Indian Affairs (historical romance)

by Parris Afton Bonds

  Seated in a semi-circle around a spread hide, blanketed men drummed in an undeviating rhythm and chanted softly. Wondering if one of them was Man, Alessandra strove to make out the individual faces but could not. None of them wore white only.

  Each line of dancers sang its own stanzas with no concern that they didn’t harmonize with the other three. The dissonance was both mesmerizing and strangely arousing. They shook their gourd rattles while their feet stamped powerfully.

  Alessandra was learning that singing and dancing were a vital component of Pueblo rituals. She couldn’t remember ever hearing Brendon whistle, much less hum. And when was the last time I sang to myself, just for the pure pleasure of it? Or danced?

  A flickering memory surfaced of her inebriated and disastrous dance in the rain. She squelched it and focused on the spectacle below.

  The young women, their hair flowing freely to their waists, wore black cotton dresses, contrasting with the broad red woven sashes and their starkly white ceremonial leggings of deer hide. White embroidered underskirts peeked from beneath their hems. They formed an inner circle and stretched out their arms, their spread fingers making a repetitive gesture as though they were gently smoothing the sown earth. Round in the circle they moved, smiling, delicately treading. Sand, colored gold by the sunlight, flurried around their softly pounding feet like stardust. Their arms rayed toward the center where the dark mystery was being entreated.

  She recognized Mud Woman – and felt an instant stab of jealousy – and intense pain. She leaned close to Peg. “Do betrotheds always adhere to promises made when they were children by their parents?”

  Peg followed her gaze and said quietly, “You know, I paid off Tony’s first wife to disappear.”

  Her eyes widened. Then, she said ruefully, “The idea sounds appealing, but I’d feel so guilty.”

  Peg smiled archly. “It’s surprising what we will do when we want something badly enough.”

  “Peg . . . do Indians . . . kiss?”

  The socialite eyed her speculatively. “It’s been my experience, Alessandra, and I emphasize, my experience, that that expression among the Indians is reserved for only the deepest affection.”

  She returned her attention to Mud Woman and the other dancers. Watching the performance, she felt as if she had crossed over into another world. Purple mist wreathed the guardian Mystery Mountain. Sweet, blue smoke coiled from chimneys. Lacy cottonwoods and warm-colored willows enclosed the plaza like a fairy Magic Ring. Deep, throbbing drum beats echoed around the plaza, filling the ears, the blood, the mind, the heart, the womb.

  Come to me. Come to me.

  The back-and-forth sawing of notched sticks introduced a new movement: a ring of men outside the women’s circle. They walked, rather than danced, round and round to the right. The booming drums were counterpoint to the jingling bells on the men’s moccasins.

  The voices rose gently, yet full of vibrant power. As if within that inner circle existed a Being with deep purpose and wisdom. Their expressions were luminous, those of a people deeply fulfilled.

  Suddenly the dance ceased, followed by exultant cries from the tribe that brought shivers to the onlookers.

  She observed the tribe with the envy of an outsider, one whose familial spirit would never be so close, so trusting. The total trust in one another and in the goodness and bounty of something so elemental as the earth and nature and something else so mysterious as that-which-has-no-name.

  Is this what Christians called the “I am that I am“?

  Before me is a living religion.

  Silently, as the last rays of the sun retreated from the sky, the two circles became one, the men mingling with the women.

  At the same time a solitary drum began beating, she recognized Man, now sitting in the circle’s center. How he got there she couldn’t fathom. Surely, she would have seen him enter the plaza. So much bigger than the other Puebloans, his physique was unmistakable.

  The rhythmic thud-thud-thud of his hands, his deep and throbbing drum reverberating throughout the plaza, and the strong and good and very masculine sound of his voice reached her, calling once again, insistently.

  Come to me. Come to me.

  Chapter Ten

  The most perfect of September days spread across northern New Mexico, a difficult distinction because most days were nigh perfect. This was one of the lazy days when shimmering sunlight, seventy-degree temperature, and dry, fragrant air combined to produce a feeling of suspended contentment and even an undefinable happiness.

  Uncaring, Alessandra lay on her stomach in bed, one arm slung over the side, fingers brushing the floor. She had no energy. Not enough even to pick up the half empty bottle of rye on the floor next to her hand and finish it off. She wore only a housedress, eschewing the propriety of undergarments. Her hair tickling the bottom of her shoulder blades now, invited a pack rat to nest. Dishes in the dishpan were unwashed. Ubiquitous sand coated her few pieces of furniture.

  She simply couldn’t muster the interest to care about anything. That wasn’t true. She cared about her Indians friends and preserving their balanced approach to living. Letters furiously scribbled to Washington socialites on her kitchen table awaited only addressing. But a bloody coughing spell had delayed that.

  And two nights before, she had dragged her uncooperating, lethargic body to the latest, well-publicized planning meeting of the Indian Defense Association, this time at Joseph Henry Sharp’s studio, a rundown penitente chapel he had purchased in 1909. Artistic luminaries like Russian artist Nicolai Fechin rallied to the cause when she volunteered suggestions regarding Washington policy so Henri could more clearly present his case to the various Pueblo tribes. Poor Henri, he had looked overwhelmed but determined nevertheless.

  In the distance, the soft ringing of the morning’s school bell by some unseen hand brought her full circle . . . back to Jeremy and his absence. With him gone, she just couldn’t find any purpose for her life. Not that she was suicidal. But if one of New Mexico’s frequent lightning bolts struck her dead . . . well, that’d be all right, too.

  Except she was condemned to live . . . at least through her emotional pain. The physical form, the stabbing in her chest, her lungs, had become a hated companion, detested as much as her self-alienation. This sense of living outside herself, outside of life, was becoming too much for her to endure. She had never considered herself fragile, yet she knew she was slipping surely over the edge into madness. She was falling, falling in love with Man, and that was the worst. Jeremy would always be her son. Man would never be her love.

  It was madness to entertain such a preposterous idea. She needed to keep busy, keep out thoughts of both Jeremy and him. Still, she could not bring herself to interrupt her sequestered existence.

  When she heard rustling in the sala, she turned her head toward the door. Man stood there, shrouded in his preferred white, dark skin contrasting with his cloak as aspen might against mahogany. His dark eyes, prominent nose, and full lips reminded her of a kachina mask representing the spirit of the invisible forces of life.

  “We walk.”

  She turned her head away, toward the cream-colored stuccoed wall. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  Puzzled by his simple yet commanding response, she raised up on her elbows and stared at him. “You can’t make me.” It was a statement inflected with curiosity, not petulant defiance.

  “A child’s answer. I come because you want to walk. Your Spirit wants to talk to your head.”

  “Oh Man, not this morning. I feel like shit.”

  His heavy-lidded gaze scanned her features. He grinned. “You look like shit, too.”

  She groaned and flopped back down, this time on her back, fastening the hatches of her lids. “Not today. Please. No cheerfulness, do you mind?”

  A finger lifted her left lid. Near her face, his eyes twinkled. “Yes. I have prepared. We go. You will get well. In spirit, first.” His wide mouth curved with mirth.

  “
Indian humor leaves a lot to be desired,” she grumbled.

  “You obey.”

  She sighed. By now she realized his will was unyielding when he chose to exert it. “Let’s get this over with.” She pushed aside the coverlet, sat up and swung her bare feet over the edge, and felt a swirl of dizziness. Once the room rightened, she pushed upright. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to bother to change her dress or comb her hair. What a fashion plate she presented. She doubted if any of her friends from the past would even recognize her now.

  Man might refuse to be her lover, but if he weren’t her friend . . . . Perhaps it was precisely because he was, although she yearned for him to take her again, ravishing her body. Ached for his warm, intuiting hands on her flesh. . . his magnificent sex moving inside her, reawakening her dried up female organs to silky, sluicing life.

  His knowing lips tasting mine in the kiss that is soul-giving.

  But that was not to be, and she resigned herself to the blessing of his friendship. How comforting to have someone who knew her as she was. Not the facade of daughter, debutante, wife, mother. Just her from the perspective of Alessandra the person. He knew all her weaknesses, her pettiness, her selfishness . . . and forgave her. She felt she could tell him anything. In his sight, she was whole.

  He collected her moccasins from beneath the straight-back chair and knelt. His big hands first slipped on one moccasin, then the other. She swayed, aroused violently by his mere touch. Amazing, the energy coming off him was palpable.

  Annoyed by his insistent arrogant presumption, she said nothing, swept past him, and headed for the rear door and the portal, but hesitated in its shadows. Intense sunlight was not a comforting prospect to her throbbing head.

  “Where to?”

  He held out her riding jacket, which he must have taken from the peg on his way outside. The other big hand gestured toward one of the cottonwoods along the acequia banks. A pair of horses was tethered there.

  She flung him a blistering look of mistrust. “I thought you said we were going walking.”

  “We ride first.”

  “You said walk.” She could be insistent, too.

  “We travel far . . . to Blue Lake. Then we walk.”

  Her eyes widened. “Blue Lake’s sacred. No white men are permitted there . . .uhh, right?”

  “But you are white woman.” He grinned again, and instantly she detested anything or anyone who could feel good this morning. Detested anyone who was so at ease with himself.

  She hadn’t ridden in years. And bareback only a couple of times as a child. These unsaddled horses, hers a plum red piebald and his a bald faced pinto, didn’t look like children’s ponies. Their halters had been fashioned of maguey fiber, with magenta and green tassels. That was the extent of their livery.

  After several exhausting tries, she managed to get a leg across her mount’s warm back then squirmed to shove the hem of her dress down at least to cover her knees. Man merely sat on his pinto, waiting patiently for her to ready herself. Obviously, he refused to lay a disdaining hand on her. When she firmly gripped a fistful of mane hair and pushed her shoulders back, he turned his horse and led the way.

  On unshod hoofs, the two horses padded silently along the sandy path, as though sharing the reverence of this spiritual journey the humans had undertaken.

  As usual, Man didn’t feel conversation was significant. He appeared to be wholly self contained . . . unless one watched him carefully. Then one noticed his whole being spoke continually through his acute awareness of the most minute detail. The way his head canted in one direction. His torso shifted imperceptibly in another. Small animal tracks. A bent aspen twig. A shrill bird call. The pink cloud-streaked sky.

  If all this registered with him, she wondered if he was just as aware of the most minute detail about herself . . . like the small mole just below her right nipple his forefinger had delighted in circling, the faint stretch marks striating her belly that his tongue had more than once exotically traced, her soul crying out to his?

  As the horses climbed higher and higher, their flanks began to steam, mingling with the sweat off her thighs and causing a mild burning where flesh rubbed horsehair. Juniper and pungent cedar scrub offered scant shade. Farther up, up into the folds of the crystalline-rose mountain, blue spruce, aspen and birch grew denser . . . even more aromatic. The air cooled, thinned. The need to breathe deeper was not unpleasant. She could imagine all kinds of spirits able to penetrate the thinner air from beyond man’s realm.

  Then again, her imagination had been quite freely liberated from normal constraints by her consumption of rye whiskey during the night. Any serious thoughts had been numbed, leaving only her senses to be stimulated. After a while, she gradually had the feeling the magical woodlands whispered spiritual messages and the mountain had its own consciousness of her presence.

  Having eaten nothing since the night before, and then only a bowl of Peg’s stale dry cereal, Alessandra’s stomach rumbled. As low and indistinct as the rumble was, Man heard it. He turned with a grin, and pointed eastward, farther up the mountain. “We will eat . . . there, at the waterfall.”

  More than food, she wanted water to flush the alcohol that seemed to ooze from every pore, water to soothe her aching head. So, when a thin stream joined the edge of the path, she contemplated the difficulty of an awkward dismount. Man ignored her longing glance and pressed upward. Where fissures of rock had fallen away, the canyon path narrowed dangerously. Her piebald followed closely behind his pinto, and she accepted the necessity of continuing on.

  As usual, Man wore a white cotton shirt, but now belted with a knife sling, and loose trousers that clung damply around muscled brown legs controlling and guiding his horse. Forcefully, she directed her gaze away from his all-too-masculine figure. He was forbidden to her. She was married. Nothing good could come from this time-consuming, body-occupying, soul-stealing, wanting of him.

  I want you. Want you. Want you. All the while.

  Remember, you have your life waiting for you back East . . . your dream of an art gallery to pursue and Jeremy to raise; Man has his calling of spiritual leader and his Mud Woman to marry.

  Until then, for the next six months, she had only two things to do – recover from the ravages of tuberculosis and recover the Indians’ rapidly loss of rights.

  Ahead, the stream tumbled from a high, steep cliff and cascaded over the opening of grotto-like cave before them. The water roared a deafening cacophony. All around, the ground was dampened by the cataract’s mist. She lifted her face, collecting the moisture and letting it clear her foggy brain. As they skirted the edge, the horses slid in the sticky clay but regained their footing to pick up a pine-needled path leading off a short way.

  Finally, the evergreens gave way to an emerald clearing with a brook running through it. Gifted with the melting of winter’s heavy snows, the meadow did not suffer the drought that relentlessly hounded the desert.

  Man dismounted. Relieved, she did the same, thighs aching, knees wobbling. Posthaste, she dropped to her knees on the brook’s grassy banks and quaffed the cold water spilling from her cupped hands.

  “God, I must be a cosmic looney,” she muttered. “Going up the mountain to see Moses. All I need is a burning — ”

  Man paused from stripping soft twigs from pine branches. “What?”

  “This is a private conversation,” she moaned. “Do you mind?”

  His smile annoyed her. He set to spreading the twigs he collected for her to sit on and indicated it was a protection against the damp ground. From the ample folds of his blanket mantle, he produced a little tuft of green fern.

  “Mint. Takes away mouth’s bad taste.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Now that’s real tact.”

  Sampling the mint, however, she grudgingly admitted he was right. Undoubtedly, that explained the Indians’ consistently sweet breath.

  Next, he opened his large palm to show her wild strawberries.

  “A grocery s
tore as well as a drug store.” She laughed dryly. “But, yes, I can be bought.” Smacking her lips, she gobbled the tartly sweet offering, softly moaning with pleasure.

  He put his forefinger against his lips, signaling for her silence, then nodded toward a clump of pines. She didn’t understand . . . until she saw the deer. Three does and a fawn gracefully, cautiously approached the brook. They halted, ears pricked. Then, majestically, the animals resumed their vigilant pace.

  Man leaned near, his two long braids swinging forward on either side of his strong neck, saying in a low voice, “No bucks.”

  She shrugged as if to say, “So?”

  “Fox, wolf, mountain lion . . . they might come. But the bucks are under spell of the female, the doe. She is the strong one in nature. She makes the magic. The wild beast, he must follow where she leads until sacrificed. Eaten . . . taken in.” He thumped his muscle-corded midsection. “And made into a new force. For this, we have deer dance.”

  “I watched you.” She popped another strawberry in her mouth and mumbled, “At the deer dance.”

  “I know.”

  She choked the strawberry down in one swallow. Did he notice me watching for him? Or had he been watching for me? She didn’t know what to reply. No snappy Lawrence-type repartee came to mind. She thought about Jung’s stylized profundity. But there, in that halcyon sunlight, anything less than truth, her truth, could not pass her lips.

  And what is my truth? she asked of herself for the hundredth time. Ah, that was her real problem. She no longer knew. Her father would have declared there was only black and white. No confusion as to right or wrong. But here in Taos valley colors ran riot, as did her blood and her emotions and her life.

  He passed her another strawberry. And patiently waited.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “No thing.”

  Everyone wanted something. A twitchy nervousness rippled through her, like ripples from a cast stone that effected the farthest shore. She looked at the strawberry she was clutching. It had colored her palm scarlet. “Do you want me to say something?