Free Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 by Land of Echoes Page A

houses and mobile homes. No trees relieved the
     bare-dirt desert; the land stretched in every direction without any notable features. The laundry on the clotheslines, the
     satellite dishes on the parched yards, the pairs and trios of playing kids and their tagalong dogs: on one level, not so different
     from any neighborhood. But set in this arid moonscape, blasted by the westering sun, the little human outpost struck Cree
     as marvelously foreign.
    Julieta drove slowly along the hard-packed dirt street. "One of my maintenance staff had to have a hip replacement. Earl Craig.
     It's his second. He's been out for three weeks and he's had some complications. He'll need to miss another month or more,
     so I had to hire someone to cover. I know he's secretly worried about whether he'll be able to keep his job—employment is
     hard to come by out here. So whenever I pass by, I try to stop in to kind of reassure him."
    She pulled the truck into a short driveway to a tiny shoe box house. A thickset, midfifties Navajo man sat in a wheelchair
     not far from the front door, face tipped to the late-afternoon sun. When he heard the truck, he rotated his chair and a small
     dog jumped off his lap and began yapping. Julieta shut off the engine, rummaged behind the seat, and came out with a rumpled
     grocery bag full of something heavy.
    "You should probably just wait here," Julieta told Cree. "I'll only be a minute."
    Earl's face relaxed into a smile as Julieta got out. The little dog sped toward Julieta and without pausing hurtled itself
     through the air at her. She clearly wasn't ready for the greeting, but she managed to stoop and catch the dog with one hand.
     She winced into a vigorous face licking, then slid the animal down onto one hip and awkwardly carried it back to its master.
    Cree couldn't hear what they were saying, but Earl laughed and appeared to be apologizing for his pet. When Julieta set the
     bag at his feet, he bent to pull out several paperback books and exclaimed gratefully. Then they talked seriously for a moment, Earl shifting in his chair to point to parts of his hip and thigh, Julieta still holding the
     wriggling dog and nodding.
    It was only two or three minutes until she handed back the dog, touched Earl's shoulder in farewell, and returned to the truck.
     Earl waved good-bye with his free hand and then bent to dig more books out of the bag.
    When Julieta climbed back into the truck, she explained quietly to Cree, "Mysteries, thrillers, that's all he'll read. I get
     them by the pound from a used paperback place in Albuquerque. Last time I slipped in Memoirs of a Geisha, but that didn't go over too well." Remembering that mischief made her grin. "Arthritis. He had a healing Way sung, too. The
     Hand Trembler—that's the medicine man who diagnoses illness—blamed it on Earl's walking on the grave of an ancestor. Earl
     sincerely and completely believes that, but it didn't stop him from getting high-tech molybdenum joints put in. And if you
     asked him whether it was the Way or the surgery that fixed him, he'd credit both. That's pretty typical."
    Looking back now, Cree saw Earl differently: to outward appearances, an ordinary middle-aged man in jeans and T-shirt; in
     fact, a person who lived in the knowledge he was poised on the brink of infinite mystery.
    Another reminder that in coming here she was entering a different world, where nothing was quite what it seemed.
    Julieta's expression of contentment remained as she backed the truck out of the driveway. Such a lovely woman, Cree thought.
     Such a lovely smile, all the more beautiful for its rarity. She covertly watched Julieta during the quarter-mile drive back
     to the highway. By the time they'd turned onto the asphalt again, the lines of worry had returned.
    They drove on in silence. Still the land had not changed: As far as the eye could see were low hills of bone-dry brown earth,
     low-growing brush, scattered scrubby piñon trees. The only