Authors: Parris Afton Bonds
At last the dismissal bell rang. She lined the children up in front of the classroom door and, as they left the room, handed each the stocking she had made. Most of them shyly accepted the gift and exited. Julie Begay pulled at Abbie’s dress until Abbie knelt and then threw dimpled arms about Abbie’s neck in a tight little hug.
Delbert bestowed a small smile that gave Abbie hope that perhaps she was succeeding at Kaibeto. Robert jammed his stocking in his jean’s pocket and stalked past her. Outside the building parents waited eagerly for their children with burros, buckboards and battered pickups. For some parents this would be the first time in four months they would see their children.
Abbie followed the children out to the steps to see them off, waving at one child, blowing a good-bye kiss to another. She bid good-bye to all except Robert. The boy stood on the steps, his eyes slowly sweeping the grounds. One by one the children went off with their parents until only he was left. Abbie stood behind him, uncertain what to say. Would he understand her anyway?
Thirty minutes passed, yet Robert never moved from his position. The sun was setting, the air growing colder. Still he did not move. She hurt for him. His little face was set as hard as those carved at Mt. Rusnmore. She knew that all the tears he choked back were being shed inside his heart. Soon darkness would bring its blanket, and he would have to return to the dormitory with the few other children who had no homes to go to.
What a sap you are, Abbie Dennis.
She touched his shoulder. “Robert, you’re going to spend the Christmas holidays with me.”
She wasn’t particularly delighted with her idea, but she just couldn’t leave him to spend the holidays alone. Besides, he was the solution to her own problem, albeit a temporary one. Cody couldn’t very well demand anything from her when Robert was staying with her. Maybe by the time the Christmas holidays were over her longing for Cody would subside; maybe time would dull his want of her.
The boy remained staring off into the distance where Navajo Mountain dominated the horizon. She touched his arm again. “Robert, come with me.”
He looked at her then, and all his resentment flared in his eyes before his lids dropped. Maybe she didn’t understand his language, but his resentment—that she understood. He had never wanted to come to the boarding school. It was the
bil'langali’,
the Anglos, who had forced him to leave his father.
Gently she took his wrist and tugged him down the steps, but at the bottom he jerked away. “Now listen, Robert Tsinnijinnie, I have—”
He jutted his head forward and spat, this time aiming—quite successfully—for her face.
She gasped. Incredulity followed by rage swept over her. Her hands balled into fists. The boy tensed, preparing for the coming retaliation.
She smiled, a formidable smile that had often made the twins wince. What she did next was an outrageous thing to do, but the situation demanded something outrageous—so she simply picked up Robert’s thrown gauntlet . . . and spat back at him. Shock almost toppled the boy. It was wholly unexpected for a woman to do what she had just done.
Before he could gather his wits about him, she grabbed him by his ear—as she had once promised she would do—and pulled him along beside her. They passed two older students, both girls, who giggled behind their hands. A dull rose tinted Robert’s cheeks, but she knew he wouldn’t fight her. It would be too degrading for a warrior to fight with a woman!
This time he offered no resistance when she led him over to the dormitory. She knew without being told that it was only a matter of time before he would try to run away again, but this time she doubted he would run to Cody. She sighed as she watched Dalah pack his clothes in a paper sack. She would just have to keep a close eye on the boy.
That evening Robert stood at her apartment window, his hands jammed in his pockets while she fried chicken. Some Christmas, she thought. Neither of them could converse with the other. He resented being there, and she—she had to smile wryly at her predicament—she, who wanted no commitments, had saddled herself with this little savage for the duration of the holidays. She shouldn’t have been so impulsive. She had already spent a lifetime paying for her impulsive marriage. Would she never learn?
She forked the last piece of chicken from the frying pan, wondering just how she was going to entertain the child. Hiking? One could only hike so much. Camp-outs? Too chilly now. Besides, he would have to build the fire, and she would bet he would be just stubborn enough to sit there until their faces turned blue.
The front door suddenly opened. Robert was hitting the road already! “Damn!” she muttered and dropped the fork, heading for the living room at a run. She came up short to find Cody standing in the doorway, his hand resting on Robert’s shoulder.
Slowly, purposefully, Cody shut the door behind him.
* * * * *
Cody saw the fear, the same mistrust that clouded Robert’s eyes at times, leap into hers. He had been foolish, thinking he could demand what had to be freely given. He had spent the four weeks worrying that, like Robert, she too would run, that the holidays would draw her back to her family. He had even asked Orville what he knew of her holiday plans, and that had been a stupid thing to do, because beneath that mop of a mustache the old man’s mouth had grinned like that of a kid who had just been let in on a secret.
Even when Orville had confirmed that Abbie would be staying at Kaibeto during Christmas, Cody had known no way out of his dilemma. He couldn’t just throw her over his shoulder and ride off as his ancestors had done when they had robbed other camps for brides.
But he wasn’t about to walk away without Abbie. He glanced at Robert, who had turned indifferently back to the window. “I see that another man has already claimed you.”
She wiped her hands nervously on her apron. “It seems that Robert and I are stuck with each other. His father . . . he didn’t come, Cody.” She spread her hands. “And there didn’t seem to be anything else to do but invite Robert home for the holidays.”
Home for the holidays!
The idea came to him like a bolt of welcome lightning. It would be a surprise for his father and Deborah, but it would resolve the dilemma he faced with Abbie. He crossed the room toward her. Before she could retreat from him, his hands encircled her waist to untie the apron. “Get your things, Abbie. You and Robert are coming with me.”
She clutched at the apron and the fear he had hoped to dispel still lurked in her eyes. “Cody . . . I can’t. I can’t just up and leave and—”
“You assumed responsibility for Robert, and the boy deserves to celebrate Christmas with his kind, with his people. We’re going to New Mexico, to spend Christmas with my parents. Their house—Cambria—sits in the midst of a Navajo rancheria.”
She looked toward the boy, and Cody could see that she was vacillating. He wouldn’t give her a chance to refuse. “Abbie, my father still sits on the Navajo Tribal Council. If you don’t come with me, I’ll see to it that pressure is brought to bear on the BIA to question your competency as a teacher.”
Her eyes flashed. “You never wanted me here to begin with, so why—”
“But I want
you.
Are you coming?”
As much as he tried, Robert couldn’t hide his
excitement behind his usual impassive facade. The boy’s inky eyes glowed like rekindled coals as he stared out the window of Cody’s private plane, a Cherokee 235. The four-seater airplane winged its way through the night toward the seventy-six thousand acres that were Cambria.
“All of that is owned by one family?” Abbie asked incredulously.
“At one time Cambria, which belonged to my great-grandmother, was the largest land grant in the United States. Over five million acres.” Cody kept his eyes on the instrument panel. “Over the generations portions have been sold off because they were too costly tax-wise. It’s still too much for my father to oversee at his age.”
Far below passed the pinpoints of lights of Gallop, then Albuquerque; off to the left was Santa Fe. At last they reached the flare-lit dirt strip of Cambria’s airport. Cody deftly pulled the yoke back until the stall-light flashed, then eased the plane smoothly onto the runway. Abbie exhaled the breath she had held since they took off from Pulliam Airport at Flagstaff. Flying in a commercial aircraft hadn’t ever bothered her, but flying in Cody’s private plane had. And the sensually charged air between them was only intensified by the Cherokee’s small cabin
When he extended his hand to help her step down from the wing, her legs were trembling so much that she thought her knees would buckle. They did. She collapsed within the warmth of his arms as the chilly December wind whirled about them. “I’m taking the bus back,” she muttered against his chest.
“Buses aren’t any safer and not nearly as fast.”
“I feel like going on my knees and kissing the ground.”
He tilted her chin up. “How about kissing me instead, Abbie?”
“You promised tonight that—”
“—if you came with me to Cambria, I wouldn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to,” he finished, his lips tickling the hollow just below her ear. “But that doesn’t exclude persuasive tactics, does it?”
She nodded toward Robert, who stood before them, holding his sack of clothes. He seemed to look right through them. Cody sighed. “Your watchdog.” He placed his hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Listen, son, we Navajo have got to stick together. It’s the two of us against all of her.”
The blast of a car’s horn interrupted Cody’s council of war. Taking the two suitcases, he steered her and Robert toward the four-wheel Blazer that had just driven up. A slender woman wrapped in a white wool coat got out and hugged Cody to her. The wind swirled her sophisticated short-styled hair so that the silver strands that intermingled with the brown seemed to have a life of their own. She stepped back from him, and Abbie saw by the car’s lights that the attractive woman was much older than Cody, maybe in her sixties. But her high-planed cheekbones stretched her skin firmly. The woman had to be the stepmother he had mentioned during the plane ride. And his mother?
“Cody,” Deborah said warmly, “it’s been too long.” She turned to Abbie. “And you must be the schoolteacher he told me about on the phone tonight.” She took Abbie’s hand, and her dark, tilted eyes misted. “We’re deeply grateful to you.”
“But I did nothing,” Abbie said, restraining the impulse to add that she hadn’t even wanted to come.
“You’re the reason our son came home. That’s enough.”
“Deborah,” Cody admonished affectionately, “it’s cold. Please get in the car.”
Behind the wheel sat a man whose thick hair was iron gray. The eyes he turned on Abbie were as dark brown as his corduroy hunting jacket— and as warm. “It’s a pleasure to have you as our guest, Mrs. Dennis.”
His voice held the same deep resonance as Cody’s, and his features were stamped with the same virile power, though he must have been at least in his seventies.
Cody and Abbie sat in the back seat, and Deborah wedged Robert between her and her husband. When the older woman wasn’t filling Cody in on Cambria’s operations or telling Abbie some of Cambria’s history, she was talking to Robert with the low intonations of the Navajo language that continued to baffle Abbie. Sometimes the boy would nod in response to Deborah’s questions, but he never spoke. Yet, Abbie noticed that the few times Chase Strawhand addressed him, the boy replied—tersely but respectfully.
In the back seat Cody stretched out his long legs diagonally. His fingers absently stroked Abbie’s nape where the clasp bound her hair while he chatted with his parents. At his touch a pleasant shiver raced up her spine. She felt like a dormant seed that would sprout to life when the conditions were just right. He had the power to make her completely aware of herself as a woman, and that was the problem. She didn’t know which she dreaded more, which would kill her first: her sickness or his cure.
It was much later by the time they crossed the bend in the Pecos and drove up before the main house. “Cambria’s castle,” Cody said wryly.
All the house lights seemed to blaze against the night and the isolation, illuminating the heavy earthen wall exterior with its spiraling turrets, dormer windows and wide balustraded verandas. Looking out the Blazer’s window, Abbie could sense a strength about the house that had nothing to do with its solid structure. Rather, it possessed a strength of character, like Cody and Chase and Deborah.
Abbie followed Deborah up the wide staircase that was banked with polished mahogany railings. Behind her Cody muttered, “Did I ever tell you what a delightful ass you have, Abbie?”
She flashed him a withering look and glanced at Robert, relieved that the boy didn’t fully understand English. But how could he miss the lustful gleam in Cody’s eyes?
Deborah turned into a wing of the house that was flanked with doorways. “I’m putting Robert in the room connecting with yours, Abbie,” she said, with a sly twinkle in her dark eyes for her stepson.
Cody set Abbie’s suitcase down next to the rosewood dresser. His gaze actually seemed to caress Abbie as they stood before the others. “I think Abbie knows that a mere bedroom door wouldn’t stop me, Deborah.”