Reason To Believe (19 page)

"Ben?"

"I'm right here." His voice slid deeply, smoothly into her ear, fortifying her. "You're doin' great, honey."

"How can you tell?"

"'Cause I'm shakin' in my boots, and you're cool as can be."

Her thready laugh turned into a sharp yelp. "Oh, Ben, make it stop!" She rolled her head to one side, panting, panting, pushing herself up on her elbows. She needed to sit up, to push down, to
get it out.
"Help me!"

"What can I do?"

Someone said, "Help her sit up so she can bear down better."

He slipped his arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her. "Better?"

"No, yes, oh no, not agaaain..."

He pressed his cheek against hers. "It'll be over soon, and we'll have our black-haired baby."

"It hurrrts!"

"I know. I'm sorry. Hang on, hang on, hang on."

Someone said, "Push, Clara."

"Give it all you got, Clara-bow," Ben urged.

Someone said, "Push, Clara."

"She's pushin', for crissake!"

"Here it comes!"

"Our baby, Clara! I see its whole head!"

She closed her eyes and pushed herself inside out. "Yeeeahhh!"

"It's a girl!"

For the moment it was absolute and unqualified relief.

"A girl, we have a girl, Clara! Look how... Jesus, I can't believe you could..." He lifted her a little more. "How did you do that?"

"What?" After the excruciating buildup she was still trying to catch up to the sudden explosion. Breathless, wrung out, she felt as though she had stepped outside herself.

"I can't believe it, Clara." He squeezed her shoulder. "She came out of you. Holy Jesus, I saw it with my own eyes."

She could feel the slippery little thing, warm and wet where the doctor had laid her on her mother's stomach, but all she could see was that beautiful black hair. First the baby's, thoroughly soggy, then the baby's dad's, damp around his face.

"Can I touch her?" Beaming, grinning, utterly awed, Ben looked to Clara for permission.

But somebody snatched the bawling baby away, and somebody else pressed hands on Clara's stomach. "We've got one more job to do, Clara."

The afterbirth was nothing compared to the real thing, and soon she had her baby back, wrapped in flannel and tucked in her arms this time. And the crying stopped.

"Oh, Ben, come see who's here."

He stepped closer, suddenly shy.

"Now you can touch her," Clara invited, for she was touching her, feathering a finger over the chubby red cheek.

"Nah, my hands are too..." He hid them behind his back and leaned closer. "Can I kiss her, maybe?"

"Oh, Ben..."

"Can I kiss you, maybe?" His eyes were bright with wonder, and by the looks of his smile he was positively intoxicated. "You won't hit me again, will you?"

"Just a love tap," she said, vaguely remembering the throes of an early contraction.

That part, amazingly, was all over now. His kiss made her drunk, too. Drunk enough to slur her words, but it didn't matter. They were in a world of their own, speaking a language no one else understood. They shared something like a mind-expanding drug or a winning sweepstakes ticket or a conversion experience, but more. It was all of those things, but it was also utterly brand-new.

They had a child together.

"Thank you for hanging in there with me," she said, speaking for more than just this day.

"The least I could do," he said, speaking for more than just this day.

"I'm embarrassed now, for putting up such a fuss."

He grinned. "Tell the truth, now. It wasn't as bad as it looked, was it?"

She groaned.
"You
get to have the next one."

His grin vanished. "I would if I could, Clara-bow. I don't ever want you to suffer like that again."

She looked up at him, blinked, blinked again, but it didn't go away. Ben Pipestone had tears in his eyes.

"Ben? Cowboys don't—"

"Shh." He swallowed hard, pressed his forehead against hers, and whispered, "Don't tell anyone, but that just scared the bejesus outta me."

She slid her free hand around the back of his neck and held him tight. "I couldn't have done it without you."

Anna had tidied up while Clara was in the shower. It had undoubtedly been a labor of love for her, for, like most teenagers, Anna only cleaned her room when she couldn't find anything in it anymore. Now she was stretched out on her dad's bed. But she'd lost interest in the horse magazine that lay open in front of her, now that her mother was getting dressed.

"You think there's any point in putting on makeup?" Clara glanced up and smiled at her long-limbed, dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter. "I guess you must. You look wonderful."

"I didn't do anything extra." Anna swung her legs to the floor, planted her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. "You should wear the belt I gave you. It looks nice with jeans."

"Good idea." Clara brushed on a little blush, checked the results in the compact mirror, then added more before snapping the case shut. But Anna looked unsatisfied. "Too much?"

"No. But you've gotta wear some mascara. You
really
need mascara."

Clara took the magic eyelash-making wand from her purse and worked on her skimpy lashes. When she was done, she looked up for approval.

"Yeah. Makes your eyes look
really
big."

"I'd better hurry." She dropped the makeup into her purse. "Tell me when you hear Dad coming."

"He'll wait for you. 'Member when me and him used to sit on the bed and watch you get dressed?"

"Mmm-hmm. And make me flub up the eyeliner."

Anna smiled wistfully. "I still like watching you. It's fun to see how you turn out."

"It can't be much of a surprise. You know all my clothes." With splayed fingers she lifted her hair away from her temples, then flipped it back impatiently. "You know what this mop does."

"It's not a mop, and it makes you look like Mom.
My
mom. We like watching you get dressed because we know you're gonna turn out pretty, and we like watching it happen."

Clara returned the smile, which came prewarmed from deep inside her. "Even when you just want to hate me?"

"Want
to," Anna made clear. "Sometimes. But I can't ever quite make it stick."

"That's a relief."

"For very long."
With a jaunty smile in her eyes she rose from the bed and started gathering Clara's few loose items. "I'm glad you decided to go on the ride. I never expected you to. And Grandpa never expected Dad to. So there must be some reason why it's happening this way."

"Please don't read anything into it other than the fact that—" She felt like a stingy-hearted killjoy when she looked up and saw Anna's sparkle start to fade. "We both love you very much."

"I know." Anna jerked the zipper tab on Clara's bag. "But, then, sometimes I think if you loved me, you wouldn't be split up."

"That has nothing to do with it." Clara gave a mother's sad-truth sigh. "I've explained all that, Anna."

"I know." Anna lifted her chin and flashed a defiant, self-assured smile that reminded Clara of her own former, younger, more idealistic self. "Anyway, I don't think you hate each other any more than I hate either one of you. But that's just me."

"Nobody said we
hated—"

"And you look pretty. Your hair looks nice." She handed Clara her purse. "But you need lipstick in the worst way."

"I always forget."

"And I always remember for you. I don't know what you're gonna do when I go off to college."

"Neither do I."

Die a little, maybe. Ache a lot. Eat frozen dinners and let your dog sleep at the foot of my bed.

Puffy white clouds drifted overhead like smoke signals, calling the riders to the meeting place on the banks of the Grand River. The gravel road turned to dirt, then to a set of parallel wheel ruts across the rolling sod. Clara and Anna bounced along, side by side on the pickup's big bench seat, with Ben at the wheel and the three hundred and sixty horses under the hood gobbling up South Dakota dust for breakfast. His sister would pull in later, horse trailer and four living, breathing mounts in tow.

Several miles back they had passed the relay runner, one of nine teenagers carrying the Big Foot staff from Sitting Bull's grave in Fort Yates to the campsite where the old
wicasa wakan
was murdered, a distance of almost fifty miles. A van decorated with a red, white, and blue banner followed along, flashing its lights. As the pickup pulled around them, giving the relay party wide berth, Anna recognized the runner as Billie's friend.

Ben tapped the horn, and everyone waved except the runner. The long-legged young woman dressed in royal blue sweats plodded along doggedly, her dark eyes trained purposefully on the road ahead as she carried the fur-wrapped crook toward the hand that waited somewhere down the road.

"She looks cold," Anna said, still rubbernecking.

"She's doin' fine," Ben said. "This time last year those kids were freezin' their tail feathers off. Wind chill was about fifty below."

"So far, it's really been mild this year," Clara observed hopefully. "Hasn't it? Really mild."

"Sure has. So far it's been an open winter."

"Winter hasn't officially started," Anna reminded them.

They drove on, past the stubbled hayfields, past the bread-loaf stacks, the round-bale stacks, the square-bale stacks, past the dugout stock dams, past the assortment of fence posts supporting boundless strands of barbed wire stuffed with masses of tumbleweeds, past the "No Hunting" sign painted on an old tire. Hereford and black whiteface cattle grazed alongside the occasional horse in a land where the signs of labor and its fruits were still dwarfed by the expanse of grass and sky. Autumn lingered on borrowed time, and prairie dwellers dreaded, waited, watched for signs of change.

Anna was right. It was only the cusp of winter.

As they neared the campsite the signs of man-made change all but disappeared. The tire path was nearly overgrown with tall buffalo grass, and there was a hallowed-ground feeling about the place. An aspect of beauty and desolation, a silent echo of timeless melancholy. The gray scrub oaks stood like gnarly old sentinels over clay washouts that were striated with God's own claw marks.

"Are we almost there?" Anna asked in a hushed voice.

"'When are we gonna get there, Daddy?'" Grinning,

Ben indicated the road ahead with an expressive chin jerk. "Just over the hill, Annie-girl."

Just over several hills. Clara thought, but Indian miles were like Indian time. Close enough, soon enough. And sure enough, beyond the several hills they came to the river bottom, and the gathering of cars, pickups, horses, and people, all in rare attendance to a spot beneath the bare trees that had mercifully been left alone during most of the last hundred years.

But there was a monument, one that might be termed
permanent
by those who somehow failed to notice the river, the hills, and the sky. Clara thought it strange to find an official historical site marker so far from the beaten path. She wondered how many citizens of the state of South Dakota had ever seen it, nestled in the stand of little oak trees, only a few yards from the riverbank.

Inscribed on the stone tablet was the date—December 15, 1890—and an account of Sitting Bull's death. The original version of the Historical Society's authoritative chronicle alluded to "this unnecessary, tragic killing of a noble, if misguided, Sioux leader." The words "if misguided" had been removed, leaving behind a white imprint, which, ironically, stood out amid the raised letters like a neon sign.

One white mistake standing in testimony to another, Clara thought.

Greetings and introductions were exchanged as the gathering of riders and their supporters continued to grow. Horses were unloaded from their trailers, and saddles were hoisted on the animals' backs. Children begged to take their turns riding up and down the riverbank. Video cameras recorded the proceedings. Reporters pressed their questions on anyone who was willing to expound. All the while, preparations were being made for more ceremony.

Clara sat on the tailgate of Ben's pickup, watching him get ready several yards away, where Tara Jean had parked the horse trailer. She was going to have to get used to the idea that they were a family again, at least for the time being. She was going to have to harness all her mixed emotions and hold them in check. No more tears, she told herself. She simply had to face the fact that the attraction would always be there, but so would the betrayal. She had taken a chance on this man and lost. Nevertheless, he would always be Anna's father.