Reason To Believe (13 page)

"Aw, shit." Ben spun his chair aside as he got to his feet. "Now you're tryin' to make me look bad. No choice, I have to go along and watch out for you guys."

"Nobody said you had to ride with us." Dewey chuckled. "But we all know you got more pride on you than anything else, you get right down to it."

"You get right down to it, I'm probably the only one who can make it to the end. You're too old," Ben declared, raising an eyebrow his father's way. Then to Anna, "You're too young. And you're too—" He challenged his wife with an arrogant smile. "Let's say, too fragile."

"We'll see," Clara said smugly. "Maybe you're the one who should drive the pickup, Ben. Somebody has to haul our stuff. Unless we could take a packhorse. Should we do that?" She turned to Anna, her excitement growing. "Remember that trapper display we did with the mannequins? We learned all about loading a pack saddle with that little project, didn't we?"

"The thing kept coming off," Annie recalled, lifting her face toward her grandfather. "Course, that hairless horse was so slick. It was life-size, but no hide. It was like a Barbie doll horse. I was the one who figured out how to balance it so it wouldn't sag."

"I can just see you two, showin' up with your historically authentic packhorse," Ben predicted, getting into it now that the die had been cast. "Two days later, you've got your authentic saddle sores and your present-day frostbite, don't come cryin' to me."

Clara slid a glance between Anna and Ben. "You mean, you won't even let us warm up in your pickup?"

"Hell, no. You wanna play Indian, you stick to the rules." He wagged a finger under Clara's nose. "The rules that say the Indians go hungry, freeze their damn asses off, and end up losin' everything in the end."

"There's a difference between losin' it and throwin' it away," Dewey told his son.

"And anyway, we haven't lost everything," Anna said, touching the strip of red flannel that lay across her grandfather's knees.

Dewey chuckled. "You see, son? When the women have to turn to an old man like me—"

"Christ, here it comes."

"That's when the young men lose out. They think they have so many other things to worry about, while an old man has it narrowed down pretty good. We take what we need and leave the rest." With a nod he assured his granddaughter, "I can get enough horses."

"I've got my own horse now," she said proudly.

"I've got horses for both of them. And one for myself." Ben bristled at the sound of his father's dry chuckle. "I
said
I'd
ride.
I ain't gonna be drivin' no damn supply truck." He jerked his chin, signaling to Clara. "C'mon outside with me. I got something to show you."

The corrals were almost a quarter-mile hike east of the little house overlooking the Grand River. They were made of a motley assortment of weathered scrap lumber, posts collected along the river bottom, and splintering rails. The pens had been put up, torn down, and rearranged every summer since Ben could remember, depending on what kind of stock they'd picked up that year. It had never been more than a few head of anything, usually some animals to ride, some to ride herd on, a few to sell, and something to butcher in the fall. Before the ol' lady had flown the coop when Ben was ten, a variety of beasts had gotten the ax, but after she'd left, no one ever came up with any bright ideas about chickens or geese, pigs or goats. After Ben's mother had left the family for greener pastures, it was just cows and horses.

Part of the all-purpose chute Ben had framed out during the summer of his seventeenth year was still standing. He'd experimented with switch gates and makeshift latches, but it had never worked quite the way he'd wanted it to. Still, he and his sisters and their cousins had enjoyed some fine bucking action within the confines of those corrals. They'd roped calves, broke horses, even bucked out some lumbering cows.

As good as some of those times had been, he couldn't go out to the corrals anymore without remembering the best times, without dreaming of green and gold summer afternoons filled with meadowlarks singing in the grass. Every time he headed for the corrals, he could see himself saddling up not one horse, but two. He could feel his face catching a breeze down by the river. He could remember his hands and his mouth making chaste love with Clara in the shade of the big cottonwood. Horses had been as much of a turn-on for her as they were for him. Summer wind and horse sweat, damn! Ben and Clara. They'd get so close, 'til he'd thought it was do or die, and then she'd manage to hold him off at the very last. And he'd die a little.

They were close now, closer than they'd been in two years. The autumn-cool sunshine was not as brassy as that of young, green summer. It felt friendly and comfortable, and he liked watching their shadows travel across the pasture together. Their footfalls swished through the crisp buffalo grass. In the aftermath of unexpected decision making, the silence between them was strangely peaceful, as though for the first time in two years they were headed in a direction they could both accept because neither of them had dictated it.

He leaned on the top rail of the corral and braced a booted foot on the bottom one. She, in her tennis shoes, stepped up on the bottom rail and hooked her elbows over the top one. The three horses barely took notice.

"What do you think of the bay?" he asked.

"She..." She gave a quizzical look. "She?" He nodded, and she smiled. "She looks a lot like Misty."

"She still needs work, but I can have her ready in time. They're all gonna need conditioning for a ride like that." But he hoped she noticed how good they looked now. He'd given them his care, and they had carried him through his loneliness. "The little paint is Annie's."

"Perfect," Clara marveled. The black and white horse raised its head and pricked its ears as if on cue. "Oh, he's perfect. Has she ridden him?"

Beaming inside, Ben nodded once. "He was going to be her Christmas present."

"Well, he still can be, but I'm sure she won't be able to wait to tell her friends she has a horse of her own."

"We used to talk about it. Remember? Buyin' that piece of land behind the house so we could have a couple of horses." He reached for a cigarette, ignoring her glancing reproof. "Just one of my many pipe dreams."

"Anna will want to come down here more often now. We'll have to come up with some kind of a regular schedule."

"A regular schedule for seeing my daughter," he repeated, cigarette bouncing in the corner of his mouth. He struck a match and cupped his hand to shelter the flame, muttering dryly, "Ain't that the shits."

"As Dewey said, I'm sure you have lots of important demands on your time, but you only have one child—" she eyed him, affecting suspicion as she watched him suck up a lungful of smoke "—that I know of, anyway. And she still needs you. And yes, it might require a commitment on your part."

"Don't you know I'd give just about anything..." He closed his eyes, hung his head, and expelled a long, slow, smoky breath. "I've never done real well on a schedule, have I? But then, neither has Annie. Remember how you tried to get her on a nursing schedule?"

She rolled her eyes, recalling her determination.

He smiled, remembering the way the baby's persistence had melted Clara's resolve.

"When Annie wanted her mama, she wanted her right now."

"Much the same way you did."

His eyes widened, and she glanced away. Neither one could believe she'd said such a thing. Not now.

But he wasn't going to let it pass without an appreciative chuckle. "Yeah, but I was always willing to go to the trouble of coaxing Mama along until she wanted Papa pretty bad." He cocked his head, watching her closely as he touched her chin with the back of one restrained finger.
"Needed...
her Papa-bear..."

She closed her eyes, and for a moment she stopped breathing. "You can't do that to me anymore," she willed as she leaned away. "I've kicked the habit. I don't need your brand of heartache."

"Took the cure, huh?" He turned, rolling his shoulders against the rail as he took another long, deep pull on his cigarette. He spat a stream of smoke. "You wanna tell me your secret so I can get off these?"

"Knowing they're bad for you should be enough. And then..." She looked up at him, catching the sun in her eyes "... staying away."

"That's how it works with booze. I stay away. Can't trust myself to see it or smell it. It wouldn't take much more than a taste to get me started again." He studied the cigarette, the ash sheltered in his cupped hand. "I still think about it a lot, so I know
I
really have to stay away." Smiling, he lifted his gaze slowly to meet hers. "Course, if I didn't have a taste for it at all anymore, I wouldn't worry about staying away."

"You're about as subtle as a bulldozer, Ben Pipestone."

He chuckled. "Who was it said, it ain't over 'til it's over?"

"Some man." She folded her arms along the top of the rail, rested her chin on her sleeve, and watched the bay mare swat the big chestnut gelding with her tail. "I'm doing this for Anna."

"What? Going on the ride? So am
I."
He shook his head, still finding it hard to believe. "Turned the ol' man down flat. Told him there was no power on earth could make me do such a fool thing." He took a quick puff on his cigarette, then dropped it beneath his bootheel. "I hadn't counted on Annie."

"You wouldn't... take anyone else along, would you?"

She spared him a glance.

He hiked a brow, inviting a such-as.

"I mean, I know you
said
there wasn't anyone at the moment," she reminded him, trying to rush the notion headlong past her caring. "But who knows what opportunities might come your way between now and the middle of December?"

"Opportunities?"

"We've been separated for quite a while now." She stared hard at the bay. "And I'm not as naive as
I
once was. But since we're doing this for Anna..."

"Jesus, Clara." With a parched chuckle he shook his head. "I don't think it would go over too good, do you? Hey, baby, how about a winter getaway down to Wounded Knee, South Dakota? Where would we stay? Well, hell, I just thought we'd pitch a tent." He slid her a glance, saw that she wasn't amused, and shrugged. "I don't know anybody that damn desperate."

"I just think it might be awkward," she said stiffly.

"Awkward?"
He laughed. "After a day or two in the saddle, I don't think 'awkward' is likely to be the first word that leaps to your proper little tongue. I'd say sooner or later this ride is bound to be a blue bitch. So when you finally give in and start cussin', just remember, this wasn't my idea."

She glared. "You'd be offended if my
proper little tongue
were to, for the sake of variety, direct a bit of profanity your way?"

He grinned. "Sweetheart, if the idea of offending me ever tempts you to talk dirty, then yeah." He gave her an insolent wink. "I'd be downright mortified."

Mid-December 1990

The Little Eagle Community Center smelled of cigarette smoke and boiled meat. Not much had changed in the many years since Clara had been there. Sheets of particleboard had replaced most of the windows, and the paint was peeling off the ceiling like curls of old paper. The Bingo apparatus was new. A sign above it read "Bingo on Last Call Only." Not being much of a bingo player, Clara had no idea what that meant. She had heard that all the districts on the reservation ran weekly bingo these days, partly to finance community improvements, partly to alleviate community boredom. There was so little employment available in the more isolated reservation districts like Little Eagle.

Whatever the doings at the center, there was always a crowd. There had been a good-sized crowd the day Tara Jean had given Clara's bridal shower in the same building, such a long, long time ago. She remembered the strands of purple crepe paper tacked to the wall where the "Last Call" sign now hung. She remembered the refreshments of Kool-Aid punch and sheet cake and the gifts of plastic refrigerator bowls and blankets. She'd been showered, literally, with thermal-weave blankets, a dozen or more, mostly from women she'd met for the first time that day.

From her side of the family, who stood firmly in opposition to the marriage, there had not even been good wishes.

After more than fourteen years, it didn't matter that plentiful measures of both the good wishes and the dire predictions had come true. What mattered was that it felt good to be back. Even though her marriage had failed, and even though every person who came and went through the ever-swinging front door probably knew that, she still felt welcome in her husband's hometown. It was December fourteenth, the eve of the anniversary of the death of Sitting Bull, and the people were gathering to honor the Big Foot Memorial riders. They might be surprised to see Clara among them, but no one would predict any dire consequences for her. No one would wish her ill.

"Hey, Mrs. Pipestone!" The greeting came from a young man in a fatigue jacket who was hauling a bass drum toward the singers' corner, dodging boisterous children as he made his way across the floor. "Where's the ol' man?"

Clara grinned and gave an exaggerated shrug. "How're you doing?" She recognized the man's smile, but his face had matured considerably, and the name she'd once had listed in her school attendance book was just beyond her memory's reach.