A Rainbow in Paradise (13 page)

"Y-yes?" She was looking out the window. She
was crying, trying to hide her tears.

"Eden, I'm taking you home, as you asked, but
may I say something, too? Will you listen?"

She made an odd "umm" sound again that might
have meant either yes or no. He decided to take it for assent and
stopped the truck to make it easier to talk to her. She was crying
steadily now—softly, almost soundlessly, her pain betrayed only by
little gasps between her silent sobs. The sound almost broke his
heart.

"Eden? Oh, Eden." He moved into the middle of
the seat beside her and drew her into his arms, fearing she might
push him away, surprised when she allowed him to comfort her. "Shh,
love, shh," he said, stroking her hair, rubbing her back. "I did
want to show you something of where my people have come from, but
there was no hidden agenda here—at least..." He paused, and his
voice rang with honest introspection as he added, "At least none
that I planned, none I was aware of. I certainly didn't mean to
hurt you." He held her away from him, looking into her eyes. "You
believe that, don't you, Eden? You believe that I've never meant to
hurt you?"

She didn't answer, but her eyes suggested she
was willing to try.

"Eden, sweetheart, I may not want to care
about you, but I can't help myself, and I'd never forgive myself if
I hurt you deliberately. Please, love, tell me you believe me."

She burst into sobs, pressing her face into
the crease of his shoulder. He sat holding her, soothing her,
whispering sweet endearments he had never meant to say, but which
came so naturally to his lips when he held paradise in his arms.
Finally she calmed and he pressed her again for an answer. "Please,
Eden, tell me you believe me."

Her words tumbled out in a rush. "Oh, Logan,
I want to believe you. So much."

"Then that will have to do," he said, his
heart relieved even while his mind insisted it wasn't enough.
"Thank you, Eden. Thank you for that." He gathered her against his
chest, holding her until her trembling ceased, holding her as if he
would never let her go.

* * * * *

Eden was weary Sunday morning and slept in so
late, she barely made it to church. She slipped into a pew beside a
young family she thought she ought to know, and smiled in greeting
just as the prelude concluded and Reverend Phelps stood to welcome
everyone. Then what might have been chagrin or embarrassment
changed to surprise as, during the first strains of the opening
hymn, Logan Redhorse slid in beside her.

"Good morning," she whispered over the
congregation's somewhat discordant rendition of "O, Thou Rock of
Our Salvation," wiggling over a little to make room for him at the
end of the pew.

"Ya-ta-hey," he answered, grinning that wide,
warm smile that never failed to clutch somewhere around her middle.
"Surprised to see me?"

"Yes, I am." She couldn't help wondering if
he had come here just to see her, or... Well, she couldn't guess
what else would have brought him.

"Surprised to see me in Rainbow Rock, or
surprised to see me here?" Logan asked in a whisper, gesturing
around them at the small but overfilled church.

"Both, I guess."

"You wore me out yesterday," he said, his
eyes twinkling.

"Well, I think there's some question about
who wore out whom," she responded, still whispering.

"Maybe, but either way, I decided I was too
tired to drive home, so I crashed in Holbrook with friends. As for
church..." He made again that small, yet sweeping gesture that
seemed to encompass not just their surroundings, but the whole
concept of church and religion. "It was a mentor of Reverend Phelps
who baptized me out on the rez when I was in my teens. I always
make a point of coming here if I'm in town on a Sunday."

"Baptized you?" The older couple in front of
her turned to look and Eden realized she'd spoken louder than she
had intended. She felt her face warm in embarrassment as she smiled
an apology.

The hymn ended just then and the reverend
rose to pray. "We'll talk later," Logan mouthed as he placed the
hymnal in the shelf in front of them.

Eden could only nod an answer.

As the service wore on, Logan took her hand
and they sat together companionably, looking much like the young
couple who sat just down the pew from them—together, smiling often
at each other, holding hands—except, of course, that they were
taking turns holding their baby and the mother had a toddler at her
side. Eden couldn't help noticing both the similarities and
differences, wondering...

Well
, she decided
,
I'm
probably better off if I don't do too much wondering
. Still,
the knowledge that she and Logan shared a faith helped to overcome
at least one major barrier to the possibilities that might lie
before them. She barely heard the sermon about diversity and
appreciating differences and how all human beings were children of
the same divine creator.

After the benediction, while the congregation
was still milling around and filing out, Chris and Sarah approached
them to ask if they'd like to come to the traditional McAllister
family dinner and sing-along which they planned to host at their
place that afternoon.

Eden was about to answer when Logan said,
"Can we take a rain check on that and come another day? Eden and I
have plans."

She tried to keep the surprise out of her
voice as she told Sarah she'd love to come another time. "What
plans?" she whispered as Chris and Sarah turned away.

"Sorry," he said, and when he smiled like
that, Eden felt certain she'd forgive him anything. "I hadn't had
time to ask you about it. I brought a picnic lunch and I was hoping
you'd join me."

"Sounds fun," she answered, touched by his
thoughtfulness. It was a few minutes later, when they were alone in
the cab of Logan's pickup, that she asked, "You said you were
baptized in your teens?"

"Yep." He nodded, turning the truck toward
the hills. "That was one of the first things I did to make my
grandmother mad at me. She beat me with a willow switch until I
thought I'd never sit down again."

"So why did you do it?" Even as she said it,
she was embarrassed she had asked. She knew why he had done it. She
felt the answer in his presence.

"Because I believed what the minister
taught."

"Yet you're a Navajo, and you continue to
practice the ceremonies of the native faith."

"Many of the Dineh are baptized Christians
who still find strength in the legends and rituals of the
People."

"I don't understand—"

"I know you don't. Be patient a moment," he
answered, gently taking her hand. "I think perhaps I can show
you."

Again she nodded, waiting in silence while
Logan drove them out of town and into the hills, onto the
reservation lands, into Dinehtah. It wasn't long before he stopped
the truck atop a knoll and came around to open her door. "Come," he
said, offering her a hand, "walk with me," and she smiled as she
took his hand, thinking she might follow this man anywhere he
led.

He did not lead her far. A few yards from the
truck, he stopped where the earth fell away beneath their feet.
They were looking out over a vast expanse of the Arizona Badlands,
the multi-striped hills for which the Painted Desert was named
spread out below them. "Look," he said, but she couldn't have
helped looking. The scene commanded attention, its stark beauty and
regal splendor a feast to the senses. After a moment, he asked,
"What do you feel?"

"Awe," she answered slowly. "Amazement."

"Do you feel the spirit of this land?"

She paused and, for a moment, closed her
eyes. Then she knew she did feel it—through the soles of her feet,
through the touch of the desert breeze on her skin, even through
the penetrating silence. She nodded assent, barely whispering,
"Yes."

"Eden," he spoke, his voice intent, and she
opened her eyes, turning to face him. "Eden, the Dineh feel it,
too, only our tradition has given it a name. When we feel the peace
of the home, we say that
Hasch'ehooghan
, or Hogan god, is
there. When we feel the spirit of the land, we say that Talking god
is upon the land. When we see the lightning storms forming in the
hills, we say the
yei
, the Holy People, are coming to bless
us."

He raised a hand and touched her cheek, a
touch almost as gentle as the whisper of the breeze against her
skin. "As a teenager I heard Reverend Willis teach about the
creator of all things and I felt the truth of what he was saying,
yet I also knew the traditions of my people were, in many ways,
metaphors for the truths the good reverend taught me. There are
some ceremonies, some of the more religious and less social ones,
that I no longer attend..." He let the sentence trail away, and
Eden felt his sadness about the parts of his tradition he had given
up. "Still, I find few contradictions between one form of faith and
the other."

He moved his hand from her cheek to her waist
and drew her close to him. They stood together on the cliff, arms
around each other, Eden snuggling close as they looked out over the
vast expanse of divine creation and shared in the spirit of the
land.

Chapter Seven

Eden stretched her back
against the seat of the truck. "Are we there yet?" she asked,
mischief in her voice.

"Almost," Logan reassured her.

It was Labor Day, and for the past half-hour,
Logan had been driving a narrow, winding trail of hairpin
switchbacks and stomach-twisting angles where juniper and
piňones
towered over the roadway. Now as Eden watched, he
brought them onto a flat plateau. All that lay above them here was
the endless sky and, maybe a half-mile away, the opposing wall of
the canyon.

"We're here," Logan said, setting the
emergency brake.

"Ah yes, but where is here?" Eden teased,
gesturing at the emptiness surrounding them.

"Come on, I'll show you."

He held out his hand and Eden took it, warmed
by his touch. She was becoming more accustomed to the nearly
electric jolts of energy that shot between them whenever Logan was
near. She no longer startled at his touch; now she was content to
bask in its warmth, enjoying it while it lasted, knowing the loss
would be devastating.

Logan led the way down a narrow trail. Eden
followed until they came to the cliff side. He stopped a safe
distance back and pointed at the base of the opposite cliff.
"Look," he ordered gently.

Eden looked. At first all she saw was the
towering wall of red and yellow sandstone, then, "Oh!"

"It is something of a surprise, isn't
it?"

"Oh!" she said again. "Logan, what is
it?"

"White House," he answered.

Eden looked out across the valley with its
meandering stream lined with tamaracks and mesquite. There, on the
canyon's opposing wall, lying partly in the shelter of a natural
cave some hundred feet or so above the canyon floor, and partly on
the valley floor itself, lay the remains of an ancient pueblo.
Carefully shaped rock-and-mud walls formed both tall, rectangular
dwellings several stories high, and round ceremonial kivas, sunk
deep into the earth. “Can we go down there?" Eden asked
eagerly.

"We will in a little while," Logan answered.
He handed her a pair of binoculars. "I thought you might like this
view first. It shows you how well camouflaged these dwellings were
in the old days."

"They certainly were that," Eden agreed.
Using Logan's binoculars, she studied the ruin. Despite its name,
the pueblo wasn't white, but it had once been covered in a pale
adobe clay that blended into the surrounding rock walls,
effectively hiding the village in plain sight. "I thought your
people didn't live together like this," she argued, remembering
what he'd told her about the
rancherias
on their first drive
into the canyon.

"They didn't. The White House is an Anasazi
ruin."

"Anasazi," she mused. "The Old Ones. Then the
Anasazi aren't ancestors of the modern Navajo?"

He shook his head. "Their descendants, more
than likely, are the Hopi and Tewa and other pueblo peoples of the
southwest—"

"The ones you call the Kisani."

He smiled, pleased. "Right. The Kisani are
all Shoshonean people, using similar languages and continuing to
build in the pueblo styles learned from the Anasazi. Their
high-rise pueblos always remind me of inner-city apartment
buildings. I've never had any wish to live like that."

Eden twinkled at him, looking mischievous.
"You know, when you frown like that, it makes a little crease in
your forehead, right here between your eyes." She placed one
forefinger on the spot.

She didn't know whether he was more pleased
or embarrassed, but Logan responded with a mumbled "Hmph." Then a
purposeful intensity came into his face as he reached up and took
her hand, still poised above his forehead. Holding her gaze, he
gently and carefully kissed each of her fingers in turn before
intertwining them with his own. Eden heard the sharp intake of her
breath. She tried to steady her pulse.

Logan flashed her one of his breathtaking
smiles. "Have I told you today how beautiful you look?"

She remembered how this conversation was
supposed to go, how it had gone between them before. "No, I don't
believe you have, but you're welcome to, if you like."

He laughed, happy to replay their banter.
"All right, I will," he said, but there was no humor in either his
voice or expression when he spoke again. "You are beautiful,
Eden—as beautiful as your name, as beautiful as paradise." He
slipped his arm around her, drawing her close.

"Paradise," she whispered, breaking his gaze
before the spell of it carried her away.

He took her hand then, and for a moment they
stood looking down upon White House, then he stepped a little away
from her, breaking the warm contact. "Let's have some lunch," he
suggested. "Then we can go down to the canyon floor and have a look
at the pueblo up close."