FSF, March 2009

by Spilogale Authors

  "Now a rig that size in that part of the country? It kicks up a fair cloud of dust when it stops, so Williams wasn't all that surprised that the girl didn't come running right when he opened the passenger's door. He just waited until the dust thinned out. But even then, no one came up. She wasn't in the mirrors either. Williams hopped out and looked back at where she'd been, but there was no one there, and not even a weed thick enough to hide behind.

  "He calls out a few times. Says as he was just heading up to Shiprock, and thought she might want a lift. No one so much as spits at him.

  "He climbs back up in his rig, gets ready to head back out, and then all of a sudden, he gets this sick feeling. Starts thinking What if I hit her and just didn't notice? What if she's under the wheels right now? So he climbs back out and looks around, slow and careful. But she isn't there. Eventually, he gives up and heads back out.

  "And that might have been the end of it, but it wasn't. That night, Williams had a dream. A nightmare, and a bad one.

  "He was in the desert, and he knew the way you do in a dream, that he was walking away from the place he wanted to get to. Heading east when home was west, like. Every time he tried to turn around, though, someone hit him. Spun him back east. It wasn't a short dream. It was one of those kind that go on all night, so all night Williams was driven across the desert like an animal. Sometimes his friends and family were there with him, getting whipped just like him. Sometimes he was all by himself. And he started feeling a powerful hatred for the fella that was hitting him. Then just a little before dawn, he turned and got hold of the guy. Said afterwards that he could feel the cloth of the man's shirt in his fist just like it was really happening. Thing was, the fella he'd grabbed onto looked just like him. It was him.

  "Now you might think that would have woken him up, but the dream wasn't done with him yet. He took a knife, and he started slashing this guy, started killing him. He could feel the knife catching against the bones, could hear the fella trying to breathe. Smelled the blood. He knew it was himself he was killing, and he just didn't care.

  "Well.

  "He woke up in the back of his rig, just like he'd gone to sleep, and the first thing he thought, sober as a Baptist judge, was Holy shit, that girl's going to kill me.

  "Now Williams wasn't the superstitious type. He got up and went out, ate his eggs and bacon and drank his truck-stop coffee, and tried to laugh it off, same as anyone would. He told himself that whoever she was out on the road, she'd spooked him with that vanishing act was all. He'd had a bad night of it, and be done.

  "It was about a week later he saw the girl again. It was broad daylight this time. He was heading back south, going into Gallup this time, and there she was standing by the side of the road. She didn't have a thumb out or nothing. She was just standing there, watching the truck come on. Williams got a cold feeling on his neck, and his heart starting tripping over like someone'd pulled a gun on him. He was a big fella, and he'd been in his fair share of fights, but that Indian girl just standing there on the side of the road looking up at him.... Well, she scared the piss out of him. He gunned the engine and sped straight past her, fast as he could. Thing was, five miles on, there she was again. He passed that girl four times before he got to Gallup. He sat in a booth at the truck stop for three straight hours, not wanting to get back on the road. He was afraid to be alone, you see. If he hadn't been more scared of being caught on the road after dark, I expect he'd never have left.

  "Well, he got back to Albuquerque and went to his boss and said straight up that he was never doing that run again. If it meant quitting, then he'd quit. The boss didn't like that much, but Williams was a pretty good driver otherwise. They worked out a different run for him, heading south to Las Cruces. Williams thought that was the end of it, but he was wrong again.

  "The dream kept coming back, you see. First every week or so, and then more and more often, until by the end of September, he wasn't getting any rest when he slept. He'd wake up in the morning half sick with dread and half still feeling the joy from killing the other version of himself from the dream.

  "It was September fourth of ‘73 that he ran his rig off the road. He had his heater on in the cabin, and the radio was playing something soft. Country music or some Fleetwood Mac or some such. And then just like that, he woke up going eighty on the shoulder and heading for a ditch. He wrestled the truck down slow enough that when he hit, it didn't kill him. But it messed up the rig, and he had to wait half a day to get someone out there to tow him.

  "He was sure of it now. That Indian girl, whatever she was, didn't care whether he was driving old 666 or not. She'd seen him, she'd heard his voice, and sure as kittens in the springtime, she was going to see him dead.

  "Now back in those days, there was a fella used to hang out at a diner in Abiquiu. An anglo, which was strange enough in that part of New Mexico. What's more he was a queer too. The locals put up with him, though. I won't say they were afraid of him, but they had respect. Said that when a man was different one way, sometimes he was different other ways too.

  "The way it was, someone needed advice about spirits or how to get someone to fall in love with them or whatever, they'd go to this little greasy spoon out in Abiquiu, sit at the back table, and the queer would tell them things. Sometimes it was things they wanted to know, sometimes it wasn't. Sixth of October—same day the Israeli airforce starting bombing the shit of Egypt—old Steve Williams got his rig back from the shop and drove in to Abiquiu.

  "By then, Williams didn't look like the big, tough ess-oh-bee he used to be. He hadn't slept for shit in weeks, and he was scared all the time. His skin had that gray look meat gets right when it starts to turn, and he had the standing shakes. The place was a pit. Smelled like they were still cooking in last month's grease, and the linoleum tile was all chipped and bleached out from the sun. And there at the end of the aisle back by the men's room, was this fella in a white silk shirt and a great big blond pompadour haircut drinking a cup of coffee.

  "Williams walks up and the queer smiles at him and nods to the bench across the booth, just like they were old friends and he'd been waiting on him. Afterwards, Williams said that sound changed when you sat down with the queer. The radio from the kitchen, the bells on the diner's door, the tire noise off the highway. Everything got soft, like they were farther away than they really were. The windows looked out on the parking lot, but they were so greasy, everything out there was soft focus, like when they'd shoot through gauze in the old movies. The only thing that seemed real was the queer and his cup of black coffee.

  "You've seen her is what the queer says, first thing out. Williams hadn't even told him anything, and so the queer comes out with this, and Williams just nods.

  "That's going to be hard for you, the queer says. She's angry.

  "So Williams says, Thing is, I don't know what she's angry at me for.

  "The queer smiles just like a woman and puts his hand out, touches Williams on the wrist and says, Of course you don't, sweetie. You never even heard of the Long Walk.

  "And so the queer tells Williams about it. Way back in the middle 1800s, there'd been a couple decades worth of playing cowboys and Indians for real. Lots of dead people on both sides, and lots of anger. Well, come 1863, Kit Carson got sent out to accept the surrender of the Navajo, only when he got to the place he was supposed to be, no Navajo showed up to surrender. Carson took it personal. Next few years, he started burning Indian crops, starving them out, and eventually, they did start giving up. That's where the Long Walks came in.

  "Back then, the Navajo were all through northern Arizona and New Mexico, on up into the south part of Colorado. Well, the government's bright idea was to get them the hell off that land. Break their connection to it. Turn ‘em into exiles. So they started herding them off to Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo. Three hundred miles on foot. Hundreds of them died along the way, and when they got where they were going, it was like a little slice of hell. Nine thousand people squeezed i
nto forty square miles. Not enough food. Not enough water. Maybe the men at Fort Sumner didn't like the Indians. Maybe they just didn't care one way or the other. Either way, the starving never stopped.

  "Now the story was that in the middle of this internment camp, there was a group of people—women mostly, but some men too—who were trying to do something about it. There's this journal from one of the soldiers at Fort Sumner that talks about a girl named Sahkyo leading some kind of pagan ceremony in the summer of 1867. The details were scarce, but you can tell from the tone of it that the fella was disturbed by it. Said there were sounds coming out of the woods after that. Voices, but not the kind you'd hear from people. And lights at night where there wasn't anyone to make a light.

  "Well, the general at Fort Sumner cracked down. Fifty Navajo got killed over it, including the girl Sahkyo, but things only got worse. There were rumors about Indians whose shadows moved even when they were standing still. Soldiers started dying in strange ways. One fella hung himself from the rafters in a stable, only there wasn't a ladder to get up there. The official story was he'd climbed up the side of the wall, but them soldiers who went and kept the Indians in line said the story in camp was he'd been hung by the spirit of Sahkyo.

  "One way or another, it was about a year after they did whatever it was they did that night that Lieutenant General W. T. Sherman signed the treaty of Bosque Redondo and sent them back. That started another Long Walk, but this time, they were going home. People said they saw Sahkyo walking with them.

  "There's power in a return from exile, is what the queer says. It makes a spirit stronger, but it does not bring peace.

  "And Williams says, What's it got to do with me? I didn't put anyone off any land.

  "So the queer sighs and nods and looks out the window. He's looking real sad. And he says, Violence and death have narrowed her. Only revenge has meaning for her now.

  "Now Williams was just about shitting himself right there. The queer's telling him there's a hundred-year-old ghost has it out for him? Well, he knew that, but all this talk about vengeance and that soldier hung up from rafters and no way to get up there was bad enough. But more than that, he understood the dream now. He was dreaming this Sahkyo's world, what she went through. And he'd felt just how happy she was going to be watching him die.

  "So he asks the queer, What the sweet fuck am I supposed to do about this?

  "And the queer says, Give her mercy meaning as well. And then he picks up a copy of that morning's newspaper and hands it to Williams. Says, You'll need this.

  "So Williams walks back out of the diner and into the parking lot, gets in his rig and heads off. He didn't have the first idea what he was going to do, except he was pretty clear that running wasn't going to help and whatever this girl Sahkyo had turned into, she was way stronger than he was. For about eighty miles, he didn't even think about that newspaper or why the queer thought he'd need it.

  "Well, there wasn't any question that he was going to have to face her down, and most likely on her own territory. Williams, he put up at a hotel outside Española for about a week, thinking and stewing and not sleeping if he could help it. The dreams kept after him like hounds on a possum. Time came, he decided he couldn't let it go another night or he'd be too tired to drive at all. He tanked up on coffee and diesel, and headed back out to Gallup and the Devil's Highway.

  "At first, he thought she wouldn't show up. Thought he'd just be driving up and down the highway until he dozed off and she killed him. He just gritted his teeth and kept going. It was tough work. His eyes felt like there was grit up under them, and the engine noise started sounding like it was trying to say something, distract him. She didn't show up until almost midnight.

  "Then, bam, there she was, standing like before right at the side of the road. He uses the engine brake, and the rig starts jumping and screaming like it's about to come apart, he's trying so hard to slow down and pull ‘er to the shoulder. But he does it, and he jumps out, and she's gone. Just like the first time.

  "Thing is, this time, he knows her name. So he walks back into the dust and he yells out Sahkyo and the third time he says it, there she is.

  "So he's seeing her up close now, and there's no way he can pretend she's alive. Her skin's all pale and thin as paper. Her eyes are moving, but they're black all through. There's things moving in her hair. She's standing there by the side of the road all red from the back lights, looking at him, waiting, and he knows if he wants to see morning, he'd better talk pretty damn fast.

  "Look, Sahkyo, he says, I heard all about what happened to you and your people and all, and I'm real sorry about it. But I didn't do it.

  "The girl just looks at him, doesn't say a thing. He can feel the hate coming off her like hot off a fire. So he holds out the newspaper the queer gave him. Right there on page one above the fold, it's all about the Israeli airforce pounding the shit out of Egypt. The girl doesn't look at it, but Williams holds it out to her all the same.

  "You're pissed off I'm on your land, right? he says. Here's the thing. I ain't got no from to go back to. Maybe my grandpa or his grandpa came here from off in Europe someplace, but I'm from America. I'm from here, see?"

  "She takes a step toward him, and all he wants in the world is to run like hell away from there. But he holds his ground and says, Maybe you kill me, okay. But what good's that do? You're gonna make all this around here just as messed up as they are over in the Middle East. That what you want for your people? Have ‘em still fighting a thousand years from now?

  "Now she looks down. I don't figure she can read English, but she looks at the paper all the same. Williams starts to get this feeling that maybe he's getting to her, so he keeps going. Your people got fights enough right now, he says. You don't let go of the old ones, we're gonna be doing this forever.

  "Now maybe he scored a point with her by showing how the Jews were still fighting thousands of years after they got back from their exile, or maybe she was just tired, or maybe a ghost loses its power when you face it down and the newspaper and the Jews and all that were just something the queer gave Williams to give him courage. Either way, Sahkyo turned away from him and walked out into the night. Williams never did see her again, and he never had the dream again neither.

  "Now it's true when he took his shirt off that night, he found a handprint on his chest right over his heart. It was black as ink, about the size of the girl's hand, and it never did come off. But that was the worst he got out of it, thanks to the queer.

  "So when his bumps chased Corine off, the Swede started thinking maybe he could find someone like that to help him out too."

  The back door swung open, old wood barking against the side of the house. Uncle Dab looked back over his shoulder as my little sister Joanie led the women of the family out into the thick night air. Abby's lemon-creme dress seemed to glow in the darkness as Aunt Mary walked with her. I sat forward, trying to interpret Abby's expression in the dim light. The kid cousins, water-soaked and grass-stained, swarmed toward the women and were shooed away into the house. A dozen bare feet pounded across the boards of the back porch.

  "Satellites,” I said with a sigh. “She pulls us out two or three times a week to look for one."

  At the edge of the lawn, Joanie was pointing up at the star-filled sky. Abby and Aunt Mary and the others were following her gaze. Eight grown women peering up into darkness. Abby raised her hand as if to shade her eyes, and the engagement ring glittered on her finger. Aunt Mary leaned over and said something to her in particular, and Abby shook her head. Her sleeve was riding up, and the smallest arc of ink showed at the edge of the cloth. I bit my lip. Dab sucked on his cigar and chuckled.

  "You ought to tell your sister how smart she is, doing something like that,” Dab said.

  "It's not hard,” I said. “There are websites you go to, just give them your latitude and longitude, and they give you times."

  "You ought to tell her anyway,” Dab said. “More times you tell something, the mor
e it gets true. Ah! There. Look at that, will you?"

  In the high, dark arch above us, a star caught fire. It moved slowly across the sky, slower than a meteor and never consumed by its own flame. The women of the family murmured admiration, and Joanie grinned as brightly as the star. Abby looked over at us, followed my gaze, and tugged her dress back into place. She mouthed Thank you and I touched my finger to my eye in our covert sign that meant I love you.

  "Beautiful,” Uncle Dab said, still looking at the sky. “That's just beautiful. Now then, where was I? Oh yeah. The Swede.

  "Well now, the Swede started off looking for someone who could give him a hand. Thing is, folks like the queer aren't common. Oh, there's people who say they've got the hoodoo or the holy spirit or what have you, but most of those are liars and thieves who're just too small-time to start a bank. I'd like to say it didn't take him too long, but the fact was the Swede took the better part of a year going one place and another.

  "He got his energy balanced and his aura looked at and one thing and another. There was one time he had this guru fella who had him eating nothing but onion soup for the better part of a month. Poor old Swede had the shits so bad, he couldn't get through half a shift without the foreman giving him hell for being in the john all the time. He even took a week off and drove to New Mexico to look for the queer. Found the diner all right, but by then something must have happened, because there wasn't anyone sitting at the back table. No one out there would talk about it, so he had to just come on back. Must have taken him five or six months before he found someone that could actually help out.

  "There was this Mexican fella had a reputation for performing miracles, but so did a lot of people the Swede had already been to. This one called himself a curandero and worked out of a little shop, down where all the Mexicans live. Going down there was just like stepping into Juarez. All the signs were in Spanish, all the flags were Mexican, and you didn't find many cops around.