Rabbit Moon (eBook)

Jan D. Payne (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
300 Seiten
Rabbit Hole LLC (Verlag)
979-8-9910625-0-3 (ISBN)

Kidnap, murder, and intrigue confront Marin Sinclair on the Dineh (Navajo) reservation, and only by escaping into the Lukachukai mountains can she hope to survive, confronting danger and unknown adversaries in the depths of a deserted uranium mine.

Drawing from her years in the Southwest and on the Navajo Nation, Jan Payne writes using themes of courage, regret, hope, and restoration in a world of kinships within differing cultures. Through her characters' lives-Marin Sinclair, end-of-life doula; Sergeant Justin Blue Eyes of the Navajo Nation Police; Cullen MacPherson, Nuclear Regulatory Commission agent; Garret Washburn, teenaged ward; and Lewis George, spirit-guide-she explores cultural backgrounds and how friendships forged in crisis have the power to shape our lives. Jan Payne lived on the Dineh (Navajo) reservation on the New Mexico side of the Lukachukai mountain range, where she climbed the mesas, took horseback camping trips, explored mountain ghost towns, and worked with her dad training horses. Her most memorable summer jobs include working with pack-mule trains at a dude ranch and a brief stint as camp cook in a uranium mining camp. A graduate of Shiprock High School in Shiprock, New Mexico, she also holds university and medical degrees, as well as a graduate degree in Christian Studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attributes an early interest in writing to a wealth of family stories, including that of a great-great aunt taken captive by Comanche/Kiowa raiders in 1870's Texas. Jan Payne is a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West and she and her husband, Jon, live in the Leech Lake area of northern Minnesota with their three big dogs-Kaibab, Rudi, and Orrin. Visit her website at: jandpayne.com

CHAPTER ONE

The eagle’s cries and Marin’s screams faded, and she opened her eyes to morning sunlight and the breeze moving the bedroom curtains. She listened for the sound of Mark’s breathing, but this was her own bedroom and not the armchair at Mark’s bedside—and she would never hear his breathing again.

With Mark’s coaxing, she’d agreed to see Dr. Lippmann when the dreams had grown more frequent, agreeing to let Mark cover the cost. He’d been certain the doctor could help, and had wanted Marin to be, if not happy, then at least at peace with herself after his death.

“Your psyche is trying to tell you something,” Mark had said, tapping her gently on the forehead. “The mesa memory is in there somewhere, trying to get out. My advice is to see Dr. Lippmann, let her help. Then, I think you need to go to this so-called reunion, talk a few things out with Vangie Tso. It’s not rocket science to realize this dream-vision thing started after you got that invitation.”

“But I don’t think…”

“Do it,” Mark had said, and tapped his chest. “I can afford it. Dying man here; death-bed request.”

Mark hadn’t realized Marin’s true fear was she was losing her grip on reality, afraid of developing Alzheimer’s disease as her father had.

Mark knew Marin had cared for her father at home until his death, but he didn’t know everything…how isolated she’d been, unable to maintain relationships with former friends or have a life of her own. Mark came from a wealthy family; he didn’t realize how out of reach the expense of a memory-care facility could be, didn’t know how she’d depended on hospice visits to have even the free time to shop for food. After her father’s death, she had closed the big, Victorian house and contracted with a local agency as an end-of-life doula to make enough money to pay the mortgage and her father’s medical bills.

“Any relationships?” Dr. Lippmann had asked.

The doctor hadn’t known the irony of her question.

She got up and wandered into the kitchen, standing undecided before moving to fill the coffeepot.

It was always like this afterward, the lassitude, the period when she didn’t quite know what to do with herself, making the readjustment to living alone, to being in her own apartment and caring for herself instead of being fully given over to the care of someone else.

“It’s your dream, Marin…”

“Just something to think about…”

So much for the visit to Dr. Lippmann.

“Nothing like your dream ever really happened?” Mark had asked in one of their last conversations…

“Standing on a mesa ledge and having an eagle dive at me…an eagle with Vangie’s face?” she said and paused as if thinking. “I don’t think so.”

“No need for sarcasm,” Mark said. “Obviously it’s symbolism. Did Vangie blame you for something?”

“You’d have to know Vangie,” she said. “That’s not who she is. Vangie takes people as a whole—she doesn’t try and change you; she just accepts you. Or she did when I knew her…”

“But the mesa itself, it’s a real place?”

“Yes, it’s behind the school compound, less than a mile away…but it’s a place we didn’t go—the mesa is haunted.”

Mark leaned forward.

“The story is there was a stand-off on top of the mesa, a battle between the government authorities and a Diné man who had large holdings of land and sheep and horses…and two wives.”

“That’s allowed?”

“This happened around 1870,” Marin said, “around the same time most all of the western tribes had been relegated to reservations…and to your point, the U.S. Supreme Court had only recently ruled polygamy illegal, a criminal offense.”

“What a coincidence,” Mark said.

“Yes, wasn’t it? The Diné man was declared in violation of the new polygamy law…a ruse to get him out of the way to steal the property and animal herds from his wives.”

She paused when Mark frowned.

“The Diné are a matrilineal society,” she said. “It’s the women who own the property and the herds, the women who inherit.”

“Ahh…I see.”

“So, rather than submit to arrest, and have their large holdings stolen—he took his wives and children to the top of the mesa and made his stand there when the authorities came to arrest him. There was a gun battle, and…”

“He died there with his family,” Mark said.

Marin shook her head. “No, he lived. According to the story, one of his wives jumped from the rim of the mesa to her death, and that ended the standoff.”

“He wasn’t prosecuted?” Mark asked.

“No, they returned home, kept their holdings.”

“One of his wives jumped…voluntarily?”

“That’s debatable. Her ghost, her chindii, has haunted the mesa ever since; you can hear her crying when the wind blows—which is always—so the mesa is called ‘the woman who stands and cries’ or, in English—”

“—Crying Woman Mesa,” Mark said, and took a breath. “So…it’s… haunted?”

“Haunted,” Marin agreed. “I’ve heard her crying.”

Mark frowned. “You said you didn’t go there.”

“We didn’t,” Marin said, her words slow. “I’m sure we didn’t—chindiis are evil ghosts—no one went up there.” She shook her head. “I’m probably confusing it with some other mesa we climbed. No shortage of mesas on the rez.”

“Except this mesa was close to the school, and you said you heard her crying,” Mark said. “Sounds like the same one to me.”

“You hear that moaning sound all the time…it’s the wind blowing across the erosion cavities, the rock-pipes, in the sandstone. The holes have differing lengths, and they sound like organ pipes when the wind blows across them. Vangie and I used to crawl under the sandstone slabs to hide from Bailey, and we’d call or whistle up through them, but Bailey was a smart dog. She found us every time.”

The coffee maker beeped, and Marin filled a cup. She missed Mark, her own apartment seemed lonely and stark after the months spent in Mark’s home, where his own paintings on the walls reflected his artist’s love of light and color.

She had one of Mark’s paintings in the Victorian house, but there weren’t many personal items here in the agency-provided apartment. A bookcase holding her father’s books and the photograph of Bailey and Edison were almost the only signs the apartment wasn’t for rent by the week. She was rarely here, so the decor hardly mattered.

No, Dr. Lippmann, no relationships.

Another stab of sorrow went through her at the thought of Mark, one more loss she had been helpless to prevent.

How long could she continue to do this?

She’d been caring for the dying for years now, and each loss added to the one before it, heaping another weight of sadness to a load she could barely carry. Despite what Dr. Lippmann had said, she had developed no inurement to death, her care for the dying hadn’t made her tough; it had made her realize she was no more than a flag-bearer on a battlefield, watching the dying fall. How much insight had she gained over the years? About life? About herself? About God?

The God Mark had believed in so firmly.

Mark had tried to help, had tried to give her a part of his own faith, his assurance in the goodness of God, but Marin knew from years of experience that faith is necessary for the dying.

For the living, it comes harder.

She brushed at her tears. Dealing with death and dying was her job—had been for a long time now—and she had no use for maudlin sentimentality in herself or in others. Mark had certainly not had any for himself. Even near death, his faith had been strong, his concern not for himself but for others, for her.

The arrangements for Mark’s memorial service were made, she needed only to make a phone call to put the preparations into motion. She would call Mark’s family as well, give them her condolences, but not now.

“Do you keep in touch?” Mark had asked her toward the end. “You know, with the family?”

“Yes, I keep in touch. For a while anyway.”

“Good,” he’d answered. “You know my dad and I aren’t close, but my mom will need you.”

She’d smiled, but the reality was that after a death she was an unwelcome reminder of dark days, and no one had ever ‘kept in touch’ with her, or she with them.

She took her coffee to the bedroom and picked up the invitation on the nightstand. She’d promised Mark she would go, and she intended to be well on her way to Shiprock before the heat of the summer day set in, but she read the card again, whispering the words to herself and studying the formal signature—Evangelina Tso—underlined and in Vangie’s remembered handwriting.

Vangie would know Marin would catch the significance of using her name, of using both their names, but that didn’t explain why a woman as strong as Vangie Tso needed her help.

Please come, Marin. I need to see you.

The entire invitation was a mystery, for besides the fact that she and Vangie had not graduated in the year stamped on the invitation, and their tenth anniversary had passed several years ago, the address for the reception was odd as well—she’d looked it up and found it was the address...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	6.9.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
ISBN-13	979-8-9910625-0-3 / 9798991062503

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