Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

  “More than your brother knows about? Or Montana?”

  He nodded. “I never killed anyone, nothing like that. Just stupid stuff. Debts. You know how it is.”

  She didn’t, but took a guess at some kind of theft, maybe lifting from easy targets the way he had as a kid, or stealing from a girlfriend’s purse. He’d said women were one of his problems. If he was cheating on Montana and had gambling debts, he could easily have done something to make the bad movie.

  Mae waited for more, but Will seemed to have said all he was willing to share. She began sorting through her crystals, choosing ametrine to promote transformation, ruby and garnet to help with both change and stability, and Apache tear for healing old wounds. Amethyst would boost her intuitive powers and also ease Will’s addictions.

  Will peered at her hands. “What are you doing?”

  She held them open so he could see. “I’m gonna put some crystals on your body. They help me channel the healing. You may feel some emotions, or you might feel heat or light, or have images in your head. I had one lady bust out laughing while I healed her. That’s all normal. Just lie still and let it happen. Okay?”

  “Fine. As long as it’s quick and no religion.”

  “No religion. I promise that.”

  Mae laid the red stones on his lower belly, put the black Apache tear stone in his right palm, the ametrine on his diaphragm, and added another—leafy green tree agate—on his heart, to aid his renewal and letting go. Holding the amethyst, she took time to clear her thoughts and calm her body and breath, and then rested her hand on Will’s head. She sensed he was ready. Her work would be to loosen the memories or energy scars that clung to the drugs, the gambling, the old way of life.

  While she sought the root of the problem, she hoped to send energy to remove it without having to see it, but the tunnel that signaled a psychic journey overtook her vision. It swirled her through a layer of colors, then fog and darkness, bringing her awareness to a rocky clearing in deep but spacious pine woods.

  Will, aged thirteen or so, with a girl Mae recognized as a young Melody, sat on a broad stone outcropping that formed a shelf in the steep slope, sharing a joint and a bottle of wine. Sunlight dappled the rock and threw bright spots on their hair and limbs. Lowing cows sounded not far away. Melody stood, wobbling, and tossed the wine bottle into a plastic barrel on which someone had drawn a planet earth with its tongue hanging out over the hand-lettered words, Save Our Mother. Below this, a badly drawn cartoon of Smokey Bear with a doobie between his lips bore the caption, Put it Out.

  “I feel like I’m slo—oow.” Melody giggled, imitating the cows.

  She lost her balance, landing in Will’s lap. He flopped backward and they laughed harder, rolling into each other’s arms and kissing.

  The tunnel moved Mae’s vision through flash images of Will in bars, at rodeos, in hotels, always drinking or smoking tobacco or weed, or tucking a dip behind his lip. Will at casinos playing slots. The visions slowed finally at a cluster of bland apartments with flat treeless lawns. Will was young, his nose straight, his lip unscarred. He parked a dented pickup with a camper shell, got out and looked around, then grabbed two six-packs from the passenger seat and strolled to one of the apartments, whistling. Balancing both six-packs in one arm, he rang the bell.

  Melody, a little heavier but still a beauty, opened the door. “God, it’s good to see you. I’m so glad you got in touch. I’ve been bored out of my mind here.”

  “Zak won’t let you get in any trouble,” Will said with a laugh, setting the beer on the coffee table. “That’s your problem.”

  They hugged. Melody said, “He gets himself in trouble trying to keep me out of it. The sober guy starting a fight at a party because somebody got me to play beer pong. It’d be funny, except his commander doesn’t think so.”

  “Hell—that is funny. But I guess we’d better not play beer pong.”

  The vision blurred. Melody and Will lounged on couch cushions on the living room floor, and he was rolling a joint. Most of the beer cans on the coffee table were still in their six-pack rings, but two were open, and a couple more lay crushed and empty. The door opened, and Zak, in army fatigues, froze, then slammed the door shut.

  “What the hell?” He strode across the room and hauled Will to his feet. “My wife has been trying to get clean and you dare show your sorry ass? I told you to stay away—”

  “I’m not fucking her, for crissakes, we—”

  “You would be once you got her drunk enough.” Still holding Will by the shoulders, Zak kicked one of the six-packs across the room. “This could kill her. Do you understand?” He shook Will, shouting in his face. “Kill her.”

  “She had one beer—”

  “She can’t stop at one.” Zak pushed Will to the floor, pinning him down. “But you don’t give a shit as long as you can get her drunk and shove your dick in her. I’m trying to save her life and you don’t care if you kill her. I should kill you.”

  Melody screamed. Will tried to buck free, but Zak struck a blow to Will’s face that snapped his head back. Blood poured from the smaller man’s nose. Melody begged Zak to stop.

  Someone banged on the door. A woman’s voice called, “What’s going on? Melody? Are you all right?”

  Zak struck again and Will went slack. The neighbor opened the door.

  Mae pulled back from the vision, barely able to keep her trance. Any more of this story would be too much. It was already too much. But the Sight had showed her the wounds, the places in Will’s heart that needed healing. Mae wanted to think about Zak and Melody, but she focused on Will again, quieting her reaction, and the tunnel retook her.

  When it opened, she saw him in a Jeep parked on a dirt access road behind a strip mall. The angle of the light and shadows suggested late afternoon or early evening. The back door of one of the shops was open. Will got out, scanned the area, and made a phone call. A few seconds later, a large blue parrot flew out the door in a burst of flapping as if someone had given it a liftoff and landed at his feet.

  Startled, Mae lost the vision and became aware of the faint hum of the lights, the sound of voices in the corridor. She needed to finish the healing before her analytical mind or her emotions took over and she lost her trance completely. Drawing on whatever source the healing power came from, she asked it to reach Will’s stuck and broken places. She moved her hands over the crystals she’d placed on him, holding the connection until she sensed a vibration at each location and a kind of shifting, like muscles relaxing at a subtle level, soul muscles ceasing to grip and grasp.

  Will exhaled with a groan. Mae brought her hands to his feet, then back to his head, closing the healing. She waited until she felt peace, and let go.

  “Okay, Will. I’m done. You may want to be quiet for a while. Just relax and let the change soak in.”

  He nodded and lay still. Mae used snow quartz to cleanse herself of his energy traces and put the crystals she’d used into the separate pouch for those that needed rebalancing in sunlight or salt water.

  After tapping softly on the door, Refugio opened it a crack. “I heard you talking. Are you done? Can we come in?”

  Will opened his eyes and tipped his head to the right to indicate his bedside table. “Yeah. I need you to pay her.”

  Mae started to object. “I didn’t expect—”

  “And I didn’t either. I changed my mind.”

  Refugio opened the drawer and took out a battered wallet. His brother said, “Give her what’s in it.”

  The boy extracted a twenty and offered it to Mae. It wasn’t much for her effort, time, and gas, but it was more than she suspected Will could spare. His injury reminded her of when Jamie had been hurt and couldn’t play his instruments. She pushed the money away. “I have a special rate for cowboys who can’t ride.”

  “But what about partners in the Baca Ranch who come home to roost?”

  Refugio sounded skeptical. “Seriously, bro? You’re gonna stay for real this t
ime?”

  Will gave his injured arm a rueful look. “What do you think?”

  Refugio handed Mae the twenty and put the wallet back. “Mom and Dad will need some convincing.”

  “Call ’em for me, would you?” Will said. “We’ll convince them.”

  Montana rushed toward his bed, tears in her eyes, arms reaching out to him. Will held up his hand, shook his head, and let the hand fall. “Sit down. Let me rest a minute. Then ...” He looked at Refugio and back at Montana. “We need to be alone, babe. And talk.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The hour alone on Mae’s return trip to Mescalero gave her a chance to think. She had driven herself to the hospital rather than riding with Montana, so Will’s fiancée could stay with him. Mae doubted the couple’s time together was going to be as joyous as Montana had hoped. More likely, their talk was going to be a hard one.

  Part of what Mae had healed had to do with Melody. The first vision might have shown the root of Will’s troubles. Early substance use was all it took for some kids to end up with problems. He might have romanticized his bad habits, too. Having his relationship with Melody entangled with them gave the addictions an extra layer of power.

  There was nothing romantic about how things had turned out, though. Zak’s fight with Will must have been the last straw that led to his other-than-honorable discharge. Elaine’s claim that Zak had been trying to be honorable made sense now. He’d been out of control, but no doubt in his version of the story he’d been a hero.

  For once, Mae couldn’t judge him. She understood his rage. In what turned out to be the final month of her first marriage, she’d seen Mack with an old girlfriend staggering out of the bar at the hotel where Mae worked as a front desk clerk, and heading not to the parking lot but down a corridor of rooms. Risking her job, she had followed and screamed at them, telling Mack not to come home. Though she hadn’t hit him or the girl, she’d felt like it, felt like grabbing something and throwing it at them. If she hadn’t been in that bare corridor without even a potted plant in sight, she might have. She’d been lucky not to get fired. Zak had been in the wrong—but Mae got it.

  Disturbing as the fight was, it was less surprising than the final vision. The fight hadn’t come out of nowhere. Mae knew about Melody’s relationship with Will, her alcohol and drug problems, and Zak’s discharge. Jamie had warned her that Will liked to break rules for the hell of it, so drinking and getting high with his married ex-girlfriend fit her expectations of his character. But she didn’t have any context for Will and the parrot.

  Had he by sheer chance been behind the exotic bird store when the parrots flew out? It was unlikely, and yet it was equally hard to believe that Shelli had sent them to him. Jamie believed that someone had found the birds and kept them. What were the odds that Will had found them and sold them? He was, according to Jamie, both a reckless risk-taker and a casual thief.

  Mae couldn’t ask Will for the rest of the story—or tell anyone what she’d learned. This was like what a priest heard in confession or the confidences shared in a psychologist’s office. Private. Even more so, because in her case, the client didn’t know what he’d revealed.

  When she reached Mescalero, she called Jamie for directions to Bessie Yahnaki’s house, and then took a winding country road past evergreen forests and open pastures. The view reminded her of her vision of Will and Melody in the woods. Had the healing triggered Will’s memories of the same events? Or had he already seen them in his “bad movie”? Mae regretted knowing so much about Will and Zak, and yet she wished she’d stayed focused to see more of the parrot incident. No—if she’d seen more, she would be even more tempted to share it with Jamie, and she couldn’t. Will didn’t even want the healing itself talked about.

  She pulled in at a double-wide trailer in a grassy hollow with a creek running through it. The place gave her a peaceful feeling. Maybe she and Jamie would finally have a pleasant time together here. Something to make up for the way the weekend had gone so far.

  A sturdy, broad-faced woman, her gray hair hanging down her back in a single long braid, stood watering the vegetable garden that took up nearly a third of the yard. She wore a floral dress and sensible shoes, and leaned on a three-pronged aluminum cane. Bessie reminded Mae of her Granma Rhoda-Sue Jackson, the folk healer. She’d loved to work in her garden, dressed the same way, and had the same sturdy build, soft and old-womanly but strong.

  There were several cars in the driveway in addition to Stan and Addie’s red Fusion hybrid and Jamie’s van. Mae guessed the older vehicle with handicapped plates was Bessie’s, and the rest had to belong to her relatives.

  Under the shade of a small deck, a fat brown mutt and a shaggy black-and-white one barely lifted their heads. As Mae climbed out of her car and approached, the brown dog gave a small, whispery woof, and both dozed again. Bessie lowered the hose and made her way to the side of the trailer to turn it off. A smile lifting her full cheeks and deepening the crow’s-feet lines around her eyes, she reached out and took Mae’s hand. “Bernadette speaks highly of you.”

  Mae felt as if Bessie could see through her. The medicine woman was warm and relaxed, not at all challenging, yet the sensation was powerful, and Mae felt self-conscious as she spoke. “And of you.”

  Jamie came bouncing out the door. “Ready for tomatoes.” His hair was restrained by a blue bandana tied into a tight little cap. Combined with his gold-toothed smile, the effect was oddly fierce and piratical. “You’re not late for lunch, love. It’s taken that long. Had to get people here, get food, shower ...”

  He started down the steps at a jog, then stopped abruptly as if his left hip had caused him a jolt of pain and changed to a walk. With only a faint hesitation, he passed the sleeping dogs, taking an arc around their lair.

  “Not bad,” Bessie said. “My lazy dogs don’t scare you anymore?”

  Jamie let out his breath and slipped his arm around Mae. “Been working on it.” He kissed her ear. “Sorry I was grouchy earlier. Everything go all right?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Was it going to be that easy? No fight to finish up? “Do we need to pick tomatoes?”

  “Yeah. One for everyone.”

  Bessie listed people by name rather than counting, picking tomatoes and handing them to Mae and Jamie, one fruit per name. As an only child of parents who had left each other and their roots, Mae wasn’t used to such large clans and gatherings. She had barely gotten the names of half of Bernadette’s family down, and now she would have to learn the Yahnakis as well. Jamie gave Mae most of the tomatoes and juggled a few while Bessie walked ahead of them to the house.

  Ezra’s mother, whom Bessie introduced as her daughter-in-law Cheryl, opened the door, letting them into the packed and noisy living room. After depositing tomatoes in the kitchen, Jamie escorted Mae to the bathroom, showing her where he’d hung her clean clothes on the back of the door and where he’d put her lotions and deodorant on a shelf, then hugged her and drew back, toying with her hands. She’d hardly needed the tour, but she suspected he needed to make up for being angry with her over helping Will. To be the good boyfriend who thought of everything, and for her to notice.

  She stroked his cheek. “Thanks, sugar.”

  “Does my beard look funny?”

  “Hmm. Kinda.” It was a little scraggly, as if he’d torn a few hairs in his impatience to get free of the candy. “It won’t show if you braid it.”

  He laughed. “Don’t let me have any more lollipops. You get along all right with Will?”

  “I think so.” She tripped over the urge to tell him Will might have stolen the parrots. “But I shouldn’t talk about it. It’s private. Let me get cleaned up, okay? You’ve got a lunch to finish cooking.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” He kissed her and left, closing the door.

  The hot water refreshed her body, but her mind wouldn’t unwind. She wished she could tell someone about her visions. Could she talk with Bessie, one healer to another? No. She didn’t have Will
’s permission. And certainly not Zak’s. What she really needed to ask Bessie was how to stop seeing what she didn’t want to know. How to heal people without her psychic gift intruding.

  When Mae returned to the living room after her shower, she saw little chance of an opening to get to know Bessie at all, let alone ask questions about healing. Cheryl introduced her to everyone, another inundation of new names and faces. None of the guests drank alcohol, but they were as lively as if they did. The kitchen adjoined the living room directly, with people crowded at the kitchen table while others ate from plates in their laps. Off and on during the meal, Jamie wandered around with a bowl of salad, talking and joking while adding servings to plates, and then made a circuit with a tray of bean burritos slathered in green chile, offering second helpings of these as well. He circled with the cornbread last. Mae liked how easily he mingled with people he hadn’t seen for two years, and admired how he’d managed a meal that would be healthy for all the diabetics Ezra had mentioned. Where was Ezra?

  She finished eating and took her plate to the kitchen. Jamie squeezed her bottom on his way to the oven, dancing a little. He slipped a pair of oven mitts on and extracted two sticky-looking brown pies. “Peanut butter and dark chocolate. Sweetened with brown rice syrup.” He sounded proud of this. “They need to cool a minute. Want coffee?”

  “Thanks, yes. Have you seen Ezra?”

  “Out back. Having a shy spell.”

  Mae couldn’t blame him. She was ready to have a shy spell herself, and went out to join the boy.

  Ezra sat alone at a picnic table in the backyard, absorbed in creating a piece of beadwork, a half-eaten lunch beside him. Without looking up from his work, he took a bite of salad, made a face, and added another bead.

  “Hey.” Mae sat across from him. “Don’t you like vegetables?”

  “I do. But the dressing is funny. Don’t tell Jamie.”

  It was balsamic vinaigrette. Mae wouldn’t have liked it when she was twelve, either. “Can I see what you’re making?”