Love Forevermore

by Madeline Baker

  The wickiup looked the same as before. The yellow dog wagged its tail as Zuniga dismounted. Loralee was suddenly ill at ease as Zuniga lifted her from her horse. She had heard tales of Nachi from Mike Schofield. The old man had been a redoubtable warrior in his time. No doubt he had killed many a white woman and taken many a scalp. Her heart was pounding wildly as she followed Zuniga into the brush-covered lodge.

  It was dark inside, with only the light of a small fire for illumination. There were no windows, no furniture of any kind save for two crude backrests made of woven willow branches and covered with hides. An old man sat cross-legged beside the fire, his chin resting on his chest, a blanket draped across his shoulders.

  "Grandfather," Shad said, his voice low and filled with respect. "I have brought someone to meet you."

  The old man glanced up, his sharp black eyes as bright and inquisitive as a child's. "The school woman," he said with a nod.

  Zuniga grinned. "Yes, the school woman. Her name is Loralee Warfield. Loralee, this is Nachi."

  Loralee smiled uncertainly. Should she offer to shake the old man's hand? Did Indians shake hands?

  Nachi grinned as he patted the ground beside him. "Come, sit," he invited.

  "Thank you." Loralee sat down beside the old man. The floor of the lodge was hard and cold.

  Zuniga remained standing near the doorway. The old man smiled up at his grandson. "You have a good eye for a woman," he observed candidly.

  Loralee smiled, pleased by the compliment. She liked the old man, she decided. His eyes were honest and direct, his smile sincere.

  She listened quietly as Shad told his grandfather about the school, and what Loralee was trying to teach the children, and then Nachi began to talk of the old days, of Geronimo. Geronimo had never truly been a chief, Nachi said, shaking his head, not like Cochise or Mangas. Nor was Geronimo a Chiricahua, as many thought, but a Bedonkohe Apache. He was the fourth child in a family of four boys and four girls. Geronimo firmly believed in destiny, and in the magic of the number four. He had four wives that were full-blooded Bedonkohe Apache, and four that were part Bedonkohe.

  Four of his children had been killed by Mexicans, and four were held in bondage by the United States. Yes, Nachi said, nodding sagely, the sacred number four was evident in Geronimo's life.

  Loralee nodded as the old man paused. She knew a great deal about Geronimo herself. He had surrendered for the last time on September 4 (four again, she thought), 1886. A few days later, he had been put on board a train and sent to Florida along with other Apache warriors, where they were put to work sawing logs. They were kept at hard labor for nearly two years. Sometime later, they were sent to Alabama, where they remained for several years until they were transferred to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And that was where the old warrior lived now.

  Loralee smiled faintly as Nachi broke into another war story. Geronimo was a fighter no longer. He had joined the Dutch Reformed Church and had been a Sunday school teacher, of all things! He had quickly learned the value of a white man's dollar and he spent hours promoting himself, hawking photographs or bows and arrows at fairs and expositions. But, for all his popularity, he was still a prisoner of war.

  Loralee's attention turned to Nachi. He had stopped talking of war and was talking about Usen, the Apache God, and the various Apache tribes. Usen had created a special place on the earth for each tribe, Nachi remarked. The Indian was tied to the land, to his birthplace. Take him away from his homeland and he withered and died.

  "It is true, even today," Nachi said with conviction. "My people do not prosper when they are taken away from the land of their birth."

  Loralee nodded in agreement. It was true. The Apaches who had been taken to Fort Sill and other faraway places had not done well. Many had sickened and died, just as Nachi said. Today, their numbers were few.

  Nachi spoke of General "Three Stars" Crook and how he had been respected by the Apache. He spoke of life in the high mountains, of the days when Usen had smiled on his red children.

  After about forty minutes, Nachi sighed heavily. His head lolled forward, and Loralee assumed that he had fallen asleep. She glanced at Zuniga, who was squatting on his heels near the doorway.

  "I miss my girl," Nachi said. He lifted his head and stared hard at Loralee. "My lodge is empty without her."

  Loralee glanced at Zuniga again. Girl? What girl?

  A flicker of sadness surfaced in Zuniga's dark eyes and was quickly gone. "He means my mother," Shad explained quietly.

  "You would have liked my Nadina," Nachi said, smiling at Loralee. "She was a good daughter, always thinking of her family. It was a sad day when she married Nakai. He was much older than she was. He was no good." Nachi spat into the firepit. "Shad will tell you the same thing."

  "I wish I could have known your daughter," Loralee said sincerely. "She must have been a very special woman."

  Nachi nodded as he bestowed another warm smile on Loralee. "She would have liked you. Always, she wanted a daughter, but I think it was better she had no children after Shad. Nakai was not a good father. He drank too much, and when he was drunk, he beat Shad and my Nadina. Our wickiup was a happier place when he was not in it."

  Zuniga stood up abruptly. "It is time for us to go, grandfather. I must take Miss Warfield back to the reservation."

  Nachi nodded, then grinned with pleasure as Loralee placed a kiss on his withered cheek. "Come again," he said. "My lodge is yours."

  "Thank you," Loralee replied. "I will."

  Zuniga laid a hand on his grandfather's shoulder, then followed Loralee out of the lodge.

  "I hope he did not bore you with his stories," Zuniga muttered.

  "No, it was wonderful. Why did we leave so suddenly?"

  "He was in a talkative mood. Pretty soon he would have started telling you things that are better left unsaid."

  "Like what?"

  Zuniga stared into the distance, a muscle working in his jaw. He was obviously upset, Loralee mused, but why?

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Forget it, Loralee."

  She nodded as she followed him toward the corral, willing to let the subject drop. For the moment.

  "He's a dear man," Loralee remarked. "Not at all what I expected."

  "What did you expect?" Zuniga asked dryly. "War paint, feathers, and fresh scalps hanging from the ceiling?"

  "Of course not," Loralee retorted with a toss of her head.

  "Sure you did," Zuniga insisted. "But just to set the record straight, my people rarely took scalps."

  "I didn't know that."

  "I thought you knew all about us."

  "Not everything," Loralee admitted with a shy smile.

  "Did you know scalping was introduced to the Indians by the whites?"

  "Yes. And I also know the Mexicans used to pay a hundred-dollar bounty for Apache scalps."

  Zuniga nodded, his eyes dark and fierce. "The bounty was supposed to be for the scalps of fighting men only, but hair is hair, and there's no way to tell if it belonged to a man or a woman, or a child, once you hack it off."

  It had been a shameful practice, Loralee thought, but it had happened. She glanced at Zuniga out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning against the corral, staring into the distance toward the setting sun. What deep, dark secret was he hiding, she wondered. What had he been afraid Nachi might say?

  "My grandfather was a brave warrior in his day," Shad mused. "I wish I had lived then. "

  "Not me," Loralee said with a shudder. "All that fighting and killing. Never knowing what was coming from one day to the next. Never feeling safe, even in your own home. No, I like it better now."

  "My people were better off a hundred years ago. Now, most of them are lost. They cannot change their ways of life to live in a white world."

  "They will, in time."

  Zuniga shook his head. "No. The Indians do not think like the whites. Our values are not the same. The white man has a need to own things, especially land. The I
ndians never thought of the land as theirs. You cannot own the earth. It belongs to the Great Spirit. There was enough room for everybody, but the white man could not share the land with the Indian. He had to fence it and fight for it. In the old days, an Apache warrior never owned anything but his horse and his weapons. The lodge and everything in it belonged to his woman."

  Zuniga laughed bitterly. ''But the white man's ways are catching on fast. Our women want to live in square houses and cook on stoves. They want cotton dresses and washtubs and tables and chairs. They are no longer content to cook and live in the old way."

  "Why should they be? Why not take advantage of things that make life easier? Why cook over an open fire when you can cook on a stove? Why sit on the floor when you can sit in a chair and be more comfortable? Why spend days cleaning and tanning a smelly old hide when you can buy a bolt of ready-made cloth and have a new dress in only a few hours?"

  "Why?" Shad demanded angrily. "Why? We are Apaches, not white men. Why should we try to become like the whites? I will never be a white man! We are living on the white man's charity, and look what it has done to us. My people have lost their pride, their identity, their reason to live. Even if we were to eat, dress, live, and talk like the whites, we would never be white. We are Indian! No matter how hard we try to be like your people, they will never accept us as equals. It would have been better for us if we had all been killed rather than surrender."

  Loralee was taken aback by his sudden burst of anger. She took a step back, keenly aware of the differences between them. "Do you really feel that way?"

  "Yes."

  "Then why did you come to school? If you don't want to change, if you don't want your people to change, why did you come?"

  Zuniga closed the distance between them, his black eyes looking steadfastly into hers. "To be near you," he answered quietly.

  "Oh."

  Loralee's cheeks flushed with pleasure and she felt suddenly shy. Would he make love to her again? He was still watching her intently, and she began to fidget with the collar of her dress. His nearness made her senses come alive, and she was suddenly nervous without knowing why.

  "I'm sorry you're against changes for your people," she said, not liking the heavy silence between them. "I think things are better now than in the old days. It might have been a lot of fun for the men, always out hunting and fighting and having a good time, but what about the women?" She was babbling in an effort to keep him away, not certain if she wanted him to know how much she needed him. "I'm glad I have a laundry tub to wash my clothes in so I don't have to haul them down to the river and pound them on a rock. I like having a sewing machine and a stove and all the other things that make my life easier, and I know most of the Indian women would feel the same if given half a chance."

  "Maybe," Zuniga allowed. "All I know is that something is missing from my life. I do not know what it is, but sometimes I feel like I do not belong anywhere." He stared past her, the fire gone from his eyes as he gazed at the distant mountains.

  Loralee felt a twinge of disappointment. She had expected him to take her in his arms. Why had she rambled on about washtubs? What had she been afraid of?

  They were silent for several minutes. Loralee's thoughts returned to their visit with Nachi. Zuniga was hiding something from her. What could it be?

  "What was Nachi going to say that you didn't want me to hear?" she blurted at last, her curiosity overcoming her manners.

  "I said forget it."

  "It was about your father, wasn't it?"

  "Loralee"

  She ignored the warning in his voice. "Did he beat you often?"

  "I do not want to talk about it," Zuniga answered brusquely. "Some things are best left in the past and forgotten."

  "But you haven't forgotten it," Loralee exclaimed. "I can see it in your eyes, hear it in your voice. Whatever it is, it's eating you up inside."

  "You are right. I have not forgotten it." Zuniga laughed softly, bitterly. "Nachi was right. Our wickiup was a happier place when Nakai was not there. My mother would sing when me were alone. Sometimes she would dance the old dances with Nachi. My mother loved to laugh, but she never laughed when Nakai was home. No one did. I don't know why she loved the bastard. He never brought her anything but grief."

  "You can't pick and choose the people you love," Loralee remarked wistfully. "It just happens."

  "Maybe. I do not know. All I know is that my mother should never have married Nakai. He was twisted inside, never happy unless he was hitting something. And that something was usually me. He beat me when I tried to protect my mother from his cruelty, he beat me when I refused to steal whiskey for him, and sometimes he beat me just for the hell of it. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

  "No." She chewed on her lower lip, saddened by what she had heard. Mike had told her that Zuniga had killed his father.

  As if reading her mind, Zuniga turned to face her, his eyes seeking hers. "You have probably heard many rumors about me," he said flatly. "The people at the Agency do not like me. They think I am a thief and a liar. Most of their stories are lies, but the big one is true. I killed my father, and I want you to know it."

  Loralee shook her head, not wanting to hear any more.

  "Yes. He was drunk that night, but then, he was always drunk. And he was a mean drunk. I do not know what set him off that night, but it did not take much to arouse his temper. I was not at our lodge when it began, but I could hear my mother screaming for help when I rode up.

  "I ran into the lodge and almost fell over Nachi, who was lying unconscious on the floor across the doorway. I learned later that he had tried to defend my mother, and Nakai had hit him over the head with a beer bottle. My father was beating my mother, hitting her in the face and throat with his fists. She was bleeding from her nose and mouth when I dragged him away from her."

  Zuniga's face grew dark and his eyes were terrible to see as he relived the incident in his mind. He could see it all clearly: his Father, short and stocky, strong as an ox, his face flushed with drink, his black eyes wild with irrational anger as he hit Nadina with his fists; Nachi, lying on the floor, his gray hair matted with blood; Nadina's face, swollen and bleeding, her eyes damp with tears.

  "My father swung at me and missed," Zuniga said, resuming his story. He laughed softly. "That really made Nakai mad. With a scream of rage, he grabbed his knife and came after me. We fought for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he managed to cut my forearm and I guess I went a little crazy. I shouted the Apache death cry and lunged at him. I knocked him off his feet and he dropped the knife. I killed him with my bare hands."

  Loralee shuddered. She could see it all so clearly in her mind: Nadina sobbing as her husband and her son struggled on the floor, the hate in Shad's eyes as he fought to defend his mother against Nakai's drunken attack, the grandfather he loved lying on the floor, unconscious.

  "Surely that was self-defense, not murder," Loralee whispered.

  "No. I did not have to kill him. My mother died in my arms a few minutes later. The next morning, early, I dumped my father's body in a ravine and covered it with dirt and rocks."

  "Did it happen here, on the reservation?"

  "No. In the Dragoon Mountains."

  "How old were you?"

  "Sixteen."

  "How awful that must have been for you."

  Zuniga shrugged. "I am not sorry I killed him. I would do it again."

  Loralee looked at him, her eyes filling with compassion. What could she say? He had done a terrible thing, yet she could understand why he had done it.

  "Come," Zuniga said. "I'll take you home."

  7

  Loralee arrived at the schoolhouse early the next night, wondering if he would come, wondering if she would feel the same now that she had heard his story. She paced the floor in front of her desk, thinking about what Zuniga had told her. No matter how Zuniga had felt about his father, no matter what his reason for killing him might have been, it must be an awful burde
n to bear.

  She whirled around when she heard the door swing open, felt her heart leap with gladness when he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  Wordlessly, he took his customary seat, opened his McGuffey's Reader to the page she specified, and began to read:

  "Charles was an honest boy, but his neighbor, Jack Pilfer, was a thief. Charles would not take anything which did not belong to him; but Jack would take whatever he could get.

  "Early one summer's morning, as Charles was going to school, he met a man who had oranges to sell. The man wished to stop and get his breakfast, and asked Charles if he would hold his horse while he went into the house. . . ."

  Loralee listened as Zuniga read. His voice was deep, resonant, pleasing to the ear as he read the story of Jack and Charles.

  She looked up askance as Zuniga broke off in mid-sentence.

  "This is a foolish story for a grown man to read," he declared, and closed the book with a resounding bang.

  "I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe I can find you something more thought-provoking."

  "I have learned to read, and I have learned to write. It is enough."

  "What do you want to do, then?"

  Zuniga rose to his feet. He towered over her, making her feel small and helpless, vulnerable in a way that was both frightening and titillating.

  "I want to make love to you," Zuniga replied evenly.

  Loralee swallowed hard. Seven little words, yet they affected her whole body. Her heart began to beat faster, her cheeks grew hot, her knees grew weak as a sudden warmth started within her and heated her whole body.

  "What did you say?" she stammered.

  "I want to make love to you," Zuniga repeated. "Here. Now."

  "Here?" Her voice was weak.

  He nodded. his eyes watching her face. What he saw reflected there pleased him. Going to the lamp, he extinguished the flame, then gathered Loralee into his arms and kissed her, his mouth crushing hers as he claimed the kiss he had hungered for since he entered the schoolhouse that night. She yielded without a struggle, her eyelids fluttering down as her mouth opened to the invasion of his tongue. Her arms twined around his shoulders for support, her fingers digging into his back as she drew him closer still. She was hardly aware of it when he lowered her to the floor behind her desk. The planks were cool against her flesh as he expertly removed her clothing and then his own before he stretched out beside her. His body was warm, hard, eager, and she urged him on, wanting him to make love to her, to enter her and make her whole. Her hands moved restlessly over his broad back and shoulders as she wrapped her legs around his waist, moaning softly as he thrust into her again and again until, at the last, she cried his name.