Once a Father (11 page)

Laughing, he complied. “I don't think you can do me that way, baby, but I haven't seen as much of the world as you have.”

“You have your grandma, and I have my continuing education classes. I've taken two in therapeutic massage. I use it on my dogs. Mint water?”

“Pour it on.”

She poured more than bracing mint water. She attended to him with gifted hands, pressing away tension he hadn't known was there, replacing it with the kind of affection he craved. It was an intimacy complementary to their coupling, attention shared by people who cared for each other even when they were separate. He'd known little of this kind of attention, and it touched him deeply. It surprised him to think he could get used to this. He would think about the consequences later.

For now he basked in the beauty of having her hands all over his back. He wouldn't take his jeans off but his feet were bare, and she tended them with “advanced” techniques. He was glad he'd finally sanded off some of his calluses.

It was early evening when they finally went outside. Adobe raised his head.
Oh, there you are.

“Ready for a family outing?” Logan asked the mustang. He opened the pen enough to let two two-leggeds in, which meant that one fleet four-legged could easily fly past them and get out if he wanted to. But they had the horse's attention, and they were getting his
what next?
look. Logan handed Mary the halter and coiled lead rope. “We're gonna get us some grass.”

“We're going to go for a walk?”

“Just like walkin' the dog.”

“Not quite.” She fingered the halter, sorting out the part that would slip over the ears from the loop that would take the loose ends. She knew how to make the knot. One quick demonstration, and the knack was hers. But she still had her doubts. “If he decides to take off, this will be useless.”

“Have you ever had a horse run away with you when you were riding? If he decides to take off, all you can do is bail out or go along for the ride. No muscle in your body can match his.” He took the coiled part of the gear from her and left the halter in her capable hands. “He's bigger than a dog, Mary.”

“And he eats grass.”

“That's right.”

“If a dog decides to rip my face off—”

“Like I said, no tooth in your head can match his.” He steered her in the right direction. The horse was
waiting. “Like you did before, let him come to you. Take the lead with your body.”

“I'm the lead mare,” she remembered, and then she scowled. “What are you smiling about?”

“Thinking about when you let me come to you.”

Ah, a smile. “And I matched you, didn't I.”

“With every fiber in your body.”

“A terrible comparison.”

“I'm not comparing. I'm saying your body knows how to lead. Adobe gets it. I get it.” He smiled back. “Now, you go, girl.”

When they walked, the horse walked. When they stopped, he grazed. They sat in the grass, listened and watched. The sun had lost its unremitting power over the prairie for the day, and all that lived there enjoyed the soft light and easy warmth of its gentler side. From a sidehill a meadowlark tweedled in the grass. Another answered. A breeze lifted Mary's hair, and Logan drank in the simple beauty of her face. He saw it more and more, the kind of loveliness that made a man's throat sting.

“My sister likes you,” he told her, because it was the best praise he could come up with. He could have told her that her profile against the early evening sky was a real grabber, but she wasn't one to take just any kind of praise to heart. “For one thing, she thinks you're some kind of hero. What you do saves lives.”

“The dogs save lives.” She draped her forearms
over upraised knees. “That's not why they're doing it, of course. They don't set out to save lives.”

“How do you know?”

“They do it because the handler asks them to. They appreciate the hands that feed them.”

“You have good instincts. You know how to ask. What you do saved my nephew's life. If you have to go back…” He'd allowed
if
to replace
when
in his thinking. “It's for a good cause.”

“Mustang Sally's Makeover Challenge could be a lifesaver for these horses.”

“Your father has petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for a hearing about the leases.” From his sister to her father. Hell of a leap, but there was some balance in there somewhere. He was beginning to know Mary's needs, and balance was a big one. “He has some powerful friends.”

“You mean Senator Perry. They go way back.”

“Which means your father has some pull with the Bureau of Land Management. Perry's on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which is sitting on a bill that would force the BLM to protect wild horses and burros instead of this half-assed
management
program they're pushing. They're calling it the ROAM Act.”

She surprised him with a smile.
“Half-assed.”

“There's a group of women who've adopted burros, call themselves ‘The Wild Ass Women.' That's my kind of woman.”

“Really,” she marveled.

“Oh, yeah. It's women who'll push for this ROAM Act. It was a woman who got the whole thing started. Called her Wild Horse Annie. Way back in the fifties she started the ball rolling by getting them to stop the aerial roundups for slaughter. They'd almost run the wild horse into extinction, along with the buffalo and yours truly.”

“You weren't born yet.”

“I don't mean just me. I'm not
just
me. And I'm more than bloodlines.” He nodded toward the horse, who didn't give a rip about anything but ripping up a little grass. “So is he, but that's a whole different branch on the political tree. I'm talking rescue. You think it's men coming to the rescue, but it's—”

“I do?”

“That's the way they tell it, but I'm here to say it's more likely women. You and your dogs, for one. And we've got our own Mustang Sally.” Adobe moved on to a new patch of grass, and Logan nodded, watching intently. “Mustang Sally. Don't slow down, baby. Don't ever slow down.”

“You came to the rescue.”

He looked at her curiously.

“If your former wife could leave two children with you, she probably would have left them without you. Did you adopt them before or after she left?”

“I didn't have time before she left.” He glanced away. “Maybe I did. See how useless time is when
you're having fun? It was the fun that ran out. Time was nothing, and life went on.” He smiled at the hills. “To this very day.”

“I'm not my father,” she said quietly.

“You think we don't know that?”

“Who's
we?
” She gave a dry laugh. “The Tutan brand is pretty well known. Around here, anyway.”

“Change it.” It was her turn to shoot the curious look. He lifted one shoulder. “There are lots of ways to change it. You get married, you change it. You get divorced, you change it back. You get adopted…”

“Adopt me,” she said cheerfully. “You do that, don't you? Adopt people into the tribe?”

“I did it through the state with the boys. All nice and legal, so they could have my name. But I can't adopt you into the tribe. Can't adopt my sons into the tribe. Some white guy says he was adopted into the Sioux Tribe, check his legs. One's bound to be longer than the other.” He raised his brow. “It's all about blood.”

“But what about all of us being related?”

He chuckled. “That would put a whole new spin on what we did earlier.”

“Seems to me I heard that somewhere.”

“
Mitakuye Oyasin.
All my relatives.” He sat up. “Yeah, the blood quantum thing, that came from the U.S. government. We've gotta be enrolled. So I can adopt you our way, if that's what you want. But that doesn't make you a member of the ‘vanishing race.'”
He glanced away. “Or, I can marry you and change your name your way.”

“
My
way? Maybe I'd want to keep my name. Just change the Tutan brand.”

“If anybody can do it, you can.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, you won my sister over.” He nodded toward the horse. “And him. You had him at…whatever your body told him.”

“It wasn't—”

“Don't worry. I'm not jealous. I'm getting my own messages.” He touched her shoulder on his way to standing up. “And I like them just fine.”

“Where are we going?”

“That's up to the lead mare. Find us some greener grass.”

 

Adobe went quietly into the round pen after they'd watered him at the creek. It felt good to watch him get his groove back. His world suited him perfectly. He could no longer live there, but it was a nice place to visit. Prize money notwithstanding, Logan's goal was to make Adobe's transition as agreeable as possible. Whoever won the bid on this horse would be getting a prize that had little to do with money. They would have a heroic creature, one that had come to his family's rescue. Whether he liked it or not.

It was the kind of summer evening the prairie saved up for. When the wind rested, the prairie broke out the fireflies and cranked up the crickets. The sun
made a splash when it sank behind the buttes, spraying rosy streaks across the sky and putting up purple cloud drifts for good measure.

They roasted buffalo kabobs and marshmallows. The buffalo was crisp on the outside, rare on the inside, and the marshmallows were blackened. “Just the way I like 'em,” Logan said. He hadn't roasted marshmallows since his sons were kids, and he'd never licked them from a woman's fingers. She said she'd never had her fingers licked by anyone without a tail. He added sage to the dying fire, and the pungent smoke kept the mosquitoes at bay.

He brought blankets outside, and they lay on their backs and got lost in a night sky overflowing with stars. As many diamonds on black velvet would have paled in comparison, but he would have found a way to offer them to this woman if such a gift would persuade her to stay with him. He'd asked her, but she hadn't taken him seriously. Or maybe she had and she'd pretended otherwise. But, no, she was no pretender. She had passed the four-legged test. Animals were like children. They could smell a fake a mile away.

“I should go,” she said to the night sky.

“Where?”

“Back to…” She turned away from him and made ready to push up. “Back.”

“Back to back.” He reached for her and pulled her back down, her back flat against his chest. His arms
encircled her. He slipped one hand under her shirt and cupped a bare breast. She drew a deep breath and filled his hand with soft flesh. He kissed the side of her neck.

She wasn't going anywhere.

“I vote for belly to belly,” she said. “But I'm willing to compromise.”

M
ary awoke to bird chatter and man song.

The hills on the horizon were crimson, but the heart of the promise had yet to appear.
Come come come,
the birds chirped. The man's voice was less urgent, more evocative. She propped herself up on her elbows and scanned the shadows, but she saw no singers. They were all sound, and the sound felt sacred.

Mary threw off the blanket she'd shared with Logan and followed her first instinct.
Get up and go after the voice.
But within a few steps she saw the light and stopped dead in her tracks. The singer's pitch rose in concert with the sun's slow rising, and it struck her that this was not her moment. No one had
summoned her. This was not a show. There would be no sermon. Her appearance was unwarranted. The emotion in Logan's voice was not for her, but it was a gift nonetheless, there for her to enjoy along with sunrise.

Adobe stood quietly, ears perked, soaking in the music and the morning. Once the sun had topped the horizon, the song sank into silence and Mary was drawn to the mustang. He would welcome water from the creek. Calmly and without hesitation Adobe stood for her haltering, followed where her shoulder led and stopped behind her on the bluff overlooking the creek. They both saw the nude man standing knee deep in the water below, but only one held her breath.

Good God, he was glorious.

Logan had his back to them, which gave Mary time to gather her wits and proceed carefully. Tumbling down the hill after Jack was fine for Jill, but Mary channeled Tuesday's child, full of grace. Logan glanced over his shoulder, and she bid him a high-pitched good morning. “That looks wonderful,” she said too cheerily. “We might just try it ourselves.”

“Not there. Too deep. Bean-shriveling cold, too.” He grinned as he waded to the bank. “Maybe you noticed.”

She managed to stifle the better part of a laugh. After that awe-inspiring backside, there was something else she was supposed to notice?

“Oh, so that's how it is. You come down this way and laugh, woman.” He stepped out of the water, pulled a towel off a chokecherry bush and nodded in her direction as he took quick swipes at his arms and legs. “The current's stronger than it looks down there. I don't want it to take you away.”

“Do you know how beautiful…” She started upstream, thoroughly captivated. Adobe hadn't had his water yet, but he went where Mary went, swishing his tail behind him. “What were you singing?”

“Oh, what a beautiful morning!” he sang, arms outstretched. He'd been in better tune in Lakota.

“So that's how it is,” she teased, fascinated by the way he put on his jeans one leg at a time like everyone else. Except the people who started with underwear. “More code.”

“No kidding, that's pretty much what I was singing. You've heard them sing their sunup song in the Middle East, right? Sunrise is the same in any language.”

“It's prettier here.”

“That's because this is home.” He tipped his head to the side and smiled as Adobe ripped up a mouthful of big bluestem and tall switch grass. “It's our place.”

“Rightfully so.” She glanced across the creek, and there stood a clutch of Mexican redhat coneflowers ablaze in the slanted sunlight, their petals folded back at the base of long brown heads like…

Oh, for Pete's sake, Mary.

She grinned like a school girl suddenly seeing Freudian symbolism everywhere she looked. “It was a beautiful night, wasn't it? I've never seen such bright stars. Not even in the desert.”

“Good company turns it all up a notch.” He sat down in the grass to put on his boots and looked up at her, one eye squinted closed against the sun. “What date are we on?”

“On the calendar?”

“It's time I took you to a dance.”

“Time?” She stepped back as Adobe stretched toward water. “Did you say
time?
”

“Wanna go to a powwow with me?” Logan pushed off the ground and grabbed his shirt from the cherry bush. “The
Hanskaska
celebration is tonight. Wolf Hide Bearers. It's an old warrior society.”

“Are you a Wolf Hide Bearer?”

“I belong to
Tokala,
the Kit Fox Society, one of our
Akicita
. More for policing than soldiering.”

“Like an MP?”

“But not military. You're soldier police. I'm camp police.” He finished buttoning his shirt, started tucking it into his jeans. “What do you say? Have you been to a powwow?”

“I haven't. Isn't that awful? I grew up right down the road—” he joined in on
right down the road
and had her smiling “—and I haven't been to a powwow. Tonight?”

“Let's take our boy into town and see how he takes to a saddle. Maybe I'll put you on Hattie and we'll do a little riding.” He reached for Mary's hand, and the three of them started up the hill. “And we'll stop by and say hello to your mother.”

“You're a kind and gentle man, Wolf Track. I don't think I've ever dated a real gentleman before.”

“Kind and gentle goes with the fox, not the wolf. I was born a wolf, but I learned to be a fox.”

“The fox is sly,” Mary pointed out.

“
Your
fox is sly. Ours is swift and clever, but also gentle. He lives close to the ground, so he knows a lot about plants that feed the soul and heal the body. One of our songs says, ‘I am the fox. I am supposed to die. If there is anything difficult, anything dangerous, that is mine to do.'”

“Sounds like the words of a soldier.”

“You understand what it means to police your own. A soldier must go all out in his fight, all teeth and claws. But when you police your own people, you can't lose the gentle side of your nature. It takes strength to be gentle.”

“So your kind of fox wouldn't raid the henhouse,” she said as she led Adobe toward the section of the round pen she'd left standing open.

“Ha! Are you kidding? All those lovely hens tended by one overworked cock?” Logan squeezed her hand. “They beg to be raided.”

 

Audrey was happy to see her daughter and genuinely pleased to see her with Logan. She fussed over coffee, followed by ham and cheese omelets, followed by caramel rolls and more coffee. Logan knew when people liked him and when they were just blowing sunshine to get whatever they wanted out of him. Audrey wanted to keep her daughter around as long as possible, but she liked Logan. She approved of him. He could see it in her eyes. As long as no mention was made of her husband, Audrey was a cheerful soul. Logan noisily sucked cinnamon and sugar off his fingers, one at a time, as he savored another jolt of satisfaction over denying Damn Tootin the use of a beautiful chunk of Indian land.

“Need another napkin?” Audrey was already halfway out of her chair.

“No, no.” Logan waved the notion away with his unsticky hand. “None of this should be wasted on paper. Mmm. My sister makes great pies, but otherwise…mmm. My sweet tooth just died and went to heaven.”

“I wrapped up a whole fresh batch to take with you,” Audrey said. “They're not on my diet, and Dan shouldn't be eating them, either.” She set the heavenly-scented package on the table in front of Logan. “I love to bake caramel rolls. It brings me good luck. Sometimes out of the clear blue it brings me visitors.”

“I'll bet you can smell them all the way out to the highway,” Logan said. “Especially once you've tasted them. You can be sure they'll bring me back.”

“Every Friday morning,” Audrey said. “Like clockwork. You be here.”

“Logan's a worker, but he isn't much for clocks.”

Logan laughed. “For your mother's caramel rolls, I'll buy myself a damn watch with one of those perpetual calendars on it.”

“Careful,” Mary warned. “She might be in cahoots with the tooth fairy.”

“That tooth is like a cat,” he said. “Many lives. All it takes is a whiff of lovin' from something in the oven.”

“You have my recipe, don't you, Mary?” Audrey reached across the table and patted her daughter's hand.

“I've never seen a recipe,” Mary said.

“It's in my head. Heart.” The woman smiled at Logan, eyes a-twinkle. “I know it by heart, but I can write it down for you.”

 

The road to Sinte was busier than usual, and the rhythm of the dance drum was the cause. “Wait 'til dusk,” Logan said. “The only time of the year we get bumper-to-bumper traffic. Except for funerals, but those aren't seasonal.”

“We're coming back then, aren't we?”

“Well, yeah. We've got a date.”

They drove past the gate to the powwow grounds on their way to his place. He flashed her a smile, pleased that she was looking forward to the celebration. He was looking forward to it, too—feeding her Indian tacos and maybe a snow cone, trying to trick her into sampling some
taniga
—traditional tripe. Soldiers were generally pretty adventuresome eaters.

Adobe unloaded as sweet as a trail horse. Logan put him in with Hattie, and they got reacquainted while Mary helped him haul out the saddles. She insisted on doing her share, and he wasn't one to argue. The mustang accepted the saddle blanket after a couple of tries, but be damned if he was willing to take on a heavy saddle.

“Let me ride him bareback.”

“I wasn't gonna let you ride him at all.”

“Just let me try.” She tapped her forehead with the heel of her hand. “What am I saying?
Let me.
We're equal partners here, and I know he'll let me ride him.”

“How good are you bareback?”

“We'll see. We won't be going far, will we? If he balks, I'll walk back. But he won't do that, will you, ‘Dobie'?”

“Don't push it, okay?”

She didn't have to. It was a rough ride for her, but only because Adobe didn't know how to carry a rider. By the end of the ride to the end of his pasture and back—about two miles—the horse had gone
through all his gaits, and Mary had stuck with him. She bobbled and bounced around, but, damn, she had guts, grit and great legs.

 

They met Hank and Sally at the powwow grounds. Sally was using her cane, and Hank carried a folding three-legged stool on a stick. Seating could be hard to come by at a summer powwow, and Sally thrived on the freedom to come and go as she pleased. For her part, Mary was all eyes, ears and nose. The smell of meat and wood smoke, yeasty dough fried in lard and strong coffee, pine pitch and trampled grass and summer dust mingled with laughing adults and squealing children, the swish of long leather fringe on beaded traditional dresses, the tinkle of hundreds of tiny metal cones dangling from a jingle dress, and the rustle of feathers. The colors were glorious. Some of the fancy dancers could easily have been mistaken for exotic birds as they strutted about the grounds like cocks of the walk.

The heart of the powwow grounds was the bowery—a huge circle of plank benches sheltered by a leafy thatch of cottonwood branches to form an arena with a flagpole in the middle. There was an announcer's stand, yard lights, half a dozen drum groups scattered around the perimeter and a grass dance floor open to the night sky. The children's contests had been held during the day, followed by the women, who were finishing up with the last round
of shawl dancing as the men gathered outside the bowery.

“Why aren't you dancing tonight?” Hank asked Logan.

“You sing, I'll dance.”

Hank laughed. “You got me there.”

“You can't compete when you're on the committee, and they've always got me on the committee. Besides, I have a date.” A slow cadence on the drum prompted him to take Mary's hand. “
Kahomni.
Come on, this is intertribal.”

“Intertribal?” she asked.

“Any tribe. Even yours.” He pulled her into a growing boy-girl-boy-girl circle, people in and out of costume. “Intertribal means no contest, and
Kahomni
is the Rabbit Dance. It's our two-step.”

The dancers held hands. The step was uncomplicated, and the rhythm matched a lover's heartbeat, steady and resolute. Mary's palms felt clammy. She glanced up at Logan, who winked at her and squeezed her hand. She was thoroughly charmed, even felt a little dizzy with it. A little discombobulated. Men didn't wink at her. She wasn't easily charmed.

And she almost waited too long to excuse herself and head for the bathroom.

Mary waited in line for a turn at the blue biffy. Something was either very wrong or very right. She felt vaguely crampy, which should have been welcome at long last. But it seemed strangely forbidding,
like every other weird turn her body had taken on her lately. She couldn't abide the possibility of being pregnant now, but if she
was
pregnant, and then she wasn't…that thought scared her almost as much as the other. What the hell was wrong with her head?

Probably nothing. Somewhere along the line she'd given common sense a furlough.

Okay, it was her turn to use the head. Latrine.

She wasn't sure she wanted to close the door all the way. Close, rank smelling quarters didn't do her stomach any good, but the anxious faces peering back at her settled the question of closing the door. She'd certainly had less privacy in cruder facilities, but her pulse was pounding like machine gun fire, and she wanted to bolt. Not much light, not enough air, couldn't tell much of anything. If there was blood, it was minimal. The beginning of something, the end of something—only God knew. And He wasn't picking a place like this to answer any stupid questions.

Mary took a detour into a copse of trees, found a place to sit, put her head down to stave off a wave of dizziness. She used her shirttail to wipe cold sweat off her face. She'd half thought about talking to her mother. She'd half thought about talking to Sally. Half thoughts were easily abandoned. As long as they weren't fully formed, Mary could still get away. Go back to Fort Hood, back to work, get busy and figure things out. She had plenty of options,
good
options, readily available to her where she really wanted to
be, where everybody knew her name because it was pinned to her uniform.