The Spirit Woman (11 page)

She stepped over to the door and slid the chain into the channel. Leaning into the tiny crack at the frame, she called, “Who's there? What do you want?”

“L
et me in, sweetheart.” The voice came like a painful memory floating uninvited into her consciousness. “I'm turning into the iceman out here.”

Laura slid the chain free. Her hand trembled. Her legs felt weak and unattached as she opened the door and watched Toby Becker stride in, boots stomping the carpet, shoulders rolling, so that tiny snow crystals flew into her face like sand blowing in the wind. He had on blue jeans and the bulky red ski jacket he always wore to campus on cold days. The tips of his brown curly hair fanned over the thick collar as if it were a pillow.

“How did you find me?” she managed. She knew the answer. She'd told the department chair where she was staying.

“Did you really think you could get away from me?” Toby threw her the indulgent smile that he bestowed whenever she'd disappointed him. She knew his face by heart: the hint of amusement behind the dark eyes, the flare of nostrils in the long, perfectly shaped nose, the way his mouth began to move before he spoke.

“Just like you, Laura, to land in a place like this. Efficient and cheap.” His gaze flitted from the shabby bedspread to the dresser and television with a formation of airplanes floating across the screen. The announcer's voice droned above the roar of engines. He took off the ski jacket and threw it onto the bed next to her coat. His muscles rippled through the fabric of his navy-blue shirt, and a wisp of brown hair poked into the V of his opened collar.

“Hardly worthy of you, sweetheart,” he said. “You deserve a penthouse overlooking Central Park, roses in the foyer, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and champagne chilled on a marble table. You deserve the world, Laura. You're beautiful.”

Laura braced herself against the door. “Why are you here, Toby?”

“I'm dying without you, sweetheart.” As he started toward her she slid along the door, wincing as the knob dug into her spine. He stopped. “Can you try to imagine for one moment, one moment, Laura, how miserable I've been? I've lost my appetite, can't sleep. I'm an automaton up there in front of my classes, mouthing words. I don't even know what I'm teaching.”

He wagged a finger at her, as if she were a student who'd missed the main point of a lecture. “I haven't been able to write, Laura. Not one word on my new novel. I thought you understood it's my most important work yet.” The finger moving, moving. “You're responsible.”

Laura fought against the impulse to apologize, assure him that he was a great writer. He must finish the novel. The role she usually played in a scene they had enacted—how many times in the last year?

She stepped past him and clicked off the television. In the mirror she caught his image, hands dangling helplessly at his sides. If he touched her, she feared she would be lost. “It was always about you, Toby,” she managed.

“It's about us. We belong together, Laura. You're the sun in my sky, the air I breathe. I need you. Give me another chance. Give us another chance.”

Laura turned slowly. “I gave us enough chances.”

“It'll be different this time.” Light reflecting through the faux Tiffany shade gave his face the soft, languorous look she'd seen when she'd turned to him in the middle of the night. “I'm seeing a therapist,” he said. “I've had some real breakthroughs. I understand where the rage comes from. Mother, the enabler, and Dad, that SOB. Don't you see? I've simply displaced the rage onto you. Now that I understand, I'll be able to control it.”

Suddenly he dropped to his knees. “Please, Laura.”

“What are you doing?” She had to stifle a laugh. He looked like a clown, walking toward her on his knees.

“Begging you, Laura. Come back to me.” He wrapped his arms around her legs and started to lift her into the air. “I adore you. I need you.”

“Stop it, Toby.” She pushed at his head. The thick softness of his hair flowed through her fingers; his breath was warm against her thigh. She jerked herself free.

“We'll stay together, you and I.” He was still on his knees. “Walk to classes, write, make dinner, go to bed. You and I, Laura, just like before.”

“It's over between us, Toby.” Laura could hear the waviness in her voice. Her breath burned in her chest. “I'm going on with my life and my own work. I have a meeting tomorrow with a man who may be able to get me the critical evidence I need. I intend to finish the biography”—she shot a glance at the manuscript on the table—“and get tenure next year.”

“Oh, yes. Pocahontas.” He gave a snort that flared out his nostrils.

“Sacajawea.”

“Yes, yes, I meant Sacajawea.” He shrugged. “You can work on the biography while I write my novel.”

“We tried that. Somehow, my time was spent making it possible for you to write.” She stopped herself from saying, And entertaining your friends, typing your notes, typing your endless drafts.

“Surely you don't mean the biography takes precedence over our being together.” He lifted his hand and gave a dismissive wave toward the manuscript.

“Please leave, Toby.” She stepped past him and opened the door.

He got to his feet, his eyes hard on hers now, as if he were trying to decipher the meaning of his dismissal. Then he grabbed the jacket from the bed. “You think I don't have anything better to do than drive all the way up here to see you?” His tone rose to an angry pitch. “I should be working on my novel, not groveling to some ungrateful bit—” He tightened his lips over the word. Still keeping his gaze on her, he walked past and out the door.

As he started down the steps he turned back. “You're still my woman, Laura, and you know it. I'm not going away. I'll be here as long as it takes for you to come to your senses.”

 

Laura felt shaky, slightly nauseated, when she crawled into bed. She'd watched the black BMW back out of the driveway and dart out of sight past the Victorian, weak with a sense of emptiness. People could change. Vicky had taken her ex-husband back after all these years, and Toby was seeing a therapist. He'd driven all the way to Wyoming to beg for another chance. He was filled with remorse. What more could she ask?

She snatched pieces of sleep from the night, floating through a jumble of dreams. She was treading through a mountain wilderness, snow blowing through the ponderosas, the dark-haired woman walking ahead, always ahead. Suddenly the woman stopped and turned back.
Who are you to come for my story?

Laura sat up in bed, her heart banging hard. She felt cold with perspiration. What was she doing here? So far from home and her own life—a life she could share with Toby. Chasing after a phantom, a spirit. After all, it was another scholar who had discovered the memoirs.

But that scholar was dead, she told herself, and the biography was hers to finish. She would be the one who would first publish the memoirs. Her reputation would be firmly established. Everything was going just as she'd hoped. She was making contacts on the reservation, and sooner or later she'd find Toussaint.

Laura settled back against the rough sheets. From outside came the sounds of voices and car doors slamming. She tried to ignore the fear moving like a shadow at the edge of her consciousness. Toby was gone now. Everything would be fine.

He would be back
. She couldn't get the nagging voice out of her head. He knew where she was staying.

L
aura sped through the northern reaches of the reservation, gobbling up the miles, the foothills flashing by outside her window. The sun angled overhead, compressed between puffs of clouds. At the junction of 287 and 26, she veered west, closing in on the mountains. She felt as if she were floating in space, Toby part of the unsettling dreams, nearly forgotten in the bright morning light. He had left, she kept reminding herself. Surely it would be final now, the breakup. Surely he'd go back to Boulder and forget about her.

Ahead on the left was a wide dirt road, just as Robert Crow Wolf's directions indicated. She swung onto the road and started climbing around the mountain slope, the ponderosa branches dancing in the wind outside her window. As she came around a curve she saw the gray ranch house, the sloping roof outlined against the sky. She turned through the opened gate of a barbed-wire fence and stopped near the front stoop.

As she lifted herself out a large, round-shouldered man in blue jeans and fringed brown leather jacket came around the corner of the house. Somewhere in his sixties, she guessed, with a reddish complexion and tufts of gray hair that dropped beneath the rim of a black cowboy hat.

“Hello,” she called. The wind brought her words back to her. “I'm looking for Willie Silver.”

He came forward, milky dark eyes taking her in. “You must be that professor lady Crow Wolf called about.”

“Laura Simmons.” She thrust out her hand and went to meet him. A gust whipped the front of her coat back and sent a chill running through her.

“Come on in,” he said, shaking her hand. She flinched at the tightness of his grip. He ushered her to the front door and into a narrow living room with a sofa, a couple of chairs, and a table scattered about, as if they'd been dropped from overhead. Newspapers, food-crusted plates, and beer cans toppled over the tops and trailed onto the floor.

“Excuse the mess,” the man said. “My woman took it into her head to go off somewhere a week ago.” He cleared a stack of newspapers from an upholstered chair, the cushion stained and ragged at the edges. “She'll be back. They always come back. Have a seat.”

Laura perched on the edge of the cushion, keeping her bag in her lap. “I understand you're a descendant of Sacajawea,” she said in a firm, businesslike voice. He was different—rougher—than the men she was used to. An outdoorsman with squint lines fanning from hooded eyes and bulky, chapped hands.

“Yeah, that's me.” Willie Silver straddled the sofa armrest. “Come down from Baptiste himself, natural son of Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. Bazil, he was her nephew, born to her sister. She might've adopted him, but that didn't make him her natural son, like Baptiste.”

“Bazil took care of her in her last years.” Laura heard the lecturing note in her tone. “The 1880 census identified her as Bazil's mother.”

The Indian flapped a hand at the air, as if he were swatting away a pesky fly. “Baptiste was out hunting when they made that census, gettin' food for the people. He was a helluva guide, too, like his old man. Guided people all over the mountains, some of 'em real important, like that so-called explorer Frémont. Couldn't explore his ass without Baptiste.”

Laura shifted in her chair. “Mr. Silver,” she began.

“Willie.”

“I've been asked to complete a biography of Sacajawea.”

“You gonna tell the truth?”

“I don't understand.”

“The truth about Toussaint, her old man. None of them history books—” He hesitated. The dark eyes narrowed, deepening the creases in his forehead. “Don't be lookin' so surprised. I read about my own ancestors. Them books don't tell the truth. Toussaint was one helluva guy. Made his way from Montreal across the plains, learned to speak Indian, lived by his wits. Trading with all them tribes up north, guiding folks about. Old Lewis and Clark never would've made it west without Toussaint.”

“I'm afraid there's no evidence to support that theory.” Laura felt a spasm of irritation.

“Hell there ain't. He was one helluva man.”

“He was a wife beater.”

“Yeah, well, maybe his woman needed some discipline once in a while for her own good.”

“Listen, Willie,” Laura began again, struggling to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Twenty years ago a historian named Charlotte Allen came here to research Sacajawea. Did you know her?”

“That's a long time ago. Been a lot of women around since then.” The man's gaze flitted around the room. A vein pulsed in his temple. “If I remember right,” he went on, “she got lost up here on the ridge. She'd been goin' around the res, trying to get folks to talk to her. Lots of folks don't trust white people much.” He winked, as if to make sure she understood he wasn't one of them.

Laura opened her bag, drew out the red journal, and began flipping through the pages. “Let me read you what Charlotte wrote. ‘Toussaint came today. He told me the most incredible news. His great-grandfather rescued Sacajawea's memoirs from the agency fire. They've been in the family ever since.' ”

She glanced up. “Can you help me find the memoirs?”

“You thinkin' I'm that Toussaint she wrote about?” Willie Silver swung out a scuffed boot and kicked at the sofa. His boot made a muffled, pounding noise.

“Are the memoirs in your family?” Laura could hear her heart beating. She was close, close.

“They'd be valuable, right?”

Laura didn't respond for a moment. “I'm certain my publisher would compensate you,” she said. She was thinking that she didn't even have a publisher yet.

“I sure wanna help a pretty professor lady like you.” The man kicked at the sofa again. “I'll ask around the family, see what I can come up with. I'll get back to you. Where you staying?”

Laura told him. Then she rose to her feet and started for the door, limp from the rush of excitement. She was so close to the memoirs, she could almost feel the weight of the old notebook in her hand. She was about to let herself out when the man set his hand on her shoulder.