A Foreboding Felony

by Constance Barker

  “We want the dreams to make sense in this world and our minds oblige us. But we often don’t have the information necessary to reveal their real meaning. That comes later. So a dreamer practices the art of remembering and letting the dream be what it is without forcing meaning on it. Try to understand the dream as the stories they foretell unfold around us.”

  “How?” Charli demanded.

  “It is different for each dreamer. You have the gift, but no one can explain how it will work best for you. That reveals itself.”

  “In its own sweet time, apparently.”

  Her grandmother sighed. “It does take time. If you'd been here, I could have brought you along slowly, but your mother put distance between us to ensure you couldn’t get my help.”

  “I still don't understand why she did that. Didn't she know that I would suffer from these dreams?”

  “Yes. But she thought she could shield you from them.”

  “But she knew it wasn't working. She knew I had them. Sometimes I’d wake to find her sitting on my bed, stroking my forehead as I came out of one. She soothed me, but she would never talk about them, she never let me know they were something other people didn't have to deal with.”

  “Because she feared their power. She could understand the dreaming and she rejected all of it for herself. She hoped to save you from it.”

  “It frightened her?”

  Grandmother took a long breath. “You know how unsettling they can be and how much more so when a strange vision turns out to be true.”

  “Yes. I suppose. But if I knew more...”

  “Your mother had the dreams. I gave her some instruction and we talked about them. That was interrupted when she left for college, and when she came back, her eyes told me that one dream troubled her. I asked, but she wouldn’t talk about it. Only later I learned that it was the dream of your father’s death.”

  “She saw it when she was young?”

  “Even as a girl. You can understand how it was. She saw a man killed in a car accident. Long before she met him she realized that there was a connection between herself and the man in the dream. When they finally met, when she fell in love with him, she didn’t recognize him as that man. Then it came to her.”

  “That must've been terrible.”

  “She set her mind to the idea that loving this man would make the dream untrue, but it came back as a series of nightmares, the dreams grew stronger. She came to me for help. She insisted that we should be able to get beyond the power of the dream.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She decided that the dream was of a possible future. She decided that she had been shown a future so that she could change it.”

  “She thought avoiding the situation would change the future she saw?”

  “And because of her love, she was determined. Something in her dream, some detail, made her believe the accident would happen near Tucson. Unfortunately, as we've talked about, that was probably some detail her conscious mind added, simply giving her a place for it to happen. She grasped that detail and made a simple plan. She made Kee promise her that he would never go to Arizona.”

  “Did he keep his promise?”

  “Yes. Kee laughed at the idea and he teased her about her dread of Arizona but he gave his word.” The woman nodded. “Kee loved her dearly, and you were his delight. He kept his promise, even passing on taking part in rodeos there. Then, when the accident happened, as the dream foretold, it took place right here in Mescalero. I think that made the tragedy even more difficult for her to handle.”

  “You think it broke her?”

  “She felt betrayed by her dream and her fear that somehow she’d failed Kee, and you. That idea filled her with hatred.”

  “Hatred? I could understand anger and sorrow.”

  “She felt those as well, but they were nothing compared to her hatred for her own dreaming and our ways. The dreaming, her foreknowledge made her feel complicit and helpless. Our ways, our acceptance of the fate we see in our dreams was, to her, nothing but a curse. She hated knowing that she had been cursed with the ability to see something terrible in the future and yet be unable to do anything to stop it. It was unfair, and especially when it concerned someone she loved.”

  “So she felt defeated by her own power?”

  Grandmother gave her an odd look. “That’s an interesting way to see it. I hadn’t thought of that, and she no longer would talk to me about her dreams. Whatever her conclusion it drove her to flee our world, and me. She hated my acceptance of the fact that the power to see wasn’t the same as a power to change.” She held out her hands. “Your mother was crushed and I could give her no hope. I had only my love to give her and the empty truth that the world is how it is.”

  “And her father? Grandfather?”

  “Duncan told me he’d never felt more like an outsider than when she turned to him for solace and he had nothing to offer her from either world. Her leaving devastated him completely. He adored her as Kee did you. He died shortly after. When I called her and told her of his death, she grew quiet and told me to never contact her again. Although it was a knife in my heart, I had to respect it. I’d only given her news of tragedy. And perhaps she'd dreamt that as well.”

  Charli shook herself. After years of thinking her mother was simply too much taken with the white world, she had a glimmer of understanding. She knew she had to tell her. She owed her mother that. But at the moment she needed to unravel her own death dream.

  “And now Coyote has asked me, ‘what do you think of that?’” Charli said. “I'm sure he meant more than what I saw in the dream about the death, but I didn’t understand. I still don't.”

  “He asked you this?”

  “Just now, in my dream.”

  Torre licked her lips. “It is a sign. Something is coming.”

  “The only thing that happened was me finding a body.”

  “Are you sure it hasn’t happened yet?”

  “I think that’s what Coyote was telling me.”

  “Coyote has a different sense of time than humans. And it might only mean that the death is coming to your life, regardless of when it happened. You will get involved.”

  “That must be what he meant. He said that they, whoever they are, would want to know about his death... from me.”

  Torre rubbed her chin in thought and stared at the woven sticks in the ceiling as if she could read something there. “Do you know who the victim is? Were you given a name?”

  She shook her head. The weakness inside her grew alarmingly. “No. A tall man. I got the impression he was handsome. The horse was a gorgeous palomino with an attitude.”

  The old woman nodded. “At once precise and vague. That’s charmingly Coyote.”

  “And exhausting. I feel like I haven’t slept in days.”

  Torre nodded. “Of course.” She smiled. “It's still the middle of the night. Not long after you lay down the dream came and it woke you. And the dreams are often tiring. I’ll give you something to quiet the great dreaming. Then you must sleep. When you’ve rested we can talk more.”

  The something her grandmother gave her was a foul-tasting tea that Torre insisted she drink down. She did it more to please her grandmother and found that it quickly began to grow groggy and her brain began drifting. She felt herself relax and she sensed the moment her consciousness departed.

  Then she slept soundly. That was fine, but the potion didn’t actually keep her from dreaming. Yet, perhaps it did quiet the dreaming as this time her dream was of her mother. She saw her as if from a distance. She was working at her home office, reading documents.

  Watching her mother work, Charli felt shame. For some time now she’d been angry with her mother for keeping her so isolated from her heritage. She’d accused her of indifference. Now she could see the other side of it and understood that her mother had desperately needed to distance herself from the pain of a terrible loss she had seen but hadn’t been able to prevent. It was a wound
that wouldn’t heal easily and one that any mother would do anything to protect her daughter from experiencing for herself.

  Love had generated despair that become anger and now was muted by love. Would the cycle ever be broken? Should it be?

  The dream made her restless until she realized she was staring into the distance, watching for a coyote who, this time at least, didn’t seem to be there. There were just the mountains in a haze on the horizon.

  Then she slept.

  Chapter Eight

  An Invitation to Investigate

  Naturally they talked more about the dream over breakfast the next morning. Things like that didn't just evaporate. Not for dreamers at least.

  “It's hard to just let them be,” she told Torre. “And I find myself wondering who would ask me about a murder. I don't even know anyone here.”

  “We will see,” Torre said. “I have my own thoughts, but as your guide to dreaming I'll simply say that things come in their time.”

  “Appropriately enigmatic and mystical,” Charli laughed.

  “And as your grandmother I'll tell you to always eat a good breakfast in case surprises come up and you don't get a chance to eat later.”

  “Classic grandmother stuff,” Charli sighed, and dug into the pancakes Torre had made.

  As she finished, a knock on the door startled her. Torre just smiled and picked up her fork. “I'm not quite done. You should let your friend in,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I think your journey into dreaming is about to shift on a side track.”

  “Roger?” she asked, hopping up and running to the door. She hadn’t expected him. He’d said he wait for her call, but if he was here, there was so much to tell him. She swung the door open stopped in her tracks, staring. “Elle?”

  Finding Elle standing on her grandmother’s doorstep was about the very last thing that Charli had expected. The last thing she might have expected, if she’d thought about it, was that she’d win the lottery, but from a statistical standpoint, Elle turning up unannounced, or even finding her wasn’t actually that much further down the list. She rallied her wits and gave her friend a hug. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “She came because she needs your help, of course,” Torre said, sounding amused.

  “My help? What?” Then she caught herself. “Oh, I’m sorry. Elle, this is my grandmother, Torre.”

  “Welcome,” Torre said. “Would you join us for breakfast?”

  “I already ate,” Elle said. “But thank you.”

  “Then we can have tea while you explain to Bonita what brings you here and how her dreams can help you with that.”

  “Bonita...” Elle took a seat at the table as Torre went to the stove to fetch the tea. “I’m still not used to that name.” She looked around the kowa. “It suits you somehow though—especially here.”

  “Having everyone here know me as Bonita but growing up as Charli still has me feeling a little schizophrenic myself,” Charli admitted. “Maybe I should become a rap star... Bonita B sounds good.” Then she nodded toward Torre. “So is my grandmother right? Do you need my help?”

  “Yeah.” She looked at Torre. “But how does she do that?”

  “I don’t know. She knew I was coming too.”

  “So much for being able to surprise people out here.”

  “Sensing someone coming isn’t hard out here,” Torre said. “There aren’t many people around, and new people seem to attract my attention. And for why... dreamers are always going to draw the seekers.”

  Charli looked at Elle. “So what’s going on?”

  “Okay, I’m on a case, and I did come for your help. But what you got wrong is that this isn’t about your dreaming superpower,” she said. “I’m here investigating a suspicious death... of an Indian.”

  Torre laughed. “So it is about the dreams.”

  “What? No. I just thought Charli, Bonita could help me in case there were issues with the tribe. She did that in the cases in Albuquerque and Ramah.”

  As the kettle did its work, Torre sat down and took Charli’s hand. “So this is the friend whose work brought you back to our land,” she said. “I like her better already. But she doesn’t understand that you are already more involved than as a politically correct face.”

  “What did she mean?” Elle asked, wrinkling her nose the way she did when she was fairly sure she wouldn’t like the answer to a question.

  Charli was reluctant to tell her. In fact, she hadn’t made the connection to Elle’s sudden visit until Torre made that comment. “Oh no,” she moaned, looking at Torre, who nodded. “Are you looking into a suspicious death?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Because I had a dream about a dead Indian.”

  Torre chuckled. “And she was told that someone would ask her about it. She told me that no one around here knew her.”

  “How would I know Elle was in town?” Charli asked.

  Torre just cocked her head. “No matter.”

  Elle pursed her lips. “I don’t suppose you know if this dead person you saw is named Jake Ravenwing?”

  “I’ve got no idea. Did your dead guy own a palomino horse?”

  “No idea.”

  Charli held out her hands. “All I know is that I was told that he died for some reason that wasn’t his own fault. It wasn’t something he did, at least not exactly.”

  “You didn’t tell me that part,” Torre said. “Are you holding out on your grandmother? I can’t help you understand what you don’t mention.”

  “I didn’t think of it until she started asking questions,” she said. “Somehow, when Elle asks me questions, I seem to remember more details. It’s been that way before.”

  “To impress me, no doubt,” Elle said.

  Torre poured the tea and brought three mugs to the table, then sat with them. “It sounds like you two have work to do.”

  “Work?” Charli asked.

  “You don’t think that your friend interrupted an investigation just to come here and chat about the case do you? Or that she somehow needs an Indian guide?” She grinned at Elle. “Now perhaps that’s what she told herself at the time, maybe it was the excuse she used, but she needs your help as a dreamer.” Then she leaned back and laughed. “Children, honestly! You two might be able to fool yourselves, but you can’t pull the wool over the eyes of someone with twenty years of grade school teaching under her belt.”

  Elle rolled her eyes. “I just thought that since Charli was here, she might give me some insight, and help me from getting lost. And I was kind of lonely out here. Do you realize how much nothing there is between here and Las Cruces?”

  “A lot,” Torre said. Then she shook her head. “And you say that, but immediately want to know about her dreams.”

  “Okay,” Elle said. “I've used her sleepy time visions before. But I try to avoid saying that in polite society.” She snorted. “Will you help?”

  “She can only do so much from here,” Torre said.

  “So you think I should go with her?” Charli asked.

  “Bonita, you came here to learn how to read your dreams, to understand what they mean and how not to be overwhelmed by them. Now you’ve had an important dream. Elle's investigation will give you a context for the things you learned from Coyote. This is a perfect chance to learn something more. I’m thrilled having you here, but sitting around with me is going to limit your learning. Your real teachers at this point will be this place and the ancestors who live here. See how the truth unfolds.”

  “Heavy duty,” Elle said. She nudged Charli. “I think you just got volunteered to play dreaming investigator, Bonita.”

  “Sounds like,” Charli said.

  Elle shook her head. “There seems to be a massive conspiracy around us.”

  Torre sipped her teas. “Who do you suspect as conspirators?”

  “The universe, I’d guess.” She turned to Charli. “See, I tried to call, and when I couldn’t get through, I cal
led Roger. He told me where you were. When I told him I wanted your help, he more or less said the same thing as your grandmother.”

  “Which part?”

  “That I needed to come get you to help you move along your journey... although he didn’t mention coyotes or ancestors.”

  “Just Coyote, not coyotes,” Charli said.

  “My mistake.”

  “He’s only all coyotes some of the time, whatever that means.”

  “Fine. Coyote, singular then. Is he cute?”

  “For a furry critter, I suppose.” She stood. “So where are we going?”

  “The man was killed in a place called Ruidoso Downs.”

  “There’s a racetrack there, right?”

  “And a casino.”

  “Billy the kid,” Torre said.

  Elle laughed. “Billy the kid is there? I thought he was dead.”

  “In spirit. That’s the name of the casino.”

  “They named a casino after a guy who was a robber?”

  Charli chuckled. “They named it after a famous person. A Lincoln County celebrity.”

  “Maybe it’s just truth in advertising,” Torre said. “People around here tend to put their cards on the table... especially in a casino.”

  Elle winced. “It’s easy to see that a certain sense of strange humor is passed down through the genes in this family.”

  Torre smiled and winked at Charli. “I like this girl,” she said. “You pick good friends. And good boyfriends.”

  The words warmed Charli’s heart. Even though she hadn’t know her grandmother long, having her approval was gratifying. And she knew it was important to her, more important than she could’ve guessed.

  “So are you going with me?” Elle asked. “Time’s a wasting.”

  She nodded. “Sure. Between family pressure and a universal conspiracy it doesn’t seem I have any choice. Let me pack a bag and we can go solve this mysterious death,” she said.

  “Great,” Elle said.