by Come Sunrise
"Can you drive?"
"If I have to. You going to be all right?" He looked at Tommy.
"Yes. Go ahead, I'll be fine."
After that Tommy was constantly drunk, too much so to pay her any attention, let alone abuse her. Sometimes he stayed at the ranch, sitting in his customary place until he passed out and fell over and Diego carried him back to the shed. On other occasions he drove away. At first she thought he must be going to Santa Fe, but later she found a matchbook with the address of an Albuquerque bar in his pocket. Tommy often stayed away for days at a time, but she felt better knowing that he wasn't in Santa Fe. Even an animal doesn't foul its own nest, she told herself.
By early April she was sure she was pregnant. She sat one night in the door of the shed, unable to sleep, and stared out at the stars. They floated low in the blue velvet sky. Amy remembered the hotel room and their first night in New Mexico.
Tommy was gone at the moment, and she had no way of knowing when he'd be back. She resolved to go into Santa Fe in the morning and see a doctor. John Lopez could recommend someone. Dawn reddened the horizon by the time she pulled herself wearily to her feet and started to make coffee. Then she heard the motor of the car coming toward the ranch. "Oh, God," she muttered, "Why do you come back, Tommy? Why don't you just disappear?"
Amy brushed her tears away impatiently and added more water to the pot. The car stopped some distance away. She waited a while, then walked out.
He had parked by the corral and the gate was open. She saw it swinging on its hinges and started to run. The last thing she needed now was runaway horses. She thought of shouting for Diego, but he had heard the car. He appeared from the direction of the bunk-house, casually hitching up his trousers. Then he too saw the open corral gate, and broke into a run.
They arrived at the enclosure at the same moment. In the half-light of dawn Amy and Diego stared at the scene within. Tommy was on a horse. He had no saddle. He merely lay along the animal's back, and clung fiercely to its neck, laughing aloud like a madman.
He'd chosen a black mare that neither Amy nor Diego ever rode. She was on the small side, but fractious and difficult. The mare bobbed her head from side to side, prancing and whinnying and trying to dislodge the annoyance plaguing her.
"You're not going to throw me, horse!" Tommy shouted. "You're a lousy, dumb animal, and I'm clever Tommy Westerman who knows all the answers. You're not going to throw me!"
He was roaring, raving drunk. His muscles, loose and flaccid, rolled with the horse's motions. His buil-tup shoe slapped against the mare's flanks, and his body kept to her rhythm in a wild improbable grace.
"Jesus," Diego said under his breath. "I ain't never seen anything like that. Never thought no cripple could sit a horse."
"Shut the gate," Amy said, "before the horses realizes it's open, Diego."
He jerked into motion and closed the three of them and the eight horses inside the corral. Tommy continued his ride. Nearly two minutes passed before he noticed his wife and the Indian watching him.
"Good morning," he called as he passed by. "I'm learning to ride. Only way to get around out here ...." His voice was lost in the neighing and stomping of animals infected by the unhappiness of the black mare.
"Get down!" Amy shouted. "We'll take her out of the corral and you can try again. There's not enough room in here, Tommy. Too many other horses. Get down!"
For a long time he paid no attention, but finally he slid off at their feet, laughing and gasping for breath. "Ok, that'll do for now, I guess."
Diego helped him to his feet and half carried him to bed.
Amy left Tommy sleeping and drove the buckboard to Santa Fe. It took her four hours and was not an easy journey, and she realized that for her own good she must learn to drive the Model-T. Her amber linen dress was crushed and dusty by the time she stood outside the doctor's office, and she felt irritable and unsure of herself.
Lopez's secretary had told Amy how to find this low white complex of buildings perched on the edge of a canyon north of the plaza. Amy went through a painted green gate in a high white wall, and found herself in a courtyard filled with the scents of spring and the sound of trickling water. In front of her was a two-story house with carved wooden balconies fronting the upper windows.
She looked left and spied a smaller structure with an open door and a sign that said, "Ricardo Ibanez, M.D." Underneath was the word, entrada. She knew no Spanish, but it wasn't difficult to guess the meaning. Amy entered.
"Good afternoon, senora. May I help you?" A woman dressed in nurse's white looked at her with little curiosity.
"I'd like to see Dr. Ibanez. I'm afraid I don't have an appointment."
"Don Rico will see you, senora, but he is very busy. You must wait please."
The nurse had a faintly foreign accent and a harried expression. She opened the door to the waiting room. It was jammed to overflowing with patients. Men, women, and children were everywhere. They sat on all the chairs, perched on the wide windowsills and wedged themselves into the corners. Amy looked at the scene and murmured. "I'm sorry, I seem to have picked a bad day."
"It is like this every day, senora," the nurse sighed. "You must just wait."
"Of course. Thank you."
A man rose to give her a chair, and she took it gratefully. He and many of the others looked to be Indians. A few women, like the nurse, looked vaguely foreign. Amy spotted three ladies more like herself, and didn't feel quite so out of place. She settled down to wait, adopting the air of patience the others exhibited.
In an hour and a half most of the throng had disappeared through the door to the doctor's office, but just as many had replaced them. The nurse came to where Amy sat, brandishing a pad of paper and a pencil, and took her name. The waiting continued.
Finally, after nearly three hours, it was her turn. She walked into a room lined with books and freshened by two vases of flowers. The doctor sat behind a large table of carved oak. When she came in he rose and extended his hand.
"Good afternoon, Senora Westerman. I am Don Rico. How can I help you?"
She had expected someone older. This was a man of perhaps thirty, tall and slim with smiling dark eyes and black hair that swept back from a pronounced widow's peak. His teeth were very white in a sun-bronzed face, and he had a deep cleft in his chin. He exuded vitality and frank maleness.
Amy took the hand he offered, and blurted out, "I think I'm pregnant."
"Ah, but that is always nice to hear. I am glad you are not ill, senora. Please," he ushered her to another door. "I will examine you."
When the examination was finished they left the treatment room and returned to the gracious office. Amy perched on the edge of her seat. "Well?" she asked.
Ibanez smiled. "I think so yes, but it is too soon to tell for sure. You have other children, senora?"
She explained about her miscarriage. "In New York the doctor said such things meant the baby wasn't normal. That's why I was anxious to see a doctor right away. "
"New York! You have come a long way to consult me, senora," he said, smiling broadly. He glanced down at the notes on his desk. "But of course! I didn't make the connection right away. Westerman. You're the young couple who just bought Santo Domingo. Congratulations. And welcome to New Mexico." He pronounced the x as if it were an h, and didn't wait for her to reply but added quickly, "And stop worrying. There is no reason for you to lose this baby-if you are pregnant, that is. You must take sensible precautions, that's all. Plenty of rest, and the proper diet. My nurse will give you a list before you leave."
"I've been wondering if it's all right to ride," she said shyly.
He looked at her in mild surprise. "You ride? I didn't expect it. Forgive me, that is stupid and prejudiced of course. Out here we have stereotyped ideas about New Yorkers."
Amy explained that she had learned in Africa.
"Then, since it is an activity to which you are long accustomed, you may ride. But only for another month or tw
o," Ibanez said. "And you must come to see me once a month. One other thing," he added. "No soaking in hot baths. Sponge baths only. It is a small precaution in view of the last time."
Amy thought of the chipped enamel basins and the water butt. No hot baths indeed. "Thank you." She rose to go. "I'm not sure, do I call you Dr. Ibanez or Don Rico?"
"Whichever you prefer," he said laughing.
There was a separate door for leaving, so she did not have to walk through the waiting room again. He escorted her out to the courtyard. "Wait here," he said. "I'll tell my nurse to give you the instructions I mentioned." He turned to go, then turned back. "Listen, I just thought. I go by your place every few weeks on the way to see patients in the pueblos. I'll call at the ranch. No need for you to come into Santa Fe."
She thanked him, but she was disturbed by the idea of this handsome and elegant stranger seeing her in the ruin that was her home.
She had left the buckboard in the plaza. When she walked back to the center of town she saw a noisy crowd standing by the telegraph office. Amy moved toward its fringe, trying to see what all the excitement was about. She craned her neck, but couldn't read the notice in the window. "What is it?" she asked a man standing nearby. "What's happened?"
"War, that's what's happened. News just came. President Wilson's asked congress to declare war on Germany." He pointed to the crush of people trying to get inside the telegraph office. "All these guys is trying to send wires to Washington. Want to volunteer to give ole Kaiser Bill what he deserves. Makes you proud to be an American."
She stood in the doorway of the shed, with the setting sun behind her, and told Tommy the news. He was bent over the table they used as a washstand, pale and red-eyed, but sober.
"War," he said quietly. "So it's come at last. I always knew it would sooner or later." He pushed by her and went outside, and stared at the sky as if he expected to see German planes zooming in from behind the fiery desert sunset. "War," he said again. He sounded thoughtful, not alarmed. "It makes sense."
Amy thought of the killing and the death that had filled the New York papers. "I don't think it makes any sense at all. It's just useless slaughter. I don't even know what they're really fighting about."
"That's not what I mean. Sense for us. For my plans. "
"What plans?"
"I'm not ready to talk about it yet." He turned and stared at her, as if suddenly aware that she'd just returned after a day's absence.
"What were you doing in Santa Fe? How come you went all that way alone?"
"I had to see a doctor. You certainly weren't in any condition to accompany me."
"Are you sick?" There was an anxious expression in his gray eyes.
"No," she said. "I'm going to have a baby."
He reached out as if to touch her, and she pulled away. "Don't come near me. And don't start making noises like a loving husband, as if nothing's happened. I've been planning all the way home to tell you this. I only hoped I'd find you sober enough to listen. You are for the moment, so pay attention. Get this into your alcohol-soaked brain."
Amy spoke through clenched teeth, with a fury that nearly choked her.
"You hit me last month. You probably don't remember, but you did. It was the first and the last time, Tommy Westerman. If you ever lay a finger on me again, I'll leave you. No excuses and no warnings. I'll just go. And I won't hesitate to tell your precious prominent family in New York why."
She shook with rage, as if the abuse had just happened, and she was facing the shock for the first time.
Tommy looked at her silently. The swift desert night already shrouded her features. "That's all you want to say?" he asked at last.
"That's all."
"Ok. Let's eat. I'm hungry. And I've got a lot to do tomorrow. "
The next day Tommy disappeared for a few hours. When he returned he emerged from the flivver wearing a striped chambray shirt, blue denim trousers and a Stetson. The clothes, already covered with the dust of the road, didn't look new, and despite his built-up shoe, Tommy didn't look odd in them. Extraordinarily he looked as if he'd been born in such an outfit.
17
AMONG THE CRATES SHIPPED FROM NEW YORK TO Santo Domingo was one containing Tommy's exercise equipment. Each wooden box was carefully labeled in Amy's neat hand; silver serving dishes, china, glass-ware, linen-the still unused bounty of the showers and the wedding. Tommy pawed through them until he found what he was looking for; then he set up the chinning bar and the weights in the patio of the old house. He adopted a routine of rising at dawn , and in the morning cool, under the shade of the gum tree, he slowly and agonizingly began rebuilding muscles withered by alcohol and neglect.
Amy would stealthily creep as far as the wall of the house and listen to the sounds of his struggle. They made her hope. So did the untouched bottles of whiskey in the shed, and his harrowing riding sessions.
She offered to teach him, but he would accept no instruction. "At least let me show you how the saddle works. Why must you be so stubborn? This just happens to be something I know about. Why won't you let me help?"
He muttered something about doing it his own way, and refused to discuss it further.
Tommy never changed his original choice of a horse. The temperamental black mare was his unwilling partner in heroics. He mounted her by himself, alone behind the wall of the corral. Sometimes it took an hour or more. Diego and Amy, as instructed, waited by the gate. They could only listen to Tommy curse, and eight horses whinny and stomp and paw in response.
"For God's sake!" Amy shouted once. "Let Diego catch her. We'll lead her out on a tether. Tommy, do you hear me? This is mad, you'll kill yourself!" He didn't answer.
Eventually Tommy yelled, "Now!" Then she and Diego had a role to play. They pulled open the gate of the corral and closed it after Tommy rode out on the black.
He came as they had seen him that first drunken time, lying almost full length on the horse's bare back, his arms around the animal's neck, clinging for dear life. The mare would cavort wildly in an attempt to throw him, and Amy and Diego would dash from one strategic spot to another to head off any mad plunge into open country. This went on until Tommy slid to the ground in exhaustion. Then Diego would catch the horse and lead her back to the corral.
At the end of a week Tommy sat upright on his mount. Amy's offers of help had been refused, but on the eighth day she noticed a blanket between Tommy and the horse. At least Diego had some influence. The Indian watched Tommy's struggle without comment, but sometimes Amy saw something in his eyes. It was respect. hard won and grudgingly given, but permanent.
A few days later one of the saddles from the tackroom replaced the blanket. The stirrups had been carefully altered to accommodate Tommy's built-up shoe. "Thank you,"she said to Diego.
Diego didn't look at her. "He was ready, so I did it. No thanks needed."
"You approve of the way he's learned to ride, don't you? Even though he wouldn't let either of us help?"
"In the old days, the Apaches and the Comanche were the greatest horsemen in the world. Nobody ever born could ride like them. That's how they taught their kids. Just put 'em up on a horse and let 'em go. You get a feel for the animal doing it that way. It's better."
It was a long speech for him. "What tribe are you?" Amy asked. "Are you an Apache?"
He didn't look disgusted, but he sounded it. "The Pueblo Indians were here before any Apache ever saw this country. And long before any Anglos came."
Amy found herself wondering what tribe her grand-father had belonged to.
***
Toward the end of the month Ricardo Ibanez called to see her. "I'm early, but I was in the vicinity, so I came. I hope it's not inconvenient."
"No, of course not. It's most kind of you. Please come in." Because she had no choice, she stepped aside and motioned for him to enter the shed.
Ibanez made no comment about their living conditions. He examined her and waited outside until she dressed and joined him.
"Well," he said. "You are pregnant."
"I know. I've been sure for some time."
"And in excellent health. You mustn't worry. Everything's going to be fine. Mrs. Westerman."
"Please call me Amy, Don Rico."
"Thank you. I'm Rick to my friends."
She smiled at him. "Rick and Amy, then. It's a lot easier. "
Tommy had taken the Model-T and gone into Santa Fe for supplies. Diego was off somewhere. They were alone. "Would you like a cup of coffee? It's not much good, but it's hot and wet."
He grinned and she noticed the way his eyes crinkled at the corners. It was typical of the men of this territory, a characteristic born of a lifetime under the sun. "It will taste like ambrosia to me," he said. "I've been out to Santo Domingo pueblo. My motor car can't handle those dirt roads. It's a long ride on horseback. "