Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Chapter Seven

  “Brendon!”

  He was the most handsome man Alessandra had ever seen.

  She was a good judge. She had seen lots of men. As a colonel’s daughter, she had been courted by many West Point cadets, but the ‘Dash and Daring’ of the plebes’ military life was nothing but organized violence to her. The uniform held no appeal, the zealous faces above even less.

  In 1904, when her father had been appointed assistant to the military governor of the Philippines, she and Paul had journeyed with him to the other side of the world to his post in Zamboanga. Despite days wafted by cool trade winds; despite the smooth white sandy beaches only twenty paces from Camp Vicars; despite palms, ferns, and rare orchids that hung profusely from the family’s wide verandah, Alessandra bristled at the romantic setting and the fervent pleadings of the young bachelor cavalry officers trampling a path from the BOQ to her father’s front door.

  The restrictive, regulated, ordered life of the soldier constricted her life’s flow. The heavy, humid air made breathing difficult. Oppressed and hating everything and everyone, she appealed to her father to let her attend college, the Sorbonne, no less. Miracle of miracles, he granted her this one desire. She always thought he gave in because he was preoccupied with the demanding duties of his new post. While he struggled to acquire the Maranaw dialect and Paul to master the use of the wide, sharp bolo blades, she quickly applied, packed, and sailed from the Zulu Sea without even a lingering last look back.

  The memories! Such vivid sensations . . . and the heavy, suffocating, tight spaces of my life still press in upon me! Sweat trickling down my throat, under my armpits, down my belly . . . as it did when the sea breeze died. But there was air in Paris.

  Like all young artists did in Paris, she set out to survey its sites: the Bastille, the Opéra, Napoleon’s Tomb at Invalides, Sainte Chapelle, Louvre, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower, which was Paris. Or so she thought.

  Three years into her stay, she went with two of her friends to discover another Paris existing apart from their studies, museums, and opera – the Caveau de la Huchette, a jazz cellar with songs definitely not for innocent ears.

  Tall, gangly Lydia had been all for leaving at once. Buxom Minette hesitated. Alessandra, drawn by the freedom of the music’s improvisation, charged into the dark depths of the cellar. Scott Joplin’s rigid ragtime style expanded to an abandoned syncopation that caught her wide-open imagination.

  After only one night, she became a regular. She learned to dance with the free spirited movement of the popular Isadora Duncan, liberated her tongue intent on out-cursing any soldier, and flouted the constraint of her absentee family’s disapproving eye by enjoying the nectars of the gods and becoming a compatriot of Dionysus, the Greek god not only of the grape harvest, but of ritual madness and ecstasy.

  Her studies she neglected. But, hell, for the first time she felt really alive, away from the oppression of military and daughterly duty. In Paris, she did not feel as if she slugged through a dark, suffocating morass day by day, night after night.

  Hot. Tropical, damp climates always made the skin sticky and hot. Feverishly so. Sometimes, I thought my very flesh would melt and hang from my bones like Spanish moss. In Paris I whirled in lightness and freedom . . . flinging the past away until I felt cool and alive again. But . . . the oppression came back, didn’t it? I shivered, it still held me down, sucked my breath away.

  In the midst of her freedom, she discovered Brendon. Or, rather, he discovered her. He and three of his Harvard buddies, taking the Grand Tour after graduation, entered Caveau de la Huchette. She supposed he viewed her, the daughter of America’s famous general, as a trophy. Had he known her longer, perhaps he would have seen there was more to her than just her passion for art. Inside, she vibrated with a passion to discover life’s secrets, a passion to right wrongs, a passion to unfold the petals of the heart.

  But even I didn’t know that then.

  Rebellious, she accepted his offer to accompany him to the Moulin Rouge. Scandalous, shocking, and deliciously decadent Moulin Rouge. Even more scandalous was her decision to leave their companions and go with Brendon to a small but smart hotel in the Eighteenth Arrondissement. That night, she had been an eager virgin. The surprising, involuntary orgasm she experienced at Brendon’s invasion soon lost its novelty. Feeling like a wilted flower the next morning, she left the hotel and Brendon.

  His search for her had been unexpected. In that endlessly resourceful city of female intuition, under the elm trees of fashionable midsummer cafes, in the flatteringly lit salons of the great couturiers, at the place-to-be-seen races, he pursued her until she agreed to marry him.

  At thirty-nine, I’m as immature as a twenty-one. And as tarnished.

  “Brendon!”

  “Sshh, my dear. It’s all right. I’ve wired your husband. He’ll be here within a few days.”

  Alessandra struggled to open her eyes. Peg leaned over her.

  “I’m — I’m ill?”

  Peg’s smile was a struggle, also. “Jeremy found you beside your well yesterday morning. Henri brought you here.”

  “I feel . . . very tired.” Her head ached with an odd, exploding pulsation. Her throat was swollen. Every joint hurt excruciatingly. A boulder had rolled atop her chest. Each struggled inhalation brought pain that screamed like a train whistle.

  “Sleep. You need rest. Doc Martin’s come and gone. Says it’s pneumonia . . . he, uh, is very concerned that you . . . . ”

  * * * * * *

  Washington’s oppressive, hot dankness steamed her skin. Drawing a breath was sheer agony. Her lungs felt as if they were filled with the mildew that oppressively pervaded the capitol come summer.

  “You’ll love Washington, honey. The city has all the excitement of Paris and — ”

  “And the people speak English.” She could not shake the recurrent emotional malaise that trailed her from the Philippines to Paris to Washington D. C. Would the search for her final destination never cease?

  “And French and German and Japanese. That’s what makes being here, being a senator so exciting, even if I am only a junior in Congress.”

  “How do you feel about a real junior, O’Quinn?”

  In the dresser mirror, she saw him rotate and look at her. He took a faltering step towards her. “What?”

  She turned on the stool and looked over her shoulder. “Surely, you wouldn’t call him ‘Junior’?”

  Quickly, Brendon crossed the intervening space to kneel before her. “You’re serious?”

  “It could be a girl.” She took his hand and splayed its palm across her stomach, still flat.

  “It wouldn’t dare.”

  “Brendon!”

  His name sounded as a litany of excruciating pain.

  * * * * *

  A primal sound lay hold of her. Soft, insistent thudding that filled her ears. Her pulse pounded. Her blood beat in her temples, vibrating throughout her body.

  Hi ya yi hay ha ya yi ho. Hi ya yi hay ha ya yi ho.

  The thudding increased . . . with a strange sound to it. The sonorous beat filled her, rolling to the corners of her being. Wave after wave, not leaving any interval for the intensity to ebb, until the life left in her freezing-while-burning body took on the pattern of the sound. One beat chasing the other, leaping across, and driving the waves before it.

  Struggling to rise, drenched in sweat, she wobbled on weak legs to the window and opened the shutters to deepening twilight. Immediately below, beneath the white-blossomed apple tree, Man sat on one of Peg’s stone benches. He sang in a low, melodious tone and softly, relentelessly, beat his drum. His upturned face was passionate, tortured, intense. His baritone voice, brimming with life, was at once strong but gentle, stirring yet urgent. Through the wrought iron window work, she watched him gravely give himself over to the energy he created. My life is in his hands. That is enough, whether I die or not. Her knees threatened to give way. Wobbling, she returned to bed, givi
ng herself over to him and his vital juices. She was permeated by him, by his vitality, by his magic.

  A cool moon sailed slowly, inexorably westward, deep into the darkest hours of the morning.

  * * * * *

  Alessandra arose, stretching the kinks from her muscles. She felt clearheaded and light of body – until her chest would not expand, a tightness compressing her breasts and ribs. Peeking inside Peg’s cotton ribbon-and-lace nightgown, she saw that her ribcage had been bandaged. When?

  Then she remembered something else. She opened the shutters. The garden was empty.

  Incredible! This link I feel with another human. With him. For the first time, perhaps since her mother’s death, she felt sheltered and protected.

  Still dressed in Peg’s shroud of a nightgown, she hurried to find the woman. Peg stood at the head of the stairs, instructing one of the Mexican girls on how she wanted a nearby bedroom readied. At Alessandra’s approach, she turned. Delight shown in her smoky gray eyes.

  “You’re better!”

  “I feel marvelous! Like I’ve been awakened from a winter’s hibernation. Where’s Jeremy?”

  “I sent him and Jose to see the moving picture Ramona.”

  “Oh, swell!” She mimicked her son then rolled her eyes and grinned. “At Miramon’s?”

  Peg had the good grace to look sheepish. “Well, it was either that or let him accompany Marta to a baile, and you know those Saturday fandangos can get pretty rough.”

  The moving-picture house was in Miramon’s dance hall. Alessandra had gone with Henri one afternoon to see The Last of the Mohicans, but the air was so thick with dust and the man pumping the mechanical piano played so badly, they hadn’t stayed.

  “If Brendon knew his only begotten son was in a dance hall, he would suffer an apoplectic fit.”

  Peg’s generous mouth tightened. “Speaking of him, he telegraphed this morning. He’ll be arriving in three days. I’m sorry, Alessandra. I thought you were dying!”

  “Yesterday . . . was it you who summoned Doc Martin and Man?”

  “Only Doc Martin. There wasn’t much he could do, except wrap your chest with bandages to relieve your pain. I don’t know who summoned Man.”

  I did. Some atavistic power in her communicated with Man. “Did you know he drummed all night outside my window?”

  “Occasionally, muffled beats reached through my sleep-fogged brain.”

  “Oh, Peg, I’m so sorry. You’ve got to be exhausted. Tending me while trying to accommodate your other guests. You must be – ”

  “Whatever Man did,” Peg interrupted, eyeing her glowing face, “it must have worked.”

  ”I . . . I can’t explain it, but what happened last night was . . . strange, mysterious . . . mystical.” She turned back to her room, intent on finding her clothes. “I have to go to the Pueblo.”

  Peg touched her arm. “Alessandra, be careful what you commit yourself to.”

  The earnest woman’s compelling gaze held hers. “What do you mean?”

  “Since the Great World War, our values might have disintegrated. But the Indians . . . they still live their isolated lives . . . and still take their relationships seriously.”

  “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”

  Peg turned her head to look at her from the corner of her eye. “I think you do.”

  “I only want to thank him. I’m extremely grateful.”

  “To Doc Martin . . . or Man?”

  She looked past Peg’s shoulder, at the fresh linen sheets the maid tucked under the mattress in the closest room. “I’m not shoving Brendon out of my bed for Man, if that’s what you mean. I’ll return in a couple of hours.”

  “Alessandra?”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s an East Indian proverb. ‘He who lives with passion, lives on the edge of the desert.’”

  * * * * *

  Alessandra would never get used to how northern New Mexico’s radiant ether deepened angles, heightened colors, enhanced the ordinary. The Pueblo thrummed, impregnated with the fullness of a mellow life, with its easy rhythm of comings and goings. The music of the little river; the footsteps echoing on the two narrow footbridges; the Indians’ round, merry voices; all softened in June’s afternoon sunlight. The willows, wild olives, and cottonwoods breathed quietly and deeply in the calm of the gold-dusted day.

  She paused at the church to rest. Her energy wasn’t what it had been before that foolhardy rain dance of hers. She smoothed the crépe de chine middy around the hips of its matching navy walking skirt and felt out of place.

  In the Pueblo plaza, shawl-wrapped women returned from the river, round clay pots balanced upon their heads. Other women ground cornmeal on their petate or moved slowly before the open ovens. The old men in their timeless circle focused on drumming and singing, providing the rhythm underlying the activity. Lazing against sunny walls, several young men rolled cornhusk cigarettes. A man with a dirty red bandanna tied around his head kicked by on a slow-plodding burro.

  She inhaled deeply, searching for the elusive scent of piñon. Her eyes feasted on the rich turquoise that rimmed windows and doors. Never had her senses been more alert. It was as if before Man she had been deaf and blind her lifelong.

  As she passed among the Indians, their expressions changed, closing to stoic reserve, uncommunicative and so unlike the prying, analyzing white man. No white man had ever been allowed to spend one night in their pueblo.

  Will they accept me before I have to leave New Mexico?

  Have to leave?

  She didn’t have to do anything. Except talk with Man. Let him know how she felt, explain her profound, overflowing gratitude at his tender devotion.

  You are not speaking your truth. Not to yourself. Not when your thoughts return to the way Man’s fingers stroked his drum, his flute . . . and you.

  Without even concentrating, her steps took her beyond the Pueblo to his adobe. She felt incomplete after their lovemaking was interrupted by Tony. Just one more time, she told herself. Just one more time with Man before Brendon arrives, that’s all I’m asking.

  To her surprise, Tony, enveloped in his purple blanket, hunkered before the adobe’s flimsy, wooden door. She smiled. “Is Man here?”

  “He resting.”

  She shifted, indecisive. “Why yes, I suppose he must be tired.” After all, he had worked all night while she had slept. “Perhaps . . . May I wait, Tony?”

  His face looked as closed as the house. Something about the house made her uneasy.

  “He making journey.”

  “I thought you said Man was home.”

  He nodded gravely, his black braids dipping lower on his chest.

  A moment of confusion took her thoughts as she stared from Tony to the house.

  What if something happened to Man, and Tony doesn’t want to tell me? Doesn’t think I have the right to know? But, damn it, I do. I’m Man’s . . . well, his friend and his patient, aren’t I?

  Caring little about her rudeness, she brushed past Tony and pushed open the door. Its perpendicular slats clawed the hard-packed earthen floor. Her glance swept the room, seeing little more than a wooden bedstead draped with a shaggy buffalo robe and to the side a deal table and its bench. The room’s perfume wasn’t from Paris but fragrant, fresh cedar, sage, and sweet grass.

  Prismed sunlight poured through mica-flecked windows, illuminating Man. He sat in the room’s center, eyes closed, legs crossed, apart somehow from the place.

  “Man?”

  Slowly, his lids opened. The eyes held a far-away look, as if the fires of his life force were banked. “You are well now.” It was a statement not a question.

  “I came to thank you.” She felt awkward. Intrusive. Only then did she notice the small half moon of pure tawny sand before him. On it were remnants of what looked like cactus. A drum, a gourd, and a knife lay beside him.

  Then she made the connection.

  His dreamy gaze took her in, held her fast in its snar
e. “I go to talk to the Peyote God.” Then his gaze slid past her. His beautiful eyelids half-masted his pupils. “Go.”

  Frightened by what she could not understand, she backed to the door, backed into Tony, and turned to flee.

  * * * * *

  “I don’t know, Henri. I guess I’m . . . perplexed. I mean, I’ve heard tales of how one can go crazy on that stuff.” Man had looked so — so vacant yesterday.

  Hands jammed in the pockets of his green sweater, Henri walked alongside Alessandra. He wore his beret at a jaunty angle over his wiry, yellow hair. He had fallen in with her as she returned that cool morning from Cummings Meat Market with a brown paper-wrapped package of meat.

  “It’s like I told you about the healing process and drumming, Alessandra. That when the heart is right — ”

  Her impatience erupted. “What does that have to do with the peyote?”

  Henri and his metaphysical views! And you and your failure to make everything fall into its proper place!

  Maybe that was it. She just couldn’t put Man in a proper place. He was as elusive as quicksilver . . . or like that damned Coyote Henri prattled on about. But since yesterday’s incident at the Pueblo, she didn’t know what to think.

  “Alessandra, the peyote is that way, too. At least, the Indians believe so. Better not to use it at all unless it is used right. With reverence and prayer and ritual.”

  Her long-simmering frustration damped her irritation. “Well then, perhaps if I pray and perform a little ritual before opening a bottle of gin . . . . ”

  He stopped and turned to look at her. “What’s wrong, Alessandra? You’re better off leaving the sarcasm to Lawrence.”

  She strode ahead of him. The sand cushioned her quick, angry steps. “My husband arrives tomorrow.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t know I have Jeremy with me. He’s sure to take Jeremy back with him.”

  “That’s it? That’s everything?”

  “Isn’t that enough? What are you insinuating?”

  “Merely that you don’t seem happy to see your husband.”

  Stopping, she glared back at Henri. “Well, of course, I am.”