by Wind, Ruth
“Why is it in your glove box?”
“The tobacco? That’s where I keep it.”
“No.” She lifted her arm, feeling the cool weight of silver against her skin. “The bracelet.”
He shrugged. “I wore it one day and took it off to work. How ‘bout that cigarette. Please?”
Jessie dropped the subject, but she didn’t take the bracelet off as she attempted to roll the cigarette. In her mind’s eye, she saw the Oregon meadow of her dream, the meadow she had tried to paint. It was a day torn from the past, a soft summer dawn by the Columbia River. A mist had clung to the firs and dotted Luke’s long black braid with silvery beads of moisture. In the woods, blue jays scolded, squirrels chattered and a single deer danced to the edge of the river to drink, until it caught sight of the humans and bounded away again, leaping with exquisite grace over a low fence. Jessie, taking the magical morning to be a sign, gave Luke the bracelet she had purchased at a Seattle street fair. It was a token of the vow she had given him that morning, a vow to love him always.
In her mind, it had been as binding a vow as anything uttered before a priest or clergyman in a church. In her mind, she had married Luke Bernali that day. She knew he’d viewed it the same way.
Now she rolled a cigarette for that same man, in a truck much like the one he had been driving then, the weight of his bracelet on her arm. In agitation, she rolled the paper too tightly around the tobacco and it tore. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry about it.’’
The gentleness in his tone unnerved her. It told her he, too, remembered that cool morning and the vow she had spoken. She took off the bracelet and threw it into the glove box. “I’ll do it.”
And, as if rolling a perfect cigarette were all that mattered, Jessie concentrated on doing just that. The paper smooth between her fingers, a pinch of moist tobacco…
“That’s right,” Luke said. “Now just shake it out so it’s even.”
She did and managed to smooth the paper around right, too. With a toss of her head, she handed it over. He grinned as he took it, then devilishly offered it back to her. “Maybe you need it worse than I do.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she said darkly. “I’ll throw every scrap of tobacco you’ve got right out the window.”
He laughed and scratched a match with his thumbnail, rolling down the window so the smoke would go outside. “Now dig that bracelet out and give it to me.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I know.” His mouth was firm in profile. “But it’s mine, and I want to wear it.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Too bad.” Abruptly, he stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and leaned over, snagging the bracelet from the glove box before she could stop him. With a lift of his chin, he cut her a glance and slapped the silver cuff on his wrist. “You’ve got your painting. I’ve got my bracelet.”
Jessie didn’t respond. The mess from the glove box still sat in her lap, and with annoyance, she grabbed a tape without checking to see what it was. She stuffed it in the tape player, then shoved everything back into the glove box the same wily-nilly way she’d found it. Just as she slammed the box closed, music poured into the cab.
“I’m on Fire,” by Bruce Springsteen.
Luke roared with laughter. Jessie slumped in her seat and glared out the window. “One of these days, I’m going to strangle you.”
“No, you won’t.” He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “You love me and you know it.”
Chapter Eleven
Luke teased her to keep from slipping away, but it was a lost cause. She curled up against the window and pretended to sleep, and he knew it was her way of escaping him. He tried not to mind, tried to tell himself he’d known it was coming and ought to have been prepared. He tried to tell himself—
Yeah, right. He’d been trying to tell himself since she dropped into his life again that it was dangerous to get close. But as usual, his heart overrode his reason. Now he would pay the consequences.
Jessie was simply incapable of letting down her guard completely, of giving her whole self to another person. The damage of her childhood made it so, and all the wishing in the world wouldn’t change it.
Irritably, he passed a slow-moving car. Once, he’d been willing to settle for that portion of her heart that she could give, but it had nearly drained him dry. No way he’d do it again.
If she wanted him this time, it had to be on his terms. All or nothing.
As she shifted back and forth, pretending to sleep, he set his jaw and focused on the dry high plains through which they passed, the jutting buttes and carved arroyos, the grayish green clumps of sage and clusters of yucca. There was no essential difference in the landscape itself; from southern Colorado onward, they had passed through the same country.
But slowly, the feeling of the land and the people changed. Not so many ranchers in hats and boots. Not so many crisp, square towns with a single stoplight at the center. More little villages centerpieced with an adobe garage and filling station, often with a rangy-looking dog guarding the step, places where the language spoken would as likely be Spanish as English.
There weren’t so many people out, bustling here and there on morning rounds, but Luke knew in the hills there were women cooking and men tinkering and children laughing. Somewhere, music was pouring from a radio up there and the song would be a Spanish ballad.
As they passed through one of the little villages, Luke gave a slow wave to a man crossing the highway and the man waved back, just a raised hand. It gave Luke a curious rush of pleasure. Here, he knew how things were. He knew what to expect.
Giselle banged on the window. Luke glanced in the rearview mirror, and she exaggeratedly rubbed her stomach. Beside her, Tasha popped up, tongue out as she panted.
Luke gave Giselle a nod of acknowledgment and looked at Jessie, reaching over to tap her arm lightly with the backs of his fingers. “Hey, Jess. Time to wake up.”
She straightened, blinking, and Luke wondered when she’d passed from pretending to sleep to the real thing. “I think we’ll stop in Gallup and get some lunch. Okay with you?”
“Sure.” She yawned.
Luke had never spent any time in the reservation border town of Gallup, but it wasn’t much different from Farmington, to the north. Neither were large towns, but the streets were thronged on the weekends with Indians come to shop.
This was Saturday. An odd dissonance—equal parts nostalgia, fear and delight—rose in Luke at the familiar sight of bruised pickup trucks and old cars crowded into the parking lots of small shopping centers and restaurants. It was this he’d been half dreading, half anticipating since Marcia suggested he and Jessie come down to lead the meeting. Everywhere were Indian faces, young and old and in-between, keenly familiar in shape and color and arrangement of expression.
As with the little villages on the road, he knew what these people were doing. He saw a youth carrying a toddler wrapped into a round bundle against the chilly wind, and chuckled, thinking of himself and Marcia. A mother strode along the street, dragging a two-wheeled basket half filled with purchases, and behind her trailed a gaggle of stair-stepped sons with new haircuts. Luke recognized the tan marks on the back of their necks.
He smiled to himself, pleased at the warmth it aroused in him, the feeling of belonging. He glanced at Jessie but could read nothing in her face.
Spying a sign for a family restaurant above several blocks of low-slung buildings, Luke made a left turn in the direction of the sign.
And here was another familiar sight. At the doors of bars hung men and women, laughing. Music spilled through the windows. It was not too early to see an older man stumbling with measured concentration toward a truck, his keys in his hand.
Luke saw them and felt a sound go off in his head, a little roar. Throat tight, he forced himself to look only at the road, driving slowly to make sure he saw what was in front of him
.
He took a breath and blew it out as they reached the parking lot of the restaurant.
“Are you okay?” Jessie asked.
“Fine,” he said and grabbed his jean jacket from the seat. For a minute he didn’t know if he wanted the hat or not, but the dithering irritated him and he grabbed it defiantly. He wasn’t going to start second-guessing himself here. He’d be himself and let everybody else—Indian and Anglo alike—draw what conclusions they would.
Giselle and Tasha both leapt from the back of the truck, and Luke looked around for a field where he could let Tasha relieve herself. To the side of the building was a waste area, and he leashed the dog. “You two go in and get a seat,” he said. “I’ll take Tasha to do her business.”
Jessie glanced toward the restaurant and turned back, shaking a loose strand of hair from her face. “We’ll wait for you.”
Surprised, Luke took in the stiffness of her back, the restless swing of her earrings against her neck—and almost teased her about her shyness. Instead, since he’d felt a similar clutch of the feeling over whether to wear his hat, he only nodded. “It will only take a second.”
So it was together they went inside, with Giselle between them. The lunchtime crowd was thick. A smell of sizzling meat and onions scented the air, and a small cloud of smoke hung near the back.
As they walked through the room, Luke felt a sense of pride over his beautiful daughter and the woman everyone would assume was his wife, walking so straight with her long braid gleaming in the low light. The deep pleasure he felt at being with them, among these faces that echoed the faces of his childhood, gave him a small shock.
They were seated in a booth near a window. “I’d like coffee,” Luke told the hostess as he slid in. “Cream and sugar, please.”
“Your waitress will take your order when she has a chance.”
“That’s fine. Would you tell her I’d like some coffee as soon as she can get it?” He glanced at Jessie with raised eyebrows. She nodded, and he said, “Make it two.”
The hostess, a girl not more than twenty, dressed up way too much for such a place, rolled her eyes as if he were a bit thick. “I said she’ll take your order when she gets a chance.”
He opened his mouth to insist she could relay the message, but Jessie touched his hand. He sighed. “Fine.”
When the waitress came, bearing two cups of steaming coffee, they settled on hamburgers all around. “No pickles for the little one,” Luke said. Giselle leaned against him with a smile.
Jessie stirred sugar into her coffee. “So, kiddo, are you having a good time back there? Are you bored yet?”
“No, it’s fun. Like having my own little house, just me and my dog.”
“Yourdog?” Luke teased, bumping her with his elbow. “You aren’t going to steal her away from me, are you?”
Giselle lifted her eyebrows with a grin. “I might. You better be careful. She already loves me. I can tell.”
“Oh, yeah?” Luke winked at Jessie. “What makes you think so?”
“She likes to lay on me and lean on my leg and she licks my hand all the time.”
“Pretty good signs.” More seriously he added, “If you get tired of riding back there, just say the word and you can ride up front with us.”
“I would, just to keep you company, but I think Tasha would miss me.”
Jessie chuckled. “It’s perfectly all right if you want to stay in the back.”
In the booth behind Jessie, a chubby toddler suddenly popped over the top of the seat and grabbed Jessie’s braid with a gleeful noise. Giselle giggled as her mother turned around, smiling, to loosen the clutch of fierce fingers. “Ow,” she said playfully.
The toddler laughed and reached out again, this time for the dangling earrings at her neck. Jessie caught his hand. “Gotcha.”
A young teenager caught hold of the baby. “You getting in trouble, Eli?” he said, giving Jessie a flirtatious little smile. “Sorry.”
“He’s cute.”
“Mom,” Giselle said, as the baby was lured with a french fry into sitting back down, “I think you should have more babies. They like you.”
“Oh, really?” Jessie replied with a grin. “And I think if she’s anything like you, one child is enough.”
“But I’d like to have a brother. It would be fun.”
“Glad you think so.”
Listening to this, Luke was assailed with his recurrent vision of Jessie holding his son at her breast, sitting in a rocking chair he made for her. The wish to make it true gave him a pang in his stomach.
To his relief, the food came. As they ate, Luke listened to the rise and fall of the voices around him. It was not the same growling undernote of murmuring voices in the Springs, but a lilting mingling of English and Navajo, a comforting rhythm that fell like music in his ears.
And yet, he didn’t know these people. He didn’t really belong to them anymore.
Jessie jolted him out of his downward spiral of thoughts. “How do you know Daniel, Luke?”
“We were friends as children. His mother’s land was close to ours; sometimes we took the sheep out together.” He lifted a shoulder. “I wasn’t supposed to hang out with him, though, because he was bad.”
“Bad?”
“He was always doing something to start trouble. My dad didn’t want me to get a bad reputation.”
Jessie gave him a quizzical smile. The light struck her eyes exactly right, setting the pale color ablaze with such beauty, he caught his breath. It annoyed him that Daniel had been Jessie’s friend all these years, that Daniel had known of Luke as Giselle’s father and had done nothing. “He wasn’t always as perfect as he is now.”
“Perfect?” She wiped a smear of mustard from her lip. “Are we talking about the same person?”
“You’re the one who said he’s a genius, not me.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt about that part. He’s smarter than anybody I’ve ever met.” Her pale eyes twinkled. “He’s also impatient and wants everything done yesterday, and he has a hard time understanding that the rest of the world has to sleep and eat and doesn’t compute figures at warp speed.”
Luke lifted his coffee cup, appalled that his emotions were so evident, that Jessie was grinning at him now because she knew he was jealous. But her assessment was surprisingly acute. He found himself returning her smile. “He hasn’t changed much then.”
“He drives me crazy if I spend too much time with him.”
Luke looked at her. Now her face was open, her eyes unshuttered. “I drive you crazy, too,” he said deliberately.
“No comment.”
All at once, surrounded with the lilt of Indian voices in a city not unlike Farmington, with his lost love sitting calmly across the table from him, Luke felt as if he’d fallen into the twilight zone—into some alternate version of how his life might have been if only he’d made some different choices.
It scared him. He’d been struggling to keep his life on a perfectly even keel for so long that the new influx of emotions stimulated by this place, on top of everything else that had happened the past week, made him want to explode.
Abruptly, he stood up, tossing his napkin down beside his empty plate. “I need to take a walk.”
Giselle looked up at him. “Can I go with you?”
He had envisioned himself alone, but the appeal in her sweet face was irresistible. “Ask your mom.”
“Go ahead,” Jessie said. By the strain around her mouth, Luke could see she didn’t want Giselle to go, but in the straightness of her spine, he saw the stubborn pride that would not allow her to admit it. “I’ll pay the bill and wait at the truck.”
For a moment, he hesitated, thinking he should urge Giselle to stay and keep her mother company. But Jessie wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he spun on his heels. Nothing he said would change her mind.
Damn, he thought, rubbing his chest restlessly with the flat of his palm. It was going to be a long three or four days.
> * * *
Jessie paid the bill, thinking it had been a mistake to agree to this trip. She walked out to the truck, hearing Luke’s words to her earlier—you love me. The phrase had haunted her for hours.
Now she flung open the truck door and settled on the passenger side, leaving the door open to dangle her feet out and look around her. You love me.
She had curled into her corner of the cab and pretended to sleep while they drove, but even with her eyes closed, it was impossible to escape Luke. He hummed along with the music, sometimes breaking into actual words in a tuneless tenor made sweet with his enjoyment. It was one of the little things she had forgotten and now seemed doubly dear—how much he loved to sing along with all his old rock and roll and just how awful he sounded.
Last night he had slipped through all of her defenses, had filled her with himself in ways that went far beyond physical. The essence of him had wafted through her pores and stained her heart once again.
Now she sat in the cab of his truck, enveloped by the scent of him, and looked toward the side street down which they’d traveled—that road to ruin littered with Indians drinking, even so early in the day—and thought of his tuneless hum.
Yes, she loved him.
But loving him was never the question, never had been. Even as she had loaded her meager possessions into her car and disappeared from his life, she had loved him. Even when he was drunk and unbeautiful and unintelligent and all the gentle funniness of his personality disintegrated in drink, she had loved him.
But loving someone didn’t mean it would work. No matter how hard she tried to forget it, overcome it, come to terms with it, the fact remained Luke was an alcoholic. It was a permanent condition. He had reformed, or recovered or whatever the current term was, but at any moment, he could fall again.
At any moment.
Living with her mother had shown Jessie just how grueling it could be to wait for that fall. She couldn’t face the daily doubt again. Not even for the love of Luke.
But, oh, how she wanted him!
