Wind Song (23 page)

“It’s already tomorrow,” she said, snuggling closer to the warmth of his body. “And I don’t hurt.”

Her fingers followed the whorls of crisp hair that matted his nipples and abdomen, and his hand caught hers, halting her finger’s play. “Shall we try another position?” he teased, his tongue stroking each fingertip.

“Not yet,” she laughed. “You’ve weakened my whole body with your lovemaking.”

In the dark he lit a cigarette. She lay next to him, watching its glow in the mirror above them. She found no shame in the reflected beauty of their naked bodies; rather, she gloried in the sight. She had come a long way in the space of only a few months.

“I love the smell of your cigarette,” she murmured against the flesh of his chest. “It affects me like fresh coffee in the morning.”

And she loved him. But did he love her.  Or just want her for now?  The image of him ruffling Robert’s hair, covering Miss Halliburton’s head with his bandana, laughing at her from across the flame in the firepit—these images superimposed themselves over the two entwined above her.

“Abbie?”

“Hmmmm?
^-
’

“What happens now?”

Her leg, scissored between his thighs, shifted and stirred. Her gaze met his in the mirror overhead, but in the haze of smoke she couldn’t read his eyes. “We go back to Kaibeto.”

“You know that’s not what I’m asking.”

She steeled herself. “Then tell me.”

“Your muscles are tensing beneath my hand,” he said, massaging the fleshy area of her arm, “which tells me that I don’t have to explain myself.”

“Are you asking if I’ll marry you?”

* * * * * *

He blew a swirl of smoke. Marriage was what he had intended since that first time in the mill house; no, perhaps he had wanted it all along, marriage to this one irresistible, exquisite woman. He needed her warmth and love to make him whole, to blot out the emptiness that was his life without her. He loved her wildly. And that love made him feel terribly vulnerable, a feeling he had not allowed himself since childhood. So he said nothing of that love. Instead, he said, “Of course.  I don’t want our child born a bastard.”

“Oh. May I have a cigarette, please?”

He reached for the pack and shook a cigarette out. Leaning over her, he placed it between her lips and touched his cigarette to hers. Past the glow, her eyes locked with his.

“I can’t.” She rushed on. “I’ve explained this before, Cody. Please, please try to understand me.”

He ground out the cigarette in the ceramic ashtray on the nightstand. “I understand that you’re afraid of making commitments.”

The cigarette left a bad taste in her mouth. She sat up and stubbed hers out, too, in the ashtray next to her. Her hand was trembling. “I’m not afraid of making commitments,” she said in the monotonous voice of a tour guide. “I just don’t
want
to make a commitment. There’s a difference. Is that so hard to understand?”

He uncoiled himself and rolled to a sitting position, grasping her upper arms to push her prone on the bed again. His hands manacled her there. “I think I do understand.” She shivered at the brutal tone in his voice. “You don’t have the fortitude it would take to live out the rest of your life in anything less than a mansion, do you?”

“That’s not so.” He watched as she struggled to summon some further kind of defense. “It’s just that a half-breed child deserves better than to end his life hanging himself from some showerhead.”

His hands tightened on her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh. “You selfish bitch,” he grated. He shoved himself away from her and sat looking at her, using his Indian’s inscrutable gaze as his own defense. “Why don’t you just destroy our child? It would make everything easier for you.”

She turned her head away. Tears clouded her eyes. “I—I couldn’t do that ... I wouldn’t do that.”

In one smooth movement he rose from the bed. He crossed to the window, jerking the plush velvet-lined drapes apart. The city’s bright neon lights lit up the night sky like sunlight. Pressing his forehead and palms against the glass, he kept his back to her. He could feel the muscles in his back flickering like a bull’s beneath a cattle prod. He was half-tempted to smash a fist through the window. When he spoke his voice was hoarse with contempt.

“I was right from the start. I knew it that first day when I touched your lily-white palms and saw your mannequin’s smile. You’re nothing but an empty shell, lady.”

“Take a good look at your reflection in the window, Cody Strawhand,” she cried. “You’re afraid to face life . . . real life. And you won’t find life hiding out at Kaibeto! You’re as much of an empty shell as you call me!”

When he made no reply, he heard her sprang from the bed to pound her fists ineffectually on the broad sweep of his back. “Do you think I want to live like some squaw in a hogan with you?” she lashed out.

He whirled and grabbed her wrists. “What makes you think you have the guts and grit to?” He shoved her away from him. “The Indian squaw you talk about is more of a woman than you could ever hope to be.”

Chapter 11

D
orothy Goldman poked her head through
the classroom doorway. Abbie halted in mid-sentence and looked up. “It’s Miss Halliburton,” the old woman said. “She wants to see you in her office.”

Abbie stilled the uneasy tightening in her lungs. It was probably nothing. Just because she had spent a miserable Easter vacation, just because the weather had turned worse with snow threatening—incredible for the first week of April —just because Robert was still sulking at the failure of his father to come at Easter—all that didn’t necessarily mean that the disastrous trend would continue.

Yet she held little hope that things were going to get any better. The stormy scene with Cody three days earlier had left a bad taste in her mouth and a worse pain in her heart. Why did loving someone have to be so painful and difficult? She had returned to Flagstaff alone, as was getting to be her habit. The scene with Cody had made her more determined than ever to prove— not only to herself but to him also—that she was capable of being a good teacher, that there was more to her than an empty shell.

She dismissed the class for recess in the gym, since the weather was so wretched, and walked with Dorothy down the hall to the principal’s office. Dorothy chattered nervously about her retirement, which was coming up in May. “Only seven more weeks, then I don’t have to answer to the Dragon Lady or anyone else. I can’t imagine
...”

Abbie couldn’t imagine what she herself would do if she lost her job at Kaibeto. Teaching jobs were scarce, and especially for a teacher who was also an unwed mother. A mother at thirty-seven . . . impossible. But she wanted to be with the child. The Indian boarding school system would allow her to keep the child in the compound with her. And she would be surrounded by the Indian women, who were famed for their love of children. The BIA even paid somewhat better than the average school system.

There were many reasons for retaining her job with the BIA school beyond the necessity to prove Cody wrong. Dear God, don’t let Miss Halliburton find some small infraction to use against me now, she prayed.

At the office counter, Dorothy deserted her. Abbie walked on past to the principal’s door and knocked. In that one moment the awful suspicion occurred that perhaps Cody had* arranged, through his father, to put pressure on the BIA to have her fired. Would he really do such a thing? Hadn’t he told her he could be relentless? Hadn’t she experienced a sample of his relentlessness in Las Vegas? Yet she knew that this time he was finished with her.

Her knees began to wobble, as if they were held together with sponge rather than cartilage. At Miss Halliburton’s bidding, she forced herself to open the door. “Do come in,” the woman snapped impatiently.

Abbie complied, taking a seat opposite the letter-covered desk. Miss Halliburton held an open folder before her. She didn’t lift her gaze but continued to read. Abbie had the satisfaction of noting that the woman’s wig was slightly askew. A harried morning?

That doesn’t bode well for me, Abbie thought with a sinking heart.

At last Miss Halliburton looked up. “Well! It seems that you have gone and done it again.” Abbie’s heart thudded and fell. “Done what?”

“Attracted the attention of the BIA in Gallop.”

Abbie’s heart ceased its thudding altogether. “What did I do this time?” she managed to ask.

The principal’s dun gray eyes narrowed, her mouth pinched until the lips were invisible. “The beads you had the children make and sell
...”

“
Yes?
”
Oh, please just get this torturous waiting over with.

Miss Halliburton jabbed a gnarled finger at a place on the file folder. “The BIA is upset that you did not file for a vendor’s license, a commercial tax number.”

Oh, dear! She had forgotten to put in a request through the BIA. And she had assured Miss Halliburton that she had taken care of everything. “Yes?”

The principal slapped the folder closed. “I’m afraid that you are officially on probation, Mrs. Dennis. I have to tell you that the BIA has been debating whether to renew the fall portion of your contract.”

Abbie’s eyes closed. She felt so weak that she didn’t know if she would have the strength even to open her lids again.

“Fortunately, I, uh, convinced them to offer you a position at the boarding school at Ganado. I felt that perhaps you might have fewer problems at a different school. Your room and board here will, of course, be paid through August.”

It could be worse. Abbie opened her eyes. She might as well get the worst over with now. “I’m expecting a baby in August, Miss Halliburton.”

“Well?”

Abbie blinked. “You heard what I said?”

“What do you expect—congratulations?” Miss Halliburton tossed the folder into a wire basket. A genuine smile cracked her principal’s mask. “Women have babies all the time. Treat it just like a bad cold, and I’m sure you’ll come through just fine. Now out! I’ve got work to do.”

Like the crystalline snowflakes that continued to blanket the red earth, Abbie drifted back to her empty classroom in a state of relief. Not only had she retained her teacher’s position, thanks to Miss Halliburton’s intervention, but she would be working at a boarding school where she would not have to worry about running into Cody.

Her relief was slightly diluted when Becky rushed breathlessly to the door. “In the gym—I turned around—and he was gone!”

Abbie dropped the paper she was grading. “What? Who?”

The frazzled Becky ran a hand through her stringy hair. “At recess. Robert. He’s gone.” Robert. Of course. “You’ll just have to look for him, Becky.”

“What if Dragon Lady finds out?” she wailed. “He disappeared when I was supposed to be watching him.”

Abbie shrugged. Robert wasn’t her responsibility this time. Undoubedly the child detested her as much as she did him. Besides, in a few weeks she would never have to wipe the spittle from her face again. “Just brazen it out when she calls you on the carpet.”

Becky groaned. “I don’t even know where to start looking.”

“Try the trading post or the old mission.” Let Becky deal with Cody and Robert this time.

“I don’t know where it is,” she whined. “And how would I get there? My car’s battery is as cold as an ice cube. I can’t walk in this weather!”

Abbie swore beneath her breath. “All right, I’ll go for Robert. I’ll use the Jeep. Besides, I think I know where he is. Cover for me.”

She was wrong. She realized it immediately when she went to the shed to get the Jeep—and found both the wagon and the burros missing. Robert had never used the wagon to go to Cody’s. Pulling her suede jacket tighter about her, she went to the corral gates. There, out of the protective lee of the shed, the wind blustered around her. Pushing her hair from her face, she searched the snow before her. Wagon tracks. Her gaze followed the path the wagon wheels had rutted. The tracks ran north. Her gaze lifted. Dominating the northern horizon, Navajo Mountain loomed—and beckoned.

The old Jeep demanded that she pump its pedal several times before its engine decided to deliver a coughing wheeze and kick in. Abbie whispered a prayer and shifted into reverse. It shot out of the shed backward and charged down one of the corral’s mesquite posts. Her heart sickened at the crack of the wood, but she jammed the gears back into first and bolted on past the shed and out of the school grounds.

The snowflakes she had thought so marvelous were now headache number one-hundred-and- five. They were falling faster and threatened to soon obliterate the tracks. How long a start had Robert gotten on her? Half an hour? The tracks angled off into one of the canyon mazes that she and the children had taken on the seed-gathering outing. When the shoulder of the road began to drop away precipitously, she kept her gaze trained to the ground immediately ahead of the Jeep.

She began muttering to herself to keep up her courage. Why couldn’t the Jeep have been provided with a canvas top? It was getting killing ly cold! She really ought to turn back and notify the principal or the BIA or the tribal police or the highway patrol. Or the president of the United States.