Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “You’re sure you want to do this? To entrust your health to an Indian?” he asked after a moment. “I mean, I’d feel like a jerk, persuading you to listen to his advice if . . . well, if nothing came of it.”

  She lightly flipped the seared tortilla over before she singed her fingers. Marta had shown her how to make the thin, flat bread from Indian maize. No need to tell Henri she had had sex with Man, fertilizing the very spot where Henri stood. She was married. The General would certainly label her a two-bit whore, if he knew. She could only hope Brendon never did. “Henri, if it’d heal me, I’d entrust my health to a coyote.”

  His mouth stretched into a lugubrious grin. “A wise choice. The Indians consider Coyote very clever, you know. A jokester, a gift giver and a thief, all at the same time.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “The Indian culture intrigues me. And I truly like them. I like the spiritual way they adapt to nature.”

  Yes, she was beginning to realize there was something even spiritual about preparing food herself instead of employing a cook . . . and something warm, something personal, about candlelight, as if she were honoring the light of the Spirit in her home. How she loved her skewed little house.

  “The way Dr. Jung explains it,” Henri went on, “Coyote is a jokester. But he also embodies the life-giving power of the human imagination. The Indians call him the Delight Maker.”

  That would be Man, damn’t. “Next time you talk to Man, tell him I want some kind of therapy besides walking, for Christ’s sakes.”

  He grinned. “Well, if you want to bring up Christ—”

  “No, I don’t want to bring up Christ.”

  “He walked in the desert for forty days and nights to prepare for what his future held, didn’t he? Well, Indians walk for vision quests. Walking is a spiritual tool. A form of meditation. Why do you think pilgrims make their pilgrimage afoot?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please, spare me the lecture, Professor.”

  His grin climbed high enough in his freckled cheeks to touch the rims of his glasses.

  “Just go to Man . . . the shaman or Coyote or Delight Maker, whatever . . . and tell him to help me get well.”

  His grin dropped away. “I realize you want to be healed, Alessandra. But I can’t force Man to do it your way. Man is like Coyote. Mysterious. It’s important for you to understand something that most people don’t buy into . . . .”

  The way his voice lowered, she glanced up at him, searching his face. “What?”

  He bit his lip. “Only that Coyote knows no boundaries and may appear anywhere to guide us. There, I’ve gone and said something that makes me look really foolish.”

  “Guide us where?”

  “Guide us, my dear woman, across the boundaries of our ordinary reality to where we can experience other states of consciousness.”

  She frowned at his uncharacteristic metaphysical statement. “Well, I want Man to guide me . . . back to health.” No, she wanted him to guide her to life. And to love. With that thought slamming the forefront of her mind, she gave a little gasp. Love. That was more dangerous than mere passion.

  Henri just studied her without comment.

  “Look, I’ll walk with him,” she said quickly. “All right? But can’t you sort of prod him into action? It’s been over two weeks since I walked with him.”

  “Why not ask Tony to talk to him?”

  “I did. He said all in good time. Well, time is something I don’t have.” She yanked the hot tortilla from the low flame but not quickly enough. “Ouch!”

  Henri reached for her burnt finger and placed it between his lips. Shocked, she watched the tip of his tongue steal the heat from her fingertip. He released her finger. “Alessandra, I don’t have the stuff heroes are made of, but I’d heal you myself if I could.”

  “Mom.”

  She and Henri whirled. Jeremy stood in the sala doorway. Beside him towered a lanky boy in a floppy straw hat.

  “Jeremy!” She smiled. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  His little face clouded over.

  “Dinner’s just about ready. Henri is eating with us.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “But you haven’t eaten all day, sweetheart. Who’s your friend? He’s welcome to eat, too.”

  “Clyde. Clyde Potts.” Jeremy glanced at the kid, then nodded toward the boy’s hat.

  The boy jerked it off, but his expression was anything but respectful. Framed by dirty red hair, the bleached blue eyes were . . . dismissive. As if she were of little consequence.

  “Clyde’s my new friend. He lives over by Twining, where his father runs sheep.”

  “Won’t you stay for dinner, Clyde?”

  “Pa says you hired Indians to rebuild this adobe.”

  “Why . . . yes.”

  He clamped his hat on his head. “Well,” he told Jeremy, “time to head back home,”.

  “I’ll see you at school?”

  Clyde glanced around the kitchen. His pallid blue eyes avoided her and Henri. “Yeah.”

  After the screen door slammed closed behind the boy, she glanced at Henri. “What was that all about?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “The government is trying to take land his pa homesteaded,” Jeremy said, “and give it to the Indians.”

  “Father, not pa.”

  “It’s all the same.”

  “No, it’s not.” She drew a steadying breath. “Now go outside and wash your hands for dinner.”

  Frowning deeper, she watched her son head for the water pump. Man had built the wooden deck surrounding it. A far cry from her luxurious tiled bath at her Rock Creek mansion. Brendon’s mansion.

  Here, she felt pampered . . . and uncaged. And as if she belonged. Cities and concrete and car fumes had become part of a foreign land. It was difficult to believe she had consented to live as she had. She could better identify now with the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, both the bane of her school years.

  “Don’t worry about Jeremy,” Henri consoled behind her. “His actions are normal for his age.”

  “I know,” she sighed, giving Henri a rueful smile. “I just don’t know what is normal for my age.”

  Surely this wasn’t normal . . . this obsession with an Indian, who could be either her savior or her annihilator.

  * * * * *

  April’s morning air hung chilled, pristine. From her portal hammock, the vista had to be one of the world’s grandest. The play of light and landscape grew more magical every day. The vast distance had somehow entered her soul, making it feel larger. She stretched lazily in the cocoon of her light cotton Indian blanket and watched the rising sun burn away clouds around Taos Peak.

  The canvass that Blumy had dropped by, along with some old brushes and leftover tubes of paint, was beginning to take on the bold lines of Taos Peak. Eagerly, she rose at sunrise each morning to catch the mountain’s changing colors on her canvass.

  But this morning, she heard the flute music from Taos Pueblo and had strolled outside to her hammock to listen. Henri had told her that daily at dawn, the men walked to the stream that ran through the pueblo’s center to wash and afterward would play flutes in worship of the new day.

  Could one sometimes hear as clearly in these distances as one could see?

  Now she only heard silence. Yet she felt the presence of someone.

  Puzzled, she stirred, turned her head. Man stood at the end of the portal. The white cotton blanket draped over his head and wrapped around his large frame lent him an apparitional appearance. She was not startled. Strange. But her heartbeat had accelerated.

  “Henri told me you were like Coyote.” The words fell like a hushed lullaby over her lips. “That you can mysteriously appear anywhere.”

  One shoulder gave a negligent shrug. “When I want, then you see me.”

  Cautiously, she shifted in the hammock, then swung her bare feet over its edge. She spoke her truth. “I’ve been waiting for you
.”

  “I know.”

  She stared up into those fathomless eyes. Did he know how his mere presence rattled her? Did he know how much her thoughts dwelled on him? And just how libidinous her thoughts were?

  “We walk now.”

  She nodded. Obediently. His willing slave. “I’ll get my shoes.”

  “Your shoes are feet killers.”

  She grinned, feeling suddenly giddy. “Yes, they are.”

  From the folds of his mantle, he held out a pair of moccasins beaded with shell, tin, and turquoise. “I made these for you.” He knelt before her.

  Embarrassed, she lifted one naked foot, chafed and contorted by the constraints of her tight-fitting shoes. His hand cupped her ankle, guiding the soft moccasin on. She smothered a gasp, before it escaped, exposing her arousal. Where his fingers touched . . . she might as well have been branded. Shivers of desire rippled throughout her again.

  She braced her hand on his broad, muscled shoulder. At that moment, the earth seemed incredibly still, silent. Without cacophony to mask inexperience, fears, thoughts, she was unarmed, undefended. She broke the earth’s natural silence. “I could be Cinderella.”

  He glanced up at her. “Who is this Cinderella?”

  Embarrassed again, she felt silly, forgetting his lack of extensive education. Yet, he seemed far wiser than anyone she knew.

  “Uh . . . merely a girl in a fairy tale.”

  “Fairy tale?”

  “Something not true.”

  “Everything has truth.”

  Afraid he would once more demand her truth, she interrupted. “If I am to walk, I have to dress first.” Beneath the striped blanket, she wore only chemise and knickers.

  He rose. “Why?”

  Her lips pursed. “Because, well . . . it’s improper to. . . to, er, have oneself uncovered.”

  He closed his eyes and was silent for a moment, as if he was considering replying that he had seen her naked. Had stroked her naked flesh with his fingers, tongue, and phallus. His eyes opened, and his amusement curled those beautiful full lips. Damn, he was so handsome. “The blanket covers you. We walk.”

  Am I going crazy out here? Did we did not make wild, intimate sex within the past fortnight? Perhaps something like that happens all the time to the Indians and means nothing. Well, nothing like that before has ever happened to me!

  Watching him turn away, she remembered how his superbly muscled frame moved. Crazy or not, I want to know those feelings of ecstasy again. With a soft sigh, she resigned herself to his quaint Indian culture, gathered the blanket around her, and followed him like his squaw from the portal.

  They set off down the same path as before. This time she refrained from speech. The insides of the moccasins were surprisingly soft. Their tiny bells tinkled lightly, the only sound as she and Man walked, side-by-side.

  Her awkwardness fell away. Her gait grew smooth, easy. Purple, silver leaf sage bloomed alongside scarlet paintbrush and wild strawberries. The sun warmed the morning. Man slid his blanket down to tie around his taut, muscle-corrugated waist.

  She continued walking. Heat spread around her midsection, up under her arms and down the inside of her thighs. She dropped caution, and eased her blanket around her waist as man had done. Her chemise’s ribboned Valenciennes lace revealed the tops of her breasts. But out in the middle of nowhere, who was there to notice or even care? Certainly not this man, who was stealing her heart, buried in the tomb that was her ribcage.

  She cast him an oblique glance. His face remained impassive, as laconic as his speech. Then he looked at her, his mouth curved, and a sly grin played on his lips, a grin that was also mysterious and knowing, as if he was aware of things she wasn’t. He was Coyote the Prankster. But also the Delight Maker.

  “Not so hard, is it?”

  She gave into his humor and shrugging, smiled back. “No.”

  “Now listen. Do you hear the land?”

  “No.”

  “You will. Listen to its song as you walk. Walk a lot. Then you learn to hear your own life song. Learn what makes your song right for you. Learn what makes your song not so right.”

  “Like harmony and dissonance?” she asked, determined to catch him off balance. She raised a brow. “You know these musical terms?”

  Again that knowing smile. He had seen through her façade of superiority! “I wasn’t taught those words at the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania .”

  “Peg said that the government shaved your peoples’ heads and forbade you to speak English or worship your — ”

  His hand flicked, stopping her. “You no listen,” he chided.

  She rolled her eyes but truly tried to listen. At first, she didn’t know what she was expected to hear. Coming from a constantly talking, intellectual society hadn’t prepared her for purely nonverbal attentiveness

  Gradually, the awareness came to her. The song of the land . . . in a tempo molto largo. Sunlight cascading over them . . . the sun and the air enriching the beauty and color of land . . and of life. Then with the planting of her next footstep . . . and the next . . . and the next, she recognized the sound of her own rhythm, her own song.

  Her breath sighed out. This time it sounded the contentment running quietly through her like an underground stream burbling. For the time she had left, this high desert defined her universe.

  And Man was master of her universe.

  Here nothing grew ugly, awkward, odorous. Here, with Man, life was sublime. Here was genuine enchantment, and she surrendered to it.

  “Close your eyes,” he commanded, startling her from her reverie.

  She cast him a doubtful glance but paused, surrendering to Man, as well, without resistance, and closed her eyes.

  “No, keep walking.”

  “Easy for you to say, with your eyes open.”

  “You must trust me,” he scolded. “Do you?”

  Did she? His demand fanned her lips with his warm breath. When had he drawn so close? Kiss me. Oh, please, kiss me, Man. Nothing. “Yes,” she breathed at last, disappointed. Eyes still closed, she tentatively placed one footstep in front of another. Her hand had the urge to reach out, to feel for something solid.

  “I’m here, at your side. Do you trust me?”

  With one nod of confident acceptance, she breathed, “Yes.” She walked on.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing.” This was scary. Not knowing. But trusting. Trusting the ground to be there for her. Trusting Man.

  “Look again . . . inside your mind.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “What do you see?” Now, his breath was a warm breeze on her temple. He was there with her every step.

  She forced herself to focus. So difficult when she wanted only to feel his lips kissing hers. “Canyon walls. Pink canyon walls.”

  “That is good.” In his voice, she heard a boyish pleasure. “What do you hear?”

  Her eardrums strained with her effort. “The rock walls . . . they’re contracting. And expanding. Wheezing like a million cicadas.” She paused. “Now what?”

  A long moment. What was he thinking? Doing? His breath skimmed her cheeks. At last, “You open your eyes. We wait.”

  Lids open, her gaze went at once to his dark, mature face with those beautiful heavy lids. It was so close to hers, as if he were studying every pore on her skin. She wanted him to enfold her against his safe solidity. She had never seen Tony and Peg exchange even the briefest sign of affection. No holding of hands or caress of the shoulder. “Wait for what?”

  “For your heart to awake. It sleeps. Since you were a child. When it awakes, you are healed. Whole.”

  He talked as parent to child. Teacher to student. Yet she never felt so much a female. “That is all there is to it, this healing?”

  “You learn patience. You learn there are things outside you. You learn to live with life’s questions. Without answers. Then you understand . . . all.”

  For a moment, her unquenchable wanting of hi
m was replaced by sheer admiration. His innate intelligence resonated with hers despite the difference in race, language, customs, and gender. Looking into his eyes, she appreciated his soul’s submerged magic, undiluted by adult inhibition. “It would be enough to understand myself.” To understand how she, a married woman, could continue to entertain these disturbing romantic and sexual fantasies about a man pledged to another woman.

  She blinked, turned her face to the mountains, and said airily, “Isn’t that what everyone seeks? To understand everything. To understand why we’re here? Is there somewhere else?” Her gaze returned to his. “And that age-old question, Man, ‘Is this all there is?’”

  He peered at her with such kindness, such gentleness. Inexplicably, tears welled in her eyes. “I walk with your spirit. With time you will understand more.”

  “What if I don’t have time?”

  He set off walking again, throwing over his shoulder, “Time is endless.”

  She called after, him, “Will you hold my hand? Please?”

  He turned back to her, closed his lids, as if gathering strength, then opened them. “Friends don’t hold hands.”

  “But friends fuck?”

  Shock flared in his eyes.

  Delighted that she had aroused a response in him, she giggled.

  “I like that sound,” he said quietly. He held out his large and swarthy hand. “Come, then.”

  Tremulously, she laid her hand in his larger, proffered one. It was as if a bolt of lightning struck her. Her entire body ignited. Man’s sharp inhalation revealed he was experiencing the same alchemical effect.

  “When?” she asked, her breath ragged as they walked, looking up at him shyly despite the carnal knowledge that bound them. “When do we walk again?”

  “When the heart is right.” He didn’t bother to look at her, and she stole the moment to store away in her memory his beautiful chiseled profile, quite stony at the moment. She didn’t press. She was learning. It was enough that he cradled her small hand in his massive one.

  All too soon, cryptically, by way of a chamisa-studded path, their steps brought them in view of her adobe. She didn’t want to part with him. Even the thought of it saddened her. She stood, looking up at him. Breathless. Waiting. Because she couldn’t be the one to say goodbye.