Thunder In Her Body

by C. B. Stanton

  “Armed robbery. I was the foreman of the jury that convicted him,” Blaze replied.

  “Looks like the Universe put you in the right place at just the right time, doesn’t it Babe? It’s funny how that happens, isn’t it? I’ll talk to Aaron. We haven’t laid out any money yet, and there’s no paperwork done. What’s curious is how they found out we were interested in those properties,” Blaze finished with a quizzical frown on his brow. He stood up, leaned across the table and kissed Lynette gently on the forehead. “You are my angel, aren’t you?” he smiled.

  CHAPTER 20

  ¤

  The Misunderstanding

  “I was over to the building site this afternoon, and Alberto mentioned that Lynette comes over almost every day, and when she’s there, she spends an inordinate amount of time with one of the laborers. He’s a black guy. She ever mention anything about him to you?” Aaron asked Blaze.

  “No. She hasn’t said anything, why?” he asked, with a frown on his face.

  “Well, I think Alberto feels it doesn’t look right for her to single out this one guy over all the others,” he answered.

  “I know she takes cookies, and pies over there when she goes sometimes. She likes to watch what they’re doing, but I really don’t think much of her talking to some guy,” he said with an honest air of unconcern.

  “Ok. Just thought I’d mention it,” Aaron ended the conversation.

  Aaron also mentioned the comment by Alberto to Clare.

  “What did you say to Blaze?” she asked. Aaron related the conversation.

  “I can tell you Lynette is going to be pissed that you said anything to Blaze. She’ll feel you should have brought any concern you have to her, not her husband,” Clare added emphatically. “If I were you, I’d say something to her before Blaze does. I know my friend. I know her values. I know her temper, and she’s gonna be pissed,” Clare

  warned.

  Blaze had not discarded the information Aaron shared with him. He was a thoughtful man and was sure that whatever was happening had been misread. After what caused a temporary rift between them the week of their formal engagement, he knew that he must trust her, but he thought he might bring it up that evening for her sake. He did.

  “And you heard this from whom?” she said, immediately irritated.

  “Alberto said something to Aaron, and you know how protective Aaron is. He just thought that maybe you’re making the wrong impression out there,” Blaze explained.

  Lynette kept cutting up the cucumber, but Blaze noticed that her strikes at the vegetable became more pronounced, almost violent.

  “Aaron,” she yelled in an uncharacteristically loud voice, without turning around. He emerged through the doorway from the deck.

  “Is there some question you have about my behavior?” she asked pointedly, still hacking on the cucumber.

  “Oh, shit,” he sputtered. “You told her about…”

  Blaze nodded his head.

  There was a really long, uneasy silence. Lynette turned to the men, one sitting on the bar stool at the kitchen island, the other standing a ways back. She was aware that she was in someone else’s house, so she wanted to be careful, but she would not have her reputation or actions questioned.

  “Why didn’t you bring this issue to me, not my husband?” she asked, turning around slowly with the knife in her hand. It was the look on her face that concerned Blaze. He had never seen it before. It was a cold, angry expression. Her eyes were narrowed and she spoke in an unsettlingly calm voice.

  “I…I just thought Blaze should know before he heard it from anyone else, that’s all Dear Lady,” he said in a patronizing voice.

  “Then let me help you understand something. I am deeply and earnestly in love with your brother. If you thought my behavior cast any doubt on that, you should have come to me first. I will cut off my right arm before I’ll do anything to hurt this beautiful man. I am an adult; I am neither chattel nor bondwoman born in a third-world country. I am a free-born woman, and I don’t need to be chastened or watched like a child. And I am neither a fool nor whore. If anyone came to me with some crap about your business dealings that affected Blaze, I would stand before you and discuss what I’d been told. I would not go running to Blaze. I don’t like what you did. It was patently dishonest. But just for the record, let me explain this. I don’t get to see many blacks out here. It’s either Hispanics, Indians or Whites. We, he and I, are decidedly in the minority, and that status causes people to gravitate toward one another. He has an estranged wife who is playing havoc with his life and the lives of his children. I mentioned one day that I had been a manager in a child support division during my state tenure. We sit and talk about what he can and can’t do. He is in arrears, they are garnishing 50 percent of his wages because there are six children, and he believes that only two of them are his.” She wanted to look at Blaze, but she kept her angry gaze fixed on Aaron. “I’m trying to help him. I sat across a desk for twelve years and had to make some men pay for children that weren’t theirs because the law said so. If I can make some of that right by helping this one, single, human being who happens to be black, then I will do it. Now if you, or Alberto, would prefer that I meet him at some out-of-the way place, to talk, like there’s something to hide, it isn’t going to happen. I’m fully out in the open. I’m not going to risk my reputation, or Blaze’s, to do what I’m doing – in some clandestine manner, trying to help him. This man needs a lawyer, he needs to file suit for paternity tests; he needs to know that there are people out here who can care about a rank stranger. I have contacts in Texas and I have put him in touch with three of them, who can maybe help him. And, Clare is one of them.”

  Lynette stopped momentarily to draw a breath and to exercise her jaw muscles which had tightened in her anger. She spoke again.

  “I will change my behavior in only one way. I will wait until his lunch hour to talk with him when he needs it, and if Blaze is out there at the time, I’ll ask Blaze to come with me and visit with this man. I don’t have a godda…,” she started to say and checked her speech. “I don’t have a thing to hide, and this will be the one and only time that I’ll defend my behavior to you or anyone else but Blaze,” she said, still with that steely tone in her voice. “Forgive me for being blunt in your home. My upbringing says I should not challenge you under your roof, but my sense of self and truth says, still, what you did was sneaky, paternalistic and dishonest,” she finished and turned around to resume cutting vegetables for the salad. There was dead silence in the room as Aaron turned around and walked back out onto the deck. After a long minute of watching her shoulders rise and fall, and hearing the heavy breathing through her nose, Blaze joined Aaron on the deck. Before he could say anything, Aaron laughed and spoke up, “I’ve never had my ass kicked so calmly in my life. Look, I’m sorry,” he said to Blaze.

  “I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” Blaze said.

  “You know, she’s right, and I need to make it up to her, too,” he said. “I’ll buy her something nice tomorrow when I go into town,” Aaron offered.

  “Ooohhhh, noooo! Whatever you do, don’t try to buy her favor. I can guarantee you you’ll regret it if you do. Just talk to her. You all talk this thing out. Maybe there’s more she needs to hear from you. Maybe you need to get to know her a little better,” he said.

  Lynette was all the way down in the steaming hot water, with only her face and hair sticking out. Her pony tail sat on top of her head like Pebbles from the Flintstones Cartoon. The bathroom smelled of lavender and peppermint, of all the combinations. She lay immobile, eyes closed, as if sleep. Some people drink, some people smoke, some people play music to relax. Lynette soaked.

  She was almost asleep when that soft, masculine voice, interrupted her meditation.

  “Are you angry with me?” Blaze asked.

  She did not answer right away. He waited.

  “No,” she finally answered. “A little bit peeved, but not angry,” she
admitted.

  “Wanna talk about it?” he asked softly.

  “That you asked me about it, tells me the information carried some weight with you. That I put myself and you in a position to even have to talk about it, makes me furious with myself,” she admitted.

  “I am a very caring person. I am a passionate and compassionate person, and in my zeal to help people sometimes, maybe I don’t use the best judgment. I’m irritated that I had to get crossways with Aaron. I’m irritated at you, I’m irritated at me, shit, I’m just plain damned irritated. Everything has been going so well, it’s just a sense of temporary loss I guess. Loss of equilibrium – homeostasis. Do you know what I mean?” she asked, not expecting an answer.

  “I have the science degrees. Sure I know what you mean,” he replied quietly.

  “I’m not going to play ombudsman between you and Aaron. You were perfectly correct in saying that he should have come to you, but you know how guys are?” Blaze said.

  “Oh, don’t give me that crap” Lynette spit back at him. “There’s still the vestige of “let’s keep that li’l gal in her place” or “you have to watch that woman. Women can piss in your face and convince you that it’s raining,” she sniped. “Somebody I used to know said that a lot!” She was silent for a moment. “I’ll be Ok. I’ll talk to Aaron, but not tonight. Let me have some self-limited misery for awhile,” she asked, half joking.

  Lying in the bed next to Blaze, she rolled over onto her side facing away from him. She just didn’t feel like winding all around him, she didn’t want to read and she didn’t want to watch TV either. She wondered what they would wear for the wedding.

  “Have you thought about what you’ll wear for the wedding?” she asked, without turning over.

  “Yeah,” he said, closing the book he was reading, or at least the pages he was looking at. She noticed that he hadn’t turned a page in a long time. Her hearing was acute even when distracted.

  “I’ll wear traditional Apache wedding wear,” he said confidently.

  “What does that look like?” she asked, turning a quarter way toward him.

  “Red tunic shirt with a belt, white or cream leggins’, breechcloth or apron panel and moccasins.”

  “What about you? I haven’t noticed anything on your yellow page, marked dress,” he said.

  “I’ve told Clare, Janette and Merrilynn to just wear a nice summery dress. It wouldn’t make sense for the ladies to go out and pay for something they’ll only wear once. All that foolishness about bridesmaid dresses and fittings, it would be a waste. I know this wedding is bigger than we expected, but where possible, I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible,” she said dispassionately.

  “Have you ever noticed how ugly a lot of bride’s maid dresses are?” she said, this time with a little chuckle. “I couldn’t do that to them.”

  Some of the tension had broken. He’d been uneasy about her mood. He hadn’t seen this before. He didn’t want to impose on whatever was going on in her head, but neither did he want her with hidden, unresolved anger. He was very familiar with how that festers and turns things ugly.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” he pushed a little.

  “I look best in a suit. Maybe a nice off white suit with pearls,” she said in a very contemplative way. “I have some pearl colored shoes with a small heel. That might work. Would you like that?” she asked.

  “That would be nice,” he replied. “You’ll look pretty in anything you wear.”

  He rolled her back over onto her side facing away from him and tucked his body around hers in spoon-like fashion. When he began stroking her hip and running his fingers around to her stomach, she immediately relaxed. She wound one foot onto his leg and slid her toes up and down his calf. He slipped down in the bed, positioning himself so that his hand followed the contour of her sloping buttocks. It slipped in between the division, down between the fullest part of her thighs. His hand inched slowly but deliberately between the canyon, moving forward toward the fluffy dark brown tangle. Gently he rubbed the warmness, parting the area with his fingers. He worked with that area patiently. He needed to know if she was ready. With this hand, he guided himself easily into her. She arched her back to more easily accommodate him. He held tightly to her, so as not to loose the connection, and he lifted his slim, firm pelvis back and forth. She slowly gyrated her hips in the form of an eight, and he remembered this motion from the dance floor on the night they met. Surely she knew how badly he wanted her right then, and now he had what he wanted and it was agonizingly delicious. She alternated where the figure eight began and ended. He bit her softly on her back and she pulled his arm around, opening his hand and squeezing it onto her breast. He rolled and kneaded that breast as he moved back and forth. The pressure on him was great because of the tightly closed position of her thighs. He wanted to stay with her until she began, what he now knew, was that tell-tale shudder, but he didn’t think he could. How could she continue, night after night, to give him such overwhelming pleasure, he thought. He fought for control, he tried to hold on, but he couldn’t, and he buried his head in between her shoulder blades and moaned. It was a pitiful moan, a life-taking moan.

  They lay still for several seconds. He kissed her arm, her shoulder and found his way back up to her neck. She slipped over the side of the bed, brought a warm cloth back for him and a towel for herself. She turned out the light with the yellow glow on the night stand, and crawled back into bed with him. She turned to him, draped her arm over his chest and laid her leg across his.

  “I love you. I love you so much,” she whispered in his ear.

  CHAPTER 21

  ¤

  The Wedding Dress

  Ten days before the wedding, just about all was in readiness for the celebration. Invitations were out, caterers were prepared, participants had been given whatever information was required, the hotel rooms were reserved, and their log cabin was coming along fairly well, though more slowly than they had anticipated. That was Ok, because they weren’t in any hurry and they’d be gone almost a month on honeymoon. So on this 4 of July weekend, Blaze and Lynette broke from all chores and attended the Apache Ceremonial and Rodeo. An integral part of these festivities was the Dance of the Maidens, a ceremonial rite-of-passing for girls of puberty age. Held yearly at the Crystal Bend Fairgrounds, the events also included a traditional Native American POW WOW.

  As with many cultures world-wide, the coming of age of a young woman – being a time when she leaves childhood and becomes a woman, able to bear children - is a very special time for the girl and her family. Lynette knew this. She wondered how many of the girls had undergone The Sunrise Ceremonial. This private, ritual leading up to the final ceremony, takes about four days before commencement of the more public event. The ritual itself lasts from one to as many as four days depending on the family and how able they are to finance such an expensive event. Often, several members of the girl’s family or close family friends, contributed objects, materials, food and/or money to finance this event. How the ceremony is conducted depends much on each band of Apaches, but there are some common activities central to the onset. There are the Changing Woman Dances, where the young girl dances through endless stages of life – from young child, to fertile woman, to ancient sage – all connecting and all renewing. Symbols are utilized in every step of the ceremony, such as spruce (the symbol of the Great Mother earth), birds, hummingbird feathers, crystals, bear claws ( a symbol of fortitude, strength and supernatural powers), and the use of the number four, which symbolizes the four cardinal directions of space and the totality of the Great Spirit. It can be a rigorous rite-of-passage with an exhausted but proud young woman emerging at its conclusion.

  “How do you know these things?” Blaze queried Lynette, using his straw hat to shield her eyes from the sun. He was so much taller than her. When she looked up at him with the sun at his back, she squinted from the intense light. He was always aware of her comfort level.

 
; “These ceremonies are universal in one form or another,” she replied. “I did a term paper in college on Native-American puberty rituals. In the broader world, there are the Hispanic Quincieneras; in the rich, or I should say, affluent white world, there are the Debutante or Coming Out Balls. Many African-American social organizations have adopted this form of formal introduction to society, which means the girl is ready for dating and later marriage. And, I took a course in Women’s Studies which included some of these rituals,” she finished. Blaze often looked at her in amazement. She knew so much about his people. She knew so much about so much! He didn’t have to explain every nuance of his dominant culture. It was part of what made him so comfortable with her, among other things. Her broad knowledge on so many topics made her an excellent conversationalist, and he liked talking to and listening to her. When they grew old and there was not as much physicality in their lives, he knew they would still have a lot to talk about. There could be no better companion for him, he was sure. She was just special. That was the word he kept using trying to describe her to his closest friends.

  It was a really warm weekend, with temperatures in the lower 80s, but because of the low humidity, the temperature never felt uncomfortable. They watched the horse riders with their magnificent steeds; the bull riders, barrel racers, and enjoyed hot dogs and Indian fry bread. Lynette delighted at the men’s fancy dance competition. This was not her first POW WOW as a similar event is held yearly in Austin. She’d also attended one at the Alabama-Coushatta Reservation in east Texas. However, there was something special about this event and she felt like she belonged there. It all seemed so authentic. The costume colors were bright and vibrant, and the male dance contestants, often imitating the movements of animals, made the feathers move to the mesmerizing beat of the drummers, no matter how fast they beat and chanted. The chanter teams competed against each other. Their voices, the high-pitched yells, and the heart-throbbing beating of the huge central drum, held Lynette in place, almost in a trance, broken only by the abrupt ending of each session. Blaze watched her fully engrossed in the chanting and drumming. He was aware of the changing energy that emanated from her, and he could feel the excitement rising around her as she enjoyed this ritual that had become so commonplace to him.