Desert Hearts (32 page)

Elizabeth reached out her hand and put it on top of his. “We are husband and wife now, Michael. And we are friends. We must try to be each other’s home,” she said softly, afraid to lift her eyes to his.

Elizabeth’s words went straight to his heart and Michael turned his hand over and grasped hers.

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” he whispered, stroking her fingers with his thumb.

They finished their dinner in silence and after Elizabeth finished the washing up, spent an hour in the parlor, Elizabeth knitting and Michael trying to read.

“Em, have ye ever read Mr. Dickens, Elizabeth?” he asked, looking up from his battered copy of Nicholas Nickleby.”

Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows. “Why, yes, I have. Is that whom you are reading?”

“Ye sound surprised.”

Elizabeth blushed. “Why, no.” She paused. “Well, yes, I confess I am. I suppose I didn’t expect an enlisted man….”

“Ye mean an uneducated Irishman….”

“Truly, I didn’t mean that, Michael.”

“I am only teasing ye, Elizabeth. Not all enlisted men or Irishmen are illiterate, ye know. Anyhow,” he said, putting the book down, “I’ve read this one so many times and I never get any further….”

“Why, which one is it, Michael?”

“Nicholas Nickleby. Em, ye see, I’ve only got the first volume to read and I know it by heart. There are not too many booksellers on the plains, I am afraid!”

Elizabeth looked over at Michael’s book. The leather cover was worn, exposing the cardboard underneath, and the pages looked soft, almost tissue thin. She thought back to her own school days, when she had never heard anything but “Watch out for the dirty Irish children,” and was once again ashamed of herself. Michael’s book was obviously a treasured possession and his hunger for the written word almost palpable to her.

“Not everything of mine was destroyed by the Comancheros, Michael. My father brought his books with him and I saved a few. I haven’t unpacked completely, but I think I have the three volumes of that book.” She hesitated. “Thomas wasn’t fond of reading, but my father used to read aloud to us in the evenings. It would be nice to do that again. That is, if you would enjoy it?”

“ ‘Twould be heaven,” said Michael with a smile that lit up his face.

Elizabeth set her knitting down. “Tomorrow night, then.” She cleared her throat. “Today was a long day, and I think I am ready for bed.”

“I’ll be joining ye soon. After I bank the fire.”

She was in bed by the time he had finished with the stove, her back turned away from him. He crawled in and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek and then turned away himself. “Good night,
muirneach
,” he whispered.

Elizabeth lay awake for a while. She could feel the warmth of his body and hear his breathing, which became soft and regular after a few minutes. Obviously he wasn’t suffering from thwarted desire, the way she was. She wanted him. But she couldn’t, for the life of her, show it so soon again. At the same time, she could hear Mrs. Gray’s words, “Don’t wait too long, Elizabeth. Don’t wait too long.”

The hostilities started slowly and gathered momentum. Kit Carson, who had acted as agent for the Ute, hired the best warriors and Mexican guides from Abiquiu and by early June raids on Dinetah were being led out of Cubero and Cebolleta as well. Slave traders, claiming to be part of “volunteer” companies, captured and sold several hundred Navajo women and children. One of them was Serena’s niece.

“What will happen to her, Antonio?” Serena’s throat was hoarse from crying and she was exhausted from the night she had spent attempting to comfort her sister and brother-in-law.

“She will become someone’s servant. If she is lucky, the family will treat her well. If she is very lucky, someday they will release her. Perhaps someday someone will even marry her.”

“But she was to have married the son of Left Hand this spring!”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if I can bear it. It reminds me too much of our own daughter.”

Antonio sat beside her and pulled her into his arms. “You must rest,” he said, putting his hand on her belly. “You can’t do any more for your sister. She will have to live with this the way we have. What is important now is our new child.”

“And where will he or she be born, husband? At Bosque Redondo?” Serena asked bitterly.

“Never. I promise you that. Our daughter will open her eyes upon Dinetah.”

“So you think it will be a daughter?”

“I hope so. Not to replace our lost one,” he added.

“No, I understand you. And I feel the same. I hope for a daughter too. May Changing Woman give my niece strength,” she murmured.

“May Changing Woman bring us all strength, wife. Chavez has given us until July twentieth to come in. After that, any Diné who is not willing to go to Bosque will be considered hostile.”

“You can tell that Colonel Chavez and Rope Thrower that I am already hostile,” said Serena, her anger taking over from her grief.

“That is what I have always loved about you, wife. Your spirit. You would have made a fine warrior,” he teased. “Like the women of the Indeh.”

“I will fight next to you if need be, husband, you know that.”

“For right now, why don’t you lie here next to me, and get some sleep,” he said, drawing her down against him.

They lay there quietly, Antonio’s hand resting on her slightly swollen belly. “Our daughter must be tired too,” he whispered. “She is being quiet.”

Serena nodded.

Antonio reached under his wife’s dress and stroked the soft skin of her belly. “You are as round and tight as a little drum,” he whispered.

“Soon I will be more like a giant melon,” she joked. “Too big to lie with.” It felt good to have him stroke her and she gave a little sigh of pleasure. Antonio brought his other hand around her and cupped her belly, pressing her close against him. Then his left hand wandered between her legs and he began to stroke her there too.

Serena could feel him hard against her buttocks and started to turn toward him.

“No, no,” he murmured into her ear. “Let me pleasure you.”

So she let herself relax against him as he gently brought her to climax. He was her husband and all male and she could feel him stiff against her. But as much as he was husbanding her he was also mothering her, holding her and their unborn child in his hand as she sobbed out her release against him.

“Go to sleep, wife,” he finally whispered, and after a few minutes of blessed peace, she did.

But Antonio lay awake, considering their options. A few Diné had begun to surrender, reasoning that there were too many
bilagaana
to fight. They would be pushed onto the reservation anyway, so why not go of their own free will?

“But you are not free,” Manuelito and Barboncito had told them. “How can you be free away from Dinetah?”

But the words of the headmen could not overcome the hopeless resignation of those first to go.

Antonio knew that soon more and more would join them. He would not. He could not. He would follow his uncle. Disappear into the red rock canyons with his wife. They had never been defeated before, they would not be now.

* * * *

Antonio’s optimism was well founded: the army had always come after the Diné with full troops, supply wagons, and large guns. Time after time they had entered Dinetah only to find their enemies had disappeared into the remote canyons of the Chuska mountains. But this time, Carleton was determined to fight differently and the soldiers were sent out in small groups carrying their own supplies with them. And they were not so much hunting Navajo as Navajo sheep, horses, and mules. There was a bounty on all livestock and money was a great motivator for the ill-paid soldiers.

The troops at Fort Defiance were drawn in slowly. At first they only watched as Carson’s volunteers brought in Navajo livestock.

“I wish we were out there, making money hand over fist like Carson’s men are,” said Elwell one day as they were unsaddling their horses.

“Do ye now, Josh?” replied Michael.

“Why, couldn’t you use a twenty-dollar bonus for a few horses, Michael?”

“Sure and I’d love a few dollars more a month, Joshua,” he said easily. “But no use grousing about the army. We both know it too well.”

These days Michael felt he was becoming the walking effigy of a soldier. The only place he was able to speak his mind was to Elizabeth. Despite their lack of physical intimacy, he felt closer and closer to his wife. It was a new and wonderful thing for him: to have someone of his own to come home to. To have someone who greeted him with warmth, who was truly interested in his thoughts, in his day’s work. He would sit down at the dinner table facing his wife and the cares of the day would fall away for a bit. Then later, over coffee, he would pour out his concerns. With Elizabeth to share them, he didn’t feel quite so isolated. And somehow she always knew just when they had both had enough of problems they couldn’t resolve and, opening Dickens, they would read for half an hour before bedtime.

The first few weeks of their marriage, Elizabeth had half expected Thomas to walk through the door at night and had to hide her surprise and guilty pleasure at seeing Michael. Their routine was very familiar and yet different. Thomas would talk about his men and the other officers, it was true, but he took his orders for granted and had never questioned what the army asked him to do. As the summer wore on, Michael was becoming more and more concerned about Carleton’s policy, especially as more and more Navajo arrived at the fort on their way to Bosque Redondo.

“Another herd of horses and mules today, Elizabeth, and Joshua grumbling about the bounty,” Michael said with an ironic smile as they drank their coffee that night. “ ‘Tis foolish, I know, but I keep looking for Antonio’s bay whenever they bring in horses.”

They both sat in silence, each feeling helpless, when Elizabeth got up and went to the bookshelf.

“Come, let us see what Mr. Dickens has in store for us tonight, Michael.”

They had finished Nicholas Nickleby and had moved on to Bleak House and agreed it was a more powerful book, even though they would both sometimes find themselves annoyed at Esther’s narrative.

“She is just too good,” Elizabeth had complained one night, dropping the book in her lap.

Michael had smiled at her reaction. “Sure and I agree with you, but by having her tell a part of it, he keeps the story going.”

They were coming close to the end of the book and Elizabeth had begun the Chapter entitled “Jo’s Will.” As she was pulled further and further into the scene of the little crossing sweeper’s death, she forgot Michael, herself, and everything in the power of Dickens’s words. Her voice was trembling as she read:

“Art in heaven—is the light a-comin, sir?”

“It is close at hand. ‘Hallowed be Thy name.’ “

“ ‘Hallowed-be-Thy….’ “

The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead! Dead, Your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying all around us every day.

Michael’s eyes had been half closed and his head had been resting on the back of his chair, but when Elizabeth finished reading Dickens’s words, he dropped his head into his hands. When he lifted it to look at her, his pupils were so black and large, his gaze so haunted and intent that she felt as if he were drawing her into his soul so that she could see what he was seeing: the faces of his family and friends who had been victims, like Jo, of a heartless world. For a moment, she stopped breathing. For a moment—for an eternity—everything stopped for her: her own heart was drawn into his, felt his pain and also the universal pain that Dickens evoked. When she came to herself again, when she could feel her own individual heartbeat, she knew. She loved Michael Burke. She had probably, without knowing it, loved him for some time.

It was strange. The words were the same. “I love you, Thomas,” she had said many times. And it had been true. She had loved Thomas Woolcott. I love you, Michael, she said to herself, and oh, the difference. All of herself was open to him. The love went beyond the gratitude and affection she had felt for Thomas. There was no safety in this love. In that moment she felt she could die from it, yet was only fully alive because of it.

She could say nothing, of course. He had married her out of friendship, not love. But there was desire between them, which they had kept banked like the fire at night. “I will only make love to you again when you ask me, Elizabeth,” he had said. “Don’t wait too long,” Mrs. Gray had told her.

She stood up and placed a trembling hand on his shoulder.

“Michael, come to bed,” she murmured.

He looked up at her, a question in his eyes. They both knew what he was asking.

She couldn’t say it. Not here, not like this, so she only nodded slightly and leaned down to kiss his cheek.

He quickly turned down the lamps and followed her into the bedroom. The moon was full and she had not drawn the curtains but stood in a river of silver light. Her hair was around her shoulders and here and there a golden strand glinted in the moonlight.

“You look like a bean sighe,” said Michael hoarsely.

“A what?”

“A woman of the sighe. A faery woman.” He moved close to her and touched her hair gently. “ ‘Tis beautiful you art,
mo muirneach
.”

She shook her head. “No, it is only the moonlight, Michael.”

He reached out and began to unbutton her blouse, feeling her tremble as his hand brushed her breast.

In a minute she stood there, her clothes in a pile around her feet.

“Now you,” she said and started on his blouse.

“First me boots, darlin’, or we’ll be in trouble,” he said, smiling.

His legs and feet were swollen a little from the heat of the day and he thought he would never get his boots off.

“So much for us enjoying the sight of each other in the moonlight, Elizabeth.” He laughed. “Get into bed, for this may take all night.” But she didn’t move.