Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  “Hey,” Steve whispered, so near she jumped. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I just…”

  “I doubt this is any of my business, but if you want to talk about what’s bothering you, I’d be honored to listen.”

  “I get so confused sometimes.” She knew she shouldn’t tell him, but she wanted to talk about it. She needed to talk about it. “I know you probably think I’m insane…It’s just”—she inhaled a deep breath—“I’m in love with another man.”

  “Ahhh.” His first thought was that now he didn’t have to worry about getting involved with her. But strangely the realization did not bring relief or ease his mind.

  “Where is he?”

  “Durango, Arizona.”

  “Why isn’t he with you?”

  Stunned, childlike misery darkened her lovely eyes. “He’s married. He’s with her.”

  “He had any sense, he’d be here with you,” Steve said, his voice gruff with emotions set in turmoil by her misery.

  “I know…it,” she said, ending on a sob. She couldn’t continue. She didn’t want Steve to know how stupid she was. When Lance had told her he was in love with Angie and was going to see if she’d marry him, Samantha had stopped listening to his words. Actually her mind had no longer been able to heed them. It was showing her a picture of what looked like an overripe piece of fruit nestled within her where her womb was supposed to be. As Lance spoke those dreadful words, she saw his hand reaching out and pressing a finger into the too soft flesh of that imaginary fruit. At his touch, the whole piece of fruit turned black; blood seeped slowly out of the bruised place.

  Are you going to be okay? Lance had asked.

  What? She was so engrossed in watching the image within that she only vaguely remembered his question.

  Are you going to be okay?

  Yes, of course.

  Good girl! I love you, Sam, but it’s not the kind of love you want. I’m your brother. You’ll do better with another man who loves you the way you deserve and need to be loved.

  The next morning she woke up sick and could not get out of bed. Her insides felt so badly bruised she could barely walk. The doctor in Phoenix had diagnosed sciatica. She’d been sure she had cancer or some massive infection.

  She went back East and pretended to be okay, went on her grand tour, and struggled daily with the pain. She was bedridden for three weeks in a hotel in a city whose name she could not even remember. During that terrible time she wrote lies to Mrs. Lillian and Aunt Elizabeth, telling them what a wonderful trip she was having. She’d limped on the left side for almost a year.

  “Here, lie down,” Steve said, startling her back to the present. “You’re shaking all over.”

  Her legs did feel shaky. She allowed him to lead her back to the quilt Juana had sent.

  “So tell me about this wonderful man,” he said, settling down next to her.

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  Steve shook his head. “I’m assuming you have good judgment in men.”

  “I do.”

  “So what’s he like?”

  “He’s wonderful. After my parents died, he would let me sneak into his bed.” She stopped at the look on Steve’s face. “I was only a child then. And so was he. My parents abandoned me, and I cried a lot as a child.” She brushed tears off her cheeks. “This isn’t like me. I never cry anymore.”

  Steve pulled out his handkerchief and gave it to her. “It was fresh this morning. Abandoned you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was four when they drowned at sea.”

  “Wait a minute. Did they drown or abandon you?”

  “Both.”

  “If they drowned…”

  “They abandoned me when they drowned,” she said, as if that made perfect sense. “Anyway”—Samantha dabbed at her cheeks—“when I cried, Lance would hold me until I fell asleep. When kids at school or in the family hurt my feelings, he whipped them. Once, I took one of Uncle Chantry’s guns out of his gun cabinet. Lance told his father he did it. I probably could have gotten away with it, because I was younger and a girl, but Uncle Chantry whipped Lance hard, because he expected him to know better.”

  “How old were you when he did all these things?”

  “From four to seventeen.”

  Steve looked confused. “And you’re still in love with him? Your cousin?”

  “He’s not my cousin.”

  Steve laughed. “He’s your uncle’s son but not your cousin?”

  “Uncle Chantry is my guardian. We’re not related.”

  “So this Lance, what has he done for you recently?”

  “Recently?” Samantha asked, frowning.

  “Yeah, recently.”

  “He doesn’t have to do anything for me. When I love a man I love him unconditionally, whether he does anything or not.”

  “I’m sure that’s a wonderful quality, but it’s impractical.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “I understand he didn’t marry you.” Steve felt like a heel the minute the words left his mouth.

  Samantha inhaled a long, shaky breath. “I think he married someone else to avoid a deeper soul connection with me. I’m not saying this out of pride. It’s not that I think I’m so wonderful, but he was badly hurt in love. The first woman he loved—before I grew up—was brutally murdered. He never got over it. Losing her was very painful for him. I think he wanted not to have to go through that again. It was awful for him.”

  “I’m sure it was, but life is too short to settle for the safest way out, especially in something as important as marriage.”

  “Well, that just tells me you’ve never really loved anyone or lost anyone you loved. Love is a terrible thing. It makes you horribly vulnerable.”

  “I guess it does.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  They sat together without speaking until Samantha could bear the silence no longer. “I’m sorry,” she said miserably.

  “Don’t apologize for things you can’t help,” Steve said. “I learned a long time ago that feelings are whatever they are. We can’t help them, so we shouldn’t be ashamed of them.”

  “Sounds like justification for chaos,” she said, sniffing.

  “I didn’t say you have to act on them. Just that you have to know what they are and respect yourself. If you don’t do that, you’ll lose sight of who you are.”

  “Maybe I should,” she said darkly.

  “When I was seven, Crows Walking used his shamanic powers to save my life during an illness that should have killed me.”

  “What does that mean, shamanic powers?”

  “He was the medicine man, the keeper of the Medicine Basket. Anyway, within days of my getting well, Crows Walking’s natural son died in a freak accident. The traditional Papago are mostly fatalists, believing that whatever happens is what the Great Mystery wanted to happen.”

  “Some aren’t?” she asked.

  “Some are Christians, and they believe differently. Crows Walking seemed to accept his son’s death, but occasionally he’d get angry at me for no reason, so I began to believe that if he hadn’t saved me, his own son would have lived.”

  “How awful for you,” she whispered.

  “His sister, Uncheedah, made up for everything, real or imagined. As far back as I can remember, she never used the word love, but I remember her eyes, shining with love for me.”

  Samantha seemed to have drifted off into her own thoughts. “Where are you from?” he asked her.

  “I was born in Old Bolingbroke, Lincolnshire, in a castle owned by my grandfather. But I spent most of my childhood on a ranch near Austin, Texas.”

  “I’m glad you added that last. You’ve no English accent.”

  “I can fake it, though. Where are you from? I can’t believe you don’t know.”

  “You’d be wrong. Never had a chance to ask my folks where home was.”

  “They’re dead?”
/>
  “I don’t know.”

  “How sad.”

  He shook his head. “I was too busy surviving to be sad. I suspect sadness is for old folks who have plenty of time to think about things.”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “At the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We called it ‘away school.’ Then I was apprenticed to a builder who taught me everything I know about working with brick.”

  “Why did you go to an Indian school?”

  “Every now and then, the federal government picked up a handful of Indian kids and sent them to school away from the tribe.”

  “But you’re not Indian. And I’m surprised the authorities didn’t take you away from your Indian family as soon as they realized you were white.”

  “They did, when I was almost sixteen. Since I had no other family they sent me to away school anyway, to try to undo the damage the Indians had done to me, they said. Then they wouldn’t let me go back to the tribe. When I finished school, I started my apprenticeship. Now I go back to visit whenever I can.”

  “So you didn’t know Elu—Tristera before?”

  “No, the Hopi reservation is hundreds of miles north of the Papago Reservation where I grew up.”

  “Were you kidnapped by the Indians?”

  “I ran away from home. The Indians saved my life.”

  “What was it like being raised by Indians?”

  “Indians, at least the ones I was with, spend all their time teaching their youngsters how to do things. They work and play with them all day. Kids belong to the whole tribe, not just to their parents. Everyone takes responsibility for the kids’ education. Depending upon their interests and talents, the children are taught woodworking, basketmaking, jewelrymaking, painting, house building, farming, animal tending, fighting, or riding. If they’re going to be warriors, young Indian boys Nicholas’s age have almost no duties except to play competitive games to build strength and the ability to run, climb, ride, and shoot arrows. I had no inclination to be a warrior, but by the time I was twelve I could work all day beside the men building houses.”

  “Houses?” she asked.

  “Well, they were dome-shaped brush houses, but a man’s got to start somewhere. I’d rather have been a Hopi and lived up on the mesa with Tristera’s people. Some of the Hopi pueblos are rumored to be almost a thousand years old.” Steve sighed. “That would be a good feeling, looking at something you’ve built and thinking it could still be there in a thousand years.”

  “Nothing I’ve ever done will last even a hundred years. I graduated with high hopes from the Mount Holyoke Seminary for Young Ladies of Talent, but nothing has come of it except a few sculptures that will be thrown away someday.”

  “Yeah,” he said drily, “I’ve been lucky all my life.”

  Samantha laughed. “What happened to your parents?”

  “I don’t know. I remember following a band of Indians who kept trying to drive me away. They were probably afraid someone would come looking for me, think they had taken me, and kill them. I remember being cold and digging in the snow looking for nuts or berries to eat. Crows Walking saw me doing that, thought I belonged to the Indians trying to drive me away, and traded a blanket for me. He took me a long way to his home in Arizona and gave me to his sister, who couldn’t have any children. From then on life was pretty sweet.”

  “I can’t believe the whites just let them keep you.”

  “They didn’t know. The Papago are nomads. We kept moving most of the time. Looking for food mostly. I was so dirty most of the time no one could tell me from them.”

  Samantha tried to imagine what it would be like, living among Indians. “I’d like to meet Uncheedah. No one has ever loved me like that,” she said wistfully.

  “I find that impossible to believe.”

  “It’s true. Even Lance abandoned me.”

  Sunlight glinted off the golden crown of her hair. Bangs fell over her eyes; she tossed them back, only to have them fall over again. The rest of her hair was twisted into some sort of braid. Her sweetly curved cheeks were pale, her lips pinched. “It isn’t like you think,” she whispered.

  She told Steve about being on the ship with her parents, waking up alone, and being taken to that terrible woman’s house. She told him about begging in the streets and hating her parents for abandoning her. About the Kincaids finally coming to get her and taking her home with them, only to find that she hated them instead of being grateful. She even told him how Lance had finally broken through her rage and brought her into the family.

  “How old were you?”

  “Four when they left. I’ll never forgive them for it, either.”

  “That’s a little harsh for what appears to have been a tragic, unavoidable accident,” Steve said softly.

  Samantha sucked in a shaky breath. “Lance tried to make up for it, though. He’d hold me at night, rocking me in the rocking chair, stroking my hair, and letting me cry. He probably saved my life.”

  “How old was Lance then?”

  “Ten years older than I. Most boys his age would have been mean to a little pest like me, but he never was. He was my protector. Until…the day he told me he was going to propose to another woman.” Samantha shuddered. “The world ended for me then.” For a moment she could not continue. “When you love someone, the worst thing in the world is for them to leave you.”

  “You hate your parents for dying, but you’ve somehow forgiven Lance for marrying another woman.”

  “He made a mistake. Anyone can make a mistake.”

  “It may have seemed a mistake to you, but what if he’s in love with his wife?”

  “He isn’t,” she said, suddenly weary. The conversation had started a heavy hum that swelled dark and ugly inside her. “We’d better be heading home,” she said, standing up. “Nicholas will be waiting for me.”

  “One more thing for you to see, then we’ll go.”

  Steve led her up the mountainside; they climbed for five minutes. The activity helped. At last Steve called a halt. Hot and panting, Samantha stopped at the crest of a small box canyon with a shallow stream cutting through the middle of it. She stood on a narrow shelf overlooking the ravine.

  “I have a few more tests to make, but see this natural basin?” Steve said, pointing. “If I’m right and the tests confirm it, we can dam it here and create a reservoir. You’ll have all the water you’ll need.”

  He placed his hands on her waist and faced her back down the hill, so she could view the site she’d chosen. “The bunkhouses will be over there…about two hundred feet from the main house and separated from it by that line of trees for privacy,” he said. “The toolsheds and barn will be there, so you don’t have to smell the horses unless you want to or unless the wind changes. The road will wind from there…to there…to there…to the old house.”

  She laughed. They were already calling it “the old house.” His warm breath near her cheek seemed to interfere with her ability to follow everything he said.

  “The sewer lines will go off in that direction, downhill to the septic tank,” he told her. “We’ll store your new furniture in the barn under canvas until the house is finished. Smokehouse over there. Women’s quarters over there. The outbuildings will rise faster than the main house, or they’ll seem to because they’re simpler. After we finish the house, if we have enough steam left in us, and you want us to, we’ll put adobe around the outbuildings, so they’ll be more comfortable. You’ve picked a good site. It couldn’t be any better.”

  Steve felt the tug of her nearness. Her cheeks were pink from the climb, polished with a light film of perspiration. Her lips were partly opened, as if waiting.

  “Is there anything I should be doing?” she asked, watching him with wide, dark eyes.

  You should be kissing me, Steve thought. The urge to pull her into his arms was overwhelming. He cleared his throat. “You could be ordering your furnishings. You’ll probably want a couple of crystal
chandeliers, some hand-blocked wallpapers. What do you think?”

  Samantha had been watching the way the light changed the color of his eyes from khaki to hazel. She felt sweat beads forming on her forehead. Her mind was entirely blank. In a panic, she said the first thing that came into her head. “New gowns, shoes…”

  “New gowns?” he asked, frowning.

  “I’ll want to have a party when it’s done, won’t I?” she asked, covering her blunder.

  “And fancy mirrors to hang on the walls,” he said. “New furniture, area rugs, carpets, and draperies.”

  “All that?”

  “It’s a bigger house than the one you have. Should be plenty to keep you busy, just selecting, ordering, and unpacking everything.”

  Samantha felt dizzy at the thought of trainloads of furniture arriving. “I’ll make a list,” she said halfheartedly.

  “I just wanted you to see this. We can go now.”

  Steve’s voice was gruff. He turned abruptly and started down the hill. Samantha followed, panting to keep up with him. She was so aware of his body beside hers, and she wanted…she wanted. She didn’t even know what she wanted, just that his easy acceptance of her love for another man disappointed her, made her unsure of herself in a way that disturbed her more than she cared to admit.

  The next day Steve woke up cranky. He didn’t realize it himself exactly, but Juana did. She greeted him with a smile and shook her head at his surliness as if she had expected it.

  “What?” he growled. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, señor, nothing.” Juana’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Did thees old woman say somezhing?”

  Steve scowled and poured himself a cup of coffee. “God sends meat, and the devil sends cooks,” he said, scowling and pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Maybe I woke up cranky,” he said. “But if I’m left alone, I’ll be fine by the time I finish this. If not…”

  Juana giggled, not overly upset at the threat, and turned back to the stove. She served up tortillas, refritos and a pan of fried eggs. Steve ate, finished his coffee, and walked outside.