A Man Without a Wife

by Beverly Bird

  She’d do it in a second if she had the money, she thought, but it was going to take her weeks just to save enough to fix her car. Even if she postponed it again—and she’d do that, too—it would take her months to raise a thousand dollars. And then she somehow knew that it would be too late.

  So all Ricky had left was her limited current resources and she didn’t even really know what they were. Love, Uncle Ernie had said. She had a wealth of that, but how could it possibly be enough?

  She felt angry and frustrated and helpless. She wanted instinctively to strike out at Dallas, but then he came out of the ticket office with that almost arrogant stride and she remembered his vulnerability when they had talked about being a single parent. He was trying. He was struggling so damned hard to deal with something he truly didn’t believe in just in case it really was a threat to his son, and not once had he ridiculed her for her beliefs. He was strong and secure enough that he didn’t have to.

  She remembered the way he had touched her and something warm curled inside her. By the time he reached her, she only felt helpless.

  “This way,” she said quietly.

  He looked toward her sharply at the way her voice dropped, then he followed her down the gravel path. A ticket agent was just swinging open the big metal gates, but Ricky had already crawled through on his own. He was far ahead, standing beside two brick outbuildings, his hands on his hips, looking around.

  “There’s nothing here,” he complained when they reached him.

  “Is that what you think?” Ellen asked softly.

  “Well, just look.”

  She took his hand and led him to a low, brick abutment, the last remains of some military quarters. “There’s not much to see,” she allowed, “but there’s a lot to feel.”

  He looked up at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

  She sat on the abutment and planted him in front of her. “Here, stand here. And close your eyes.”

  He did, so trustingly and enthusiastically she felt a faint smile touch her mouth. Dallas stood back a little way, watching them.

  “Okay, remember last night when you thought you saw your mom?”

  He opened one eye a crack. “I did see her.”

  She felt Dallas glaring at her, but she ignored him and went on. “Well, either way, you know she wasn’t there in quite the same way that you and me and your dad were there, right?”

  After a moment, he nodded.

  “If she was there, then she was sort of...part of another time, right?”

  He peeked at her again, this time distrustfully. “Like a memory?”

  “No, not exactly. Like another time happening right in the middle of this one.”

  “Oh.” He struggled to comprehend that.

  “And that’s exactly what’s going on right now.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. On that very spot where your feet are standing now, another Navajo boy stood a hundred and thirty years ago. Just because you can’t see him now doesn’t mean he was never there.”

  That rapt look came back to his face. It warmed something inside her. She had seen it before, when he had been listening to Uncle Ernie’s stories. Suddenly she loved him so much it hurt. And if it was a wolfman who had brought him back to her for this little time, she thought, then she would gladly pay him any price he demanded.

  “Just like when Mom disappeared last night, it didn’t mean she was never there?” he suggested tentatively.

  Ellen dragged her thoughts back. “That’s right. If you saw your mom last night, it just means that time got mixed up, two times came together for a little while. Maybe you can make it happen again now.”

  “How?”

  “Here.” She tapped a finger against her brow.

  “In my head?”

  “Yes. Now come on, close your eyes.”

  He did again, waiting.

  “Okay, what do you smell?” she asked.

  He caught on quickly. “Buffalo!”

  “No.” She laughed softly. “Our people never really hunted buffalo. The bison lived on the plains and we lived in the desert.”

  “Then what did they eat?”

  “Antelope and deer. And they usually had gardens, with corn growing.”

  He grinned. “So I smell deer cooking and corn on the cob.”

  “No,” she said again, fighting a smile. “By the time the Navajo were brought here to this place, all their corn was gone. Kit Carson went to Dinetah, to their land, and burned everything. He starved them into submission.”

  “What’s submission?”

  “Giving up. He made them so hungry they couldn’t stand it any more. Many of them went to Canyon de Chelly—we’ll visit that later. They tried to hide from him. But others just finally gave up and came here where the white men wanted them to come.”

  “Why? Why did the white men want them to come here?”

  “So they could have Dinetah. They thought there was gold in them thar mountains.” She made her voice a low drawl and was rewarded with a sweet giggle that almost made her want to weep.

  “Was there gold?” he asked.

  “No,” she said quietly. “There was some coal and there were some less significant minerals, but not one bit of gold. But none of those white men believed it, so they sent Kit Carson to get rid of the Navajo so they could have the land and look for what wasn’t there. And that brings us back to the people who came here.

  “They were very hungry, remember. The white men tried to give them some of their kind of food at first. It was leftover government rations, stuff that the soldiers didn’t want. Bacon and flour and coffee. But the Navajo had never eaten that kind of thing before so it made them sick with something called dysentery.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Diarrhea that doesn’t stop until you die.”

  “Geez. What did the kids eat?”

  “Bacon and flour and coffee, just like everyone else. Only the flour had worms in it and the bacon was rotten. Remember, it was stuff the soldiers didn’t want for themselves, so it had just been sitting around in a warehouse somewhere, getting old.”

  “No way!” He looked at her again disbelievingly. “And they ate it?”

  “They were so hungry that if they didn’t, they would die of starvation anyway. So they took their chances.”

  “What about their babies?”

  “They died first, Ricky,” she said gently. “And then the grandmothers and grandfathers, until finally all that was left of the Navajo were the people hiding in Canyon de Chelly and the grownups here, the ones who were the strongest. So,” she finished, “now what do you smell?”

  He scrunched his face up in concentration. “Poop.”

  From somewhere behind her, she heard Dallas choke. She bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Sure, because they were all sick,” she agreed.

  “And they didn’t have toilets, right? So it would smell gross. But maybe there’d be some of that coffee, too. And the soldiers had real food, didn’t they? So that might be cooking, and the Indians would be jealous and hungry.”

  “Good, that’s good,” Ellen whispered. “What do you hear?”

  “The Indians crying.”

  Dallas felt a frisson of surprise and warmth hit his heart. When had Ricky become so insightful? When had his imagination started flying like this? And how, he asked himself, how was it that a meddlesome Navajo nurse was the one to pull it all out?

  But he knew, and that jolted him, too. She was sinking sweetly and inexorably into their lives, not so much tangling with them but swelling somehow to fill all their cold holes with warmth. Suddenly it seemed as though she had been with them, forever, not just a few short weeks. And in so many respects she was like Ricky. She understood him in ways Dallas never could.

  He didn’t mind. It had happened so slowly, so easily, that he didn’t feel invaded at all.

  It took him a moment to realize that she had gotten up and was leading Ricky off toward the river. He could just
make out their voices now. She was pointing out where the Navajo had been forced to plant beans that wouldn’t grow because the soil was too alkaline, showing where they had made hovels of the rare wood the military officers had left behind after building their own dwellings. They were holding hands and the sight drove something both frightening and wonderful through him. Ricky was avid, pulling away from her to run now, pointing to things here and there.

  Dallas went slowly after them. He wondered what he and Ricky were going to do when these visitations were over and there were no strings left for him to pull to keep Ellen Lonetree in their lives.

  Something told him the void was going to be unbearable.

  Chapter 11

  It was late when they finally stood in front of the Isleta mission. Not far away in the darkness the Rio Grande rushed and groaned against the confines of its banks. Night had fallen hard and fast, the way it did in a land close enough to each sunset that a person could almost reach up and touch one. But the western sky still showed faint streaks of orange and purple.

  “Are you going all the way back to Flagstaff tonight?” Ellen wondered aloud.

  Last night might have threatened him, she realized, but not enough to keep a sudden, wicked gleam from his eyes now. Like a true survivor, he bounced back fast. She watched him grin slowly and felt something hot skip through her.

  “We could check into another motel,” he suggested.

  “Yeah!” Ricky burst out, then he frowned when he saw Ellen shake her head. “How come?”

  “Well, you guys can, but I have to work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call Barbara, tell her that it’s all in the line of continuing duty. I’m not willing to give you up yet.”

  Her heart lurched. There was something so intimate about the way he said it.

  “That won’t do any good,” she managed. “I volunteer at...at Our Lady, but I work at the Indian health-service clinic on the Res.”

  “How come you didn’t know that, Dad?” Ricky demanded.

  Because she holds back, Dallas thought. Then again, he’d never actually asked her. He’d just assumed.

  Finally he realized that they were probably saying too much in the presence of avid little ears. “What about next weekend?” he asked neutrally.

  Ellen hesitated. She was in too deep, just as he had said. But, there was the issue of the wolfman, and it was far too late to back off now, to stay out of these visitations. Nor did she entirely want to any longer, she realized.

  Flashes of the day came back to her, flashes of Ricky and of Dallas, of smiles and laughter and a picnic that had somehow descended into a food fight which Ricky had resoundingly won. She scraped a fingernail over a tiny patch of catsup that had dried on the hip of her jeans. She smiled whimsically, then her smile trembled.

  She had felt so good inside today, she realized, and the previous night, though that had been in an entirely different way. She wasn’t finished feeling that way yet. She didn’t want to be finished, didn’t want to go back to cold days and empty nights in a trailer built for one.

  And there was absolutely no alternative. She couldn’t stay with them after the visitations were over, couldn’t remain in their lives, not being who she was. Sooner or later she would have to go back.

  But not yet. Not now.

  She began walking to where she had left her car, hugging herself against a chill as the sun’s heat left the air. “Canyon de Chelly, I guess,” she finally answered. “Isn’t that what we decided we would do next? I could meet you guys at the park headquarters in Chinle on Saturday.”

  Dallas and Ricky fell into step on either side of her. “Is there a motel there?” Dallas wondered.

  She looked at him, startled. “It’s barely an hour and a half out of Flagstaff. You won’t need one.”

  “But it’s clear on the other side of the Chuska Mountains for you.”

  “I’ll manage,” she answered dryly.

  “We’ll see.” His mouth moved in something almost like a smile. They reached their cars and he unlocked his doors. “So what do you think, Sport?” he asked Ricky. “Can you stand one more night in a motel with just me for company? Guess it’ll mean no school tomorrow.”

  She expected Ricky to whoop, but he only kept watching her. “Are you sure you can’t stay with us again?” he asked.

  Her heart squeezed. “I’m sure.”

  “But you’ll come back this time, won’t you?”

  “Come back? Oh.” She remembered the way she had left them stranded in Shiprock and felt herself blush. “I promise.” This time.

  She refused to think about what would happen later. She got into her car, waved rigidly and began the long drive home to her trailer, wondering when the thought of it had started depressing her so.

  * * *

  The health-service clinic was packed again on Monday, but it emptied out by midafternoon. Ellen tidied up desultorily, her mind far away, alternately in Flagstaff and Vaughn.

  She collected thermometers and instruments from the exam rooms and wondered again what Ricky might know, what could possibly make such a small boy a threat to anyone. She dropped everything into metal trays for cleaning and considered if it was wrong not to tell Dallas who she was now. Her stomach twisted, and something small and nasty clawed there. But the fact remained that it would probably do more harm than good. It would be a horrible emotional jolt for him and it would serve absolutely no purpose. There were two weekend visitations left, and after that the only responsible, kind thing she could do was get out of their lives.

  She poured alcohol into the trays and was still pouring long after it had run over the edges, onto the floor. She didn’t realize that Saint Catherine was watching her, appalled.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon before Ricky and Dallas made it home. They had stayed in the motel in Albuquerque with the indoor pool. Dallas had let him stay up late, swimming, and they had gotten a late start in the morning. The drive had been a long one and now they were both tired and cranky.

  “Hey, Dad, let’s just order pizza,” Ricky said as they pulled up in the condominium parking lot.

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t?”

  “You’ve already missed school. I guess it’s a day for breaking rules.”

  A day? he wondered. More like weeks, and he’d certainly broken a few of his own. For one of the rare times in the past few years, Dallas looked forward to the hour when Ricky would go to bed, when he could be alone to pour himself a scotch, to put his feet up on the coffee table and think about all this.

  Who wanted to hurt Ricky? Was Ellen actually right about this mystical voodoo or was all this Navajo tutelage just stressful for him? Was that stress coming out in odd psychological ways?

  Flying horses and his dead mother in a motel room. What did it mean? Dallas shook his head, locked the car, and followed Ricky into the garden lobby of the high-rise. He wondered if maybe he should consult a professional before things got any more out of hand.

  But Ellen wasn’t telling him everything, he understood suddenly. He could hardly consult a doctor until he had all the facts. He felt there was something big going on that she was holding back—it was in the way her eyes slid away sometimes. Ricky did that when he was trying to lie or skimp on the whole truth. It was in the occasionally defensive set of her shoulders.

  Was she hiding it because she didn’t think he could deal with whatever it was? He had tried his damnedest to entertain her supernatural ideas. But did her secret have anything to do with Ricky’s strange troubles at all?

  Or did it have something to do with him? With men in general? If that was the case, then he supposed it was really none of his business...except he wanted it to be.

  He realized that he was already hungry for Saturday, to see her again, to laugh with her again...touch her again. He was going to have to think of a way to keep her at Canyon de Chelly overnight. Broken rules, he thought, then he unlocked the door of their apartment and fr
oze.

  What the hell?

  His first reaction was shock. He stepped inside, looking about dazedly at the upturned furniture, the slashed artwork, the bottles from the bar shattered and strewn about. He moved dumbly into the kitchen. The refrigerator door was ajar and food and leftovers were hurled everywhere. Strands of spaghetti clung to the walls.

  “Wow,” Ricky whispered from behind him.

  Too late he remembered him. Too late he considered shielding him.

  “Stay here, Sport. Don’t move a muscle.”

  He pushed past him and half jogged, half ran into Ricky’s room, his heart thumping hard now. If the rest of the place was a shambles, then the boy’s room was a war zone. Dallas gaped at it.

  His mattress had been slashed. Springs and stuffing were everywhere. Every one of his drawers had been pulled out and upturned and both his closet and bathroom doors were ajar. Clothes were everywhere, and toys and toothpaste and toilet paper littered every space. Books and notebook pages carpeted the floor.

  The curtains had been pulled off the windows and the glass had been smashed. Why hadn’t the burglar alarm gone off?

  He jerked, sensing Ricky behind him. “I told you to stay put, damn it!”

  “Dad, what happened?” His voice was on the brink of terror, and Dallas was instantly remorseful for snapping at him.

  He bit back another curse and turned to intercept him before he could come any further down the hallway. Then he felt something soft spread under his shoe. He looked down incredulously. Animal droppings?

  That was when the rage came.

  He could handle what had been done to his own property, but not what had been done to his kid’s room. Not his kid. And this made it real, not just something that was happening in a child’s mind. It was a flesh-and-blood problem. Someone was trying to hurt him.

  He made a choked, roaring sound and scooped Ricky up in his arms.

  “Dad?” he asked again, scared. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, Sport, but I swear to God I’m going to find out.”

  He took him to Mrs. DiNardo, the widow who lived in the next unit, promising that someone would come back for him shortly. Then he returned to the mess of his own condo and went into the kitchen.