Apache Flame (2 page)

“Why weren’t you at school yesterday?” she asked.

He looked away, his expression guarded. “I was…I was sick.”

“Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah.” He sat down beside her, his long legs dangling over
the edge of the rock.

“What’s that thing you’re wearing?”

“It’s a breechclout.”

She frowned. “I’ve never seen anything like that. Where did
you get it?”

“My ma made it.”

“Oh?” She would have asked more questions, but something in
his voice warned her not to.

“Wanna go swimming?” he asked gruffly.

“I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“You can’t swim?” He looked astonished.

She shook her head.

“I could teach you, if you wanna learn.”

“Really?” She looked at the water, then shook her head. “I
don’t think so.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked, the challenge in his voice
matched by the look in his dark blue eyes. “You scared?”

She was, but she wouldn’t have admitted it to him, not for
anything.

He stood up and held out his hand. “Come on then.”

She didn’t want to, but couldn’t think of any way to refuse,
and then, to her relief, she heard her mother calling.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. Scrambling to her feet, she
grabbed her shoes and stockings and ran all the way home.

She started taking extra food and sweets in her lunch pail
after that, sneaking them to Mitch when no one was looking. Even as a boy, he
had been inordinately proud. He had hated her because she knew he was poor and
hungry all the time, had hated accepting her charity, and yet he had been just
a boy and all the pride in the world wouldn’t fill his empty belly.

She saw Mitch often that long, lazy summer. Her mama was in
the family way and so sick that the doctor told papa she should stay in bed
until the baby was born. Papa hired a girl from town to look after her and Mama
and do the housekeeping chores, but Chloe didn’t care what Alisha did, so long
as she didn’t cause any trouble. It offered Alisha a kind of freedom she had
never had before.

She went to the creek every chance she got, drawn to Mitch
without knowing why. She took him apples and fried chicken and when Chloe
baked, she took him sugar cookies and bread fresh from the oven.

One sunny afternoon not long after their first meeting at
the river, he taught her how to swim. Clad in her underwear, she followed him
into the creek where the water ran deep and slow.

“You scared?” he asked, and she shook her head.

She wasn’t scared at all, not with Mitch there beside her,
and before long, she was swimming. It was exciting, exhilarating, and she swam
until she was exhausted and then they climbed out of the creek and flopped down
on a patch of sun-warmed grass. She stared up at the cloudless sky, basking in
the warmth of the sun.

“What does your daddy do?” she asked when she caught her
breath.

“He doesn’t do anything,” Mitch replied sullenly.

“He must do something,” Alisha insisted. She had seen
Mitch’s father in town from time to time. He was tall, handsome man with cold
blue eyes. She had never seen him smile.

“He’s a gambler,” Mitch said.

Alisha’s eyes widened. “Really?” Her papa often preached
against the evils of gambling, declaring that saloons were dens of iniquity.

Mitch looked at her, daring her to say something. She wisely
changed the subject. “Tell me another story.”

She loved the stories he told her, stories his Apache mother
told him about Coyote the Trickster and why the raven was black. “Please?”

He sighed. “Did I tell you the one about how death came into
the world?”

Alisha shook her head. “No.”

“Well, a long time ago, people lived forever. Nobody got
sick, and nobody died. I don’t know why. Maybe nobody ever thought about it.
But one day, when the earth started getting crowded, they knew had to make a
decision about it. Coyote didn’t want death in the world. He thought it would
be a bad thing. He said he was going to throw a stick in the river. If it sank,
people would begin to die but if it floated, people would go on living forever.
So he threw the stick into the water, and it floated.

“Then Raven decided he should have a say. He said he would
throw a stone in the water. If the stone floated, there would be no death but
if it sank, people would begin to die. So he threw the stone in the water, and
it sank to the bottom. And that’s how death got started.”

Alisha clapped her hands. It was a foolish story, of course.
Young as she was, she knew it wasn’t true. Papa had told her Adam and Eve had
brought death into the world, and Papa wouldn’t lie. Mitch’s story was just a
fairy tale, like the ones Mama told her at bedtime, but she loved Mitch’s
stories, just as she loved the hours she spent with him.

In the days and weeks that followed, he taught her how to
snare a rabbit and cook it on a spit over an open fire. Once, she asked him to
teach her how to fish, but he had refused. When she asked why, he explained
that Usen did not intend for snakes, frogs, or fish to be eaten. Likewise, the
Apache did not eat pork or turkey. They shunned bear meat, believing that the
spirits of evil people sometimes returned to earth in the bodies of bears. It
was no wonder he was always hungry, she thought, when there were so many things
he wouldn’t eat. And yet, to her horror, he told her he had eaten gophers and squirrels.

He taught her a few words of Apache.
Gah
meant
rabbit,
gidi
meant cat,
dloo
was the word for bird,
baya
meant
coyote.
Ashoge
was the word for thank you,
ya a teh
meant hello.

It was the best summer of her life, until her mother died
and the baby with her. Papa told Alisha the news, then took her by the hand and
led her into the dark bedroom so she could kiss Mama goodbye. Alisha stared at
the body on the bed, with its pinched waxy gray face, then turned and ran out of
the room.

Sobbing, hardly able to see where she was going for her
tears, she cried Mitch’s name as she ran down to creek, praying that he would
be there. She stumbled once, scraping her knee on a rock, but she hardly
noticed the pain. Mama was dead.

She found Mitch sitting cross-legged on their rock, tossing
pebbles into the creek. He had taken one look at her tear-stained face and
opened his arms. He held her while she cried, held her and rocked her, soothing
her with his presence. He didn’t tell her she had to be strong, or that Mama
and the baby had gone to a better place. He just held her until she had no more
tears. And then he had washed the blood from her knee and patted it dry with
her handkerchief.

“Will you come to the funeral, Mitchy?” she asked, sniffing.

“Sure, if you want me to.”

The funeral was the next day. Alisha stood between Chloe and
Mama’s best friend, Mrs. McKenny, trying to be brave while Papa talked about
what a good woman Mama had been, how she had loved her family and been a good example
to others, how she had cared for the sick and taken food to the poor and the
infirm.

Alisha glanced over her shoulder from time to time, hoping
to catch a glimpse of Mitch. He couldn’t stand at the graveside with the other
mourners, but she knew he was there, out of sight behind a tree.

Later, after all the mourners had told her how sorry they
were, after everyone had gone home and Papa had shut himself up in his study
and Chloe was busy in the kitchen, she crept down to the river and into
Mitchy’s waiting arms.

Nothing was the same at home after Mama died. Papa didn’t
laugh anymore. His sermons, once filled with hope and joy and a love for life,
grew dark and somber. Chloe stayed on to keep house and cook.

When Mitch turned fifteen, he quit school and went to work
full-time in one of the saloons. She had been afraid she wouldn’t see him
anymore after that, but he had sought her out, especially in the summer.

She was thirteen and Mitch sixteen when he kissed her for
the first time. They were sitting on the rock near the creek—she had come to
think of it as their rock—when he drew her into his arms. His lips were gentle
and sweet as they claimed hers. He had closed his eyes, but she had kept hers
open. His eyelashes were short and thick.

With an oath, he drew away from her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, disappointed that he had ended it
so quickly.

“Damn, you sure don’t kiss like a little girl!”

She glared at him, and he laughed out loud.

‘I know, I know,” he said, still laughing, “you’re not a
little girl.” He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, making her
feel self-conscious of her budding breasts. “You’re not a little girl at all.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, angry because he had ruined
the most magical moment of her whole life.

“Don’t stick that tongue out at me unless you mean to use
it.”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed her and pulled her up
against him. And then he kissed her again, showing her just what he meant.

She gasped as his tongue slid over her lower lip, licking,
sucking gently, then slid into her mouth. Her gasp of surprise soon turned into
a muted sound of pleasure. She melted against him, her body pressed intimately
against his, her breasts crushed against his chest. Heat flooded through her.
Her eyelids fluttered down. Her heart began to pound.

It was, she thought, a kiss she would never forget…

* * * * *

And she never had. Alisha lifted her head from her desk and
looked out the window. That kiss was burned into her memory like a brand.

And now he was back.

With a sigh, Alisha graded the last paper, then stood up,
stretching the kinks out of her back and shoulders. Extinguishing the lamp on
her desk, she put on her coat and hat, pulled on her gloves, picked up her
umbrella.

Leaving the schoolhouse, she closed and locked the door,
then stood on the stoop for a moment, staring at the rain. She frowned as she
faced the prospect of slogging through the mud and then, with a faint grin, she
remembered another rainy day…

She stood at the window, watching the lightning streak
through the clouds. She hated rainy days, hated them because they kept her from
the river. From Mitch. She wondered what he was doing, if he was missing her,
too.

She had been turning away from the window when something
pinged against the glass. Looking down, she saw Mitch standing outside, looking
up. He grinned when he saw her, waved for her to come out.

Laughing, she opened the window and leaned out over the
sill. “Mitchy, what are you doing here?” she called in a loud whisper.

“Waiting for you,” he called back. “Come on out, ‘Lisha.
Let’s go for a walk.”

“A walk? Are you crazy? It’s raining.”

He shrugged. “So what. A little water won’t hurt you.
Besides, you can only get so wet.”

She grinned. What was a little rain when Mitchy was there,
waiting for her? Happiness bubbled up inside her, as it always did when he was
near. “Be right down.”

Bundled up in coat, boots, hat, scarf and gloves, she
tiptoed down the stairs and out the back door. He was waiting for her behind
the ancient cottonwood tree where they always met. Alisha shook her head. As
usual, he was wearing only a shirt and his clout. She had never seen him wear a
coat, and wondered now if he even owned one.

“Don’t you ever get cold?” she asked.

Mitch shook his head. “Warriors don’t get cold,” he said
with a touch of arrogance.

“I suppose they don’t get wet, either,” she muttered.

But he only laughed. “Come on,” he said, and reaching for
her hand, he started to run.

Feeling happy and lighthearted, she followed him. Mitch
loved to run. Once, she had told him that proper young ladies did not run, it
was unseemly. But he had just laughed at her. “You’re not a lady yet, proper or
otherwise, Miss Alisha Faraday,” he had retorted. “Besides, ladies never have
any fun.”

She had thought about that a minute, and decided he was
right. None of the ladies in town ever seemed to have time to have a good time.
They were always complaining about something…the price of sugar, the new
saloon, the speed with which their children outgrew their clothes, the
ever-growing Indian problem. Alisha had promised herself she would never be
like them.

They spent the day in the rain, running, exploring, swimming
in the deep part of the creek. Later, they took shelter in a cave Mitchy had
found the year before. He laid a fire and they huddled beside it, he clad only
in his clout, she in her chemise and drawers, while their clothing dried.

They sat close together, one of the blankets Mitch kept in
the cave draped over their shoulders while they chewed on hunks of beef jerky.
He had told her he came here sometimes, to be alone. Though he had never said
so, she was sure he came here to get away from his father. She knew Mitch’s
father beat him. She had, on occasion, caught a glimpse of bruises on his arms
and back. She suspected that, on those occasions when she didn’t see him for a
day or two, it was because he was too badly hurt, or because the bruises were
where he couldn’t hide them and he was too ashamed to let her see. Knowing how
proud he was, she had never mentioned them.

As always, she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He fascinated
her, with his long unruly black hair, dark skin, and deep blue eyes. She had
always thought Indians had black eyes, but Mitch’s were dark blue, like his
father’s. She knew her father would have been horrified if he knew how much
time she spent with Mitch. He would have locked her in her room and thrown away
the key if he knew, if he even suspected. But she didn’t care. She would have
risked anything to be with Mitch. He made her life fun, exciting…

Taking a deep breath, Alisha opened her umbrella and stepped
off the stoop into the rain. Her life wasn’t fun anymore. It was as cold and
dreary as the weather.