by Shirl Henke
He closed his eyes and fought the welling despair. She could not die before he held her in his arms once more. He prayed to the Everywhere Spirit, he even prayed to Jeremiah's God.
Suddenly he heard a baby's thin shrill wail and felt Stevie's peace. Then the hollowness of fear left him, replaced by a deep sense of joy.
* * * *
“He's a fine strapping lad, Mrs. Remington,” Dr. Jamison said, shaking his head at the highly irregular way the baby had been born only moments before he arrived. He addressed her as the Reverend Remington's granddaughter-in-law, believing, as did everyone else, that she and Chase had been married before his imprisonment. As he washed the infant in warm water, while Bridget assisted and Mrs. Keenan fussed getting Stephanie into a clean nightgown, the doctor asked, ‘‘What will you name him?”
Stephanie's smile was radiant as she accepted her newborn son and pressed him to her breast. “Jeremiah Chase Remington. I shall call him Jeremy.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Stephanie looked at the huge pile of moldering stones with foreboding. Fort Marion .was every bit as inhospitable and ominous as she had feared. The day was stifling with a hot salt-laden wind gusting erratically from the ocean. Billowy gray clouds promised a spring rainstorm within the hour. Casting an uncertain glance at the sky, she climbed out of the hackney she'd hired for the day and told the driver to wait. Her yellow lawn dress was wrinkled and she felt wilted in the humidity as she made her way up the crumbling steps toward the prison. Stephanie could feel a thin trickle of perspiration between her breasts.
She had left Jeremy at the hotel in St. Augustine with Bridget. There were things she and Chase must discuss before she would allow him to see his son. If she could keep her resolve. Over the years she'd shown amazingly little willpower where Chase Remington was concerned. Nervously she smoothed her skirts and stopped near the front gates of the fort. Heavy iron bars were set across its opening like ugly rusted teeth. How lightless and foul smelling the interior of the hellish place must be.
She had been instructed to wait here. Chase was to be released at noon. She had checked her watch before alighting from the hackney—eleven-thirty. But if there was any chance they'd let him out early she wanted to be here. After nearly a year of separation she was desperate to assure herself that he was all right. That he still loved her. The sun came out from behind the clouds, intensifying the cloying heat and she cursed herself for not bringing a parasol. Spying a cluster of cabbage palms she walked a few dozen feet and took what shelter they offered. Her eyes remained glued to the arched entrance of the fortress.
Time crawled by as slowly as the mosquito circling her wrist. She swatted it before it drew blood. Her watch read twelve noon. What was delaying them? What if Chase had been taken ill in the pestilent place since their last contact with the commandant? Foolishly she had insisted on leaving Jeremiah's attorney in town, wanting her reunion with Chase to be private. Now she was beginning to regret the decision as all sorts of awful possibilities flitted through her mind.
Then the whining screech of rusty metal grating against rusty metal filled the hushed stillness. She squinted against the merciless glare of the sun and saw a lone figure walk through the big arched entrance and pause as if momentarily stunned by the bright light after a long time without it. The gate clanged shut again and he stood staring directly at her, but he did not move.
“Chase!” Stephanie picked up her skirts and dashed toward him. Still he did not take a step, just continued staring at her with burning black eyes. He was thin to the point of emaciation with a gray pallor beneath his coppery skin, what was visible over the shaggy black beard that covered his lower face. His eyes were old. He wore a pair of light tan trousers, a white shirt and brown shoes, all cheap and ill-fitting. What had she expected—that he would still be dressed in breechclout and moccasins?
Stephanie slowed her headlong rush when he did not open his arms to her but remained motionless except for those restless eyes. The clothes hung on his big frame. She extended one hand, unable to stop herself from touching him. Her fingers dug into the coarse scratchy cotton of his shirt front, feeling the heat and muscle beneath. She was rewarded by the slam of his heartbeat against her palm. Her eyes studied him questioningly as she reached up and touched his hair, which was cut shorter to shoulder length.
Chase did not dare embrace her. She was a vision of paradise, smelling of apple blossoms, robed like sunshine, sweet and pure and beautiful. He would not sully her with his touch. “I should have known you were the one responsible for getting me free,” he said at length.
“I didn't do it. Jeremiah did. He's moved heaven and earth for you, Chase.”
He digested that, wondering if Jeremiah knew that he had killed Burke. Chase was not surprised that the old man would still try to claim him, but was grateful that he had taken in Stephanie and provided for her and the baby. The scent of her filled his nostrils, robbing him of coherent thought. His eyes strayed down the slender curves of her body, pausing at her breasts, now fuller. “The baby?”
“Your son is waiting for us back at the hotel. His name is Jeremy.”
He released a pent-up breath he had been unaware he was holding as he watched her lips curve into a heart-stopping smile that lit up her eyes. Eyes Like Sun. “I was afraid…”
One day she would tell him about the birth and Red Bead, but not now. “They didn't give you my letters. I feared that had happened. No one was allowed in to see you. Oh, Chase,” she said softly, pressing both hands against his chest, moving closer.
He held her at arm's length. “Please don't.” She reacted as if he'd struck her, the light dying in her eyes. “Lice,” he explained. “They don't allow much bathing. We're all dirty Indians anyway. I'm the only prisoner who required shaving. They had no provisions for it and weren't about to make accommodations for me. I don't want you to be contaminated by the filth of that place.”
The grimness of his expression was softened by the hunger in his eyes and in his voice. With a sob she broke loose from his restraining grip and threw her arms around his neck. “I don't care! It'll hardly be the first time we've bathed together.”
He could no more stop himself from holding her than he could block out the Florida sun with its glorious golden warmth beating cleanly on his skin. She was his sun, his light, his life. Her fingers dug into his filthy cropped hair, pulling his face to hers for a kiss that devoured them both.
Her hands moved everywhere, around his shoulders, down his arms, over his back. Chase simply held her pressed tightly to him, kissing her as if he could draw the sweet joy of life solely from her.
He was so thin! What hellish things had they done to him? Tears filled her eyes thinking about the months he had spent locked away from the sun, the fresh air and green earth that was life and breath for his people. “I'll make this up to you, everything, I swear it,” she murmured between kisses.
“Stevie,” he breathed in her name like a prayer, tasting the saltiness of her tears. He reached up to touch one silvered cheek, then stopped when he saw his begrimed fingers with their blackened broken nails. “I need a bath,” he said, feeling that the filth penetrating him went far beyond skin deep.
She could sense his subtle withdrawal and did not understand it. “Yes, of course. I have a hackney waiting to take us to the hotel. What did they do to you, Chase?” she asked as they walked to where the driver waited patiently on the dirt roadway.
As they climbed into the coach he shrugged. “What didn't they do? Prisons for whites are bad. For Indians, worse. I expected to die in some black dungeon.”
“Surely you didn't think we'd give up, abandon you!”
He smiled at the indignation in her voice. “No, I didn't suppose you would.”
“They wouldn't let me see you or testify at the trial and I couldn't reach Jeremiah until it was over. As soon as he knew, he set his attorneys to work. We've both written you so many times since they sent you here.”
“I never received any mail. I imagine the commandant believed no dirty Indian could read.”
“I was afraid of that. The election last fall finally gave us a chance after we had exhausted every avenue in the courts.” At his puzzled look she realized he had no sense of how long he'd been in prison or that Grant was no longer president.
“You’ve been in prison for almost a year, Chase. There was a presidential election last fall. Rutherford Hayes won. Jeremiah and I went to Washington to make a personal plea for you as soon as Hayes was inaugurated.”
“I'm surprised it worked.”
“Rutherford Hayes ran on a reform platform. Pardoning the grandson of such an illustrious man as the Reverend Jeremiah Remington was a good place to start. Of course, it didn't hurt our cause one bit that Jeremiah contributed very substantially to his campaign,” she added with an impish grin.
“The army will take a long time to get over its defeat on the Greasy Grass no matter what any new politicians in Washington may do.”
She knew he was thinking about his family. “I've tried to find Stands Tall and the children. They're not on the reservation.”
“If Little Wolf is still alive they're all right.”
When he offered nothing more on the subject, she wondered what he planned to do. “Will you go searching for them?” Will you leave us again?
“I don't know, Stevie. I never thought...hell, I figured to die in prison. Indians on the High Plains won't be allowed to run free either. They'll all end up penned somewhere,” he added bitterly.
“Perhaps in the Yellowstone country?” she ventured.
“Without the buffalo, they'll be forced to live on government handouts.”
“And you don't like handouts, do you, Chase? From the government or your grandfather.”
“Let's go to that hotel, Stevie,” he said quietly, not replying to her remarks. He was too confused to argue, much less have any idea of what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. The only thing he was certain of was that he would not spend it dancing to Jeremiah Remington's tune.
They rode toward the city, the silence unbroken for several moments. Chase stared out the window at the flat sandy land and cloud-filled sky. “I can feel the rain coming,” he said, rubbing his thigh.
“Where Burke shot you?” she asked, watching his hand.
He nodded. “Does the old man know I killed his son?” The question seemed to hang in the air. Why the hell had he brought it up?
“Yes. He guessed as much when I told him about your arrest. He doesn't blame you.”
“Big of him,” he replied, regretting bringing up the whole sorry mess. He tried to return his concentration to the scenery but he could feel her eyes on him as they sat side by side in the cramped coach.
What did I expect—that this would be easy? she reminded herself. He had good reasons for his bitterness, yet there were far more compelling reasons for him to forgive his grandfather. He'd been horribly abused in the prison. “You look starved,” she blurted out hoarsely, fighting the urge to cry and throw herself into his arms again, but it would not be wise.
He grinned wolfishly. “Thanks. The food, what there was of it, wasn't exactly wholesome. Most of the prisoners have dysentery.”
“I knew conditions were awful. That's why they wouldn't let me inside. We can do something to stop the abuse, Chase.”
“We? As in the Remington we?”
“Are you questioning my right to your name?”
Poised stiffly on the edge of the seat, ready to shatter, she looked as if he'd struck her. And he supposed verbally he had. “I'm sorry, Stevie. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I've dreamed of you all these endless months yet never believed I'd actually see you again. An hour ago the commandant summoned me to his office and told me I was being set free. Just like that. No explanation. I was given these elegant clothes to replace the vermin-infested rags I'd been wearing, then shoved out the gate. When I saw you standing there...I couldn't believe it.” He could not keep from reaching out and touching her hand, just the lightest brushing of his fingertips.
“Was that why you didn't come to meet me?” she asked, raising her palm and pressing it to his lips.
“I'm still not sure this isn't a dream,” he replied hoarsely. “Hell, Stevie, it's going to take me a week to wash away the prison stink. I don't think I'll ever feel clean again.”
She touched his lips to silence him, too overcome to speak herself. “Just hold me, Chase. For now it's enough.”
She nestled her head against his chest and fitted her body to his side. Chase could do nothing but enfold her in his arms until they reached the small hotel on Charlotte Street. As she paid the coachman, he became aware that he had not a cent to his name, only the cheap clothes on his back. Everyone must know at a glance he was one of the Indian convicts from the prison. What must they make of a beautiful white lady bringing him into her quarters? At least no one commented or made any attempt to stop him from entering the cool high-ceilinged building made of natural coquina stone. Stephanie walked briskly to the desk and spoke with a clerk, whose eyes widened when he saw her “husband,” but the man merely nodded to her request for lots of hot bathwater and extra linens.
In a surprisingly short time he was soaking in his second tub of water and contemplating the razor and scissors set out on the table beside the mirror. His first look at himself in nine months was not reassuring. Hell, he was haggard and pale as a tubercular patient and that was the good part. His eyes were cold and fathomless, filled with the horrors he'd seen and lived in that sinkhole. He looked like a hardened criminal, which in the eyes of the government he was—or had been until Stevie and Jeremiah got him pardoned.
What now, he wondered as he stepped out of the tub and reached for a towel. The door to the bedroom opened, and Stevie gasped softly. He turned to face her, holding the heavy towel in his hands.
“Your back...does it still hurt?” she asked. His skin was crisscrossed with jagged white welts.
“The scars are ugly but they healed before I was shipped here or I'd have surely died of blood poisoning.”
She walked up to him and picked up one of the towels. “Let me dry your back,” she said, moving around him. Her eyes stung with tears as she remembered the brutal beating she'd been forced to watch.
‘These are no badge of honor like the Sun Dance,” he said as she began to gently massage the tension from his back with the towel. He dried off the rest of his body, reveling in the smell of fresh clean linen.
“It's over, Chase. I don't care that you're scarred, only that you're alive and free. I've brought some clothes...from Boston. I think they should still fit...a bit loosely.” She pointed to the armoire against the wall. “Bridget pressed them when we unpacked yesterday.”
He padded across the room on bare feet and opened the cabinet doors. Several of the summer suits he'd had custom-tailored during his student days hung neatly beside starched shirts and a navy silk dressing robe. He plucked the robe off its hanger and slid it on. “I'd better hack the bush off before I see my son.”
“You just might frighten him at that, looking like one of those Spanish buccaneers.”
He picked up the scissors. Peering into the mirror on the wall, he began cutting away as much as he could of the beard. “Tell me about Jeremy.”
Watching his face begin to take shape once more, she found it difficult to concentrate. “He...he was born—”
“Late on January seventeenth. I asked the guard the date after I awoke hearing you scream, then a baby crying. Somehow I knew everything was all right.”
Stephanie gasped. Her mind whirled thinking of Red Bead. “There was a terrible blizzard in Boston that night and the doctor couldn't get through.” She told him the whole incredible story, including the comfort she received from Jeremiah's presence.
He sat, taking it all in, the scissors held motionless in his hand now. “Somehow there's a link between us that transcends the chasm between the worlds of
red and white.”
She nodded. “I know. Now we have to figure out where Jeremy will fit into these two worlds.”
“That's not going to be easy,” Chase said, working up a lather over the remainder of his beard and picking up the razor.
“His full name is Jeremiah Chase Remington. He weighs fifteen pounds now, sleeps up to six hours between feedings and laughs all the time.” She noted the razor had stilled when she mentioned Jeremy's name. “Yes, Chase, I named him after your grandfather as well as you.”
“That's reasonably obvious,” he replied darkly, resuming the steady even strokes with the blade. “Is that your way of throwing down the gauntlet to me?”
“I didn't intend for you to take it that way, but I do want you to talk with your grandfather. He's suffered, too, terribly and he's tried to make amends as best he can. He wants your forgiveness, Chase.”
“Then he finally admits the truth about Burke?”
“Your mother kept a diary. He found it the week before Burke died.” She let the words sink in as he wiped off his clean face with a towel, then hung his head. She could see his knuckles gripping the scarred edges of the dry sink. He was trembling.
He felt her soft hands on his back, her heat and sweetness penetrating the silk robe, reaching into the core of him. She had never left his heart. He could never let her. He turned and drew her into his arms, murmuring, “Stevie, you were the only thing that kept me from going insane in there. I need you like light and air—no, more.”
Stephanie closed her eyes, glorying in his words, feeling the long-denied hunger in his touch. “I love you, Chase. I could never love another man.”
He buried his fist in the mass of hair caught at her nape in a heavy chignon, working it loose from the pins until the bronze glitter cascaded around her shoulders. “Apple blossoms,” he murmured, nuzzling her throat and trailing kisses around her ears, temples and eyelids, then touching his lips to hers, gently at first, tasting the edge of her mouth.