Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  “So he’s a professional,” Mae didn’t know quite what to call the occupation, “rodeo cowboy?”

  “Yep. Always traveling. Wildman Will. Trouble times ten.” Misty smiled as if she were talking about some character on a TV show whose wildness entertained her, not about her sister’s fiancé. “You’ll see him in the next event, the bull riding. It’s amazing he looks as good as he does, the way he lives.”

  “You mean the rodeo life or bad habits?”

  “Bad habits. Drinking, smoking. Will even dips and smokes.”

  Mack had somehow looked good in spite of all his bad habits. That was how the whole sad drama worked: Bad boys with good looks and charm, and the fools who tried to change them. “If he drinks a lot, Montana shouldn’t marry him.”

  “I think it’d help him, actually. Like marrying Zak helped Mel.”

  “Did it? I mean, I’m sure he wanted her to get clean. I wanted my first husband to quit drinking. But you can’t make anyone do that. They have to have some reason of their own why they quit.”

  “Oh, yeah. Kids. She wanted kids. And Zak wouldn’t consider it unless she’d been sober a year. So she did it. She gained a ton of weight, but she straightened out. Tana could help Will, too, if he’d slow down and let her, but the way things are going I bet I’ll be married before she is.”

  To a different kind of messed-up guy. “Have you and Reno set a date?”

  “August. We haven’t decided which day. We’re just doing a civil service, nothing fancy, so we don’t have to do a lot of planning.”

  “That’s really soon.” Too soon. The girl was clueless about healthy relationships. Mae was hardly an expert herself, with her history, but even she could see Misty’s and Montana’s mistakes. And try to prevent at least one of them. “Tell you what. I just decided. If Jamie doesn’t get an answer from Zak this weekend, I promise I’ll use the Sight for you.”

  When bull riding was announced as the next event, they rejoined the rest of the extended family. Zak was still up front with Letitia. Misty sat with Melody and Montana and the squirming twins, and Mae took her place beside Bernadette.

  The whole group stopped talking as the first bull came flinging and kicking from the chute. The cowboy on its back grasped its huge body with his legs and held onto a rope that helped keep him in the saddle. His spine and his free arm whipping in balance with the bull’s motion, he looked like he could be flung to the moon.

  The announcer counted the seconds aloud. The rider lasted for eight, a buzzer sounded, and he sprang off, his white hat flying into the dirt a fraction of a second before he did. Over the tumultuous cheers, Bernadette explained, “Eight seconds is the goal. When you reach it, they score you on how well you rode. It’s pretty hard to stay on that long. ”

  “No kidding,” Mae said. “I’m amazed he stayed on at all.”

  A clown jumped from the fence, grabbed the hat, and ran in front of the bull, smacking his own bottom with the hat while the cowboy ran to safety. The clown popped back onto the fence, jammed the hat onto his head and grinned. As the next bull moved into the chute and a cowboy prepared to drop onto its back, the announcer boomed, “Coming up, from Mescalero, our own Will Baca! On Thunderstruck!”

  Montana squealed and hugged Misty. Melody stood, shouting the cowboy’s name. A cluster of people high in the stands began stomping their feet and whooping, and the crowd burst into applause. One person acted distressed, though, a heavyset boy of about twelve who scrambled frantically across several bleachers, rushing toward the front row. He shouted, “Zak—help—this is my dream!”

  Before the boy reached him, Zak moved to the steps that led down into the ring and stopped there, poised like a wildcat ready to spring, as a thick-bodied, white-faced bull charged out with the local cowboy on his back. Thunderstruck didn’t just buck, he swung his head and twisted as he kicked, tossing the rider sideways as well as up and down.

  “Oh my god,” Bernadette whispered. “I wonder what Ezra dreamed.”

  Baca slipped and righted himself by the rope. Melody hollered, “Hang on, Will!”

  Thunderstruck dropped his head and swung his hindquarters high in a spin. Will slid to the side again, this time falling to be dragged under the bull’s belly. When he lost his grip on the rope and landed, the bull pivoted and attacked. A collective shriek went up. Too stunned to make a sound, Mae felt a scream get stuck in her throat.

  Clowns leaped to work, attempting to distract the bull, but Thunderstruck ignored them, butting and trampling his victim. Zak was already on his way around the perimeter of the arena as a crew of other EMTs rushed in. The crowd fell silent as if holding its breath. Finally one of the clowns straddled the fallen man, taking a grazing blow from one of Thunderstruck’s horns, and drew the bull to chase him.

  A rider on horseback herded Thunderstruck out. Will lay motionless. The emergency team surrounded him.

  The announcer kept up a stream of reassurances until the paramedics had finished examining Will and carried him out on a stretcher. The cowboy lifted an arm for a brief wave, and the audience cheered. Though Mae was relieved that he’d survived, she couldn’t bring herself to take part in the hurrah, not knowing how badly he was hurt or if he’d live much longer.

  Montana was sobbing. Her sisters, each holding one of her arms, guided her out as if she were blind.

  Ezra, the stout youth who’d run to Zak shouting about a dream, headed back up the steps, his eyes downcast. Bernadette rose and caught up with him, and they spoke briefly with a large woman and two equally large teenaged girls—probably his mother and sisters. The lights of the ambulance flashed as it started down the road outside the arena, sirens off.

  With the boy trailing a few feet behind her, Bernadette sat beside Mae again. The boy remained standing, hands in the pockets of his long, baggy shorts, his chin tucked like a turtle going into its shell. Bernadette said, “Ezra is Bessie Yahnaki’s grandson, and my godson.” Mae had often heard Bernadette speak of this medicine woman as a teacher and friend. “It’s a long way out to her place, and he’s had a bad shock. I told him that you’re a seer, too. I thought it might help him to talk with someone who understands. Would you take a walk with us?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t mind missing the rest of this? Ezra really needs to leave.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  Mae followed Bernadette and Ezra out of the stands. Bull riding had no further appeal to her. The audience must have shared her feelings. Their reactions to the next rider were subdued. How could he dare come out? She understood the desire to win at a sport, and would push hard to do it, but not risk her life. The possibility that Will Baca could die shook her, and had to have shaken Ezra even more if he’d dreamed the accident in advance.

  As they walked down the road toward the campground, the boy remained in his shy turtle posture. Mae couldn’t see his face, only his brush-cut black hair, his round belly in an unflattering striped shirt, and his drooping shoulders. He thinks he messed up. Maybe he’d tried to prevent Will’s accident and failed.

  “Ezra?” He didn’t look at Mae, but she sensed a shift in his attention. “Did you tell Zak your dream?”

  The boy nodded. “At Boys and Girls Club a few days ago.”

  Bernadette said, “Zak volunteers a lot with the club.”

  Mae suppressed her astonishment and focused on Ezra. “Did he believe you saw what was coming?”

  “He knows I can, but ...” Ezra paused as the sirens came on. The emergency vehicle was turning onto the access road at the foot of the hill. “I dreamed Will got struck by lightning. In his arm and his chest. I didn’t know what it meant until I heard the bull’s name.”

  “I’ve had some visions that I couldn’t understand, too. And this one didn’t give you much of a chance to figure it out.”

  Ezra sighed. “I should have found a way to get hold of Will myself. I don’t know him to talk to, though, I just know who he is.”

  “But
Zak knows him to tell him, right? You did what you could.”

  “But it didn’t save him.”

  Something about Ezra reminded Mae of Jamie, though she couldn’t say why, other than knowing Jamie had apparently been built like that when he was Ezra’s age. Maybe it was the self-recrimination. Jamie was good at beating himself up over his mistakes. She said, “Even if you could have told Will yourself, that dream could have meant all sorts of things. And from what I’ve heard about Will, he might not be the kind of guy who’d listen to a warning.”

  “He could die.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Ezra looked up at Mae. He had big round cheeks, a short nose, and bright dark eyes that seemed to see into her, old eyes in a baby face. He nodded and looked down at his feet again. “Sometimes I dream exactly what happens the next day, strange stuff like this big elk walking through Grandma’s garden last year. I can’t tell if those dreams are the future, or if they’re just something weird like when I dream about going to school in my underwear. But when I have a big dream, I can tell. It’s different. I’m not in it. I know it’s going to happen. But it’s like in a code or something. It seems like the scarier it is, the more it’s in code. I wish I didn’t even have these dreams. I hate it when I can’t do anything about them.”

  What could Mae say to that? Ezra’s foreknowledge was a big responsibility for a boy his age to handle, and she had no idea what she would have done had she been in his place. So far she hadn’t been the least bit helpful and felt she was letting him down and disappointing Bernadette.

  They walked in silence for a while. The boy was fast for his build, keeping up with the adults’ longer legs, not as winded as Mae had expected him to be. There had been a boy clown in the ceremony who was his size and shape. That masked boy had danced for hours. Was it Ezra? She liked to think so, but the identities of the dancers struck her as sacred and private, not something she was supposed to know.

  Still, the possibility that he was that clown, deeply engaged in his tribe’s religion, gave her a sense of what he might need to hear. “I didn’t want my gift at first, either. Especially when I was your age. But I bet Bernadette tells you what she told me when I finally got to thinking about using it—that it’s your calling. You have to do it.”

  Bernadette rested her hand on his shoulder. The boy glanced up at her. “She does. And that I have to listen to my Grandma and the medicine men. But I still don’t like it.”

  “You sound like my boyfriend. I made peace with my gift and use it, but he doesn’t want much to do with his.”

  Ezra nodded, withdrawing again. Bernadette gave Mae a soft, discouraged look over his bowed head. Did that mean she had said the wrong thing? I’m doing a sorry job of being the fellow seer who understands his problems. Maybe she didn’t understand twelve-year-old boys.

  They reached the Y in the road where Jamie’s new van sat in the grass island. Mae noticed a scratch and a shallow ding on the passenger door. She ran a finger over it. “Aw. That’s too bad. Jamie was so worried someone would hit his new van and they did.”

  Ezra perked up. “Jamie. Jamie Ellerbee? Is he your boyfriend?”

  “You know him?”

  Bernadette said, “Bessie’s involved in Stan’s research here. Jamie’s known Ezra since he was a baby.”

  “Jamie’s my mate,” Ezra declared. This was the first break in his gloom, and it was unexpectedly bright. “I had no idea he was a seer, too.”

  “Not the way you are,” Mae said. “But he could be a strong healer. You want to see him? Talk with him?”

  “Yes!” Ezra pumped his fists up and down in a kind of dance as if punching the sky.

  Mae tried not to giggle. “We’re camping here—”

  The boy was already gone, tearing through the gap in the fence, making a beeline for the little dome tent.

  Chapter Ten

  Jamie had barely begun to relax into a nap when a voice intruded. “Ma-a-a-ate.”

  He had the dazed, half-awake thought that he’d taught the parrot Placido to say “mate” that way—the elongated version for special friends, as opposed to the clipped version for people you were pissed off at—and then opened his eyes to see Ezra Yahnaki peering through the flap. Jamie tried to talk, but in his drowsy state all he could manage was a mumble.

  The boy’s intruding moon-face creased with a frown. “You’re sleeping with your toy?”

  Jamie had cuddled up with the faded, balding, one-eared stuffed kangaroo that he’d owned since he was three. He set the roo aside, stretched, and sat up. “Yeah. I like him.” Ezra continued staring at him. “What are you looking at?” Stupid question. The scars. Jamie had taken his shirt off. He reached for the discarded garment and began to cover up.

  “You’re getting fat again.”

  “Jeezus. Look who’s talking. Go outside. Catcha in a minute.”

  Jamie finished buttoning his shirt, ran a brush through his hair and beard, and drank some water. He was glad to see Ezra, but the visit was odd. He usually ran into the kid at some big gathering. And Ezra loved the rodeo. Why wasn’t he there? Jamie crawled out and caught up with the boy, who had begun to wander off toward the trees along the road.

  “What’s up, mate? Not watching the suffering of innocent animals?”

  Instead of teasing back, Ezra began to cry.

  “Jeezus.” When other people wept, Jamie felt like crying with them. He managed to hold himself together as he wrapped his arms around Ezra, though the boy’s feelings sank into him. This wasn’t grief or ordinary sadness. It was something else. Something big. He held him until his tears stopped, mussed his hair and patted his back, and they walked side by side along the tree line.

  Jamie said, “I’ve had days like that.”

  “Days when you cry?”

  “Yeah. Hundreds of ’em. Usually for a reason. Not always. But usually.”

  Ezra ducked his head, watching his feet. “A bull tried to kill Will Baca. I dreamed it, but not in a way that could help him.” He described his dream. “I told Zak, so he could tell him, but it didn’t matter.” He slowed down and looked up at Jamie. “Would it be bad if I quit?”

  “Quit?” Ezra was apprenticing with one of the medicine men. He was young for it, but he’d shown signs of the calling all his life, and his family had high expectations for him. How could Jamie give an opinion on that? “Jeezus, like I know fucking anything.”

  “Your girlfriend said you’re a seer, too. And that you don’t like it.”

  So that was why Ezra had sought him out. Not because he was the fun bloke to hang out with, the adult who acted like a kid, but because Jamie would let him cry about the burden of his gift and perhaps reassure him it was okay to quit. But it wasn’t.

  “Yeah, that’s half the story. I see ... like auras, I guess ... and sometimes spirits ...Weird crap. Don’t like that at all. But I can do some healing, sort of. A little. That part’s not so bad.” If I only heal animals.

  “Yeah? I think I felt that. When I was crying. You did something.”

  “I did?” That had been an accident. Maybe the healing energy still escaped when he didn’t mean for it to. “Thought I’d learned to control it.”

  Ezra went quiet, shoe-gazing.

  “Fuck. Sorry. Shoot me. Sounded like I didn’t want to help you. I did. Just didn’t know it would come out that way. I mean the help. Or the words. Let me try again. What I meant—I learned to control this stuff because I couldn’t get rid of it. I tried, but it kept coming back. Like my hair.”

  Ezra snapped out of his slump and met Jamie’s eyes. “Like what?”

  “Y’know—like shaving my head. I hated my hair. But every time it grew back in it was still blond.”

  “Having dreams and visions isn’t like having weird hair.”

  “Is to me.” Jamie rocked Ezra’s shoulders in a side-hug. “My whole head is strange.”

  “Stop making fun of me.”

  “Didn’t mean to. I was making fu
n of myself. What I’m saying is ... I can’t tell you to quit, y’know? You could stop your training, I guess, or put it off ’til you’re older, but I don’t think you get to decide about the dreams. They’ll keep coming back.”

  “I hate having them, though.” Ezra picked up a plastic bottle from the grass, tire-crushed litter blown in from the road. “I hate this, too. People trashing everything. Like, what do they think is sacred? The earth or the inside of their cars?”

  Jamie steered their walk toward a trash can and began to notice all sorts of scraps at his feet. The corners torn off bags of snack food. Bottle caps. Touching litter bothered him, but now that Ezra had made him aware, he had to collect it all. The kid had made it a spiritual duty. Mae did it more like environmental housework. “My girlfriend picks up stuff like this, too. Like she’s everybody’s mum, cleaning up after ’em. But you said it like a spiritual teacher. That was good, mate. You made me think. Made me see. And you’re just a kid.”

  They dropped their trash into the can. Ezra dusted his hands on his pants. Jamie wanted desperately to wash his. There was hand sanitizer in his tent. He aimed back in that direction.

  “Sometimes I’d like to be just a kid,” Ezra said.

  Jamie started to reply with something reassuring, realized it was platitudinous crap, and stopped. Ezra didn’t need advice. What he needed was a chance to lighten up and play, like he’d said—to be an ordinary kid. He’d probably gone to the rodeo for that. And his burden had followed him. Jamie had to think of something else fun to do. Something safe and relaxing. “You like to cook?”

  “Yes.” Ezra brightened. “I make really good mac and cheese. From scratch.”

  “Great. You can help me fix lunch at Zak and Melody’s place. My recipes, though. No cheese. Teach ya something new.”

  They reached Jamie’s tent. The flap was open and Mae was crouched inside, collecting bath gear into a small zippered bag. Jamie ducked in, located the bottle of hand sanitizer, squirted his hands, and gave her a kiss on the back of her neck. “Mind if Ezra comes to the house to cook with us?”