Reason To Believe (14 page)

"Not too bad. Just finished a hitch in the army."

Clara nodded. The man—Howard,
that
was his name— Howard nodded as the children's commotion backfilled the space between them.

Ben apparently had not shown up. Not that Clara had any pressing desire to see him, particularly, but he had said he'd meet her here. She wasn't going to depend on him for anything but a horse. That was all she needed from him. She'd taken care of everything else. She had the tent, the subzero sleeping bags, the first aid kit, the silk long johns, the lamb's-wool earmuffs, and reams of tips from winter sporting experts who'd been coming out of the woodwork since she'd mentioned her plans to her colleagues at the museum.

So Clara had come prepared. As usual she derived considerable confidence from careful preparation. And if Ben didn't show up, she was prepared to find other means of transportation. Obviously she had friends here, people who remembered her well. She had her former students. She still had in-laws. And if she couldn't find a horse, she had a car. A promise with Clara Pipestone's name on it was a promise carved in stone, which was why Anna was counting on her. Not on Ben. Trusting her mother to take care of the remaining details, Anna had hooked up with a crew of cousins as soon as she'd gotten out of the car.

Clara hadn't seen Dewey yet. Not to worry; he'd be there. She didn't know about Ben, but she knew his father would soon be there. Like Clara, Dewey was as steadfast as the ancient buttes surrounding Little Eagle.

"Mrs. Pipestone?" A plump young woman with dark, smiling eyes touched Clara's arm. "Remember me? I was in your history class."

"Winona!" A spontaneous hug reminded Clara of the last time she'd seen the girl, wearing her maroon cap and gown. Clara had hugged her then, too. "Winona Taylor?"

"Still Taylor. Heard you moved up to Bismarck."

Clara nodded, suppressing the urge to elaborate, explain the move, as though she had deserted the reservation and she owed an apology.

"You had a baby that year I graduated," Winona said. "I remember those boys teasin' you about carrying a basketball under your dress."

"That's my baby, the one in the red sweater." Clara pointed to a girl-huddle she'd been keeping a casual eye on near the side door. "Her name is Anna."

"Eeez, has it been that long?" Winona shook her head in amazement. "How many kids you got now?"

"Just Anna."

"I've got three. This one is my youngest." She patted the unruly brown curls of a youngster who had just attached herself to her mother's sweatshirt. "She just turned five. Lisa, shake hands with my teacher."

The little girl responded shyly, left thumb in her mouth, right hand extended the way she'd been taught. Clara leaned down to take the small hand in hers.

"Did you get something to eat, Mrs. Pipestone? Some cold meat sandwiches, soup, fry bread, some
wojapi
over there, too." Winona nodded toward the tables laden with blue and white enamel kettles, square dish pans, and big plastic bowls full of food. A cardboard box was piled high with golden-brown fry bread. One of the kettles would serve up everyone's favorite
wojapi,
a traditional fruit sauce. Winona chuckled as she rubbed her little girl's round cheeks. "All this one wants is cake."

"Don't you like fry bread, Lisa?"

The little girl hooked a juicy finger over her tiny bottom teeth and set her head abobbing.

"Did you come to see the riders off?" Winona asked.

"I'm going to..." Clara cast a quick glance over her shoulder, as though she half expected someone to challenge her. Or laugh. "I'm going to go along."

Winona's eyes seemed to double in size. "All the way to Wounded Knee?"

"That's the plan," Clara confided with a sheepish smile. "Actually, Anna's had her heart set on it, and we had a contract. You remember my contracts?"

"So many points for an
A,
so many for a
C
. I used to go right down to the
D
line, see what I had to do to pass."

Clara laughed. "Well, you always met your goal, so I guess it worked. And it works for behavior sometimes, too, I've discovered. Anna must really want to go on this ride, because she's been making points right and left over the past two months."

Winona looked skeptical. "So you're gonna follow in a car or something?"

"I'm going to ride a horse."

"You?" The younger woman seemed genuinely impressed. "Jeez."

"Sounds a little crazy for an old teacher, doesn't it?"

"Ahhh, you're not old. Wish I could go, but... I've got these kids to watch."

Clara's gaze shifted to her own daughter, who had been coaxed into a chair so that her cousin Delia could reach her hair. Anna's long ponytail was turning into a French braid. "Maybe I should watch yours and let you watch mine."

"What about Ben? Isn't he going? He used to be the big rodeo cowboy."

"He was supposed to meet us here." Clara shrugged. "He says he's going. I don't know. I'm sure my father-in-law is going, though. Have you seen him?"

"I've been helpin' with the food." Winona scanned the big room. "He's around somewhere. Anytime they get something like this goin', Dewey's always right in the middle of it." With an invitational smile she nudged Clara toward the food tables. "You better get in line and eat, Mrs. Pipestone. Build up some muscle." She clamped her hand around Clara's slender arm and jiggled it, testing for substance. "You better eat a lot of that fry bread. And some meat."

You'd better eat
was something between an invitation and a challenge. If you love us, you'll eat with us, was generally what it meant, so Clara moved into line. At work, people gave her advice and paid her money. Her mother still gave her advice and paid her obligatory visits. But here people fed her with fond recollections and fry bread.

A deep voice startled her as she reached into the cardboard box. "Take an extra one for the road."

"Ben!" She spun around, her face brightening, blushing, then shuttering as quickly as she could catch herself. She gripped the flimsy edges of her paper plate in both hands. "How do you still manage to creep up on me like that?"

"Easy." The black cowboy hat she'd given him years ago for Christmas shaded his broad grin from the fluorescent lights overhead. "You're always deep in thought. Did you think I wasn't coming?"

"My deepest thoughts are not about you."

"They're about fry bread." A smirk danced in his eyes, then played on his lips. "You wanna take an extra one?"

She shook her head innocently. "One's enough for me."

"Hey, you're holdin' up the line, cowboy!"

Ben turned, still grinning. "Hey, Howard." He stepped back and leaned over to shake hands with the same Howard who'd hauled the drum in. "You goin' on the ride?"

Howard gave a nod, then adjusted his glasses, grasping the wad of adhesive tape that held them together at one corner in place of a hinge. "You?"

"Looks that way. You remember my wife?"

"Sure." Howard stepped out of formation to shake Clara's hand. "She was my teacher once. Told us all about the Civil War."

"Among other things, Howard. How are you?"

"Doin' okay. Hear you're still workin' up in Bismarck. At that big museum, huh?"

"I wouldn't say it's that big." Clara took two pieces of fry bread, accepted a paper bowl full of soup from the girl who'd dished it up, then moved out of the way. "It's as big as we have in North Dakota, though. And, you know, we have a wonderful collection of..."

"Our stuff." Ben chuckled and tipped the brim of his hat in mock deference. "Clara's in charge of all the Indian stuff now."

"E'en it? Big cheese, now, huh?" Howard reclaimed his place in line. "Maybe I'll have to come up and visit. I might even ask you some questions, like you used to do to us. See if you know your beadwork."

"I know
your
beadwork," Clara said. "Do you still make belts?"

"I'm beading Reeboks now. Put in an order, I can have 'em ready..." He scooped up a spoonful of potato salad and plopped it on his plate. "Guess I'm tied up for the next couple weeks. You sure you wanna turn this ol' cowboy loose for that long, Mrs. Pipestone?" Howard claimed a cup of
wojapi
at the end of the line, balanced it on his plate, and came away grinning. "No tellin' what kinda trouble he can find between here and Pine Ridge. What've we got? We've got Timber Lake, we've got Lantry, we've got Bridger..."

"She's goin' along," Ben reported as he took a piece of fry bread from Clara's plate. Then, as an afterthought, he asked her permission with the arch of an eyebrow.

Howard winced, as if to say, so much for that idea.

"I'm not going
along.
I'm just going." Clara offered a sweet smile. "Ben's free to find whatever trouble tickles his fancy."

"I was just kidding. This ain't gonna be no joyride, right, Ben?"

"Right."

"No alcohol." Howard balanced his heavily laden plate in one splayed hand and dunked his fry bread in his soup with the other. "That's one of the rules. So I was just kidding about lookin' for trouble. Ain't gonna be none of that noise."

"But I'm serious about going on the ride, Howard. And I promise not to say a word about the Civil War."

Howard chuckled. "That's okay. You gotta talk about something. Hey, maybe we'll teach you a little history, huh?" He bit off the soggy corner of densely textured bread, then talked around it. "I guess I don't know that much about Indian history, but Ben's dad really can tell the stories."

"I know."

Howard swallowed. "I guess that's not the same as history, like what you teach, but these old guys, you know, they could almost be
teachers
in a way. It's pretty interesting what they remember."

"Didn't we do the oral history project in your class? That was one of my standard assignments, where you were supposed to ask someone in your grandparents' generation about things they remembered."

"I probably got an
F
on that." Howard shrugged as he dunked his bread again. "Either that or I got my girlfriend to do it for me. She got me through high school." The bread hadn't quite reached his mouth when he paused to give Ben the male conspiracy look. "That's why I had to marry her. I had the diploma, but she had all my education."

The men chortled together.

Howard wandered off in search of coffee, and Ben directed Clara toward two vacant folding chairs. "Did Annie eat?" he asked between bites of fry bread.

"She had a plate, but whether she's eaten, I don't know."

"She's pretty excited, huh?" He took the cup of
wojapi
from the plate Clara had balanced on her knees, dipped his fry bread in it, then bit into the sauce-soaked corner as he put the cup back. He chewed, swallowed, then eyed her almost long enough to make her squirm before finally asking, "How 'bout you?"

"I'm a little worried about... details." Mainly
de tail
she was sitting on and whether it had any chance of holding up in a saddle for two weeks. But be damned if she'd tell Ben that. "I wasn't sure what we'd need."

"I told you what you'd need."

"I must have made a hundred lists, thinking, 'What if this happens? What if that happens?'"

He nodded. He knew her well. "So you're prepared for an avalanche, a tidal wave, whatever."

"I wouldn't say that. I'm definitely not prepared for making a fool of myself, and I have a feeling I'm about to."

"Don't worry about the mare," he said quietly. "I've got her handling like a dream, and her gaits are smooth as butter. She won't let you down."

She believed him. Ben had an eye for good horses and an extraordinarily patient hand. "I had intended to get a little more practice in, but I ran out of time."

"You'll be fine."

She nibbled gingerly at her fry bread, trying to think of something neutral to say. "The weather's just too good to be true, isn't it?" There it was. The obvious choice. "I've been watching the weather reports. There's no snow forecast for the next few days, anyway. Beyond that, who can tell?"

"You want my prediction?" Ben braced his hand on his knee and leaned back, winding up to deliver. "There's a good chance of snow. Excellent chance of cold. Guaranteed wind."

"I suppose that's a pretty safe—" Renewed activity beneath the "Last Call" sign drew Clara's attention. "Your father's here."

Ben straightened, turning slowly as though preparing to make some move. Maybe stand his ground. Maybe bolt. It was an old reflex in Ben, one he couldn't seem to shake. Watching him, Clara could almost hear him struggling to make a choice. As if he had any. Ben's loyalty to his father was embedded in his bone marrow, a place Ben could neither consciously discern nor purge.

"God, he looks old." Ben sighed, lowering his gaze to the fraction of fry bread he still held in his hand. "Ever since that day you were out to his place, the ol' man's really been acting funny."

She knew that around Ben's family,
acting funny
generally meant that two people had been shutting each other out, and if you asked, you'd hear two different versions of how it had gotten started. But Clara considered Ben's concerns as she watched Dewey move more slowly, more deliberately, than usual. He was putting his striped wool jacket over the back of a chair, setting his plaid Scotch cap on the seat, moving stiffly and taking pains with every move.