Whitehorse (3 page)
"Everyone's got the right to feel a little sorry for themselves now and then, especially at five-thirty in the morning. Go to bed, Dr. Starr."
"Right. Bed."
She moved down the short hallway to the closed bedroom door. Gently, she turned the knob and allowed the door to creak open just enough that she could see the sleeping form on the railed bed. Her gaze traveled the room, which was lit by a night-light: a plastic clown with a beam of light shining through its open smiling mouth. In the far corner sat the shadowed hulk of a child's wheelchair. From the ceiling hung a crystal wind chime that would reflect the morning sun into a hundred splashes of light on the wall by the boy's head.
Shamika moved up behind her. "You know you can't go in there. Too risky with that fever."
"I know. I just needed to see him."
"Val sang 'Old MacDonald' nearly all the way through yesterday."
"Not bad for a seven-year-old, huh?"
"Not bad for a seven-year-old with cerebral palsy and light mental retardation," Shamika said gently, and hugged her. Then she turned Leah down the hallway and nudged her toward the bedroom.
Shamika had laid clean pajamas out on the bed. The covers were turned back, revealing flowered flannel sheets. Shamika sat the medicine on the bedside table before drawing the curtains closed over the window.
"No," Leah said, dropping onto the bed. "Leave them open. I like to watch the sun come up."
"You want me to draw you a bath?"
"I'm too tired to bathe."
Shamika left the room, closing the door behind her.
It took all of Leah's effort to peel out of her damp jeans, socks, bra, and sweatshirt. Her toes were wrinkled as raisins from standing in water for the last few hours. She put on clean socks, dragged her pajamas on and propped herself up against the pillows, sipped the hot medicine beverage that tasted like apple cider, and waited for the first rays of sunlight to spill in streams through her window overlooking the mountains. The morning sun always turned the cracked, curling, ochre-colored linoleum on the floor into a golden carpet.
Her eyelids growing heavy, she sank back into the pillows and reached for the television remote, hit the power button, and watched the bright, friendly faces of the KRXR Channel 10 news team beam out at her. With neutral expressions and voices, they related the stories of area flooding, robberies, falling interest rates, and an Asian stock market that had crashed for the second time in as many months.
She drifted.
The horse came out of nowhere, ghostly against the rain-drenched darkness, its eyes wild with terror as it skidded into the pool of light in front of her truck. She wrenched the steering wheel hard to the right, sending the truck spinning round and round, closer and closer to the churning, water-swollen ditch. Frantically, she stomped at the brakes, only to spin faster, until the world blurred into an image of Johnny Whitehorse glaring at her icily from beneath the brim of his hat.
Her eyes flew open and fixed on the television screen.
Dolores Rainwater, one of the news anchors, spoke to her audience with the slightest touch of amusement in her voice as a replay of the previous night's news was displayed behind her.
Johnny Whitehorse stood on the capitol steps, surrounded by angry Native Americans, all carrying signs and banners. They chanted in unison, "We want our money back!" to a nonplussed bureaucrat who stood toe to toe with Johnny, as rigorously righteous as the picketers were furious.
"Fed up of waiting for reform, the Native American Rights Fund, spearheaded by Johnny Whitehorse, has filed the largest class-action lawsuit in history against the federal government on behalf of three hundred thousand Indians who have accounts held in trust by the bureau. As we reported some weeks ago, thousands of American Indians have asserted that their money is being mismanaged, even lost, by a Bureau of Indian Affairs trust system that never had an accounts receivable list or a complete audit and has not worked properly since Andrew Jackson was president. The lawsuit seeks a court order directing that the bureau's so-called Individual Indian Money trust account system be fixed. Restitution to those who claimed their savings have mysteriously disappeared could run into the billions of dollars.
"The problems of the
New Mexico
tribes are as diversified as the state itself. Just last week Mr. Whitehorse again confronted Senator Carl Foster regarding the Senator's role in the bankruptcy of the Apache Casino and Resort development. Whitehorse contends that there is more behind the reversal of the senator's stand against reservation gambling compacts than his sudden desire to accommodate the New Mexico tribes, going so far as to insinuate publicly that there might be more to the senator's relationship with Formation Media, the financier of the casino development, than meets the eye. Senator Foster called
Whitehorse
's statement a ridiculous accusation bordering on slander, and that Mr. Whitehorse's comments are attributable to his desire to run for Senator Foster's seat in the next election. When we asked Mr. Whitehorse for his response to Senator Foster's remark, he replied: 'No comment.' This is Dolores Rainwater for Channel 10 News."
TWO
J
ohnny Whitehorse always slept with his sunglasses on. They blocked the morning sun from his eyes, extending the night a few more precious hours. He liked the dark, the moon, the stars. The blackness brought serenity and soothed the rawness in his chest. The blackness felt cool. It seeped through his pores and put out the fires of his discontent.
He enjoyed sitting atop
White
Tail
Peak
at
and watching meteorites streak across the endless sky. The Apache believed that each flash of light depicted a new soul in the spirit world. Occasionally, if he listened hard, he could detect the sound of his ancestors singing, their chants whipping through the wind-twisted cedars that clung with exposed, gnarled roots to the sides of the mountain. Sometimes he would even chant with them.
He'd gone to White Tail the previous night despite the lousy weather, hoping to assuage the frustration of that day's meeting with the deputy solicitor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He'd been returning home when happening upon the unfortunate accident with his mare and Leah Foster. Leah Starr.
Dr.
Leah Starr,
D.V.M.
She would always be Leah Foster to him. The boss's daughter, voted most beautiful at Ruidoso High. Who graduated first in her class. Untouchable. Too good for the likes of an Apache horse trainer's son. Or so Senator Foster had thought. Leah, for a while anyway, had thought differently.
Lying on his back in bed, Johnny stared at the ceiling.
There was great irony in the fact that he now owned what once had been Leah's home. He'd paid a cool two point five million
cash
for the house and eight hundred acres. At the time, Senator Foster had had no idea who was purchasing his farm, and probably would not have cared, not as long as he walked away with enough funds to help finance his reelection to the senate. But he
had
cared when learning the purchaser was Johnny Whitehorse—the one man who had every intention of making certain Foster would
not
be reelected in the upcoming senatorial race. Who had every intention of proving that Foster was, in some way, involved with the development company that had virtually robbed the
New Mexico
tribes of their future.
The very bedroom he lay in now had belonged to Senator Foster and his wife, Jane, who had died in 1996 of breast cancer. Leah had slept down the hall in a room facing the stables so the first thing she saw each morning was the horses being worked. More than once he had climbed the rose trellis on the outside wall and sneaked through her window. They had rolled together for hours, arms and legs entwined, bodies feverish with the sort of desire and urgency that came with too many hormones and too little restraint.
He wondered if she still burned with the same sort of passion. He wondered about her husband—the one who had swept her off her feet during her sophomore year at college—who had relocated her to Texas, where she attended A&M University and vet school, during which time she had a child. A son. Born three months early. Somehow the struggling infant had become infected with meningitis while in intensive care, destroying a portion of his brain. Leah's husband had eventually buckled under the pressure of caring for a disabled child and divorced her.
Jerk.
The body beside him shifted, drawing his thoughts back to the present. He glanced at the clock. Nearly twelve. He should have trucked over to Leah's hours ago to check on his mare. So why hadn't he? It was not like him to show such apathy toward one of his horses. What was he avoiding?
"Good morning." The warm, moist words whispered against his ear.
"Good afternoon," he replied, grinning.
The woman raised her head and sleepily focused on the clock. She was incredibly beautiful, with eyes shaped like almonds and as dark as espresso. Her chin length hair was glossy black, and she had cheekbones that would make Cindy Crawford envious. As always, she looked poutingly sensual upon awakening. If he kissed her now he would not leave the bed for another hour.
Dolores Rainwater slid her leg over Johnny's hip and nestled against him. Carefully, she removed the glasses from his eyes and tossed them toward the end of the bed. "Did you catch the broadcast this morning? I did a great piece on your meeting with the bureau. I also hinted of your interest in running for office. We were flooded with calls. All women, of course. They want to know how they can volunteer to work on your campaign."
"Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we?"
"Do you still deny you don't want a piece of Senator Foster?"
"Just because I'd like to see that son-of-a-bitch boil in oil doesn't necessarily mean I want his office."
"You're a natural for it."
"I'm a Mescalero Apache. Do you think the white populace is going to put me in a position of power?"
"If a movie star can become president, and a rock singer can become a congressman, a Native American can become a senator." She smiled. "I can see it now. Instead of posters of Uncle Sam declaring 'Vote for
Whitehorse
,' there will be gigantic images of you, wearing nothing but a loincloth."
Johnny rolled from the bed.
Dolores propped up on one elbow and watched as he grabbed up the damp jeans he had worn the night before and began pulling them up his legs. "Did I say something to offend you?" she asked.