by Maree, Kay
Could he forgive what she had done and place it into history. Burning that painful page in a new moon fire with a chant on how to fight for the now.
He was her mirror, and she was his. They used to be able to stare at each other and know just what the other was thinking. How the other felt and what each other’s next move was. Eka missed that more than anything else. She was determined to fight for it.
I am as hollow as the ocean is blue
~ Eka Peno
Walking from the yard, a small lad all but tripped Wolf up as he came barreling into him.
“Whoa, little man, what’s the rush?” Wolf reached down for the lad’s shoulders to steady him.
“Hey, hey are you Wolf Thunder-Horse?” the youngster asked. Chuckling at the kid, Wolf answered, “Sure am.” Smiling down at the boy you couldn’t miss the excitement in his expression.
“Wow, man, Wow! I knew it. I told my buddies it was you. I was going to see you.” Excitement was zapping from the boy’s little body.
“Can I get your autograph? Please!”
Wolf pushed a barge, ten-gallon hat back on the boy’s head as it had slipped down over his eyes with all his jiggling and jumping about.
“Sure thing, kid.” Wolf crouched down so he was eye level with the lad.
He took the program from the boy’s hand along with a black permanent marker.
“Who do I make this out to?”
“Timmy, Timmy Olsen.”
“Well, Timmy, are you a big rodeo fan?” The young boy nodded his head so hard and fast that Wolf had to grab hold of his shoulders to steady him then once again flick the kids hat back up.
“You know some day, Mr. Wolf, someday I’m gonna be the number one all-round cowboy just like you.” Timmy pushed out the words along with his little chest that had Wolf mimicking being blown backwards.
“Well hold on to ya hat there, cowboy,” Wolf said to him, his smile cracking across his face as he looked at the pure happiness that shone from the small boy.
“Well, little man, I have to beat that cowboy right there first.” Wolf looked over his shoulder as Timmy’s eyes followed his line of vision. Wolf knew Cody was watching him. He always did. He was never far from him and it made Wolf uneasy. He knew just what this guy was capable of and he didn’t want to be near him for any extended period of time.
“Mr. Wolf, I know you can do it. I feel it in my bones.” Wolf couldn’t help but laugh and pull the lad in for a hug.
“In ya bones huh, little guy.” Wolf pushed him back and placed the program back in his hands.
“Yes, Sir. That’s what my mamma says when she feels something happening. It’s normally when it’s about to rain, or dads gone and done something stupid. But I feel it, Mr. I know you can do it.”
“Well, little lad, I thank ya for that and ya faith in me.” Wolf tipped his hat to the boy with a wink and a smile on his face.
“I best be going and saddling up, gotta fan to impress.”
“I’ll be watching ya, Mr. Wolf, and yelling loud,” the boy said, making Wolf chuckle as he walked away feeling freer and lighter than he had in a long time. The eyes of a child are so innocent and free.
Wolf walked around back to where the yards and holding pens were. It was also the area where all the cowboys got ready: oiling ropes, fixing buckles and rolling up sleeves. The smell of animals and sweat was strong in the air. Wolf was feeling alive until he’d seen Smith and that his hands were wrapped tight around Eka’s arm and elbow, pulling her tight into his face. Her eyes screamed in fear as she shook. His screamed hate as his body rippled in anger. Wolf knew it was to do with him. The way he was and the way she looked for him and not the man she ran away with. See, that’s the thing with fake masks you can only wear them for so long before they begin to chip, crack and fade.
You broke me. Now I can't feel anything
~ Eka Peno
I saw him with the little boy, and tears sprung to my eyes. What I didn’t see though was Cody watching me watch him. I had no idea of where he was or that he was even close. Unlike Wolf, I can’t feel him before I see him, so I am always caught off guard and it’s a dangerous place to be. He was spitting fire by the time he approached me and pulled me back out of sight behind the yard where the smell of animal dung and sweat took your breath away. Cody’s fingers dug deep into my skin, biting at my flesh and causing me to grimace in pain as he assaulted my emotions with harsh words and flaming hot eyes. The ghost of a past washed down my spine like a waterfall, trying to calm me like always. I begged for my mind to wander from the hurt, to the peace. To the pools I could seek refuge in and shy away from the malice of this man’s grip and harsh tongue.
It didn’t work though because the man I was trying to hide from walked around the corner, his eyes staring right at me with a pain lacing them that I hadn’t ever seen before. Seeing that torment, that pain, the realization cut deeper than any words from Cody. It hit me harder than any slap to the face and kicked me deep in the stomach with more force than his cowboy boot ever could.
It hurt knowing that he saw just what Cody was like, and that I had run from perfect to utter imperfect, throwing more than just a love story away.
Closing my eyes as hot tears broke free and rolled down my cheeks, I fall into the violent touch of a man who said he would love and protect me when all he did was hate and abuse me.
This was all I had now.
Hot words and harsh slaps.
~*~
Wolf’s bull ride was up next. This was the ride that would make him number one and one step closer to securing the land across the river from the reserve for his own ranch. Wolf needed to just breathe. He had to shake what he’d seen and the fear inside her eyes. She was ashamed and terrified at what he thought, at what Smith could do to her. She was a soul that deserved to be worshiped not abused. Wolf prayed to the spirits to help him erase what he’d seen from his mind and bones. To help him shake Eka, his Eka… the beautiful enigma that is Eka Peno, from his body so he could focus on the task at hand. He needed to wrap all the pain and anger up into a ball, and use it to ride that bull like it has never been ridden before. Maybe dispel it into the bull, allow the animal to take it all on and become one with the bull. Then he would focus on what he was going to do about what he had seen. All he wanted to do was take her home. Knowing that wasn’t an option, he knew he had to get his land and fast. The elders couldn’t do anything if he had Eka with him on his own land. They could say something, but could only turn her away if he stayed on reserve land. He needed to save her before evil took all that was beautiful about her and cause the sun to never rise again and a dark cloud would preside over his soul for eternity.
Going against the screaming of his mind, all Wolf wanted to do whenever he saw her was kiss her and take her. It tore him apart, watching, feeling the hurt. He tried to hold it together, but the pain was too much, loving her too painful. She wasn’t his – didn’t belong to him anymore - and that truth hurt. When she had belonged to him, she was a wildfire running out of control, while he was chasing her. They both knew it was a battle to contain it. Wild sparks licking at the edges of a story where love wasn’t what was needed to douse the flames. His memory rolled back to the last time he held her. How she felt in his arms, the way he felt her heartbeat in sync with his. He thought she belonged only to him in that moment. You would have never known what was about to rip through them all. For she had already left, her heart had changed and up in smoke went the story of Wolf and Eka and her new one began with him. She was his, vowing herself to a man with violent hands, bitter eyes, with a sharp tongue. Wolf still wanted to pick up all her broken pieces and put her back together.
Smith limped toward Wolf, whacking dust from his blue and black chaps, his bull rope slung over his shoulder with a smirk placed high on his violent lips.
“Beat that, Indian boy,” he spat at Wolf before throwing his bull rope at Eka. Wolf’s eyes gazed over Eka… she was
trembling. “Put that away and get me a beer,” he snapped out, clapping his hands loud and fast in her face, commanding her like a slave, not the woman he was meant to love.
Wolf’s jaw clenched, making the vein in his neck protrude as anger danced inside his caramel flesh. Eka’s sad eyes met his as her lashes fluttered to blink back the tears threatening to spill down her honeyed skin. Wolf broke a little more at seeing how lost she was. How far she was from the road she wanted to travel. He sent a wish out into the ethos for her to find her spirit and come home. Come back to him. She had to make the first move - he couldn’t. He wouldn’t take her from the white, no matter how much his moral compass screamed at him to do so. He knew the rules. He heard the stories, and he felt the eyes of the gods watching him. Judging him. He knew what he wanted, but he also knew his culture and was embedded inside the realm of his forefathers.
“Time to rope up, Wolf,” Benny called out to him from the top rail of the Bull chute. Looking up, Wolf squinted as the bright sun blinded him, making his blue eyes water. As he blinked it away, the broken image of Eka also disappeared, because when he looked back, she was gone.
“Be right up, Benny,” Wolf called as he searched the yards for her, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.
Benny helped Wolf tie in punching his closed fist over his bull rope Wolf took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. Stealing a glance toward the family member’s stands, hoping for a glance of the black-haired beauty that was Eka. Still, his eyes came up empty. His heart hammered inside his chest as sweat beaded down his spine. He always felt this way. Fear laced with a sense of adrenaline. You had to hold a special kind of crazy fire to bull ride and Wolf felt it each time he slung his legs over the back of these incredible beasts. He also felt the same fear laced with love when he looked at Eka. He would never get over her and he would never stop bull riding.
It was embedded inside his DNA.
Woven deep into his being.
He breathed for this feeling.
This rush.
This weightless magic.
His eyes closed as he sought out his inner strength. Eka ran through his mind bare feet with flowers in her hair. The wind whirling around her, taking the sound of her heavenly laughter with it. Her eyes looking back over her shoulder for him as they ran freely through wildflowers, causing little wisps of pollen and fragrant scent to rise around them.
The invisible string that held them together. Him to her and her to him. It pulls him down deep into the dark of the film that he has seen a million times before. Like all the others he sits alone in a single, red, velvet-covered seat with the click-clack of the old-school film projector behind him lighting up the dark space playing all their memories like faded films of lost days and sleepless nights.
Wolf Thunder-Horse and Eka Aesha Peno. Wild and free.
Happy...
It wasn’t meant to be.
Wolf could feel her stare before he even opened his eyes. He didn’t shake this episode from his mind, but he let it settle down like dust from a whirlwind dust storm, leaving it as evidence that he felt it. It was real. It was there… it needed to stay when everything else disappeared.
His blue eyes locked with the emerald green of hers. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears, her arms wrapped around the weather-worn rails of the arena. They were holding her tight in this place as Wolf nodded to the chute boss. The boys pulled the gates open. Benny tapped Wolf’s shoulder as Wolf leaned back into the bull, lifted his arm high in the air and rode the eight seconds.
Whipping and whirling, twisting and rolling, one with the wild beast with each move, flick, kick. Wolf was ready and rode it out, watching her watch him. He sought her out with each and every flick and kick, each buck and twist he followed her as she followed him - staying locked in place and cemented into that one stare. The buzzer sounded out loud around him, but he didn’t allow it to break the stolen stare he was sharing with the unique women that looked at him, through him and into the breaking pieces of his heart. His body twisted and bucked, his mind run through all their secret conversations… all the time they stole just to be near each other. A million little times of them being just that together.
He could hear the crowd erupt around him as their cheering and talking and that of the bullfighters broke the trance of two lost souls on a journey back to each other. For a few fleeting moments, eight seconds to be exact, Eka was his.
Wolf pulled his bull rope wrapped hand free from the worked-up beast that was continuing to buck and kick, foaming at the mouth worked up, ready to avenge his rider.
Wolf’s feet landed onto the dusty floor of the arena with a thud as Eka was dragged from the rails by the messy bun piled on top of her head. Her hands instinctively went up to her bun along with the cry that hit him just as hard as the bull did. The raging beast spun around on Wolf, seeking vengeance, and buried his head and horns into Wolf’s chest, then jerked his massive head up in one quick movement that sent Wolf flying through the air. His eyes never left Eka. She kicked and screamed while his body screamed with hers. Falling slowly down to the ground his body crashed into the sand making dust swirl around him as Black Magic came for Wolf again, his hoofs stomping his body into the dust. His breathing was momentarily hindered as he sucked in sand and dust through his mouth and nostrils. He started coughing as the sharp burn of foreign matter invaded his lungs. Before he could try to move or think, the bull had twisted around on him, flicking him back into the air over and over again. Soon the noise of the crowd faded as inside his head flatlined along with Eka’s eyes. Next, the arena around Wolf Thunder-Horse went black.
~*~
Eka tried to free his hands from her hair as he pulled her backward from the rails.
His anger was hot.
His force was brutal.
She felt it all seep through him and into her. She was just watching Wolf’s bull ride. She wasn’t doing anything wrong in a normal world… in a normal relationship. But Eka’s relationship with Cody Smith was far from normal and in that moment she felt like she was empty and oh so lost, floating inside the mad world of his brute force and vicious tongue. He assaulted her with words and force to the point that she wished for the world to open and swallow her whole. Because nothing hurt more than staring into Wolf’s eyes while he was stomped and flicked into the air by a beast just as angry as the beast who’s assaulting her. He has weaponized his emotional indifference, abusing rather than cherishing Eka’s loving emotions.
Tears escaped her eyes, running down her heated red cheeks, leaving her body as if they could not bear to witness yet another verbal and physical assault. This one in full public view of each cowboy on the circuit as well as any bystanders.
He threw threats of hateful things at her like he was ordering food from a take-away menu. Hateful things that Eka cannot explain. When they shame you in the assault, they feel sure you won't share it or call for help. This time it’s different.
It just hurts.
Red hot embarrassment follows. As Eka begins to realize that the word ‘hurt’ holds a lot more meaning than the usual definition. It is a lingering pain, one you can only shake by gaining a greater perspective, by standing back and imaging yourself as someone who loves you. Then you ask, "What would they say about all this? What might their advice be?" Eka thought this over as Cody dragged her back to the trailer through the crowds of people, horses and cowboys. No one reached out to help her or to stop him. A few wolf whistled like it was a fun game of catch and kiss but this one was not a happy game from childhood, this was a pain laced kiss from a fist about to meet her flesh inside closed doors. There his anger was free and he left all his hate on her body in the form of purple flowered bruises all over her dark, honeyed skin.
When the love between them died, the love of power arose in Cody. No longer did he hang on her words or surrender himself to her caress. No longer did he cherish her company or speak her name with softness. His new lif
e of rodeoing and sleeping around, drinking beer with his buddies and using her body as a carnival ride for himself and Jerm, left nothing other than an uncontrollable rage. That rage came from Wolf moving up in the ranks on the circuit by channeling Cody and his career. He could not suppress this newfound rage in sex, nor could he on his horse or drinking. He found that the only way to dispel it was her. Her body became his target, her flesh his punching bag. He lost her with that first slap. He broke her with that first punch, and he destroyed what she could have been with that first kick.
At first there was guilt, an attempt to stop, but soon he gave way, realizing how much he enjoyed beating his fists into her skin. With every hit he felt a cold zing of delight, a buzz he could get no other way.
Eka lay on the bed, inside the trailer, blood seeping beneath her skin, her ribs fractured. There would be no doctor, no evidence, and in say two hours when the alcohol had touched that small part of his soul, Cody would be her groveling lover. Until he lost his temper all over again. Already she could smell the aroma of fancy cooking coming from the small kitchenette inside the living quarters of the horse trailer It would be a meal she'd never be able to eat through the pain that cut each breath short.
Eka’s mind filtered to the persona.
From the outside, it was a perfect relationship. Eka a supportive partner of a cowboy while on the road with him. Living on his ranch - cooking and cleaning, servicing all his needs and desires. Yet Eka hid purple ribs and purple "flowers" that blossomed over her legs. On skin as brown as hers it was harder to spot, but it was there and she felt the pain with each breath. His home was his trailer that was meant to be theirs. The space they shared when they fell in love wasn’t home anymore. It was a cage for her body and in her depression her body came to feel like a cage for her soul. She was no longer free spirited and happy, she was empty and lost. He had stolen so much from her that even her reflection wasn’t her own.