Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  “Dad, there’s Man!”

  “Where, son?”

  “There . . . talking with Tony.”

  Her inward groan backfired into a cough. Close to five-hundred Taos Indians living on the plaza, and Man had to be present that afternoon. And Jeremy had to spot him.

  “Man can track a spider across the sand, Dad. And he taught me how to drum. Gave me a drum, too.”

  Jeremy tugged his father across the plaza to the group of men sitting on their haunches, some of them frugally smoking cigarette butts. They looked up at the approach of the outsiders.

  Tony and Man, both standing, gazed with firmly impersonal expressions. Peg had explained that ‘showing the face’ was an Indian term. Showing the true face was reserved for those so chosen to receive the openness of the heart.

  “Tony, Man,” Jeremy said, “this is my father.”

  With innate dignity, Man and Tony nodded, their deep eyelids concealing all thoughts.

  “Man, can you teach my father how to make a drum?”

  Brendon did not offer his hand, but gave them a thin smile. “I’m too old for child’s play, Jeremy.” His practiced and cynical eye quickly assessed Manuel Mondragon’s visible attributes, summarized the entire man, and mentally dismissed him as being of no possible value. “So, you’re the local medicine man, eh?”

  Tony and Man might not speak English fluently, but she didn’t see how they could miss the disdain in Brendon’s voice.

  “I am,” Man replied. The folds of the white blanket over his head shadowed his rich, dark eyes.

  The lack of superfluous words left Brendon at a loss. His instant smile was ingratiating. “Well, I’m sure the Mayo Clinic would be interested in hearing your . . . uh, unique views.”

  The awful heat of mortification flushed her skin. Then, Man gave her his face. Their eyes polarized toward each other. His gaze dominated her, claimed her. An urgent, erotic visceral charge surged through her. She almost stepped from Brendon’s side toward him. She doubted anyone noticed the exchange, her body’s suppressed movement – well, maybe Tony – but at once, and quite unexpectedly, a serene happiness stole over her.

  She and Brendon and Jeremy left the Pueblo soon after. Once outside its perimeters, Brendon said, more to Jeremy, “Can you imagine? Darkies in white sheets. Wouldn’t’ the Ku Klux Klan’s Grand Wizard love that!”

  His callously cruel words appalled her.

  Jeremy’s eyes widened. Even at his tender age, he had heard light-hearted discussions at the house about the Ku Klux Klan’s recent violent activities throughout the southern United States. The circumstances of how they destroyed property and branded and whipped Negroes and those who sympathized had turned into grossly insensitive jokes. “Dad, Man’s just like us. He’s nice . . . like you and Mom.”

  For not the first time, she wondered what could make a man like Brendon behave so. Where everyone else was different and, therefore, less. He has to be deeply lonely in his apartness. How could anyone keep from going mad with such an attitude?

  Later, at her adobe, she showed Brendon her studio and the painting she was working on. Standing behind him, she said, “I want to open a gallery, I was thinking in Georgetown maybe or Alexandria, and showcase a collection of the Taos artists. Promote the sale of their works.” She realized her enthusiasm was rushing her words. “What do you think about the idea?”

  “I think,” Brendon said, studying her unfinished painting of Taos Peak, “that you are far more talented than I realized.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Forget an exhibition of Taos artists. Granted, I don’t know a lot about art but let’s promote you. We could make you the center of new Americanism in art. You can forge a style of your own that is unique. Expose art lovers to unfamiliar cultures and landscapes.”

  His boyish gusto mollified her earlier discontent with him. Basically, he was a good man. After a lavish meal of meat and drink, on which she and Marta had combined their culinary efforts, she and Brendon sat at the table with its blue oilcloth and lovely, irregularly hand-carved chairs with their marvelously garish-painted scrolls. They talked. Talked about other things. Nothing important. At least, at first.

  “Paul’s finally got his act together and branched out on his own,” Brendon said, crossing one knee over the other. He looked very urbane in a blue flannel jacket and gray trousers. When he realized dust coated his trouser cuffs, he would be appalled. “An engineering firm. Set up an office close to the Mall.”

  She hid her smile behind a sip of the chokecherry tea she had prepared earlier. “That’s nice. I’m sure he’ll do well. Give him my love.”

  “Eichman’s got an office there, too. But the old Jew will take you for everything you’re worth. I don’t see why on earth people hire him.”

  She had no idea who Eichman was and didn’t care.

  “And the General’s taking up lobbying. Damn, but this chokecherry stuff is God-awful, Ali.”

  “Sorry you don’t like it.” She sipped again.

  He pushed his chipped cup away. “Yeah, the General’s helping to get backing for the Bursum bill.”

  “What bill is that?” She kept an eye on Jeremy. He sat on the floor, softly beating out different rhythms on the drum Man had given him. Jeremy’s presence kept the argument over his disposition at bay.

  “At the behest of Secretary of Interior Fall, Bursum has introduced a congressional bill to put all internal affairs of the Pueblos under authority of the state court system.”

  That undoubtedly was better than the current situation of being under the authority of the Interior Department. “Don’t the Pueblos have anything to say about that? They are a sovereign nation.”

  “They’re children, Ali. They don’t know how to take care of themselves. Just look how backward they are! Surely you’ve seen that since you’ve been out here. Why, on the trip up from Lamy, we passed squalid pueblo after pueblo . . . no electricity, no running water, no schoolhouses. They urinate and defecate in the open behind their adobes. The filth and odor . . . my God, they’re still living in the prehistoric age.”

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” Sunlight was seeping from the room. Feeling the need to busy herself, she stood up and lit the cast-iron hanging lamp. Its kerosene oil bathed them in a rich yellow glow.

  “Well, it certainly isn’t a good thing. Their lack of motivation is disgusting.” He turned around in his chair. “Jeremy, can you stop that infernal pounding?”

  Jeremy looked up in surprise but picked up the drum and went outside to sit on the shadowy portal.

  “Besides, Ali,” Brendon went on, “the passage of this bill will establish Bursum and Fall – and ultimately myself – in that upper echelon of presidential contenders.”

  Her tea sloshed in her cup like heavy seas. With that carrot dangling before her husband, there would be no way he would be willing to listen to her pleas in behalf of the Indians.

  “We’ve really got our hands full with the congressional election only months away. It looks as if the Democrats may very well succeed in reducing our majority this time.”

  She truly tried to appear interested. “Do you have reason to be concerned about your own seat?”

  “Not really, not with Bursum and Fall behind me. And, of course, the General.”

  Yes, he had bought the General. And his daughter. And the clout they gave to his political aspirations.

  “Your father’s a remarkable old man. Last month, the Daughters of the American Revolution contacted him about . . . .”

  And so it went, the talking between them. Talking. Talking. Talking details. Never really communicating emotions.

  She had noticed how Indians learned to talk with their eyes, their fingers. The way the young men and women communicated with glances, gestures between lovers, passing as rapidly as the beat of hummingbird wings, subtle exchanges that went unnoticed if one were not attentive. She was learning to be attentive. She had a goal to accomplish.

  Unfortunately, Brend
on fell into an exhausted sleep that night.

  * * * * *

  The Mexicans, both the people and their mud-brown adobes, seemed to blend with the land better than Brendon’s Irish stock. The flames of the desert scorched the Mexicans’ skin and glinted in their eyes. The gnarled, baked Mexicans were in touch with the land on which they had fought for survival. However, they were not leached of their spirit or hardened in their hearts by their struggle, downtrodden qualities she had seen in the empty faces of Irish immigrants, escaping their rain-leaden land and its never-ending struggle to big cities back East.

  Laughter and life could be heard in the speech and song of the Mexicans. Their cuisine burned as hot as their passions. Their thick adobe homes defied the ferocious environment.

  The Martinez estancia and its hacienda was one of the most defiant, a fortress-style compound with thick walls that once withstood terrible Apache and Comanche raids. Inside, the gran sala’s hand-adzed floor, finely carved corbels and hanging, wooden candle holders transported visitors back to the Spanish Colonial life two centuries earlier. In that isolated, mountainous area, the Spanish customs and the Castilian language hadn’t changed since the seventeenth century of Cervantes.

  Just like at every fiesta, a cornet, guitar, and violin mariachi band played gay fandangos while elderly women in black rebozos kept vigils over their sensually beautiful, young charges.

  Early on, Peg explained how, when widowed, no matter if one remarried, a woman wore black the rest of her life. Fashion and tradition had changed little in the current century. Some of the Mexican women still powdered their faces with corn flour to protect their skin from the fierce sunlight.

  Santos and retablos in their hacienda wall niches announced the powerful influence Catholicism welded over the Mexicans. Indeed, a padre in a black robe was herding his parishioners like sheep around the gran sala. Since social and political life in northern New Mexico still relied heavily on its religious foundation, the predominant vote was Catholic.

  Alessandra introduced Brendon to their host, Sr. Martinez, elegantly attired in a black satin jacket, vest, and skin-black trousers emblazoned with silver. “Senator O’Quinn, you do our humble home much honor.”

  Alessandra watched Brendon work their host and the guests with a politician’s polished charm. And, of course, he alluded to his own Catholic sensibilities. After all, the Republicans wanted to make sure Bursum was elected to New Mexico’s senatorial seat, which the man now occupied by appointment.

  At last, she maneuvered her husband over to meet Mary and Blumy. “Darling, Blumy also studied art in Paris – at the Académie Julian.”

  “But an entire decade before Alessandra,” Blumy grinned wryly.

  Immediately, the three fell to reminiscing about the Paris of old and, sadly, how the Great World War had changed it. Brendon’s eloquence and charisma attracted others to his circle of enchanted listeners. Ruefully she admitted he had it in him to be a future president. He would make a good leader.

  All the meaningless chatter, the smiling masks, the intense urge to impress . . . she wanted to escape the hot, crowded room to breathe the sharp, pine-and-cedar scented air outside. She wanted to talk to someone who listened with mindfulness. And listen to someone who spoke from the heart.

  “You’re wearing a poignant expression, Alessandra,” Henri said, appearing at her side.

  She donned a more cheerful mask. “It’s been a busy two days, what with Brendon’s arrival.”

  “Did I hear you call my name,” her husband said, joining her. He extended his hand. “Brendon O’Quinn.”

  “Henri Genêt.” The two shook hands. “We have a mutual acquaintance. Holm Bursum.”

  “Oh, yes. You’re the one we owe our thanks. You helped my wife get settled in here.”

  Through his thick glasses, Henri shot her an oblique look. “Alessandra seems to have settled in very easily on her own,” he said, smiling politely.

  “Well, she’s certainly learning a lot about the area. She’s been telling me about Mystery Mountain.”

  “You two talk as if I’m not here.”

  Brendon leaned over and kissed her cheek. “My apology, dear. It’s been too long, five months, that I’ve had to do without you.”

  He turned back to Henri. “Alessandra tells me that the mountain is filled with gold and silver and that Twining started out as a copper mining camp. Some kind of mining company wouldn’t be a bad investment, eh?”

  “Actually, the Indians believe Mystery Mountain is filled with something else, Senator.”

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “Something much more powerful.”

  “You make it sound mysterious.”

  “It is,” Alessandra interjected boldly. “Tell Brendon about the prophecy, Henri.”

  Brendon raised a black-winged brow. “Prophecy?”

  “The Ancient Ones,” Henri said. “Even the old men of today, have always passed on the prophecy about a white race that would come and swallow them up so they would almost disappear from the earth . . . except they will be strong and keep the eternal fire burning in the mountain.”

  Brendon shrugged. “An eternal fire? Something like the flame always burning over the grave of the unknown French soldier, the one buried beneath the Arc de Triomphe?”

  “Hardly. This flame has the power to destroy the world, so the Ancient Ones say . . . or recreate it into something much better.” Henri’s smile looked as arcane as Man’s. “Perhaps it’s a mistranslation. Perhaps, rather, an internal fire was meant. Who knows?”

  Chapter Nine

  Once Alessandra and Brendon were ensconced on her brass double bed that night, she made love to her husband with a will to please, of which she would not have thought herself capable.

  But her lovemaking was more than just a will to please. It was a will to communicate. If they could find no other ground to come together, surely, in the joining of their bodies, she could reach through to his soul. She could change the present to reflect all that had been good of the past, to mirror a more bonded future.

  How she wanted him to understand, to know her monstrous fear of facing death alone which the wealth of her vocabulary miserably failed to express. She wanted him to understand how terrified she was to lose Jeremy. The mere thought of surrendering her child from her arms stabbed into her soul like no pain she had ever experience. If she were never to see her son again . . . .

  “Brendon, you are beautiful here . . . . ” Her lips encircled the fleshy cap of his penis. Licking and sucking slowly, she worked more rapidly as she sensed his passion mounting.

  How sad a woman’s source of sexuality was hidden away, as if shameful, whereas a man’s was proudly, boldly displayed.

  He groaned, and, after his relief spurted in white splashes over her, she slid up atop him, her breasts pressing against his hair-matted chest. Her lips brushed his. He turned his mouth ever so slightly away, so that hers tipped only their corner. “Oh, God, Ali, that was great.”

  Finis.

  After long years of intimate body contact, she and Brendon shifted in unison, so that she rolled off to lie beside him. He lay on his back, breathing heavily. Moonlight slashing through the shutters glistened the sweat on his temples and upper lip.

  “I don’t know what’s come over you,” he rasped. “Whether it’s the air or the absence, but you’ve never performed that good.”

  How could anyone so astute, so educated, so gifted with conveying cordiality and congeniality, choose a word like perform? She wanted to weep. For all that was lost. For all that would never be.

  Now was not the time.

  “It must be the air. Perhaps I seem so much better, Brendon, because I have never really felt the absence, as you put it.” Her fingers entwined in his damp, curling chest hair. “With Jeremy here, it seemed I was never far from you . . . or from home.”

  He turned onto his side, facing her, his head propped on his fist. His flaccid, diminished organ draped over one thigh,
but his body really was magnificent, muscular and sleek from big game hunting, handball, rugby, boxing and the aggrandizement of all his masculinity. She could never understand the ceremonial violence of his sports.

  “Is this about my taking Jeremy back with me, Ali? Because go with me he will.”

  She looked into that stubborn gaze. Brendon was a man who didn’t take losing lightly. He had set out to win her, as much as he would any trophy cup. When he had set out to win New York’s senatorial seat, the idea of losing anything never crossed his mind.

  “Then I will go back – ” she had almost said home, “ – to Washington with you two.” Once there, she could more easily fight for the Indian Defense League, establish her gallery, introduce the magic of the Southwest to the rest of the nation – and escape the intoxication with which Man spellbound her.

  “Doc Silverman ordered you to take a year out here to recover. For God’s sake, Ali, it’s just half a year more.”

  Half a year until and if she returned, if she lived that long – but by then Jeremy would be entrenched in the regimented Citadel and beyond her arms! “Brendon, how can I make you understand that Jeremy is as much a part of me as my next breath? I was there when he said his prayers . . . and whenever he had a nightmare . . . and when he was ill with small pox . . . and when he printed his first word. The word sun. I still have the first picture he drew.”

  “All a mother’s job, but it’s time for me to take over and do my part as his father. I still can’t believe you removed him from school without – ”

  “Is there a dividing line, an age, where one role begins and the other ends,” she cut in. “Shall we just divide our son in half with a sword like King Solomon?”

  “There you go carping again. Why can’t you understand the obvious, Ali? Jeremy needs a good education. The schools out here are pathetic. Be realistic.”

  “Brendon, I - I don’t want to die alone.”

  “I said realistic, not mawkish.”

  She drew back. “That’s cruel!”

  “And this conversation is manipulative on your part. As was your sexual performance. Do you seriously think I don’t recognize a woman’s genuine passion? Look, Ali, I’m bored with this con — ”