Reason To Believe (10 page)

"I don't understand," Anna said to her mother. "If you still don't believe he's got a problem, why did you kick him out? I mean—"

"I didn't say there weren't problems." She didn't like being put on the spot like this, either. "I simply said I wouldn't call your father a
drunk."

Clara glared pointedly, but Ben ignored the message as he gazed into her eyes and smiled knowingly. "She'd like to call me a lot of other things, but she doesn't have the vocabulary for it."

"We're discussing Anna's problem, Ben. Not yours."

"Okay." The smile faded. He turned to Anna. "Your mom tells me she thinks it's mostly your friends' fault."

"And
you
think it's
your
fault," Anna assumed.

"I think I made my problems, and you're makin' yours. I wish you could just take my word for it, Annie." He shook his head sadly. "It'll cost you, Annie-girl, and it's not worth the price."

The wounded-bear look in her father's eyes clearly cut deep. Anna hung her head. "I didn't know you'd be here. I knew you'd find out, but I didn't know you'd see me. I didn't want you to. Not like
that,
God."

Father and daughter exchanged a look of pain and empathy. Clara saw it and read it, but she understood only that she was not included in what they shared. She had missed something, and she felt a surprisingly deep stab of regret.

"I saw what you went through in treatment, Dad. Some of it, anyway. I didn't mean to..."

She'd missed that by choice, Clara reminded herself. The right choice, the only choice. Watching them now, wondering what this wordless memory was, she felt like an intruder. She turned and stared sightlessly out the window.

She wanted to kick herself for feeling left out.

"Hey," Ben said softly, laying his hand on Anna's shoulder. "You're the only kid I got. I find out you're in trouble, you think I'm gonna ignore it and hope it goes away? You think what I don't see with my own eyes doesn't bother me?" He lifted her chin on the edge of his hand, tracing its curve with his thumb. "Doesn't hurt me?"

"I didn't do it to hurt you." She turned her face from him, and Clara felt the threat of Anna's tears creep into her own throat. "I just wanted to try it," Anna whispered. "I just wanted to see what it was like."

Clara cleared her throat. "Anna, you don't have to try everything right now, and
surely
you know enough about the effects of alcohol without sneaking off and—"

Ben gave Clara the covert signal for a change of tack. "So what was it like for you, Annie-girl?"

"No big deal." She stared hard out the window, focusing on a bare tree in the backyard. "I gotta admit the aftermath is a real bitch."

"Uh-huh. I'd say you've met Iktome, the Trickster. One way or another we all get to meet him, but you don't wanna get too friendly." Ben patted his daughter's knee. "We'll get your grandfather to tell you some Iktome stories."

Anna fairly whirled in her chair, turning her mood around just as fast. "When?"

"Well..." Ben slid Clara a lopsided smile.
"Toksa.
Pretty soon."

"Don't
toksa
me." Anna grabbed her dad's brawny arm and shook it as though she expected apples to fall. "Let's go on that ride, Daddy."

He laughed. "Don't
Daddy
me, you little weasel. You know how cold it can get that time of year. You want your butt to freeze to the saddle and your toes to turn to ice cubes?" He gave her earlobe a playful two-fingered flick. "You want your ears to turn black and fall off?"

"I'll dress warm."

"You wanna spend Christmas camped out in some icy pasture? How's Santa Claus gonna find you?"

"Don't
Santa Claus
me," she returned, pulling on his arm again.

"Tell you what, Annie-girl, that has to be one miserable way to spend your holidays. Your teeth won't stop chattering until spring."

Anna shoved his shoulder with the heel of her hand.

Still laughing, he shook his head in protest. "I ain't kiddin' you, they do some hard ridin'. I'm hopin' your grandfather'll come to his senses and take his pickup instead of a horse."

"You've
got horses," Anna reminded, resorting to a little whining. Which, unlike crying at her age, was still okay.

It wasn't his way to say no to her. He was inclined to let her make her own choice, even at thirteen.

But Clara had not been raised the same way, and when she spoke, she echoed her own parents.

"I'm not going to let you go off on a two-week ride, Anna. At this point you're just as unpredictable as the weather. I'm not about to let you out of my sight for that long."

Anna grinned. "Then you come, too."

"Me? I'm sure they wouldn't want
me
along."

"Why not?" Anna demanded. "The paper said there would be some women going. Kids, too."

"I know, but—"

"And you're always telling me stories about you and your wonderful bay mare, Misty," Anna recited. "You
used
to tell me how you and Dad would take long rides and how he looked so great on a horse, you could hardly control yourself, just watching him handle the reins."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Anna." Clara shot her daughter the grimace of the sorely betrayed.

"And if you can't ride, you could at least drive along so I could go," Anna insisted. "So I could at least give it a try and see if I could make it all the way."

"Listen, Annie, I'll..." In a glance Ben sought alliance with Clara. "I'll take you down to see your grandfather, okay?"

"When?"

"This weekend. If that's okay." He turned to Clara. "You wanna come?"

"I think we should talk," she said quietly, instantly regretting the pall she'd suddenly thrown over the conversation. But she wasn't prepared. This was all going too fast for her.

He figured raking the yard was about all he had time for after he'd thrown the ball for Pancho a few times, hosed off the mess Annie had made at the side of the house, and watered the shrubbery. "Put 'em to bed wet," he remembered the guy at the nursery advising when he'd bought the first bushes for fall planting. The expression had struck him funny. Still did.
Put 'em to bed wet.

In his zeal to establish a nice yard, he'd learned about a lot of things the hard way. Like "putting them to bed wet" was a good idea, but you had to take the hose off before the first hard freeze, or you'd have busted pipes. Hell of a mess, busted pipes. But he was going to have a nice yard, come hell or high water, and he'd gotten himself up to his neck in both. He didn't want the neighbors saying anything about his presence devaluing their property.

So he'd learned this stuff the hard way. Before he met Clara, he'd thought buckbrush and buffalo grass made a perfectly good yard. A guy didn't have to worry about busting his pipes—didn't need any pipes. Prickly pear cactus took whatever water the heavens could spare and produced pretty yellow flowers in the spring. The taproot on a yucca plant could grow twenty feet deep if you left it alone. But roses and Kentucky bluegrass had to be watered constantly, and even then, a good, hot Dakota summer or a normal Dakota winter could kill them.

But he'd had those Joneses to keep up with, and by damn, he wasn't going to give them anything to complain about. Except when they wanted him to get rid of the cottonwoods that grew in his backyard. The cotton was blowing into their yard, they'd said. They'd cited an ordinance against planting cottonwoods in the city.

Ben had to point out that he hadn't planted them. As far as he knew, those trees had been stuck in the same plot of ground since before Lewis and Clark had come nosing around. And they were staying put. They belonged in this country. They were
native.
That Russian olive in Jones's front yard was an import, for crissake. Even Ben Pipestone, who didn't know a goddamn thing about trees, could figure out why some plants grew better on the prairie than others. To hear his father tell it, the cottonwood was sacred. But Ben wasn't going to try to convince his neighbors of that. They'd probably start a rumor that he was practicing some kind of satanic tree worship in his backyard.

He didn't mind raking up after the cottonwoods. He was determined to have his nice yard, but if he'd ever bought that little piece of land behind it, he would have let it go back to prairie. No damn cornfields for Ben Pipestone. He wanted to be able to look out his window and see a few acres of prairie and a couple of broomtails.

He had most of the leaves raked up when Clara came outside. She'd changed into a soft print skirt and a blazer that matched her eyes. Fall colors. And he could tell by the spring in her penny loafers that she was ready for their talk. He knew it had to come, sooner or later. But later was fine with him.

He picked up the blue rubber ball and flung it toward the horizon. "Go get it, boy."

Clara took a seat on the tree bench he'd built at the base of one of the cottonwoods. "I had planned to spend the afternoon at the office," she began, "but it's getting to the point where I can't trust Anna on her own."

"Go ahead. I can hang around until you get back." He smiled as the lively border collie came bounding up the slope carrying the ball in its mouth. "There's plenty for me to do around here."

"I can hire someone."

"To watch Annie?" He gave her a get-real look as he pitched the ball again. "You'd be treating her like a kid. That would only make things worse."

She brushed a brittle brown leaf off the bench and crossed her ivory-stockinged legs at the ankles. "I meant I could hire someone to do the yard work. I don't expect you to come all the way up here to rake the yard."

"I don't mind workin' outside," he assured her as he reached inside his jacket for a cigarette. "Besides, the house is still in my name, too."

She squinted up at him, watching his every move. His glance ricocheted off hers as he planted one boot on the bench. He could just feel it, the way she was looking at him, judging him for some damn thing. All he was doing was lighting a cigarette.

"When are you going to stop smoking, Ben? It's not good for you."

"So I've heard." He spat a stream of smoke past the drooping cottonwood branches. "When are you gonna quit naggin' me about it?"

"Force of habit, I guess. Anna will probably take that up next."

"Oh, for crissake." He took one more deep drag before he ground the cigarette out against his bootheel and flipped it into a pile of yard debris. "There. Happy?"

The disconsolate look in her eyes said no. There was no way he could make her happy. Not anymore.

A terrible sadness drifted over him, like the cloud of gray smoke he'd just forfeited. He tried to shrug it off. "They don't advise tryin' to give up all the vices at once."

"Who's
they
?"

"The vice doctors," he said absently. "Guess they figure if they drive out all the devils at once, there might not be much left."

"It's just... for your own good."

"Tellin' the truth was supposed to be for my own good, too. Part of the cure." He looked down at her, sitting there primly on the bench he'd had one hell of a time putting together before he'd invested in a table saw. "Is this what you wanted to talk about?"

She shook her head tightly and spared him a glance, then wrapped her arms around her middle as though her stomach hurt her. "I think Anna needs more stability in her life, Ben."

Here it comes, he thought. She was about to tell him she'd finally met the right man. The Rock of Gibraltar who would give her what she needed and love her daughter like his own. He'd thought he'd prepared himself for it, but he was ready neither to hear it nor to step aside without a fight. Two years ago when he'd hit bottom he probably would have, but not now. He'd come too far.

"Stability?" He reached up and snapped off a brittle twig. "That's why we moved up here. And I guess that's why Annie's staying with you. You've always been perfectly steady."

"But I'm only one person. And I'm not..."

Not what? Could she say it?
Not perfect?

She sighed. "There are some things I just can't be. Anna needs you, too. She needs your family. In many ways, she feels more like a Pipestone than a Whiting."

Ah, he thought.
Not Indian.

"But your name is Pipestone, too," he observed, testing the waters cautiously.

"For now," she said as she rose from the bench. "Anna looks like a Pipestone. I don't. There are times when that makes a difference that I can't deal with without getting all..." Shoving her hands in her pockets, she drew a sharp, menacing breath through her teeth. "I hate it when they say things that—"

"Who's
they!"
he echoed with a knowing smile.

"Unfortunately,
they
are usually people who come from a background similar to mine, people who look like me, people Anna associates with me."

She looked to him for deliverance. He knew she wanted him to assure her that there was no reason for Annie to associate her mother with that particular kind of
they.
Clara knew as much about Indian history as he did. Okay, maybe more. But since he had the distinction of knowing more than she ever would about
being
an Indian, and since maybe he was feeling a little contrary, he stood silent, offering her no reprieve.