Cupid's Holiday Trilogy

by Geeta Kakade

  Family, Christy knew, was made up of the people one liked the best.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ma looked around the Reservation. She had never been on one before and this section of the Eastern Washoe area was poor.

  She liked Jacob’s grandmother with her herbs and her counseling and her soothing chants. Ama reminded Agnes of White Feather’s grandmother who had safely delivered Jacob, her son, and helped Agnes so much with her herbs and medicines.

  She could sense there was still some pain that lingered in Ama’s heart and Agnes depended on Christy’s generosity to smooth the last vestiges of that pain away.

  Pa felt bad. He could see pictures now of the young White Feather who had lived out her life as a medicine woman, her only happiness the boy she had given birth to. The thought he had sentenced her to a life without love haunted him.

  He might have been right that society would ostracize a white man who married a native girl but he had been wrong to break up their love. When he watched Christy and Bridget, he knew it would hurt terribly if anything came between them and the men they loved. He wanted them to be happy always and yet he had denied his son the same happiness.

  “I’m sorry,” Phillip whispered hoarsely as he looked at his son’s headstone. “I’m sorry. My actions were molded by the times. Help me make it right.”

  Mentoring Stephen too was driving it home the importance of love to Phillip.

  Stephen looked at Brian as he sat in his study. His son had withdrawn from his family since he had read his first wife Lucinda’s letter. He spent his evenings here now, alone, either re-reading the letter or writing notes to Bridget that he didn’t mail. Stephen was alarmed. He didn’t want Brian to sink into depression and the new discovery to ruin his life and that of his wife and children. Stephen knew the depression he had sunk into after Brian left had affected Brianna deeply. He would do anything to see his son did not make the same mistake.

  They were in the car getting on the highway heading north when Laurel asked, “Where are we going?”

  Jacob turned to her and said, “Anywhere you want to.”

  He’d been conscious of feeling good since the breakfast episode. This was the normal Laurel needed.

  “I don’t have any particular place in mind,” she said. “We’ve just finished our vacation and I thought you might be going back to work today.”

  “Not for a few more weeks yet.”

  For some reason the reply made Laurel happy.

  “If you don’t mind I’d like to show you where I spent summer vacations,” Jacob said.

  “Is it around here?” He hadn’t mentioned his childhood on the trip.

  “Yes. About an hour away.”

  Laurel kept quiet for a while and then had to ask, “Are we meeting your relatives?”

  “Just one that’s important. There are a few distant cousins we might run into but we’re not visiting them today.”

  Nervousness spiraled from the pit of her stomach into her throat tightening it. She had on jeans and an old sweater, as it was much cooler in Silver Lake this morning. Jacob should have warned her.

  Half an hour later she looked at the signs they were following.

  Washoe tribal area they said. She looked at him. Dr. Lightfoot.

  The name made sense suddenly.

  “You’re from here?”

  “I’m part Eastern Washoe though one of my ancestors was from Southern Washoe. They call me Lightfoot here.”

  “How did you get your first name?”

  He lifted one shoulder and said, “Every firstborn son in our family has had that name as far back as we can remember.”

  “Jacob’s a Christian name.”

  “My forefathers intermarried with the white folk in this area and that’s how the name came into being.”

  Something in his tone told her he wasn’t comfortable with the discussion and she kept quiet chewing over the facts.

  After a while he gestured to the sign as he entered the area that said Eastern Washoe Tribe of Nevada. Suddenly the scenery had changed. It was like a movie set. There were rows of small houses and children everywhere playing, running, most of them barefoot. The ground was dry and dusty, the few trees in the area spindly.

  “Why aren’t they in school?” asked Laurel.

  Jacob shrugged. “Some parents still don’t want them to go to Western schools. They insist they be raised in Indian ways.”

  He headed for a house off to one side. The door opened and an old lady with a wrinkled face stood there. She was dressed in a bright blue ankle length skirt and a top covered by a shawl. Her chest was draped with necklaces of varying length and bright colors.

  “Ama!” Jacob bent down and hugged her very closely.

  When he straightened she looked at Laurel. This is Laurel Ama.”

  “The young woman you told me about?” she said without preamble.

  “How do you do,” Laurel said. The words sounded silly.

  “Come in. Come in.” Ama held the bead curtain aside and they walked into a room. Someone disappeared behind another bead curtain.

  “The girl who helps me, Sylvie,” Ama told Laurel. “She is shy.

  Please sit down.”

  They sat on plastic chairs and she asked, “Can I offer you any refreshment?”

  “Thank you Ama,” Jacob smiled at her, “but we’ve just eaten.”

  “Ah you are eager to start your work!” Turning to Laurel Ama explained, “Flu vaccinations. He comes and gives them to the children, elders and pregnant women every Fall. I will see you later.”

  Laurel followed Jacob to a building that had Tribal Clinic on it. He greeted the health nurse, Barbara Track and introduced Laurel.

  “They’re waiting for you. Medic America cleared all the formalities with the county as usual.”

  “That’s good.”

  Laurel followed him out and was surprised to see the line that had formed since they’d gone in.

  There were children of all ages, seniors and a lot of pregnant women. She was surprised how young some of the latter looked.

  The children came first, rolling up their sleeves ready for his needles, their eyes on the bag of suckers Jacob had placed on the makeshift table.

  He’d set up the red bin for disposal of the needles as she said, “You didn’t tell me about this part of your work.” Was this what he’d meant when he’d referred to the future work he’d like to do?

  “Medic America, the non-profit I belong to deals exclusively with the Washoe people of Nevada.”

  His past tied in with his plans for his future.

  She watched him pull on a pair of gloves and said, “May I help?”

  He looked at her for a minute and then handed her a pair of gloves.

  “Clean the site like this.” He broke open an antiseptic swab packet and pulled out the wipe, rubbed the arm of the girl in front of him and threw it into a trash bag draped over a bucket.

  He gave the girl the shot and asked the next one to step forward. Laurel was ready. In one hour they had gotten to the end of the line.

  Laurel didn’t think she had ever seen so many shots administered so quickly.

  “Do psychiatrists give flu shots usually?” she asked as they cleaned up.

  “Not usually, no,” Jacob put his things back in his bag and started putting the medical supplies into a box. “But in this case it’s a question of who’s willing to do the work. Medic America the non-profit I’m part of clears my work with the tribal clinic and county health and the Navy doesn’t mind that I do it in my free time.”

  “I want to help as much as I can while I’m here.”

  “Do they let you help because you are part Washoe Indian too?”

  “That’s some of the reason. My grandmother follows Washoe customs and lifestyle but her father before her married a white woman who was part Irish part American. He was a powerful medicine man and it was all right for him to have an American wife and they lived on the Reservation. Ama marri
ed a native American and stayed here all her life. She’d graduated from high school but when she realized her husband had no ambition she seriously began to learn how to mix the medicines from the roots, leaves and plants she had always gathered from her husband. Great Grandfather taught Ama everything he knew. Her husband drank himself to death and she was left with a ten year old son to raise. Luckily she already had a reputation as a healer and was much in demand even by women from other tribes. Ama was always busy and she was afraid my father would grow up like her husband. She sent him to boarding school and then to medical college where he met my mother. Mom’s from Virginia and her roots go back to the British. We are all a mix now but we do have a connection with the Washoe.”

  Jacob sounded proud of his heritage and Laurel was glad.

  “I was sent here for my summer holidays and the first time I came here my grandmother said she saw a link to the past in me.”

  “Are your parents still alive?”

  Jacob nodded. “My father’s a retired Admiral. He likes to play golf and go fishing. My Mother still has her practice.”

  “Do you have any other siblings?”

  “Three. Two sisters and a brother. My sisters Irene and Susan are both married with families of their own. One’s a nurse, the other’s an occupational therapist. They have two children each. My brother Bill is a cardiologist. He’s married too and has a son. They all decided to stay close to home.”

  “What made you enlist?”

  “I always wanted to join the Navy, travel and see the world through my job. What about you? Why did you join up?” He slipped that in there to see what she would say.

  “My parents died when I was eighteen and we are a career military family going back four generations so it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Being a photojournalist made my mother think I wasn’t going to be in the frontline but I always knew different.”

  She fell silent and Jacob knew she was back in quiet city trying to figure out where her memory had gone.

  An hour later he said, “Let’s go see Ama for a few minutes and then we have to leave.”

  A beautiful young girl with blonde hair and black eyes came in with a tray with two glasses of juice. She was very obviously pregnant.

  “Try the juice,” Ama told Laurel.

  She took a glass and sipped it, amazed by the taste. It had strawberries and mint and something else she couldn’t identify.

  “This is delicious.” Laurel proved it by finishing her drink.

  Jacob was talking about some of the people he’d vaccinated and Laurel looked around the room. A shelf held beautiful baskets, the wall was adorned with a cross.

  Jacob had mentioned his family had been converted three generations back.

  Plastic chairs provided seating and there was a new television mounted on the wall.

  “A gift from Jacob,” Ama followed her gaze. “My neighbor watched television with me every night.”

  “Come.” Ama smiled as she headed to the eating area. “Sit beside me on either side. This is Sylvie who helps me. She lives two doors away with her brother and his family. Sylvie this is Laurel.”

  The girl smiled shyly at her, picking up the glasses.

  Laurel sat down and Ama looked at her. This close she realized the older woman had eyes like Jacob’s. They could see down to her soul.

  “You are troubled in spirit,” she said. “The road you are on now is difficult but you have someone to support you along the way and things will change. Your mind has received a painful blow and needs time to heal. Trust and have faith.”

  Laurel was surprised. One look and she’d been diagnosed accurately. She felt herself go pale.

  “You must call me Ama too,” invited Jacob’s grandmother.

  “Th..thank you.” Laurel felt honored.

  Sylvie brought in wooden bowls of venison stew and fry bread and disappeared.

  Ama asked Jacob to say grace and then Laurel picked up her wooden spoon and began to eat. The stew was flavored with herbs, the meat very tender. The hot and puffy fry bread had just been made.

  “Jacob tells me you eat lightly so I have given you a small bowl of stew,” Ama said.

  “This is delicious, thank you.”

  Ama smiled. “The next time you come I will have pine nut bread ready and baked fish. Jacob used to bring me fish as a boy. He loved fishing. I had a cousin teach him how to hunt and fish, trap game. He learned to love Nature and respect it. He attended our pow wows and ceremonies as a young boy. Once he disappeared for three days saying he wanted to experience surviving on his own and communicating with Nature the way the Washoe did in the old days. He knows the old Indian ways and they will help him now that he’s a medicine man himself.”

  Laurel knew the land the Washoe had included streams for fishing, forested hunting areas and space for farming their crops.

  “Has Sylvie said anything about who the father of her child is?” Jacob had made short work of the stew and eight pieces of fry bread and was eyeing the last one on the serving platter.

  His grandmother shook her head. “She refuses to, yet it is someone she is very afraid of. She goes to meet him at night when she thinks I am asleep but the next day she is upset and crying and I have seen bruises on her fair skin that shouldn’t be there. I know who the boy is but I want the words to come from her mouth before I can talk to his family.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Joe Crutch. He’s not a good boy. He and three other boys are suspected of the robberies we’ve been having around here. They drink all the time and are rude, noisy and obnoxious. Not one of them has any interest in work or studying.” She turned to Laurel, “The curse of the new generation is not only poverty but a multitude of bad habits, chief among those laziness.”

  Jacob looked at Laurel. She had finished the fruit Sylvie had brought in.

  “It’s time we left Ama,” Jacob said. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Wait Jacob. I have something for you. It’s time you have it. Your father never came back to the Reservation once he married and I couldn’t give it to him.” From around her neck she took a chain and Laurel’s eyes widened. At the end of it was what looked like a pendant. Ama opened the oval case and showed them the gold pendant inside “This has been passed down for seven generations so far. Someone before us put it into this light case to keep it safe. You are the eighth generation and I wish you all that’s good as I give it to you. May the Spirits watch over you always.”

  She reached up as he bent and fastened the chain around his neck.

  “Don’t you want to wear it for now Ama?”

  “No grandson. An old friend had a chain snatched from her neck the other day as she walked home in the dark and I cannot risk losing this. I have pinned it to my dress since the day Elsie told me what happened to her. There are bad elements here that will stop at nothing to get some easy money and find the elderly easy prey. This chain is a sacred trust. I will sleep easier now that you have it.”

  When they were in the car, Laurel asked. “How did she know so much about me? Did you tell her?”

  “No,” said Jacob. “She’s a powerful medicine woman in her own right and has the second sight so many of our ancestors did.”

  Laurel thought about that. Jacob’s studying medicine had been a natural thing for him to do. She wondered if second sight was responsible for his being extremely intuitive too.

  “Did someone in all seven generations before you practice as medicine men or women?”

  “Yes. That’s why we were tolerated in the Reservation in spite of our mixed blood. My grandmother still treats those who are too afraid to go to a Western doctor.” He took the Silver Lake City exit.

  “On the subject of driving would you like to drive here?” Jacob asked.

  “Yes.” Laurel was surprised at how decisive she was about that. “Uncle Paul didn’t want me to drive right after being discharged. Carol did say she would lend me her car and then it had to be repaired there was no ques
tion about it.”

  “What happened to Carol’s car?” Was it her imagination or was Jacob’s gaze more intent than usual.

  “Not really. Something about an old problem with the brakes she’d been ignoring. Luckily she always checked her brakes when we got in the car so it wasn’t a big deal.”

  Jacob was relieved that Laurel didn’t know that the brake line had been cut.

  When they went back to the house Jacob disappeared into what she was beginning to think of as his study saying he had some letters to answer.

  Laurel had noticed the huge stack of mail waiting for him when they got back and he’d told her he kept in touch with many of the men he’d served with. Some of them didn’t have computers so he kept in touch via snail mail.

  She sat in the armchair by the window in her bedroom and opened the journal Christy had given her. Two hours later she looked up as Jacob entered the room. She’d been lost in the stories of the past. She stared at him blankly as he came in and he said, “It’s five thirty. Do you want to change before we go in to dinner?”

  She closed the journal and stood to put it into the drawer of her nightstand.

  “Yes.”

  “Is the journal interesting?” he asked when she came out of the bathroom dressed in slacks the color of her hair and a peach top. She’d put her hair up and looked stunning. His heart did a cartwheel.

  “Very,” she said. “I lost track of time reading it.”

  That night she had a dream like she’d never had before. A young Indian girl stood by a tree calling to her in fright. Laurel went to her and saw three men surrounded her, their evil faces leering at the teenager while they closed in.

  “Stop!” It was her own voice she heard but they wouldn’t. They kept closing in and the girl kept screaming.

  Suddenly there was a gun in Laurel’s hand and she lifted it and fired into the air.

  The sound of the explosion woke her and she opened her eyes to see a shadow near her bed.

  “No!” she screamed.