Diamonds at Dawn

by Catalina Claussen

  “We’re going up to the springs, Mav. You wanna go?” I say.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he says easily.

  I make room for him on Yas. He puts his hands on my waist at first, and I begin to second-guess riding with him.

  But sometimes, mostly always, I overthink it. Maverick’s hands travel to their rightful place on the back of the saddle.

  “Ready?” Cassie says once we’re settled.

  “No,” I say, looking back at her, uncertain.

  “You got this,” she says. And I couldn’t love her more.

  “How ‘bout this one,” Maverick says, leaning back a bit, “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me.”

  “Speaking words of wisdom. Let it be…” Cassie and I join.

  Then Chad solos, “And in my hour of darkness there is still a light in front of me…”

  And we carry on like that, yodeling like fools along the dirt road.

  We drop down into Cold Creek basin and head upstream. The naked limbs of elm and cottonwoods reach for the clear blue. Funny how even by mid-winter, the curled leaves will cling to branches despite sap that has receded long ago. The creek runs clear and cold with sheets of glassy and opaque ice gripping the banks in the shade of granite boulders. The water is full of easy chatter echoing off the canyon walls and spilling downstream.

  The gorge narrows to craggy cliff-faces holding fragments of the prehistoric tribe who once lived here. A rock and concrete wall forming a man-made waterfall looms above us. Grandpa Norm’s dad built it in the 1920s to harness the energy of the creek for electricity. At the base of the falls, we dismount.

  The water is lazy in the winter months. The floods are long gone, and all that remains are the sleepy twists of the stream traveling through shaded ice patches.

  There’s an eerie stillness, and something about being in the bottom of the canyon is unsettling. A chill goes up my spine. Then I spot her. Standing strong, front paws curled at the canyon rim, a mountain lion watches, her presence muted by the gurgling water. I reach back to touch Maverick’s hand in warning and nod across the creek, drawing his attention to the cliff top. Cassie chats on about the temperature of the springs this time of year and turns to get my attention. I bring a finger to my lips, shushing her, and nod up. She touches Chad’s thigh in warning.

  The cat stares back, bold, commanding. She begins her descent, eyes trained on her prey. Cassie leaps into action, heading for the path up from the canyon bottom. The steep trail is obscured by overgrown willows. The gravel tread slides under Cassie’s hasty feet. She encourages Cinnamon, tugging on her reins. I pray that the horses don’t see the cat. There’s no reasoning with a spooked horse. I signal to Chad and Maverick to keep quiet. We have to keep calm for the horses.

  The cat stops long enough to take in our confusion. Her face is distinctive with a diamond of darkened fur set between piercing sage green eyes. She loosens rocks from the canyon wall, and they tumble into the stream below. Cinnamon panics and breaks into a run just as Cassie finishes mounting.

  “Hurry!” I say.

  With horses brought safely above the crest of the waterfall, Chad swings up on Beau. Maverick and I mount Yas. We take off, running after Cassie, hoping to corral reason into Cinnamon’s Arabian sensibilities before she throws Cass into the creek. Maverick struggles to keep his grip on the cantle.

  “Keep an eye on that cat,” I tell him as we charge forward. “All this running triggers her instincts and…”

  And I don’t finish that sentence. With a quick glance back, it’s clear that Maverick knows we might be in for it. He follows the cat’s line of sight. With his knife at the ready, he has his eyes trained on the deer trail that runs midway up the cliff face.

  “I can’t spot her,” he says over the wind in my ears. “Crap.”

  I don’t say anything. I search for Cass. Chad races alongside us.

  “Look up there,” Chad says. He points just above the tree line where we can see the cat lunging along the upper trail, ahead of us, and glancing down at the creek bed below.

  “There she is,” I say, as we round the next bend in the creek. Cinnamon is struggling in a full panic. I slow Yas and signal for Chad to do the same.

  “Stay here,” I say. “Keep calm and watch that cat.”

  Beau’s gentle nature helps Chad keep his seat, and he responds quickly to Chad’s soothing voice. Maverick, fully in Yas’ saddle now, is a natural as if he’s always belonged.

  I approach Cass on foot. Despite her expert handling, calm voice, and steady stroking hand at Cinnamon’s withers, she can’t get her to calm. The best shot she has is dismounting and pulling Cinnamon up out of the canyon. But she can’t get down until Cinnamon stops rearing. I push on upstream just ahead of Cinnamon, so she can see me. Then the tones of a banishing chant Ama used to sing for me flood my mind. I begin, softly at first, gaining Cassie’s attention little by little. I look up at her. Gratitude spreads across her face. The tones mingle with the creek flow. I keep a steadying gaze on Cinnamon and approach from the side, non-threatening. A few feet from her I reach out to touch her star and then grasp her reins. Cassie moves to dismount.

  But the cat’s position, ahead and drawing down towards us in the creek bed, overshadows our efforts. Then I hear a thunder of hooves, at first in the creek bottom and then rising up the cliff face in the mountain lion’s direction. The sudden movement alarms Cinnamon, and Cassie fights for balance. The cat turns on Chad and Maverick unafraid. They work as a team shouting and pushing closer into its territory. Cinnamon’s panic fills the canyon. Her distressed calls echo off the walls. After a few more tense moments, the cat backs down. She retreats under pressure from the horses and slips up over the canyon rim. With the cat out of sight, Cinnamon settles almost immediately. Maverick and Chad rein up their horses and turn back down to the creek.

  “That was awesome!” I say.

  Cassie, now strong in her seat with Cinnamon at ease, says, “Respect.”

  “You’re the ones who deserve respect. I can’t believe you were able to ride out Cinnamon’s panic like that,” Chad says with glowing admiration.

  “Where’d you learn to ride like that?” I ask Maverick.

  “Around,” he says, grinning. Even though he’s joking, it reminds me of how little we know about him.

  Cass takes note of the sun’s position in the sky. “We better go.”

  Maverick positions himself behind the cantle again to make room for me. I climb on Yas once again. He places a hand at my waist. The heat radiating from his palm warms my skin and stirs me.

  He leans up and says softly, “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

  I inhale and exhale, steadying myself. I’m not sure how to answer. Ceremonial songs are not the same as learning music in a choir. Ama breathed these chants into the fibers of my being. The tones rise from a deep place inside me, mimicking the steady rhythm of my mother’s movements that became part of me as a baby. It’s a place past memory that borders on instinct. There’s no sheet music and rigid structure. The chants push away ugliness and the dark to restore balance.

  “My Ama,” I say.

  It’s strange to say her name aloud, as if the sound of it could awaken her from sacred sleep, so I don’t say anything else.

  We reach the confluence of hot and cold creeks; steam rises, marking the junction. We let the horses go, to ramble along the banks, and we turn to head upstream. The hot water is home to vibrant green algae waving in the current just under the surface like the emerald tresses of Persephone of the Underworld. The river rock and cement pool that Grandpa Norm built as a teen comes into view on the bank above the creek.

  “Remind me to never ever take this place for granted again,” Chad says, sinking into the heat of the water. He closes his eyes for a moment and then fights to keep them off Cassie as she sheds her jeans. She fills the pitcher with bath water and rinses the mud and grit that Cinnamon stirred up in her panic.

&n
bsp; “You better not take me for granted, either,” Cass says, getting in the water, and then she looks uncertain. “Wait, what does that mean again?”

  And we laugh.

  “It means that you’ll always be here, no matter what.”

  She considers it. “That’s not such a bad thing.”

  Then I think she’s right.

  At night,

  The hogan was surrounded by a blanket of snow.

  Ama and I tented our covers

  And played by flashlight.

  From the yarn scraps in her weaving basket

  We made dolls: a mama, a papa, a grandpa,

  a baby

  And told stories.

  Some of them were scary

  About Spider Woman

  And the way she’d wrap bad children

  In her silky threads

  Until they decided to be good.

  Then I would tell a funny one I learned in school

  About a snowman built by the baby

  Who came alive with a special kind of hat

  and who taught the baby to dance.

  Ama laughed, lighting up the tent

  With her gleaming teeth

  And glittering eyes.

  So then I told another

  To feed the light

  And help us through

  The dark season.

  (Found among the willows at the confluence

  of Cold and Hot creeks)

  Chapter 11

  As the sun sinks lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the pool, we emerge, soaked and satisfied. I towel off, and pull my jeans over my damp bikini bottom. I wriggle into my thermal top and sweater. Ama’s woolen snowflakes and red roses hold the heat of the bath against my skin. I throw my hair into a quick braid and drink deeply from my water bottle.

  “So…” Chad says to Cass uncertainly, “I was thinking you could ride up to my house and then take Beau back to the stable with you later.” His eyes are bright and unmistakably filled with ideas other than where to house Beau.

  As usual, it goes over Cassie’s head. Or does it? And I can’t help feeling Chad’s trying to get back at me.

  “Sure thing,” Cassie says.

  Maverick, in his jeans and not much else, gives a nod to the setting sun and says, “I could use a ride home.” He pulls the sleeves of his thermal top over his muscular forearms, flexes his chest as he draws the shirt over head, and grins at me watching him settle the shirt in place. There’s his answer.

  We mount up and head out in opposite directions in the gathering dark.

  “See you tomorrow, Cass,” I call.

  “Yeah, see ya,” she says. Like that. Normal with a twist of I can’t believe this is happening.

  “Let’s go home, boy,” I say to Yas. We circle up on the dirt road again as the first stars begin to peek out from behind the curtain of midnight blue. I sit tall in the saddle at first. Out here, just the two of us in the dark, Maverick leans in close. I give in to the warmth of his chest. My heart races and then thunders as he places his hands on the tops of my thighs. I breathe deeply, inhaling the scent of summer grasses turned to damp straw, dank earth churned with each step, and oak bark steeped in snow. But no breath I take will settle my heart.

  We ride on silently, the stars gathering strength in the blue-black. I spot Central Fire, a constant constellation in the changing night sky.

  “Where do people go when they die?”

  “What?” he says.

  With Yas sauntering along the road, I turn slightly in my seat to glance back at him. “I know it sounds like a little kid question, but I want to know what you think.”

  After a moment he says, “To my house.”

  “What?” I say.

  “At least my sister did. You’ll see.”

  The road slopes down, and Maverick says, “Turn here.”

  I nudge Yas to the left into an almost hidden canyon. The narrow corridor rises in shadowed rock faces around us, cutting the night sky into a thin strip of starlight. The passage tapers with one last try to keep us out and finally gives way to an open grassy field with an old white-washed frame house. Snow crystals flash lavender white against the night. Some gather around empty tin cans, a cast-off ladder-back chair, and faded tall grasses shot through an abandoned tire rim.

  “You live here?” I ask.

  “Yep,” he says, sliding down off Yas and leading him gently to the front door. “After they took my dad to jail and the fire season ended, I decided to move in with my sister.”

  As if on cue, I see a figure, ghost white in a lacy dress, twirling carefree and soundlessly across the planks.

  I draw down off the saddle and approach. In the light spilling out of the living room and onto the porch she fades in and out. I call to her chanting Ama’s song, guttural tones that push past this world and she stops, leans forward on the newly repaired porch railing, and listens. After a moment, I stop too, letting the silence close in again. Then she’s off, animated as ever.

  “What did you do?” Maverick breathes, coming up to stand behind me.

  I turn to face him and say, “I don’t know. I guess I just talked to her.”

  “Cool,” he says and smiles, catching me up in the circle of his arms. I look up at him. His wild, indecisive hair shines in the moonlight. He pushes back a stray strand of my hair and draws nearer, smiling.

  Smack! The screen door slaps against the house, and a woman emerges, backlit against the interior light. My heart sinks. Maverick steps back, putting distance between us.

  “There you are, Maverick. Have you been hiding from me?” Her voice cracks with age or a hard road rutted with alcohol and cigarettes. It’s hard to tell which. The moment with Maverick, once ripe with dreams, slips through my fingers like sand. I turn and pick my way through moonlit wreckage back to Yas. I don’t know who she is, and I don’t want to know.

  “You can run, but you can’t,” she says. I can hear the sneer that must be across her face and Maverick’s silence. I swing my leg up on Yas and don’t look back.

  Maverick’s boots churn the gravel as he turns and calls, “Ahzi, wait.”

  But I don’t.

  I’m such a fool.

  What did I expect? Especially from a guy named Maverick.

  “Do you love me, Ama?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  “More than anything?”

  “Yes, Ahzi,” she said.

  She pulled her fingers through my hair

  coaxing star shine along the strands

  weaving light into the inky dark.

  “Will you ever leave me, like Dad?”

  “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “Just say you’ll never leave.”

  “Okay. I’ll never leave.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  Sometimes I watch Cassie

  And Grandma A

  And I wonder what it’s like

  To be molded like fine clay

  into a woman

  By a woman.

  Then I wish

  I didn’t wish,

  So the aching in my heart

  Will stop.

  (found caught in the porch railing at Maverick’s)

  Chapter 12

  In the pale, cold light glowing on the winter horizon at dawn, I push the corral gate shut. Yas sneaks up behind me and licks my left and then right ears in quick succession and finally presses his cheek fur up against my bare cheek.

  “Yuck,” I laugh.

  He nickers his reply.

  I’m lucky to know what real love is.

  I turn to pat his star and give him a hug. He pushes through my arms and goes straight for the carrot in my back pocket.

  “Hey, you little thief,” I say, and then I laugh at Yas, too big and brawny to be considered little, chewing his loot.

  It’s chilly this morning, and I hurry myself through my chores. I break the ice on the trough and pile manure on the compost heap. Bac
k in my room, I throw on a day-old pair of jeans, a thermal top, a flannel shirt, ropers and a field coat and head out to Cassie’s. The sun hasn’t made it up over the mesa top yet, so I slip around the side of the house and climb in Cassie’s window, just like old times.

  “What are you doing here?” Cassie whispers, as I nestle down under the covers with her, boots and all.

  “Nothing,” I say. I hug her tight, and suddenly I’m eleven, fast asleep in a sea of our dreams, hoping to erase the fragmented images of last night from my mind.

  “Good,” Cassie says, settling back into sleep and pulling me closer.

  An hour later, the sun streams in the window, warming our faces with honeyed light.

  Cass says, “What a night.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say, sighing.

  “Do you really want to hear it?” she asks.

  “Nope,” I joke. But I’m serious. I don’t want things to change.

  She rolls over to face me, her funny morning face sparkling.

  “He kissed me, Ahz,” Cassie says, excitement rising in her voice.

  “I know,” I say.

  “No, you don’t,” she laughs.

  “Well, I knew it would happen.”

  I can’t help feeling jealous. I don’t want to feel jealous. I want to be happy for her. So even though it will kill me to listen to the details, I say, “How did it happen?”