"They were killed while we were traveling to California."
Her heart lost some of its fear and opened slightly to him. "I'm so sorry. Car accident?"
"What?"
"Car accident." It seemed a reasonable assumption.
"We were traveling on a wagon train. A war party of Mojave Indians from southern Arizona attacked us. My mother hid me inside a water barrel that fell over during the assault. It must have been two days before the Paiutes came and took me back to their camp."
Mairie simply stared at him. She wasn't going to touch that one. Okay… let him continue to fantasize if he wanted. While he held that knife, she was not about to contradict him. Obviously, the residue of peyote was still affecting him. Maybe it was like LSD with flashbacks. Granted, she was from the East and not familiar with western tradition, but she was pretty damn sure wagon trains had not been a common form of transportation for quite some time. "How 'bout that dinner?" she asked, forcing her lips into a big grin. "I am truly starved."
He stuck his knife under one of the cakes and lifted it to a rock outside the fire bed. He then cut into the meat and pulled it from the carcass, licking his fingers when he'd dropped it onto the same rock. She realized it was her dinner plate when he stood up and offered it to her.
"Thank you," she said, and inhaled the gamy aroma. It didn't matter what it tasted like. She had to eat to keep up her strength for whatever awaited her through the night. And there was no way she was going to insult him now. Not when she was spending the next ten hours in the dark with him and his knife—a man who continued to stick to his story of living in the past.
She ate in silence, forcing herself to chew the stringy meat and dry tasteless bean cake. Both were protein, and even though her stomach rebelled, Mairie was determined to keep each bite down. She took deep breaths and finished every single crumb.
As if reading her mind, he handed her the canteen. It was old, dented, and the leather strap was soft and worn. Unplugging the top, she brought it to her mouth. The water was warm and tasted of metal, yet she took several gulps and handed it back. Delaney drank from it and placed it on the ground next to him. He tore the carcass apart and handed her a leg. Looking at the tiny limb, Mairie shook her head.
Delaney shrugged and bit into it. She watched as he cleaned the bone and sucked on it as if to extract every bit of nourishment. He made a good Indian, she thought. He didn't waste a thing. Finally, when he sat back against a boulder and sighed, she knew he was satisfied. Well, she thought… it appeared that dinner was over. Now what?
Intense darkness surrounded them. There were no lights in the distance. No city. No planes… only the most spectacular display of stars that she'd ever seen. She'd been watching him so closely for the last hour that she had almost missed it. Lifting her chin, she stared in awe at the sky above her. Thousands of stars formed a canopy of brilliant beauty.
"God… it's beautiful," she whispered.
"Yes."
She heard his voice, yet kept her gaze on the stars. She had never seen anything like it in her life. Without the reflection of city lights, the stars seemed to come out and display all their magnificent glory. "Doesn't it seem surreal?" she murmured. "What we're actually seeing is the past."
"The past?"
She nodded as she continued to take in the glittering show of bright jewels against the night sky. "I read somewhere that there are more than two hundred billion stars. Imagine that. And they are discovering more every year. This book said it took years for the light from the stars to travel to our atmosphere. Light years, millions and millions of miles. So what we're looking at is not that star as it appears right now in this moment, wherever it is in the universe, but as it appeared years ago, millions of millions of miles ago. Amazing, huh?"
"Where did you learn this?"
She blinked and looked at him. He was staring at her with an odd expression.
"I told you. I read it. In a book. You know… a book? Maybe when I was in college."
He seemed surprised. "You attended college?"
Her spine stiffened. "Yes. Is that so surprising? Don't tell me you're a male chauvinist, too."
"A what?"
"Male chauvinist. A man who doesn't believe that women should have the same equal rights as a man. You know… equal pay for equal work. The right to hold office. No discrimination because of sex. All the rights granted under the law to males. Of course, I've always thought that women who seek to be equal to men… lack ambition." She tried not to laugh.
"And how can a woman hold office, if she can't vote?" He seemed pleased, as if he had punched holes into her argument.
Obviously, he didn't get her joke. "Hey… ever hear of the Nineteenth Amendment?"
"No."
It was one word, one simple word, and yet it had a startling effect on her. For she knew he was telling the truth. He had no idea what she was talking about. What had happened to him? How had he lost all memory of history?
"May I ask you a question?"
He nodded.
"How did you get that scar on your chest?" She wanted to know. She needed to know.
He simply stared at her for a few moments, as if deciding whether or not to tell her. Finally, he sighed deeply and said, "In the war."
"The war? Vietnam?"
"What?"
"The war in Vietnam." He seemed a little young for Vietnam. "Or the Gulf war?"
He was looking at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. "Gettysburg. The war between the North and the South? Where have you been for the last ten years?"
She tore her gaze away from him and looked back to the stars. It was getting cold, yet she couldn't attribute the chill in her body to the night temperature. He had to be crazy. He had to be! For if he wasn't, she was. What was happening here? If she listened to him for one moment, if she believed his words for one instant, then she was the one out of time. She was the one traveling into the past. Like the light from the stars…
She shook herself from the irrational thoughts. This simply couldn't be. In the morning she would laugh at herself for even considering such a concept.
"I'm going to sleep," she announced, and stood up. Every muscle in her body rebelled at the movement, yet she ignored the pain as she limped toward the small cave. "Good night, Delaney. Thank you for the meal."
Once inside she arranged herself, using the parachute as a ground cover and blanket. It wasn't much, but she left a goodly portion of it to her side, in case Delaney wanted to cover himself. She would not wait for him to join her. Secretly she hoped he sat in front of the fire all night. She knew she wasn't going to sleep.
Gettysburg! None of it made sense. And she was too tired to figure any of it out now. Tomorrow… tomorrow everything would be put in its right order. She would be rescued. Look into her brother's eyes. Get a real bath, real food. She was even going to get a facial and have her nails done, at least what remained of her nails. That was it: she would find a spa and spend the day being pampered. She certainly deserved it. Studying Delaney's profile as he sat before the fire, Mairie fought the dread his words had brought. Something… something really strange had happened. Either to him, or to her. Right now, at this moment, in a cave on a mountain in the high desert with a man before her who lived in his head, it was too scary to let it all play out in her own mind.
Life as she had known it seemed to have disappeared.
It was that sense that creeps up on you in sleep, a warning that someone is watching you. She felt it yet was too tired to open her eyes. It persisted and she tried pushing it away, but her instincts were beginning to activate and she felt herself surrendering. As much as she didn't want to lose the warm comfort in front of her, the dream of sleeping next to a handsome cowboy with long brown hair and laughing blue eyes who pulled her against his chest for warmth, something was nudging her to wake up. She felt safe. Protected. Wanted. It was too good to last and Mairie reluctantly opened her eyes. She was immediately confused. Why was she
snuggled up against Bryan? Was it still a dream?
Oh …my… God!
Mairie froze for just a moment before lifting her arm off a man's chest, a man who definitely was not her brother. The heat of humiliation rushed through her body and she blinked a few times, attempting to make some sort of sense out of her surroundings when she again felt that creepy sensation. Lifting herself up on her elbows, she turned her head toward the daylight and stared for a few seconds at the strange figures crouching in front of her at the entrance to the cave.
And then she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Terror slammed her against the back wall as she tried to pull away from them yet she only managed to entangle her feet in the silky parachute as she yanked it up to her chest.
"What? What the hell is going on?" Delaney shot upright into a sitting position next to her and pulled the material away from his face. He looked sleepy, irritated, confused.
She stuck out her arm and pointed a shaky finger toward the men.
Delaney turned his head and she couldn't believe how his expression changed. It softened immediately as he called out to them in a guttural language. The men nodded and laughed and moved away from the cave opening.
"They are my brothers," he said. "They came looking for me when I didn't return yesterday." He shoved the material away from him and added, "Get ready. We're about to break camp."
"Who… who are they?" Mairie demanded, trying to make her heart stop slamming against her rib cage.
"I told you. My brothers. The Paiutes. We're going to their camp."
He slid out of the cave as nonchalantly as if he'd just delivered the morning mail. She could only clasp the silky chute to her chest and fight back the tears as the truth entered her brain and refused to be denied.
The nightmare was about to continue.
Chapter 3
It was bizarre. Truly bizarre. And Mairie wondered how she would ever relate this to Bryan when they were together again. How could she explain being hoisted like a sack of potatoes by three men and taken down the mountain? The grunts and laughter. The look of awe in the eyes of the Indian men when Delaney explained how he had found her. It didn't matter that she didn't understand the language, or that she protested and tried to interject reason. She could see in their expressions that they too believed that she came from… from heaven… like some angel, or something. Even Delaney must be questioning it, or why would he have sarcastically muttered that she certainly was heavy for an angel, even one with a bruised wing?
He introduced the two young men as his brothers and gave them names she knew she wouldn't remember, like Waits for the Sun, or something. They were shorter than Delaney and stocky, looking more like Mexicans than like the Plains Indians she had read about in her youth. Their hair was long and matted. Their clothing, shifts and pants, really, was made of crude fiber. They seemed very poor, and Mairie decided to be as polite as possible, until they reached this encampment and she could figure out her next course of action. Somehow, she must reach her brother and get out of this madness.
All plans seemed to evaporate when she saw the Indian camp. These were not the colorful and exotic tipis she had seen in pictures and movies. This was far different from the romanticized Plains Indian settlements. These Paiutes lived in brush shelters, lodges made from the earth, situated near a creek. Fires were already smoking with some morning meal. Men, women, and children were moving about, all dressed in the same poor clothing. It was quite depressing, and Mairie knew she would not find anything modern to communicate her distress to the outside world. She saw a horse attached to a line that ran from two mesquite trees and wondered if Delaney would take her to civilization with it. At least it was a mode of transportation, although provincial. She would ask later, but not now, not when people were noticing the returning men and beginning to walk toward them. Her body stiffened with apprehension as the tribe crowded around them.
She was lowered to the ground with surprising gentleness and everyone began talking at once in a strange language that Mairie thought was more like sounds than words. What did she know? She was at the mercy of a deranged mountain man and a tribe of Indians that appeared to have turned their backs on any modernization. It was as if she had stepped back in time.
No, she wouldn't think of that. She refused to consider that possibility, for then she truly would be mad and Delaney would be right about her. Instead, she tried smiling at the children who were staring at her with a look of wonderment. What were these men saying to their tribe?
She turned to Delaney and saw he wasn't pleased. "What is being said about me?" she asked, wondering if he would tell her the truth.
He shrugged, pushing the hair back off his forehead as if he were highly annoyed by her question. "My brothers are saying that you came from heaven as my gift. That the gods have smiled on us, and Wolf has outsmarted his brother Coyote in bringing a messenger of hope."
"Me?" She looked at the faces of the Indians and couldn't find it in her heart to contradict their words. If ever a people needed hope, these did.
Delaney spoke the dialect rapidly and she could see that the Indians were not pleased with his words. He turned to her and translated. "I told them that you insist you are not my gift and that you didn't come from heaven. I have said that you are … well, the best way to translate is… you are confused in your head."
She glared at him. "You told them I was crazy, didn't you? How could you?"
Again, he shrugged, and Mairie wanted to punch his shoulder. "I am not crazy, Delaney. I know where I come from. I just don't know how to get back… yet. You tell them that. Go ahead, tell them."
Delaney wasn't even listening to her as he spoke with an old man. A small child, a little girl dressed in a rough shift, bravely reached out and touched Mairie's leg and then retreated with a giggle. Looking down to the child, Mairie smiled, and when her gaze connected to the innocence of the girl, Mairie experienced an intense wave of compassion. What kind of life awaited this beautiful child? Her depression set in deeper and she stood quietly until Delaney turned to her.
"You are to go into the elder's lodge. There you will be given food and afterward he wishes to speak with you. He knows little English, so I'll translate."
Her back stiffened. "Delaney, I need to get off this mountain."
His eyes narrowed, as if he were speaking to a disrespectful child. "Look, this is an honor. You can't refuse his hospitality. It would disgrace him."
She gazed to the older man at Delaney's side and saw in his eyes an ageless wisdom. Perhaps this man could help her if Delaney continued to prove difficult. Besides, she wasn't about to stand here in front of all these people and argue with a delusional man who took drugs and thought he was an Indian and then a cowboy and is back being an Indian. Really … she had some sense of reality, even if he had lost all concept of the word. Nodding, Mairie reluctantly used her makeshift crutch and allowed herself to be led away.
Entering the largest dirt lodge, she was struck by a wave of pity while looking around the dark, humble shelter. A woman smiled at her and indicated she was to sit on a rug made of rabbit fur. It was soft and worn in places and Mairie gratefully sat down by the dirt wall, keeping her parachute by her. She looked around at the crude structure. Weapons or hunting tools were placed in leather. Baskets were filled and covered by the same rough material that was used for clothing. Looking up, she saw a small smoke hole in the top and was grateful a fire hadn't been lit. The last thing she needed was to be smoked out. Herbs hung from the wall, drying, and she smelled something pungent and slightly citrusy.
Soon she was joined by other women. Some carried in water and bowls of food. Mairie was stunned to realize that the baskets had been woven so tightly that they could contain water without leaking. She smiled her thanks to each woman and they squatted down on the opposite side to stare at her.
It took her only a few seconds to figure out that they were like women anywhere, at any time. They wanted her to taste thei
r food and were waiting for her reaction. She picked up the bowl and looked at the mashed stuff. It didn't look appetizing. She again smiled as she brought it to her nose and inhaled. The women seemed pleased, and Mairie had to use every ounce of willpower not to show how distasteful the aroma was to her. How in the world was she supposed to eat this? Her stomach began rebelling even before she tasted it. For a moment she thought of the Luxor Hotel in Vegas, of the luxury and the delicious food, and felt guilty. She couldn't hurt the feelings of these women. Somehow she would do this.
Mairie scooped out some of the paste and stuck it into her mouth just as the women shouted and began covering their mouths to stop peals of giggles.
Mairie stared at them and almost choked as she held the lump of foul mass on her tongue. Gagging was a distinct possibility.
One of the women came forward and shook her head. She pantomimed spitting. Mairie didn't need further instructions. She spit out the paste and wiped her mouth and tongue with the back of her hand. Another woman came closer and covered the mess with dirt. Then the woman touched her own ankle and pointed to Mairie's.
It took only a few seconds for Mairie to get it. The paste was for her ankle. She giggled at her ignorance and smiled into the faces before her. Such a simple act of human kindness and frailty. Already she felt herself opening to these women.
Hey, maybe they could help her if a friendship could be nurtured…
She untied her Nike and gingerly slipped her foot out of the shoe. Inhaling sharply at the pain, Mairie placed the sneaker beside her and removed her sock. The women were murmuring at her actions, and now some gasped at the purple and green bruise that marked her ankle. Or maybe it was her nail polish. They were staring at her toes as if they'd never before seen painted nails.
The woman closest to her held out her hand, as if to show that nothing was inside of it, then slowly she sat in front of Mairie and picked up her heel. This stout woman placed Mairie's foot into the warm water and bathed it. The woman's focus was entirely on Mairie's ankle, as she created tiny waves in the water to run over the bruised part while whispering words Mairie couldn't understand even if she heard them. It was almost as if she were performing some sort of ritual. After a few minutes, the woman used her shift to dry Mairie's foot, then placed it in her lap and began scooping up the paste, lathering it on so gently that Mairie felt soothed by the delicate action.
Anywhere You Are Page 5
