Season of Storm (26 page)

He was looking at her as though she had transmogrified before his eyes, but what he said was, "More than a 'little profit,' girl. These are hard economic times. Not a few giants in the lumber business are tottering these days. Will Campbell went under the week before you got back from Europe, and Matt may not make it through the month." Will Campbell and Matt Hurtubise were colleagues of her father's in the business; she had entertained them often at home. Will was a small chip-barge operator who had held out against her father's buy-out attempt many years ago and thus gained his respect and friendship. She hadn't heard this news before and it saddened her. Matt ran Comox Paper Mills and was a big customer of St. John's Wood. If he was going under the industry was in a bad way indeed.

"Are you telling me the Cat Bite River timber is going to save us from ruin?"

"I'm telling you that last year housing starts in this country were the lowest in ten years," her father said grimly. "Don't ask me for a gesture, Shulamith. I can't afford one. I've got two thousand workers whose life-style depends on my staying solvent. How do their rights measure up against your new friends'?"

Smith was silent with shock. She had known things were bad, but she was taken by surprise by her father's grim acceptance of the fact that a bad economy could topple even him. And the concern in his voice for his workers was genuine.

"What's the name of the tribe on that land?" he asked her suddenly.

"The Chopa."

"You know a lot about it."

She was being a fool; she must recover. "I looked up the company file," she lied. "After all,
somebody
knew I was going to be away and took advantage of the fact—unless you invented the phone call."
 

He ignored the last part. "That's right," he said slowly. "That's right—somebody did."

Twenty-four

Smith sat in her favourite chair, a huge stuffed leather armchair, in her favourite posture, back propped in the niche between arm and wing, legs flung over the other arm. The patio doors stood open onto a warm evening and a small summer breeze.

She was reading the book of poems she had bought.

As the mist leaves no scar

On the dark green hill

So my body leaves no scar

On you, nor ever will…

she read. She was filled with a sudden harsh longing for Johnny Winterhawk.
Yes,
she thought,
yes, you leave a scar on me. The scar of knowledge—of what your body can do to mine….
 

As many nights endure

Without a moon or star

So will we endure

When one is gone...

Shulamith dropped her head back and shut her eyes. She wondered how Leonard Cohen meant that "endure." To last while the loves were apart? Or to live through the ordeal of knowing they would never be together again?

Being without Johnny Winterhawk was an ordeal. She might as well understand that the effects weren't going to wear off quickly. She had been without him over a week now, and each day had been harder, not easier, to get through. Now the thought of him was a leaden weight on her thighs, an empty ache in her mouth and breasts and hands.

Smith let her book drop to the floor, swung her feet off the chair arm and stood. The memory of him was an urgency in her, forcing her into motion like an excess of energy. She began to pace the length of the softly lighted room, her senses heightened, feeling the bunch and stretch of every muscle, the pull of the denim cloth of her jeans against each thigh.

Suddenly she could feel his presence like a physical thing, as though some sensory device in her brain had begun to glow.
You're going mad.
She was imagining things. Her need was trying to present her with a solution. But still she could not prevent herself from stopping at the open French doors to gaze out into the early twilight.
 

Johnny Winterhawk emerged from the bushes at the other end of the pool. With a small silent gasp Shulamith went still, watching as he swiftly skirted the pool and moved toward her.

He was wearing black, as though to blend in with the night that hadn't quite arrived. His feet were silent on the smooth patio stones. A hawk on wings could not have approached more smoothly and silently.

"Johnny," she breathed as he reached her. He took her in his arms and bent to kiss her, slowly, carefully, the way a starving man forces himself to pick up a knife and fork at a banquet.

Smith evaded his lips. She was filled with a sense of danger, drawing him back into the softly lighted room with her. She closed and locked the door, pulled the drapes.

"There are probably police around. How did you get here?" she whispered urgently. She established a distance between them, because her heart was clamouring with need. If he kissed her, touched her now, her reason would take flight.

"I drove and walked," said Johnny aloud, and his voice caressed her spine like a hand. "I parked at a country club about a mile down the mountain."

She sighed her relief. "That ought to do it," she said softly. She used a lowered tone instinctively, as though she were surrounded by enemies. "Thank God you've come," she said, backing away as he approached, trying to maintain a distance so that she could stop wanting to fall into his arms. "Everything is absolutely crazy. Thank God you've come. We've got to talk."

Johnny took two quick steps to reach her side. "Talk be damned," he said hoarsely, and pulling her into his arms he held her face and covered her mouth with his.

She was engulfed in a fog of need. At a stroke reason was blinded, while through the heady mist she felt her thighs against him, knew the comfort of her arms encircling his back and finding him flesh and blood. She was in a dreamworld, one she had inhabited every night since leaving him; but this was no dream. That, and desire, were all she knew.

Her hands clung and pressed and clung again. When his lips left hers to rest against her eyelids she kissed his cheek, his chin, his throat, wherever she could reach. His hand pulled aside her shirt and claimed her breast with a heat that melted her, and her voice caught in her throat with a sob of gratitude. But when she moved to pull him down onto the long sofa behind her, Johnny forestalled her, picking her up to carry her through the room, out into the hall and up the broad elegant staircase to the top.

"Where?" he whispered, and briefly it seemed strange that this man who knew her so well should not be sure where she slept. She lifted one clinging arm from his neck and pointed to the left around the broad gallery, then dropped her hand back to his shoulder and nuzzled her face against the column of his throat.

He set her down on the soft, green coverlet of her own bed, and she felt the weight of his body with a distant sense of the perfect rightness of things and an immediacy of hungry need that nearly choked her.

Her naked breast found his hand, his mouth; urgently her nipple met the caress of his lips and tongue. She whimpered her bewilderment as his longed-for touch did not satisfy but only fuelled her need, body and spirit.

She sensed air and his hands on her thighs then, as Johnny stripped her hips and legs naked; then she was bereft for one long desperate moment as he stood over her and silently stripped off his own clothing, and then the blazing heat of him enveloped her. It was a scorching heat; too much, she knew, and yet it was not too much for her. Her own heat rose to match his, fire for fire, flame for flame. His mouth and his hands taught her again the torment she had learned on the beach, and her body remembered now, and moved to invite the rough stroke of passion that would destroy and create her all at once.

Her abandoned response shook him, carried him to breaking point. He could wait no longer to possess her, and his body moved into the waiting cradle of her hips, and she lifted herself for the stroke of union that would make her complete.

She looked up into his face in the deepening twilight then and felt the force of his unleashed passion, felt it stir her to frenzy on frenzy. She was no one; she was everyone; she was child, woman; mother, daughter; she was virgin and harlot. She was one with him, she was one with the universe; she was the universe.

The universe exploded in a thousand bright bursting stars that skyrocketed through the dark infinity of her soul, and she heard her long high cry mingle with Johnny's, and then the deep shuddering of their breath.

He kissed her, though they were both starved for oxygen, and then tore his mouth away from hers. "Shulamith," he breathed. "Shulamith."

He eased his weight off her and sank down beside her and drew her still-trembling body into the comfort of his hold.

***

When she stirred she felt the weight of sheet and coverlet against her skin, but she was not conscious of how they got there. She didn't remember having been asleep.

A hand in the darkness stroked her, and she felt as though the touch bathed her with light.

"Johnny," she said, smiling. For a moment she had been afraid it was a dream. He was curved protectively over her, as though he had been watching her while she slept.

"Have you had many lovers?" he asked huskily, the memory of their lovemaking still thick in his voice.

"No," she answered with a drowsy smile. None at all, if this was what one meant by a lover. Nothing had ever come close to this. "You?"

"A few," said Johnny. "Nothing like this."

"No," she agreed, turning to the warmth of his chest, and then, because he was waiting, she said, "I had a boyfriend in college for a while. He was nice, but...I had to work so hard, there wasn't any time. Daddy wanted me to learn everything all at once. So finally we...we broke it off." Johnny was silent, listening. The years-old hurt bewilderment was still there, inside, surprising her, and he stroked her hip comfortingly through the thin covering of sheet and coverlet.

"Were you in love with him?"

"Yes...no. I...he was sweet and very gentle. He was very different from my fa—" She broke off. "He couldn't understand why work meant so much to me."

Neither could she, now. Smith suddenly felt a deep regret for the missed opportunities of her university days. All the parties, the confiding friendships, the experimenting with philosophy and politics that she should have experienced then were lost to her, as though she had spent those years in a coma.

"I'll bet," she said, not knowing how the pain of the might-have-been glittered through her voice, "I just bet that
no one
I went to university with would have been surprised by what you told me about Indian rights and the way Indians are treated by the state! No one. Just me. I was so damn buried in forestry—do you know I was studying so hard for my finals I didn't even know Trudeau had lost the election till I graduated that year?"
 

The indignation in her voice made Johnny laugh, and she was oddly comforted by the sound. "Don't you think that happens to a lot of students?"

"I don't know," Smith said. "Maybe. But I still feel cheated." She pressed closer to him, loving his warmth and the sense of closeness. "Anyway, I'm trying to catch up now. I've been reading a lot lately."

"What have you been reading?"

"Aha.
The Unjust Society,
and
As Long As This Land Shall Last,
and
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
and—" her eyes drooped sleepily, "—and a whole lot of others. You know, when you told me you gave up your Indian status I didn't understand what you meant, or why you would want to do it. But you had to do it to be enfranchised, is that right?"
 

"That's what they call it," said Johnny.

"And you're not allowed to change your mind later! So you're cut out of your tribe and out of your right to live on a reserve and inherit Indian land...and your children automatically lose those rights, too! Is that true? Because of a decision you made before they were born? And what does
enfranchise
mean, anyway? It doesn't mean getting the vote, does it?"
 

"No," he said, and now it was his voice in the darkness that was bright with pain. "I'm afraid the motive isn't as honourable as that. You're right, I had the vote as a status Indian. It just means assuming the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Reserve Indians are more or less wards of the government—Indian Affairs runs a large part of their lives. I renounced my status for nothing more than a desire to prove I'd 'grown up,' that I was a responsible citizen."

Smith was silent, understanding how that must torment him—to have sacrificed his history and gained nothing in return except a spurious sense of independence. After a moment she said quietly, "But, Johnny, one thing I don't understand. The books I read said that...that if an Indian man marries a non-Indian woman, she becomes an Indian and so do their children. But if an Indian woman marries a non-Indian man, she automatically loses her Indian status. Is that right?"

"That's right."

"But you...under that law, you...you're a non-Indian, aren't you?"