Double Blind

by Hannah Alexander

  No, hated was too strong. Over the years he’d shown more of the distrust that many of their people carried for whites. He didn’t appreciate Sheila’s arrival, Betsy could tell, and it was because he remembered. He’d been the one most outspoken against Sheila returning and had made his opinion known. Kai better watch his mouth this time.

  He approached the serving line with his tray and glanced up at Betsy. The wrinkles around his dark eyes stretched with surprise at the cold look of warning she shot him.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, his voice still gruff with sleep.

  She plopped a serving spoonful of cereal in a bowl and slid it across the counter to him. She jerked her head in Sheila’s direction and waited until Kai looked that way.

  “Leave her alone,” Betsy said.

  “I will. I’ll leave her as alone as I can.”

  “You know what I mean. You knew her, too. Her parents raised her here. She went to school with our children, played with our children. She isn’t going to hurt anyone.”

  Kai picked up his tray. “She’s not a kid anymore. What if she turns out like her mother?” Without waiting for an answer, he led his boys to the far side of the dining area from where Sheila sat.

  “He’s right.”

  Betsy jerked her head around to find her helper, Steve Hunt, watching Sheila from behind the counter. His dark, slightly slanted eyes narrowed when Sheila’s voice could be heard joking with the others.

  “What are you talking about?” Betsy put her hands on her hips and turned to glare up at the young man, her chin pointed at his chest. “Don’t tell me you’ve been listening to Kai, too.”

  “I don’t have to listen to Kai. Can’t you see it, Betsy? She took a job that should’ve gone to one of our people. Jobs are scarce here on the reservation, anyway.”

  “So are Navajo nurses willing to come back here and help. They want to go out into the white world, where the pay and benefits are better.”

  “If it’s better there, why did she come here?” He turned his sullen gaze on Sheila once again. “She doesn’t belong here.”

  A burst of laughter reached them, and Betsy saw Sheila helping one little third-grade girl balance a spoon on her nose, to the nearly unbearable delight of the other children.

  “She was raised here,” Betsy said, turning to see Canaan York enter the cafeteria, then stand grinning at Sheila’s antics.

  “Her mother died here,” Steve said.

  “What do you know of that? You weren’t even born yet.”

  “I heard stories about her, bad stories.”

  “Who told you those stories?” Betsy demanded. “Kai?”

  “No, not Kai.” Steve looked down. “Other kids.”

  Betsy would have to watch this one, as well. With his parents gone, he had no one to keep him in line, and he was in the prime years of his life for a little troublemaking.

  She could feel it in the air. Something was going to happen soon.

  Chapter Fourteen

  C anaan took a tray and slid it along the stainless-steel serving counter toward Betsy Two Horses and Steve Hunt. He couldn’t keep his gaze from wandering back over his shoulder to Sheila. This was the Sheila he remembered so well from childhood, always giggling with the other little girls, playing mischievous tricks, though never anything cruel. She’d learned that balancing act right here…or at least, in the old cafeteria. Tad Hunt had taught it to her, if Canaan remembered it right.

  Canaan thanked Betsy for his cereal, poured himself a cup of coffee and carried his tray to Sheila’s table. Two little girls who had left their seats to get closer to Sheila now scurried back to their places at a word from their dorm mother.

  “You used to get into trouble every other morning for that balancing spoon act,” Canaan told Sheila as he took the empty chair across the table from her. He nodded at the uneaten food on her tray. “And that was why. You got so busy playing you forgot to eat.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Sheila made a face at him, but she poured honey over her cereal and picked up her spoon. “I forgot I knew how to do that until just a few minutes ago. Funny the things you forget about your childhood, until you return to it.”

  Canaan noticed she still didn’t take a bite of her food. “What’s wrong, don’t you like Betsy’s five-grain cereal? You’d better be careful not to hurt her feelings. Looks like she gave you an extra helping.”

  With the laughter gone from Sheila’s eyes, the dark smudges beneath them appeared more prominent against the pale white skin of her face. She tipped a few drops of her milk over the cereal and took a bite.

  Canaan watched this silent stranger. Only a moment before he could have sworn his old friend Sheila had peered across the table at him with those wide eyes, grinning with some secret thought of mischief. But this dark-smudged gaze held nothing, as if it had gone purposely blank. He glanced toward the kitchen, and found Betsy and Steve watching them in silence.

  Canaan leaned forward. “Sheila?”

  She looked up.

  “You left before I returned from the dorms last night. Doc said you were tired. I hope you slept well.”

  “Fine.” She dropped her spoon onto the table and stopped all pretense of eating. “Daddy raised me in a Baptist church, all strict and by the book. I thought I’d learned everything there was to know about the Bible until I went to college, and then I made friends with people from different denominations. I went to lots of different churches with lots of different friends, but I never saw a single exorcism take place in any of those churches.”

  “You won’t see an exorcism here, either,” Canaan said, “but if you’d come with us last night, you’d have seen some pretty heavy prayer going on.”

  Sheila leaned closer. “Why is Tanya so scared?”

  He shrugged.

  “She ran away yesterday, didn’t she? That means she’s pretty frightened.”

  Canaan nodded. If it was obvious to Sheila, it must be obvious to everyone, which was what bothered him.

  “What is there to fear here at the school?” Sheila asked.

  “Nothing for real, I hope.” Not yet.

  “You hope? What could there be?”

  “If I knew, don’t you think I’d be doing something about it?”

  “Last night you said there was something frightening the kids, but you couldn’t explain it.”

  He looked around and saw that most of the kids had finished their breakfasts and left. “The grades seem to have dropped since I arrived here. Two of the dorm parents have reported children waking up in the middle of the night screaming from nightmares.”

  “The same children every time? Could they be having problems at home?”

  “These were children who stay at the school through the weekends because their homes are so far away.”

  “Have these children suggested anything that might be causing the dreams?” Sheila asked.

  “They’re afraid to talk.”

  “What else?”

  “The older children seemed restless in class. They’ve become harder to control, which keeps me busy in the principal’s office, which is why you’re here.”

  “Something is bothering the children, but none of them will tell you what’s wrong. Is that because they’re afraid of you? We were always afraid of the principal.”

  “But we weren’t afraid of the nurse,” he said.

  “That’s because she was my mother.”

  “No, it’s because the nurse isn’t the disciplinarian, the principal is. Think about it, Sheila. I only took over as interim principal two weeks ago. Before that, I was the clinic doctor. Wendy Hunt was my office assistant. The kids would have told one of us.”

  “Wendy wasn’t a nurse, was she?”

  “No, she just helped out with files and some procedures, took vitals for me, that kind of thing. I taught her how to run the equipment, even how to draw blood.”

  “What did Tad do?”

  “He taught and helped coach the track team.
”

  “Doctors can instill fear in a child,” Sheila said. “They order painful procedures.”

  “Then maybe you can reach them in a way I couldn’t,” Canaan said.

  “The children with nightmares never described them?” Sheila asked.

  He shook his head.

  “And the dorm parents don’t have any idea what’s going on?”

  “No.”

  “What about the teachers?”

  “Nothing, just complaints of bad behavior.”

  “Interesting that there would be a problem like this in a Christian school,” Sheila remarked.

  “It isn’t so strange when you think about the ancient conflict between good and evil. Where goodness flourishes, evil will search for an opportunity to destroy it. How can we expect anything different?”

  “I thought you said you were hoping they had nothing to fear.”

  “Not a physical presence. Evil is always around, but when it takes a physical form it becomes a physical and spiritual battleground.”

  She studied him silently for a moment, and like the child he’d once been, he wanted to squirm with the discomfort of her scrutiny. There was something…personal about it.

  “You take your faith seriously, don’t you?” she said at last.

  This surprised him. “You don’t?”

  “Of course I do, but it’s just…I don’t know…nice to see a man who isn’t afraid to defer to the Almighty.”

  “You were married, weren’t you?”

  “For ten years.”

  “Was it a good marriage?”

  She grimaced. “Getting a little personal, aren’t you?”

  “I tend to do that. It’s the doctor in me.”

  “No, it’s the Canaan in you. You always asked a lot of questions, even when they weren’t appropriate. I remember when you asked one of our teachers why she had dark roots in her blond hair.”

  “Oh, yeah, Mrs. Reilly. She didn’t last the year. Nice change of subject.”

  Sheila’s gaze roved around the room, settled for a few seconds on Betsy’s bowed head at the sink, then returned to Canaan. “My husband wasn’t exactly what I would call a devoted Christian.”

  “Are you saying he wasn’t a believer?”

  She hesitated, nodded. “I met him at a singles class at church. Turns out he was just cruising for chicks.”

  He smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that phrase.”

  “I was obviously not very discerning, or I’d have realized before the wedding that he didn’t share my faith. Love does make people blind.”

  “Granddad said you were widowed.”

  “Two years ago,” she said. “How about you? No wife? Your grandfather told me you’ve been too busy to find someone after your divorce.”

  Good old Granddad. “He’s getting desperate. He even signed me up for an online dating service, but he was very specific. He’s looking for a Navajo woman who intends to stay in Navajoland.”

  Sheila chuckled. Her laughter was infectious, as it had always been, feminine and lilting. Canaan felt a smile catch at his lips despite the reason for her amusement.

  “Come on, Canaan, a handsome guy like you probably has to fight the women away.”

  He willed his face not to flush—an unfortunate carryover from his pip-squeak days. “I’ve never fought a woman away.”

  “No, if I know you—which, of course, I don’t anymore—you probably never even noticed when a woman was interested in you.”

  “I think I would notice.”

  She shook her head, still smiling.

  “Want a tour of the school?” His turn to change the subject.

  “What I’d like is an orientation of the clinic.”

  “I’ve got one errand to run, then I’ll have some time to show you around.”

  “Will it take long? I think I’ll take a walk on the trail that leads toward Piñon Valley.”

  Canaan nodded and stood. “You should have just enough time. And you want to do it alone, right? You used to do that all the time.”

  Sheila blinked, obviously surprised. “I did?”

  “Sure, don’t you remember?”

  “There are a lot of things I don’t remember.”

  “Then a walk might do you some good.” He picked up his tray and left her to make her own way into the desert, where he hoped, for her sake, she might uncover some happy memories for once.

  Chapter Fifteen

  S heila watched Canaan’s retreating figure—tall, confident, at ease in his own skin, even if he wasn’t at peace with the situation here at the school.

  His comment baffled her. Why couldn’t she remember simple things like solitary walks in the desert?

  There was a lot she did remember—such as racing through the desert with the other children, laughing, teasing, playing tag, getting dirt and sand in her shoes. Not too far from here were some hills painted by the colors of the windblown sand, just as beautiful as the hills of the Painted Desert, down on I-40.

  Sheila and Canaan had once explored them without their parents’ permission. Later, Canaan’s conscience betrayed them. He confessed, and they were both restricted from playing together for a week.

  She smiled at the memory as she deposited her eating utensils in a plastic bin, waved goodbye to Betsy and stepped outside into the bright morning sunlight. Not all her memories of this place were unpleasant. In fact, most were very good.

  The cotton-dry breeze had warmed with the sun, and Sheila raised her face to the sky and breathed deeply the scent of dusty, sunbaked sage. From the sidewalk beside the cafeteria, she saw a small, lone figure walking several yards out in the desert, away from the school. The breeze was stiffer out there in the open, and it picked up eddies of dust and swirled them in the air, like old phantoms trying to come to life.

  The figure turned, and Sheila recognized Tanya’s heart-shaped face and dark brows. The girl’s long black hair whipped across her neck, and she pushed it out of her eyes as she stared at the school.

  Sheila stepped off the sidewalk and walked toward her, and saw the girl stiffen. For a moment, it looked as if she might turn and run like a frightened kitten. But her slender shoulders straightened and her firm chin raised a bit higher.

  Smiling to herself, Sheila slowed her steps. Tanya was a beautiful girl and obviously very skittish right now. The last thing Sheila wanted to do was make her more afraid.

  Tanya had shown a surreptitious interest in Sheila this morning at breakfast, when Sheila was playing with the younger children. There had been a wistfulness in her expression that Sheila had inferred as a desire to belong. In the short time Sheila had been here, she hadn’t seen Tanya interacting with any of the other kids her age.

  Tanya nibbled her lower lip as Sheila approached her.

  “Hello, Tanya. I don’t think we were properly introduced yesterday. I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re the new nurse. I’m supposed to apologize. Canaan says I have a temper that will get me into trouble someday.”

  Sheila stopped a few feet away. “I knew you were upset.”

  “Moonlight was a good dog.”

  “I’m sure she was, and no animal deserves to die that way. I’m sorry it happened.”

  Tanya’s eyes filled with quick tears. She turned her head and swiped at them.

  “You must have loved her,” Sheila said.

  Tanya shrugged and kicked at an anthill.

  “Maybe you can get a puppy.”

  “We aren’t supposed to have pets in the dorms.”

  “No, I suppose that would be a bit much. Speaking of the dorms, did Canaan take care of the problem in yours last night?”

  Tanya gave a sharp gasp, residue of tears glistening on her face.

  Sheila hurriedly said, “I’m not making fun of you. I sure wouldn’t ridicule you for your fears. Everyone has them.”

  “Not everybody. Canaan’s not afraid of anything. Neither are Betsy Two Hors
es or Doc Cottonwood or Steve Hunt.”

  Sheila decided not to remark on that. Though she had been told that Tanya was friends with the Hunt children, Sheila hadn’t had the opportunity to see her with them. All she had seen of Steve was a glare or two shot at her from behind the kitchen counter.

  “What about you?” Tanya asked.

  “You mean do I ever get scared? Of course.”

  Tanya shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and kicked at some pebbles on the ground. “You’re supposed to outgrow stuff like that.”

  “Maybe so, but I didn’t. I think a lot of people are scared of something, but they cover it up once they reach a certain age because they’re expected to outgrow their fears.”

  Tanya studied her with eyes that glowed dark amber in the sun. “I didn’t want to hear that.”

  Sheila suppressed another smile and stepped along the faint trail that wound along a ridge into the desert. “Want to walk with me a little way?” She didn’t wait for Tanya’s reply, but immediately set off and heard soft footsteps behind her.

  “You play like a kid,” Tanya said.

  Sheila nodded. In the cafeteria, she wasn’t behaving the way Tanya obviously expected an adult to behave. “Is there a problem with my having fun?”

  “No, but I’m just saying if you play like a kid, maybe you’ve never grown up. That’s why stuff still scares you.”

  “I see what you mean,” Sheila said, trying, and failing, to match Tanya’s serious tone.

  “Doc and Canaan like you.”

  Sheila’s footsteps slowed as she tried to keep up with Tanya’s train of thought. The girl seemed younger than twelve.

  “They don’t know me anymore,” Sheila said. “I was younger than you are now when I left here.”

  “But they still like you.”

  “Yes, and I like them, but that doesn’t mean they know me.”

  Tanya was walking beside Sheila now. “What kinds of things are you afraid of?”

  Sheila glanced to her side to see Tanya watching her, stepping over the terrain like a sure-footed antelope, never stumbling, focus intent. “Oh, things like my loved ones getting sick or dying,” Sheila said. “Death scares me the same way it does everybody else.”