Double Blind

by Hannah Alexander

  Chapter Seventeen

  E mbers of wood collapse onto themselves as I rouse from my Sunday-morning trance. I rise to my knees in the middle of the hogan, the cedar smoke burning my throat and nostrils. The peyote button has left my tongue furred with its bitter, clinging aftertaste. Or is that, also, the smoke? I can’t tell.

  The vision still teases my inner eyes with wisps of knowledge, distorting my human sight. The spirit seldom answers my call, even with the enticement of peyote, but it sprang at me full force this time, its message plain. She must be brought here again.

  The dream wavers and fades, and my sight clears. Much as I court the power, its intensity frightens me. I’ve never liked being controlled.

  A strong breeze whispers through the open doorway, stirring the embers again, filling the hogan with thick smoke. I bend low and stumble out the door into the brisk morning air.

  Spirit of the wolf. The wolf is the true power, my witchcraft the only witchcraft—much more powerful than any other. But others might discover the truth soon, in spite of the power. I must do what I’ve done before to stop this discovery, or the truth could destroy my power for all time. It could destroy everything.

  I raise my face to the wind, exulting in its caress. A sliver of moon, hanging amid a smattering of stars, hooks one bright star in its curve, much the way a wolf’s claw catches prey.

  I smile. It’s the way I will catch the enemy who would destroy what I’m doing. This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.

  In the Sunday-morning gray light, just before dawn, Tanya Swift’s eyes flew open. She gasped in terror and sprang up in bed. Her heart throbbed, blood pounding through her head, drowning out the nightmare howl of the wolf.

  He was here, at this school. She knew it, but she couldn’t understand how. It felt as if pieces of time had been taken from her memory, and she couldn’t find them. They’d been stolen from her.

  No one would understand. No one would listen to her, not even Canaan. All he did was pray, and how could his prayers control the wolf?

  She did remember being afraid. The past few days she’d had flashing thoughts of a dark room, of smoke that had the scent she’d caught yesterday when she was walking with Sheila Metcalf. Could those be part of the bad dream? But she also remembered the pain, and that was no dream.

  As if in answer to her memory, the pain began again, this time thrusting low in her belly, shooting needles through her body. She bent over double and gritted her teeth to keep from crying out. This was worse than monthly cramps.

  The light grew outside, and Tanya knew it was time to move. The wolf would be hiding now, and she had to get away. If she waited, someone would stop her again, as Canaan did Friday.

  She slipped out from beneath her blanket, groping in the darkness for the clothes and shoes she’d stashed beneath her bed. Her dorm mother and other dorm mates were watching her more closely now that she’d already sneaked out once, so she didn’t want to make noise. She would pull her clothes on outside.

  Susan, in the next bed, turned over, rustling the covers and yawning.

  Tanya stopped breathing. Don’t wake her up!

  Silence settled again, and Tanya crept barefoot into the hallway, her bundle of clothes and shoes clutched to her chest.

  A movement startled her and she froze.

  The dorm mother had stepped out in the hall, on her way to the bathroom.

  Tanya took a deep, silent breath, and went the other way, into the big general room. Two other hallways branched off from there, with other bedrooms down each hall, where people were sleeping. Maybe they were even waking up now. It was a good thing she’d soaped the hinges of the front door yesterday.

  It didn’t make a sound when Tanya pulled it open and stepped outside.

  Dear Jesus, protect me, she prayed. Fill me with—

  The wind flew up, grabbing at her. It felt like fingers of the spirits plucking at her, but she pulled the door shut behind her. She would not let a simple wind chase her back inside.

  Dear Jesus, keep me safe. Help me to not be afraid—

  The bush beside her rustled as another puff of wind whistled through it. Like an invisible monster, the wind attacked her from around the side of the dorm, from across the playground.

  Dear Jesus, just help me! She dressed quickly and pulled on her shoes on the front step. A sharp breeze wrapped her hair around her face, blinding her and catching at her clothes. She tied her hair in a knot at her neck, squatted to tie her shoes and stared around the gray, empty school yard.

  Taking a deep breath for courage, she stepped onto the road and walked toward the highway.

  Sunday-morning sunshine streamed in through Sheila’s bedroom window as she tied back her hair and pulled on her jogging shorts. It was early yet, just past seven o’clock; there should be plenty of time for a good run and a shower before church.

  She needed the exercise. Canaan had worked her hard in the clinic yesterday, but despite a crick in her neck and a sore back from poring over countless medical records, there had been few results. By the time they heard the children marching toward the cafeteria, they realized they’d missed lunch and that it was dinnertime.

  They had returned to the clinic after dinner for another few hours. Canaan had not become more garrulous as an adult. He was comfortable with silence and didn’t need a constant flow of conversation.

  Sheila was filling a water bottle when someone knocked on her front door. She opened it up to find Canaan, standing there in jeans and a fresh, red T-shirt, face unshaven, hand raised to knock again.

  “I’m glad you’re up and dressed,” he said. “I’ve got a problem.” Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped inside and pulled off his red baseball cap to reveal a disheveled mass of shiny black hair. “When you talked with Tanya yesterday, did she say anything to you about her plans for today?”

  “Plans? No, we didn’t get around to that. What—”

  “She’s gone again. Her dorm mother called me earlier.”

  “Couldn’t she be out walking in the desert?”

  “I’ve already searched the whole campus, the cafeteria, the trails around the school.”

  “You think she’s run away again? But why?”

  “I doubt the reason has changed since Friday.” His voice cracked, and he looked tired. He’d probably stayed at the clinic long after she’d left late last night. “She’s spooked. She can’t have gotten far, because she’s afraid to travel at night, and she was in bed last night.”

  Sheila groaned. “Maybe she went home.”

  “I don’t think she’d go there again. Did she talk much yesterday?”

  “Yes. After her less than warm welcome Friday, that seemed odd to me.”

  “I’m not surprised. She craves adult attention. She gets lonely for her family when they’re gone. What did she talk about?”

  “She apologized—sort of—for being angry with me Friday, but she was still upset about the dog’s death.”

  “What else?”

  “What struck me was what she didn’t talk about,” Sheila said. “She didn’t talk about what frightened her so badly. She talked about her friends, and—”

  “Which friends?”

  “The Hunt children and her cousin Donna, who’s expecting a baby.”

  “Donna.”

  “According to Tanya, she’s married and she works at Hubbell Trading Post, weaving blankets.”

  “Sounds like a good place to start.” He jammed on his hat and pivoted back toward the door.

  “Hold on,” Sheila said, grabbing her water bottle. “I’m coming with you.”

  Tanya was fast. She knew it. She could run faster than the wind of a storm. But she couldn’t run faster than the wolf.

  He would find her again if she stayed at the school, and she didn’t want to live if he found her.

  Had his spirit found her already? This awful pain clawed at her as if a devil had forced his way inside her. The pain grew through her body u
ntil there wasn’t a place she didn’t hurt.

  The pain grew stronger as she walked. She had come only about eight miles north of the school on Route 77 when the cramps in her stomach grew so bad she had to rest.

  Her clothes clung to her skin with the sweat that dripped from her, even though the sun hadn’t yet warmed the air. Her face felt hot, and her ears rang, echoing through her head so loudly she barely heard the cry of a hawk overhead.

  She stepped off the road, stopped to steady herself against the dizziness and climbed down toward a gully below a bridge. No curious motorists would be able to stare at her there, or call and report her to the Navajo Tribal Police. Sometimes tourists driving through the reservation decided they must watch out for the children, as if the Dineh didn’t know how to take care of their own.

  She stripped off her sweat-soaked red jacket, then felt it catch on a piñon stump and jerk from her fingers. But it didn’t matter. She would rest for a while, just a little while, then go on.

  The pain sharpened. Something was wrong. She’d never felt this bad before. Her legs grew weaker. She had to lie down. She needed to reach the shadows below the bridge before—

  Sudden moisture warmed her inner thighs. She looked down to find red the color of her jacket spreading down toward her knees. The warmth quickly became pain again, shooting up her back, stabbing into her belly, and down her legs. Her knees lost their strength.

  She stumbled into a stand of grass. Her legs refused to work. She fell forward, hitting her forehead against the hard-packed dirt as the pain continued to spread, mingling with the heat.

  This was what happened when you tried to run from the wolf.

  Chapter Eighteen

  S heila winced as the Plymouth Voyager hit another pothole in the road. She could see why they met very little traffic, even though the soothing desert colors of terra-cotta, sand, turquoise sky and piñon green created a magical backdrop of scenery.

  No phantoms stalked her from the roadside today, but she remained alert, nevertheless, as Canaan drove north toward Hubbell Trading Post. He drove slowly enough for them to scan both sides of the road, far out into the desert. Sheila wielded a pair of binoculars that he had pulled from the glove compartment. Every so often, she studied the surrounding plain to the east.

  “Have you contacted her parents yet?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I have their schedule in my office.”

  “Wouldn’t they be more likely to know where she would be? They might have a number for Donna.”

  “I’ve already called the trading post to alert them, in case Tanya shows up. If we don’t find her this morning, I’ll be forced to call her parents, but I hate to overreact and alarm them unnecessarily.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They should be in Phoenix, if they followed the schedule. They travel three times during the year to craft fairs across the country, and each trip takes about a month.”

  “Three months,” Sheila murmured. “Without Tanya?”

  “She goes with them on their summer trip, but they don’t want to take her out of school. She has always seemed to be happy at the school before.”

  “If I were in Tanya’s place, I might have a lot of fears, too, if my parents abandoned me so often.”

  He gave her a sharp glance. “They come back as often as they can, and I’ve tried to spend extra time with her this year. I know dorm parents and doctors aren’t good substitutes for parents, but we try. She’s not abandoned.”

  “I realize that, but I’m saying that she might feel abandoned, even if she isn’t.”

  Canaan sighed. “Consider the alternatives. The Swifts make their living with their blankets and jewelry. The area where they live is already too populated with goats and sheep, so they can’t have a herd.” With a nod of his head, he indicated the open land. “There are few jobs on the reservation. And Tom and Linda Swift are too proud to accept assistance. Besides, they are true artists, and they do well.”

  “I’m glad about that, but Tanya suffers for it.”

  Canaan glowered at her.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound judgmental.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  She returned the glower. “I lost my mother when I was ten years old, and then my father moved with me to a placed filled with strangers. Hideaway is a wonderful town, but I lost all my friends, my security, my foundation, within a few months. It was a struggle to connect with new people, and I believe it influenced my choices as an adult.”

  “You mean your choice of a husband?”

  She shot him another look of annoyance. “We’re talking about Tanya here.”

  “It sounds like we’re talking about you. Don’t let the bitterness of your choices influence your judgment with this child of the Navajo. We have our own set of problems, and they don’t always correlate with others outside the reservation.”

  “But I can’t help wondering how Tanya must feel.”

  “I realize that. I feel for her, too, but unlike you, she sees her parents when they’re home, and she knows the dorm parents, teachers and the other kids. The school isn’t new to her. Something besides homesickness is troubling her now. Don’t confuse your issues with hers. You’re two different people.”

  “Ah, yes, this haunting menace that has to be exorcised from the—” Sheila caught sight of a movement out in the desert, and raised her binoculars to study it. The movement turned out to be a couple of shepherd dogs playing together.

  She lowered the binoculars.

  “You were saying?” Canaan prompted.

  She looked at him, noting the scruffy shadow of beard growth on his normally clean-shaven face. “Maybe you’re right. Who am I to suggest ways to help Tanya? I’m not in her situation. No way for me to identify with her.” Sheila glanced toward the field again, pulled the binoculars to her eyes and studied the shepherd dogs for several seconds.

  “You see something suspicious?” Canaan asked.

  “Until now, I haven’t been able to remember a time when I wasn’t afraid of dogs.” She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. “Until now.”

  His black eyebrows rose above the line of his ball cap. “Really?”

  She nodded. “Now I remember.”

  “You’re afraid of dogs?”

  “You don’t remember how terrified I was of dogs? What kind of best friend were you?”

  “But you loved dogs,” Canaan said. “Are you sure you’re not hallucinating?”

  “After we moved to Hideaway, we never had a dog, even though Dad could have used one on the farm.”

  “Maybe your dad was being overprotective.”

  She shook her head.

  “I can remember a time when dogs didn’t scare you.”

  She glanced toward the shepherds and again had a spontaneous recollection. “Do you remember the two puppies we rescued from the side of the road one Saturday?”

  “I sure do,” he said. “We were about eight.”

  “You named them Amy and Bluebird,” she said, surprised by the clarity of this memory. She looked at Canaan. Something about being with him seemed to trigger that kind of clarity of thought at times.

  “All the kids laughed at the names,” he said.

  “But they still liked the puppies, even though we got into trouble sneaking them into the buildings at night.”

  “So at age eight,” Canaan said, “you obviously were not afraid of dogs.”

  “Maybe that’s just because they were helpless puppies. Someone had dumped them, left them to die.”

  “We raised them at the school,” Canaan said. “And they grew almost as tall as we were, but you were never afraid of them.”

  Canaan was right. Sheila remembered playing with them, running and wrestling, laughing, and never once being frightened by either dog. The memory was so vivid.

  “So what changed?” Canaan asked softly.

  “Maybe that’s something I need to find out.”

  C
anaan drove in silence for a few moments, and Sheila stared out at the open plain. As if a spigot had been turned on, more memories rushed into her mind, happy ones about the good times.

  “I remember you tutored me in science and math,” she said.

  “And you’re a nurse now, so it obviously helped.”

  “In exchange for the tutoring, I provided the muscle.” She glanced across the cab in time to see Canaan grimace, and knew she hadn’t chosen the most comforting memory on which to focus. “You obviously no longer have need for that,” she offered. “I remember how we found the puppies,” she said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You knew they were there. No one had seen them, because they were out of view. You just knew.”

  He shrugged, eyes narrowed as he continued to study the landscape. “I heard a whimper. I know the sound of distress.” He glanced at her. “I also know the look. I’ve seen it in your eyes several times, and I don’t think you’re just homesick.”

  “Watch the road, and don’t change the subject. It’s a special gift you have.”

  “Changing the subject?”

  “Empathy.”

  Canaan shrugged. “I’d hope both of us would tend to have some empathy, considering the professions we chose.”

  “Well, when you think about it, that might be counterproductive. It’s hard to be objective when you identify too much with your patients.”

  “I know. I’ve always had to struggle with that.”

  “Maybe it’s because you experienced so much rejection because you were half white, half Navajo.”

  “I was always too sensitive.”

  “And you’re not now?”

  He shot her a wry smile. “Maybe I am.”

  “I especially remember your sensitivity to others,” Sheila said. “You always seemed to be tuned in to others’ feelings. I remember you cried for people.”