Wind Song (5 page)

She escaped out into the sunlight with the boy, escaped the sensual enthrallment that had held her Cody Strawhand’s captive.

But Robert had no intentions of letting her “walk in beauty.” When the two of them reached the bridge, the boy would not budge. She wasn’t particularly happy about crossing the bridge either, but for a different reason. She faced him. “I’m thirty-seven and you’re eleven,” she said, doubting if he understood her, “and I’m not going to let a child win this battle.” She pointed in the direction of the school. “Now march.”

Robert’s black eyes glared at her; then suddenly he spit at her feet. Shocked, Abbie looked down at the spittle that formed a minute puddle in the sand. In a flash of a second the sand absorbed it. She looked up at the boy. His face was as blank as a blackboard. Clenching her fists, she controlled her desire to punch the brat.in his shoulder. “You little beast,” she said, smiling.

He blinked, unable to hide his wariness. Her hand shot out to grab his ear in a secure hold. So much for the patience Cody had advised using with the boy. The wrestling hold had served her well when dealing with Jason and Justin. She jerked upward and pulled him along with her across the bridge. He tried to dig in his feet and pull away, but she only squeezed tighter. Once she reached the other side of the bridge, she let go.

“Every time you run away, I’ll come and get you,” she warned. “And the other children will laugh at you for being pulled along like a sheep by the horns.”

She didn’t know if he understood the words, but the flicker in his eyes at her next words betrayed his comprehension of the idea, at least. “Walk in beauty, Robert Tsinnijinnie,” she snapped and, turning on her heel, left

Chapter 3

A
bbie hesitated over the list. Perfume wasn’t
among the basic personal articles printed out on the Teacher’s Order Form. Following the grocery heading with its itemized canned goods, meats and dairy products, there came the “personal articles”—toothpaste, hair spray, deodorant. But no listing for perfume. And she had used the last of her expensive stock for the rewards.

She smiled, thinking how well the inducement to learn English words was working out. The children were intrigued with the fragrant spray. And Leo Her Many Horses, who most enjoyed smelling the delightful odor that strangely drifted from the glass bottle, had already mastered so many of the elementary words that she thought he might soon be ready to try a reading primer.

Boldly she penned in the name of an inexpensive brand of perfume—all that she could afford now. She only hoped that it could be purchased in the Tuba City drugstore, though she doubted that any store in the small Navajo town carried luxury items like perfume, rouge or fingernail polish and remover, which Joey Kills the Soldier called “eraser.”

Abbie wished that she could go into Tuba City herself. Oh, just to eat a hot fudge sundae at the local ice cream parlor! If Tuba City even had one, which she doubted. She hoped that she would have enough money saved to purchase a car when her two-week vacation came at the end of the school term, seven months away. As it was, staying in the apartment on the weekends was driving her nuts. She had completed all her correspondence and read all the back issues of
Town & Country
that had finally caught up with her at her new address.  No PC’s, laptops, or Ipads were to be had at Kaibeto. Perhaps, she could smuggle one in next year ~ if she wasn’t fired first.

Earlier that week Becky had grudgingly offered her a ride into Flagstaff when she went to visit her lumberjack, but Abbie had demurred. Flagstaff. Gateway to the Grand Canyon. Suddenly the college town with its tourist and lumber industries seemed like a large metropolitan city in comparison to the isolation of the Kaibeto Boarding School. Next time Becky offered her a lift into Flagstaff, she would accept.

Wistfully, she placed the order form in the appropriate box on the office counter and left the school building. As she crossed the grounds toward her apartment, a voice hailed her. She turned to see Marshall Lawrence striding across the grassless yard toward her. “Dr. Livingston, I presume,” he said, his gray eyes crinkling with laughter.

She smiled. “I do feel like I’ve been lost from civilization, Marshall.” How nice, how handsome, he looked in a kelly green sports shirt with epaulettes on the shoulders. She recognized the brand. She used to buy them for Brad. Now he would have to do his own shopping. “I’m on my way back to the apartment. All I want is to get out of my shoes and dress and prop my feet up.”

Marshall shook a cigarette out of its pack, saying, “You know, in that dress you could easily pass for a Paris model.” He feigned a wicked leer. “Or out of it.”

She looked down at the toast-colored crepe with its frothy neckline. Was she indeed still an attractive woman? The encounter with Cody the week before, his dispassionate reserve, had left her wondering just how attractive she really was. Without the mask of cosmetics, was a woman really there?

That encounter had shaken her. That night, after her bath, she had looked in the mirror. Cool blue eyes, her best feature really. Well-shaped lips with an indentation in the center that Brad had once told her was an indication of a sensual nature. How wrong it seemed he had been. Good cheekbones. And the rest of her? She had stepped back. Hesitantly her hands had come up to cup her breasts. Still high and firm. The waist—small; the legs long and slender, without any orange-peel dimples to mar them. Her hands had slipped down to her stomach. Still flat, despite carrying the twins, but streaked with stretch marks, faint now after all those years.

The pungent odor of the cigarette brought her back to the man before her. Now, what had set off that line of reverie? . . . Oh, yes, Cody Strawhand.

“I think I could use a cigarette,” she told Marshall. “I’m making lots of adjustments here, but it appears that sacrificing smoking is not going to be one of them.”

He offered the package from his shirt pocket. “I hope you won’t reconsider when it comes time to renew your contract, Abbie.”

She withdrew a cigarette and tipped her head to his proffered.lighter. She exhaled slowly, savoring the pleasure. Her first cigarette in five months.

He fell into step with her. “I’m counting on seeing you for a long time to come.”

“You can bank on that. I gave myself a goal of two years here. It took that long to lose myself. It’ll take that long to find me.”

His gaze swept the desolate landscape. “Well, you sure aren’t going to find anything else here. I’ve come by to pick up the weekly order forms. How about running in with me to Flagstaff Saturday while I fill them? We-can squeeze in dinner before we make the trip back.”

“I thought the BIA filled the requests at Tuba City.”

“We usually do. But every quarter the Western Navajo Agency purchases supplies not available in Tuba City—mostly office equipment, medical supplies for our public health clinic, things like that.”

The suggestion sounded heavenly. She paused on the small slab of cement that was supposed to serve as her apartment’s front porch. “Marshall, you’d have to backtrack fifty miles to pick me up.”

“Cody often comes into Tuba City on Saturday. I’m sure I could persuade him to stop by your apartment.”

She almost said no. But she would be damned if she was going to let the strained feelings between her and Cody spoil her chance for an outing. Then again, he might refuse Marshall’s request. “I’d like that very much.”

“Good, I’ll give you a call tomorrow at the school office to let you know what time Cody’ll pick you up.”

“What?” she mocked. “Use the school’s telephone for personal calls?”

He grinned. “It’s an emergency.”

* * * * *

Cody’s frame cast a large shadow through the screen door.

“Let me get my purse,” she told him. Why did she have to feel so self-conscious?

She grabbed her shoulder bag off the double bed and looked over her shoulder in the mirror. The white designer jeans didn’t hug her rear too tightly. With the matching denim jacket, cerise satin blouse and strappy sandals, she looked casual enough to spend the day shopping in Flagstaff's decidedly western shops and still chic enough for most of its restaurants. And to think the metropolis of Phoenix was only two hours further. It was enough to make her giddy.

Cody was already in the pickup. She climbed inside the cab, keeping to the far side. Electrical currents sizzled the cab’s air., raising the fine hair on her forearms and at her nape. He spared her only the briefest of glances. She had become accustomed to that from the Navajo. In the school, at the trading post, moving among them, it was almost as if she didn’t exist. Their eyes never made contact with hers. But she was sure that later at night, over the hogan fires, every detail of her appearance would be recounted, just as she was sure that Cody’s sharp eyes missed nothing in their swift inventory, down to the pins that held her hair in its low knot. It was the first time in months that she had bothered to do anything with her hair but pull it back in a clasp at her nape.

“Escaping to the big city?” he asked and revved up the engine.

“No,” she said tartly. “Only visiting.” She slid a glance at him. He wore the usual boots and jeans, which rode low over his hips. A faded denim jacket had been added. The worn black Stetson slouched low over his eyes. “Are you? Escaping to the big city?”

He laughed, a low but pleasant sound that she liked. “Hardly. I feel like I’m bearding the lions in their den when I find myself anywhere with concrete pavement and steel buildings and blaring music and car horns. And people jammed elbow to elbow.”

She sensed that he was alluding to his own fear, a right that he had reminded her even an adult had. It would seem that the two of them could carry on a normal discussion without getting into an argument after all. Maybe the fifty-two-mile trip to Tuba City wouldn’t be as disagreeable as she had thought. “After living here, I can see how you would feel that way. The tranquility. The untouched beauty
...”

“Oh, don’t fool yourself, Mrs. Dennis. The tranquility and the untouched beauty are nice for a change. But soon the quiet begins to grate on the nerves, and the untouched beauty gets awful stark and empty-looking for people like you.”

The attempt at a congenial conversation was sliding dangerously. “And just who are ‘people like me’?” she asked, trying to keep the friction from her voice.

Momentarily he took his eyes off the dirt road that dipped and jumped ahead ad infinitum and shot her a cool glance that she could only interpret as contempt. “Patronizing women who come here to play the ‘grand lady.’ You come with your donations and your impersonal charity. You come with your electricity and technology, unwilling to live the simple life you claim you seek. You come with your Sunday religion for a people whose every daily action is directed toward the Great Spirit.”

She bit back a furious retort, because she knew that a large part of what he had said was true. And she also sensed that he wanted to make her angry, that normally, with anyone else, he would have let the subject pass. Why was he so hostile toward her?

“I believe you have made your point, Mr. Strawhand,” she said, keeping, her face toward the open window, “but I’m not leaving Kaibeto.” She was grateful for the wind in her face, cooling her. She would not lose her composure. Marshall had told her that she didn’t belong at Kaibeto, Miss Halliburton didn’t want her there and Cody had made it quite clear what he thought of her. And sometimes she herself wished she were anywhere else. But there
was
nowhere else. She was going to have to prove herself here.

Moments later Cody swung the pickup off the main dirt road onto one that was little more than wagon wheel ruts through the sage and broom- grass and low cactus. “Where are we going?” she asked, hiding the concern she felt.

Wasn’t he part Indian? Hadn’t she felt that primitive side of him? He had a sheer force that wasn’t easily reckoned with. In this desolation he could easily dispose of her.
Oh, come on, you’re being melodramatic.

“Just beyond Camel Rock—there”—he poined to the jagged hunk of rock plopped in the midst of the empty desert—“is a hogan. A friend is going with us.”

“Oh,” she murmured, both relieved and ashamed at the direction her thoughts had erroneously taken.

Once the pickup passed Camel Mountain, the tail end of White Mesa with its “window” formation came into view. Cody braked the pickup to a
halt, but she couldn’t immediately see anything for the flurry of dust. When it settled, she spotted the hogan. With its low and dim silhouette, it was almost camouflaged by its natural habitat. As in all Indian homes, its doorway, curtained by a flour sack, faced east. A few yards away was a miniature hogan, the bath house, and a brush arbor that was in reality the summer hogan.