Hallowed Ground (46 page)

Say no, Julie. Tell him why you called.

Naturally I talked about Chloe’s case. Tied all the loose threads and wrapped it up in a tidy little package.

He didn’t seem particularly happy with my present.

“Glad she’s all right. Won’t be surprised if Harvey left everything to her,” he said.

“Harvey had a will?” I said.

Martinez sighed.

He did that a lot around me.

I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, which burned my ass because I
so
wasn’t a beat-around-the-bush girl.

More uncomfortable silence.

“So you’ll send me a bill for the rest of the charges?” he asked. “Or should I pay you now?”

And . . . I lost it.

“A
bill
? Fuck you, Martinez! There isn’t enough money in the world to pay me for what I’ve been through. Threats and dead bodies and nasty images I’ll never be able to erase. Look at me!

I’m beat to shit! I even totaled my goddamn car. Although, it was crap, it was still my—”

He loomed over me, gently placed his fingers over my mouth before I’d worked up a really inventive set of swear words.

“It is you. I’d begun to wonder if I’d gotten the wrong room.”

“Ow, let go of me,” I tried to say, but it came out, “Owwllggmm.”

His hand fell away. “What?”

“Umm. It hurts where Reggie, ah, punched me.”

His gaze iced over and dropped to my jaw.

I lowered my chin.

“Let me see.”

“It’ll just make you mad.”

“Too fucking late. I’m already mad.” He tilted my head back, and sucked in a harsh breath when he saw the bruising.

I closed my eyes. Willed the tears away.

The warm gentleness of his lips shocked me, as it always did. He placed a string of tender kisses up my throat and over my jaw.

I started to cry. I hated to cry. “Shit,” I said through my sniffles.

“Let ’em rip, blondie. I’ll still think you’re tough.”

I laughed and cried some more.

Martinez kissed me until my eyes were dry. Took a long, long time.

With his forehead nestled against my neck, he said, “Stay out of exploding buildings.”

“I’ll try.”

“Christ. That’s reassuring.”

His breathing was a steady, soothing stream of warmth across my chest. His fingers were entwined in my hair, twisting the sections into long spirals.

“The memorial service?” I asked.

“Had it this morning.”

I listened to the nurses chatting at the kiosk. “I’m sorry. I would’ve gone with you.”

He raised his head and stared at me. Smiled in that sexy way that sent my pulse tripping.

I touched his face, let my hand linger. “What are we doing here, Martinez?”

“Hell if I know.”

“You any good at this relationship stuff?”

“Not so much.”

I sighed. “Me either.”

“Wanna give it a shot and see what happens?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Good.” He turned his head and kissed my palm.

In that moment did I think about any of the scary things that defined badass businessman Tony Martinez?

No.

Did he worry about getting involved with a woman who had more issues than the Sierra Club?

He didn’t appear to.

Neither of us was naive; we knew we’d have to address our differences sometime.

Just not now.

“Come away with me,” he said softly. “For a couple days, a week.”

“Where?”

“A secluded beach.” He paused as my hand drifted down his arm and I felt his muscles tense beneath my fingers. “You interested?”

I stroked the dragon tattooed on his bicep and pretended to consider it. My mean streak showing?

Hell yes. I wouldn’t want El Presidente to think I was easy.

“Maybe. When you thinking?”

“Tomorrow.”

I laughed.

“Seriously. A guy I know has a place in Florida. We could be there by sunset. Surf. Sunshine.

It’ll give us time to ...”

He let me fill in the blanks.

I did. Not with, “Time to figure this out.” Or even, “Time to roll around naked and sweaty.”

Though both of those scenarios were likely.

No. I knew what we both needed more than anything.

Time to forget. Time to heal a little. Time to just be.

“I’d like that,” I said. “But not tomorrow, okay? Give me two days? Something I’ve got to do first.”

Martinez didn’t ask what. He tucked me in, lingered with a good night kiss that left me dreaming of sand, sun, and nothing else for a change.

Once again Kim signed me out of the hospital. Sensing my melancholy, she hadn’t fussed much.

I slept the whole day and through the night. I think Martinez checked on me at one point but he hadn’t stuck around.

The next morning I made prayer pouches with pieces of fabric from my favorite Van Halen T-shirt and tobacco from a crushed pack of cigarettes. When I finished, I realized I hadn’t smoked in three days. A sign it was time to quit?

Nah.

Later as I stared at the trailhead I didn’t think it would matter. This climb was a bitch even for crusading nonsmokers.

In all the years I’d lived in South Dakota, I’d never hiked Bear Butte. Never had the chance to before Ben’s death, didn’t want to afterward.

First, face your fear head on.

My mind traveled as I started the ascent.

I thought about my mother as I tied the first bundle to a small chokecherry bush. It’d been easy to forget her life against my father’s anger over her death.

Kevin. Donovan. Chloe. Martinez. One each for their grief.

Kim. For filling a void in my life I hadn’t realized existed.

Frankie Ducheneaux. Although he was a deadly mix of ego and ideology, he shared a pouch with The Medicine Wheel Holy Society. I hoped their quest to keep this chunk of earth a sacred place wouldn’t get lost in politics and the personal motives some people masqueraded as principles.

None for Reggie, the Carluccis, Bud Linderman, or Maurice Ashcroft. They didn’t deserve prayers, mine or anyone else’s.

I tied individual bundles to a large pine. One for Rondelle, Luther, Harvey, and Red.

Still, I didn’t feel relief as if my load had lightened. Instead, my temper rose. Why was Bear Butte at the root of so many needless deaths?

Mato Paha
was slow in answering.

I began to scale the beast, slowly, one step at a time.

The higher I climbed on the twisting path the more urgent my questions seemed. The more intense the pain seemed, both the physical pain from my face-off with Reggie, and the emotional pain I’d been hanging onto for years.

The chunks of rock and shale lining the path rattled beneath my feet, suggestive of walking on ancient bones. In other places the path gleamed, polished by the footfalls of many. I stopped on a small plateau and watched as two red-tailed hawks dove, then caught an updraft and hovered above me. Weightless and free.

I wondered what that felt like.

Heat radiated from the sage plants, releasing a tangy scent. Yucca, cactus, Black Sampson dotted the steep landscape on the front side. On the backside, pine trees charred black from fire stood in a perfect line like a broken-toothed comb. The path leveled in the shade, then began a series of steep switchbacks which led to the top.

The summit is invisible until you’re there.

I climbed the last set of wooden steps. After my lungs quit aching and my calves quit burning, I walked the perimeter of the pine deck, able to see all four directions.

I was unprepared for the impact of the rugged beauty. The wide sky was an endless palette of blues, lavender, and grays, extending above the magnificent sweeping vista where black hills met golden plains.

Little wonder this majestic place was considered holy.

How could anyone believe this was nothing?

Bear Butte had survived fire and floods. Had seen the rise and fall of nations. Would still stand tall and proud through the human cycle of birth and death. Love and hate.

I clutched the remaining prayer bundle in my fist. The one I’d made for Ben.

Standing on hallowed ground, I didn’t feel the measure of peace I’d expected. Or experience a sudden realization that my hatred for this sacred place had been misguided.

There was no catharsis for me. I knew in my heart there wouldn’t be any until I found out who had murdered my brother.

I studied the bundle. It’d keep until that time when I could truly let go.

I tucked the pouch in my pocket, turned away from the grandeur spread out before me and began to make my way back down the rocky slope to the bottom.

THE END

A Special Presentation of Lori G. Armstrong’s first novel
from Medallion Press,
BLOOD TIES:

DEATH HAS NIPPED AT MY HEELS like a disobedient dog since I was fourteen.

A drunk driver killed my mother the autumn of that year. She was hit head on. The extent of her injuries, including massive head trauma, excluded the option of an open casket.

I felt cheated. I believed then, if I’d touched her hand or stroked her cheek one last time, acceptance of her death might have offered me comfort or closure. It didn’t ease my pain that she didn’t suffer. It didn’t ease my sense of injustice that the drunk also died upon impact. And it didn’t ease my father’s rage that the man responsible was Lakota.

After my mother’s death, my father’s hatred of Indians deepened, spreading wide as the Missouri River which divides our state. He’d never hidden his prejudice, but in the aftermath, the racial slurs flew from his mean mouth with regularity.
Prairie niggers
and
gut eaters
were flung out heedlessly. In those public moments I cringed against his harsh words. In private I fumed against him. I found it puzzling that a man with such a deep-seated loathing for an entire race had sired a son with the same blood.

Apparently my father believed he was absolved of his part in the creation of that life when he signed away paternal rights. The child’s mother believed the boy would never know the truth about his white father.

They were both wrong.

My half-brother, Ben Standing Elk, arrived on our doorstep shortly after he’d turned nineteen.

When my father leveled a look of pure disgust upon the Indian darkening his door, I was horrified, and demanded an explanation for things I didn’t have the ability to understand. His stony silence mocked me. I expected him to yell back. I expected to be grounded for showing disrespect. But the last thing I expected was the hard, stinging slap he delivered across my face.

We never spoke of that day. By some miracle, probably of my mother’s making, I forged a relationship with my brother.

Good old Dad was conspicuously absent whenever Ben came around. I’d gone beyond caring. I loved Ben without question. Without boundaries. And without clue to the consequences. With him I found the bond I’d been lacking. A bond I counted on years later when the tenuous one with my father finally snapped.

Blood ties are strong. But the strands can easily be broken, whether tended with love or ripped apart by hatred. My father chose his means, fate chose mine.

Fate and death seem to be intertwined in my life. After recent events, I realize nothing about death ever offers closure, regardless if it is accidental or premeditated. I still feel cheated. But I’m older now. Wiser. More determined that justice will be served, even if that justice is a brand of my own making. I won’t blindly give in to acceptance until I know the truth. Even then, I doubt it will bring me peace.

Ben helped me deal with my mother’s death. I grieve that there is no one to help me deal with his.

The dog is quiet once again, sated somehow. But I know it won’t last. It never does.

Three years later . . .

“ALMOST, JUST A LITTLE LOWER. Right there. Oh, God, yes, that’s it.”

I’d shamelessly splayed myself over the filing cabinet, but the warm masculine hands caressing my vertebrae froze.

“Knock it off, Julie. Sheriff hears you moaning like that, he’ll think we’re doing it on your desk.”

“Al.” I sighed lazily. “If I thought you could find my G-spot as quickly as you zeroed in on that knotted muscle, we
would
be doing it on my desk.”