Nightway

by Janet Dailey

  Bending to pick up his bundle of clothes, Hawk ducked under his horse’s neck and stepped noiselessly to his father’s side. He returned Rawlins’ gaze, his dark blue eyes impassively inspecting the man his father wanted him to live with. There was no welcome in the man’s look, no warm smile that Hawk usually received from him. Therefore, despite his several brief associations with the man in the past, Hawk would not make the first move to renew the acquaintance.

  “He’s an intelligent boy, quick to learn. He won’t give you any trouble, Tom, I promise,” his father said.

  “What happened to his face?” After narrowing in on Hawk’s right cheek, his gaze had darted in sharp question to his father.

  “God forgive me,” was the barely audible murmur before he added, “I hit him.”

  “Why?” The question was filled with shock.

  “I don’t know.” His father tiredly shook his head, as if he didn’t want to remember. “There was White Sage, all stiff and cold. You know how Navahos are about the dead, Tom. He started spouting all that superstitious nonsense about ghosts. He was trying to pull me away from her. All I wanted to do was shake him off my arm. I never meant to hit him.” There was a great sadness in the look he gave Rawlins. “In his way, he was just trying to protect me. It was a brave thing … and I hit him.” He paused. “Will you take him?”

  In a slow, affirmative nod, Rawlins agreed. “Some will guess who he is. Others will ask. What do you want us to say?”

  A muscle was jumping in his father’s jaw. “Wouldn’t it be natural for a Christian couple to offer a home to an orphaned half-breed?”

  Rawlins considered the question for a moment, then nodded slowly again. “Yes. Yes, I guess it would.”

  His father’s arm reached hesitantly to place his hand between Hawk’s shoulder blades and push him forward, toward Rawlins. “His name is Jim Blue Hawk. He answers to Hawk.”

  “Hello, Hawk.” A faint smile touched the quiet face as he extended a hand toward him. “You remember me, don’t you?”

  Hawk nodded, the watchful expression never leaving his face. He placed his hand in the man’s and felt the man’s strength, but it didn’t equal that of his father, who was taller and broader. His hand was released after a brief shake.

  “You must be hungry and cold after that long ride,” Rawlins said. “I’ll take you to the house. Vera, my wife, will fix you something to eat. How does that sound?”

  Hawk nodded silently and the hand that had just shook his reached out to take hold of his shoulder and guide him forward as Rawlins turned to leave.

  “Tom?” His father’s hesitant voice halted the man. “Thanks.” The word was offered when Rawlins glanced over his shoulder in answer. “I’ll … uh … see to it that you get some money every month … for the boy’s clothes, expenses, and such.”

  “Fine.”

  “What did you tell Katheryn yesterday when she asked where I’d gone?”

  “That you were out checking the stock—like you instructed me to do.”

  “How … how did we come through the storm? Did we lose many?” But his father didn’t sound very interested, asking the questions only because they were expected.

  “A half dozen, no more than that. They drifted quite a bit, but we came out lucky,” Rawlins answered.

  Something painful and bitter twisted his father’s face. “Katheryn will probably be relieved to discover I’ve decided not to personally leave to check the ‘cattle’ anymore.”

  “Yes, she probably will.”

  Hawk watched his father’s unhappy eyes run over the man’s face. “You never did really approve, did you, Tom?”

  “It isn’t for me to judge.” Rawlins shook his head.

  “I’ve passed judgment on myself. I’m guilty of not having any guts—not then—”—his gaze skipped to Hawk briefly—“—and not now.”

  His father grimaced and turned away, signaling an end to the conversation. Hawk’s gaze lingered on him before the pressure of the hand on his shoulder prodded him forward. In that second, he sensed that his life was undergoing a more drastic change than he had expected. It wasn’t just that he was going to live with white strangers. His mother and little sister were gone. Now he had the feeling that his father was changing, too. He might see him, but the relationship he had known before was gone. He was truly alone.

  When he walked out of the building into the bright sunlight, his eyes lifted to the sharp blue sky. Empty. Endless. Its nothingness offered no escape.

  With the rolled blanket under his arm, he followed the man Rawlins. The man’s boots crunched noisily in the snow; his own footsteps barely made a sound. As they passed other white cowboys, Hawk felt their stares and stoically ignored them. Tucked back in some trees, he saw a big, rambling house, but it was toward a group of smaller buildings that Rawlins walked. Soon, Hawk was aware of the one that was their destination. When Rawlins started up the wooden steps to the door, Hawk held back uneasily.

  “What’s the matter, Hawk? Come on in. It’s all right.” The man motioned him forward with a pretense of a smile.

  “The door doesn’t face the east,” he pointed out.

  The look in the man’s eyes became cool, the smile vanishing. “White men don’t believe it’s necessary to have the doors of their homes face the east.”

  Hawk knew this, but it made him uneasy to think of living in such a place. Rawlins waited, the patience of time in his eyes. He didn’t attempt to urge Hawk to enter, nor did he scoff at his hesitation. Finally, Hawk moved to climb the steps and follow the man into the house. Inside, the man stomped his feet on a rug, knocking off clumps of snow.

  Hawk went no farther than the man did, looking around the small back porch with its coats hanging from wall hooks and a sink for washing. A door opened into a room with white cabinets. Smells of cooking came from within. Rawlins took the rolled bundle from Hawk and set it on the floor.

  Seeing his reflection in a looking glass above the sink, Hawk stared. The swelling on his cheek was a purplish-red, the skin puffed near his eyes. He lifted a hand to it. Despite the cool, outside temperature that had chilled the rest of his skin, the distended flesh felt hot to the touch—and very sore.

  “Vera?” Rawlins lifted his voice to call the name.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” A high-pitched voice cried in excitement as a little girl came running out of the room where the smells were coming from and threw herself into Rawlins’ arms. “Mommy is letting me bake cookies!” she announced proudly. “Do you want one? I made them all by myself.”

  “Almost all by herself,” a woman’s voice corrected.

  Hawk was aware of a second person in the doorway, but he was dazzled by the yellow curls on the little girl’s head. “How did you trap the sunlight and make it shine in her hair?” he questioned Rawlins with awe. He had heard of whites with yellow hair, but never had seen one with his own eyes.

  His question brought silence. Then Rawlins set the little girl on the floor and Hawk’s gaze was drawn to her eyes—to be amazed again because they were green. She stared back at him.

  “We didn’t have to catch the sunlight,” Rawlins explained. “Her hair is blonde. A lot of white people have hair that color. There isn’t any magic involved, except when a bottle of bleach is used.”

  “Who are you?” the little girl asked.

  But Hawk remained silent, digesting the information Rawlins had given him. “Who is the boy?” It was the woman who asked the question.

  “Carol, I’d like you to meet Hawk.” Rawlins pushed the little girl forward. “Hawk, this is my daughter, Carol.”

  “Hawk?” The little girl repeated his name with a curious wrinkling of her nose. “Like the bird? That’s a funny name.”

  “He probably thinks your name is funny,” Rawlins suggested.

  “What happened to your face?” The little girl demanded, staring at the swollen and bruised side of his cheek and jaw.

  Before Hawk could answer, Rawlins was speaking. “He
fell and hurt himself. Why don’t you take Hawk into the kitchen to sample one of your cookies? Maybe we can persuade your mother to fix him a sandwich. It’s been a long time since he’s eaten.”

  “Come on, Hawk.” The little girl reached out and grabbed hold of his arm. At first he resisted the tug of her hand, then let himself be led into the next room by the child whose golden head came up to his chest.

  “Tom, who does that boy belong to? Why did you bring him here?” As the woman whispered the questions in a demanding tone, Hawk finally glanced around to see who owned the voice. The woman’s hair was light-colored, too, but not as yellow as the little girl’s. She was wearing a dress the color of the prickly pear flower with half of another dress covering the front of it.

  His inspection was halted when the little girl pushed him onto a chair pulled away from the table. She skipped away from him but was back within seconds, carrying a plate with two cookies on it. The noise she made almost made him miss hearing the answer that Rawlins gave.

  “J. B. brought him back. He—”

  His murmured answer was interrupted by a shocked: “Do you mean that boy is the one his Navaho mistress had?” The words were whispered, but even though the man and woman had remained on the porch, Hawk could hear what they said.

  “Yes. She died—in the storm. J. B. asked if we would take care of him. I agreed,” the man stated in the same low tones.

  “Do you mean he wants us to raise that boy?” Her face was pinched in angry lines. Hawk noticed how thin her lips were. They almost disappeared when she pressed them tightly together—as she was doing now. In Hawk’s opinion, all of the woman was too thin. “And you agreed?! How could you? Katheryn is my friend. Do you think—does he think—she isn’t going to guess?”

  “Katheryn will look the other way and pretend not to know anything—the same way she always has.” Rawlins shook his head in a confused gesture. “I’ve never quite figured out how J. B. can inspire such loyalty from women. It’s a pity he can’t relate to men in the same way.”

  “Well, I don’t care what you say. J. B. Faulkner has a lot of gall to install his bastard child in this house right under Katheryn’s nose.”

  “Don’t you see how much trust J. B. is putting in us, Vera?” Rawlins remained calm despite all the hissing words that had come from his wife. “Once you stop to think about it, it’s quite a compliment.”

  “I just hope he realizes the awkward position he’s put us in.” The woman sounded less angry now.

  The little girl moved to stand beside Hawk, blocking his view of the whispering couple on the porch. Putting a hand on her hip, she demanded, “Aren’t you going to eat any of my cookies?” Hawk glanced at the plate on the table in front of him but didn’t immediately reach for one of the cookies. “Daddy?” The little girl turned abruptly, her ringlets of gold dancing and bobbing. “He won’t eat any of my cookies,” she complained in an offended pout.

  It was a second or two before the man, Rawlins, answered. “That’s probably because he wants to save them for dessert. There’s some cold roast beef in the refrigerator, isn’t there, Vera?” he asked the woman. “Why don’t you fix him a sandwich?”

  As the woman entered the room, the little girl asked, “Are you going to eat any of my cookies, Daddy?”

  “Sure, I’ll have some of your cookies.” Taking off his hat, he put it on the wall hook behind him and ran a hand through the sand-colored hair the hat had pressed down. As he unbuttoned and shrugged out of his sheepskin-lined coat, he glanced at Hawk. “Why don’t you take your coat off, Hawk? You’ll be too warm in the house if you keep it on.”

  Unlike the white man who takes action, even if it’s wrong, it was the way of The People when caught in a situation they had never experienced to do nothing until they discovered how they were supposed to act. Rawlins’ suggestion was the first indication to Hawk as to what the correct procedure was. He stood up and began unfastening his coat.

  “Yes, and wash your hands,” the woman instructed. “In this house, we wash our hands before we eat.”

  Rawlins motioned him onto the porch, taking Hawk’s jacket and hanging it on the hook next to his. When Rawlins walked to the sink, Hawk followed him. The man turned on the faucets, letting the water run while he wet his hands and lathered them with the bar of soap. Like the white teachers, he used water as if there were a limitless supply. Hawk was silently critical of the water that was being wasted, but he said nothing, and he washed his hands, too. All white men were foolish and wasteful, he decided. It would have taken him two trips to the well to carry as much water as the man, Rawlins, was letting run away. He dried his hands on the cloth that was given to him. Returning to the kitchen in the wake of Rawlins, Hawk sat down again in the chair he had previously occupied.

  “Is the coffee hot yet, honey?” Rawlins questioned the woman.

  “It’s on the stove,” she said, nodding with her head.

  Hawk watched Rawlins take a white porcelain cup from a cupboard shelf and walk to the stove to pour a cup. Rawlins glanced up as Hawk was breathing in the aroma of the strong coffee, and he smiled.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Hawk?” he asked. He moved his chin downward in a single, affirmative nod, and Rawlins reached inside the cupboard for another cup like his.

  “You aren’t going to give him coffee,” the woman protested. “It will stunt his growth.”

  The man, Rawlins, just smiled and ignored her, filling the second cup with coffee and then carrying both to the table. “It will grow hair on your chest, won’t it, Hawk?” he winked. But Hawk couldn’t imagine why that should be a thing he would want, so he made no comment.

  “You really aren’t going to let him drink that!” The woman frowned in ill temper. “He’s just a boy.” She walked to the table, bringing a plate that had meat between two slices of white bread.

  “Navaho children are accustomed to drinking coffee and tea, Vera,” Rawlins explained. “Besides, after being outside in the cold, it will help warm him up.”

  His sore and swollen jaw made chewing painful and forced Hawk to eat slowly. The little girl climbed on her father’s lap while he ate some of the cookies and told her how good they were. When Hawk finished the sandwich, he ate the two cookies the girl had brought him and sipped at the scalding-hot coffee.

  “Why is he so quiet, Daddy?” The little girl twisted around on Rawlins’ lap to look up into his face.

  “Why do you talk so much?” was his teasing response.

  She giggled. “Maybe the cat’s got his tongue.”

  “I doubt it. Unlike you, he probably doesn’t talk unless he has something important to say.” Rawlins tapped a finger on the button nose of the girl.

  “Where’s your mommy and daddy?” An unblinking pair of green eyes was fixed on Hawk.

  “He’s an orphan, Carol.” Hawk’s gaze darted swiftly to the man holding the girl and answering the question for him. “He doesn’t have a mommy and daddy anymore. They went away.” The explanation confirmed what Hawk had suspected. His father was still his father, but not in the same way anymore.

  “Doesn’t he have anybody?” The little girl’s eyes rounded into limpid green pools.

  “I am alone,” Hawk answered truthfully. It wasn’t said in an attempt to solicit sympathy. It was a statement of fact—nothing more.

  “Where do you live?” His answer prompted another question from her.

  “He’s going to be living with us,” her father explained.

  “Yes, but first, Tom Rawlins,” the woman inserted, “you are going to see that the boy is cleaned up. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is infested with lice. Where are the clothes he brought? I’ll need to wash them, too—and the ones he’s wearing.”

  “You’re right, Vera,” the man sighed, as if he were reluctant to agree. “His things are wrapped in that blanket on the porch. He’ll need something to wear in the meantime.”

  “Katheryn left a box of old clothes that Chad has outgrown. She
brought them over last week so I could take them to the Women’s Club at church. We’re sending them to a missionary in South America to distribute to the needy. There should be something in the box of clothes to fit the boy.”

  Setting the little girl down from his lap, the man rose. “Come on, Hawk. We’ll get your head shampooed first; then you can take a bath.”

  There was a grim resignation in the man’s face when he motioned Hawk toward the porch. Hawk found it strange because he understood all about the crawling lice. Once they were so bad in Crooked Leg’s hogan that he and his family had to abandon it and build another.

  “She soaped my hair again and again and took the blankets outside every day for the sun to kill them.” Hawk explained the ritual that had been part of his life—and that of many other hogans, as well. “It was the only way to keep them away. Sometimes they came, anyway.”

  Rawlins looked disgusted as he turned on the water. “You won’t find any lice in this house.”

  Hawk thought they were very fortunate, indeed, but he wasn’t able to say so as his head was pushed under the running water. After his hair was shampooed, he was taken to a small room beyond the kitchen where there was a long white tub standing on four feet that looked like a cougar’s claws. It was what his father had once described as a bathtub. Rawlins let water run into it. With instructions to put on the clean clothes folded in a stack on a table hooked to the wall after Hawk had finished his bath, Rawlins left him alone.

  Because of the scarcity of water, baths had always been a luxury for Hawk. Perhaps here there was a limitless supply of the precious liquid. Hawk washed very slowly, enjoying this rare opportunity to the fullest. After his bath, he put on the clothes. They were loose on him, but they were clean and smelled good.

  When he came out, he helped Rawlins carry boxes from a small storage room and install a narrow bed and a chest of drawers in the vacated space. He was told this was the room where he would sleep.

  There was much to observe, much that was new to him, and strange. He was instructed in how to clean his teeth and shown how to use oil to tame the springy thickness of his hair, combing it to one side the way it wanted to go. That night, he was given a different set of clothes to sleep in, called pajamas, confirming what the teachers at school had taught, yet contrary to the habits of his father.