Fear gripping him, Wes dropped to where Anna lay and turned her over. Her bruised face was covered with dirt, her damp tangled hair matted with blood. Her eyelids flickered a couple of times, then she whispered, “Wes,” and her eyes slid closed, her body slumping in his arms.
Chapter Twenty
Relentless pounding on the front door barely made it through Wes’s whiskey-soaked brain. “Go away,” he mumbled, resting his head on his crossed arms at the table.
Arnold’s voice grew louder as he opened the door and entered the kitchen. “Goddammit, Wes, this place is a pig sty.”
Wes peered at the man through bleary eyes. “Leave me alone.”
His friend pulled out a chair and straddled it. “Everyone’s left you alone since the funeral, but this has to stop. You’re drinking yourself to death.”
Turning his head away, Wes growled, “I don’t care.”
Arnold reached out and touched Wes’s arm. “You know Anna wouldn’t want this.”
Rubbing his eyes with fisted hands, Wes groaned. “I failed her, Arnold.” His chest ached with the pain. “I failed her, and I lost her.” He closed his eyes, burning with the lack of sleep. “I always knew she could disappear one day, but never like this.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Arnold studied him, his brows furrowed in confusion.
Realizing what he’d said, Wes gave a weary shrug. “Nothing.”
Arnold propped his arms along the back of the chair. “The town council sent me over. They want to know when you’re coming back to the jailhouse. They’re sympathetic and all, but the town needs a marshal. I can only cover emergencies and even though everyone’s feeling sorry for you, they want your word that you’ll return soon.”
Wes stumbled as he bolted from his chair. “The only thing I need is gone. I don’t need anyone’s pity. I don’t need this town, or that goddamn job.”
“What’re you saying?”
“I don’t know.” He stared at the empty bottle on the table. “I need a drink.” He grabbed his hat from the hook by the door, leaving Arnold sitting there.
The humid night air hit him with a sobering effect, as if someone had thrown a blanket over his body. The feeling of suffocation came not only from the dampness, but the crushing heaviness in his heart.
He’d sat all last night with his loaded Colt alongside the slowly diminishing bottle of whiskey, staring the weapon down, daring it to leap up and end his miserable life.
Twice he’d raised the gun with a shaky hand, but a hushed tone teased him, a whisper of Anna’s voice, gliding like silk over his skin, an echo of when she’d said his name for the last time. For a moment his heart stilled when he swore he heard her ask him to wait, that it would get better. He’d smashed his fist into the wall and stormed from the house into the late summer downpour.
This night he wandered the town, remembering. Dark storefronts stared back, the yawning caverns reinforcing the emptiness inside him. His life had become hollow, the sunshine that was Anna snatched from him, leaving him dead inside. A slight smile forced its way to his lips as he stopped in front of the newspaper office. Then the agony of loss drove him away, his heart fractured.
He made it as far as the batwing doors of the saloon before coming to a decision. His steps slowed until he turned and headed in the opposite direction.
“I’m quitting.” Wes dropped his marshal’s badge on the mayor’s desk.
The overcast morning cloaked the room in dimness as Clem Gardner sat back in his chair and peered at Wes from behind thick spectacles. “I don’t suppose I need to ask you why. But I will ask if you’ve given this enough thought.”
“I have to get out of here.” He turned to leave.
The mayor called him back. “Where ya going?”
Wes raked stiff fingers through his hair. “Home.”
After a day and a half of travel through woods and plentiful farmland, small towns and open prairie, Wes arrived at the Potawatomi compound in Indian Territory. His mother’s family had lived on a Kansas reservation when Wes made his visits there as a child, but a few years ago they’d split from the Prairie Potawatomi, and along with other Citizen Potawatomi had traveled to Indian Territory where they’d purchased land. Now settled in a village of small homes and neat farms, Wes felt a pull to these people as he rode through the settlement.
Laughing, brown-skinned children ran around, shouting gleefully and chasing each other. Several dogs raced alongside them, barking and enjoying the play. Women, gathered together and busy with their hands, visited with each other, the younger ones casting a glance in his direction under lowered lashes.
Free of whiskey for a couple of days, his mind was clearer, and his body protested the lack of food. Welcoming smells swirled in the air, bringing a growl to his belly, the first indication he was still alive.
He’d never been to the compound, having last visited his mother’s people after he’d been discharged from the army back in sixty-five, two years before they left Kansas. But the new location had been set up the same, and he easily picked out his grandparent’s hut. He guided Nektoska toward their tidy home, stopping to enjoy the sight of his grandfather sitting in a rocking chair, smoking his pipe.
The old man regarded him with a widening toothless smile as Wes hobbled his horse and walked up the path to the small hut. Childhood memories washed over him. The soft, melodious voices of his mother’s people as they told stories over campfires at night. Feasts, with an abundance of food, dancing, and laughter. He and the other children sitting wide-eyed as the elders told tale after tale of these great people, their heritage and strength.
“Yankobcakin.” The old man cried out the Potawatomi word for ‘grandson.’ He put his pipe aside. “Bozho!”
Wes returned the greeting and embraced him, his grandfather’s frail bones a stark reminder that numerous years had passed since Wes had sat at the man’s feet and listened to tales of the Potawatomi people. “Koyake'?” he asked, referring to his grandmother.
“Your grandmother visits with Laughing Star, who has just given her man another fine son. She will return to me in a few days. Are you hungry?”
“Yes, mIshomes.” Wes honored his grandfather by using his formal name. “It has been a long time since I’ve eaten.”
“Come into the house. Your koyake' has left enough food for you and all the other villagers.” He smiled and led Wes into the hut.
Warm, familiar smells almost brought tears to Wes’s eyes. So many of his happy childhood memories were tied up with this wonderful couple who grieved the loss of their beautiful daughter, yet had accepted her son into their hearts.
His grandfather placed dishes of food on the crude table, indicating Wes should fill his wooden bowl, not satisfied until it overflowed with meat, smashed beans and wild onions. They talked of many things while Wes ate his first full meal since Anna’s death. The older man encouraged Wes to talk, but he couldn’t tell him about Anna. The words would not come.
After Wes finished eating, they returned to the front of the hut and Wes accepted the pipe from his grandfather. The man eyed him carefully. “Koyake' saw great sadness for you before she left to visit Laughing Star. She told me you would come to her. As always, she was right. I am glad you’re here, yankobcakin. Perhaps we can soothe your heart.”
Wes shook his head and handed the pipe back to the older man before staring into the distance. “My heart will never heal.” He placed his fist on his chest. “It is dead, mIshomes, and I wish it to stay that way.”
The older man sat back in his rocking chair and remained silent.
A week went by, and while Wes stayed apart from the rest of the villagers, he enjoyed his grandfather’s company, finding a certain amount of peace in the man’s presence, and for a strange reason, a sense of hope. They sat together for hours, and once again mIshomes taught Wes the skill of carving small animals from wood. As a child, Wes had many that he’d treasured, but always left them with his grandparents when he ret
urned to his winter home with his father.
Despite the amount of months he’d spent each year with Mike Shannon, Wes never felt as if he knew the man. Tall, broad shouldered and handsome, he’d been a good father, but shared very little about himself with his son. On many long, dark winter nights, after a few gulps from the whiskey jar, he’d speak a bit about his beloved Sings Like Angel. He’d eventually grow silent and then shuffle off to bed, the pain of loss etched on his face. Pain that Wes now understood only too well.
Wes spent hours hunting and fishing, providing food for his grandparents and others in the compound. After long walks in the woods, his strength returned, but his heart remained a cold block of stone in his chest. As always, he ignored the looks sent his way from the young girls.
Nights were spent talking quietly with mIshomes, the man who’d also helped form the person Wes had become, as he listened again to tales of The People. Crickets chirped a late summer melody around the small house, owls hooted and small animals settled in for a night of slumber, as the man spoke in soft melodious tones. But Wes kept Anna’s memory in his heart, unable to share the greatest love a man could have, and the excruciating pain of losing it.
Wes awoke to the sound of a female voice, singing softly. For a moment he thought it was Anna, before the now-familiar crushing pain descended on him once more with crippling force. He turned on his mat to see his grandmother rocking slowly back and forth as she sat on the floor, weaving bits of colorful cloth.
He watched her for a few minutes, her brown wrinkled skin, her gray hair fastened into two braids that hung down her back. Love filled him, and despite the pain, peace took possession of his heart. A renewed feeling of hopefulness hovered out there somewhere, lifting his spirit. “Koyake',” he whispered.
She turned to him, giving him a gap-toothed smile, the orbs of her black eyes reaching to his very soul. “Yankobcakin.” Setting aside the small rug she worked on, she held her arms out. Wes rose and went to her, helping her up and pulling her into his embrace. Familiar smells of honeysuckle that always surrounded his grandmother comforted him. He leaned back and studied her face. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
“And I am glad you came to us as well. I knew you would.”
Wes grinned at her. “Still having visions, koyake'?”
“Come. We will have some food and you will tell me of this sadness.”
He dropped his hands. “I can’t yet speak of it.”
His grandmother continued to hum as she placed food on the table. His grandfather joined them, and they ate their meal while she spoke of the new baby and the joy he brought to his family.
“He’s a fat, healthy baby. But Laughing Star says there will be no more, which makes her man unhappy. She told him he could birth the next one.” She laughed, the sound a tinkle as musical as small bells.
Wes watched his grandmother as she spoke, wondering again why she’d been so accepting of the grandchild who’d been only half Indian. Both his grandparents had loved their only child, and never had either of them indicated any unhappiness that Sings Like Angel had married outside of the tribe.
“Now we talk,” his grandmother said as she placed a cloth over a bowl to put away the last of the food. She made her way out the door and down the path, apparently unconcerned that her grandson might not follow.
Wes joined her, and she held onto his arm as they walked through the woods. The scant sun barely reached them through the thick foliage. After about ten minutes of silence, she headed toward a fallen log and settled there. She patted the space alongside her. Once they were side by side, she took his hand in hers and spoke. “Tell me about Anna.”
Only his surprise at her use of the name he hadn’t uttered in weeks kept him from groaning as pain sliced into his heart. He tried to form the words that would make it all seem real by speaking of it. As he gathered his thoughts, he studied the older woman. The bit of sunlight through the leaves fell directly on her neck, highlighting the small tattoo of a star.
Wes’s heart came to an abrupt halt before suddenly speeding up, and for a moment he felt as if he’d been struck by lightening.
“It was you,” he whispered.
With every one of his senses heightened, Wes could only stare at his koyake'. The soft chirp of nearby birds turned into a cacophony of sound, the dampness of the woodsy air grew until he thought he would drown in its heaviness. He swallowed, trying to gain control of his raging body, to keep from running far away from every whispered breeze that passed over his skin, and the metal taste of fear that lingered on his tongue.
My grandmother sent Anna back in time.
One word screamed at him, whirling around his mind until it erupted from his mouth in a single, agonized moan. “Why?”
She patted his hand, her face taut with sorrow. “Anna Devlin was your woman. No matter that you were separated by time. She needed your strength and loyalty as you needed her courage and help.”
Staring off into the distance, the pain in her voice real, she said, “When last you visited our home, you were deeply troubled. You never spoke of it, but your moans in the night woke me many times. My once forceful yankobcakin had become broken from the white man’s war.” She returned her attention to him. “Your Anna also suffered from fears. The weak man she had planned to marry would never have made her whole. Your two souls called to me to bring you together. She needed you, as you did her.”
His body somewhat under control, he was able to form words. “No, you’re wrong. Needing me got her killed.”
“That is not true, yankobcakin. The evil one killed her, not your love. Your souls would never have been complete had you remained apart.” She placed her worn finger against his lips when he attempted to speak. “Hear me. Anna will always be a part of you. That will never change, even when the pain eases.”
Wes bounded from the log. “I won’t accept that.” His head in a whirl and his senses pounding him, he strode from her, his steps soon turning into a race through the woods as he ran from the demons of his own personal hell. After crashing through a couple of miles of brush, he halted, dropping to the ground, his arms resting on his bent knees. Gulping for air, he leaned his head back and studied the blue sky. Even the filmy cloud above him resembled Anna’s face.
Where had his grandmother’s powers come from? All these years he’d known her, and yet he didn’t know her at all. He clamped his palms against the sides of his head, wanting to squeeze the misery out.
Then, staring down at a small colony of ants as they worked diligently to drag a small, discarded crumb, a small niggling of hope started in his chest and spread outward. The idea took hold of his mind until it possessed him, body and soul.
Smiling for the first time in weeks, he pushed himself off the ground and headed to his grandparents’ hut.
“Send me to the future.”
Wes’s grandmother sighed, her coal black eyes boring into him. “No, yankobcakin.” The old woman shook her head, her tightened lips in a determined line. “I can’t do that.”
He squatted before her. “Why not?”
His stubborn koyake' continued to shake her head as she stabbed a needle at the soft piece of leather, drawing through a string that she slid colorful beads onto.
Wes removed the garment from her worn hands and held onto her fingers. “Is it possible?”
She refused to meet his gaze. “It is no matter. Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be.”
He took a deep breath, attempting to slow down his heart before it beat its way out of his chest. “Koyake', I ask you once more. Is it possible?”
“Trust me when I tell you, it is not a good idea.”
Relief spread through him, and he hugged her fiercely. “I want you to do it.”
His grandmother rose from the crude stool and closed the front door. “First I must tell you all the reasons it should not be done.”
Unable to sit still long enough to listen to her, Wes jumped up and paced. To
see Anna again, hold her close . . . he’d tie her wrist to his so she couldn’t go anywhere without him watching over her. Things were apparently very dangerous for women in the future. She’d had to go to a school to learn how to defend herself. And did dangerous work just to buy food and other necessities.
He’d also take care of that jackass she had intended to marry. That knothead better not be bothering her in any way. Even if he wasn’t, a visit to let him know to stay away from her would set things to right. Then, he’d have to—
“Are you listening to me?”
So deep in thought that her voice jolted him, Wes stared at his grandmother. For a moment he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone in the room. “What?”
“Sit down, yankobcakin. You are making this old lady dizzy.”
Running impatient fingers through his hair, Wes pulled out a stool and joined her at the table. She laid her hand on his arm. “Several things are important before you make this decision. The future is very different. Your Anna had studied history books in her time, so all of this was not so unusual for her. In the future, nothing will be familiar. In some ways it’s a strange place. There are many things you won’t understand, machines that you’ll find hard to accept. More white man’s wars have changed the world.”
Wes shrugged. “I can learn. Don’t you understand? I would do anything to see Anna again.”
“Your wife will not recognize you.”
Wes continued to shake his head. His grandmother cupped his cheeks in her wrinkled hands to hold him still. “Here are more concerns. I can’t promise the exact moment you will arrive. There is the chance Anna might have already traveled to the past.”
He felt the blood leave his face, but nodded for her to continue.
A Tumble Through Time Page 21
