Daniel felt fury—whole, overwhelming anger—blast through him. “What the hell does all this have to do with the land, Winona? We weren’t talking about household habits—we were talking about the land.”
“It’s all the same, don’t you see that?”
“No. I don’t see anything at all the same.”
She yanked on the wheelbarrow, sloshing water over her feet. “You’re dogmatic about this land, about the whole moral imperative. I don’t give a damn about the moral imperatives. I only know I love this land, this orchard, this place in the universe, more than any other place I’ve been.”
“Moral imperatives?” he echoed dangerously. “Let me tell you about moral imperatives.” He grabbed her arms and saw the fury in her clear, light eyes.
“The moral imperative that killed my great-great-grandmother, the moral imperatives of planned extinction. Think about that, Winona. Planned extinction.” He shook her arms a little. “Think about moral imperatives to remove all traces of Indian vermin from the face of this country.” He clenched his teeth, fighting wild waves of emotion. “Moral imperatives.” He spat on the ground, and was pleased when she winced.
“This isn’t about political correctness and saying the right thing or doing the right thing,” he said. “It’s about trying to save a nation—not a tribe, not just more Indians. My nation. I’m fighting on economic levels, and social levels, and even as many political levels as I can stomach.”
He watched tears well up in her pale, moon-colored eyes and spill over her cheeks. He didn’t let her go. He couldn’t.
“But this land isn’t even about the nation. It’s about me. It’s mine. The same blood that runs in my veins was spilled here, and nourished these trees. And all these years, she’s been waiting for someone to come and take it back. Well, I did. And you aren’t taking it from me now.”
With a fierce cry, she yanked out of his grip. For a moment, she stared at him, the tears streaming over her face, making clean streaks in the dust and dirt of her labors. Her breath came hard, and he felt a painful thrust of sorrow move through him. He’d tried to drive her away and he could see in her face that he had succeeded.
“You used me, didn’t you?” Her voice was appallingly calm. “You thought that if you could make me love you I’d sell the land cheap and you’d hang on to it.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to fall for it. I should have known better.”
With a furious cry, she grabbed the wheelbarrow and wrenched it, dumping the water it contained on Daniel. “You water your precious trees, then, Mr. Holier-than-Thou.”
The water, cold and shocking, caught him across the knees and thighs, and he jumped back. The wheelbarrow fell on its side as she stalked away, and for a split second, he thought about letting her believe all that. It would be the simplest way—they could just put all this behind them. She’d leave the ranch, and he’d have to fight in court just as if he’d never met her.
But the line of her spine was almost rigidly straight with pain and he couldn’t bear it. Those shards of exploded heart that had splintered through his body last night now needled him, as if someone were brushing a torturous hand over the invisible spine of cactus in his skin.
“Winona!” he cried.
She kept walking, ducking under a tree, then another, her long stride carrying her away from him too fast. He yanked his muddy foot out from under the wheelbarrow and ran after her.
A low-hanging branch caught him across the face, momentarily blinding him, and he staggered. “Winona, wait!” Blinking furiously, he ran after her, and caught her beside the mother tree. She fought his hands, and he heard her breath catch in a little sob, and before she could mount all her defenses, he caught her close to him, enfolding her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Her fists were balled against his chest. Murmuring words he didn’t understand, he took one and smoothed it, feeling the other open on his chest. And she collapsed against him, weeping. “Damn you. I’ve done just fine all these years, and you come along looking like a dream, and I fall apart.”
He rocked her against him, feeling the shards stop aching and a strange, soft peace fill him. Maybe it was the mother tree, shading them with her ancient wisdom. Maybe his emotions were spent.
Maybe it was just Winona, so strong and warm against him. He smoothed her hair, putting his chin on top of her head. “I didn’t use you, Winona. I swear it.”
“I know,” she whispered, then eased herself away from him. She wiped ineffectually at her tears, then looked at her dusty wrist and sighed. He saw her swallow. “But the fact is, we can’t go on like this. I can’t. It’s too hard.”
A brush of that invisible hand made his veins ache. He crossed his arms. “I can’t give up, Winona;”
“You know, in all of this, the most painful part of it is that you keep making a competition of the past and who loves the land more, who deserves it more.” She shook her head slowly, sadly. “That creates a relationship that doesn’t solve anything. It isn’t either/or. It’s how can we make everyone happy?”
Standing there next to the mother tree, with thunder beginning to roll over the sky, Daniel recognized what she said to be true. It was startling. In his quest to find his own place, he’d objectified the trees and all they meant to him. He frowned, trying to work his way through the maze of conflicts before he spoke.
All at once, a sizzling flash of lightning seared the sky almost directly overhead, and before Daniel could begin to count, a hard crack of thunder followed. A sharp scent of ozone filled the air.
“Get inside!” he yelled, starting to run. “The girls are on the bluff.”
Chapter Sixteen
By the time Winona reached the house, a hard wind was blowing, whipping through the cottonwoods, slamming into the windows with clanging rattles. Lightning split the sky twice more before she reached the safety of the back door. Percival met her, whining low in his throat, his little body trembling. She picked him up, cooing softly. Poor thing. It hadn’t stormed since he’d been born—he probably thought the world was coming to an end.
She peered toward the bluff, and saw Daniel herding the girls down the slope in front of him like a pair of lost sheep. They reached level ground and started to run, just as the first enormous drops of rain began to hit the ground.
Winona put the puppy down and tore downstairs to check the basement windows, then raced back upstairs to close the windows there. Daniel and the girls burst through the back door already soaking wet.
“Go down and unplug the phone and the VCR,” he barked, moving toward the living room, where he pulled out one big cord that hooked the computer to its energy source, then got down on his knees and reached under the desk to unplug the phone line. His back was splattered with enormous splotches of rain, and when he stood up, Winona saw his face was wet, too.
Drawn by the growing sound of the storm, all four of them met at the wide kitchen window, which showed the longest view. Wind-whipped rain slammed into the glass as if thrown in buckets, making the scene gray and blurry, and hard, booming cracks of thunder rattled the doors. Percival yelped and barked, as if to warn the humans of danger.
Daniel whooped suddenly. “Let it rain!” he cried. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Winona silently agreed, mesmerized by the roar and the crisp feel of the air, and the smell of ozone. She’d learned to love these gully washers as a child, for they often came on suddenly like this, torrential and violent. Her uncle told her the Navajo called these male rains, the wild ones like this that held the energy of a warrior. The drops were as big as shields, and in minutes, the dusty yard was puddled.
It was only then that she became aware of Joleen, pale and hollow-eyed as she stared at the scene. Winona touched her shoulder. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
Joleen nodded, but Winona could feel the shivering in her body, and when a crack of thunder sounded, Joleen started violently.
Winona almost suggested Joleen go do
wn to the basement, but then she remembered her resolve to let the girl face her demons. “Sit and watch,” she said. “I’ll make tea.”
“Don’t turn on the stove,” Daniel warned. “Not until the lightning stops.”
As if to emphasize his point, a sizzling, blinding flash lit the whole kitchen just then, an eerie greenish blue light followed by a deafening explosion. Winona jumped.
Joleen screamed, slapping her hands over her ears. Before Winona could move, Daniel was with her, easing her into a chair. “It’s okay, honey,” he said quietly, as if gentling a spooked horse. “It’s okay. I’ll sit with you and you can hold my hand.”
Giselle sat on Joleen‘s other side and spoke to Daniel in Navajo. He nodded, and Giselle began to sing, softly, rubbing Joleen’s arm. Another blinding, deafening flash rocked the room, and Joleen started to cry, shaking all over, but Daniel simply continued to hold her hand, and Giselle sang the strange words. Winona wondered what the song was.
And then Daniel began to sing, too, his bass resonant and unutterably beautiful. Winona stared at him, a sharp pain in her heart. In the murky, shifting light of the storm, his voice sounded eternal, steady, strong, cutting through the chaotic noise of the storm with a relentless, quiet, steadfastness.
In some odd, deep way, the sound of that voice illuminated a thousand things for Winona. It was so beautiful she felt tears welling in her eyes, but it was deeper than beauty. The simple steadfastness of the sound suddenly seemed to her to symbolize all the things he’d been saying about his fight for those trees, now being nourished by the violent but life-giving rain. His voice was the undying, relentless, persistent survival of his nation in spite of all odds, against all the violence. That he should stand upon the land for which his great-great-grandmother had died, strong and whole and willing to fight again, was akin to a miracle.
How could she have been so blind and arrogant to have refused to see that until now? Not see that Daniel, above and beyond all else that he was, was Indian. Not only just Indian, either. Diné, as they called themselves. Diné, who long ago had laughed and dreamed and loved—and died—among those trees.
A brilliant, violent flash of lightning filled the room, and on its heels came a ripe, ear-splitting crack that was quickly followed by the sound of an explosion. Daniel stood up, peering outside.
“What was that?” Giselle cried.
A vivid, uncertain light burned from the orchard and Daniel cursed, moving toward the door. “Lightening hit one of the trees. It looks like one is on fire.”
He reached for his coat on a hook by the door. Winona moved, suddenly fearful. “You can’t go out there, Daniel,” she said, holding on to his ann. “The rain will put out any fire that comes.”
He looked at her with a bleak expression in his eyes. “I have to.” He shrugged into his coat.
“You’ll be struck by lightning!”
“Daniel.” The word was plaintive and heartbreaking from Joleen’s mouth. “Please don’t go. I’m afraid.”
He paused with the open door in his hand, and Winona saw that some terrible struggle was going on in him, that somehow he was as unbalanced by the storm as both Joleen and Winona were.
It was only then that Winona heard the strange pattering coming through the open door. She frowned, listening. “What is that?” She lifted her head to look out the window.
And suddenly, the house was engulfed in a horrific, roaring maelstrom. Joleen screamed again, and Winona acted without thinking, dragging both girls away from the windows as enormous ice stones pelted the glass.
Hail.
Daniel slammed the door closed against it and dashed to the archway between kitchen and living room, where Winona held both girls. They were all transfixed. The noise was incredible, pounding like a thousand hammers on the roof and walls and ground. Bits of green leaves stuck to the window, and Winona knew a sinking feeling.
The orchard.
She looked at Daniel, but his attention was fixed on the windows and she saw only his profile. His mouth was hard in the angled face, but nothing else showed. Whatever he thought, whatever he felt, was buried below his rigid privacy. Holding the girls close to her, Winona tried to see the loving, teasing man who’d made love to her last night with such abandon, and could not. This man was far from all of them, wounded but unreachable.
Sorrow ached in her. The gilded, beautiful time she’d spent with him was over. She had fallen too deeply in love with him to be able to stay and accept whatever crumbs he thought fit to offer her. She would let him have the orchard as long as he could give her the money she’d invested in this year’s taxes. Later, when she was a little calmer and less emotional about all of it, she would go talk to someone about a fair price and payment schedule that would be equitable to both of them.
It was the right thing to do.
* * *
The hail lasted twenty minutes or more. Long enough that Winona was fairly certain any crop that might have been possible was now destroyed. When the rain finally ceased an hour afterward, all four of them crept outside to examine the damage.
The sky was still heavy and dark, casting a bleak light over the scene of destruction that greeted them. They stood on the back steps, stunned.
“Holy cow,” Joleen breathed. “I’m going to see if my rabbits are okay.”
“I’ll go with you,” Giselle said, and both of them jumped off the porch, landing in mud that sucked at their feet when they tried to move. Struggling, they headed for the worn barn, where the rabbits’ hutch was. They finally reached a patch of ground where buffalo grass held the dirt in place, and started to run.
Daniel and Winona still did not move. She was still too stunned. In an hour, the trees had been nearly stripped bare of their leaves, and the ground was covered with their debris—shredded green leaves and twigs and even a few larger branches. She eyed the orchard, but could see little from her vantage point. It didn’t look quite as bad there, but—“We may as well go look,” Daniel said heavily.
Winona followed him to the orchard. The going was slow, thanks to the mud, and she was glad she’d put on a thick sweater, for the air was chill and wet.
At the orchard they paused, both of them struck dumb by the devastation. Leaves carpeted the ground below the trees much as the shed blossoms had the first day Winona had come there. Overhead, the remaining leaves were tattered. Some limbs were stripped bare, but others had barely been touched. Toward the bluff, she noticed many of the trees had escaped damage at all, probably due to the protection of the high shelf of land. Her spirits rose, and she eagerly moved through the trees, unmindful of the way her feet squished in her shoes or the slap of wet branches on her arms.
Birds, subdued by the weather, began to sing quietly as Winona stopped again and again to examine this branch, this tree. A great many of the peaches had been stripped off by the leaves, but a great many more remained. Jubilantly she turned and called Daniel’s name.
There was no answer, only an eerie silence. “Daniel?” she called again. She circled the knot of trees that had been spared. As she ducked under the low-hanging branches of a young tree, she emerged in the meadow at the center of the orchard.
And there was Daniel, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his head bowed before the mother tree.
Or what was left of her. This was where the bolt of lightning had struck with fierce and annihilating power, which only made sense. The mother tree had been the tallest of all of them.
The bolt had struck hard, and the tree had exploded. Broken limbs were scattered in a wide radius on the ground, along with bits of bark and leaves. The stump smoked, black and forlorn in the gray light.
Winona closed her eyes for one tiny moment, aching as if a beloved pet had been killed, then she steeled herself and walked toward the unmoving Daniel. Nearby him, she bent and picked up a strangely unharmed branch, the leaves green and clean, with a tiny knot of a peach on one.
And still he only stood there, staring at the smoking
ruin of tree. “Are you all right?” she asked, coming up to stand beside him.
He didn’t seem to hear her. Winona touched his arm. “Daniel?”
That was when she realized that on his face was the bleakest expression she’d ever seen. All hope, all life were drained way. Below her hand, his arm trembled, as if there were some internal instability, one that would gather and gather until it exploded. In a brief, graphic moment, she saw Daniel as devastated as the tree, and she couldn’t bear it. “Daniel,” she said, tightening her hands.
Slowly he turned his head and looked at her, as if only just now becoming aware of her. The vast emptiness in the dark irises frightened her, but she couldn’t think of what to say to heal it, to give him back what he’d just lost. Not just a tree, but all his hopes, all meaning. His whole quest had centered on the symbolism of this tree.
Without a word, he looked at the tree again, then turned and walked away, moving faster and faster as he neared the house. Winona stared after him, unsure what she should do.
It was only when she heard the sound of his truck starting that she knew she’d lost him, that any opportunity she might have had to help him was gone. Forever.
* * *
He drove mindlessly over the rutted, muddy roads, a howling pain in his veins, so vivid he didn’t dare even take a deep breath for fear the stabbing would kill him. He drove and drove, west to the reservation, where there were fewer and fewer cars, fewer buildings. Off in the mesas and along the arroyos, he’d find hogans and houses and sheep and humanity, but he did not seek them.
Under cover of darkness, he at last reached the destination he must have realized he sought. Coatless, still damp from his tramp through the orchard, he took a blanket from the seat of the truck and got out. Wrapping the blanket around his shoulders, he sat on the cold, wet ground. His grief was dried and tight inside him, and he faced east, from whence the morning would come.
* * *
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