Desert Hearts (37 page)

“Damn it, Burke, I can’t spare anyone,” yelled Cooper. “Only a dumb mick would let his fingers get frostbitten. Where the hell were your gloves?”

“Em, I lost them, sir.”

“All right, all right. Get over to the infirmary.”

The doctor kept Michael overnight. “Lucky I can save them, soldier,” he said, clucking over him sympathetically and giving him whiskey laced with laudanum. “But they’ll be painful as you regain feeling.”

He was in the infirmary for another day and night, drifting in and out of his laudanum haze. He had a vague memory of Mr. Cooper standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at him in disgust. And of Elwell, sitting next to his bed, saying, “I told you so,” and then, “Goodbye.”

By the third day, however, the pain was at a manageable level. When the doctor unwrapped Michael’s hand, he nodded, a smile of satisfaction on his face at his own good work.

“We’ve saved them, Sergeant. You’ll be able to leave the infirmary today.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I am grateful to have me fingers, I can tell you.”

“Yes, well, your friend Elwell told me what you did. It was a stupid gesture, but a good-hearted one and I am glad to send you home so well. I understand you have a wife back at Fort Defiance?”

Michael laid his head back on his pillow, nodded, and closed his eyes. He couldn’t, for the life of him, summon up Elizabeth at all.

“She’ll be happy to have you safe at home then. But you’ll be traveling by yourself.”

Michael remembered Elwell’s good-bye. “The troop has left?”

“Yesterday, I asked for another day for you to recuperate.”

* * * *

The next day, Michael dressed himself, fumbling awkwardly at the buttons on his blouse and grimacing with pain as he pushed them through with his healing fingers.

First he visited Frost at the stables with a couple of dried apples in his good hand. The mare approached him slowly as if to say, “Well, you’ve taken your time, haven’t you?” She took the apples from Michael’s outstretched hand and chewed slowly as though she were considering whether she should forgive her neglectful master. Then, with a low whicker, she pushed her head into Michael’s chest in her usual gesture of greeting.

“So ye forgive me, do you,” he whispered. “It looks like they’ve been taking good care of you. I’m glad, for we have a long ride back and we leave tomorrow.”

He picked up a curry comb and after a few awkward minutes of adjusting his grip, got into a good rhythm of brushing. The familiar activity relaxed him, and by the time he finished, he was feeling better than he had since he arrived at Sumner.

“I’ve got to find your old friend, the bay,” he told the mare. “But I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”

* * * *

It took two hours and Michael was almost dizzy from the effort of keeping his emotions in check as he walked through the camp looking for Antonio and his small family. Finally he found them huddled together with two other families. When he greeted them and squatted down beside them, they only looked at him with dull eyes as though they had never seen him before. They were the eyes of his dream, and he had a moment of terror when he wanted to jump up and run away. He made himself stay and keep quiet. The terror subsided, leaving a very real fear for their chances of survival. He had never seen faces so expressionless, eyes dead, with no light or spark of determination behind them. If they had given up, then what would happen to them?

At last, Antonio spoke. “We thought you had left with Cooper.”

“Em…no…I had some orders to carry out before I left. You know old Stringy Arse,” he added with a smile.

There was no response from either Antonio or his wife.

“Em, how is the baby?”

“She is alive,” said Serena quietly, as though speaking took a great effort.

They all sat silently for a while and Michael feared he was going to lose them. They would give up here and die away from Dinetah. And why not? What reason was there to live in this godforsaken place. And what use to them was his anger and his grief and his guilt at what his adopted country had done to them.

Finally he pulled out a small pouch. It was why he had come, to give them this. He would do it quietly and leave.

“Antonio, I have a little money that I brought with me. I am thinking that it will be a while before the crops come in here. And there is always someone willing to sell if you’ve got the means to buy.”

Antonio said nothing. Did nothing.

“Antonio”—Michael’s voice was harsh—“ye must take this.”

“Why must I,
bilagaana
! So that we will live a few extra weeks? Why would we want to live anyway, so far from Dinetah?”

Michael was twelve again. Saying to his da, “Da, I’d rather be here, starving with you, I can’t leave ye, Da.” Meaning he couldn’t leave the green hills and rocky hills and pearl white strands of Ireland. He might die if he stayed, but surely would die if he left. But he hadn’t died. He had taken the chance his da had given him. Some small group of Indians far away had given him. It was all one, it seemed to him: his grief, Antonio’s grief. What was between them but an ocean of salt tears for all those who had died before them, victims of mankind’s greed. He had to close the circle. He had to give back what had been given.

“Antonio, look at me.” The passion in his voice made Antonio look up, although the Diné never looked anyone directly in the eye. It was torturous, but Michael’s eyes held him.

“Antonio, I am here. I survived. Some of my family and some of my neighbors survived. So many of us had to leave our homeland,” said Michael, his voice breaking. “I know what that is like.”

Antonio’s eyes changed. Only a little, but Michael could see some life come back to them.

“ ‘Tis my heart speaking to your heart, Antonio. You will take this money. Sure and ‘tis little enough. But it will get you through this, you and your family. I promise you.”

Antonio nodded and reached out his hand. “Thank you,” he whispered. The Diné rarely said thank you, but this was a time to break that custom, if any was.

“I must go, my friends. I will be praying to the mother of my God for you. I will be keeping you in my heart and I will be hoping we will meet again.” He said something softly in Irish, and then repeated it in English, “Deep peace of the son of Peace to you.” and as he got up to leave, Antonio stood too. The two men were silent for a moment and between them was all the pain and unassuageable grief of parting: their own, which might be final, and the sorrow of losing one’s own place and becoming a stranger in a strange land. It felt to Michael that the world’s heart was breaking between them. And as it broke open, what it revealed at its core was the essential spark of the universe: love. Despite greed, despite cruelty, it was love that had kept him alive. And that love, which was not his to give or to claim as his own but only to experience, had flowed through him today and would give strength to Antonio and his family.

“I will see you again, Antonio,” he said softly. “And if God and his Holy Mother are kind, it will be in Dinetah.” Michael turned and walked away quickly. He could not look back.

Holy Mother of God, who am I to promise anything
, he thought. He was suddenly drained of all energy and whatever had filled him for those few minutes had left him empty. Maybe it would have been better, to offer no hope at all.

* * * *

He left early the next morning, having said his goodbye and thanks to the doctor the night before. Frost was fed and rested and eager to get home, but he made the journey slowly.

No one had picked up the bodies of those who had died along the way and as Michael retraced the route, he saw their bones, already picked clean by buzzards. He felt like he was moving in darkness and the only thing that kept him going was that occasionally the dark curtain lifted and he would have a glimpse of Elizabeth’s face.

* * * *

Elizabeth had been frantic when the troop returned without Michael. She had received a short note from Lieutenant Cooper, which only informed her that her husband had been left behind in the Fort Sumner infirmary, which sent her running to the barracks to look for Joshua Elwell.

When she handed him the note, her face was white and her hands shaking. Elwell looked up after reading it. “He is a stupid bastard. Or a meaner one than I thought. There is no need to worry, Mrs. Burke. It was only a touch of frostbite that kept the sergeant behind.”

“You are sure it wasn’t something worse than that?”

“I swear to you, it was only a couple of fingers that were affected.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“He’ll probably be back within a week,” Elwell reassured her.

It was ten days. Ten days of walking Orion near the fort. And around and around the fort. Ten days of scanning the southeast with field glasses. Ten days of worrying if he had become lost, if not in the desert, then in one of his nightmares.

Elizabeth knew she was being foolish, but she couldn’t help it. Her anxiety took her over completely and by the end of the tenth day she had almost stopped eating.

She was sitting in the dark in their parlor when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She was frozen in place. What if it was someone else, come to tell her he had been found dead. The door opened and there he was, his pale face shining through the shadows.

“Elizabeth?” He sounded disappointed as he called into the darkness.

She willed her fingers to be steady as she struck a match and lit the lamp next to her.

Michael was fumbling with the buttons on his coat and looked up like a startled deer.

“You are here.”

Elizabeth walked slowly over to her husband. She looked up at him and her eyes held all the worry and all the love that had tortured her these past few weeks, and with a little sob she put her arms around him and collapsed against him.

“
Día
,
a ghra
. ‘Tis all right. I am home.”

He held her to him the way he had at the
kinaalda
, his hand pressing her head against his chest. They stood there awhile and then Elizabeth released her hold on him and pulled herself out of his arms.

“Let me help you with your coat, Michael.” She finished unbuttoning it for him and then he drew off his gauntlets. It was only then that she realized it hadn’t been only exhaustion that had caused his awkwardness.

“Your hand, Michael?”

“Sure, ‘tis fine now, Elizabeth,” he said lightly.

“Sergeant Elwell told me they’d been frostbitten.” Her voice was strained. “They look barely healed.”

Michael flexed his fingers. “They are feeling very good, as a matter of fact. I’m lucky the doctor was so good,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Come and sit down, Michael. You look exhausted.”

They sat on the sofa and she curled her feet up under her and held his left hand in her lap, stroking it gently as though that might speed the healing.

His arm was around her shoulder. It felt so good, so right to have him home, and for him to be home that they just sat there quietly. Finally Michael broke the silence.

“ ‘Twas an awful march, Elizabeth. I didn’t disobey any orders, but only because Josh kept me from it. I don’t think I can stay in the army any longer.”

“Leave the army, Michael? I know we have spoken of it, but it has been your life for so long. What would you do?”

“It has been your life too, Elizabeth. Could you stand to leave it?”

Elizabeth was silent for a moment. “Oh, Michael, it was my life because of Thomas. It became a home for both of us. It stayed my home because of you. But you—”her voice was so low that he had to lean down to hear her“—you are my home, Michael.”

Michael drew her head against him. “And you mine,
muirneach
. I will be sad to leave. But I don’t think I could stay under these circumstances, Elizabeth. I can’t bear being part of this destruction any longer.” He paused. “I was thinking…em, what would you think of being a rancher’s wife?”

“Cattle?”

“I was thinking maybe sheep with a little horse breeding on the side. Frost is a fine mare.”

“I think that is a wonderful idea.”

“We’ll not have much while we are getting started,” he warned her. “It will be hard times for a while.”

“I can take hard times as long as we are together, Michael.”

He leaned down to kiss her and they lost themselves in each other’s arms until Michael’s stomach interrupted them with a loud grumble and Elizabeth realized that she was hungry for the first time in days.

“Let me get up and make us some cocoa and toast some bread, Michael.”

They sat in companionable silence over their cups of cocoa, dipping toast slathered with butter and honey.

Elizabeth drained her cup and looked over at her husband. Michael’s eyes were half closed and she got up and shook his shoulder.

“Michael, come to bed.”

He had fallen asleep instantly, on his stomach, his arms thrown out. Elizabeth tucked herself under one of them and very shortly was asleep herself.

Sometime just before dawn, she realized that he was gone. She got up and sleepily made her way into the parlor. There he was, seated on the sofa again, his head buried in his hands.

“What is it, Michael? Another dream?”

He raised his head and looked at her and the torment in his eyes was unbearable.

“
Día
, I wish it was a dream.” He began to cry, great wracking sobs, and Elizabeth knelt down in front of him.

“You must tell me, Michael.”

“ ‘Tis their faces I cannot stand, Elizabeth. The eyes…they are death in life.”

“Who, Michael? Are they dream people?”

Michael’s laugh was ugly. “Dream people? No. They are me friend Kevin and me cousin Tom and the neighbor down the road.”

“Why would they come to torment you, Michael, if they are people you know and love?”

“Because I am alive and well fed and damned to hell for leaving.”

“Michael, you have never told me the whole story about how you left Ireland.”

“I left because me da made me. Because the praties were blighted again and the fever was taking anyone who hadn’t already starved to death. He wanted one of us to live.”