Warrior's Embrace (72 page)

“How are you, darling?” he said, bending to
kiss her on the lips.

“Larry ...we have a visitor. My
brother-in-law from Oklahoma.”

The man Anna called Larry turned, not at all
flustered at having been caught kissing Cole’s wife.

“Hello. I’m Larry Carnathan.” He stuck out
his hand. “You’re Eagle Mingo.”

“Yes.” His handshake was firm and his gaze
unwavering as Eagle assessed him. Self-assured. Determined. Not a
man to be taken lightly, Eagle decided.

“You’ve come a long way to see Anna. Why
don’t I leave you two alone?”

“You don’t have to leave, Larry.” Anna thrust
her chin out as if she dared Eagle to contradict her.

“I won’t go far. Just to the kitchen to make
us all a pot of coffee.”

They heard his footsteps disappearing down
the hall. In the humming silence, Anna fidgeted with the
covers.

“He’s my sister’s accountant,” she said
finally. “I met him when I first moved out here. He’s been good to
me.”

“You and this man have made plans?”

“Yes. I’m going to marry him.” Her chin came
up. “I need a father for my children, but more than that, I love
him.”

“They have a father.”

“Cole’s dead, Eagle.”

Eagle heard his brother’s cry as he fell over
the edge of the cliff. He wanted to shut his ears, but he couldn’t.
Cole’s haunting cry had become the lamentation of a nation, falling
over the edge of a cliff into oblivion.

“He lives through his children, Anna. They
will carry on the Mingo name, the Mingo traditions.”

“Clint will remain a Mingo if he wishes
...he’s old enough to choose. But my babies will be called
Carnathan ...like their adoptive father.”

“They are Cole’s children. If you do this,
you desecrate the Mingo name.”

“Cole desecrated the Mingo name.”

The fearsome truth glittered in Anna’s eyes,
and Eagle understood that both he and Cole had vastly
underestimated this woman.

“Didn’t you think I’d guess?” she added.
“Didn’t you think I’d add up all his absences, his erratic
behavior?”

“No one else knows . . .”

“No. Nor will they ever.” Anna folded her
hands over her vast abdomen. “I will tell the babies their tribal
history, but I won’t burden them with paralyzing traditions and a
name they’ll have to defend.”

In the face of her implacable will, Eagle was
defenseless.

“My father’s spirit will never recover from
this final blow.”

“You underestimate Winston, Eagle. You always
have.”

There was a discreet knock. Larry Carnathan
stuck his head around the door.

“Is anybody ready for coffee?”

Eagle knew that his response would set the
course for the future. With the waiting stillness that had
characterized his ancestors, he studied the man who would raise his
brother’s children, studied him, and saw his strength and his
courage.

“Coffee sounds like a good idea,” he
said.

Charleston, South Carolina

Every morning Martha cooked bacon and eggs
and biscuits, in spite of what her daughter said about cholesterol,
and every evening Kate stopped on her way from work to pick up some
special treat for them, the Italian ices they loved so well, or
boiled peanuts from the vendor on the corner near the hospital.

Often now, her mother sang. And three days a
week she put on her striped cotton uniform and did volunteer work
at the hospital. Gray Ladies, they were called.

“How do you like being a Gray Lady,
Mother?”

“I love it. But what do you suppose they’d
call me if I dyed my hair red?”

“They’d call you beautiful. Do it.”

Restless, Kate went to the window. Soon it
would be spring. Though the lilacs weren’t yet blooming, their
fragrance was already in the air, as if it had been borne in from
some exotic and faraway place on breezes drifting across the
sea.

The news reporter on
Wake Up,
Charleston
was giddy with the sighting of a bluebird she’d
seen on the way to work. As Kate leaned on the windowsill,
listening to the woman’s drawl, thick as molasses, she remembered
the musical rhythms of Deborah’s voice telling her she should wear
a hat in the sun, and the mesmerizing cadence of Eagle’s voice as
he wooed her in Muskogean.

“And now here’s what’s happening around the
nation,” the woman on television intoned. “In Tupelo, Mississippi,
a new furniture market is opening, and in Ada, Oklahoma, Governor
Eagle Mingo announced the opening of Native Arts, Incorporated, at
the site of what was once a tool and die plant.”

Suddenly his voice was more than a memory; it
filled the room, flowing through Kate like the Blue River, until
she was full of the sound and the music of it.

“The new enterprise has two purposes,” he
said, “to employ the people who need work as well as to preserve
and promote Chickasaw culture.”

His face filled the screen, chiseled and so
beautiful, it took away Kate’s ability to breathe. The camera
panned to woven baskets and hand-painted pottery, and the
honey-voiced Southerner waxed eloquent about the art; but Kate
still saw and heard Eagle. Only Eagle.

“Katie.” She felt her mother’s hand on her
arm. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You remind me of the way I used to look
forty years ago when I knew Mick would be calling.”

Kate walked toward a chair, keeping her eyes
on the television screen, although she knew that she’d seen the
last of Eagle Mingo.
Wake Up, Charleston
featured sound
bites, not in-depth reporting.

The cameras were panning across a zoo now, in
Washington, D.C., honing in on the pandas.

“Mother, what are you going to do?”

“I thought I’d go down to the nursery and buy
some plants. Don’t you think flower beds would look nice in front
of the cottage?”

“I’m not talking about today. I’m talking
about the next few months, the next few years.”

“My future, you mean?” Martha laughed then
inspected her hands. “I don’t know, Katie. I don’t need the money,
but I realize I can’t depend on you the rest of my life to keep me
company and make all my decisions.”

“Wasn’t there anything you wanted to do? Any
burning ambition you had when you were young?”

“Not like you. You’re like Mick. Both of you
always knew exactly what you wanted.”

A long silence fell over them. Finally Martha
went to the window and opened it wider to let in the breeze.

“I used to think I might like to be a concert
pianist,” she said almost timidly. “But my hands are too stiff now
and my skills too rusty. It’s far, far too late for those
dreams.”

“If I left, would you stay here? At the
cottage?”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you, Katie?”

Until that moment Kate hadn’t known it was
so; but suddenly she understood that she had to leave, that the
redemption she’d spent years trying to find had been inside her all
along, waiting to be discovered. At last she forgave herself for
the death of her brothers, the death of the Chickasaw children, and
most of all, the death of Deborah.

“Yes, Mother. I’m leaving.”

Martha untied her apron and began to tidy up
the kitchen.

“Don’t you worry a minute about me. I’ll be
fine. I might even go up to Virginia for a while to visit Cousin
Clara. She’s been after me to go to Europe with her.”

“Dye your hair red first,” Kate said, hugging
her mother.

“I might just do that.”

Kate turned her face to the open window,
where bird- song drifted through on fresh breezes. Spring had come,
and, with it, peace.

Witch Dance

The land was coming alive after a harsh
winter. In the mountains, patches of snow still clung to the
ground, shaded by enormous trees, but in the valley the grass
sprang up fresh and green, and flowers threaded like colored
ribbons along the edge of bluffs and the banks of the river.

High above the land where ravens nested and
eaglets tested their wings on maiden flights, Eagle stood alone,
staring into the ravine. There was no sign of violence now, only
the quiet beauty of a land renewing itself. On the place where his
brother had died, flowers grew, more vivid then the ones around
them. An eaglet lost its confidence and landed among the blossoms,
squawking.

“Fly, little one,” Eagle said. “Fly”

And while he watched, the eaglet spread its
wings and lifted upward, growing stronger and more beautiful as it
flew toward the sun.

Eagle tipped his head back to watch the
flight, and as he lifted his head toward Father Sky, he slowly
lifted his arms.

“Loak-Isthtohoollo-Aba.
Alail-o
. I
am come.”

The eaglet bent its wings and swooped close,
crying out ancient secrets to him, and the vision that had been in
Eagle’s mind all winter became so real, he could almost touch
it.

Kate was riding Indian-style, sitting proud
and erect the way he always remembered her. He lowered his arms and
stood with his feet planted apart as the big Appaloosa topped the
ridge and cantered close, stopping a few feet from him.

“Hello, Eagle.”

His soul wept for her, and his heart cried
out, but he stood apart, wrapped in dignity and the heavy mantle of
duty.

“Hello, Kate.”

She stared at him with eyes that held
memories. Even across the distance his skin burned with her and he
felt the warm, sweet melting of his flesh into hers. Her bottom lip
trembled ever so slightly. She caught it between her teeth as she
dismounted.

For a small eternity they faced each other,
watching, waiting, wanting. Finally the eaglet swooped between
them, its cry breaking the screaming silence. Kate turned abruptly
and walked to the edge of the cliff.

He wanted to reach out to keep her from
falling over the edge, wanted to cry out
Stop
. Instead, he
remained as still as the carved mountains around him.

She stood at the edge of the cliff for a long
time, and when she turned to him, there was a hint of tears in her
eyes.

“Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”

“Kate, you were never one to keep secrets.
You’ll tell me.”

“Damn you, Eagle Mingo.”

He smiled at the quick spots of color that
came into her cheeks. Nothing about Kate Malone had changed. At
least he had that.

“Why are you here?” he said.

“Because I knew you would be here, standing
just as you were when I first saw you with your arms lifted to the
sky. I knew those things, Eagle, because you are still here
...inside me in ways that no man has ever been or ever will be.”
The hand she had spread over her heart clenched, catching the
fabric of her blouse and drawing it tight across her breasts.

Eagle wanted to take the clenched hand and
gently pull it apart, wanted to lift it up to his lips and taste
the sweetness of her palm. The high mountain wind whipped her hair
around her face. He could almost reach out and touch it, that
bright hair of his visions, that silky, flaming mass that moved him
in ways not even he could fathom.

One small movement. That’s all it would take
to send him flying across the space that separated them. If she had
lifted her hand to hold back her hair, the sight of soft,
blue-veined skin of her underarm would have been his undoing. If
she had shifted her right foot, thrusting her hips forward ever so
slightly in the provocative angle that used to drive him mad, he’d
have covered her with wings that would carry them on a flight from
which neither of them could ever return.

But she stood unmoving, her arms wrapped
around herself as much to ward him off as to keep out the spring
winds still chilly in the high mountains. The wind soughed between
them, crying out for their isolation.

He opened his mouth to speak, though he
didn’t know what he would say. How could he bind her to him with
words when he couldn’t bind her to him with deeds?

“Please don’t say anything, Eagle. If you
call me
Wictonaye
, I’ll lose my resolve. If you speak to
me of flying, I’ll spread myself on the ground at your feet and beg
you to take me with you.” She held up her palm. “No ...don’t speak
to me yet. I have to finish what I came to say”

He watched her silently, but his eyes spoke
to her of love, and she turned her face away so she wouldn’t see.
His stallion pawed the ground, impatient, and hers whinnied,
skittish,

“I’m going to rebuild my clinic as a memorial
to Deborah, and I’m going to rebuild a life here in Witch Dance. A
real one this time, Eagle.”

Without him. Her stance and her stubborn chin
made that perfectly clear. There would be no more summer affairs
beside the Blue River, no more explosive matings in the
mountains.

“The clinic will be a good thing. The old
shaman is dead, and Witch Dance needs you.”

Witch Dance needed her, she thought, but not
Eagle. Governor Eagle Mingo would never need her.

She mounted her stallion in one fluid
movement. The time had come to go.

He took a step forward, and for a moment she
thought he meant to catch her bridle so she couldn’t leave. But he
stopped short of the Appaloosa.

“If I can help you in any way, let me know.
The governor’s office is always at your disposal.”

“You can help me by staying away, Eagle.” She
tossed her hair and held her back erect. She would not ride away a
defeated woman. “If any man ever rides up to my door again to carry
me off on a horse, he’d damned well better mean it.”

She wheeled her stallion away, wanting to
shut out the sight of him quickly before she could change her
mind.

“Kate!”

His voice was not a plea, but a command. She
brought her mount to a halt and looked back at him over her
shoulder. His eyes sucked her into him so that she went spinning
away, caught forever on the medicine wheel.