NOTE TO MY REGULAR READERS:
These are not the usual columns and "Native Waters" meandering you may be used to. These stories touch on the dark side of existence, on things not quite visible, not quite there, but dangerous or cruel, loving or devoted. Most reflect my love of things on the edge of perception, netherworlds and shadows, creatures benign or vengeful. Here are the glimpses underneath bridges, behind dark forests, into hidden doorways with keys intentionally lost. So if you chose to enter, know this: Here there be dragons!

Across the street, through the vertical slits between cars honking and drivers cursing in a traffic jam, he saw the cowboy.

Bert Graffino, a valuable client with whom Len had developed an almost exclusive professional relationship, was rambling on about how he wanted his new web site to be "extravagant, but Spartan…something simple yet elegant" and Len was trying his best to pay attention. His eyes wandered over the rim of a crystal wine glass filled with a 1992 merlot Bert insisted he try, across the outdoor seating of La Pinta’s restaurant on 54^th Street. He paused for a split second to appreciate a long-legged brunette reading The New Yorker while nibbling at a Caesar salad then, right over her head, his eyes focused momentarily on the cowboy.

"I can see it all," Bert said, wiping his shiny white bald head with a napkin. "You can’t sell shit with fancy, garbled up sites, you know? It’s gotta be simple, it’s gotta be easy or people click out."

Len nodded, smiling. Bert was quoting back the sales pitch he heard the first time they met, the same pitch Len used for all new clients. The slimy little man, who owned four pawnshops in the city, had the idea that he could post his inventory on the Net and draw more customers. Len figured it might actually work, but it wasn’t the kind of job he relished. These were the meat-and-potatoes sites, not the kind where he could apply his artistry.

"We’ll index it," Bert went on, slicing into lasagna with his fork. Red tomato sauce stains like blood would have ruined his white shirt, had not the yellow stains in the armpits already accomplished the task. "You know, electronics, automotive, and the guns."

"The guns," Len put in, examining the half-eaten spaghetti on his own plate. His head felt a little light. The merlot was good, and he had perhaps enjoyed it too enthusiastically.

"Can’t?" Bert asked, misunderstanding. "Shit. Okay, skip it. We’ll sell them the old fashioned way. Once we get them in the shop, we’ll put the guns right up front. Impulse buying, that always gets them."

Len glanced up again, and the traffic jam was finally moving, a convoy of Yellow Cabs dominating the streetscape. The cowboy was gone. He hadn’t seen much more than the black hat, could pinpoint no further details. The only reason he noticed it at all was that in this neighborhood, hangout for upstart lawyers, prominent physicians and all manner of business executives, that hat stuck out like a sore thumb. He promptly forgot about it.

He shook himself. "I’ll work you up a template," Len promised. "We’ll get this together quick as we can.’

He took the subway home. He had owned a car, for about a year, but the frustration of traffic jams had persuaded him to part with it. Cabs were more convenient, and he still used them sometimes, but there were the traffic problems again. He couldn’t stand the noise, the smell of the exhaust, the fury. The subway went where he wanted to go, and most of the time, his more than six-foot frame dissuaded potential trouble.

The Graffino site was already coming together in his mind. It would be a simple one, as the little miscreant had requested, but expensive. Len figured ten grand, minimum. Perhaps a week’s work. He had the Advantage site half done, a yacht manufacturer, which challenged and invigorated him tremendously. He worked alone creatively, but hired a secretary at the small rented office uptown, someone to answer the phone and keep his appointments organized, a skill he was not very good at. Cynthia was efficient and understanding of his mood swings, never bothering him when he closed himself up behind the locked door of his office to work.

The apartment was similarly small, but adequate for a single man. It took some negotiating to get it, for at first the landlord mysteriously claimed there were no openings, even though Len had been told by a friend that there were three empty apartments. He left angry and confused.

"Oh, man," Chip Larson had said. He was president of Nantucket State Bank, and Len had set up an online customer banking service for them. "I bet that old fart Bernie thinks you’re Hispanic."

"Hispanic?" Len queried, perplexed. "What difference does that make?"

"He hates ‘em. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, whatever. Won’t rent to them. Somebody’s going to file a civil action against the idiot one-day. Listen, I’ll clear this up, if you still want the place."

Len told him he did. The neighborhood was good, the price was right, and truth be known, he didn’t mind living with an absence of Hispanics either. He had worked hard for that, to be far from that, memories and all. Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang.

"Mr. Carter," he recognized the landlord’s voice. "It seems that I was wrong, we do have a great two-bedroom unit available."

"Is that so?" he said. "Glad to hear it. Can I come make a deposit in the morning?"

"Sure thing, sure thing," the landlord said. "I’ll have a key ready for you. Mr. Larson just gave me a call and gave you an excellent reference."

"Chip’s a great guy."

"Sure is. You know, I have a sister in Arizona."

Len was silent, confused.

"You aren’t from Arizona?"

"No," Len said. "I’m from North Carolina."

"Oh. I just assumed…"

"I see."

"It’s a damned shame," the landlord went on.

"What’s that?"

A cough. "What we did to your people. Putting you all on reservations and taking all your land. I think it’s a shame. You know, my grandmother was Cherokee."

You don’t say. But he merely sighed. "Thanks for the phone call. I’ll see you in the morning." He hung up.

That was three years earlier. In those days, the company he had started, Edge Internet, was struggling. He now had fourteen major clients and was paying ridiculous taxes on a six-figure income. Success came easily: he had the talent, knew his trade, and arrived on the web development proverbial ground floor.

Outside the dirty window, upon which someone had spray painted a swastika in brilliant metallic red, light and dark alternated hypnotically. Len watched as the train slowed, marking his arrival at his station. From there it would only be a short walk home after a long, but profitable, day.

He exited behind an elderly lady, helping her with a huge load of shopping bags. In his Italian cut suit and patent leather shoes, he surmised she perceived no threat from him and allowed him to hold her merchandise while she gingerly disembarked. She was little more than a shopping bag lady, olive-skinned and wearing clothes the colors of which were like fading memories. "Thank you, young man," she said.

"Yes, ma’am," he said, and turned away. The subway car whined, riding electric rails away to its next destination. He clutched his laptop close to him, eyeing the shadows for trouble, but encountered none. The old lady had gone the opposite direction, and he was alone in the tunnel.

Another shuttle approached from the opposite direction as he walked; he noted without much thought that it was empty. Vacant windows flashed by him, some cracked, some opaque with grime, then the train was gone.

Across the track, half in shadow, he saw someone.

There was darkness covering the person from the knees up—or at least, where he guessed the person’s knees were, for all he could see was a long black overcoat to the ankles and the toes of black pointed boots.

The stair to the street was only steps away, but he slowed for a moment, about to shout a warning about the tracks, about subway trains coming so fast, when dread reached out and caressed the back of his neck, raising the close-cropped hairs there.

The figure didn’t move, but he felt somehow threatened. He quickened his pace, made the stair without trouble, and just as he climbed up he stole a glance back. The person in the shadows was still there, but still all he could see was the bottom of that black coat and the toes of boots.

Emerging on the street, with other people around, made him feel better. He had run afoul of bums and punks in the subway before, even disarmed a knife-bearing hooligan who wanted his laptop once. The few that ever bothered him, despite his size, quickly learned that his training as a Marine augmented his stature. He enlisted right after high school, unable to afford college, anxious to leave the reservation and its hopelessness. The military offered him training in computer skills, which he augmented four years later at a technical college paid for by Uncle Sam and embarked on his career as a web developer.

He crossed the foyer of the apartment building, keying his code into the lock to gain entrance to the elevator. He was on the third and topmost floor. Once inside, he shed his coat and loosened his tie, kicked his shoes into a neat pile near the door and sat in his favorite chair. He opened the laptop and started working on the template for Bert. He wasn’t hungry, the spaghetti had made him nauseous, or perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps it was Bert, but after an hour of work he paused to grab a Diet Coke from the fridge, and noticed he had messages on the answering machine.

The first was from Cynthia, who said that the McFarland account had paid and she would make the deposit on her way home. He trusted Cynthia, paid her enough to keep her honest, and he kept a close eye on the books. She also said that Bert called twice since he left, with ideas for the site, "something about a background of coins with the shop logo on each one of them where Liberty’s head would be." Len sighed and silently jacked up the price to twelve thousand.

He keyed the machine for the next message. "Hey, Len…" His brother, Arthur. "Just wanted to let you know…mom’s not doing any better. The doc says her lungs are getting worse. They’ve got her on oxygen, and may put her in ICU tonight. Umm…she keeps asking about you. Give me a call."

Len leaned against the counter. He had put it off long enough. He hadn’t seen his mother or brother in a year, the last time he had gone back to North Carolina. He had only stayed a day, rushing back to the city with excuses of a major sale, which was true. She had been short of breath then, and the doctors had said her lungs were failing, the profit of thirty years in the textile plant. She had been hospitalized for a week now, and Arthur had called every other day to update him on her condition.

Guilt gnawed at him again. He needed to go. He refused to believe his mother was on her deathbed – no one as strong as she, who had raised two big, brawling and always in trouble boys along – could be dying. But he had to go soon, had to answer her call. He quickly made plans to leave the following afternoon. He would call Arthur tonight and let him know he was coming.

He pressed the button for the final message.

But no one spoke. There was only the hiss of the telephone line for several seconds, then the machine disconnected the call.

He checked the caller identification box. It only showed two calls, from Cynthia at 6:08 p.m. and from Arthur at 6:23 p.m.

Len checked it again. The information didn’t change.

But the answering machine had responded to three calls. It didn’t just pick up unless there was a ring. And even if it did, wouldn’t it have recorded a dial tone?

He played the third message again. Nothing but silence. He keyed it again and turned the volume up higher. The hiss was like sea air along Cape Fear rushing through a seashell when his mother took he and Arthur there one Saturday out of the month, with a basket of lunch. She worked a second job as a waitress to fund these outings.

Len shrugged and turned away from the machine, but paused. He keyed the message once more, and turned the volume up to full.

The hiss became a roar, but behind it, he heard something.

On second consideration, he decided he didn’t actually hear it, so much as he sensed it. At first he thought it was just the noise of the telephone line, the crackle of static. But then he realized it was far too regular: Click. Click. Click. Five times, at regular, quick intervals.

He could barely hear it, wasn’t even sure he heard it, but there was no doubt it was there. Hearing, he somehow understood, was not exclusive to the ears: though he could barely perceive the sound, some part of his mind clarified the sound, gave it dimension and shape.

"Forget it," he said, dismissingly. He cleared the messages and returned to his chair. He picked up the cordless phone and dialed his brother.

Later, staring at the ceiling from his bed, sleep was elusive. His conversation with Arthur had begun uncomfortable, escalated to adversarial, ended in fury. He hung up the phone with the angry promise that he’d arrive late the next day.

The argument had in essence been the same: about commitment to family, his long absences, how much his mother missed him. Len had long ago tried to stop explaining himself, had resorted to anger as all answers. Their conversations were always the same.

In the morning, he’d go into the office, finish the preliminary template for Bert and have Cynthia send a hard copy by courier. He’d nail up a few loose ends and head out on a noon flight.

By two a.m. his fury subsided, his resentment waned. He was drifting, jerkily, into sleep. In those half-wakeful moments, the sound of the air conditioning permeated him, brought up the fading memory of that errant message. The hiss was so much like the air conditioner, a sound he never got used to because there had been none in his childhood—

His eyes darted open.

He was, for a moment, ten years old again. His Uncle Alex, keeping the two brothers under a watchful eye, rubbed the barrel of the .45 with his shirt.

Len sat up in the bed, swung his legs around to the floor. The memory was stark, unabridged.

He heard that old revolver speak when he was ten: Click. One round under the firing pin. Click. The next. Click. The next…

***

Morning found him showered, dressed in jeans and a Nike tee shirt and out the door without even his usual pot of coffee.

He had slept little, kept awake by the sound of Uncle Alex rotating the cylinders of that old revolver…of the answering machine seemingly playing back that sound from his childhood. But a part of him was beginning to wonder if the source was his imagination, a ghost from his past…or from his present.

He took a cab that morning, telling himself the subway was too slow and he was in a hurry. The traffic was light, so he made it to the office an hour before normal.

On his way to the door, negotiating the rush hour madness, he spied it.

Across the block, near Sheridan’s Jewelers: that black hat.

Len stopped, letting people brush roughly past him. The hat towered above everyone’s head, it seemed, but he could not see the face. And the wearer was just standing there, like him, letting the crowd course around him. Nobody seemed to care, nobody seemed to acknowledge him.

Wait a minute, Len thought, staring at the hat. I’m starting to get this…

Angry now, convinced, he pushed his way through the crowd, toward the hat.

Some kook with an attitude, he thought. Some freak messing with my head because he doesn’t like Indians. Or Hispanics.

The hat loomed nearer, but every time he nearly got a glimpse of the face, someone’s head blocked his view. He pushed harder, not bothering to apologize. The crowd seemed to converge on him, as if mindlessly blocking his path. He forced his shoulder between two men in janitorial uniforms, and ran straight into a small, frail body.

She nearly fell, but Len reached out and grabbed the old woman’s arm, feeling loose skin slide over her bones. "Oh," she said. "I’m sorry!"

"My fault," he apologized, smiling, but looked up, looked forward.

The cowboy was gone.

"Damn!"

He shouted it before he thought about it, pounding his fist at the air in frustration. How the hell did he move that fast?

"It’s okay," the old woman said. "It’s okay, now."

"I’m sorry I ran into you, ma’am," Len said, trying to find that hat in the crowd, knowing already that it was useless. "Are you sure you’re okay?"

"No," the old woman said, "I mean you’re okay now."

He looked down at her, closely, for the first time.

She stood there, just over half his height, and at first he thought he was home.

But no, those weren’t reservation clothes, weren’t traditional garb. At least not his tradition. The bright colors, the braided gray hair and the long, multi-hued skirt succeeded in confusing him for a moment, but then he recognized them for what they were.

"You’re okay now," the gypsy woman repeated.

"I—where are you going?" he blurted. It was rude, and he felt the pang of his better upbringing for talking to an elder that way. "I mean, are you lost?"

She studied him closely with a crooked, wrinkled grin. "No more than you, Joe. No more than you."

"My name’s not Joe."

"Ain’t it?" she cackled, loud, and he noticed then a crumpled bag at her feet full of fresh cut flowers. "Indian Joe, that’s you."

He had enough. "Look, if you’re okay I’ll just be on my way." He turned back the way he had come.

"He’ll be back, you know."

Len froze so quickly two people barreled into him, muttering obscenities and giving him hateful glances. He turned around. "Who’ll be back?"

"You know. Him. The one you were going after before I saved you."

"Before you—what are you talking about, grandmother?" The word slipped from his lips so easily he didn’t even notice it. Then recognition dawned, and he pointed at her. "I remember you. I helped you with your bags off the subway last night."

She retrieved her bag, set about tidying her flowers, and he realized she was a peddler. The irony, the stereotype, left him amused. "You know who I’m talking about. Him. The one you saw on the street. I saw him, too. Last night, in the tunnel. And today. I been watching you, because I knew something bad was going to come of it. I saw in your eyes what you were going to do. I had to stop you, because you’re young and dumb. So I jumped in your way."

Len walked back to her. "Listen, ma’am, no disrespect, but I think you might need a little help. Can I get you a cab?" He would tell the cabbie to take her to the hospital, some place where she could be cared for.

But the old woman snorted. "Bullshit. You do mean disrespect, so don’t try to hide it. I’m just a crazy old lady, right? You better listen up! Listen up, Indian Joe, because you ain’t got no eyes, and you’ll get yourself in a world of trouble if you don’t."

"No—eyes." Len laughed out loud, incredulous. "No eyes?"

"Your eyes, Indian Joe. You lost your eyes."

Len rubbed his hand through his hair. "I gotta go."

But she reached out and grabbed his arm. "You’re a good boy. I can see that. You make your mama proud, I bet. But good boys don’t always know what’s best for them. What happened to your eyes, good boy?"

"Nothing’s wrong with my eyes. I can see fine. Let me go."

"Not your eyes in your head. Your eyes in your head." She studied him closely, penetratingly. "Looks like you used to have them. Might still have them, but you’re almost blind."

He pulled his arm free, but gently. "I gotta go, lady."

"Wait a minute, how about a flower from an old lady? Only five bucks."

Grumbling, he dug a ten out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Keep the flower."

"No girlfriend to bring it to?" she grinned, half-toothed.

"Lady," Len muttered as menacing as he could, "you’re getting on my nerves."

She cackled again. "Just stay away from him, Indian Joe. You’ll be okay, even if you can’t see too good. Long as you stay away from him."

"From who?"

"The one you saw."

"Do you know who he is?" Len suddenly thought perhaps the old lady wasn’t cracked, that she might actually have some knowledge useful to him.

"No," she said, fiddling with her flowers, picking one long red carnation from the bag. "At least, not like you think. Indian Joe, if you ain’t got your eyes, you ain’t got your ears, so you can’t hear what I would say, anyhow. Just stay away from him, don’t tangle with him, and you’ll be right as rain."

"Is he a gypsy, too?"

"Of course not. He’s yours, not mine."

"My what?"

"He’s yours. Use your eyes. Use your ears." She pushed the carnation into his hand, closed his fingers around it. "See ya around, Indian Joe."

And she left him there, clutching the flower, feeling it die.

***

Cynthia had canceled or rescheduled all of his appointments, and an envelope with airline tickets was waiting on his desk. He thanked her brusquely and went to his desk, sitting for a moment with his head back. He didn’t drink, never had, but suddenly wished he did. In retrospect, he knew absolutely nothing had happened to unsettle him so. Even the old woman’s rambling he could discount, the appearance of the black-hatted stranger he could write off to coincidence. There had been nothing threatening about any of it.

She made him think of Uncle Alex.

His father’s eldest brother was the teacher, the one who showed the boys the paths, the old trails leading back so many thousands of years. It was Uncle Alex who gave them their true names, taught them the old words and old songs. The sweated together, they hunted and fished and laughed.

Uncle Alex had been the one who drove him to the bus station that day, that last day, when he left the reservation with all his savings.

You remember where home is, Uncle Alex told him.

I will. But the words were lies, and he was sure Uncle Alex knew it. There would be no coming back. He was turning away from it all: from the little brown HUD house and ragged picket fence his father built of crate lumber from the warehouse before he died, the isolation, the fear. He refused to be contained on an island in the middle of America, refused to vanish. There was no thought of retribution, only survival.

As he boarded the bus, waved goodbye to Uncle Alex through the window, he knew he would succeed. The bus passed through the reservation, and he watched as Carla Breakwater pushed a shopping cart filled with baskets, unpaid bills and a lifetime of despair along the shoulder, on her way to the flea market in town; he saw Hap Randall, sitting on his front porch, whittling another pipe; he waved goodbye to Martha Bender, but he knew she didn’t see him, so intent was she on trying to wake up Ted King from a drunken stupor in her driveway—he noticed someone had stolen Ted’s shoes.

He snapped his head up from the chair in his office years later. "What?"

Cynthia was standing in the door. "Sorry. I didn’t want you to be late for your flight."

Len rubbed his eyes. "Thanks. I’m moving."

"’Kay. Hope everything’s okay with your mom."

"Thanks."

He punched the first floor button in the elevator, leaned against the wall. The closer he came to leaving, the more he dreaded the return. Uncle Alex would be there, smiling that crooked, sad smile of his, his braids disheveled. Arthur would meet him at the airport, drive him to the hospital in whatever derelict junk he was driving these days, and then he’d—

The lighted floor numbers caught his attention. The first floor indicator lit up, shone brightly for a moment, then went out. The elevator stopped, and the ground floor lamp came on.

"Shit." He punched at the buttons, but instead of responding, the doors opened.

The elevator refused to budge. He figured he’d have to take the stairs to the street, through the parking garage.

Lifting his bag to his shoulder, he walked quickly between the rows of cars on either side, toward the stair.

The cowboy stepped out from behind a van, walked to the center of the row, and turned toward him.

Len stopped, stunned.

He stood there, bigger than life: long black overcoat, black hat tipped just low enough that all Len could see was a jutting chin, clean shaven, smooth. Immaculate black leather boots peeked from the hem of the coat.

"What do you want?" Len shouted.

But the cowboy didn’t move.

"What do you want from me?"

No reply, no acknowledgment.

"Come on, come on," he muttered. "This is getting ridiculous." Louder, "Why don’t you take your problems somewhere else—"

The cowboy lifted his head.

The face was neutral, a composite of every western villain he had ever seen on late night television. Angular face, thin hard lips, nose like a wedge. But the face seemed somehow unreal, unfinished to him, like a department store mannequin. Worst of all, the eyes pierced him, held him impaled like arrows.

They were black as tar, without whites, without light. They didn’t even reflect light, they ate light, consumed and devoured it. The entire garage seemed to dim as those eyes sucked all light into them and killed it.

Len stepped back, and for the first time in his life felt real fear.

Though the granite face didn’t change, Len perceived a smile, maniac glee. It was like the smile on an animal’s face, an unseen but sensed levity.

"We have business, you and me." The voice was wet clay. The cowboy moved toward him. Long, heavy strides, he strode toward Len like a titan, overcoat flapping, boot soles clopping loudly on the concrete, and Len thought wildly of Yul Brynner as the robot gunslinger in Westworld stalking Richard Benjamin.

There was no thought of resistance, no more courage. Len dropped his bag and ran.

He stumbled into the elevator, slapped at the buttons wildly. "Come on, work, damn you, work!"

The cowboy came, black eyes unblinking, fixed on Len like a stalking predator, and Len saw now he did look like Yul Brynner in that old movie, but the emptiness of the eyes remained. "Can’t run, Indian Joe. You can’t hide."

Len slammed his fist against the buttons. "Go! Goddamit, go!"

The overcoat flapped, and Len saw a glint of steel. There was nowhere to run, no other exit. He had the insane notion of climbing up, through the elevator’s maintenance door, but there was no time.

From the coat, the gun emerged—the cowboy never slowed, never took his dead eyes off Len. Something buzzed. "Nobody can save you. Not Uncle Alex, not Geronimo or Kevin Costner, not that old bag of bones on the street this morning. You’re mine."

Len threw himself against the back wall of the elevator, trying to get even a few more inches away.

A long, dusty thumb reached up, pulled back the hammer of the gun—

The buzzing Len was barely aware of stopped suddenly, and the elevator doors closed.

He threw himself flat on the floor. Three explosions deafened him, but the elevator moved, he felt it ascend.

Distant, hollow like from a deep, watery grave, he heard the cowboy: What happened to your eyes, Indian Joe? The question echoed up the elevator shaft, through the roof and was carried west by the wind.

When he rolled over, he saw the light stop on the first floor. He fought for breath, gulped it painfully. His eyes drifted over to the doors, which were opening, and just before they slid out of view, he saw the three bullet holes.

Then a bearded, blonde head pocked through the door, cigarette dangling from one lip, staring down at him.

"Shinola!" the building super said. "What the hell happened to you?"

He pushed past, past the crowd waiting for the malfunctioning elevator, and darted out into the street.

The crowd had thinned, and he realized he had dropped his bag in the parking garage, but didn’t care. He leaned back against the granite wall, breathing hard, fighting to keep his hands from trembling.

I’m losing my mind, he thought wildly. God help me, I’m losing my mind.

But the notion almost comforted him. The alternative was unthinkable.

I don’t know! he screamed at the old woman’s memory. What makes you think I know?

He knew his flight would be leaving soon. He had to get a cab. He could replace what he had in his bag when he reached the airport in North Carolina. There was a shopping mall nearby. He suddenly wanted to get as far away from the city as he could. Even the reservation would be a sanctuary. He forced himself to stand straight, struggled to ignore the din of passing cars, look for a cab. He stepped away from the building, and something touched his elbow.

He cried out, spun around, one hand raised in a fist, ready to retreat if a blow seemed futile. But the old woman standing there only smiled at him. "You gonna hit a lady, Indian Joe?"

"You," he said. "You."

"I came back to find you," she said. "I figured God wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t. Like leaving a baby in a trash bin, that’s what it seemed like."

Len had to resist the urge to fall to his knees before her. "Help me, grandmother. I’m going crazy."

"Let’s go talk," she said, and taking his hand, led him away.

***

He followed her two blocks east, then took a turn down an alley into a part of the area Len didn’t know existed. There were pockets of despair everywhere, he realized, and even here, in the upscale business district of the city, the homeless and the desperate nested.

There was a small enclave at the end of the alley, between two dumpsters, where the old woman motioned for him to sit on a wooden crate. She lowered herself to another, carefully.

"Tell me about yourself, Indian Joe," she said without prelude.

"Tell you what?" He rubbed his face with his hands, trying to wipe it away, to become unrecognizable.

"Who you are, where you’ve been. Don’t worry. He won’t come right now."

He stared at her. "How can you know that? He knew you. He said things you said. How does he know you?"

She grinned. "He won’t come. Just take my word for it. And he only knows me because I can see him too, and that makes him notice me. But he doesn’t care about me. Where are you from?"

He told her, and the simple explanation turned to a condensed autobiography, concluding with his now abandoned flight back to the reservation.

"See, see," she said, nodding wisely. "Indian Joe, don’t you see?"

"I don’t see anything," he said. The smell of something dead nearby burned his nostrils. Around the other side of the nearest dumpster, a wino sang some sad love song and cried. "You said yourself, I haven’t got any eyes. But I saw him. He tried to kill me."

"He will kill you," she said, piercing him with her stare. "He’ll kill you deader’n hell, Indian Joe. Unless you make sure he don’t."

"How? I don’t even know who he is." A day ago he was having dinner at one of the finest restaurants in the city…now he sat on a crate between dumpsters with the smell of death hanging like vultures in the air, an old drunk singing and crying, and rats scurrying away from the light.

"He’s yours. You made him."

"You said that before."

"And I’m saying it again," she snapped. "Dammit, boy, how’d you get so blind? They say you can take the Indian out of the reservation, but you can’t take the reservation out of the Indian, but whoever said that didn’t know you, Indian Joe. Your uncle told you all about it. All about what happened to your folks. Just like us, but worse, I guess. How did you forget that?"

"What has that got to do with it?" he whispered. "That was the past."

"There ain’t no past. No future. No now. Indian Joe, do you think all that hate just died? Do you think it just went away somewhere because this is now? If things was like that, I’d be a snooty heiress sipping tea with some old biddies at a bridge party. Hate like that doesn’t die. It just waits. Waits until somebody like you gives it life."

"What has this got to do with him?"

The old woman shook her head, almost sadly. "Five hundred years so many white people have hated Indian folks. Five hundred years and how many millions dead? Those that don’t still hate don’t even see you. You’re invisible, you’re smoke. Smoke signals, that’s what you are. But not you. You’re different, Indian Joe, because you think you made it. You got out, and you made it. That’s why he wants you. That’s why you brought him."

"I didn’t do anything," he said. His mouth was dry as an old pecan branch. "You’re talking nonsense, grandmother. Are you trying to tell me he’s a ghost?" He laughed, honestly laughed, and the laughter reached out and drew the world, his world, an inch closer to him again. "I don’t believe in all that crap."

"No, not a ghost. He ain’t no ghost, because he never lived. And son, sometimes it doesn’t matter if you believe in something or not…if something believes in you. He’s not a ghost. He’s not even a he. Nobody sees him but you and me, Indian Joe, and the only reason I see him is because I can. I always did. I see what other people make. I was born with the eyes. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re sad. But what you made here, is him. I ain’t never seen nothing like him before. Nothing so…cruel. And he’s not going to let you go home."

"Pretending for a moment that I believe any of this, why not?"

"Because home you’re safe. He can’t get to you. Too many eyes. He couldn’t get to you because folks like your uncle wouldn’t let him. They’d see him, and they’d run him out, back to wherever you made him from. But here, in the white man’s world, you and me are helpless. We don’t fit in, we don’t belong. And he knows that. That’s why he’ll kill you before you can get on that airplane. To punish you for thinking you’re as good as a white man."

Len nearly stood, nearly walked away from her, determined to call the police. He would file a complaint, maybe buy a gun, and end all of this. But then he remembered the cowboy’s eyes, those lifeless eyes. And he remembered the answering machine.

Two calls on the identification box. But the machine answered three. It was, he knew, a mechanical impossibility. Every call was listed on the identification box, either by name or number, or by "Unknown." The box didn’t lie, it registered everything. But it had not registered the third message. Why?

Because he didn’t call me from a telephone, Len suddenly knew. He didn’t pick up a pay phone and dial my number. There was no name on the box because the call didn’t come from another phone. The call came from him and him alone.

"Grandmother," he whispered, "what am I going to do?"

She seemed to sense the change, the sudden acceptance. "I was wrong, Indian Joe. I thought if you just avoided him, he’d go away. But that kind of hate runs too deep. Do you know where that kind of hate comes from?"

He shook his head.

"From everywhere. From every little baby whose head was bashed against a rock. From every soldier who wore women’s private parts on their hats. From every scalp hung in the sun. I know your history, even if you don’t. More than that. It’s hate from every person who ever felt it and didn’t do a single bad thing because of it. The hate was still there, growing like a boil. So now…do you know how you made him?"

The answer was clear, and brutal. "Because I hate too."

She nodded, sadly, as if sharing his pain. "Yes."

"Because I turned my back on it and I hate it. I hate it. The reservation. The government food and houses. The drunks and the dreamers. The Indian Health Service and the allotments. I hate it all. But," he cocked his head at her, "why would that matter? They tried to make us like them. The priests and the missions and Carlisle school. Why would it matter, if I’m like them? Isn’t that what America wanted?"

"You can’t be one of them. Nothing is worse than an Indian thinking he’s as good as them. Except maybe a gypsy," she grinned. "The priests and missionaries, they don’t count. Hate like that doesn’t come from one or two people."

"What am I going to do?"

"Ah," she sighed. "That’s the hard part, Indian Joe. You made him from your own head because you know your hate is wrong. People make all kinds of things. I seen plenty of them in my day. Things comical, things heart-breaking, things downright ghastly. But yours is stronger, yours is more dangerous, because he’s not only your hate, he’s your guilt too. He’s here not only to kill you for thinking you’re as good as them, but because you know you did wrong. You did wrong to your mama, to your brother and uncle and all your family."

"But I’m not the only one," he protested. "I’m not the only Indian who’s made it."

"Of course not! And you’re not the only one that’s turned your back, either. But you’ve got something in your spirit, something strong, that made him. I don’t know what it is. But to stop it, to get him out of this world and back to the place he came from, you gotta beat him down. You gotta be stronger than him, stronger than all the hate. You gotta beat him down."

"I got to kill him?"

"He’s not alive, Indian Joe. Not like you and me. He’s only alive the way hate is still alive. But yeah, you gotta kill him."

"How?"

"That," she said, pulling her shawl close around her neck, "I haven’t got a clue."

A haggard, pencil-thin man in a cabbie hat, wearing a tattered Navy overcoat, appeared out of the darkness, dragging his left leg. "Mama Carmen," he whispered. "Somebody’s coming."

"Cops?" she asked, rising painfully.

"No cops," the other said. "Mama, nobody else sees."

She stopped. "Bobby, are you sure?"

He nodded.

The old woman turned to Len. "You gotta run, boy. Run like hell."

"What’s wrong?" Len was on his feet.

"Bobby can see a little. He can see some of what I can, but not as much, just shadows, like. Indian Joe, your hate is coming."

"He’s here?"

She pushed him toward the opposite end of the alley. "Go on, go!"

He took her at her word, moving fast, but he stopped and turned back. "You didn’t say what I have to do!"

She was watching the street-end of the alley. "You gotta figure it out yourself. I can’t help you anymore. He’s stronger than me. If he can come here, he’s too strong for me."

Across her shoulder, black against the light of the passing cars, Len saw him coming, long strides, overcoat flapping.

"Go now, boy!" the old woman commanded, and he ran.

They alley ended at a chain link fence which he easily surmounted, landing nimbly on the other side. He rushed to the next corner, paused behind it, peeking around the concrete.

He saw Mama Carmen and Bobby step aside. The cowboy approached them at first without acknowledgment of their presence. But he stopped, still staring ahead, then turned his head toward them and Mama Carmen reached out for Bobby’s shoulder, and Len thought she looked suddenly twice as old. She clutched her mouth, eyes wide.

But the gunslinger moved on, and Len waited until he reached the fence, waited for the final sign.

"We still have business to tend to, boy," the cowboy said, and now he didn’t look like Yul Brynner any more, Len noticed. It took him a moment to realize he was looking at the same clothes, the same eyes, but the face was now Richard Boone.

The cowboy walked through the fence. That was enough for Len. He turned on his heel and ran.

But from there the alley dead-ended. There were three doors leading to the buildings on either side, but all were locked when Len tried them. A fire escape ladder dangled at one corner, but even in the dim light, he could see the metal was rusty and the retaining bolts loose.

The cowboy came around the corner, not slowing. The gun emerged. "You think you can run, Indian Joe? You think you can hide behind computers and gypsy magic? It don’t hide your blanket ass, boy." The cowboy laughed a Richard Boone laugh but before the laugh died, the face had become Jack Palance.

Len leaped for the ladder—he felt it slip two inches from the wall under his weight, but it was his only chance. He climbed.

Glancing down, he saw the cowboy lift the revolver and take aim, never cutting back on his pace.

This is it, he thought. He’s going to shoot.

The gun fired.

A split second before, the retaining bolts securing the top of the fire escape gave up, and the entire thing collapsed top end first into the alley.

Len rode it down, and he heard the bullet whistle past his ear. The metal concoction went down, and when it hit the impact jarred through him, stunned him.

Now the cowboy stood over him as he regained his senses, and the gun was inches from his head. He stared up, into those black eyes, into Jack Palance’s face, and resigned himself to die.

"Go ahead," he said. He stared into the thing’s eyes, defying him. "Shoot. I’ve got nowhere else to run."

Towering over Len, the cowboy cocked the hammer. "You never should have left the reservation, boy. You never should have left where you belong." There was that gleeful expression on his face, again, but the face had transformed neutral once more, unfinished. And he suddenly knew the old woman was right: he had made this monster, he had concocted it from his insides, from the hate he carried deep inside his bones, given it those faces from all the pain wrapped up within. This demon never knew hell, was not raised by incantation or prophecy. This demon came in answer to the Ghost Dance, defying it, laughing at it.

Len closed his eyes, ready to die. He could only think of his mother, wondering if they would ever find him, if she would ever know what happened to her runaway son.

"Now it ends," the cowboy said.

Over his head, up the alley, he heard a low, throaty snarl.

He opened his eyes, craned his head to see, noting that the gunslinger snapped his gaze around at the same time, never taking the gun off the mark of Len’s skull.

Around the corner of the alley, centered in the narrow tract, it stood with head low, haunches poised and straining with the anticipated leap. Brown like the earth but white on the underside, the panther’s eyes were like amber on fire.

At once, he thought of Uncle Alex: When it’s time, when you’re ready to go to the next world, your panther will come for you.

He was panther clan, he knew. And the panther always came for its Indians when it was time for them to die. Death was so inevitable now he gave up fearing it, collapsed into its arms with something like relief.

The panther shot into motion: it moved so fast, Len thought he could see through it at times, and it moved towards him, towards the cowboy, and he knew that when the hammer of the revolver fell the bullet would smash through his skull, wiping out the spark of life within him, and the panther would run through him, snagging his spirit with its claws and carry it to whatever place, whatever hell, Indians who hated Indians were doomed.

Midway to him, the panther’s powerful rear legs sprang. The cat leaped airborne, and stuck the cowboy in his massive chest.

Both went down, tumbling. Len scrambled like a crab against the wall.

The cowboy got his gun up under the panther and emptied it. Len heard the bullets strike the wall above him, but the big cat was unmarred. Yet it didn’t go for the kill, didn’t sink its teeth into that tree trunk neck. It held the cowboy down, snarling and baring teeth.

Len pushed himself up the wall, standing uncertainly. He wanted to run again, but knew he had to witness the end of this. Had to know if there was an end.

The cowboy, hat still in place, looked deep into the big cat’s eyes, and the amber fire at last reflected in the blackness of his own eyes, a light they could not consume.

Then the cat opened its mouth.

The cowboy’s head elongated, like a drip from a faucet, and flowed into the cat’s throat. There were no screams of fear or agony, the cowboy just flowed. A warped elastic specter, the rest of him followed, until at the last the toes of the boots were all that remained and the panther, with a great gulp, swallowed those as well.

The panther threw back its head and roared, and as the roar dwindled, subsided, the beast became more insubstantial, fading. But just before it was gone, it turned its gaze on Len, and though there were no words that he could hear, words nonetheless blasted like drums through his mind:

He was barely aware of voices, calling him, urging him. When he looked, it was Mama Carmen and Bobby on the other side of the fence.

The old woman grinned at him, nodding her head vigorously, her fingers through the chain link. "I’ll be damned, Indian Joe," she said. "I’ll be damned!"

"It’s gone," Len said, more to himself. "He’s gone."

"He’s gone," Mama Carmen agreed. "I’ll be hot-damned if he ain’t."

"Did you see it?" he asked her, still shaken, trying to focus on her face. "Did you see it happen?"

But Mama Carmen shook her head. "I saw it go, boy. That’s all. I saw it scooped up like a noodle going into a kid’s mouth. Into thin air!"

"It was—" he started, but she put a finger over his mouth.

"Shhh," she said. "If I didn’t see, I wasn’t meant to."

He wanted to protest, wanted to say it, but he knew she was right. The panther, the resolution, was not hers, anymore than the cowboy was. Less hers than the cowboy was. There was no jealousy, no envy, not even a hint of regret. She knew what was hers and what was not.

"It said something," Len said, standing. "It said something right before—right before it was gone. Something in our language."

"I didn’t hear nothing," Mama Carmen said. "It was for you."

He knew that, too, was right. He smiled at her. "Thank you."

She shrugged. "I didn’t do nothing."

"Thank you," he insisted sternly.

The old woman smiled, almost sweetly, almost blushing. "You’re welcome, Indian Joe."

"My name’s Len, Mama Carmen."

"Whatcha going to do now, then, Len?"

He looked around, stared for a moment at the spot where the cowboy had last been, where the panther had faded away. The space there seemed to sparkle, as if silverdust were in the air.

"Home," he said. "I’m going home."

He thanked her. She and Bobby strolled back up the alley, but the fence blocked Len’s way again. He sighed, wishing he didn’t have to scale the chain link again, he was tired and sore. He rested a moment, there in the darkness, there in the vision.

When he felt strong enough, he climbed over the fence, walked through the alley to the street. The cars passed and the streetlights blinked. Overhead, clouds moved across the sky and he could smell the rain coming, noticing for the first time that rain smelled the same everywhere. Across the concrete, past the electric poles and the steel horizon and the many miles after that, lay home.

Spinning into motion, he hailed a cab, urged the driver to get him to the airport as quickly as possible. He took out his cell phone and called Arthur, received assurance that his mother’s condition had not changed, and that he would be there to pick Len up at the new time.

On the way to the rest of his life, he made a promise to himself. The same promise the panther had somehow made to him in the alley but which he had understood so clearly.

He would make a new life for himself. It would contain the same small apartment, the same office, it would have Cynthia and Bert Graffino and all the others in it; it would be full of traffic jams and harried, bustling crowds. But it would also be full of family, brother and mother, uncles and aunts, walking beside or in front of him, not behind. Nothing would change, everything would change.

He would make what would be his, but he would make no more hate. Hate like that doesn’t die, a spectral gypsy woman whispered in his memory. It just waits. Waits until somebody like you gives it life.

Across the sky, letting the thundering silver bird take him home, Len looked out the window at black clouds dropping rain across the earth, and he smiled. The Indian face in the window glass smiled back.