Fire Dancer

by Susan Slater

  “If I think of something, I’ll call. Do you have a card?”

  He took the hint and, putting a card on the table, got to his feet.

  “Rosa? Oh, there you are. Could you show Detective Salas to the door?” Connie rose and extended her hand. “I appreciate your concern. Thank you for stopping by.”

  “You take care. I don’t think you should just dismiss this.”

  Once again a shiver prickled across her shoulder blades, and the hand she held out in parting was ice cold. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”

  She heard the heavy front door thud shut and waited for Rosa to walk back through the study.

  “Miss Consuelo? This is my early evening. Can I get you something before I leave?”

  “If you have time, make a plate of sandwiches and leave them covered on the kitchen counter. I won’t go out this evening, but I may have guests.” Not a lie, really. She was expecting someone. But not someone who would come into the house to eat.

  “Yes, Miss. I could stay. I do not mind sleeping in the study if you—”

  “No, I’ll be fine alone. I just need to rest. I’ll go to bed early. But thank you, Rosa.”

  Connie walked to the bar, filled a glass half full of ice and a generous couple splashes of Herradura. Running a lime quarter around the rim, she dropped the spent fruit into the liquor. Thank God for the blue agave. What would she do if the plant became extinct? And then that familiar jolt … would she care? Death was far more difficult to become accustomed to than she would have imagined. There was a part of the human being that clung desperately to life … refusing to believe. How easy it would be to slip into denial. Was it all that wonderful to have a warning? To know when her time of departure would be?

  She carried the drink into the living room and stood by the wall of glass that practically brought the Sandia Mountains into her patio. The green of the sloping foothills stood out in stark contrast to the desert floor. As always, the vastness of her view from this spot filled her with awe. She’d worked closely with the architect. Every detail was designed with care, with feeling for the land.

  She started this house the year after Skip died. She had discarded the plans he’d drawn up and replaced them with her own. The heavy masculine touches had given way to sunken tubs and ponds of Koi and lilies, Italian marble and natural granite, greenhouses combined with bathrooms, a lap pool—everything she’d ever wanted. Skip would have built a fortress; she built an open invitation for the surrounding mesa to become a part of her living area. She replaced or moved every desert plant other contractors would have destroyed. The result garnered her Albuquerque’s House Beautiful award and assured her a permanent spot on the City’s Parade of Homes every fall. Sadly, she’d be able to enjoy it less than six months.

  Sometimes she would wander her house and let memories of poverty intrude. A childhood of few extras. The kind of poverty that resulted in wanting what was around her now, no matter the cost. The opulence was born of a problem marriage but one that erased the struggles of a young child. The reservation was painful, but she shrugged off the memories. Hadn’t she overcome all that? Hadn’t she paid dearly for all that was around her?

  November with daylight savings time meant shortened days. It was barely five, but already a smoky haze spread across the hills, and the dying light turned the Watermelon Mountains a brilliant red-violet. She sipped her drink as night slipped across the mesa, chiseling the mountains into black silhouettes against the dusky blue evening sky. Would he come? Was tonight the night she’d been waiting for? Yes. It had to be. She’d watched the pile of piñon wood grow against the outside wall of the patio. Stick by stick, log by log. In the cover of darkness. And then, a discreet distance from any structure, the logs were placed in a tent pattern.

  Ramon, who cleaned the pool and fountains, asked if she had ordered the wood. She said she had. But she declined his offer to bring it in or chop it into smaller pieces for use in her fireplaces. This wood was not meant for a fireplace. It had a greater calling in its life. This afternoon dried grass had been stuffed into the cavity formed by the triangle of logs. The grass would explode into flame and ignite even the most stubborn gnarled pole. The result would be spectacular.

  In times of great sickness or distress, the Mountain Gods would come to her people, the Mescalero Apache. Men from her tribe would impersonate these gods and perform the dances handed down over the centuries. She knew the songs. They were coming back to her. Bits of them floated through her head now like everything else. Just snatches. A phrase long forgotten, a chant that seemed to reverberate through her body.

  “The sandwiches are on the sideboard, Miss. There’s a tossed salad in the fridge. If there’s nothing else, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “That’s fine, Rosa. Thank you. Have a good evening.”

  She listened as Rosa backed her car out of the garage and turned down the long lane to a county road that would take her back to civilization. She was alone now. He would know. The ceremony was meant for her eyes only. She had anticipated tonight’s visit and, digging through box after box of stored clothing, she found her shawl. Squaw shawl as her husband called it. She reached for the folded square of material at the end of the couch. Pale aqua with foot-long fringe knotted every eighth of an inch around its large perimeter. She shook it out, then refolded it into the triangle that would form two points to gather around her torso. The fringe shimmered and danced on its own at her every step.

  She gave an excited giggle and watched her reflection in the wide expanse of glass, twirling as the shawl hugged her hips and unwound to curve around her once again when she turned the other way. Slight of frame, she was almost dwarfed by the material. Then she reached up and let the shawl slip to the floor as she pulled two large pins from her hair. Mesmerized, she watched the cascading wave tumble to her waist. She looked young. The silver threads were muted by darkness.

  She stood, squarely facing the window-mirror. Tentatively she touched the glass and traced the curve of her cheek. Consuelo Bigrope. The most beautiful girl in her tribe. Crowned Indian Princess at the Gathering of Nations when she was sixteen, national barrel racing champion at eighteen on a horse loaned to her by the man she would marry. Too early, too soon, too young for a man like Skip CdeBaca. But would she ever have been ready to join a family of children who were barely younger than she? Was it any better now that they were all middle-aged? Of course not. Hatred surpassed all else. If time was not a healer, it was an instigator. People could thrive on hate as easily as on love. Didn’t the lawsuits attest to that? Two of the three children still contesting their father’s will and soon her own. Unless … she had hope, didn’t she? One last chance of life if he agreed? But she shouldn’t count on it. Better to go ahead with her plans.

  They would be shocked by her will. She wished she could witness their outrage when they were told where her millions would go. She only lamented the innocent soul they would turn their venom on.

  She had given their father everything but what he wanted most—her love and a child who would show the world his virility and give him a hold over her. But it was not to be. There had been no child. But for forty years of marriage, she had played by the rules—only once straying, starved for a love she’d never had. And this one time not to be found until she was in her forties. By then, far too late to start over. One more unhappiness. A young man who captured her heart—the only man she’d ever loved.

  When she had been a child, before she married, before there had been a lover—had she been happy? She was happy at school. The two years of high school made possible by the nuns. The cloistered two years in Vermont, half a world away. Those austere women who wanted her to better herself, perhaps find a life in Christ. Connie smiled. It was difficult to think anyone would have thought that would be her calling. But she came back.

  New Mexico was her home. Yet, life was difficult on the reservation. The poverty, the drinking, her mother dying before her eighth birthday. Her grandmother
was her salvation. A woman determined that Connie should learn about her heritage. She remembered the great fire of her puberty ceremony. Six young girls celebrated their womanhood on an evening in early summer. The Mountain Gods danced against the fire’s redness, approaching, blessing, backing away, circling, inviting the girls to join them in a wider concentric ring of rhythmic motion.

  She would dance this evening after the great fire had been blessed and bits of the ground where it had been built was offered to the gods. The crown dancer would wait until well after dark. But he would come. She smiled and laid both hands flat on the glass, then placed her cheek against the coolness. She must be patient.

  She would carry the plate of sandwiches and a soda to the far wall. He would need to eat something. He would not come in the house. That she knew. She found the sandwiches on the sideboard in the dining room—roast beef with horseradish, a couple ham and Swiss, one plain Swiss on rye. Would they meet with his approval? There was no way of knowing. She continued into the kitchen—commercial stove, Sub-Zero refrigerator, butcher block island twelve feet square, open cabinetry with glass fronts, pots and pans gleaming overhead from enormous hooks on a steel rectangle twelve feet long above the island. Rosa had put white gladiolas in huge clear glass bowls on the tile counter and on top of the wine rack. Of course, there was a wine cellar. Not of her choosing, a remnant from Skip’s house plan, but she did entertain; the architect talked her into keeping it.

  She walked quickly across the brick floor and opened the fridge. She chose an herbal iced tea instead of a soft drink. Would he like her choice? She thought so. She carried everything back through the study, into the living room, then out the side door.

  The early evening was still, moonless; everything had soft fuzzy outlines in that black velvet way the desert had of casting stark silhouettes across the landscape. The patio was a vast flagstone stage, sunken kiva-like in the center with tiers of steps fully surrounding it. Had she anticipated this miniature amphitheater’s first performance? Hardly. But she couldn’t have designed a better setting if she had thought about it.

  She set the plate of sandwiches on the far wall, retraced her steps to the living room, and let herself in the side door. It would be awhile. The fire had to be lighted and then fed until it towered into the night sky.

  She sank onto a chaise lounge facing the expanse of window. Night’s curtain of black bounced her reflection back. She waited. A half hour? An hour? She lost track of time. Suddenly a whoosh of flame illuminated the room. Leaping skyward, the brush burned brightly, igniting the logs. She shivered. Not from cold or fear but from anticipation. He would let the fire settle, placing more logs on the mound before retiring to begin his prayers—chants that would beg the gods to cast a favorable eye on what he was about to do.

  She rose to scoop up the shawl and gather it around her. She would wait here until he had finished the blessings. Then she would go out to join him, circle the patio as he danced around the fire. It would be just the two of them. One on the rim and one near the fire below. Two people moving in rhythm—alone, yet together. Two people who had been shadows to each other all their lives. She risked bad luck, death even, if she recognized the face of the dancer beneath the mask. But she knew who this was. This man was her one regret. A reason not to die. Would there be time now to make amends? Could her money make things right? Could she offer this man enough to save her life?

  He was approaching the fire from the back, loading log after log onto the pyre. It wouldn’t be long now. When he finally appeared in headdress and mask, his body painted with white and ochre, she stared at his height, over six feet, the additional three feet of the crown gave him majestic proportions. The crown reached beyond his head—at least a foot and a half on each side and three feet above—white, flat pieces of wood forming an E on its side. Knee-high buckskin boots were bleached golden by firelight. He averted his face, made sinister by the black hood-mask with two round eyeholes and kerchief covering his neck.

  Suddenly she was aware of drums and chanting. A tape? Or some recollection from her youth now playing through her memory? Did it matter? She opened the side door onto the patio and stood by the edge of the flagstone. She wanted to run to him, hold him, tell him all the things he had a right to hear from her. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. This ceremony was sacred. He was performing it now at great risk. Possibly without the tribe’s blessing.

  She stood, then began swaying, bringing the shawl around her head. She was vaguely aware of the shimmering fringe as her feet moved in half-steps carrying her clockwise a discreet distance above the Mountain Spirit—the fire dancer—who could bring such joy to her life. Who now, after all these years, sought her out in a time of need, came when she had called out to him. And he offered the only thing he knew, which was his to share—a heritage that might save her or, at least, make her next journey less complicated. Or maybe, just maybe, a part of himself that would give her life.

  But what would he say if he knew she had held the skull of his father in her hands? That she knew his murderer and had said nothing. She had robbed the son of his parentage and suffered every day of her life. And now, if the terrible disease inside her body didn’t kill her, someone else most surely would.

  + + +

  He watched from the rim of an arroyo that cut high above the back side of the game preserve. He’d promised the old man that he would live and let live. For a price, of course. But now, with the old man gone, him out of money, and the bitch fixing to destroy God’s little slice of paradise? Building a secluded compound of multi-million dollar houses where only elk roamed—all she ever cared about was money. And now her hocus-pocus witchcraft. It didn’t fool him, this fire dancer; it gave him an idea, though—a brilliant idea. Was this fire dancer the one who was bedding her now? Maybe she’d like to receive another skull. Just a little threat, a little insurance. A reminder that he meant business. He wanted what he was owed and maybe a little extra. He was worth it—hadn’t he kept his mouth shut all these years? Yes, he could be trusted. But he needed to act soon. She’d gotten his message; she would know he was back.

  He carefully wiped the lens of the binoculars and raised them again to stare down at the fire. She was dancing now. If ol’ Skip had ever thought he could take the squaw out of her, he should see her now. Funny how the old man considered her a trophy, let beauty blind him to just about everything.

  As an employee, so to speak, he’d been Skip’s right hand—knew a lot of things he wasn’t supposed to. But he had been willing to lay down his life for his employer. And now that the money’d stopped, he needed to renew his pension—up the ante while he was at it. She was so hell-bent on taking away his livelihood, then let her pay. Maybe this time a lump sum that would be a ticket out—a permanent ticket. He was glad now that he’d known her secrets. Secrets he could use—secrets that would be worth a lot to the family. If he couldn’t make her pay, there were others. But first he’d make her believe he would do what he threatened.

  And who was to say he couldn’t accept money from two sources? He laughed at this. It was brilliant. He held the answers and he could offer his services. No, sell his services. His brash laugh startled a doe partially concealed in brush. He watched her bound away. He wouldn’t let the squaw-woman ruin this.

  Chapter Three

  Julie had no patience. She had meant to surprise Ben at the hospital and then whisk him away for a really fantastic lunch—maybe Scalo—before she drove up to Connie’s. She was lucky he was even in Albuquerque. They had both been living in Gallup before her mother’s operation, but he’d been offered this fantastic opportunity to help out IHS in Albuquerque and do some research. He would still be driving back and forth—Gallup on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Albuquerque on Thursdays, Fridays, and the weekends. He was so excited about the opportunity; she couldn’t really nag about the tough schedule. She’d find him an apartment in the city—unless he’d be willing to take Connie up on her invitation and stay with Juli
e at the house. From what her mother said the place was big enough. They could have separate rooms or they could be together. She really didn’t think Connie would mind. Free lodging was about all their budget could handle until she turned in some work. She hoped Ben wouldn’t have some attack of Puritanism just because Connie was her mother’s friend.

  Julie had called the Indian Hospital when she got in. Gloria, Dr. Sandy Black’s receptionist, answered and assured her that Ben was taking care of a crisis and had only one other patient before being free for lunch. Gloria said she’d mark him out for two hours, then she giggled and said she’d mark him out for the whole afternoon. This was before lapsing into small talk, trying to catch up on the last few years.

  So, Julie had rented a car and driven from the airport to sit in the waiting room connected to the basement office Ben was using. It was the poorest excuse for a waiting room she’d ever seen. Three file cabinets squeezed out any furniture except four folding chairs and a magazine holder. There was a “Do Not Disturb” sign on Ben’s door and she found herself fighting the urge to just ignore the sign and rush in. It would be a cardinal sin, even though they’d been apart for over a month while she babysat her mother in Scottsdale. Her mother’s surgery probably wasn’t even necessary—at least, not urgent—the straightening of two toes, removal of a bone spur on her heel. But her father was in Los Angeles and Mom decided she needed attention—attention barely disguised as a chance to talk Julie out of her engagement to Ben. Julie sighed.

  Finally, the chance to escape. Connie—her mother’s best friend in boarding school—had called to invite her friend to come stay with her. The invitation fell to Julie because her mother was still incapacitated and hobbling around on crutches. After her special on Southwest fetishes for Good Morning America, Julie had been offered a chance to freelance a piece about warrior tribes in the Southwest. The money was great and she had a two month timeframe. Wasn’t Connie a Mescalero Apache? This seemed the perfect chance—escape, have some fun, be with Ben, and get paid for it.