Eagle, Kathleen (20 page)

"When
I didn't turn out to be a true champion."

"Aw,
Helen," he crooned as he enveloped her in his arms, half laughing, half
groaning. "Don't you ever think that. I was trying to show you off, which
is a jackass jock kind of a thing to do. You set me straight, honey. You said
no."

"Right
now, what-might-have-been is very real for me, Reese. I can still feel the rush
it gave me just
thinking
about it tonight. And I was going to show you
how good I am, how I can defy the odds and the gods. I was all set to please
you, amaze you, astound you with my dubious skill. It's very real, because it
has been and it could be again, anytime I choose."

She
drew back, looked him in the eye. "Yes, I can count cards, and I'm good at
it, but I'm also compulsive. Now say it:
You, Helen? You always seemed like
you were in complete control."

"Not
always."

"No?"

He
shook his head, pushed his fingers through her hair. "When didn't I?"
she asked.

"When
you got involved with me even though you didn't want to."

"But
I did want to. I knew I shouldn't, but I did."

"So
you're not always in complete control." He smiled. "Is the casino job
a test for you?"

"It's
a job. It's a way to put what I've learned to some use. It's a way to pay a
debt." She nodded;
Yes, Reese, yes, this is me.
"I had many
debts. Now I have one, and I'm paying it."

"Did
you get into—" He broke off when she gave him a look that pleaded for a
reprieve. He sighed, stretched his arms out along the back of the bench.
"Okay, but don't try to tell me I can't find angels in casinos. I know
what I saw in Pair-a-Dice, and you were an angel."

She
groaned, laughed a little, shook her head at his stubbornness.

"You
don't have to be one every day, but
that
day, with that pitiful
woman..."

"I've
had a good deal of counseling. Training."
Pitiful
woman no more.

"But
that's not your real job, either." He drew a deep breath and glanced
across the quiet street, away from her face. "Is my brother being
investigated?"

"Reese..."

"I
know. You can't talk about it."

Oh,
Lord.
She
wanted to tell him that she was only a small player and that she was on his
side, a silent partner. She had been his father's ally, and she was not out to
get anyone but the bad guys, the liars, cheaters, and thieves.

Bad
guys.
Now
there
was an in-the-eye-of-the-be-holder concept.

"What
do you think of your friend's proposition?" she asked.

"Ah,
this is
my
test." He considered his answer for a moment. "I'm
interested in what's going on here, but I'm not interested in getting into the
casino business. I don't even like cards. Maybe because I don't like losing,
huh? But suddenly I'm up to my neck in this gaming business— my father, my
brother, the council..." He touched her temple with the backs of his
fingers, drew them slowly along the side of her face to her neck, whispered,
"You."

"Not
me. You're not up to your—"

"My
neck doesn't begin to describe what I'm up to in you, and you know what's
different about it this time?" He smiled. "I don't mind telling
you."

"Well,
as far as the anatomy of it goes, you don't have to tell me. I was there."

"That's
what I thought. You were with me." He leaned down to touch her lips with a
butterfly kiss. "In a good way. Right?"

Her
lips tingled. "In a good way."

"And
you're with me now in a good way. We did the family-dinner thing, which we've
both noted we didn't take the time to do before." He chuckled. "Hell,
we barely took the time to get our clothes off before."

Before,
before, she thought. For him, it was the
time
before. It was the summer
of a brief affair, the new-green summer, the summer before blooming. For her,
it was before Sidney.

Tell
him.

An
honest woman would tell him, no matter what, because he was obviously a decent
man, and he deserved to know. An angel? An angel would have told him long ago.
Helen—less-than-honest and far-from-angelic Helen— wanted to tell him, and she
would have if the gamble had been hers and hers alone.

I
don't mind telling you.

Why
should he? He was up to his neck in—little did he know what he was up to his
neck in—but at least it was his own neck. Just his, and not his child's.

His
child's
neck. Reese's child. She had worried about the claims that might be made on
Sidney's life, his security, his well-being, but she had not allowed herself to
personalize those claims, to think of him as
Reese's
child. Reese was
too big. He was Touch The Clouds, the Big Man, the hero of mythical proportion.
The man who was—

"...
glad you were there today." He'd claimed her hand, absently lacing their
fingers together, splaying hers wide to accommodate his. "It's hard, you
know. I—I have a brother, and it's about time I got to know him better, but
it's hard to know where to start. Like, I want to tell him to give his family
their due, but that's not my place. Not to start with, anyway."

"Maybe
you could find a way to ask him about those debts Sarah mentioned."

"Yeah,
right, like that's not butting into his business." He sighed.
"They've got nice kids. I hate to see kids caught in the middle of a mess
made by their parents. Kids deserve their kidhood, you know? Parents owe them
that." He squeezed her hand as he lifted and lowered one big shoulder.
"I can say stuff like that real easy, not being a parent myself."

"You're
good with them." She squeezed, too, a poor excuse for encouragement and
she knew it. She was going to have to tell him about his son sooner or later.
She knew that, too. She'd planned on later, but she had not planned on nights
like this, honesty like this. "The first time I saw you, you were
surrounded by children," she recalled.

"And
you thought I was one of them. An overgrown kid." He shook his head when
she started to object. "But I wasn't. I only got to be a kid when I played
ball."

"You
still do. Today you were—"

"It's
a game, the old man would say, just a game. But it was
my
game. He said
the sports gurus were using me, but nobody used me the way he did. I was his
keeper. He'd go on a binge, and I'd be looking after myself, looking after the
place, looking out for him. I was never a kid then. And by the time he quit
drinking, it was like he didn't have any use for me anymore. He got Carter
back. He had a brand-new son, a kid somebody had been keeping on ice for him.
Fresh, smart. Damn, that kid was smart. My father was so proud of how much
Carter knew, the way he talked, his fine manners, all that was so—"

"He
was very proud of you, too, Reese," Helen interjected.

"He
never said it. He was always coming at me with more advice."

"So
you stayed away?"

"Not
completely. You know how it is when you go your own way. You look at the phone
bill, and you think, Damn, how long has it been?" He wagged his head
sadly. "People came to me with this council thing, and it wasn't me they
were looking for. They were saying it was about tradition, but the way they
were talking about him, I knew they really wanted Roy Blue Sky back."

"How
do you feel about that?"

"Maybe
that's why I agreed." He gave half a laugh. "Let him use me one more
time."

"For
what?"

"Haven't
quite figured that out yet. Tell you one thing, though. If Darnell is Ten
Star's man—" He snapped his fingers, a parallel complete. "He reminds
me of my first agent. Smiles at you while he's telling you what a moron he
thinks you are. 'You just let me do the thinking, son,' he says. I didn't renew
his
contract, either."

"Darnell
isn't Ten Star. He just works for them."

"He's
their eyes and ears, according to something I read in my father's papers. But
if that's the case, I gotta wonder what part of the body my brother's supposed
to be. Who writes his paycheck? And yours, is it...?" She warned him off
with a look, and he threw up his hands. "Hey, I'm not asking how much it's
for."

"Mine
comes from the casino."

"From
the tribe?"

"I
think you need to be careful, Reese. Tread lightly."

"Yeah,
right." He jacked up one long leg. "Have you noticed the size of my
feet?"

"I
just want you to be careful. Don't talk about not renewing contracts until you
have a better feel for the players here."

"You
mean I don't get to see a roster?" He leaned back, held her hand on his
knee. "I grew up here. I know the Indians pretty well. It's the
hairy-faced cowboys I can't always figure. And I still like to keep my thoughts
to myself pretty much."

"You
used to," she allowed. "I think you should try to resurrect a little
more of the old reticence while you get your bearings."

"Yeah,
well, I did. Preston was telling me what was coming up at the next council
meeting and how it would be okay if I abstained to begin with, since I haven't
gotten my feet wet yet, but if a committee recommends passage, I oughta know
it's probably worthy of my approval. I just listened. What I really want to
know right now is..." He paused, peered at her in the moonlight, weighing
the old reticence, setting it aside. "Am I safe with you?"

She
looked down at their clasped hands.

He
gave a quick squeeze. She didn't have to answer that one if she wasn't ready.
"How about my brother? Is he safe with you?"

"I'm
not out to get anybody, Reese. I'm trained to spot card scams." He lifted
one eyebrow. "Like
all
dealers are. Please, let's leave it at that,
at least for now."

"Sounds
all right to me." He dragged her to her feet. "I've got my first
council meeting tomorrow, but the Bad River Celebration is this week. I'd like
to take you out for a hunk of frybread and a forty-nine. When are you
free?"

"We're
going
dancing?"

"The
only dancing I ever learned."

"I
didn't know you danced at all."

"I
didn't tell you I was a dancer?" He put his arm around her shoulders,
walking her down the side street toward the main drag. "Well, that was
back in my reticent days. I quit dancing when they started talking about using
me as the tree. The center pole."

"You
were sensitive about your height? How old were you?"

"Probably
thirteen, twelve, something like that; and, you know, at that age certain words
really set you off."

"
'Pole,' I suppose."

"
'Pole'? What kind of a mind have you got in here, anyway, woman?" Reese
laughed, hooked his arm around her neck and dropped a quick kiss on the top of
her head as they strolled toward the car. "It was 'center.' The word
terrified me. I had to stop growing, I thought, please, God. All I ever wanted
to be was a point guard."

Helen
had dealer Peter Jones's number. His two agents, an older man and a short,
heavy woman who played Jones's table regularly, were about as inconspicuous as
hounds in the henhouse. They ran their scams either solo or as a team. Jones's
sniffing signal was ridiculously transparent. His nose ran only when his agents
were around. Helen had half a notion to ask him whether he had an allergy to
their Oklahoma drawls. And there were times when the dealer's push-through
shuffles were so obvious that Helen seriously longed to call a time-out, march
over to his table, and show him an artful false shuffle. What she didn't
understand was why the cameras weren't exposing Jones's shifty moves. Hanging
out in the security office on her supper break was a way to get a handle on how
the security tapes were being viewed. And what she was seeing was gaping holes.

A
dealer would not usually view security tapes, but Carter took no exception to
her interest. "You oughta be in pictures," he was crooning to her as
they watched her shift from a week ago. "You look good on TV, Helen. You
should be a newscaster or something. Look at you."

"But...
are the cameras positioned right? You can't see..." She tapped a
fingernail on the monitor screen. "Look, all you're getting is the top of
Peter's head here, and over here..."

"The
number four eye needs adjusting, looks like to me." He made a note on a
pad, tossed the pencil on the desk, and swiveled the big leather chair to face
her with a bright smile. "Hey, did I tell you I had a visit with your son
over the phone?"

She
stiffened. "Sidney called here?"

"He'd
been trying to get you at home but wasn't having any luck. Said you usually
call on Sundays."

"I
tried early Sunday, before we went to your place, and then later." Why
would he call? It was always she who tried three or four times before she
managed to get hold of him. He was too busy, having too much fun to call.
"He's okay, isn't he? Did he say—"

Carter
waved her worries away. "I think he was just feeling lonesome. We talked a
little bit. Guy stuff. I told him I had a son about his age, or a little
younger, told him Derek was nine. He sure set me straight on his age
quick." He caught her eye with a steady look. "They grow up fast,
don't they?"

She
lifted her chin, squared her shoulders. "They do."

"I
thought for sure you told me he was, like, nine or ten. He's got that dreaded
voice change going on."

"I
guess I'd better try to—"

"You
won't reach him now." He tipped his chair back and clasped his fingers
behind his head. "We've got a three-day wilderness expedition going on. He
didn't know he was going, but he got picked."

"You
really did have a chat, didn't you?"

He
eyed her steadily. "You've got a real nice kid there, Helen."

"Yes,
I do."

"Sounds
like that camp in the mountains is a great program. I'll have to look into it
for Derek." The chair squeaked when he jackknifed, sitting forward.
"Oh, I hope I didn't blow anything when I asked him how he thought he'd
like living in South Dakota. He didn't know anything about any plans to move."

"Thanks
a lot." She injected enough sarcasm into her tone to cover her relief.
Better topic. Easier to hedge. "I haven't told him."

"Jeez,
I'm sorry. Timing is everything with these little bombshells, isn't it?"
He grabbed the remote control, thumbed a button, and tossed the device aside.
The monitor went black.

He
pushed himself out of the chair with a heavy sigh, shoved his hands in his
pants pockets, studied the floor. "I tend to think honesty really is the
best policy. Not that I'm the best at practicing it lately, but..." He
looked to her for agreement, the usual cool charm missing from his eyes.
"Kids are just like anybody else. The longer you keep something from them,
the harder it gets to come clean, and when you do..." His voice dropped,
quavered slightly as he sat on the edge of the desk. "It's not the secret
itself that cuts deep, but the fact that you kept it from them."

"Children
have to be protected. Something like this..." She shook her head quickly.
It
was
the secret itself, not the keeping of it. The keeping was
necessary. The keeping prevented the taking, the losing, the cutting in two.
"There was no reason for him to worry about it unless and until it
happened."

"You
think it's going to happen?"

She
stared at him, her mind spinning around the startling notion that Sidney had
spoken to this man, his boy-man voice cracking over the phone. The delicate
shell containing her secrets had been cracked as well. A hairline crack. She
could see it in Carter's eyes.

"Maybe
you'd rather move out to Minnesota," he suggested. "Or maybe your
sights are set on an office in—"

Bill
Darnell's insistent single rap on the door brought Carter up short. He scooted
off the desk and squared his shoulders, much as Helen had done under siege a
moment ago, as though he expected to be charged with something. A hard chill
came over the office. Sparing a disinterested "How're you" with a
dismissive nod for Helen, Darnell told Carter they needed to talk.

Helen
was only too glad to move along, but not without stealing a glance over her
shoulder at Carter. Sights set on an office
where?
He was onto
something, into something, but what? Was it Sidney, her investigation, what?

She
had to get hold of her son. She ducked into the crying room, which was
generally nice and private when there were no big losers in the house.

Darn
that boy, he
knew
better than to call her at the casino.
You don't
want to blow Mom's cover.
He loved that. He knew how sensitive her job was.
He'd been a mature kid at every stage, and she had been honest with him, almost
religiously. Almost.

He
knew about her gambling problem. Not the worst details, but the gist of it.
Yes, Mom was a good card player, but she was a lousy gambler. He knew that she
had worked hard to recover her sanity, and he was proud of her. He'd told her
so. He liked to brag about his mother being a dealer, especially if he could
get people to wonder what kind of a dealer. And when she took these undercover
assignments, he thought it was cool. But he wasn't supposed to talk about it or
contact her at the casino unless it was an emergency.

The
camp counselor assured her that he knew of no emergency and that Sidney's group
had, indeed, set off on a three-day hike.

***

Carter
felt a little silly tossing off a casual greeting after Helen left the office.
He knew damn well he was looking down the barrel of a loaded cannon, but still
he played the battlefield tourist.

"What's
up, Bill?"

"I
just got word that the council tabled the gaming committee's
recommendation."

Bill
Darnell never raised his voice. He didn't have to. People could read the
consequences of not hearing him in his cold gray eyes. Especially people who
owed, and Carter's debt was massive. He'd fallen into it with silky ease,
beginning with the Ten Star perks—the entertainment, the trips, the vehicles,
the line of credit. This was the way business was done, they said, and why not?
Why shouldn't he benefit from a few dividends? He was entitled. He had paid his
dues in two worlds, and he had a right to enjoy the best of both. The best
thing Indian country had going for it right now was the gaming business, and
Carter was a key player.

He
pushed his tailored navy blazer out of the way, shoved his hands into the
pockets of the custom slacks he'd bought on a trip to the East Coast, and stood
his ground. He knew what was coming.

"You
know who made the motion to table? Your brother." Darnell paused to let
the news sink in. Reese had moved to table. Carter was supposed to be contrite
over this, but he felt like laughing. When had Reese gotten into parliamentary
procedure? His first meeting and he single-handedly put the whole issue on
hold? Damn, Carter wanted to laugh. But he kept his face as straight as
Darnell's.

"Sweeney
thought he had the votes to eliminate the other bidders so that when we make
our presentation it's a done deal," Darnell said. "They can't
seriously think they're going to bring anybody else in to manage this
operation. Ten Star
built
this place."

"That's
true, but it does belong to—"

"You
know better." Darnell snatched the small yellow tablet with Carter's
videotape notes off the desk. "What's on paper is not necessarily what
is.
Ten Star put this place up, and Ten Star can take it down. You and me,
Carter, we're the front line, the facilitators. We maintain. Now, we figured
your brother would go with the flow. He's just passing through, right?"

"Well,
yeah, this is just a formality."

"And
you were supposed to talk to him."

"I
did
talk
to him. He was..." Carter drew a deep breath. He hadn't talked to him, not
really, other than during the little session they'd all had in his living room
when Reese hadn't said much. He'd taken that as a nod. "He was completely
agreeable, I thought," he told Darnell.

"And
Sweeney was thinking it would be good to start moving things through right
away, before they regrouped, before every John Doeskin creeps out of the bush
and starts bending your brother's ear."

"He's
not going to listen to every—" Carter shook his head. He would have
Reese's ear now. They were brothers, after all. "Reese lives in the real
world. He's going to be reasonable."

"Well,
he'd better be reasonable, Carter. You need to see that he's going to be
reasonable. Because you do know what Ten Star
does
own, don't you?"
Darnell waited until he had Carter's full attention, full apprehension, eyes on
eyes. "That's right, Mr. Marshall. Your red ass."

***

Reese
pulled Helen off the floor early that evening. The last time he had been to a
powwow, the celebration committee had made a big deal over his first year as a
pro basketball player, asked him to carry a staff and lead the grand entry, had
him present the beaded crown to the new Miss Bad River, gifted him with a
special quilt and an honor song. He'd donated generously to every drum in the
bowery and to the fund for the next celebration, but he'd felt like a fraud.
His rookie year had been unremarkable. It wasn't enough for him to wear the
uniform. He wouldn't deserve the attention until he was a starter, until he was
making a difference in every game, until he'd lasted a while. By the time that
happened, he'd found it too easy to put off going home, especially in the
summer.

Now
he couldn't remember what else he'd had to do that was better than watching
beautiful young people parade around the powwow grounds dressed in brightly
colored dance costumes trimmed with fans of feathers and shocks of satin
ribbon. He'd seen a troupe of Irish dancers on stage in Minneapolis, had
marveled at the staccato clicking of their metal taps on polished floors, but
here the floor was prairie sod and the feet were marvelously stealthy. And
here, as the sun dipped low in a vermilion sky, he could feel the heart of the
earth singing along with the resolute beat of the drum.

Helen
greeted almost as many friends as Reese did while they walked the courting path
outside the circular bowery—the shelter for spectators surrounding the grassy
arena, open to the sky, where the dancing took place. People knew her from the
casino. Some remembered her from her teaching days. She didn't have to be
reminded which ones had been her students. They were the ones who received the
warmest greetings and made her blue eyes shine so that Reese's heart swelled,
simply because he was the one who walked by her side.

She
made him get her a grape snow cone, and when he told her there was no way he
was getting on any itinerant carny Ferris wheel, she cracked him up by sticking
her purple tongue out at him. He was going to be able to tease her good and
proper when she spilled the purple stuff on the long, light blue dress that
flowed around her legs like spring water when she walked, but that didn't
happen.

Her
eyes glistened as they watched the little boys' fancy-dance competition. He
remembered dancing himself when he was that age, before sprouting up to become
the lone willow in the alfalfa patch had made him shun dancing. But Helen's
eyes shone for memories of a different little boy, one Reese wondered about
more and more, tried to imagine, sometimes even spoke to in his head. "How
about a game of one-on-one?" he would say to this blond, blue-eyed boy,
fair like his mom, but sweaty and dirt-necklaced and skinned at the knees, like
a boy. And he would play him for fun, for the pure joy of sharing the wonder of
the big round ball and what they could make it do. Helen might join in or she
might not, but her eyes would shine, the way they did now as the lights came on
over the bowery where the children danced.

Daylight
lingered forever on a Dakota summer's evening, and it was still twilight when
they strolled over to the campground. A voice drew Reese's attention to three
tents pitched in the shelter of a large Cottonwood tree. A tall man with brown
leather skin and long gray braids waved a cowboy hat and shouted again.
"Hopo!
Tonska!"