Rainsinger

by Barbara Samuel

  “That’s very personal, Joleen,” she said. “I don’t like to talk about that part of my life with anyone.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Her heart jumped. “Yes.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  Slowly Winona shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It just doesn’t always work out that way, Joleen. Not everyone is like Mom and Dad.” She moved the tips of her fingers restlessly over the topmost edge of the grass below her. “But it’s probably time you understood that I’m a grown woman and there are going to be men in my life.”

  Joleen gazed at her steadily. “I think you should fight for him. Like in Grease.”

  Winona laughed. “Life isn’t the movies.”

  “I’m serious! You should see the way he looks at you when he doesn’t know anybody is watching.”

  “How?”

  Joleen pursed her lips, gazing off into the distance. “Like Humphrey Bogart looks at Ingrid Bergman at the end of Casablanca. Like he wants so much to keep her with him, but he can’t.”

  All of a sudden she whipped off her hat and her glasses, and shook her head to loosen her hair. “Like this,” she said. Her face went suddenly expressionless. And then she raised her eyes and stared at a daisy, and written in all that blankness, swimming in her limpid eyes, was an expression of the most heart-wrenching, denied longing Winona had ever seen.

  For a moment, Winona was so stunned at the ability of her thirteen-year-old sister to express such an emotion that she couldn’t think. When Joleen broke character with an immodest lift of her eyebrows, Winona gaped. “Joleen, you’re so good. I can’t believe you.”

  “I’ve been practicing that one. He’s so obvious it’s almost embarrassing.” She inclined her head. “But do you see what I mean, Winona? He loves you. I know it, but if you don’t fight, he won’t ever know.”

  Winona frowned, then laughed. “Who are you?” she said, teasing. “Is this the same girl who made such a fuss back there in the kitchen?”

  Joleen blushed a deep, fiery red and lowered her head.

  “It’s okay,” Winona said. “I’m only teasing you. I know you have a crush on him, and I’m not going to patronize you by saying it doesn’t matter. I know it does.”

  “I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe I said those mean things.”

  “It’s okay.” Winona stood up. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “One more thing,” Winona said, leaning into the arms of the mother tree, as if to draw strength from it. “This is important. I don’t know what you think and I don’t want to know. My love life is off-limits to you, but I’ll say this one time.”

  Joleen leaned forward.

  Winona swallowed, rubbed the tree with her palm. “Sex has to be precious. You don’t go looking for it by showing too much of your body or painting your face to hide who you are. You’ll bring men to you that way, but they won’t be the right ones. Value yourself, and you’ll find a man to value who you are, too.”

  “You sound just like Dad,” Joleen said quietly.

  “He was a pretty smart guy.”

  Slyly Joleen said, “He also said you should never have sex unless you were married.”

  “I know.” That was the kicker, wasn’t it? Had Winona betrayed herself by sleeping with Daniel? Was what they’d done wrong? She nudged the carefully wrapped, brand-new memories of the night and found no guilt in the package. There had been no betrayal, nothing cheap about the way they had touched each other.

  She looked at her sister. “This isn’t easy.”

  “But was Dad right or wrong?”

  “Waiting until you’re married is the best thing you can do for yourself, just because sex is so deep and important and sacred.” She paused, gathered words carefully from a basket loaded with landmines. “I’m almost thirty years old, Joleen. All I’m going to say is that sometimes adults make decisions that don’t fit a narrow pattern.”

  “So,” she said, grinning. “Just exactly how old is adult?”

  Winona laughed. “Don’t push it, kiddo. Once you’re an adult you can’t ever be a kid again.”

  Joleen looked suddenly sober. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Daniel returned with Giselle to the ranch, he was tired and more than a little off kilter. A new bank of clouds had moved in, but they clung to their weight of moisture, making the unseasonable heat seem even more stifling. The blazing white of the southwestern sunlight arced off the sidewalks in dry waves, like the desiccating blast from a forced-air furnace.

  As if in reflection, everywhere they had stopped, people seemed subdued, faces closed tight, few words exchanged. He stopped in the post office to check the box for the ranch and found four advertising circulars, three letters for Winona and an official-looking envelope from the corporation for which he’d done the latest organization. Frowning, he tore it open and scanned it, swearing under his breath.

  “I heard that,” Giselle said, examining the Wanted posters behind glass on the wall.

  “Sorry,” he said automatically, and rubbed his forehead. The liaison he’d been working with had examined the program, and thought they needed further adjustments to make it work. Daniel wondered why he hadn’t called. Not a good sign.

  Tucking the letter back into its envelope, Daniel picked up the letters for Winona. Businessy-looking things. One return address was that of a major greenhouse in Albuquerque, and he felt a queer, sick tightening in his gut.

  He ignored it.

  “Come on, honey,” he said to Giselle. “Let’s get back, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  He didn’t talk much on the way back, conscious of a thick tension in the back of his neck. He’d been fine until they’d left the ranch and wandered out into the real world. Fine about last night, thinking of it with pleasure, happily anticipating tonight.

  But as he’d stirred sugar into a glass of iced tea over lunch, he’d had an acute, aching wish to have Winona with him, right then. The longing had been so intense it felt like a physical wound. He wanted her in his arms, close to his heart, where he could smell her hair and put his hands on her skin, and feel the giving softness of her long, lush frame against him.

  It scared him. Not the longing, but the shape of it. It wasn’t sex that he wanted exactly, not the way he had wanted it before. Now it was both more and less. He wanted her naked in his bed, next to his nakedness, because they’d be alone together without restraint.

  Sitting beside him in the truck, Giselle noisily sucked the last of her pop through a straw, and he slammed back into the present.

  She caught his gaze and said, “Sorry.”

  “Did I frown? I didn’t mean to.”

  “You did.” She regarded him for a moment. “Are you going to marry Winona?”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” he snapped. “Why do kids always want to marry everybody off? Some people don’t ever get married.”

  Giselle gazed at him steadily from her calm, beautiful face, the face that was so much like Jessie’s—and conversely—so much like Luke’s.

  “Most people do.” She looked out the window. “It sure made my mom a lot happier.”

  He couldn’t deny that. “Yep. It did. But I’m not your mom.”

  “Does that mean you aren’t going to marry Winona?”

  “I’m not making plans to marry anybody at the moment,” he said, and scowled at her.

  Only then did he catch the mischief dancing in her eyes. “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because,” he said with a reluctant grin, turning into the long drive to the ranch, “I’m a grouchy old bachelor and wouldn’t be a good husband.”

  “Got the grouchy part right,” she said. He poked her skinny side, tickling her. “Grouchy, huh?”

  She giggled and grabbed his fingers, pretending she was going to bite them. “Very grouchy.”

  With a smile, he took her h
and. “I don’t need some wife to boss me around.”

  “Winona wouldn’t boss you, Uncle. And she loves you. I can tell.”

  He pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine, but didn’t get out. He looked out over the roof of the neat little adobe farmhouse at the darkening sky, hearing the truth of Giselle’s words ring through him. She loves you.

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh, “I think you’re right.” But he didn’t want to be loved. Not like that. Worse, he didn’t want to love back. His whole chest felt the pressure of that thought, and he rubbed absently at his breastbone, trying to catch his breath.

  Life was an uncertain, unreliable thing—a point made all too clearly by what had happened to Joleen. One minute she was driving along with her parents, having a normal teenagerish argument. The next her parents were gone. Luke’s father came to mind again, that broken old man who’d come back to the reservation after his beloved wife had passed on.

  Even his mother had loved and lost, loved and lost, over and over again.

  No. Better the orderly bachelorhood he’d mapped out for himself, with his bulletin boards and work and the occasional visit from Luke and Jessie and their brood to give him a taste of real life. So much better.

  Giselle sat next to him in the truck, unmoving. He looked at her. “Sorry I snapped at you. I appreciate your concern, but I’m just not husband material, okay?”

  Her dark, almond-shaped eyes grew very, very sad. “Don’t you ever want some babies of your own?”

  A quick vision of a child flashed through his imagination—a child he and Winona had made, a strapping, strong child with the blood of many nations running through him. The pressure in his chest trebled, and he coughed, trying to dislodge it. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and even in his own ears, his voice was gravelly.

  The house had the cool quiet of no one home. Daniel dropped the mail on the kitchen table and, without even realizing what he was doing, went to the back door to look for Winona and Joleen. He saw a flash of color in the orchard, and then Joleen came around the house, one of her rabbits in her hands.

  “Hi!” she said. “I thought I heard you guys.”

  “You want to go up to the bluffs?” Giselle said.

  “Let me put Peter back in the hutch,” Joleen replied. “Will you tell Winona, Daniel? She’s down in the orchard.”

  He nodded. Maybe this was best. He’d tell her they couldn’t do this, that it was wrong of him to have let last night happen. They had two months of summer ahead—somehow they had to get some kind of understanding between them.

  But as he walked toward the trees, he realized it had become an impossible situation. There was no way the two of them could continue to live under the same roof and not expect the chemistry between them to keep flaring. One or the other of them had to find another place to live.

  Him. He was the one who had to give up.

  A sharp, bright voice within him cried out in protest at the thought. Over the past year, he’d grown deep roots here. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he belonged, as if he’d come home. He thought of his great-great-grandmother fighting to save the trees for the ones who would come after her, and of how proud he felt to at last reclaim the orchard for her.

  And he knew he couldn’t let go so easily. The peach trees in and of themselves were not as important as what they represented to him. They were a symbol of a way of life that had been repeatedly put under siege, and almost extinguished. If he left here now, he didn’t know what would happen to him.

  Winona only loved the trees because of something they’d given her as a child, something she still had. She was a strong, centered woman who’d been able to travel the world in complete confidence, at home wherever she was. Her need for the land was not like his. Not at all. He thought of the letters on the table. No doubt job offers.

  A little swell of hope touched him. Maybe one of the offers would be so good she wouldn’t be able to resist, and she’d give him some time to pay off the ranch in increments. Once this big job for the craftsmen in Albuquerque was finished, he’d have a sizable down payment to give her, in addition to the back taxes he’d paid.

  The details worked in his mind and lightened his step. He stopped short when he found Winona, sweaty and covered with mud, with the wheelbarrow full of water nearby her.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She glanced up and wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a trail of watery dirt along her check. For one instant, Daniel forgot everything he’d been thinking, in the glory of looking at her. Water soaked the front of her blouse, making the pale calico print stick to her breasts and waist. The airy wisps of silvery hair were caught in a tousled ponytail, leaving work-loosened tendrils to curl at her neck and ears. Her arms and legs were streaked with mud, and she seemed only to become aware of it as he regarded her.

  “Messy work,” she said, brushing at the streaks ineffectually. She dipped a bucket into the wheelbarrow, then poured the contents around the roots of the tree.

  “Where did you get the water?” He frowned. “You aren’t hauling it from the house, are you? That’s way too far.”

  She shook her head. “I would have if necessary.” She straightened and gave him a purely impish smile. “The strangest thing happened. There’s a leak in the irrigation pipe.”

  “You didn’t—”

  She grinned, holding up three fingers in a Girl Scout promise. “No. I swear. That would be stealing. I guess the pipe just rusted. It has a hole about two inches wide. Evidently it’s been leaking for quite awhile.”

  “How’d you find it?”

  “I came out here with Joleen this morning, after you guys left. I kept noticing how the fruit was falling off the trees, and decided to check how widespread the drop was. I walked to the far end of the orchard, and noticed all the trees in the northwest quadrant were as green and healthy as if it were full spring.” She put her hands on her hips proudly. “I remembered the irrigation nozzle was over there and went to check it, and there was the hole.”

  “So you’ve been filling the wheelbarrow and dumping water around the roots of the other trees.”

  She nodded. “We’ll have to report the leak, but I figure one good watering might help all the trees last a little longer.”

  “And what then?”

  “I don’t know.” She smiled. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  He hated the way her obvious dedication to the welfare of the trees made him feel. Maybe he did have a longer claim, but hers went deep. Maybe the trees were as much a symbol of something to her as they were to him. “Let me get a bucket and I’ll help you.”

  “Do that.”

  They worked hard. The water poured from the hole in a steady stream, but only heaven knew how long it would last. Over and over, they filled the wheelbarrow and buckets and carried them to trees farther and farther from the source. Ironically, overhead the sky grew darker and darker, and over the mountains Daniel could see the fuzzy gray line that meant rain was falling somewhere.

  Breathing heavily, his limbs tingling with the hard work, he pointed to it. “Look at that.”

  “Looks good, doesn’t it?” She dipped her hands in the bucket Daniel held under the leak and splashed it on her face. “Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s hitting the ground, but we can sure hope, huh?”

  “It’s better than blue sky,” he agreed. “Thanks for doing this, Winona.”

  She inclined her head. “You sound as if I did you a favor.”

  He lifted a shoulder, determined to say nothing else until she read the letter. When he moved out of the way, she shoved the wheelbarrow under the stream of water. “You aren’t still clinging to that notion that the land is more yours than mine just because it belonged to your ancestors, are you?”

  “I never gave it up.”

  She sighed. “What do I have to do to prove to you that I love it just as much as you do? That these trees are as importan
t in my life as they are in yours?”

  “You can’t,” he said, eyeing the sky, where brittle flashes of lightning crackled along the horizon. “It’s Indian land, plain and simple, and beyond that, it was my ancestor who saved the trees at all for any of us. They are my legacy.”

  The plump lips thinned to a tight line. “You are the most singularly arrogant, anal-retentive man I’ve ever met.”

  “I am not.” The words offended him. “I’m open-minded on most things.”

  “Oh, really.” She planted a hand on one broad hip. “Name one.”

  “Food,” he said, grabbing the first thing that came to mind. “I’ve eaten every single thing you’ve cooked, even the weird things, and you haven’t heard me say a word about them, have you?”

  “No, but you’re not stupid, either—as long as I cook, at least you eat something. In fact, I think your stubbornness about learning to cook is ridiculous.”

  He blinked. “Well, that fit right into the conversation.”

  “It goes along with the arrogance. You think you’re too good to cook. Either that, or you don’t want to make a mess.”

  “Well, after seeing how you destroy a kitchen, can you blame me?”

  “I haven’t destroyed your kitchen once since I’ve been here. I even line up the glasses in that ridiculous order you have in the cupboard.”

  “No, you don’t. You always mix the small, blue ones in with the tall, blue ones. And the cups should go handle out, so they fit in the cupboard.”

  “There! That’s what I mean. When you leave your computer, do you know you line up the keyboard with the edge of the desk every single time?”

  “I like things neat. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing is wrong with neat—not that I even have a glancing acquaintance with it, you understand.” She gestured with her whole body now, pacing, her arms and hands making emphatic motions to underline her words. “It’s not neatness that bothers me. It’s the Dewey decimal system in a home library, for heaven’s sake. Towels lined up so neatly I’m afraid to take one out of the cupboard, your damned pencils all sharpened to exactly the same point, all the time.”