Desert Hearts

  “Día, Elizabeth, how else do we do it at home but naked?”

  “But that is in our bed…under the covers.”

  The sun was going down over the canyon wall and Elizabeth shivered.

  Michael released her. “Get yourself washed, darlin’, and quickly, for I have more than bathing on me mind.”

  They splashed at each other, laughing like children, and then came out and stood in the last puddle of sunshine as they rubbed themselves dry with a linen sack.

  Michael had spread out the blankets and he pulled Elizabeth down on them.

  The sun was more than halfway over the canyon’s rim and they lay there watching the light leave and the canyon become veiled in twilight.

  Elizabeth shivered and Michael pulled her closer and wrapped the blankets around them. The dying of the light had darkened both their moods and neither made a move toward the other.

  “What are ye thinking, Elizabeth,” Michael asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “I am thinking of all the Diné who have come to the canyon over the years and who will never come again. I am ashamed of myself for forgetting and just enjoying myself in the sun and the water.” She paused and then continued, almost harshly. “We are so lucky to be alive and together, Michael. I can’t help wondering why it is that we are so happy and Antonio and Serena are suffering so…if they are even still alive….”

  Michael stroked her hair gently. “Oh, muirneach, if anyone knew the answer to that question….”

  “I am so happy, Michael,” she said, ending on a sob, “but then I think of all that has happened, is still going on. We have no right to this.”

  Michael hesitated. “I don’t have any answers for you, Elizabeth. But I am thinking that our happiness is not an everyday happiness, born from easy times. We are together now because everything in our lives brought us together to this place. We have been living and walking toward one another for years, a ghra. And those years were filled with much sadness. ‘Tis that very sadness that made us who we are, Elizabeth. It formed our hearts for one another.”

  Elizabeth sighed a long sigh, as though releasing some of her grief.

  Michael continued. “I’m thinking that there is no happy-ever-after. We cannot just ride away from what happened here.”

  “Oh, Michael, and I would not want to.”

  “But there is ever-after, my beloved,” he whispered, leaning down and gently touching her lips with his. “We will find a way to live through both joy and sorrow.”

  His cheek was wet. She could feel it as he kissed her and she licked at the tears after her mouth was free.

  “Lie back, Michael,” she whispered. He lay back on the blankets, the tears still slipping down, and she licked his cheeks clean and then moved her mouth down. This time, it was her tongue circling his nipples and following the track of black hair down to his navel.

  “Día,” he groaned.

  She slid back up along his body and then slipped herself down on him, sheathing him in her warmth and wetness. She moved very slowly at first, as he did, as though they were straggling for words, trying to find a way for their bodies to speak to one another.

  It was slow and sweet and exquisitely pleasant torture, to be on the edge between great joy and great sorrow. Both knew instinctively what the other wanted: to go as deep as the heart, to reach to one another’s core. Not to heal each other’s heartbreak, but to draw from it, as a well. As they sought one another’s hearts, they found the world’s heart that had been broken over and over and over again and yet was still an inexhaustible source of joy.

  They reached their climax together, for one had disappeared into the other. The pleasure was greater than either had ever known, but neither could tell whose it was. It was all pleasure, all sorrow, coming up to them from the red earth that held them and shining down upon them from the stars.

  Afterward, they lay there in each other’s arms. It was a moonless night and as the blackness grew deeper and more stars were revealed, Elizabeth could no longer find the patterns of the constellations, only the broad swath of the Milky Way. Suddenly she saw a star blaze up and fall swiftly in an arc and Michael heard her sharp intake of breath.

  “A shooting star, my darlin’. A good luck sign for us. We will be needing it, I am thinking, for there will be some hard years ahead.”

  Elizabeth nestled more closely against him. “Nothing will be so difficult that we can’t help each other through it, Michael.”

  They fell asleep in one another’s arms and when Orion returned just before dawn, he settled himself next to Elizabeth and all three slept, cradled by the canyon and watched over by the last handful of stars.

  Epilogue

  Fort Sumner, 1868

  “A package for you, Antonio. From Ramah. You must have a good friend there,” commented the Fort Sumner postmaster as he handed over the parcel.

  Antonio only nodded in agreement and turned away. Never since their long walk had he really talked with a bilagaana, soldier or otherwise. He kept his face still and his eyes expressionless. Not one of these men would ever come to know him. Not like his friend Michael Burke had.

  He wondered whether he and Serena and their daughter would have survived without these packages from the Burkes. Many of the Diné had, of course. But almost a quarter of the people had died: of fever, dysentery, starvation. And many more of them had been almost constantly sick. And some of the young women…. He frowned when he thought about how many had sold themselves to the soldiers for extra ration tickets and were now suffering from those diseases caused by bad relations between men and women.

  His frown turned to a smile when he saw his wife sitting outside their shelter with their daughter. The little girl was four now and when she saw her father approaching, she jumped up and ran to him, clutching at his legs so it was hard for him to walk.

  “You had better come and sit by me, daughter,” Serena called out. “I need your help with this yarn.”

  Perhaps it was their daughter who had helped to keep them alive, thought Antonio as he watched her ran back to sit beside her mother. By some miracle she had survived a difficult first year at Bosque Redondo when both she and her mother had suffered from the dysentery brought on by the alkaline water at the fort. But after that, despite the continuing desperate conditions she had somehow thrived. Well, not thrived, he commented to himself sarcastically. She was thinner and smaller than a four-year-old should be, but she had kept joy and love and hope alive in their hearts.

  “Is that from Michael and Elizabeth? Is there a letter from them?” Serena asked eagerly.

  “Give me a minute, wife,” he grumbled, sitting down next to her. “Let me use your knife.” Serena passed her knife over and Antonio sawed at the rough twine that bound the brown paper. Their daughter sat there, her eyes wide and expectant. She knew that there would be something special in that package for her. They came every few months, these packages from Michael and Eliz…the people with strange bilagaana names. She thought she might have met the man when she was very little, for she had a faint memory of waking up at night and seeing a white face with very blue eyes looking down at her. At first she had been scared and whimpered in her fear and the face withdrew, but her father had whispered words of reassurance and she had closed her eyes and gone back to sleep.

  She wished her father would just rip the package open, but he never did. He unfolded the paper slowly and carefully.

  “Look, wife, a length of flannel and one of wool.”

  He passed the material over to Serena, who fingered the flannel appreciatively. “I will be able to make you a new shirt and pants,” she said with a smile.

  “You will make yourself and our daughter something first.”

  Serena shook her head and said firmly, “No, you are the one whose clothes are falling off.”

  Antonio grunted and pulled out a packet of sugar and a similar one of coffee.

  “Now we won’t have to boil and boil the leftover grains, wife,”
he said with a smile.

  At the bottom was a flat brown paper packet and Antonio opened that very carefully. He pulled out two pages, one a lined ledger paper and the other a plain sheet. His daughter saw a very small parcel slip out. She wanted to grab it, for she wondered if her father had even seen it when her mother reached over and picked it up.

  “Now I wonder what this could be? But read us the letter first,” she added, her eyes twinkling.

  Antonio unfolded the pages and cleared his throat and started to read. “Dear Friends—”

  The little girl squirmed. She couldn’t help it.

  “Here, daughter,” said her mother, handing her the little square of paper. “This is for you, I am sure.”

  Her fingers trembled as they untwisted the ends of the paper. There were three round red-and-white buttons inside and she slowly turned them over and over in her hand. They were very pretty and she wondered what they were made of. Then she felt her hand becoming sticky and licked her fingers. They tasted sweet!

  Her mother and father laughed as they watched her and then looked over her head at each other. It felt so good to laugh. There wasn’t much laughter at Fort Sumner, except for the drunken laughter of the troopers on Saturday nights.

  She touched her tongue to the red-and-white buttons.

  “Go ahead, you can put it in your mouth. It is ‘candy.’ ” Serena used the bilagaana word. Her daughter placed a button carefully on her tongue. “Now go ahead and suck it,” Antonio encouraged her.

  Sweetness ran down her throat and a fresh clean taste filled her whole mouth and her tongue tingled. Her eyes alight, she offered the two candies left in her hand to her mother and father.

  “Those are for you,” Serena wanted to say. But she didn’t. Her daughter was a Diné child and the Diné shared. So all three of them sat there quietly sucking away at the sweet, hard candy, momentarily lost in a few minutes of shared pleasure.

  Serena broke the silence. “I haven’t tasted mint in such a long time….” Her voice trailed off as she thought of chewing on the fresh green leaves of the wild mint that grew near the canyon springs at home.

  “I know,” said Antonio softly.

  The little girl looked at her parents. She could feel it again, the heavy sadness that was an almost physical presence at the fort. It had to do with this place called Dinetah that she could not remember. All of the people were weighted down with it. She wondered all the time about “home” and once, when she was very little, she had asked her father why they couldn’t just go there. Now she knew better. They had to stay here because of the soldiers.

  “What does the letter say, husband?”

  Antonio began again and Serena listened with great pride as her husband read the bilagaana words. It was one thing to speak English; it was quite another to be able to read it. But Antonio had grown tired of having soldiers read to him and had used what little free time he had to learn from one of them.

  Dear Friends,

  As always, we hope you are well and that this package meets some of your needs. We are sorry that this time we cannot send any money, but things at the ranch have been difficult this year, what with little rain and one promising colt killed by a mountain lion.

  Elizabeth includes a small sketch of Caitlin in front of our ranch house. She is a frisky little girl and it is hard to get her to sit still. (Elizabeth says that I mean “lively” not “frisky” and that I’ve been working too hard with the horses and can’t tell the difference between a child and a filly!)

  We have found out that General Sherman and Colonel Tappan are the peace commissioners assigned to look into Diné affairs. Please God this effort will finally end your exile. I have great hopes of it and know in my heart that when we next meet it will be in Dinetah.

  May you all be well,

  Your friends, Michael and Elizabeth Burke

  “Do you think he is right?” Serena asked, afraid to let any hope into her heart.

  Antonio sighed. “Nothing happened when they summoned the headmen three years ago. But surely they will be able to see that we can’t endure this much longer. The crops have failed every year, there is no firewood, and the water is poisoning us….” His voice trailed off. Of what use was it to catalog their woes. “Yet Dodd has been speaking for us. He is the first agent we have had in a long time who seems to care.”

  “You need to read this letter to your uncle.”

  “I will.”

  * * * *

  That night Antonio arrived late, after Serena and his daughter had gone to sleep. He had met with a gathering of the headmen and told them of the imminent arrival of the commissioners.

  “You must speak with them, uncle,” he pleaded. “You must make them see that if they let us leave here, we will survive only in our own country.”

  “How many times must we say it before they will hear it,” Manuelito responded bitterly.

  Barboncito and Delgadito nodded.

  “As many times as it takes to make them hear,” responded Antonio. “This new agent, Dodd, has listened and learned much since he arrived.”

  The older men nodded.

  “We will try again, nephew,” said his uncle with a tired smile. “We will keep saying it until they are so sick of hearing it they will let us go.”

  A few days later, Antonio waited impatiently outside the adobe officers’ quarters where Manuelito and the rest of the headmen were gathered in conference with Sherman and Tappan. The bilagaana had been at Sumner for two days, looking into everything at the fort and its surroundings. They had learned of the crop failures, the alkaline, water, and the fifteen miles men had to walk for mesquite wood. Now they were letting the headmen speak.

  When his uncle and the rest finally emerged, Antonio looked at Manuelito with a question on his face. His uncle only shook his head.

  Barboncito spoke first. “Your uncle has always held out the longest,” he said with an ironic smile. “He was one of the last to come to the Bosque. He is silent because there is no answer yet. But we made it clear to these men that we will agree to any conditions as long as we can return to Dinetah. And only Dinetah,” he added. “I think there was some idea of sending us to the territory in Oklahoma.”

  Antonio looked at his uncle. Manuelito grudgingly admitted that it was premature to shake his head. “Perhaps,” he said sarcastically, “we will be the only people to keep our homeland.”

  Antonio understood his uncle’s cynicism very well. He had had a long, hard experience of the bilagaana’s treachery. And he was right. Most nations had been moved from their own lands. Why should the Diné be any different? The most the headmen could accomplish would be to get them out of this death trap.

  * * * *

  “And yet….”

  “And yet?” prodded Serena.

  “For some reason, I believe that this time they will allow us to go home.” Antonio smiled. “You may laugh at me tomorrow, wife.”

  “I am not laughing, nor will I be. Dodd has become a good friend to the people. He will add his word. Maybe we will see home again.” Serena’s voice trailed off and she and Antonio sat there, seeing red rock and clear water, and the clouds gathering over the holy mountains.

  * * * *

  The camp was alive with speculation and hope and when the headmen were summoned again two days later, the people knew that something had been decided and many of them crowded around the adobe building, waiting for the decision that would determine their destiny.

  This time, Antonio stayed away. He couldn’t bear it if his uncle came out with the same expression on his face. He would wait with his wife and daughter. And so he sat next to Serena as she spun her wool and he repaired his bridle, which was falling apart in his hands. It seemed to take days, but it was only hours later that a shadow fell over them. Antonio looked up into his uncle’s face. There were tears in Manuelito’s cheeks and Antonio stood up, letting his awl and bridle fall in the dust.

  “Uncle?”

  “Nephew.”


  There was a long silence and then Manuelito whispered, “We are alive. We are going home.”

  For a moment it seemed to Antonio as though everything stopped, including his heart. So many years of suffering over, just like that. It was almost too much. And then the world started again; he could see the tears running down his uncle’s seamed face and they were the streams running down the canyons of Dinetah. He could hear the people all around him, talking again after so long a silence. They were alive, truly alive. Suddenly he was aware that Serena stood next to him and he turned to her and gathered her into his arms.

  Ramah, New Mexico, 1868

  Elizabeth was making bread and Caitlin was next to her, kneading her own “loaf,” a small piece of dough her mother had given her. Elizabeth smiled as she looked down at her daughter’s chubby fingers working a rather dirty piece of dough. It had fallen on the floor twice and Caitlin had reached down to pet the cat, which had twined itself around her legs. It would not be the cleanest miniature loaf, thought her mother, but it was for Michael, and Elizabeth knew he would praise it and eat it eagerly, cat hairs and all, for he adored his daughter.

  “Come now, Cait, it is time to let the bread rise and then we will bake it.”

  Caitlin gave up her lump reluctantly and watched her mother slip it under the edge of the damp towel covering the rest of the dough.

  “How does it get bigger, Mama?”

  “The yeast makes it rise, and the heat of the kitchen. Yeast likes the warm weather.”

  “What is yeast, Mama?”

  What is yeast, thought Elizabeth. What is yeast? “Oh, it is something that makes little bubbles of air, like you do when you blow through your lips, and the bubbles make the dough stretch and grow.” Thank goodness her daughter accepted that explanation. Really, thought Elizabeth, being a mother called upon everything a woman knew!

  She heard the sound of their wagon approaching. “Listen, Cait! That’s your da.”

  Caitlin, who had been peeking under the towel waiting to see the bubbles form, turned and ran for the door.