A Man Without a Wife

by Beverly Bird

  Absurdly, Dallas felt guilty. “Well, hell, we live in the city. The state’s not all desert wasteland and ranches.”

  She turned away from him again, took a step toward Ricky, stopped, then moved again. Reflexively, Dallas followed her, stopping and starting with her. What the hell was going on here?

  She went down the arroyo wall like some sort of wild animal innately accustomed to it. One minute she was in front of him, then she dropped her purse where she stood, pushed her sleeves up and slid down on her heels. He went to the rim to look after her. Her hair swished at her shoulders. She caught a juniper with her right hand to slow her momentum and to keep her balance, then she called back up to Ricky.

  “Come on. Be careful.”

  “Careful’s not in his vocabulary,” Dallas said dryly.

  That got a funny reaction from her, too. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder—at him or Ricky, he couldn’t be sure—but in the moment it took to happen, Ricky was already past her. He plunged down the slope and Dallas decided he was going to have to join them.

  He went after them and missed his swipe at the juniper. The wall was relatively steep. There was nothing else to break his momentum, so he scrambled for traction, waving his arms for balance. He felt like an absolute fool and wondered where this male pride came from all of a sudden. It wasn’t something he was unduly long on. Then he plowed right into her from behind.

  The collision shook both of them. He was upright when he hit her but his weight sent them both forward so that they collapsed together, face down in the sand. She went wild underneath him and one elbow came back and up, to hit him squarely in the solar plexus. He grunted and rolled quickly to the side because suddenly it occurred to him that this was as much as he’d touched a woman in three years, and of all the women he might have chosen to start with, this thorny, meddlesome nurse was not one who should have made the list. Sure, she looked good, but she had none of the qualities of Mary. For that matter, she had none of the qualities that had once drawn him to any woman at all.

  But as he laid on his back, trying to catch his breath, the feel of her stayed with him, warm and real, her legs tangled with his, her bottom pressed warmly and invitingly into his groin. Somehow his face had ended up buried in her hair and he could still feel it tickling his jaw. He could still smell it, a rich, dark scent that he couldn’t quite identify but that stirred something in him all the same.

  Oh, Lord.

  She had scrambled up, as well, so that she was crouching beside him in the sand. He looked over at her and saw that her eyes burned with black fire again.

  “Clumsy—” she gasped. “Stupid! Why did you—” But then she broke off, because it had been an accident and somehow that was so much worse. Because nobody ever touched her like that deliberately—no one dared.

  On top of seeing Ricky, on top of actually talking to him... No, she couldn’t handle this. She bolted the rest of the way to her feet, breathing hard.

  “Hey, are you guys all right?” Ricky asked.

  Dallas found his voice. “Sure.”

  The boy’s clear, perfect laughter rang out. “Man, you should have seen yourselves! Crash, splat!”

  Dallas struggled up. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” I sure as hell did. He looked at Ellen, fascinated again by the way her emotions played on her face, just like when she had talked of Billy the Kid at the orphanage. First and foremost, there was panic this time. That interested him.

  “Sorry,” he said neutrally.

  Ellen skittered back a little bit, away from him. “It was...an accident.” She wrenched her eyes away from him. “The horses,” she breathed. She looked around. Ricky was already moving up behind one.

  “Not like that!” she called out, alarmed.

  Ricky stopped fast. “Why?”

  “Because their vision isn’t like ours. They can see more sideways than we do. He can sort of see you behind him, but he can’t tell who or what you are. And a horse’s natural defense in the wild is to kick and flee when something spooks him.”

  Ricky’s jaw dropped. “He’ll kick me?” He backed up again fast.

  “Not if you move up on him from the front or the side,” she explained, demonstrating. “See?”

  She reached the gelding and stroked a hand over his neck. He craned his head around to try to nibble at her hand on the off chance it contained sugar or a thistle.

  “Wow,” Ricky said.

  His face was rapt, avid. Ellen felt her throat close.

  I will not cry. But her emotions felt so close beneath her skin. She didn’t dare look at Dallas Lazo, because she was somehow sure that he would read everything on her face. So she touched Ricky, though she had sworn she wouldn’t do that; though she had known it was more than she could bear. She caught his wrist and pulled him a little closer to the horse’s neck, and his little-boy arm was so strong and wiry. His skin was smooth, but there was a scab on his elbow. Oh, God, he’s beautiful.

  She had been right. She couldn’t bear it.

  “Give him some grass,” she suggested, her voice strangled. “Here, just hold it out on your palm. Don’t be afraid. He’ll just pick it up with his lips.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Ricky answered indignantly.

  “No. No, of course you’re not. I’ve got to go.” Before she knew she was going to do it, she turned and fled for the arroyo wall.

  “I’ve got to go,” she whispered again, desperately, as she reached it, but of course neither of them heard her. They just stared after her, surprised and confused.

  * * *

  It took her a long time to settle herself down. Ellen wandered blindly through the gathering crowd, seeing none of their faces.

  She had thought this first visitation would be the safest way to proceed, she thought wildly. So what had happened? It was a Kinaalda, for heaven’s sake, a short, pleasant rite to herald the fact that one of the Begay girls had reached puberty. In the old days it would have meant that she had achieved her power and was ready to marry. Now it was more an excuse for her mother’s clan and her father’s to gather together and eat and gamble and gossip for a few days. And the Towering Rock and the Streams Come Together clans were both huge.

  She had known there would be throngs of people here and she had thought she could lose herself among them, watching Ricky unobtrusively from a distance. As soon as she’d heard that it was going to take place, she had driven up Beautiful Mountain to find Uncle Ernie. He’d said he’d be here, so she had called Barbara Bingham, and Barbara had fixed everything with the study commission and with Dallas Lazo’s lawyer.

  It had all seemed perfectly...safe, but she wondered now who she had really been trying to protect herself from. She had been terrified of the emotion that coming face-to-face with Ricky would bring, but something about Dallas scared and dazed her, too. It was the force and strength and determination about him, she realized. It cut her no quarter or pity, and it certainly didn’t respect her temper. And it was the hard attractiveness of him that made her so dangerously aware of the very scent of the air she breathed, the scent his damned cologne filled it with.

  “Child, you look as though you have just tangled with a chindi ghost,” came an ancient, gravelly voice from behind her.

  Ellen spun around. “Uncle Ernie,” she breathed. In that moment she needed so desperately to go to him, to rest her head against his bent, old shoulder, that she ached with it. And she almost actually did it, except somehow she knew that if she allowed herself such a weakness even for one fleeting moment, she’d never get through this weekend. She’d probably never feel like herself again.

  “Where is the child?” Ernie asked. “Did you bring him?”

  “No, I...” She looked around vacantly, as though expecting Ricky to materialize beside them. “I left him in the arroyo with the horses.”

  “Why?” Uncle Ernie asked, watching her too closely.

  “Because it hurt.” There was no use lying to Uncle Ernie. He saw clear inside a person’
s heart.

  The old man nodded. His face was a road map of a thousand lines, telling of a thousand different experiences. He wore his gunmetal gray hair in braids—an affectation that puzzled many, because Navajo men had never worn braids. But those who knew Ernie best also knew it was one of his many little ways of laughing at the outside world. He was simply being what Anglo America thought an old Indian medicine man should be—and chuckling behind his hand the whole while.

  Now he gave a grunt of satisfaction. “I was right, then. The Holy Ones told me that this child was yours, from that time long ago.”

  Ellen flinched and looked around, hoping no one was near enough to hear what he had said. No one was.

  “He has come back for a reason,” Ernie went on.

  “He came back because I stuck my nose into something before I thought it out. There’s your reason,” she snapped, then she closed her eyes. “Oh, Grandfather, why don’t I ever learn?”

  Ernie shrugged. “Because it is the nature of your heart, and one cannot fight against such things. You have always been this way and rarely have there been such consequences. That means that this time the results must have occurred for a reason. The universe has a plan for everything, Granddaughter. No event is random. Each is part of a chain, a circle. What you did was merely the catalyst for things that had to happen.”

  Ellen finally opened her eyes. “Will you find him?” she asked, feeling as though she would choke. “Will you go to the arroyo and get him and...and teach him? I think...I think I could be happy then. Then I could just walk away from it.”

  He gave an enigmatic smile. “Perhaps.”

  She wondered if his doubts concerned her or Ricky’s capacity to be taught. She watched him shuffle off, not willing to ask.

  * * *

  In spite of all his intentions, Dallas found her again. Especially after that scene in the arroyo and her strange, skittish behavior, he was inclined to stay away from her. There was something there, something going on that promised to be more aggravation than he needed. That was what he told himself as he wandered through the crowd, keeping one eye open for her black turtleneck and a flash of silver.

  In spite of all her better judgment, Ellen let him find her. She knew Ricky probably wasn’t with him, and once she calmed down she thought maybe she could handle him one-on-one. There was, she rationalized, no reason at all why she couldn’t keep him at arm’s length, yet still learn a little bit more about him. And since she had this opportunity, she might as well learn as much about him as she could.

  That was what she told herself as she sought out the Begay fire. The families, though all interrelated by clan, tended to camp among themselves. The Begays were right in the center of things because their daughter, Lucy, was the Kinaalda girl. Ellen knew she’d be easily visible there, right at the heart of the gathering, but she needed to talk to Lucy’s brother about her car. Eddie Begay was the best mechanic in a two-hundred-mile radius.

  “You really need a whole new engine,” Eddie was saying. “I can patch it and tinker with it until the cows come home, but that’s not ever going to make it reliable again. You’ve got over two hundred thousand miles on it.”

  Ellen nodded, her gaze coasting over the camps and the milling people. The smells of smoke, of roasting mutton and sizzling fry bread were thick in the air. It should have kept her from remembering Dallas Lazo’s cologne, but it didn’t. As soon as she spotted him moving through the people in her direction, that scent seemed to fill her head again.

  “How much would it cost?” she asked absently.

  “If I could find one at the junkyard, maybe three hundred dollars. I need to get something for the labor.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Eddie was startled. She had always balked and fought the idea of spending so much money. Then he realized she wasn’t even looking at him. She was watching an Anglo man come out of the crowd toward them.

  “Who’s he?” Eddie asked curiously.

  “His adoptive son is Towering Rock. I...invited them.”

  “Yeah? Then I guess we should make him welcome.” He thrust a hand out as Dallas reached them. “Hey, good to see you. You want something to eat? My mom’s got a sheep cooking—that’ll take a while—but in the meantime we’ve got some fry bread and some beans.”

  Ellen watched Dallas’s face turn bemused.

  “Welcome to the Res,” she said dryly.

  Eddie moved off to get them some fry bread. Dallas finally looked at her. “Is everyone this friendly?”

  “Only if you’re clan.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means everybody here is interrelated, loosely speaking. One way or another all of our ancestors lived together hundreds of years ago. So we’re considered kin to each other, and nothing is more important to a Navajo than family.”

  He scowled as he took the fry bread from Eddie and watched the young man disappear back into the crowd. “But I’m not clan. I don’t have any Navajo ancestors.”

  “Ricky does,” she said without thinking. Her heart kicked as she waited for his suspicious eyes to narrow on her again, the way they had at the orphanage when she had told how she had become aware of Mary Lazo’s death. But he only examined the bread and the gooey honey that ran off its edges, obviously trying to figure out the best, neatest way to eat it.

  “Yeah, but we don’t know who they were,” he answered at length, folding the bread in half and simply aiming it toward his mouth, dripping honey. “His birth mother was anonymous.”

  Ellen swallowed carefully. “I think I heard that your wife was Towering Rock,” she lied. “Like I am. In fact, that’s why I...how I...heard about her. That’s close enough to count.”

  “So he’s in like flint—and I am, too, by association?”

  “Well...no. People will be a little more suspicious of you because you’re a stranger, not really clan. And if you’re not clan, for all they know, then you could be a wolfman.”

  He paused in midchew, his blue eyes wary. “What’s a wolfman?”

  “A Navajo witch. But theoretically you probably aren’t one, because you’re Anglo.”

  He finished his fry bread, looked around for a napkin, then shrugged and wiped his hands on his jeans. Ellen was surprised. She wouldn’t have expected such a relaxed impulse from him. She remembered how he had been at the orphanage and knew such laziness was deceiving.

  “Is this a truce?” he asked suddenly.

  Ellen snapped her mouth shut again. The concept made something squirm in the area of her stomach.

  “You were the one who was so fired up last weekend,” she pointed out tightly.

  He looked vaguely surprised. “Do you honestly blame me? All things considered?”

  Something like a shiver passed through her. She really was transparent, he marveled, just enough to be titillating, because he could see what she was feeling but he couldn’t quite figure out why she was feeling it.

  “No,” she said finally, softly. “I guess not.”

  He nodded. “So now that you understand me, we can both put our arms down. That’s a truce.”

  “Until the next time you think Ricky’s being threatened, then you’ll come out again with both guns blazing.”

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  Suddenly she was angry. “So we play this your way or we fight? That’s pretty damned arrogant.”

  He shrugged. “Legally and morally, I’m in the driver’s seat. I’m just steering.”

  He was right and that irritated her more than anything else—that a man, this man, effectively had her over a barrel. But he didn’t give her time to respond.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is your bed getting uncomfortable?”

  “My bed?” What was he talking about?

  “That old adage about making one and lying in it.”

  Her face closed immediately. Dallas realized he was sorry. It had been interesting talking to her...harmless after all. But now she took o
ne quick step backward.

  “I have to go,” she bit out.

  “You say that a lot. What is it? Some kind of escape mechanism?” Why in the hell was he baiting her? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just the way it made her eyes blaze and spark.

  Fortunately or unfortunately—he wasn’t sure which—Ricky chose that moment to race up to them. His eyes flicked over Ellen and he gave her a quick grin of recognition, then they came back to Dallas.

  “Guess what I found out?” he demanded.

  “No idea.”

  “You know what this is all about?” He waved a hand around at the camps. “Some girl got her period for the first time.”

  Dallas shot a narrow-eyed look at Ellen. “What an appropriate way for an eight-year-old to learn about Navajo heritage.”

  “It’s nature.” Her voice still had a bite to it. “Every rhythm of our lives is intertwined with it.”

  “Yeah,” Ricky agreed. “That’s what Uncle Ernie said. So anyway, she’s got to run like a million miles that way—” He pointed east. “And if she does that, then she’ll always be strong and...and...something.”

  “Supple,” Ellen said, filling in for him.

  “Yeah. What’s that?”

  “She can bend over and touch her toes,” Dallas said dryly. “Judging from the size of some of these women, it might be the last time.”

  Ellen opened her mouth to snap at him, then closed it again very carefully. Arm’s length, she thought. She couldn’t let him draw her in, couldn’t let him ignite her temper.

  Somehow she was pretty sure he was trying to.

  “Oh. Well, anyway, a bunch of other kids went with her,” Ricky went on. “They said I could go, too, but I couldn’t find you to ask. So when do you think they’ll be back?”

  “When the moon comes up,” Ellen answered. “Then we’ll eat. Maybe somebody brought drums. We’ll dance.”

  Ricky looked avidly at his father. “Are we staying that long?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.” He glanced at Ellen. “How long do these things last?”

  “It’s supposed to be three days, but nowadays we have jobs that make us cram our ceremonials into weekends,” she explained stiffly.