Wind Song (25 page)

“No!” she groaned and tried to push herself away from that vast emptiness waiting below for her.

The sharp slap against her buttocks brought her up short. “For God’s sake, Abbie, cut it out,” Cody’s voice growled, “or we’ll both be doing free falls.”

“How . . . what?
...”
She struggled to coalesce her scattered senses. After another moment of excruciating jarring, she realized that she was thrown over Cody’s shoulder, that he was negotiating that perilous path. An impossibility. She twisted her head to see, and he landed another blow across her rear. “I said don’t move.”

She froze at his command. Incredibly, he was climbing the foot-wide path by hauling on a rope that stretched somewhere upward out of sight.

She heard him chuckle and demanded, “How can you laugh at a time like this?”

“I was thinking ... for the umpteenth time . . . what a delightful rear you have. The one opportunity ... I have to fondle it—” his breathing was labored, and he paused to inhale— “without you interfering . . . and I need both my hands for the task at hand.”

“Thank God.”

“Thank the burro that returned to the shed . . . that’s when we knew you were missing. Otherwise hours could have passed before we started looking.”

“And I thought burros were dumb.” Her breath whooshed from her lungs as her body jolted with one of Cody’s rough strides. When her breath returned, she asked, “Robert?”

“In the pickup. He’s broken a thighbone.”

Her relief came out in an audible sigh. Then Cody’s foot slid, and she screamed, certain that the two of them were going over the edge.

Cody’s hands slipped on the rope, then held. He started working his way back up the pebbled path, hauling the two of them ever upward. She was afraid even to draw a breath, much less open her eyes, until it seemed that Cody was walking upright. Then the hinges of a door squeaked, and a rush of toasted air swept over her. She opened her eyes to find Cody shoving her into his pickup. The motor was running, filling the cab with heat. Next to her, Robert, half unconscious from the combined effects of the cold and the pain itself, stirred on the seat, where he had slumped to one side. She looked around for Cody. He stood at the tailgate, unknotting the hemp rope that he had used in the rescue from the bumper.

She and Robert were going to live after all! With the realization she started to shiver as feeling returned to her limbs again. Inexplicably she began to cry in silent little gasps.

Cody opened the pickup door and swung into the cab. “What the hell are you doing?”

She had no breath to answer him, only sobbing hiccoughs as she buried her face in her hands. The aftershock hit her and she cried copiously, uncontrollably.

“You little idiot.” He began to curse again, quietly, unemotionally and steadily, as he shifted the engine into forward and drove back down the canyon. “You selfish little fool. Why couldn’t you have stayed in Pennsylvania where you belonged? But, no . . . you just had to prove what a woman you were, no matter how much it disrupted other lives.”

“You have no right to say that!” She dropped her bloodied, ragged hands from her face and looked at him with a face ravaged by tears.

He didn’t take his eyes from the dark road, lit only by the pickup’s headlights. “But it’s true, isn’t it?” he ground out between clenched teeth. “You came here looking for amusement— entertainment—any diversion from the boredom of your
haute monde. ”

Robert stirred, awakened by the virulent tension that vibrated in the cab. But Abbie was unaware of anything but the pain caused by Cody’s charge. “No, no!” she cried out. “I thought I would find real life here at Kaibeto. I thought I would find
myself!”

“And did you?” he grated. “Did you find real life at Kaibeto? Did you find the real you?”

“No,” she sobbed bitterly. Her shoulders shook with her vehemence. “I was wrong, thinking I would find myself here. I’m leaving the reservation, do you hear! I’m going back to Pennsylvania, where I belong.”

* * * * *

Abbie laid the folded sweater in the suitcase with the rest of her meager belongings . . . and one of the beaded necklaces made by the children. Miss Halliburton had insisted that she take it after Abbie had informed the older woman that she was leaving the reservation.

The doctor had recommended a few days of rest and recuperation, but Miss Halliburton had told her to take off the weeks remaining in the term. It was then that Abbie had announced that she was giving up her position at Kaibeto. “It was the mountains and the gorges that got to me finally,” Abbie finished with a smile that rang hollow with self-mockery.

“And the baby you carry?” Miss Halliburton asked. “What will your husband—former husband—say?”

Abbie shrugged. “I don’t really care. I’m not going back to him, only to the life that I’m familiar with. Like you said, I don’t belong out here, Miss Halliburton.”

“I’d say you’re one gutsy lady.”

It was the first compliment Abbie had received from the woman. Perhaps the principal wasn’t such a dragon after all. Why did she have to realize certain truths when it was too late? Abbie wondered.

“Not too gutsy. I’m scared silly just thinking about trying to earn a living and raise a baby alone. But other women do it. Besides, in a way, I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

It would take her mind off other things. Off her failure as a teacher. Off Cody. Off her love for him and her continued desire for him. Now that he had awakened the sleeping woman within her, what would she do with the rest of her life? Read romantic books to sublimate these new, unsettling feelings? Cody’s last words had killed all hope for anything else.

They had been waiting outside Tuba City’s emergency clinic for the doctor to finish setting the cast on Robert’s leg. Cody, his hands jammed in his jeans, his back to her as he stood at the dust-filmed window, had said in a low, brusque voice, “Get out of my life, Abbie Dennis.” Only then had he turned to look at her. Really look at her. Below the bandana his eyes were hard and piercing. “Get out and don’t come back.”

She had looked away. “There’s nothing to bring me back,” she had said in a toneless voice.

And it was true, she thought as she clumsily closed the lid on the leather-bound suitcase with hands that were wrapped in gauze and tape. In the four days following the snowstorm she had had enough time to rethink her decision to leave, and the unpleasant facts she faced had not changed her mind. Cody’s contempt, Robert’s dislike, her teaching career that was nothing more than one fiasco after another—she had failed utterly, miserably at Kaibeto.

She looked around the apartment for anything she might have missed. There was still time to say good-bye to her students. But that was another painful situation she couldn’t bring herself to face. Better to wait in the school office for Marshall to arrive. Carrying her suitcase in one hand, her coat thrown over her other arm, she walked across the school grounds. The snow had melted, leaving the greasewood and broomgrass glistening in the brilliant sunlight that had perversely decided to shine. Beneath the slide, about the corral, between the sidewalk’s gaping cracks— everywhere, it seemed—sunflowers suddenly unfolded their gloriously golden petals to usher in the spring.

Yet Abbie’s heart was dormant with winter’s frost. She set her suitcase down on the school porch’s bottom step and turned to survey Kaibeto one last time. Her gaze went to Navajo Mountain. Against a turquoise sky it rose, one magnificent slab of stone. Powerful and enduring, like the Navajo people. She would miss them.

She saw the telltale spiral of dust before she actually heard Marshall’s Jeep coming down the road. He pulled up beside her. His gray eyes looked appreciatively at her, standing in her white wool suit, her chin tipped defiantly.  “Are you sure?” he asked.

She nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. He got out of the Jeep and came around to the porch. His hand touched her elbow. “I can still write and tell headquarters to disregard your resignation.”

She shook her head. “No.” It was all she could manage.

He took her suitcase and opened the door of the Jeep for her. She sat with eyes that stared stonily ahead as they slowly rolled away.

“Wait!” Marshall braked at Abbie’s sudden command.

He turned his gaze in the direction she was looking. Robert stood on the steps, his crutches supporting the weight of his thin body. As Abbie watched, he maneuvered the crutches down the three steps, looking for all the world like some unwieldy robot. Frustration showed on his little brown face as he reached the bottom step. Then he dropped the crutches and came hobbling toward her.

“Robert!” she whispered, her throat choked with tears. She flung open the door and ran toward him. She sank to her knees and wrapped her arms about his waist. His own arms encircled her shoulders.

“Shirt.” It was all he said. But she knew. She hadn’t failed. She started laughing. Robert’s childish laughter echoed her own.

She had been determined that she wasn’t going to cry, but then, there she was, bawling like a baby, she and Robert both. Brad would have said that she was making a spectacle of herself, but Cody . . . She suspected that he would have had a tear or two in his eyes, as did the people she suddenly glimpsed through blurry eyes standing on the school porch.

Crying and grinning, what a combination they were. Joey Kills the Soldier, Dalah, Linda, Karen Many Goats, Miss Halliburton, Julie Begay, Dorothy, Becky, Delbert—they were all there.

Marshall touched her shoulder. She looked up into the warm, smiling face. “You’ll return to the schoolroom?” he asked.

She came to her feet, still holding Robert’s hand. “Not just yet. There’s something I still have to do. Don’t wait for me.”

She kissed Robert on the forehead. “I’ll come back . . . soon,” she told him, and knew that this time he understood her.

She waved at the others, who watched in puzzlement as she turned back and crossed the school grounds toward her apartment. She found what she was looking for on the top shelf of the closet where she had tossed it. She smiled shyly at her reflection in the mirror. With the blanket wrapped around her, she did look like a squaw. A marriage blanket, Cody had called it when he had bundled her in it the night of the windsong ceremony. Would he still want her?

The question echoed in the chambers of her heart with each step that took her closer to the old mission. No fear gripped her, as it used to, when she crossed the narrow foot bridge that spanned Kaibeto Wash . . . only the fear of what Cody would—or would not—do.

The mission’s heavy door was open to let in the warming sunshine. The muted pounding told her where he was. She followed the portico that rimmed the courtyard to the clapboard building at the rear. Inside a fire blazed at the forge, highlighting the planes and ridges and hollows of Cody’s chiseled face. Naked to the waist, he wielded the hammer against the anvil with a grace that was sensuously masculine. She stood there watching, afraid to move, now that she had come this far.

And she had come far. She had traveled the long road to find the woman within her. She had found Abbie Dennis.

With an Indian’s sixth sense, Cody must have perceived the presence of another in the shed. He halted his hammering of the silver strip and slowly turned to face her. For a long moment he didn’t say anything, simply stared at the barefooted woman who stood before him, her tawny gold hair draped over the blanket wrapped about her. His eyes gleamed brilliantly against his dark face. “You have made the commitment?”

“Yes.” She went to stand before him, dropping the blanket at their feet. “I want to be here at Kaibeto with you.”

Still he didn’t move. “What happens, Abbie, if that need to find the woman you are, to prove yourself, starts to eat away at you again? Will it erode your love for me, too?”

She cupped the strong line of his jaw in hands that trembled with the love she bore him and looked up into the dark eyes that hungrily searched hers. “I found myself here at Kaibeto, my love,” she whispered. “You . . . Robert . . . the others here . . . have shown me the Abbie Dennis who was inside me all along. The conflict in me—trying to be my own woman, wanting to be your woman—is resolved. I can be both. I
am
both.”

“And the conflict between our two worlds?” he asked, his voice husky with the anxiety that obviously gnawed at him.

A slow smile danced at the corners of her lips. “You managed to bridge both worlds. Can I, as a woman, do less?” The smile faded to a serious look of pleading. “Oh, Cody, I love your world. I love the tranquility of Kaibeto, the stark, uncluttered beauty of the landscape. I love the challenge of the elements and the people—their humor, their kindness, their honesty and open approach to life. I want to be here at Kaibeto with you.”

He encircled her with arms that gleamed with perspiration. His lips made hungry little forays over her face. “Kaibeto can wait,” he murmured. “Cambria needs us for a while. It needs our child and our children’s children ... as I need you,” he finished, and finally claimed her lips with a kiss that told of his love.

And as he lowered her to the marriage blanket, spread for them on the dirt floor, her own lips and hands told him of her own feelings, as did his whispered words of his, “Walk in beauty, my love.