behind Tommy's cousin on the ATV. The taillights, so bright when they'd started out, were already dimming as the landscape drew light from the sky.
She hadn't heard from Cree again, but as she'd lain there in Joseph's bed the worry had intruded on the oasis of serenity they'd made together and increasingly she'd sensed it was urgent to get to Tommy. They had left Window Rock at two in the morning and driven the empty roads and wandering wheel tracks for over two hours. They'd awakened Tommy's grandparents and cousin, saddled this horse, and set out.
Once they'd climbed out of the strange canyonlike maze and reached the higher plateau, the going was easier. The horse could sustain a lope for a couple of minutes on end. The ATV bobbed and swerved as the eastern sky turned a bland gray-blue above the dark land.
At last Eric stopped the ATV and let Joseph off, pointing ahead toward a low, dark hogan. Julieta cantered past them, pulled up at the open door, leapt off. The gelding huffed as she dropped the reins and looked through the doorway. A single dull rectangle of window light. Nobody inside.
'Mrs. McCarty?'
She whirled at the voice. A middle-aged Navajo woman stood thirty feet away, looking haggard, blowing puffs of steam into the freezing air. Tommy's aunt, Ellen.
'They're over here. He only got a little way last time. It's good you came. He's starting again. Cree says if he does it again, he'll die.'
Julieta's heart clenched at the words. She followed Ellen into an area of rocks and sagebrush, and then spotted the other people: two men, standing some distance apart from two blanket-wrapped forms on the ground. Cree and Tommy.
She hurried to them. Tommy lay twisted among blankets and sheepskins on the bare ground, motionless but not quite asleep. His eyes were open to staring slits in a face that was almost skeletal and greenish in the predawn light. Julieta was seized with worry for him, and with it came that sense of knowing, of resonance, of recognition that she swore she'd forbid herself but that came anyway. She knew him. It had to be her child's ghost in Tommy.
'Hey,' Cree said amiably. 'Good timing.'
