Wind Song

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  “The larger three buildings are the dormitories. The nearest belongs to the younger girls and boys, the one with the blue shutters to the older boys, and the furthest building to the older girls. There, behind the cottonwoods, is the school, and next to it the cafeteria.”

  The only other structure was a row of single- story apartments. Some had cars in the driveways, others did not. “Yours is the third one,” Marshall said.

  He took the one suitcase she had brought out of the rear of the Bronco and handed her the apartment key. “Abbie?”

  She looked up at him, puzzled by the inflection in his voice. “Yes?”

  “Don’t let Miss Halliburton intimidate you into changing your mind.”

  She was sure that he had been about to say something else. She smiled. “I don’t intimidate easily, Marshall.”

  But that wasn’t entirely true, she thought, as she let herself into the empty, bleak apartment.

  Cody Strawhand had managed to intimidate her merely by the sheer force of his masculinity. His deliberate rudeness had annoyed her, but she had been even more annoyed at the unsettling effect his presence seemed to have on her. She had spent half a lifetime paying for an impulsive marriage at seventeen to a husband who was hardly ever home. Another man to complicate her life was the last thing she needed now.

  * * * * *

  The hand slid lightly up her calf and Abbie yelped. The tin can and its crayons, pencils and scissors clattered onto the tiled floor like a tumultuous hail storm. Two days of teaching first grade still had not prepared her for the open curiosity of two hundred fifty-two Navajo children.

  But then, a life at the Mount St. Mary on the Hudson boarding school for the daughters of celebrities, diplomats and so on, followed by twenty years of marriage to a renowned lawyer, had hardly prepared her for the Kaibeto Indian Reservation.

  Could she survive her two-year contract in the primitive desolation of northeastern Arizona? She had to. A thirty-seven-year-old woman with no previous teaching experience had little hope for a position in a normal suburban school system.

  At that moment Miss Halliburton, the principal and third-grade teacher, loomed in the doorway. She was a tall, raw-boned woman with a plain face. Though she was in her early fifties, no lines marred her sallow complexion, and no wrinkles rumpled her severely tailored clothing. A mask of powder that never cracked and a pewter gray wig were her two concessions to femininity.

  Her eyes, the flat gray-brown shade of stone, glared impatiently. “Well, what happened this time, Mrs. Dennis?”

  Abbie glanced down beneath the desk where the boy knelt, watching her solemnly. “Joey Kills the Soldier was feeling my hosiery,” she replied with a mortified smile.

  “Oh, that.” The spinster huffed with exasperation. “You’ll just have to get used to it if you intend to stay.”

  In a rare moment of feminine vanity that overrode her military bearing, Miss Halliburton lifted her hand to pat the synthetic hair that resembled a ball of steel wool. “My first week at Kaibeto the youngsters kept fingering my curls. Indian children are fascinated with curly or light hair, you know.”

  Abbie never let on that she knew the woman wore a wig. “I’m finding that out.” She recalled her first day when a portrait-perfect Navajo girl, Karen Manygoats, had tentatively stroked Abbie’s cascade of tawny gold hair.

  The older woman turned to leave, and Abbie said, “Miss Halliburton, just a moment.” She rose from her chair and crossed to the door. “It’s Robert Tsinnijinnie.” She nodded surreptitiously to the eleven-year-old who stood stonily looking out the window toward the massive domed Navajo Mountain that dominated the northern horizon. “He refuses to color with the rest. Even if he doesn’t speak English, I know he’s old enough to understand it.”

  From between almost-lashless lids the principal eyed the slender boy. “It’s his first year at school. You can spot the first-year children by their G.I. haircuts.”

  Abbie glanced at Robert, who had not moved from his post by the window. His hair was cropped almost as close as a sheep at shearing time.

  “It still isn’t necessary to practically shave the child’s head,” Abbie protested. She was appalled at the impersonal treatment of the children. She could well imagine the indignity the child must have suffered at the haircut, especially at his age.

  The woman’s knuckles rapped the wall. “What I am trying to impress on you is that there are a lot of procedures you’re not going to like or understand, Mrs. Dennis. But you’ll just have to get used to them. You can’t be a soft touch and survive out here.”

  Well, wasn’t that what Abbie wanted? To find out how capable a person she was? Whether she could survive on her own initiative rather than coast through life as Mrs. Brad Dennis, the attorney’s wife?

  But teaching on a Navajo Indian Reservation? She must be reaching senility early. More than likely she would lose whatever identity she had achieved, rather than discover it, in this wilderness of sheep and greasewood that comprised almost a quarter of Arizona and was larger than all of Pennsylvania. She was one-hundred-twenty- five miles from the nearest commercial airport , miniscule Pulliam Airport just outside Flagstaff—one-hundred-and- twenty-five miles of undulating desert.

  Yes, she must have lost her mind when she signed the BIA two-year contract.

  “You’ll just have to learn to adapt, Mrs. Dennis,” the principal reiterated before marching from the room.

  Despite all her good intentions, despite her resolve to do just that—adapt—Abbie found herself clenching her hands in agitation on Friday when she discovered that lovely, cherubic Karen had impetigo and nothing could be done for the skin infection. Since the school had no clinic, she took Karen across to the children’s dormitory, which she knew had an isolation room.

  “Are you certain?” she questioned one of the Navajo aides, all of whom had at least a high school diploma. “Only aspirin and antacids?” The dusky-skinned, lovely young woman nodded her head vigorously, and her ebony hair swished back and forth against the small of her back. “Yes, yes. We are not allowed to give out drugs. We must wait for the weekly visit of the BIA’s Public Health doctor.”

  An hour earlier Dorothy Goldman, the second- grade teacher who only had one year left until retirement, had said the same—and added in a whiskey whisper that it wasn’t wise to make waves.

  “But what happens in an emergency?” Abbie asked the young Indian woman now.

  Dalah, clad in jeans and a yellow knit pullover, smiled. Abbie had found herself coming up against that smile often that week—the friendly, blithe smile of teachers and aides who accepted everything as inevitable and right and questioned nothing. “Oh, then it’s all right to go into Tuba City. You can use the school’s Jeep.”

  Fifty-two miles to Tuba City! “Give Karen a warm bath and use plenty of soap. I’ll be back.” On foot, the three miles to the trading post seemed much longer. Sand crunched inside her open-toed high heels. With sidewalks connecting the various buildings on the school grounds, she had forgotten about the hazard. She would wear something more sensible next time she decided to hike.

  Before she reached the foot, which was scarcely wide enough for more than one person, a small dust devil danced across her path, pelting her eyes with sand and whipping her jersey dress high about her thighs. Eyes squinted against the sand and hands fighting her whirling skirts, she stepped out onto the footbridge. It shuddered beneath the force of the wind. Modesty abandoned, she grabbed hold of the railing. Her gaze dropped to the wash far below, and vertigo seized her. The knuckles of the hand that clutched the railing turned white.

  The dust devil spun on past, but she couldn’t relinquish her grip on the railing. She felt that she would never make it to the other side. Then a hand grasped her wrist, and browned fingers gently pried loose her grip. An electrical charge zpped throuogh her. Her gaze spiraled up to encounter the impersonal gaze of the Navajo she had met her first day at Kaibeto. “I’ll walk you across the bridge, Mrs. Denn
is.”

  The height wadded up her stomach and tossed it over the bridge railing. “Call a fireman!”

  At that he grinned. “A Navajo is the best you’re going to get right now.”

  She felt an Out-of-Body-Experience coming on. Zombie-like, she walked just in front of him, grateful for the reassuring firmness of his hold on her upper arm and terribly aware of his presence in every nerve cell of her body. Once she reached the bridge’s end, she steadied herself with a deep breath and turned to him. Why did the sun seem so blasted hot? Perspiration beaded her upper lip. The air seemed to crackle around them, as if charged by lightning. “I feel so silly, clinging like a scared child to that railing.”

  “Only children have the right to be afraid?” he asked.

  She blinked, unprepared for such a direct remark. In Philly a man would have made some superficial reply. Brad would have said that she did look pretty silly.

  Cody Strawhand didn’t wear a hat this time; instead, he had the typical Navajo’s red bandana wrapped about his wide forehead. She noted that his dark leather-colored hair glinted in the sun with streaks of honeyed brown.

  Now that she had the courage to look him fully in the face, she was surprised to see that he had few of the features characteristic of the Navajo children she taught. Oh, he shared the deep-set eyes, the high-ridged bones over hollowed cheeks, the narrow-bladed nose, the generous curve of the lips—though all of these features were stamped in a harder cast. However, many an Anglo possessed those same characteristics. And Cody Strawhand’s eyes, flanked by a network of faint sun-wrinkles, were dark brown flecked with green the shade of the junipers, not the flat black of Indian eyes.

  Unaccountably, she felt threatened by this overpowering virility and the way he seemed to see through to her innermost thoughts, perceiving even her fear of heights. She brought a distant, aloof smile to her lips. “I’ve never thought about it—fear not being solely a child’s right.”

  He released her arm. “The word ‘right’—it belongs to the Anglo.”

  The sudden inflection in his voice would have frozen a flame. “I—I don’t understand,” she said.

  “The sun—the wind—the water. They are gifts. Not rights. The white man came brandishing paper—deeds of title—his right to the land.”

  She almost countered with the fact that that had happened centuries ago—that it was futile to argue the point now. And absurd. Then she realized that the discussion had nothing to do with Anglo versus Indian. The man simply wished to put her on the defensive. Obviously, he felt as at odds with her as she was with him.

  She made her own voice inordinately polite. “But then, if I understand my anthropology correctly, Mr. Strawhand, the Apache and Navajo haven’t been here since Creation either. They wrested the land from primitive and gentle basketmakers, the Anasazi—the Ancient Ones.”

  “A moot point.” He smiled, a smile that did not reach his intelligent eyes, a smile that she somehow sensed challenged her as a woman. “You were on your way to the trading post?”

  The swift change from enigmatic Indian to urbane gentleman threw her. A Machiavellian tactic, she was sure. She found herself talking rapidly to cover her disconcertedness as she fell into step with him. His long legs ate up the ground between the bridge and the trading post. “I was hoping that Mr. Burnett might have something for impetigo. One of the children, Karen Many Goats, has come down with it, and the dormitory isolation room, incredibly, has nothing for it.”

  “Yes, incredible, isn’t it?” he said flatly. “Yet the BIA finds budget allotments for computer scientists and manpower development specialists.”

  His voice had a deep resonant quality, the kind that hinted at intrigue, captivating the listener— the kind that storytellers through the ages have possessed. She wanted to listen to that voice further, but at the trading post’s porch he left her without a word and swung up into the cab of a rusted green pickup. Dust clouded the air once more as he backed the pickup away and took off down a dirt road that wound back into the canyon.

  “Well!” Abbie breathed, pushing open the screen door. “If that isn’t an Indian for you!”

  “Cockamamy!” Orville Burnett said from behind the counter. With his chaotic mop of white hair over wise, mournful eyes and his rumpled shirt and baggy pants, he looked like a cross between Albert Einstein and Mark Twain.

  “What?”

  “Cody. He’s barely an eighth Indian—that’s how Indian blood is measured, in eighths.”

  “Then why does he live here, like an Indian?”

  Old Burnett humped his shoulders in a shrug and reached for some of the chewing tobacco that filled a tobacco tin nailed to the front of the counter. “Guess that’s what Cody prefers. His father, a Navajo code talker during the Second World War, had only two-eighths Indian blood. After Chase Strawhand was elected governor—”

  “I remember coming across something about that.” It had been just after she had accepted the job at Kaibeto, when she had been reading everything she could get her hands on about the Southwest.

  “Yep, Chase Strawhand—first Indian governor of New Mexico.” Orville dipped the tobacco flakes behind his lower lip. “Anyway, Chase married a young white woman. A New Mexico senator’s daughter—and by all accounts a blonde, good-looker like yourself.”

  She smiled. “I take that as a compliment. Do Cody Strawhand’s parents live on the reservation?”

  “Nope. At least, not Cody’s mother.”

  Orville turned to heft a bag of sugar onto the shelf behind him. “Course, Cody never says nothing about his family. Only that he has mongrel blood. No doubt mixed with some French trapper from way back.” Orville turned around and splayed his gnarled hands on the counter that was grooved with initials and stained with age. “I see you’ve lasted the week now. You might just have the grit it takes to buck old lady Halliburton.”

  “Not me,” she laughed. “I just want to be a competent teacher, not reform the whole boarding school system. I need this job too badly.” She purchased a box of bicarbonate of soda. It was the only home remedy she could think of that might halt the spread of impetigo. Little Karen’s face was too adorable to be blotched with suppurating sores. Her concern for Karen Many Goats lured her thoughts back to Cody Strawhand. She wished that she could stop thinking about him.

  Still, even as she prepared for bed that night, she continued to think of him. Brushing out her hair, she wandered from the bedroom back to the combined living room and dining room, trying to divert her thoughts in other directions.

  Brad would have filed for divorce by now.

  Her kitchen was a small rectangular box, but perfect for her.

  Had Jason and Justin made the university’s football squad this year?

  The furniture, a blend of contemporary and Indian design, was shabby, no doubt secondhand. But then, she no longer had to concern herself with impressing Brad’s friends and clients, did she?

  The twins were as bad at writing as she was. She really must get a letter off to them.

  Had Dalah put the baking soda paste on Karen as she had instructed?

  Did the young Indian woman and the other aides help the children say their prayers when they tucked them into their bunk beds? Abbie thought of all the nights she had knelt before the boys’ beds. Sometimes Brad would come in and stand beside them. But never did he kneel ... as if the act of kneeling threatened his ego.

  Oh, those twins’ prayers! They had provided precious moments of reflection and amusement— and closeness. But that period was behind her, and she didn’t miss it as much as she had thought she would. She felt as if she had been wrapped in a chrysalis for twenty years, had been waiting for something, some act of nature, to release her.

  Cody, if he had been bom at the end of the war, would be her age, or maybe thirty-eight. The thought pleased her.

  Really, she must stop thinking about him. She hadn’t escaped her subservience to one man just to strangle herself in an involvement with anothe
r. She wanted to be on her own, to answer to no one but herself. This was her chance. Thirty- seven wasn’t too late to begin life again, was it? She would not think of him.

  Was he married—with several wives, as was the Navajo custom?

  Chapter 2

  “That’s very good.”

  Robert Tsinnijinnie looked at Abbie blankly, as if he didn’t understand a word she said. But she knew better now. That second week she had finally coaxed him from his post at the window to sit before the long, low table. At eleven, he dwarfed the chair. He was older than most of the boys in the first grade class, but that wasn’t unusual.

  The Navajo Tribal Council had decreed that a child could continue through the eighth grade, which was the mandatory minimum grade level, until the child reached eighteen. Mostly girls attended the boarding school, because parents needed their sons to tend the sheep. Sometimes a boy went for one year and his brother the next, alternating every other year.

  Abbie bent to study the boy’s drawing of an Indian shepherd on horseback following his sheep across a desert. Invariably Robert’s drawings showed Navajo Mountain in the background. She had noted that all the Navajo children seemed to have a sharp eye for detail. Robert’s crayon picture even showed the tracks made by the horse’s hooves in the red sand.

  Always the red landscape. Later, during recess, she commented on this to Dorothy Goldman.

  “Oh, yes,” the plump and dowdy old woman chuckled. “Red sand for the red man. The Indian says that the Great Spirit undercooked the white man, overcooked the black man, but the red man he cooked just right!”

  Abbie smiled. The Indians had a great sense of humor, which she was just beginning to appreciate. Her gaze swept over the laughing children on the playground. They still had not accepted her, but their aloofness was giving way to a cautious reserve. If only she could speak the Navajo language a little. As it was, they spoke little or no English, and she felt that she faced double the problems of an average first grade teacher.