Wind Song (7 page)

She slapped the magazine closed. So much for her charge about Cody Strawhand trying to pass himself off as a craftsman. He really was a master craftsman of some repute.

Reading about him was no way to start off the day, and things got no better. It started sprinkling, which made the walk to the cafeteria at lunch a dampening experience. “They could have laid out the grounds better,” Becky grumbled.

The girl seemed to take out her disgruntlement on the children. When Joey Kills the Soldier hesitated with his tray before the side dishes, unable to pronounce the one he wanted, she snapped, “Macaroni—say it, macaroni!”

The small boy’s eyes, as large and dark as a fawn’s, welled up. His lower lip trembled, but he didn’t cry. Becky grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Say it, Joey. Ma-ca-ron-i.”

“Becky!”

At Abbie’s reproving snap the entire cafeteria quieted. The Indian women behind the counter stopped their work; the children’s spoons paused; the teachers already eating craned their heads to see what the disturbance was.

The young teacher glanced defiantly at Abbie. “That’s the only way these Indian children will ever learn! You can’t keep babying them, Mrs. Dennis.”

“But you don’t need to humiliate them, either. Now, release him.”

A long moment passed, then the younger woman pushed the boy from her. “You’ll find out I’m right,” she told Abbie and walked away with her tray.

The cafeteria noise resumed. Abbie bent down and put her arm around the little boy. “It’s all right, Joey.” Did he understand her? And would it ever be all right? How did one explain to a child that his mother was in a West Virginia prison for women and that she wasn’t sure who his father was? Sometimes Abbie thought her concern for the children and their backgrounds made her job that much worse.

“Give Joey a bowl of macaroni,” she told the woman behind the counter.

When classes resumed, Abbie discovered that Robert Tsinnijinnie hadn’t returned from the cafeteria with the other children. She was obviously going to reach a new low in an already hellish day. Miss Halliburton had probably heard by now about the episode in the cafeteria with Becky and was no doubt already foaming at the mouth. It wouldn’t help Abbie’s record if the principal found out that her student had run off again.

Abbie knew where the boy was. She would just have to bite the bullet and go after him. A steady but light drizzle accompanied her as she made her way toward the bridge. She darted an uneasy glance over the railing. Puddles dotted the wash far below. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she clutched the slick railing and hurried across. She kept to the wash’s edge, where the ground was smoother, but didn’t dare let herself look down again.

The once natty tux-shirt with its black grosgrain ribbon at the neck clung damply to her chilled skin, and the crisp black A-line skirt hung in limp folds about her thighs. She wondered if her effort was worth it. Robert would only continue to run away. Psychologists said that when a child got to be his age it was too late to change his psychological makeup. Still, if she wanted to keep her record unblemished, she had to find the boy. And she didn’t even like him.

At the same time that she sighted the mission’s adobe walls through the mist of rain, she heard Cody’s shout from the doorway. Startled, she halted in her tracks as he came loping down the incline toward her. When he drew close enough, she could see the anger that darkened his face. “You stupid idiot!” he shouted. His hand grabbed her wrist.

He spun and yanked her along behind him. Caught off balance, she slipped, falling face first in the mud. He didn’t halt but dragged her behind him. Twice she struggled to her feet only to trip again. When they reached the door, he released her wrist. Wearily she sank to her knees, her blouse hanging half open, her muscles trembling.

“Get up.”

“Leave me alone,” she gasped. Her gaze rested dully on the mud-splattered boots of the man before her.

He hunkered down next to her. His hand grasped her chin and jerked it toward the wash. “Look.”

She tried to focus her gaze on whatever it was he wanted her to see. Then she saw it. And heard it. The great white wall of water that roared down the wash, obliterating the old banks, creating new ones. “Flash flood,” he grated by her ear.

She watched, fascinated. Behind it rode uprooted trees, an overturned automobile that bob- bled like a top, the floating carcass of a cow. She shivered uncontrollably and looked up into Cody’s granite face. She was so close that she could make out the green flecks that speckled the brown irises of his narrowed eyes. “I could have been killed,” she breathed.

The violence of the moment surrounded them. The rain thundered down on the mud-sluiced ground. Lightning crackled, slicing through the black sky. Nature’s wrath seemed to communicate itself to Cody. His fingers dug painfully into Abbie’s arms, and he caught her up against him. His mouth ground down on hers in a brutal kiss. She didn’t care. The same violence that coursed through him, claimed her. She answered his kiss, wrapping her arms about his shoulders. She opened her mouth to his, savoring its warmth and trembling at the savagery of his tongue.

With a need that was as old as mankind but that was new to her, she clung to him. She half moaned with frustration that her sitting position prevented her from knowing the feeling of his entire length pressed against hers. Suddenly Cody withdrew, setting her from him. As if she were dazed, her eyes opened slowly. At her bewildered look, he nodded slightly to his left. Her gaze followed the direction of his nod. Robert stood in the far doorway. His shuttered eyes watched them.

Her arms slid down from Cody’s shoulders. She attempted to stand, bracing herself against the doorjamb. While Cody crossed the room, saying something in the Navajo tongue that seemed to her only a series of intonations, she tried to close her gaping blouse with numb fingers that didn’t seem to want to obey her brain’s signals.

Cody came back to stand before her. She looked up at him, trying to read what was in his eyes. They were as impassive as Robert’s had been. At last he removed her clammy fingers from the buttons, and his electrifying touch jolted her.  He began fastening them himself. “You’re chilled,” he said flatly. “I’ll fix coffee while you dry off; then I’ll take you and Robert back to the school.”

The bathroom was about the size of a monk’s cubicle, with modern plumbing added. Man’s shower, no tub. Terra cotta tiles and adobe walls. Above the azulejo counter was an octagon mirror set in a hand-carved wooden frame. Abbie saw the pale face that looked back at her, the tawny blond hair that straggled about her shoulders, the glazed blue eyes. She blinked several times, trying to orient herself. Shock, she knew, often made people react strangely.

The Red Cross classes given by the Junior Service League had outlined a victim’s reactions after a catastrophe: first, the disorientation; then, after the shock wore off, the individual’s actions were dominated by suggestibility; extreme gratitude followed.

Yes, she decided, stepping out of her skirt and slip, that was what it was. The shock of the flash flood, her relief at being alive—she slid out of her blouse and picked up the towel that Cody had left—those accounted for what had happened, the way she had clung to him and kissed him. Sheer gratitude. Briskly she toweled her hair. She had nothing to be ashamed of. Anyone could have forgotten herself following a moment of crisis like that.

The door opened, and she half turned. Cody stood there. She should have shielded herself, but she couldn’t have moved had her life depended on it. In that fraction of a moment his gaze swept over her, missing nothing, not the slender shape of her legs nor the faint marks that stretched across her abdomen, not the full milk-white breasts penciled with pale blue veins nor the eyes that glittered like polished turquoise. His own eyes smoldered like a fire’s banked embers. Flashes of heat crackled underneath her skin.

“Your coffee is ready. And here are some dry clothes.” The door closed behind him.

Expecting to crumple any second, she leaned over the chrome and ceramic sink and drew in several deep breaths. What was wrong with her?

The blue-plaid flannel shirt, much too large for her, she knotted at her waist; the leather breech cloth hung past her thighs. She couldn’t believe it, a loincloth!

“It was the only thing I thought would fit,” Cody remarked laconically when she stepped into the kitchen and sheepishly waved her hand at the brief garment that covered her lower torso. He set the cup of aromatic coffee down on the wrought iron and glass table. On the walls were hung copper utensils and clay pots and ollas.

Carefully she slid into the chair.
Why all the caution, Abbie Dennis, when you’ve displayed every intimate part of your body for him
? Almost, she mentally corrected with a furious blush. “You really wear this—this loincloth?” she asked, sipping at the steaming coffee with affected nonchalance.

“I have.” With his own cup in hand he took a seat at the opposite end of the table. He wore no headband, and his damp collar-length hair swung with the movement. “When I’ve been called upon for a sing.”

“A sing?”

“Most Navajo sings are a combination of religious ceremony, social event and festivity.” He smiled. “But at all of them a patient must be present.”

He should smile more often, she thought. Her hand on the cup loosened its tense grip. There was no reason why the two of them couldn’t carry on a civilized conversation. “Where’s Robert?”

He swallowed some coffee. “At the forge. He’s learning to make a bracelet. He wants to give it to his father when he comes for Robert at the Christmas holidays.”

She looked down into her half-empty cup. “I hope his father does come. Some of the parents come every weekend. Sometimes the fathers sit on the steps for half a day, waiting for school to end. One of the mothers never fails to bring a candy bar and a can of soda from the trading post. Her daughter knows exactly when she comes over the hill by the color of her skirt. Other parents . . .” She shrugged, not trusting her voice.

“Other parents,” he finished for her in a harsh voice, “like Robert’s, will never come, because there’s no way they can raise the money.”

In that moment she felt allied with Cody as she identified with the hopelessness of the Indians’ situation, a sense of oneness that she had never felt with the teachers. Dorothy cared, but her mind was more on retirement than the problems that Abbie occasionally broached. And Becky— she thought only of her dates with her lumberjack and couldn’t have cared less about the children. Linda was involved with her toddler. Maybe, Abbie thought, I would do better to emulate the other teachers ... to do my best at teaching but never let myself get involved.
That’s why I’m in this mess now . . . foolishly sitting here in a loincloth, no less.

She looked up to find Cody silently observing her. What was he thinking? She wished she had a cigarette. Why hadn’t she bought a supply in Flagstaff to stash away for the stress times? Like now? “At dinner the other night—in Flagstaff— Marshall mentioned something about you rough- necking. Did you work on any of the Navajo oil rigs?”

He finished his coffee. “No. After college I headed down to South America and found work in the oil fields there.”

She wanted to ask why there, in South America. But the conversation was beginning to border on the personal, and the last thing she wanted was to get involved on a personal level with anyone, and especially not this man who alerted all her senses to some unnamed danger.

She played it safe and selected an innocuous subject. “Where did you attend college?”

He reached behind himself for a cigarette package on the counter and shook one out. “Arizona State University.” The match’s flare briefly lit his dark eyes, and smoke spiraled up between them.

This was getting nowhere at all. “You have a unique home,” she said nervously.

“My home, the Navajos’ land.”

“You sound like some motion picture Indian!” she bit out.

“Because I don’t waste time talking when there’s something else I’d rather be doing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He eyed her steadily. “Don’t you? Then why are you here?”

She pushed herself away from the table. “To get Robert, what do you think? And it’s your fault I’m such a mess. If I hadn’t been trying to keep to the bank of the wash like you told—”

He shoved the chair back and rose.

She flinched, her nerves seeming to be strung as tightly as the strings of a tennis racket. Her breath came in ragged wisps. “I think I better go back.”

He resumed his wooden Indian expression. “All right. I’ll go for Robert while you get your clothes.”

She couldn’t get into her clothes quickly enough. They were the only protection between her starved body and Cody’s electrifying touch.

Chapter 4

“
S
hirt.”

Abbie held up Cody’s shirt, which, after more than two weeks, she still hadn’t had the courage to return. “Put your lips like this”—she puckered her lips—“and blow softly. Shhhh. Shirt.”

The children’s voices, all but Robert’s, said the word in unison. He steadfastly stared out the window. She knew that he was very much aware of her frustration with his refusal to speak. His black eyes couldn’t hide the perverse pleasure he took in thwarting her.
You’ll say shirt yet, you little savage.
She half considered passing him on to the second grade whether he merited it or not. At least he hadn’t spit at her again.