THIRTY-THREE

I had to talk to someone. Someone else. Because this has to stop.

So I went to Shimá. Brought tobacco and water and some of those Fig Newtons she likes. Sat with her under the shade house for a long time, talking about sheep and the weather and all of the usual things as the sky went from white to pale blue and then purple, the buttes standing up like sentries against it. She lit a fire and rolled a new cigarette, long and slender, her fingers nimble from the weaving. I pulled a stick from the fire and held it out. She put the cigarette to her lips and bent her head to it, the flame briefly illuminating her face, her eyes sharp and knowing upon me. The cigarette’s tip flared. I looked away and shivered, hoping she’d attribute my shudder to the cold. Temperatures drop fast in the desert when the sun goes down. “Can I bring you a blanket, Shimá? Maybe some tea? Or would you like to go inside?”

“No blanket. Tea is good. We’ll stay out here and watch So’ Dine’é,” she said of the Star People. She pointed with her chin to the sky. “Few months yet until Áltse Álts’oosi comes.” The constellation heralded winter, striding across the sky, bow at the ready, an arrow nocked in its string. I hadn’t found out until junior high, reading some whiteman science textbook, that he had another name, Orion. He carries a bow, too. But where Orion is a hunter, stalking prey across the sky, Áltse Álts’oosi, the Slender Man, is a protector, going before the children, making sure no harm awaits them. I thought of the implications of Shimá speaking of him rather than the other, more benign, stars and constellations. Was there any way to think of my actions as helping to protect our people? Because that’s what I’ve been told. Maybe Shimá would tell me the same thing.

I heated water on the stove and brewed the tea a long time, the way she likes, adding plenty of sugar, and wondered yet again at the way her teeth shine white and strong in her mouth even though she’s drunk her tea that way for as long as I’ve known her. I brought it to her and she took a sip and nodded, letting me know I’d fixed it just right, stirring in sugar until the liquid was the consistency of syrup. She slurped in satisfaction.

“Young man like you,” she said. “You should be down in the valley, finding some girl and breaking her heart. Or maybe she breaks yours. Hah!” Her shoulders shook. She was pleased with herself. “But instead, you’re up here, with this old lady.”

I didn’t say anything. It was dark, but I could feel her gaze jabbing at me like a pissed-off rattlesnake, striking again and again. Her next words ran like cold poison through my veins. “Maybe you’re here about the mine. I think so.”

“I—” I couldn’t imagine how to start.

She waited. So I told her.

No. She didn’t think of me as a protector.

What had I been thinking? That Shimá would raise her hand in absolution like Father O’Callahan used to do, back when my family still went to church? Tell me it wasn’t my fault? Or give me the backbone to return and say “No more?”

Here’s what hadn’t occurred to me: that she would wither before me as the words poured from my mouth, nearly disappearing beneath the flood of the unthinkable. That by the time I finally stopped, too late, her own breath came in rasps.

“Shimá,” I said. I bent over her. “Oh, Shimá.”

She reached a shaking hand toward me, her fear more frightening than anger, than tears. She’d never needed help from anyone. She was the one people went to for help, who then turned and marched upon the coal company on their behalf, who spoke truth at council meetings before a crowd riven by the competing needs of honoring the land and feeding their children. She could handle anything until I handed her this. I folded my hands around hers, pulled her to her feet. She nearly fell. I lifted her like a child, a near-weightless bundle of flesh and bone within the sack of her clothing. I carried her to the pallet in the hogan and laid her gently upon the soft sheepskins and pulled the woolen blankets over her.

“I’m so sorry, Shimá,” I said again and again. “I’m so sorry.”

The enormity of what I’d done hadn’t occurred to me, not until the words left my body and lodged in hers. Now she knew. And knowing left her with a choice: tell someone, and see some of the people she loved most dearly sent to jail. Not just jail, but hard time in a federal prison. But to stay silent was to see more people dead.

Before, that choice had been mine. I had cringed from it, and turned to Shimá instead. Dumped that sack-of-cement burden right on her bent shoulders. Now she lay panting and shaking on her pallet, overwhelmed, suffocating beneath the weight of this new knowledge.

Which left only one thing to do—the thing I should have done on my own, without this cowardly attempt to find someone to share the responsibility with me. I bent over Shimá and touched my lips to her ear. “No one else is going to die,” I said. “I promise.”

I sat back and waited for her breathing to ease, the shuddering to stop. If anything, it intensified. I understood. Shizhé’é and the truck driver had her in their grip and would not loosen their lethal hold until I made good on my words.