“Are you all going back to the ranch tonight, or what?” Clare asked trying to get her ducks in a row, and hoping Aaron would say no.
“There’s two bedrooms here in the condo, right?” Blaze asked.
“Yeah,” Clare answered. I have the entire upper level. Janette, Lynette’s daughter, calls it the penthouse suite. Lynette sleeps down here in the master bedroom.”
Blaze looked over at Lynette, then Aaron.
“Then I don’t see any problem, do you Babe?” he addressed his comment to Lynette.
“Nope,” she said, “and the house is pretty well insulated, so sounds don’t travel,” she smirked, looking over at Aaron with a wink.
Blaze and Lynette stood out on her balcony looking at the twinkling lights of the village and the bright lights of the nearby casino.
“It’s so different here than out at the ranch,” Blaze said. “All we see is stars and the moon when the night is cloudless. We can see some distant headlights way over on the highway sometimes. This is kinda pretty,” he observed.
“Oh, and we get to christen your bed tonight, don’t we?” he chuckled, pinching her on her voluptuous behind.
“You bet we do mister, and it’s got a new sturdy mattress and box springs on it, too,” she laughed in her earthy way.
CHAPTER 11
¤
Getting to Know You
“Lynn, under the circumstances now, why don’t you throw all your things in your suitcase and just stay out at the ranch for the rest of the week,” Blaze urged. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to run back and forth here, now that Clare is gone. Besides, I wanna be with you every minute that I can,” he admitted, looking up at her from his spot on the couch.
“You’re right. I’d thought about that,” she agreed. Then she stopped for an instant. “What about Aaron? Will he mind me under foot for a couple days?” she asked out of deference to him.
“Mind, hell, he’ll be delighted to have a woman around the house. Somebody besides me to talk to. But, I’m warning you, he’ll talk your ear off,” he laughed.
“Not to worry, not to worry. I’ve been accused a time or two in my life of being pretty wordy myself,” she countered. “Have you forgotten my rambling on and on about the mountain at dinner the other night?” she chuckled.
“No Babe,” he responded, “I haven’t forgotten a minute of that night. I keep playing it over and over in my head, trying to figure out how the hell I got so lucky; what I’ve done to deserve you,” he said with a contented smile.
Lynette left a check for the cleaning lady, locked up the condo, and hopped joyfully into her rent car. She dropped it off at the Enterprise office on Main Road and climbed into Blaze’s truck. As they drove back out to the ranch, Blaze heard her tell the property management secretary that she was ending her stay for this visit, and the $95 for the housekeeping service was on the bar in the kitchen. “No,” she assured the voice on the other end of the phone, “everything was perfect,” she just decided to leave early and go some place really special. And, she was in too much of a hurry to clean the unit herself, thus the check.
Blaze was curious and waited till she shut off her cell phone.
“I don’t understand what you meant,” he said.
“Sweetie, I have the condo in the rental pool. When I’m not there, or my daughter or some of our friends aren’t using it, we let the unit out for rent. It helps me pay the mortgage each month. I don’t always get to come out here as often as I’d like, so it frequently sits empty. I’d rather someone use it, and of course pay to use it,” she smiled, “and it cuts down on the expense. The condo is my vacation home, but it’s also an investment for the future,” she explained. “Remember, Clare told you all that I’ve given some real thought to retirement up here at some point.”
“I see,” Blaze nodded with a slight smile. She was a practical woman. It made sense to him. But now, she had a real reason to make the Crystal Bend area her retirement home. Him!
For the next few days, they talked a lot. There was so much to know about one another. People of their age come with baggage, Lynette once said to him. Certainly, he couldn’t disagree with her. He wondered if she was strong enough to handle all his.
They talked sitting out on the deck overlooking the grand valley. They talked with Aaron in their presence. Aaron knew most of Blaze’s secrets and Lynette wasn’t timid about sharing her education in the life school of hard knocks. In fact, Aaron threw his life into the pot and they laughed a lot at what fools they’d made of themselves over the years and the hard lessons life had taught each of them. Lynette shared her beliefs about being on this plain to learn lessons from others, and to teach lessons to others. She and Blaze talked about the interconnection between everything – how there seems to be a plan about all of this. They discussed the fact that all this so-called randomness in life is not random at all, but it leads to other things, other lessons. She continued to be astonished at the almost identical views Blaze held. Where had he learned about the Universe? Did the ancient wisdom of the Apache teach him about the Universe?
The really deep, personal stuff, Lynette left for the bedroom or when she and Blaze roamed around out on the ranch or drove on the highway somewhere. He listened well. Even when she couldn’t fully explain something, he understood what she was trying to say. And she not only heard him, she felt him. His strong aura meshed with hers. There was something spiritual about their bond, and both of them knew it. Maybe this was the Universe’s way of giving them one last chance at true happiness, the real happiness that they finally deserved. If so, they were grateful, and every night each of them thanked God for the gifts of that day, and the gift of each other.
One night after she’d gone to bed, she woke and missed Blaze. Usually he crawled into bed with her at the same time, and they read, watched TV or made love before they nestled together and fell into blissfully restorative sleep. On that night, Friday night, to be exact, Blaze was no where in the house. Tiptoeing barefooted through the hallway in search of him, she heard a low humming coming from outside the house, down by a stand of thick cedars. She moved cautiously toward the dining room window and eased the curtain aside. There, in the light of a three-quarter moon, stood Blaze, hair loose, blowing in the wind, and at first it appeared to her that he was completely naked. Looking more carefully she could see that he was clad only in a buckskin-colored breechcloth – a single piece of cloth between his legs which went up above his pelvis and flapped over a tied strip of leather in the front and back. His muscular arms were outstretched in a way that indicated supplication and submission. He chanted in a language that she didn’t understand. She couldn’t tell if those were words or syllables. Blaze was fluent in his native Apache language, and in Spanish. It wasn’t Spanish. It was a strange and haunting chant. Honoring this very private moment, she slipped quietly back down the hallway and climbed back under the bed covers.
If she had known the language of the ancient Apache, she would have understood his prayer.
“Oh Great Spirit, Father of us all, if tomorrow does not come for me, if the sun does not dawn from behind our mountain and brighten my eyes with Your light, I will still be content, for I now know love. I know the love You intended for man. I know what it means now to be truly happy, and Spirit of the heavens, I am more grateful than I can ever find words. You have given me the love of my life, and Great Spirit, I thank you with these humble words. I will honor the gift of this woman all the days of my life. I will love this woman almost as much as You love her. I will care for her and protect her with every breath in my body. Guide my hand Great Spirit as I hold hers. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said as he turned in all four directions.
About an hour later, he joined her in bed. He made love to her without ever uttering a word. Then he held her all night.
Blaze drove her up the snaking, winding, somewhat scary road to the ski area of Sierra Asombroso. There was beauty everywhere. As the truck ascended the
side of the mountain the view became ever more indescribable. The lower mountain peaks seemed to pay homage to the summit. Lookaway Mountain to the south sloped downward as if knowing it must take second place to this mighty summit. The basin, as it was called, a huge concave indentation where the actual ski area was positioned, had been characteristically carved out by an ancient glacier which melted thousands of years before. Though she’d been in the area many times, she’d never ventured all the way up the ski mountain by herself. As far as the eye could see, this land had belonged to his ancestors until it was over-run by the Spaniards , taken and carved up by the U.S. government. He was melancholy in a way, as he talked about the history of his people. It was upon that mountain that Blaze told her about his ancestors, the ordinary people and the early Apache warriors and chiefs. In undergraduate school, Lynette minored in history, so she knew many of the names that Blaze recounted, but she didn’t know the stories from the Apache’s point of view. From childhood she intuitively believed that the soldiers were wrong as they mercilessly slew whole villages of Indians to clear the way for westward expansion, so she searched for books that were more objective about the Natives, often hard to find. She’d learned much from the history written by the white and Hispanic historians. For many such historians, the Indian warriors were all raiders and criminals; ignorant and disposable savages. From the Apache view, they were men fighting for their very existence - an existence which served them well – an existence they and their ancestors had known for thousands of years. He spoke of Cochise, Geronimo, Victorio, Mangas Coloradas and other Chiricahua warriors and chiefs – of their pride, intelligence, resilience, defiance and determination.
“I read somewhere,” Lynette interjected, “that when the soldiers had Mangas Coloradas in the stockade, they heated their bayonets red hot and pressed them onto his bare feet in mockery to make him dance. That’s how they were able to fabricate the tale that he was killed trying to escape,” she finished sadly.
“Its true,” Blaze answered. “And we were called the savages!”
He spoke of the Apache horsemanship, their skills at reading nature from the things which surrounded them. He told of how they had been duped into cooperation or surrender to the U.S. Army and the devastating psychological effect this had on his people – let alone the whole-sale slaughter and murder. In her mind, Lynette recalled something else – 276 treaties entered into – 276 treaties broken by the white man. It was a painful discussion she and her classmates had in a forward-thinking professor’s class many years before. It was there that she realized how little people really knew about the conflicts between the white settlers, the soldiers, the Mexicans and the Indians. So many of the students, and most younger than she, had succumbed to Hollywood’s version of Manifest Destiny and felt that the whites had the God-given right to move the Natives out of their way. She heard Calvinist thinking in their words, and she was offended. She heard justification for racism and annihilation of a people, and she spoke out against it, often with the fervor and passion that resonated within her. She made some classmates very angry with her persuasive and irrefutable arguments, and she helped open the eyes of others who wanted to see both sides of history. It was at these rare times that she felt ashamed of her white heritage.
Blaze mentioned a name Lynette had never heard. Lozen, a Chiricahua Warm Springs Apache – the sister of Chief Victorio. She was a skilled warrior and a gifted medicine woman, who helped her people avoid capture by the soldiers. At one time it is believed that she rode with Chief Nana, and later with Geronimo. What amazed Lynette was that a few of the descendants of all of these great chiefs and warriors, including Lozen, live on or near the Apache Reservations in New Mexico and Arizona. She might have walked past the great grandchildren of some of history’s most important persons when she went in and out of Lowes or Home Depot in Alamagordo, or when they ate at the Foot of the Mountain Inn near Crystal Bend.
Once Clare left on Wednesday, Blaze took Lynette to see his part of the ranch, to visit with his six rescued horses, and to further enjoy some of the low-lying areas of the National Forest.
“Where did you get your horses?” she asked Blaze.
“Here and there,” he replied nonchalantly. “From time to time we hear about animals that have been neglected or abused. Lots of ranchers around here adopt these beautiful animals so they won’t have to be put down. The ASPCA calls every now and then to see if we can take in any more animals. That’s how Aaron got three of his – the palomino with the white boots and the two reds. You won’t believe what they looked like when we went to pick them up. I wish I could put my foot up the ass of the man who let those horses almost starve to death,” he said angrily. “’scuse me babe, but it torments the hell out of me the way people do animals. I think we told you that we got Rusty and Suzie Q from the humane society right here in the county. Some white trash couple left ‘em outside in the cold and rain. Fed ‘em only every now and then. The neighbors called the law and they gave up their rights to them rather than go to court.” Blaze dropped his head and shook it in disgust. “I don’t understand,” was all he said.
Lynette really liked the smallest of the four horses. “What’s his name?” she asked.
“Haven’t named him yet. Just got him about two weeks before I met you,” he said.
“And he’s filled out like that in just two weeks?” she asked in amazement.
“Yep. That’s what lots of good feed, medicine, exercise and TLC can do. This is where Hawk and Maurice were the other day when we brought you and Clare out to the ranch. They were over here feeding these six, washing them down and walking them. Remember, we said that Maurice is good with animals. Well, he seems to be able to love them back to health.” Blaze paused for a minute before he spoke again.
“The first three nights after we brought him here, I stayed out here with him. Wanted to make sure he wouldn’t try to run off and no coyote or wolf tried to get him. Me and the boys took turns sleeping in the trucks for the first week to make sure he didn’t come down sick with anything or get spooked. Look at him now,” Blaze smiled again. Then there was a thoughtful pause.
“I believe with enough love, and proper care, any living thing that wants to be, can be healed. Do you believe that?” he asked Lynette.
“Yes I do,” she answered immediately. “I sure do.”
“You wanna name him?” he asked her.
“That’d be quite a privilege, but can I wait until I come up with a really appropriate name?”
“Sure. Take your time,” he replied. “He isn’t goin’ anywhere.”
After a pause Blaze added, “And neither are we.”
THEY TALKED ABOUT THEIR broken marriages. They talked about their children. They talked about fears. They talked about disillusionment. They talked about their dreams and desires. They talked at times until they were just talked out.
It was as if Blaze wanted to know everything about Lynette as fast as possible, so they could get to the next step in their relationship. And, he wanted to get everything said about himself, the good, the bad, and the bizarre. They talked when they walked down the road to get the mail; they talked over meals when Aaron was gone. Lynette touched on many unhappy areas of her marriage during these three days and she talked a little about Roger. She began,
“In spite of all his limitations, I was in love with Roger, the man that I lived with for a couple of years. But he, like my dad, was an alcoholic. Oh, he didn’t drink much during the week, unless there was a holiday, but he drank from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon. Friday nights were the worst,” she continued, frowning. “He’d pour a real stiff drink as soon as he came in from work. I’m talking four fingers. He drank quickly, as though he needed to get drunk in a hurry. By 8:00 or so, he was drunk, and the meanness surfaced. He was a very angry man. He never raised his hand to me or anything like that, but he would try to bate me. He’d say really mean things to me. He’d been married four times, divorced four times; he lived with
several women for months at a time, then broke up with them. He hated his mother for abandoning him to his father and grandmother. He hated women because, when he was drunk, they were the reason for all the misery in the world. He was mistrustful of all women and that mistrust started slipping into our relationship. I made sure I never gave him anything to be jealous about, but that didn’t matter. He’d make little snide remarks about how you can’t trust a woman; that they could be laying under another man and talking to their husbands on the phone. He said he knew that to be true because he’d been the man on top while several of his “conquests” chatted with their husbands. Oh, he was a mess. There was something I loved about him, though. There was a sad, gentle side to him. Maybe that was the part I loved. I have a tendency to be a rescuer, you know,” she concluded.
“Do you still love him?” Blaze asked softly.
“No, oh no. That’s all over. When I close doors, they stay shut. I’ll always care for him as a friend. We parted pretty much as friends. No rancor, no final recriminations. We’d learned all we could, or at least I’d learned all I think I was supposed to from him, and we parted friendly. We’ve talked on the phone a couple of times over the past few years; he told me about the newest girlfriend he was supposed to be engaged to, but I haven’t seen him, and I don’t need to. I hope he’s doing well, and you know, I pray that he has found someone he can love and trust. I’d hate to think of him going through the rest of his life draped in so much hate, and dying like that. Do you know what I mean?” she asked Blaze.
“I think I do,” he replied, with an honest sense of understanding.
Blaze went deep into himself. He wondered if Roger had pleased her the way she needed. Even more, he wondered if she’d given him the same kind of pleasure she bestowed on him. It would be a question never asked. It didn’t really matter.
Thunder In Her Body Page 13