Yellowstone Memories (37 page)

“Me.” Thomas turned to her with a look so raw that Alicia drew back involuntarily.

She opened her mouth and closed it, feeling irritability creep up her neck. “Doubting Thomas,” she should call him for his naive hesitancy and caution. It even sounded biblical, too.

“What makes you think I’m not ready?” Alicia turned toward him with a squeak of the seat.

“Alicia.” Thomas’s eyelids fluttered as he closed them. “I know you. You’re a beautiful woman. One of my best friends. And you’re … broken inside. I can feel it.”

Unexpected tears stung Alicia’s eyes, and her look hardened. “So that means I’m not good enough for you?”

“What?” Thomas jerked his head around to look at her. “No. Of course not. But it’s not right. You’re not ready. You’re not … healed. To me it’s on the same level as taking advantage of you, if you see what I’m trying to say.”

“No. I don’t see.” Alicia tucked her arms tighter, crossing a leg rigidly away from him.

Thomas raised his hands helplessly as if groping for words. “It’s my fault. Ever since I met you, I’ve liked you. I thought it was platonic, but maybe I’ve liked you more than I should.” He curved his fingers into a fist and raised it up to his mouth as he thought. “I’ve just wanted to see you well. Healthy. Whole. Happy. You’re special to me, Alicia. More special than you know.”

Alicia sat there, not having a clue what to say. Dried Sea-Monkeys and French-speaking ferrets jolted into her mind, making her want to laugh inappropriately.

“So that’s it?” she asked, attempting to steady her voice. “I’m your charity case now?”

Even as she said it, Alicia felt herself wince. Thomas might have a million flaws, but he’d never once treated her or his crewmates as anything but equals. Equals with humble preference, even.

“No.” Thomas’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper, and he covered his face with both hands. “Never. I can’t believe you’d think that.”

Alicia let out an angry sigh, turning away from him and gazing out over the windswept grasses. Behind her, the road curved, desolate, into endless forest.

“Okay. That’s not what I meant,” she muttered. “But I don’t get your whole ‘you’re not ready’ speech. Why don’t you ask me if I’m ready?” She turned her head in his direction. “Maybe my answer would surprise you.”

“But there’s one more thing.” Thomas met her gaze soberly, even tenderly. “I can’t forsake my God.”

It took a second for the words to register, and Alicia’s eyes bugged out. “Huh? What in the world is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that as much as I care for you, I can’t pair up with someone who doesn’t love Jesus as much as I do.” He let out a long, shuddering breath. “The Bible says that. It’s called being ‘unequally yoked.’ Have you read it?” Thomas turned to her, the rims of his eyes red.

Alicia shook her head no, speechless.

“It’s like … two cows plowing.” Thomas gestured awkwardly with his hands. “They have this wooden thing across them. A yoke. If they’re not matched, one goes one way, and the other goes the other way. They never get anything accomplished because they’re … well, unequally yoked.”

He stuffed his hands miserably in his vest pockets. “For a split second I forgot that, Alicia. Please forgive me.” He drew in a shaky breath. “But after what God’s done for me, I owe Him my life. I have to wait for Him to pair me with someone who loves Him, too.”

“And if He doesn’t?” Alicia spat, angry color burning her face. Wondering if Thomas, and not her, was the crazy one, blabbering away about plowing at a time like this. Cows? Yokes? Was he out of his mind?

“If He doesn’t choose someone for me who loves Him, I’ll stay single and serve Him that way.” Thomas kept his voice even, low and husky. “I haven’t always been called Thomas Walks-with-Eagles, you know. I used to be called Thomas Two-Fires.”

Alicia heard angry blood racing past her ears, thrumming with hurt and disappointment.

“I dropped out of school when I was twelve and spent my time on the reservation drinking, gambling, and shooting mailboxes. I was an arsonist, Alicia. I set fire to empty buildings and fields, watching behind rocks and laughing as the fire crews scrambled to put out the blaze.” He swallowed deliberately, looking out the window. “Only one time, one of the buildings wasn’t empty.”

Even in her haze of anger, Alicia gasped.

“I killed an old man. A homeless guy sleeping inside an old barn I torched with gasoline.” Thomas squeezed his eyes shut. “I saw them pull him out and put him on a stretcher. They tried to save him, but he was too far gone.”

Thomas blinked faster, and he stayed silent a minute. “I saw him writhe in pain, his body covered with burns.” Emotion choked his voice. “He struggled to breathe, and then he just … stopped. Like my grandfather in the hospital. Only this time it was my fault.”

Thomas traced the steering wheel with his fingers. “The police swore out a warrant for my arrest, but federal law only goes so far on the reservation. The tribal council declared me innocent, even though everybody knew I’d done it. They said the old man was a public nuisance anyway—a drunkard and a fighter.” He hung his head. “But I saw him try to breathe. I saw his clothes burned black, all the way to his flesh. And it was my fault. I killed a man.”

Alicia sat unmoving, unable to tear her eyes from Thomas’s face. Carlita was right: He wasn’t much to look at, per se. He wasn’t handsome. His nose was too big, and dark brows protruded over deep-set eyes. But as he sat there against a shaft of sunlight, holding back tears, his chiseled face and high cheekbones looked, for a moment, more beautiful than she’d ever seen on a man.

Sunlight gleamed on his shiny, sand-pink lower lip as he opened his mouth to speak again. “I ran away. I stayed for months on top of a cliff, in a little lean-to shelter I made out of sticks, barely eating. I wanted to die, to return to the earth like some of the old men of my tribe claimed we did—and complete the spirit’s circle of life. And I prayed.” He stared out over the whispering fields. “Day after day, I prayed for the spirits to forgive me. I named all the gods I knew—the gods of water and sun and harvest. When nothing happened, I prayed to the God who hung on the cross—the white man’s God I’d seen in a painting once in a book on my grandmother’s bookshelf. And still nothing happened.”

Thomas chewed on his lip a minute, and the bright shine disappeared. “And then one windy day a man came to me, climbing up the mountain. Over boulders and rocks, knocking off rattlesnakes with a hiking stick. I figured he’d come from town to arrest me, so I went out to meet him, with my clothes all tattered and my hair matted. To turn myself in. But you know what he said?” Thomas turned to her with eyes wide and earnest. “What?”

“That I needed Jesus.” Thomas reached into his vest pocket. “He gave me this: a little Gideon New Testament. He said he was a traveling preacher, and God had sent him to tell me He loved me.”

Thomas flipped the pages of the little Bible with his thumb. “And that was it. He shook my hand and climbed back down the mountain, and I never saw him again. I thought maybe he was crazy, but he didn’t look crazy—so I read. Day after day, by firelight, by sunlight. I read it through fifteen times in two weeks.” He rocked back in the seat, his face calm. “And that’s how I came to know about Jesus. I gave my life to Him. I washed my hair and cut it and cleaned myself in the stream, and I went back down the mountain to my relatives’ house.”

“And?” Alicia looked up hesitantly.

Thomas smiled. “They didn’t recognize me at first, after all the weight I’d lost. They said my eyes were clear and bright, and the haunted look had fled from my face.” He chuckled. “They thought I’d been smoking peyote.”

Thomas shifted in his seat. “I asked them to take me to the library to find the rest of the Bible because I knew there had to be more. And there was. The entire Old Testament. I devoured it, like a man who hadn’t tasted food in months. And that’s when they changed my name. They said I walked as a man with my head in the clouds.”

“A compliment?” Alicia asked hesitantly.

“Sort of, but not really.” Thomas shrugged. “Nobody really knew what to make of it.”

A puff of wind scratched lonely grasses against Methuselah’s metal side, and something dripped under the hood.

“So you gave your life to firefighting to pay for the old man’s death.” Alicia drew one knee up on the truck seat and hugged it.

“Not to pay for it, because that would be impossible.” Thomas took off his baseball cap and ran his hand through his hair. “No one can pay for a life. But I can take what was once a setback and turn it into a blessing. Because of Jesus, I can fight fires instead of setting them, and I can save lives instead of taking them. And that’s what I plan to do for the rest of my life.”

Alicia turned to look at him. “That’s noble, Thomas. But I still don’t understand why we can’t … be together. What’s wrong with that?” She twisted her fingers together, dropping her gaze. “We don’t have to get married or anything. We can just … be together. Sort of.”

“Be together?” Thomas sighed, stretching out an arm across the seat. “It doesn’t work like that. A love relationship is like … fire. It flares up when you least expect it, and before you know it, it’s out of control.” He swallowed, keeping his eyes down. Color flushed his cheeks and nose. “And then you’re left with … with this.” He swept his arm toward a stand of blackened pines, their naked branches hanging helplessly askew.

Alicia stared at the scorched clearing, her jaw tensing with anger.

“I can’t do that to you.” Thomas shook his head. “Or to God. I’m sorry.”

“Why, Thomas?” Alicia’s eyes blazed. “Why can’t you just love me?” She clenched her fingers tighter under her folded arms. “You could be a blessing to me, just like you said about that man you killed.”

He waited a long time to answer, scuffing his short fingernail against a scratch in the steering wheel. “You don’t understand. I can’t be with you because I
do
love you.” Thomas’s eyes pleaded. “You need to be whole first—through Jesus. Otherwise you’ll always lean on me to heal you. And as much as I’d try, I could never do it.”

He lifted his eyes to hers, so dark she couldn’t see where his brown irises and pupils separated. “I can’t save you, Alicia. I’m only a man.” He lifted a hand hesitantly and touched the edge of her shirtsleeve with one finger. “You need someone far greater than me to fix what’s hurting.”

Alicia sat there in silence, feeling an icy slash through her heart, as if he’d opened his Thermos and thrown his stale morning coffee at her.

“What do you suggest?” Her eyes narrowed into cold slits.

“Read this.” He pushed a weatherworn New Testament across the seat toward her. “And call my sister.”

“Your sister?” Alicia yelped, jerking her head up in bewilderment.

“She helps run a Christian shelter for battered women in Montana. They deal with anorexia, bulimia, even cutting. They could help you.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and thumbed through it, taking out a white business card. “Here. Her number’s on here.”

Alicia sat there, stunned. Her eyes wide with dawning realization. She didn’t reach out to take the card, so he set it hesitantly into her open palm.

“I’d do anything to get you there, Alicia. I’ll pay for you to go. I’ll find someone to take care of your apartment while you’re gone.” Thomas gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles showed.

Alicia stuffed the stupid card into her vest pocket, crinkling the corner. “Why would you need somebody to take care of my apartment?” Alicia raised her voice, fresh anger coursing through her.

Thomas blinked. “Why, your fish of course. Don’t you have two betta fish?”

Her fish. Thomas had remembered her fish.

Alicia choked back a sob, groping for the door handle with one hand and pushing herself across the seat with the other.

“Alicia?” Thomas leaned after her. “Where are you going?”

Alicia didn’t answer. She kicked at the stuck door with her boot and threw herself out of the truck with so much force that she stumbled on the cool ridge of grasses.

“Alicia!” Thomas scooted hastily toward the passenger’s side door as if he might jump out. “Don’t do this. Please.”

She whirled around, furious, and slammed the door shut with all her might—right in his horrified face. And then she stalked off across the field, not once looking back.

A
licia stomped through the field toward a thicket of still-green pines, the truck fading behind her. Long, prickly grasses slashed at her ash-stained olive denims, catching at her bootlaces with burs and thorns like ugly memories, refusing to release her.

She stormed through a cluster of pines, their branches strong and thick against the sky, and broke into a run. Dodging limbs and brambles, the sound of her heaving breaths loud in her ears. Alicia heard the frantic flutter of wings as she tore through the brush—gray owls and ruffled grouse frightened from their nests among the leaves—but she didn’t stop. She needed to be far from Thomas—far from Wyoming—far from everyone and everywhere.

When her side cramped painfully, Alicia finally paused, leaning against a pine trunk and bending over double to catch her breath.

The forest stood still around her, peaceful. She sank to her knees in the rich, pine-scented soil, breathing in the sweet scent of fresh, unburned earth and stones. She inhaled, eyes closed, and felt the stress and anger slip off her shoulders like a too-heavy pack.

Forget work today
. Alicia sniffled, rubbing her eyes with her fingers. She’d use the compass Thomas gave her to get back to base camp and check in sick for the next day or two. Maybe she’d even go home.

The forest seemed quiet suddenly—too quiet—like the silence before an owl pounces on a mouse.

Wings flapped from somewhere in the distance, and Alicia turned her head sharply. Silence settled again, leaving nothing but the rustle of leaves.

An eerie bird call, throaty and throbbing. Like a warning.

Something dropped from a tree just beyond her, rattling the leaves. Hitting the ground with a soft thump. In the clearing between two trees, Alicia saw a fern quiver, its lace-green leaves shuddering against a sapling.