Wind Song (17 page)

She couldn’t handle both—the passion she harbored for Cody . . . and the passion, the desperate need, to prove that Abbie Dennis still existed.

Yet she could not so easily put Cody from her. His image was engraved on her mind ... his touch and voice on her soul.

Chapter 8

“
S
winging by the airport was no problem
,
Abbie. I had to come down Flagstaff way anyhow. Where did you and Robert go?”

“New Mexico,” she answered noncommittally. Marshall flashed her a glance. As if sensing her unspoken wish, he respectfully refrained from questioning her further.

Politeness compelled her to say something. “I was surprised when the agency told me that you had cancelled your holiday vacation leave.”

“An emergency at the Leupp Boarding School came up. That’s where I just came from.”

Only then did Abbie notice that Marshall’s healthy tanned face had a gray cast. “What happened?”

He swung the Interagency Motor Pool’s Jeep off Highway 89 onto 160. “Suicide. A ten-year- old hanged herself from a bath stall showerhead.”

“Oh, God, no.” She thought of Robert sitting stonily in the back seat and was for once glad he didn’t understand English very well.

“I don’t think the BIA will ever learn that taking an Indian kid to a white boarding school comes as a terrific shock. Like being pushed out of a cozy kitchen into a howling blizzard. Oh, our schools are modern and expensive. And our teachers, the ones like you, really try. But the kids are lonely. They enter confused and bewildered, and they leave the same way. When they enter at least they know that they’re Indians. They come out half-red and half-white, not knowing what they are.”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat. Chase and Cody had fenced on the very issue that Marshall was discussing. The horror of the suicide—it made her feel so helpless, the situation seem so hopeless.

“Is there anything that can be done?” she asked without opening her eyes. She didn’t want to see the desolation of the country that was inexorably swallowing up the car. In Albuquerque it would have been so easy to catch a plane to anywhere. Houston, Kansas City, San Francisco. But she wasn’t going to run.

“Something
has
to be done,” he said hollowly.

“Where would you start, Marshall?”

He was quiet for a moment. “You know, Abbie, we talk about the Indians being culturally deprived.” He laughed angrily. “They aren’t. You might say that they’re the only people in this melting pot who have kept their culture. What have we, the urban white Americans, got? A culture of the mass media that’s fed to us.”

He shook his head. “I’m going off on a tangent. I’d start, Abbie, by doing away with the restriction that forbids them to talk their language or sing their songs in the boarding schools. Hey, Abbie?”

She opened her eyes. “I wasn’t sleeping. Just thinking, Marshall.”

“How about thinking about going skiing with me before the holidays are over. The Snow Bowl reported more than seven inches of snow last week.”

“Marshall, to be honest, I tried seeing another man this week. And it was no good. I don’t think I’m up to mixing with the opposite sex yet.” She smiled wryly and added, “To quote Garbo, ‘I vant to be alone.’ ”

“It was that bad, eh?”

She was relieved when he didn’t ask her the name of the man she had seen. “That bad.”

“When you decide to make the circuit again, Abbie, I hope you’ll give me first chance at bat.”

* * * * *

Abbie and Dalah tacked the last deerhide Yei mask to the wall above the blackboard. They would have been more appropriate for Halloween, she thought.

Dalah had obtained the masks and the
kachina
dolls from the Navajo Indian Culture Center in Tuba City the week before. Orville contributed the large, and costly, squash-blossom necklaces that she displayed on the velvet-draped table from his pawn room. Joey Kills the Soldier’s mother, after a request translated by Dalah, had supplied a rawhide bag with cedar dust, a gourd and a rattle. Joey’s mother had explained that the artifacts were full of religious and symbolic meaning and came from a peyote ceremony.

Abbie stepped back to survey their handiwork with narrowed eyes. They had finished just in time, with the first day of school after the Christmas holidays set to begin in less than thirty minutes.

“It should make the children feel almost like they’re in a hogan,” Dalah said proudly.

“Maybe we’ll see some progress now. I won’t have to hold up a couple of fingers and say the word ‘two’ fifteen times when two eagle feathers explain the concept so much better.” Abbie didn’t add that maybe she would be able to prevent even one more Indian child from becoming another suicide statistic.

“Your idea was marvelous,” Dalah said, shoving her long hair back over her shoulder. She smiled shyly. “I’m glad you asked my help.”

Abbie’s gaze fell on the beautiful young Indian woman. She liked Dalah very much and yet the thought that perhaps Cody had made love to Dalah was a wrenching knot in the pit of her stomach. She knew that Cody had returned not long after she had, because Orville had happened —just happened—to mention that Cody had come by the trading post earlier that morning. Astute, perceptive Orville.

What a miserable Christmas they had spent, she and Robert, the boy as miserable and glowering as she. Not even the comic strip wrapped box of candy had elicited a smile from the boy on Christmas morning.

“Mrs. Dennis!”

The name was a bellow. Abbie spun to face the classroom doorway. Miss Halliburton stood there, looking for all the world like a bull about to charge. Her severely tailored gray suit made her look more like a drill sergeant than a school principal. “I have just learned that you took an Indian child off the reservation over the holidays.”

What a way to start off the new year! Abbie certainly hoped that this wasn’t an omen for the year to come. “I did. But I informed the dormitory.”

“Don’t you realize, Mrs. Dennis, that any time an Indian child is to be taken off the reservation, it must be cleared with the BIA. That is a governmental offense!”

Abbie drew a deep breath, willing away an angry reaction. “I was unaware of that rule,” she said calmly. “It won’t happen—”

“What in Beelzebub’s name is all this—this paraphernalia?” The principal’s index finger jabbed in the direction of the displays.

“Indian artifacts.” Abbie saw Dalah’s warning glance but continued smoothly. “I felt that the decorations would make the children feel more at home.”

“More at home,” the principal purred, and Abbie felt a sudden queasiness in her stomach. “Do you realize the years and time and money we have spent trying to help these children adapt to our culture so that they can make their way in our world? And you—
you,
Mrs. Dennis—without even a by-your-leave from the office—are trying to set our efforts back by a hundred years!”

“I only wanted to—”

Miss Halliburton began to quake visibly. Her face became as ashen as her pewter gray wig. Her voice was a mere rasp. “Is this—is this,” she asked, pointing to the rawhide bag of cedar dust, “what I think it is?”

Abbie lost all patience. “I don’t know what you think it is, Miss Halliburton.”

The principal folded her arms and jutted her head forward. “Am I correct in assuming that this is a peyote ceremonial bag?”

Abbie could see the trouble coming. Clearly the new year was going to be a disastrous one. “Yes.”

“Peyote!” It was a roar now. “By all that’s holy, Mrs. Dennis! Next you’ll even have the peyote buds on display here for the children. Children! How could you?”

There was no point in backing down now. “I did think about displaying peyote buds. But I didn’t know where to find them, Miss Halliburton.”

The principal clapped her hand across her forehead and leaned against the display table. After a moment she said in a deadly quiet voice, “Get rid of this—this trash, immediately.” She turned to leave, then said, “And, Mrs. Dennis, I can assure you that this will go on your record at the BIA headquarters.”

“There’s no hope of redeeming myself now,” Abbie lamented. “That last fiasco with the peyote artifacts really set Miss Halliburton off on a rampage.”

Marshall dumped a packet of powdered cream into his coffee. He had gotten into the comfortable habit of having coffee with her in the teacher’s lounge every week when he came by for the teachers’ order forms. “I’ll look into the matter, Abbie. But I can’t promise much, since headquarters has jurisdiction over my agency.”

She bit her bottom lip. “Marshall . . .” Her voice was almost inaudible. “I can’t fail here. I have nowhere else left to go.”

His hand covered hers. “You know that you have a place with me. No, I mean it. In every sense of the word. I would ask you to marry me today—except I know that marriage is the last thing you want now.”

Why couldn’t Cody be that understanding?
She managed a small smile and squeezed his strong fingers. “Your offer tempts me. I know I would find a warm, comfortable life with you. But I won’t find Abbie Dennis. If I find her anywhere, it will be here at Kaibeto.”

No, neither marriage nor men were for her. So why was it that her thoughts continually turned to Cody? She told herself that it was pointless to see him again, but found herself looking for him every time she went to the trading post.

Even when she closed her eyes at night, in the dark silence of her bedroom, she saw him—the powerful features of his face; the firm, hard curve of his buttocks. She tasted once more his salty flesh, she felt the wiry hair that snaked from his navel downward and she smelled all over again that scent that was uniquely him and affected her like an aphrodisiac.

Thus it was like a blow to her stomach when Linda McNabb, her green eyes wide with awe, showed her the
Phoenix Gazette
toward the end of January. She, Linda, Dorothy and Becky were all relaxing at recess in the teacher’s lounge.

Linda flipped down the pages of the society section to locate the article. “There,” she said, poking at the photo of a young woman with a gamin haircut and large, heavily fringed eyes behind fashionable rimless glasses. While she wasn't really pretty, there was something very seductive about her. But it was the man standing next to her in the photo whom Linda was pointing at. “Isn’t that the Indian artist who lives here at Kaibeto?"

ARIZONA AUTHORESS IN PHOENIX FOR MOVIE PREMIERE.
Abbie skipped over the headline to read the text.

Emily DuMonde, who achieved instant success with her first novel,
Ashes of the Phoenix,
is here for Friday night’s gala premiere of its screen adaptation. Escorting her is Arizona’s renowned jewelry craftsman, Cody Strawhand. Both are alumni of Arizona State University.

Becky leaned over Abbie’s shoulder. “Holy Moses, but ain’t he a stud!”

“Becky!” Dorothy reproved, but she leaned closer to get a better look at the photo.

Cody, towering over the authoress, looked very elegant in a black tuxedo that made his collar- length hair seem almost as dark. Yet even with his sophisticated clothing there was still something in his expression that warned that he was not one of civilization’s tame animals.

Briskly Abbie folded the newspaper and handed it back to Linda. “Studs are a dime a dozen these days, Becky. You’re worldly wise enough to know that.”

“If they were a dime a dozen, you can bet I wouldn’t be teaching in this prison!”

* * * * *

The man, one of the last of a wild breed, looked over the assembly gathered before him. Dignitaries, the state’s most powerful businessmen, the press.

All had come to do him homage. A cynical smile curved his lips.

Abbie bent the page’s corner and slapped the book down on the nightstand. So Emily DuMonde could write. Write well. So what? She flicked off the lamp. She had better things to do with her time than stay up until three in the morning reading. Things like sleeping.

She punched her pillow and turned on her left side—and went rigid as she heard the front door knob grate, as if someone were twisting it. It was a shock because she had come to learn that Indians simply didn’t steal on the reservation. At least, not sober Indians. But the muffled shout of “Open the door!” told her that this was a drunk Indian. Cody.

The peau de soie nightgown swished about her ankles as she made her way to the living room. She switched on the front porch light and looked out the strip of window that ran from floor to ceiling, the one concession to architectural lightness in the subsidized apartment developments. Cody stood there, his plaid shirt unbuttoned to his concho-belt. He held a fifth of scotch. Above his hollowed cheeks his dark eyes were piercing. “Open up, Abbie, or I’ll open the door for you.”

“You’ll wake the neighbors,” she said as loudly as she dared. “Go away.”

“If you don’t open it, I’ll wake every teacher in the apartments. Do you want that?”

She bit her lower lip. “All right,” she said, opening the door. “But you can only stay a minute.”