Eagle, Kathleen (13 page)

"I
never held it against you."

"Don't
lie to me, now. It's my turn to pitch, your turn to swing." There was a
challenge in his smile. "So you wanna help me burn stuff?"

Don't
lie to me, don't lie to me, don't lie to me.
She swallowed hard. "Is help
permitted?"

"It
is if I permit you."

"You're
not burning memories, are you?" She ducked a dry, drooping cottonwood
branch as she followed him to the pile of clothes. "I mean, surely you
want to keep the memories."

"Mostly
I'm burning the things he wore." He poked at the glowing ashes with a
stick. "I remember when we did this for my mother," he said as he
rolled a log, reviving the flames. "It scared me. There was all this talk
about ghosts, all the old stories, and I didn't want my mother to be a ghost.
That was the worst. Bad enough that suddenly she wasn't alive, but if being
dead meant she might be around in some other form and that she might turn on
me..." His eyes met hers. "That was the worst."

Helen
had been trying to adjust the quilt around her shoulders, but she stilled and
stared. "Did you tell your father you were scared?"

"I
cried. He told me to stop it."

"He
was grieving, too, though."

"Yeah,
but crying wasn't allowed. He never cried unless he was drunk, and that didn't
count with him." Reese sighed, shook his head, chucked a bit of sage
toward the fire. "Yeah, I want to burn some of those memories." He
took over with the quilt, slipping it under her armpits, tucking it over her
bosom to create a sarong. He'd freed her arms for his hands' quick caress.
"Help me finish this."

She
handed the remaining pieces to him one by one without looking at them until
flames crackled around them. A cutting of sage burned with each item of
clothing, filling the night with a heady scent.

"I
remember this one," he said quietly, and she risked a glance. It was a
white shirt. "He wore it the last time he came to a game."

"To
watch you play. Maybe you should keep that one."

"That's
not the way it's done."

"But
it's a good memory," she insisted as the white shirt became a torch.
"Let's acknowledge the good ones, then."

"This
must be a new one," he said of the dark shirt Helen handed him. "I
never saw it."

"I
did."
She took it back, stroked it as if it were a cherished piece of satin. "I came
over to ride horseback, and he went with me. He showed me a place where you
fell into the creek once."

"
I
fell into the creek?" Reese gave a brief, abrupt laugh. "I remember
him
falling in once. I must have been about eleven or twelve, had a hell of a
time getting him out. Sobered him up pretty quick." His gaze drifted to a point
beyond the fire, past the night. "We laughed about it, though. Both of us,
flopped on our backs in the mud, we laughed so hard we got the hiccups.
Both
of us."

"But
you never fell in the creek?"

He
shrugged. "Yeah, I guess I did once. I was pretty little, but I remember
it was spring, and the water was running real high. We were running the horses
in. I was feeling real big, you know, because he'd let me go with him and help.
He told me to follow him, cross the creek right where he crossed. Only I didn't
listen. My horse balked a couple of times. Dad was already up at the top of the
ridge, and I didn't want him to think I couldn't keep up, so I moved down a
little way and whacked that mare's shoulders with the reins." He looked
down at the shirt still in his hands, wagged his head. "It wasn't a good
place to cross."

"Too
deep?"

"Over
both our heads, and my mount was the only one who could swim. I don't even know
how the ol' man got me out. The current was pretty swift, and he wasn't much of
a swimmer himself." Reese balled the shirt up and tossed it into the
flames. "I swallowed a lot of water, I remember that. And I remember the
look in his eyes. I thought he was gonna yell at me or hit me or something, but
then I realized it wasn't that kind of a look. It was a look I'd never seen on
him before." He laughed. "Like he'd seen a ghost."

"I
know exactly how he felt. I saw Sidney get hit by a—" She caught herself,
tried to downshift, but it was too late. "A car."

"Jesus,"
he breathed, all his soft delight evaporating. "Was it bad?"

"He
was on his bike, shot out of the driveway into the street. The car—" Helen
could see the red Honda, hear the squeal of the brakes, feel the icy horror as
Sidney bounced off the seat and sailed over the hood. She swallowed,
remembering that terrible taste in her mouth, that awful inability to connect
with her legs, the pain deep in her stomach.

She
shook her head, went a little hoarse. "We were lucky. The bike took the
brunt of it. He broke his—" She clasped her forearm, grabbing for the
right word, the right bone.
Take a breath and distance yourself. Give him
the cold, anatomical details.

"His
left arm?" he supplied, eager to assist. She nodded. "Clean break?
Did it heal up okay?"

She
nodded again. His worried tone pinched her gullet, and she imagined him sharing
that scene with her, seeing it through the window. She couldn't look at him.

"I
broke the same one when I was a kid," he said, much too buoyantly. He
pointed toward the dark hulk she knew to be a pole barn. "I fell off that
roof over there. Must be awful for a parent, watching something like that
happen to your kid." His arm became a crook, hooked around her neck to
draw her against his side. "Worse than seeing a ghost, huh?"

"I've
never seen a ghost."

"I've
never had a kid," he said softly. The claim speared her in the chest.
"As for ghosts, hell, ghosts don't scare me. I keep them well fed."

She
drew a deep, shaky breath. He gave her a comforting squeeze, and they stood
together and watched the remains of the shirt she had remembered for him melt
away. Her eyes burned horribly. She hardly noticed his movements until he held
a water bottle to her lips. She drank deeply, blinking back tears as he whispered,
"Thirsty work, huh?"

She
nodded. She told him about helping his father trim the horses' hooves that day.
She wanted to know how he knew how much to take off. He didn't tell her; he
showed her. He let her watch him, then gave her a chance to try it herself.

"He
didn't like to explain himself," Reese recalled. "He'd try to get me
to do something, and if I didn't catch on right away or didn't do it to suit
him, he'd just do it himself. He was such a perfectionist sometimes, you know,
every little detail. Like that miniature Little Bighorn in the house. I can
just see him. Christ, he must have spent hours on that thing, but when I was
growing up, the games weren't..." He glanced at her, quirked a little
smile. "Kinda makes a guy wonder what kind of a father he'd make."

Oh,
yes, she'd wondered, too. It usually started out with some sweet "what if
and turned into gut-gnawing speculation.

"You
played basketball together. He had to raise the hoop because you wouldn't quit
growing." The hoop, she remembered, was still attached to the side of the
same barn he'd fallen from. "He told me about that, too."

"Told
you how he taught me everything I know, did he?" Reese chuckled. "We
used to play one-on-one, back when it was just me and him. He never played down
to me, you know? He made me work for every shot. But when I got to be too much
of a challenge, he quit playing me."

"He
went to bat for you, though. He said there was a coach—"

"Sam
Clark. That guy only knew one way to make a pass, and he preferred women, the
younger the better. My old man got him canned."

"For..."

"For
being a piss-poor coach."

"And
for
benching you for playing the game the way it was meant to be played."

"That's
what he said?" Reese looked surprised.

"Exactly
what he said."

"It's
only a game." He got lost for a moment in fire-dreaming. Then, as though
she doubted his filial devotion, he said, "I do want to know who hit
him."

He
bent to pick up a sprig of sage, came up with a little spring in his knees when
he lobbed it onto the fire. "It won't change anything, but I still need to
know what happened." A white tendril of smoke rose from the sage, his
signal to inhale. "I love that smell. It's like frybread. It takes me home
in a good way."

"I
love
that expression," she said.
"In a good way.
'Nothing's good or
bad but thinking makes it so.' Right? Or remembering, or allowing yourself to
feel. Did we do this in a good way? I mean..."

"It's
good that you're here. For balance. I went away from him, and I never really
came back. You saw him that night. You talked to him, and you knew what he was
thinking these days." He tossed more sage onto the fire. "It's good
that you're here to honor the man you knew."

"Maybe
you weren't as distant from him as you think, Reese. I believe you know him in
your heart, and that's why—"

"Remember
that time we drove out to the Badlands?" he cut in, turning to her, taking
her bare shoulders in his big, warm hands. "Remember how we built the
campfire and made love and talked and made love while the stars gradually
dissolved and the night faded, and there we were..."

"Stark
naked in the sunlight." She laughed. She'd almost forgotten what it was
like to be that bold, feel that free. But the feeling was back, just for
tonight.

"Let's
do that again." He bent his head to kiss and nuzzle and whisper,
"It's just us, Helen. Just us."

It
was an echo from the night he had recalled for her, a reminder of the words
he'd said then. The sweetness, the innocence of that night spilled over into
this one. She loosened her quilt wrap and let it slide to the ground. A deep
sound of pure male delight issued from his throat as he lifted her straight up,
heading for the stars.

Then
down, down to his blankets they went, holding each other, kissing hungrily. The
bower was like a fairy ring, a magic place where nothing could touch them.
Wrapped in his long, powerful limbs, she felt shielded and safe. He treasured
her with stirring hands and stimulating mouth, laid open her secret places, and
adored her sacred places.

He
bared himself for her, trembled when she touched him and stroked him, brought
him to the brink of madness. He reveled in teetering close to the edge while he
drew her to him, shaped her, made her his conduit, and turned her ordinary self
into something strange and wondrous and soaring.

The
rustle of dry cottonwood leaves
above her head brought Helen back to
earth. Good earth. Welcoming and gracious earth, where the darkness was
beginning to stretch and would soon pull away. The crisp crackle of the dying
fire, the warmth of Reese's breath filling the hollow of her neck, the
syncopated thumping of their hearts spoke of summer-sweet earth. The pure
luxury of it all had surely lulled the man in her arms off to sleep. He lay
still except for his breathing, his torso rising and falling in unison with
hers. She cherished his nearness.

She
remembered holding him in her arms long ago while he slept and how she'd
struggled with the pleasure and the uncertainty. But now she knew better. She'd
lived a little and learned a lot. Why struggle with a good moment? She thought
about her son and how small he'd once been, how he'd grown so much lately, how
he would one day be just as big a man as the one whose hand began to stir
slowly over her bare hip.

He
rolled onto his back, drawing her into the shelter of his shoulder. "Are
you warm enough?" he asked. She responded with a contented sound. "I
think I'll move in here," he mused.

"Really?"
She lifted her head, balanced her chin on his chest. "Leave Minneap—"

"Shh.
That's far away, outside this place. Don't name it and bring it here." He
stroked her hair. "I mean
here.
I'll live in this homemade shelter,
live the simple life, the one I took for granted. I had a cousin who spent a
couple of summers with us. Him and me, we used to sleep out here a lot. It was
like we had our own place, our own world. Nobody could touch us here."

Her
fingertips tingled where they lay against his warm skin. "Don't you want
to be touched?"

"You
can touch all you want, but just you."

"Where
to start?" she said, giving a girlish sigh as she slid her hand over his
long, smooth torso, skated over his pelvic bone, and grabbed his firm backside.
"I like this part most especially, this cute little—"

He
laughed. "I ain't got nothin' little, sweetheart."

"Compared
to the rest of you,
this is
quite compact. Why are you basketball
players always slapping each other's butts?"

"
'Cause they're too hard to pinch."

She
groaned.

"Hey,
it's the football players who do most of the butt-smacking. Basketball players
have their own hand jive. Besides, guys have a different set of standards on
the playing field. You've got your own language, your own signals, your
own—"

"Your
own world?"

"I
suppose." And then, quietly: "You don't think much of it, though, do
you?"

"Basketball?"
She was surprised to hear the tender bit of strain in his voice, as though it
mattered to him what she thought of his game. "I think it's a wonderful
sport. Much more fun to watch than football. Especially when you know someone,
and that someone was someone..."

"Someone?"

"Like
you. I mean, you played so well. It must have been hard to give it up."
Then, gingerly, "Do you, um... do you work now?" She felt a tremor in
her pillow, and she looked up to find him soundlessly laughing. "You
probably don't have to, which is—"

"Ah,
the myth of fame and fortune." He measured half an inch of air between his
thumb and forefinger. "I'm this close to a college degree. Finally. You
maybe wouldn't think it's work, but for me it is. I've had to work my ass
off."

She
reached around him, tried to take the same measurement on his rear. It was like
trying to use scissors on a rock.

He
laughed again. "See? Not much left."

"What's
left is a very nice piece of... you. What's your major? Phy-ed?"

"I
have a double major. How do you like that?"

"I'm
impressed."

"Well,
I've been at it for so many years, I oughta have a quadruple. They practically
gave me the phy-ed. The history major I did the hard way."

"History?
How interesting." One of his father's passions. And yes, one of hers.
She'd taught English and history.

"Yeah.
It really is interesting." He pulled a quilt over her, effectively
bundling her against his side, tucking as he continued talking. "I went
back to school for something to do, something to keep me from going crazy, get
my head out of my, uh... my own belly button. Now I'm almost an educated man.
Otherwise I'm a partner in a couple of pretty good businesses."

"A
silent partner?"

"I
can make noise when I feel like it. You think I'm silent?"

"Quiet."
She rolled a finger around the belly button he'd mentioned, tracing the
circumference of the small hollow, and added, "Sometimes."

"I
used to get tongue-tied around you, but I've gotten better, haven't I?"

"Decidedly
looser with the tongue."

"You
like that, huh?" He dipped his head for an exchange of tongues. "No
more knots," he whispered between kisses.

"Smooth."

"Rich,
too." He nibbled her bottom lip while she was still caressing his belly.
"Do I taste rich?"

"You
taste like game."

He
laughed. "The man got game, honey. Made some good coin, got some good advice,
made some good investments, and I do all right. Plus I do a little coaching.
Kids your son's age."

Her
fingers stilled on his belly.

"I
had a basketball camp last month. I've been doing it for three years now, and
it's gone really good. It's been..." His voice hushed on a wish. "I
want to be a teacher, Helen. Maybe coach a little bit. I remember..." He
paused, stroked her arm, stoking the fires of his recollection. "I stood
outside your classroom door once, right after school started. You know, not long
before I left for Minnesota. Anyway, I stood there in the hall, and I listened
to you talk about the Constitution. Jesus,
the Constitution.
It hadn't
been that long since I'd had to sit through that stuff myself, and all I could
think about
then
was, if you don't get through this, you don't graduate.
This is the required bullshit. But there I was back again, listening in,
getting a hard-on over all that freedom you were—"

She
smacked his hip, her giggle trailing off into a groan.

But
he was serious. "And I was thinking, Damn, this is good. She's making this
sound interesting, like it really has something to do with these kids, with
us,
with Bad River. You were doing this 'free speech' exercise, and you really
had some of those kids hooked." He pressed a kiss into her hair and
whispered, "You had me hooked. I thought you were magic."

She
closed her eyes, her scalp prickling from the breath of his kiss, and she
imagined him standing alone in that long, dim hallway with its lustrous, newly
waxed floor. Standing there, standing up, standing out no matter where he was.
Outstanding, and he knew it. The outsider, even in his own hometown, because he
always stood out.

That
was the problem, wasn't it?

"You
think I can make the grade?" he was asking her now.

Oh,
yes, she'd always thought so, but had she ever told him?
I
think
you'll go far, too far for me.

"I
think you'll have them eating out of your hand."

"I
just want to get them reading out of some books." He brushed her hair back
from her face. "You're the one I want eating out of my hand. What would
you have me feed you?"

"What's
in your hand?" She turned her face into his palm, inhaled his scent.
"Mmm, the skin is my favorite part. Seasoned with sage and smoke."
With a flick of her tongue she traced his long, deeply etched lifeline.
"And with sex and a little salt. Tasty, tasty."

"Only
an appetizer." He hoisted himself up, leaned over her, smiling.
"Tongue is considered a true delicacy hereabouts. Care for a little
more?"

"I
would love..."

She
would love. She
did
love. She loved his deep kiss and his probing
tongue, and she knew how he loved making love in the early morning when the
world was vaporous and fresh and new. Such a good time to go riding. They rode
the pleasure horse until they'd played him out, then dozed in each other's arms
on the lavender threshold of morning. But neither of them actually slept, for
every move or shifting of limbs was answered with tender accommodation.

Soft
gray light opened the herringbone cracks in their thatched roof. The air smelled
of dew and ash. From the misty copse of cottonwoods by the creek came the
doleful call of a dove. Its mate coo-coo-cooed in response. Beneath damp
quilts, Helen cuddled against Reese's side, and she was immediately enfolded in
his arms.

"Ready
to let me feed you from my kitchen?"

"I
should go soon. I hate to move, but if I do, it really should be toward the
car."

"Don't
move, then." He pulled his arm free of the quilts and checked the contents
of the hand he'd had her eating from earlier. "Damn, I wish I could make
bacon and eggs appear here. But as we've already established, my name ain't
exactly Magic."

"Your
name is Blue Sky, and I can't think of anything more magical." She planted
a kiss in his empty palm, then one on his lips. But her pleasure was stolen
suddenly by the thought that Blue Sky could be her son's name, that given the
truth, given the choice...

She
pulled away. "Mine should be Blue Moon, because I really have to disappear
with the morning sun."

"Or
because I only get to see you once every
tona
years," he said,
using the Lakota word for "many" or "how many."

"Or
because..." Oh, she had
tona
reasons. "I have to go to
work."

"What
time?"

"Well,
I have things to do before I go to work." She wanted to call her son, for
one thing.
Their
son; yes, in the misty morning light, looking up at
him, she could not put the truth of it from her mind. She wanted him to know,
wanted them both to know. So often she had imagined the telling of it, imagined
forgiveness, imagined disaster. "Reese..."

"You
still need a cup of coffee in the morning, don't you?" He was sitting them
up. "I found some papers I want to show you. I'd like to hear your
thoughts. Will you stay for coffee and have a look?"

"Your
father's papers?"

"Yeah,
some stuff about the casinos. Stuff you might understand better than I do. I
figure I'd better take a closer look if I'm going to finish out my father's
term."

"You've
decided?"

"It
feels like the right thing to do." He crawled out of the blankets and
ducked under droopy branches, explaining as he retrieved his pants. "Right
now, this morning, I'm sure it's the right thing to do, and not just because of
us."

Because
of us?
Oh,
God, she thought, don't spoil it, Reese.
Us
was a dangerous word. There
could be no
us
without the truth. "Dangerous" didn't begin to
describe it. "Fatal" was more like it. Where had she left her
clothes?

"It's
because it feels right," he was saying. "You know how you say, okay,
I'm in this game, and you feel like it was meant to be? You own the ball, you
own the court, you're the man with the power." He tossed her slip into her
lap. "It feels like the right thing to do. You never felt like that?"

"I
have. It's a deceptive feeling sometimes."

He
stepped into his jeans. "You think I should stay out of it?"

"I
didn't say that. You asked me..." She wrestled with satin straps. What
else had she been wearing? There must have been other underwear, maybe a skirt.
She needed something to clear the fog. "I could use some coffee, but as
far as your father's papers are—"

"Did
you know he requested an investigation? I found a copy of a letter he sent to
the BIA area office."

She
watched him zip his sleek, dark, intriguing nakedness into his jeans. The
letter was less interesting. She'd seen the letter once, and once was enough
for a letter. "Toast and coffee are all I ever have for breakfast."

"Yeah,
you're right. You start poking around in a dead man's letters, you might stir
up all kinds of ghosts." He handed her the damp wad of wrinkles her white
blouse had become. "Better to stay out of it."

"I
didn't say that. I'm just not sure your father's papers are any of
my
business,
especially since..." She plunged into the blouse, one arm at a time. The
morning light was stealing over her now, exposing her for a rumpled hustler.
She didn't feel much like tap dancing, yet it was part of the act. "Well,
I work at Pair-a-dice City."

"But
you're new there. You weren't there when he asked for the place to be
investigated, so you're in the clear." He took her hand and hauled her to
her feet. She groaned, and so did he. "Sleeping on the ground ain't as
easy as it used to be."