Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  He gazed at her speculatively. Then he closed his eyes briefly, as if willing himself to shut her out. When those deep-set lids opened, his eyes glittered like the area’s unnatural light. The air was charged, crackling with sexual tension. Would he change his mind? Then, releasing her hand, he simply walked away without another word.

  Bereft, she watched until his powerful figure was out of sight. Damn’t.

  Reaching the house, she found Jeremy in his animal-print pajamas watching from the doorway. “Who is that?”

  “A friend. You met him that first night we arrived in Taos. Remember? His name is Man.”

  His sleepy face screwed up in disgust. “He and Tony dress like women. And got long hair.”

  “Have long hair. Yes, he does. But he’s very much a man.”

  “And he’s Indian.”

  “That, too.” She slipped past her son and headed for the kitchen where Doc Martin’s prescription of homemade choke cherry tea awaited. She would rather have a shot of the old reprobate’s personal remedy.

  Jeremy dogged her footsteps. “Clyde’s father is going to teach me how to set bear traps.”

  “Why?” She poured the tea into a chipped cup. “Are bears bothering him and his family?”

  “They could.”

  “Hmmm. Would you like a bowl of shredded wheat with milk and honey?” Peg had sent Henri with the cereal. With the woman’s inheritance from the family’s cereal fortune, she probably received crates of free cereal even there in remote Taos.

  “Naw. I don’t like cereal.”

  “You used to. I have a box of Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix.”

  “I’m not hungry. Did that Indian give you those?” He was staring with disdain at her moccasins.

  “Man made them for me.”

  “Sewing is woman’s work.”

  Carefully controlling her expression, she added honey to her tea. Jeremy no longer pestered her to return to Washington. Still, unless he was caught up in some activity and forgot, he seemed purposefully to work at keeping her at a distance. What would it take to bridge a chasm as deep as the Rio Grande Gorge?

  Whatever it was, she didn’t seem to have it in her. She was running out of lifeline to throw. She needed her own lifeline. Desperately. And that lifeline was Man.

  * * * * *

  That evening most of the guests at Blumy’s house were members of the Taos Society of Artists, but the subject matter was not art but Burke and the Pueblos.

  Jeremy’s growing antipathy of all things Indian prompted him to stay with Marta and Jose. Alessandra’s own growing passion for all things Indian, at least her preoccupation with Man, prompted her to attend that evening. Then, too, the evening was also an opportunity to hang out with other artists. D.H. Lawrence, who was doing some painting of his own, was becoming the ultimate spokesperson for the new Modernist movement

  “Be ready for fireworks,” Peg advised. “It appears something serious is afoot.”

  Blumy’s 1797-built adobe lay tucked away on narrow, serpentine Ledoux Street. Alessandra and Peg walked the intervening distance. Ahead of them, Long John Dunn stooped his tall frame to enter the adobe dwelling. Old, irascible Doc Martin pulled up in his Tin Lizzie. He retrieved his ever-present black bag from the rumble seat. In the twilight, he peered at her and sniffed. “You’re looking better, gal.”

  She smiled. “Couldn’t be that awful choke cherry tea. Henri would claim it’s the walking. It seems Man has prescribed it as a treatment.”

  “The medical society could take some lessons from the Injuns.”

  Rather than meet in Blumy’s library, the group gathered in his spacious studio with its bell-shaped fireplace, high ceiling, and tall windows enlarged for more light. Alessandra took a seat at one far end on the hearth, beneath an old Spanish crucifix and slightly behind an easel that kept her partially in the room’s shadows. Tony and Peg nestled down to the right of Alessandra. The meeting had not actually started, and friends of the arts hobnobbed, crowding the studio.

  Opposite her, D.H. surprised her by lowering his spindly frame on a Mexican equipale pigskin bench and stretching out his legs, crossed at the ankles. Uneasily, she looked around the room for the hotheaded Frieda, but the woman was engaged in some kind of heated debate with Andrew Dasburg, who had settled his crippled frame alongside the woman on the Taos Bed, a low couch on the other side of the room.

  “Gossip says you came to Taos, seeking the cure,” D.H. said.

  She glanced at Peg, who lifted her plump shoulders to declare her innocence. “Yes,” she told him. “I have tuberculosis.”

  “Well, I, too, have TB. But the rarified air here at Taos and this – ,” he nodded with a wry grin at his glass of scotch, “are killing it off.”

  She had to smile, but any reply would have been drowned out by Bert Phillips, who argued vociferously with Lady Brett. She held her ear trumpet like a telephone between them. “That’s why I don’t like the patterns of Indian-woven rugs,” she shouted. “I am jealous of everything that is wild and untamed and strong!”

  That is Man, and I want that strength back inside me, that wild, arrogant, untamed nature that is now only a soured hope.

  When Man entered the room with Henri, Alessandra knew immediately. Her skin pebbled as if a draft had swept over her. Man wasn’t the tallest in the room, since Long John was by a mere inch or so, but Man’s splendid figure possessed a presence, a royal poise, an energetic life force that made her body vibrate sweetly like plucked harp strings. His eyes that warmed like rich Kentucky bourbon, his powerful nose, and sensuous lips – she couldn’t get enough of looking at him.

  “I’ve never seen anyone so fascinated with the Indian culture as Henri,” Peg whispered to her. “Not even Jung.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “Who?” Peg asked with feigned innocence.

  “You know who.”

  “Man, if that is whom you mean, is here to translate for the governor of Taos Pueblo.”

  She accepted one of the glasses a Mexican woman was passing out to the guests. “Thank you,” she murmured and turned back to Peg. “Count me among Man’s admirers,” she said with a disgusted sigh. “Against my better judgment, I am being won over.”

  The woman eyed her with a smug smile. “Any particular reason?”

  She took a deep, satisfying draught, savoring the aftertaste of what turned out to be sherry before answering with a grin. “Don’t project your romantic ideal onto me, Mrs. Luhan.”

  “Project?” Peg’s brows climbed. “You’ve talked too often with Jung.”

  Her foot started bobbing. She shrugged. “I’m fascinated by anything that has the possibility of healing me.”

  The moment Man turned his magnetic gaze upon her, those tumultuous thoughts suddenly stilled, calmed. Strange, the inexplicable effect his grave attention had upon her. The white blanket draped his head and wrapped around his solid frame. “Why does Man always wear white?” she whispered aside to Peg.

  “Something to do with his calling.” Peg fixed those keen gray eyes on her. “Then he has agreed to heal you?”

  “I suppose so.” Choosing to omit the night of ravaging sex she had had with Man, she said cautiously, “Twice we have walked. If you can call that healing.”

  Peg smiled. “I think there is more happening, out of sight, than most of us know.”

  If you only knew. She took another swallow of the sherry. “I wouldn’t argue that.”

  “I also think,” Peg continued in a muted voice, “that you are falling in love with Man, no matter – ”

  “I would argue that. I am merely . . . uh, like I said fascinated by – ”

  Blumy cleared his throat. He stood next to a brass-hinged tabaret, its three drawers pulled out to reveal hundreds of his paintbrushes. “Will everyone take a seat.”

  Henri slid into the space between her and Peg. “You’re looking lovely, Alessandra,” he murmured, leaning close. His mouth crimped in a rueful smile. “That was not a
flirtatious remark, only an acknowledgment of the truth.”

  “As this is the first official meeting of the Indian Defense Association,” Blumy began, “I’d like to remind — ”

  “Dear,” his wife Mary said, “why don’t you introduce our guests from the Taos Pueblo first.”

  He flashed an impatient glance at his wife, a woman five years his senior. She looked so frail the spring winds would surely blow her along like tumbleweed. Peg had told Alessandra that both Blumy and Mary were accomplished artists, but Mary had given up painting for designing silver jewelry in an attempt to placate Blumy’s jealousy of her professional success.

  “We’ve invited Juan de Jesus Romero, governor of Taos Pueblo,” Blumy went on, “to tell us what happened at the latest meeting with the Commissioner of Indian affairs – with Burke.”

  At this introduction, the old Indian remained stolid, like a lizard, never flicking so much as an eyelid. As governor, he carried two silver-tipped canes.

  “Those canes,” Henri explained as an aside, “are worth their weight not in silver but gold.” According to him, as early as 1620 the Spanish government had presented to each of the Pueblo Indian governors as a symbol of authority a silver-crowned cane that continued to be passed down from one governor to another long after Spain had given up her hold on Nuevo Mexico. “Lincoln, hearing of the custom and wishing to reward the Pueblos for remaining neutral during the Civil War, bestowed a silver-crowned cane with the name of the Pueblo, the date 1863, and his signature A. Lincoln.”

  “We happen to know,” Blumy was saying, “that on the last trip up from Santa Fe, Burke assembled the Elders of the council in the school house and delivered his ukase –- no more ceremonies, then sped on to another pueblo. There was no white man there, no witness at all, only the old men.” He nodded at Juan Romero. “Will you tell us what happened, Governor Romero?”

  At this, Man turned to the governor and waited to translate. The old man began talking, with Man translating at intervals the Tiwa into English. For Alessandra, Man’s deep and softly hypnotic voice was a blend of nature’s sounds. Water running over rocks and wind whispering in the trees.

  “‘The Elders are all feeling very bad,’” Man translated. “They are shut up in the council room, crying all of them. They say now we know we are finished this time. Burke, he tells them to shut up. ‘I don’t want to hear what you have to say. You do what I tell you. No more religious hocus-pocus’, he tells them. ‘He talks to the Elders like slaves.’”

  Man paused. His usually contained expression hinted that he might be irritated by how the white man’s government tried to control everything. “There is more. Yesterday, when our Tribal Council said no to the order, Burke, he had the old men arrested. Taken to the Santa Fe jail.”

  When he finished translating for the Taos governor, the room echoed in its sudden silence. Its occupants looked sat dumbstruck. For her part, the ember of disgust for the mistreatment of the Indians was starting to glow red hot.

  Man’s strength and wholeness receded with him as he withdrew into the studio’s shadows. Once more the coyote. Alessandra stared hard at the empty space where he had stood.

  Peg spoke up. “Can’t we mount a nation-wide publicity campaign or something?”

  At once, Alessandra felt Man near her, in the shadows behind her on her right. It was as if every cell in her body ignited with an odd pulsing electrical current . . . as if if she was wired precisely for him.

  With Peg’s entreaty, the room erupted into a Tower of Babel.

  “The danger is much greater than I think the Indians realize,” Bert Philips said, his voice rising above the others. His perpetual squint deepened with indignation.

  Man’s hand tangled in the clustered whirls of Alessandra’s hair, knotted futilely at her nape, as if he would set it free. Her eerie connection with him detected the absence of his customary calmness. It was as if his frustration with the BIA was directed at her solely. Or, with Henri sitting beside her. Was Man staking his claim?

  He wants me! He could have any woman, Indian or otherwise, and he wants me!

  His slight tug tilted her head backwards. She stared up into his fiery gaze and felt the liquid fire flood her lower regions. A frisson of excitement coursed throughout her body. His hold on her was a silken scarf, binding her. Her heart swelled with hope

  “I can contact some of my activist friends,” Peg offered, completely unaware of what was happening to her right. “Margaret Sanger or Emma Goldman. “Or Stella Atwood. She’s influential in California circles and President of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.”

  “Man,” Doc Martin said, “tell them about this land allotment thing.”

  Releasing his unseen hold on her, Man stepped the few paces forward into the room’s empty center once again. As though the past moments had never happened, he was totally in control of himself – and the room . . . and her. She could feel the color flooding her cheeks.

  He was wearing his impassive face, but was it only she who noticed the grave concern that flattened his full lips? “Land promised us by treaty is being withheld. And our water. Squatters, they homestead on our irrigated lands. Your elders, they have made laws. We Pueblos are not given title until we are judged . . . ” he hesitated, his copper face darkening with disgust, “. . . smart enough to care for land, forest. We do not cut forest because we do not see trees as dollar sign. Now your logging companies come.”

  Shocked silence reigned again.

  “In the meantime,” Frieda spoke up, flicking her long cigarette ashes into Lady Brett’s hearing trumpet, “several pueblos such as Tesuque, San Ildefonso, and San Juan, which have all suffered the greatest losses, are forced to take government rations. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Henri, as usual, said nothing, keeping to his code of non-interference, non-responsibility. Alessandra stilled her bobbing foot. That should make two of us, Henri. There could be most unpleasant consequences in drawing Capitol Hill’s attention to her and Jeremy.

  Man transfixed her with a glance that said he knew of the raging want of him burning below her waist, deep behind her groins, at the seat of her sexuality.

  The debate ground on, tedious and getting nowhere, just as all protests against the government did. Someone pointed out the exception of the protest against the tea tax. But the government had been Great Britain then. Any fool knew you didn’t fight City Hall.

  Alessandra wished she had a cigarette. Or another drink. Or Man. Where the hell is he? In all the disruptive discourse he had vanished. Vanished like the Coyote, the Giver of Delight.

  Andrew stamped his cane on the brick floor. “By God, the Indians take better care of the land than we even know how to! They’ve done it for long before we ever stepped foot on Plymouth — ”

  A commotion in the hallway cut him off. A small man in business suit, collar, and bowler hat, appeared in the doorway. He looked embarrassed. Just behind him, as if eager to get past, stood a scruffy, bearded man wearing dirty overalls and a wide-brimmed Mexican hat turned up in the back. In his arms, he cradled a rifle. Threateningly. He had the look of dissipation that seemed familiar. Then Alessandra saw the gangly boy at his side, Jeremy’s friend Clyde Potts.

  The man in the bowler removed his hat. “I’m Inspector Creel of the War Department’s Albuquerque branch. Is Mr. Blumenschein here?”

  “I’m he,” Blumy said, rising.

  “Mr. Potts here has filed a report about your household. And, uhhh . . .” he hesitated.

  Blumy prompted, “Yes?”

  “You are suspected of pro-German activities.”

  “Of what?!”

  “Mr. Potts claims you are receiving arms and ammunition almost weekly in large boxes and storing them in your house.”

  “That’s insane!” Blumy blustered. “We receive canvasses and frames. Long John will vouch for that.”

  “And further,” Creel went on, “that one member of your family is going among the Mexican population a
nd enrolling them; and that – ”

  Mary protested, “Our daughter Elsie is a close friend of the wealthy Martinez family and is to be a bridesmaid for — ”

  “Hush, Mary,” Blumy snapped. “We haven’t done anything wrong, and we certainly don’t owe any explanations to this man or anyone else. Just what do our Mexican friends have to do with this?”

  “And that you, Mrs. Luhan,” Creel continued earnestly, his gaze finding Peg, “are inciting the Indians to rise . . . .”

  “Why, if that isn’t the most insane damned nonsense!” Blumy sputtered.

  “Unfortunately,” Creel said, “with the German scare still going on, I am required to investigate all filed reports, what with the Rio Grande Canyon being the gateway for Mexico to the rest of the states.”

  “Well, I promise you, Mr. Creel, we have no German sentiments,” Blumy said, his face choleric with indignation.

  Peg laughed contemptuously. “And as to an Indian uprising, I am married to an Indian, Inspector Creel. I am teaching his family how to knit – an extremely violent activity. Knitting needles, you know.”

  The inspector wore a foolish look. He turned his hat round and round between his hands. “The war may be over, but there still remains the possibility of an invasion — ”

  “Inspector,” Alessandra heard a disembodied self, saying, “my husband is Senator O’Quinn and is head of the Senate Finance Committee. I assure you, not only does he sanction my friends and their activities but he would probably demand an immediate apology from your Bureau of Indian Affairs office for this ridiculous accusation.”

  The little man wet his lips, shifted uncomfortably, then glanced over his shoulder before clapping his bowler on his head. “Well, I guess we made a big mistake. My apologies.” He backed out of the doorway, nudging a frustrated-looking Potts and son with him.

  After they left, D.H. lifted a cynical brow. Alessandra found it exceedingly difficult to view this gangly, erotic writer with any erotic thought. “Well,” he demanded, “what the hell was that all about?”