Reason To Believe (11 page)

"I just hate it when they act
stupid
and say things out of ignorance, like..."

Silent until he tired of her beating around the bush.

"What did he say?" he asked. She questioned him with a look. "The math teacher," he clarified.

"He said..." She took a deep breath and backtracked. "Well,
I
said that I would certainly discipline her for talking back, that I'd had some problems with her lately, too, but nothing unusual for a thirteen-year-old, nothing we can't..."

With a look he appealed to her to get to the point.

She glanced away, barely able to control her emotions even in the retelling. "He said that if she continued to have trouble controlling her language, maybe I ought to take her back to the reservation, where she..."

"Belongs?" At her nod his blood pressure took a running leap. "You called the principal?"

"Yes. The principal said he found it hard to believe that Mr. Kraus would say something like that, but I reminded him that this was not a matter between a child and an adult now, this was..."

She looked to him again for deliverance, this time from her own fury and frustration, from the terrible feeling that she was actually helpless against the insidiousness of this particular threat to her child.

And he thought, yes. In this way she
does
know.

"I've never met the man face-to-face." She touched the sleeve of his jacket, tentatively at first, but as she spoke she slowly enclosed the fabric in a tight fist. "He said it to
me,
over the phone. I want to go to the school board. I want that man out of there, but—" She gave a shaky sigh. "I can't even talk about it without getting all emotional."

"I can."

"Oh, Ben, you'd never be able to control your temper over a thing like that. He'd make up some story, and you'd punch his lights out."

"So?" Grinning slowly, he covered her small fist with his hand. "If we didn't get his job, at least we'd get his lights."

She permitted only the flicker of a smile. "But the other thing is, I hate to subject Annie to any more stress."

He groaned.

"Don't you see, Ben? When it gets to be us against them, I look like one of
them
to her. I wish I could minimize all that somehow. I wish I could—"

"Turn her white?"

"No!"

"It would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?" Wounded, she drew away from him and from his accusation.

He tried to shrug off her damned seriousness for both their sakes. "Maybe it's like one of those Mormon elders told me once when he was trying to get me into his church. When Indians go to heaven—after they get to be Mormons, mind you—they'll be turned white so they can see the face of God." He tipped his head slightly and offered a conspiratorial wink. "We'll be as pretty as you guys."

She pouted, which meant she was coming around. "That's a bunch of bullshit."

"Whoa. Clara-bow experiences a momentary loss of tongue control over the old 'mark of Cain' question." He laughed. "I always loved the way you handled those missionaries when they came knockin' at the door."

"You never turned them away."

"Well, they've got their job to do. Everybody wants to convert the Indians."

She smiled, slipping readily now into the remembrance. "And you'd holler out, 'Cla-ra. There's someone here to seee yooou.' Then you'd just let them in—especially the pretty ones, as I remember—and sit back as though you were tuning in to Monday night football."

"Yeah, but I was always rootin' for you, sweetheart. My woman with all the answers. It was fun to watch you fire them off at somebody besides me."

"Well, the older I get, the fewer I seem to have." Again, her heavy sigh. "For the important things."

Again, his easy shrug. "You
always
had 'em for me."

"Do you have any for me?"

Silence. Again, their impasse.

"I still don't understand why, Ben," she said softly, her tone resonant with a needy curiosity rather than the usual wrath. "That was the one question you never resolved for me."

"Even if I had an answer, what difference would it make?" He searched her eyes in pursuit of something more than simple truth. "It wouldn't change anything, would it? I can't explain it away. I did what I did."

She winced, and a wave of heartsickness engulfed him.

Gently he took her shoulders in his hands. "And God knows I'm sorry for it, Clara, but that doesn't change anything, either, does it?"

She closed her eyes and turned her face from his. "I shouldn't have brought it up. It only makes it worse."

He let another pain-filled moment pass before releasing her to step away. Away from the bench he'd built for her around the sacred tree. Away from her unholy husband.

She buried her hands in her blazer pockets and gave her head a quick toss, catching glimmers of autumn gold sunlight in her fine, straight hair. "There are some changes that have to be made. As soon as I—"

He clenched his teeth as he stared at her prim profile. "What about this weekend?"

"This weekend?"

"Would it be all right to have Annie..." He gestured vaguely south. "I could take her along now if she's got tomorrow off. You could come down to pick her up on Sunday, say hello to the ol' man." He gave a promising nod. "He'd like that."

She looked southward, and he knew she was imagining the drive beyond the city. She was thinking about following the meanderings of the Missouri River, crossing into his territory, into sweet-memory country. She lifted one padded shoulder. "I guess I could do that."

"Course, between the two of them hounding me over this ride..." Ben imagined them wearing him down, and he stubbornly shook his head.

"It might be good for her," she offered tentatively.

"You shittin' me? Like I said, she'll freeze her little toes off."

Clara smiled wistfully. "Her toes aren't that little anymore. Her feet are as big as mine now."

Ben whistled. "Man, that's..." Grinning, he wagged his forefinger. "See, she doesn't get that from the Pipe-stones. She's got your legs, too." His grin became a warm smile. "Which is nice."

But it was her eyes that held his attention now, because today they weren't so mad at him, even when they'd talked about—well,
touched on
—the hurtful things. God, she looked like a schoolgirl in her creamy stockings, her skirt and blazer. Maybe a bit too sad-eyed to be schoolgirl young, but at least those eyes weren't so mad at him today. And he wanted to remember the way they made him feel like smiling a little, even laughing some.

She lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "If it got too cold, there's no rule that says she can't drop out, is there?"

He chuckled. "Try tellin' her that. You know how stubborn she is once she gets set on something. Besides, you said she couldn't go without you."

She challenged him with a tilt of her chin. "You don't think I could do it, either, do you?"

"You haven't been on a horse in years." But he wouldn't put it past her.

Squinting into the sun, she cocked her head to the side and smiled. "I might surprise you."

Ben wasn't worried about freezing his cowboy ass off riding horseback. He'd done that before, plenty of times. Once upon a time he'd told Clara that that was why he was so small and hard back there. Once upon a time she'd been impressed. Now she'd turned cold on him, and the weather had nothing to do with it, and
none
of that had anything to do with his reluctance to participate in the Big Foot Memorial Ride.

It was the old man, and that whole pipe-carrier thing. Ben Pipestone did not have the makings of a Lakota holy man. Not that Dewey had been talking it up much lately, but all the old man had to do was take out that red bundle. He always performed the unwrapping as though he were about to take his first look at his newborn child. Then he'd cradle the smooth red stone bowl in his palm, fit the wooden stem into place, and finally he'd look up at Ben. His dark eyes pierced the soul with an invitation to share the ancient beliefs and accept the hereditary commission.

Ben Pipestone made his living as a
mechanic,
for God's sake. All right, it was more like for his own sake, for his kid's sake, and if God needed a piece of that action, Ben could spare it. He'd gone to church with Clara, dropped some cash into the plate, even fixed the

Catholic Mission School's buses and jump-started the Mormon elders' van. God had no shortage of representatives on the rez.

Tunkasila, his father said, didn't need
a
car.

But Ben's wife was the one with the true Indian heart. The man had said so himself. She was dead serious about the stories, getting the history right, and honoring the artifacts in their glass cases.

Ben had an Indian face, a cowboy ass, and a cheatin' heart. Underneath all that he had no idea what kind of
a
soul the ol' man kept trying to chip away at with his hawk-faced looks. Whatever kind of soul it was, it was heavily tarnished. He'd all but sold it to the low bidder, and it hadn't shown much sign of being worth salvaging until just recently. Still undeveloped. Still needed a hell of a lot of work. But at least it was still his.

It had been fun to have Annie back with him for
a
couple of days. It griped him a little that he'd had to call Officer Turnbull before he took his daughter out of the state, but he'd switched on the cowboy charm anyway. The first thing he'd wanted to show Annie was his shop. Not that cars held any appeal for her, but he wanted her to see that her dad had a growing business, complete with employee.

After the "grand tour" of Pipestone Auto Repair, he'd taken her to the cafe for supper. Annie was just like her mother; she loved to eat out. Besides the fact that Ben wasn't much of a cook, he'd felt
a
little awkward about the shabbiness of his living arrangements. He did his cooking on a hotplate these days. Annie had never seen
a
hotplate. And he'd had to laugh when she'd marveled at his "antique" television set. "Wow, Dad,
a
real black-and-white."

He decided to let her sleep over at his sister Tara Jean's house, even though her family had plans to participate in the Big Foot Ride. The calculated risk turned out worse than he'd expected. By the time Ben came to pick Annie up mid Saturday morning, she and her fifteen-year-old cousin Billie had it all planned. For months Billie had been talking about being one of the runners who would start the event off with a relay, but now she wanted to ride instead. Because now "Uncle
had
to ride." Because now Annie was dead set on riding. And Billie had already spilled the beans about the little paint horse he was giving Annie for Christmas.

Damn, he really knew how to get his ass in a sling.

They'd spent much of the weekend visiting out to his dad's place, which was fifteen miles from Ben's little hole-in-the-wall apartment in McLaughlin. The three of them had swapped stories, shared meals, and they'd gone riding together. It all felt pretty good. It felt almost right. And when the one person they all missed finally showed up at Dewey's door, Ben told himself to forget, at least for another hour or so, that the three of them wouldn't be going home together.

"Hey, I'm glad you're here." An understatement if ever there was one. He was actually wishing for red carpet as he shut the door behind Clara. "I need an ally. They're gangin' up on me here."

She smiled. There sat the two conspirators, side by side near the table that divided the little kitchen from the all-purpose front room. A young head with memories to make and an old head with memories to preserve, both of one mind. Sometime over the weekend Anna's single long, thick, black braid had become two, like her grandfather's. But his were thinner. They were silver-gray, and the tight red cloth wrappings made them lie stiff against his shoulders, curved like two unstrung bows.

"You're looking fit as ever, Dewey." Clara offered her father-in-law a demure handshake.

Dewey, in turn, offered Clara a chair close to the wood-burning stove. "I'm doin' okay. You must be pretty fit yourself. Hear you're gonna go with us on the ride."

She slid a quizzical glance from Ben's face to Anna's as she draped her jacket on the back of the chair. "I am?"

"Annie's been talkin' like it's a done deal," Ben reported. He straddled a tattered kitchen chair and folded his arms on the backrest.

"And you said you'd have to go if I did," Anna reminded her mother. "You said you were gonna take some extra time off at Christmas anyway. It'll be a good time for a vacation."

"It would be a good time to go to Arizona for a vacation." With a smile Clara added, "I'd become a snowbird if I could afford to."

"See, that's my problem," Ben said. "I can't afford to take the time away from the shop."

Dewey lurched to his feet and headed for the stove. "Annie, you help me with the coffee."

"Sure, Lala."

Doggedly Ben passed a hand over his face and came up resting his chin in the crotch of his thumb. "Dad, people really need their vehicles in the winter, and that's when these rez runners break down the most. I hate to close up shop."