Welcome Back to Pie Town

by Lynne Hinton

  George knew a bit of the history of Frank’s people. He recalled that most of the Navajo and Apache had been exiled in 1863. By December of the following year, over eight thousand Navajo and over four hundred Mescalero Apache had been confined there. When they were released, or when some escaped, many of them had settled in the area around Ramah, where some of the exiles had lived before.

  He remembered readings that some of the Navajo had intermarried with the Apache and did not return to the Big Reservation, the Navajo land around Window Rock. He didn’t know the history of the name of the area where this group settled, Ramah, only that it was the same spelling as the town mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew scriptures.

  “So doesn’t it seem that Frank was giving me a clue if he told me this passage? Doesn’t it seem that he thinks Raymond is here?”

  Maria smiled. “My son and I have not always seen eye to eye on matters of religion. He is like my great-grandfather and believes that the faith of those in the Catholic Church is narrow and oppressive.”

  George nodded. He recalled the many conversations he had had with Frank about religion. Frank was never shy about expressing his disapproval of the history of Christianity and the Catholic faith.

  “Still,” George noted, “he knew the prophet. He mentioned the passage.”

  “My son is very suspicious of the ways of white people.” She rocked in her chair.

  Father George was having a difficult time following her. This statement wasn’t a surprise to him either. He waited for her to explain, but she seemed to have nothing more to add.

  He waited and then, suddenly, he understood.

  “He knew they were listening,” George surmised. “Frank knew they were taping the conversation, so he told me about the Jeremiah passage to throw them off.” He nodded, taking in the realization. “To send the FBI to the place where he knew Raymond wasn’t going to be.”

  Maria rocked in her chair and laughed.

  Frank dropped back in his seat on the sofa. It was funny, and it was also humbling. He had been just as gullible as the FBI agents eavesdropping on the conversation. He had been so sure that Frank was giving him a clue that it never occurred to him Frank knew more about what was happening during the visit than he did.

  “So it was just a ruse,” he said, taking it in.

  Maria raised her eyebrows. “Perhaps,” she responded. “What exactly did my son tell you as you were about to leave?”

  George tried to remember the conversation in detail. He leaned against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, reliving the visit he had in Albuquerque. “He said that Jeremiah has always been a favorite of his and that he especially liked the prophet’s words about the joyful return of the exiles.” George sat up and stared directly at Frank’s mother.

  “And then he said . . . and I remember this now because I thought it was an odd thing for Frank to say . . .”

  Maria stopped rocking and leaned forward.

  “ . . . He said, ‘I like that they go back to where they started.’ ” He thought for a few minutes about Frank’s parting words. “Rachel weeps for her children in Ramah. That was the hill country in the north of Judah where many of the exiles were from. Ramah, New Mexico, is the place your people were thought to have lived formerly.” He shook his head. “I still don’t understand. It still seems like he was pointing me here.”

  “ ‘I like that they go back to where they started,’ ” Maria repeated. “Perhaps he was not talking about the people of Ramah, not about the Israelites, and maybe not even about the Navajo.”

  George listened carefully. Suddenly his eyes lit up. “Go back to where Frank started!”

  Maria began rocking again.

  “Frank had started searching for Raymond at a ranch near Pie Town. I told him that I had talked to the ranch owner. I figured the FBI was listening, so I didn’t explain that I knew that Raymond had been there, but I’m pretty sure Frank understood what I was saying.” George nodded. “I told him how I had been hiking and camping around the area. Frank knew that I was aware of where Raymond had last been seen, where he left Pie Town and took off, where he started his self-imposed exile.” It was all coming together for him. “Raymond isn’t anywhere around here.”

  Maria shrugged, appearing very innocent.

  “He’s where he started.” George shook his head. Everything had become clear. He turned to Maria, suddenly figuring out something else—the reason for her calm demeanor.

  “But you knew that, didn’t you?” he asked, watching her carefully. “Did he come here and leave?” He wondered why he hadn’t found Raymond earlier in the week when he searched the area around Techado after hearing from Francine.

  She didn’t answer right away. She rocked and peered out the front window. “I am Catholic, Father George,” she said softly. “But I am also Navajo. Raymond was in trouble, and I gave him help.” She faced the priest. “He is better now because he has been given the appropriate blessing, the blessing to heal him of the wounds of battle.”

  Father George knew about the rituals of the Navajo people. He had learned the history of the ceremonies from Frank, but he had also done a lot of research. He appreciated the means of blessings used by the Navajo to heal and protect their people. There were several classifications of the blessings, or chantways, and he understood that Maria was probably referring to a sing—a ceremony used for men returning from war.

  He also understood that this ritual had been carried out in the presence of the Ramah people and officiated by a diagnostician, a kind of priest or medicine man who had learned the chants and the proper way to hold the rituals. George wasn’t sure that the time was right to hold such an event for Raymond—he thought he remembered hearing that this blessing could only occur after the late spring planting. But the medicine man must have known what he was doing in conducting the sing as required.

  “I think when you find Raymond he will be ready to return to Pie Town.” His grandmother smiled. “And I am confident that the FBI will soon learn that my grandson had nothing to do with this robbery and that he has nothing to do with dealing drugs.”

  Father George stood up, more at peace than when he had arrived, ready to take his leave, ready to find Raymond. He glanced out the window and realized that he probably didn’t need to worry about being followed. These agents were not assigned to him. They would stay exactly where they had been instructed to stay, at Raymond’s grandmother’s house in the area where they were sure the fugitive was hiding.

  He said his good-bye, walked to his car, smiled and waved at the agents still parked in the driveway, got in his car, and headed back to Catron County. He would go home, get some rest, pack some supplies, and make his trip to Bernie’s ranch the next day.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was not everything he needed to be healed, to be better, but for that moment, that day, that week, it was enough.

  Raymond Twinhorse crossed over Highway 36 just a few miles east of Fence Lake. He was heading home, back to Pie Town. He glanced down at his watch. It was just after lunch, and he knew he had at least four more hours of walking.

  A couple of cars passed him while he was on the road. One stopped, and the driver asked him if he wanted a ride. Raymond politely said no. He wanted to keep walking. He needed to keep walking.

  In the days since he had left Pie Town, the days he had been wandering the desert, it was the walking that had felt the most restorative. The movement of his body, the stride, his gait, the leaving one spot to go to another, somehow it helped. It kept him grounded, centered. There was something very important taking place within himself as long as he was moving. He figured that in the seven days he had been gone he had traveled a hundred miles. He had walked and hiked and crawled across the entire northwest corner of Catron County. He had started walking, and he hadn’t stopped.

  He headed off the paved road and into the wilderness. He would head east a few miles more and then turn south toward Highway 603, going the same way
he had come, across Bernie King’s ranch, the land he knew best, the land he was used to working, fencing, hunting. Heading along in that direction, he would make it home by dark. He would stay at his dad’s trailer, call Trina, and see if she would agree to see him.

  It wouldn’t have to be at their house, he would tell her. She wouldn’t have to be alone with him. They could go to the diner or the church, wherever she felt comfortable. He just wanted to see her, tell her he was sorry about what had happened, explain that he was wrong to be drinking, wrong not to get help, and wrong to put her and the baby in harm’s way. He would explain that he was staying at his father’s place until he could get things worked out at the VA. He hoped that he could get a room, be an in-patient and get a good counselor, get the help he needed.

  He stopped for a minute and took a drink from his canteen. His grandmother had given it to him when he told her he didn’t want her to drive him to Pie Town, when he explained he would rather walk. She had found it in a closet, said it was his dad’s, and she had filled it with water, well water from Ramah, packed a few sandwiches in a pouch, and sent him on his way. She had seemed worried at first, when he arrived, but not when he left. When he left, she was radiant, confident, at peace.

  He had only seen his grandmother once since he returned from the war. His father had driven him out there around the third or fourth day he was home. Raymond knew his dad didn’t like going to Ramah, that it brought up too many unpleasant memories of the time when he left. But telling his son that he needed to see his grandmother, Frank had driven him to Ramah.

  Raymond had realized a number of years before that he would never really understand his father’s break with the Navajo people, that it was something his dad didn’t want to discuss, but he could see in the reunion with his grandmother that his dad was more at ease with his family than Raymond had ever seen before. His dad seemed to have a peace about him while they visited with the family. He told his son that he had been back a couple of times since Raymond had been away, that the experience of Raymond being at war had somehow brought them a little closer.

  Raymond put the top on his canteen and kept moving. There were no longer any highway sounds, no passing cars or diesel trucks, just the noises from the desert, the whistle of a hawk, the sounds of a lizard darting through dry grasses, the cry of a coyote from far off. He loved the sounds, loved the silence. And with the week of cleansing, of being alone in the hills, of having nothing between himself and the earth, he felt better than he had in a long time.

  He climbed up a hill and peered behind him. He thought of the old man, the shaman, the healer who had performed the sing on his behalf. Raymond knew the man from his childhood, remembered him from the few family functions and festivals he had attended. He had been at the receiving end of the man’s treatments a couple of times before. He had taken herbs the man prescribed, had drunk his teas. He wasn’t sure he actually believed in the ceremonies or treatments, the blessings, the chants, but once he arrived in Ramah, once he found his way to his grandmother’s house, he was in such a bad place, such a lost and broken place, that he would have tried anything, taken anything, prayed to anybody. He’d had nothing left to lose.

  Raymond could see the smoke from small fires off in the distance and could also smell the faint odor of ash and burning trash. He hoped that the fires were well contained and presented no threat to the people of Catron County. Watching the rising smoke, he thought of the danger of fires in the desert and immediately remembered the dream that had haunted him since he left Afghanistan, the dream that for some reason had not shown up the previous night, the dream that he hoped was gone for good.

  It began simply enough, Raymond recalled, with a light conversation with his buddies, members of his company. They were driving along, laughing at Boxer, the private first class from Chattanooga, Tennessee, called that because he was always in a fight with somebody. He was rapping, making up some crazy song about soldiers in a truck, plowing through the desert; and the others on board, the five men returning to base after “shithole patrol”—what they called the assignment of checking caves for Taliban members—were laughing at the horrible rhymes, laughing at this skinny white kid from Tennessee who thought he could be a rapper.

  “You are so far from being black,” Dawg said as he pulled off his helmet to scratch his head. Dawg was the only man in the unit who had come from a big city. He was tall, lanky, a basketball player from the Bronx. He was sitting near the window, on the opposite side from Raymond. He was the first one blown out of the truck, the first one Raymond had seen die, the first man Raymond had ever seen take his last breath.

  In the dream, just like the real event, the explosion seemed to have come from nowhere. There were no warnings, no time to change course, no time to calculate or evaluate. They were just driving along, laughing, cutting up with each other, thinking about dinner, thinking about mail call and whether they had gotten a letter or a package from home, and then everything went white, a sudden blast that left the truck and the company in pieces spread across the barren desert floor only a couple of miles from their destination. So close to home, Raymond dreamed, so close to marking off another day of combat duty, so close to calling it a day and feeling nothing out of the ordinary except maybe a little gratitude that they were one more day closer to getting out of the war.

  The nightmare played out every memory Raymond had of the explosion: Boxer’s moans as he lay dying, the screams from the captain trying to create some semblance of order, the cries, the metal popping in the fire, the blinding pain that caused Raymond to come and go out of consciousness, the smell of gas and oil and burning bodies, the last explosion that silenced the commanding officer, and the smoke. Always, Raymond saw and dreamed about smoke.

  He took another sip from his canteen, turned, and kept walking.

  It had actually been his father who suggested he go to Ramah. Frank had found him just above the ranch the day after he had left. Raymond had been surprised to see him. Frank had explained that he had seen Trina and that she was injured but okay. He also explained that he knew things were worse than Raymond had let on and that it was time he figured out what he needed to do. And that had been just about all that Frank had said about the situation.

  They spent one day and one night together, catching dinner, a rabbit that somehow happened upon their camp, getting water, a long walk to a small spring, without any more conversation about what had happened, what was needed. Then, when Frank had awakened Raymond out of the recurring nightmare as they slept under the stars near Techado Mountain, he finally said to his son: “Go home. Go to our people,” he added, surprising the young man. “Go and have the sing.”

  And that had been the end of it. His dad had promised to stay away and to keep everyone else away for a week, but after seven days, Frank said, he expected Raymond to return to Pie Town and face the consequences of what had happened the night the lights went out. He expected his son to come back and talk to Trina and make it right. But first he had made the suggestion to go to Ramah, to go home.

  Raymond now realized that his dad had been right. The ceremony had helped. It had not alleviated the wounds, and it had not done away with the fear and anxiety and rage he had felt since returning from Afghanistan. But he had experienced one full night of sleep, and that had given him hope, given him some small sliver of light in his otherwise dark and clouded mind. It was only a very little, but it was enough.

  Raymond pushed toward Pie Town, remembering the sing, remembering his father’s departure, remembering the shaman’s blessing, remembering his grandmother’s knowing eyes, remembering the light way he felt just for a second, and he kept walking, feeling glad. Glad for what he had, glad for rest and hope, glad for where he had been, glad for the small flicker of light, the respite from the smoke.

  He quickened his stride, knowing he was making good time.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  She just said that she was going to Texas to see him.” Malene was recountin
g the story she had heard from Trina early that morning. She and Roger were meeting for lunch. Trina had called her at work a few hours earlier.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she called out to Oris, who was walking over to his seat at the counter. He had been in the restroom when she arrived.

  “Baby girl,” he responded without turning around.

  “You want to sit at the table with us?” she asked.

  Roger answered for him. “Already asked,” he explained. “He said he couldn’t stay long, has to run an errand.”

  “What errand?” Malene asked, pulling the silverware out of her napkin.

  “I don’t need to tell you my business,” the older man replied.

  Malene faced Roger, who just shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said, placing the napkin in her lap.

  “Okay, so why is Trina going to Texas to see him?” Roger wanted to know. He had ordered for them both when he arrived first. Bea had already brought them drinks.

  Malene shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe she just wants to come clean about Alexandria. Maybe she thinks she owes him that information. Or maybe she’s thinking about giving him a second chance.” She opened a packet of sugar and poured it in her tea.

  “I think that’s a very bad idea,” Roger said. He was having coffee.

  “I tried to tell her that,” Malene responded. She shook her head. “But she’s a stubborn one, that Trina Lockhart.”

  Roger nodded. “She is that,” he agreed.

  “You hear anything else from Frank?” she asked, knowing that her husband had enjoyed a very long visit with their friend after the agent made arrangements for Roger to see him. “Are they letting him out?”

  “The attorney says they don’t have any grounds to keep holding him, but they just keep making things up to satisfy the laws.”

  Malene waited for an explanation.