Reason To Believe (40 page)

"I decided I couldn't live with myself the way I was, any more than you could. I always said I could quit any time, but it was a whole hell of a lot tougher than I thought it would be. Especially since I thought I'd lost everything that mattered to me, and no guarantee of getting any of it back. But love doesn't come with a guarantee. And marriage, you can't take that for granted, either, even when there's love. You've gotta work at it every day. And I didn't do that."

"I don't know whether—" She caught her lower lip between her teeth and glanced away. "I guess I didn't, either."

"But I believe in marriage more than I ever did. I don't much like livin' the way I'm livin' now."

"I don't either." She closed her eyes. "I wish it could be different, Ben."

"Well, it's different from the way it was." She started to shake her head, but he caught her chin and made her look at him again. "It is. I'll tell you something else I've found out. Other things matter. It matters that I started with nothing and got a business goin', even gave somebody else a job. Bein' Annie's father matters. My dad, my sisters, the rest of my family, they all matter." He watched her eyes, watched closely as it all sank in, and he smiled. She was listening, maybe even thinking it over, and that, he had to believe, was a beginning. "I'm comin' along, slow but sure, Clara-bow. Guess I'm kind of a late bloomer."

"Maybe in some ways." She smiled, too. "But in the area of 'sparking,' I'd say you probably got an early start."

"Want some more?" He nuzzled her temple and whispered, "How about another Christmas song to ring your chimes?"

Her sigh was more a sound of contentment than a breath. "Where is all this caroling going to lead us?"

"You think I'm gonna try to make love to you, don't you? You underestimate my self-control. I took a vow of celibacy."

"Celibacy?"

"It's kind of a one-day-at-a-time thing, too, like sobriety, but I'm doin' real good, other than the regular Saturday night date with my very own skilled laborer's hand."

"Ben!"

"So you can roast my chestnuts all you want, honey, I won't have any trouble keepin' a cool head."

"Really." Intrigued by the challenge, she nibbled his earlobe. "I wouldn't want to come between you and your date. It is Saturday night, isn't it?"

"I've lost track. No calendar." He slipped her glove off, kissed her hand, slid it down the path of his shirt buttons, over his belt to his lap. "If it is, would you mind filling in? Under the circumstances it's a little awkward for my usual date."

"It's more than a little awkward for..."

"Just hold me there while I kiss you again." And he kissed her gently, moving his lips against hers, whetting her taste for him. "Again," he pleaded. Deepening their kiss, he covered her hand with his and arched himself into her palm, quickening his desire for her. "Oh, Jesus, Clara."

"We can't..."

"Not here we can't." He closed his eyes and massaged himself with her hand. "We might as well be parked in your mother's driveway."

"Then it's safe for you to kiss me some more," she whispered, squeezing him gently as she nipped at his chin. "Let's see if we can fog up the windows when it's snowing out."

Bitter cold was the order of the day that they rode for the people who were imprisoned. Slate skies hung low, promising to add another layer of snow to the light ground cover. TJ had returned from the clinic in Eagle Butte and reported to Clara, since Ben was busy making sure the riders were prepared for colder weather. He'd forsaken his trademark cowboy hat this morning in favor of his sheepskin helmet. He warned riders to monitor their horses carefully. As temperatures plummeted, an overexerted horse's lungs could freeze. The support vehicles would be on hand to take on riders and horses should trouble arise.

Shortly before noon they stopped for hot soup, sandwiches, and coffee. Clara fussed over Anna's loose scarf and reminded her to use her face mask when they got under way again. Ben held council with Elliot, Cheppa, and Howard. They were trailing through vast, desolate grasslands, and there were long stretches that were inaccessible except on horseback. The horses would be checked over carefully, and any marginal riders would be encouraged to hop in one of the pickups for the afternoon.

When the parley was over, Ben found windbreak behind a horse trailer, sat back against the wheel housing, and lit a cigarette. He smiled when Clara joined him with an extra cup of black coffee. "It's getting colder." He noted the clouds sliding briskly overhead as he sipped the coffee. "We're going to get more snow."

"And wind. You can feel it coming." He slid over, and she rested her bottom next to his, leaning more than sitting. "They want to move your father to Sioux Falls, but Tara Jean says he won't go."

Ben nodded. Smoke trailed from his lips and faded into the grayness overhead. "That's up to him."

"She says he's pretty weak. I thought I'd go see him this afternoon."

"In my place," he mused, half smiling. She had been known to appear occasionally in his stead when she'd thought he had a duty and he'd thought he had better things to do. He had once said that she should have been named Duty, and for weeks thereafter he'd gotten a kick out of quipping,
Well, howdy there, Duty.

"In a way, I guess, if you feel you really need to be two people." She smiled, and the light in her eyes told him that she remembered, too.

He glanced away. "He's heavy on my mind right now."

"I know. But your place is also with the ride. You're his way of being in two places at once, and I can be that for you." She studied the toes of her boots. "It really is a circle, isn't it? We're together in it even if you and I aren't... together anymore."

"What about last night? Weren't we together?" She looked up quickly, and he smiled. "Or close?"

She shrugged, then nodded, but she was afraid to say what she was thinking. She'd felt closer to him in the last few days than she had for many years, but she was afraid to tell him that. Afraid of exposing herself any more than she already had. There was a void in her life that no one else could fill. There were places in her heart that no one else could touch. Only Ben. Only her husband.

But she was afraid.

"He'd rather see you anyway." Ben's smile turned wistful. "As he would say, you're easy on his eyes. Easier than me, that's for sure." He sipped his coffee noisily. "How're you gettin' there?"

"Robert Cady offered to take me."

He eyed her speculatively. "Him and Henry?"

"Harvey," she amended. "Be nice, Ben. To him it's his trusty steed."

"His what?" He chuckled derisively. "His lusty seed?"

"Don't."

"Sorry," he muttered, as he braced his ankle on his knee and ground his cigarette against his bootheel. "Wind's pickin' up, and I'm hearing weird things like—"

"He's giving me a
ride"
Clara insisted. "This man does not interest me except as—"

He looked up at her, again with the speculative gaze. "Do I?"

"Unfortunately, yes. You still do." She'd shown it, surely, but it surprised her that she could admit it, surprised her even more that she could laugh about it. "Oh, God, I'm actually participating in a battle of wits with a man who thinks his ultimate weapon is in his pants."

His eyes sparked a quick grin. "You must be enjoying it. You're laughing."

"So are you."

"That's because you're funny. Also because I enjoy watching your face turn pink when you mention what I've got in my pants." He straightened and adjusted the overlap in his coat. "Enjoyin' it so much, it's beginning to show."

"Now
you're
turning red."

"It's just the coat." He draped his arm around her shoulders. "You know what? My dad told me once that if he'd'a been younger that time we first met, he'd'a fought me for you. But I'd'a beat him out, easy. And Cady, too, he's got no
taniga"
he averred, using the Lakota word for guts. "You belong with me."

"You're sure."

Cady dropped her off. He thought he would pick up a newspaper and have a cup of coffee at the cafe, and then he promised to wait for her in the lobby.

The clinic was quiet. Anyone who was able to go home for Christmas had done so. The few who occupied the hospital beds slept a lot, coughed some, left the bed rarely. Occasionally a quiet conversation drifted into the clean tiled hallway. There was a tree in the lobby, decorated with multicolored lights, and a "Season's Greetings" banner hung above the nurses' station, but there were no get-well flowers. Clara recalled the dry, wilting potted mums Ben had brought her when she'd given birth to Anna in a similar clinic. He didn't know much about flowers, he'd confessed, but he'd driven to Bismarck for them—150 miles round trip—because when he'd called her mother with the news of the baby's birth, she'd bemoaned the fact that she could find no flower delivery service to Fort Yates. So he'd figured the flowers must have been important, and he'd claimed they were from her mother, too, since it was her idea.

Dewey perked up when Clara entered his room. He pressed a button, and the bed jackknifed him gradually. He nodded approvingly when he saw that she'd brought him some magazines and a box of candy.

"All is going well," she reported. "As cold as it is, everyone still seems to be in good spirits."

He nodded again. "Today is dedicated to the ones in prison, and that's me. Glad they sent me a pretty visitor."

She pulled a chair close to the bed and seated herself. "How are you doing?"

"How do they say... as well as can be expected."

The bedding covered the hump of his cast. "Your leg will mend. It'll just take some time."

"Old bones are slow to heal. Like old wounds. When it cuts into the core, sometimes it doesn't heal right. Years later, you got all that scar tissue." He shook his head, giving a chuckle that converted to a brief cough. "Course, I don't have to worry. I got plenty of wrinkles to flop over the scars."

"Your wrinkles are very dear to us. People are asking about you, praying for you. Ben would have come, but he knows you want him to stay with the ride." She studied the old pipe keeper's timeworn hands, his crimped, tobacco-colored skin. "He's doing very well. The pipe is in good hands, and I think everyone knows that except..." She smiled sadly. "Except, perhaps, your son."

"He thinks he's got better things to do."

"A couple of weeks ago, I would have said that, too, and it would have been at least partly true." She drew a deep breath and boldly shook her head. After all, she was speaking to a man of considerable insight, daring to inform him about his own son. "Ben's unsure of himself in this role. People always look to you for wisdom and stories, for knowledge of the Lakota way. I think he's afraid to take on that responsibility, for one thing."

"You've studied all of that, daughter. You know a lot about Lakota ways."

"But I'm not Lakota. It's not in my blood. I wish it were." Brazenly she looked him directly in the eye and said quietly, "Sometimes I wish I really were your daughter."

After a quick bout with a deep, energy-sapping cough, he slid his hand across the white sheet, toward the edge of the bed where she sat. "You think you're not? Then you don't know as much as I thought."

"You've taught me more than my own father did. He was always distant."

"Maybe a respectful distance. That is the proper way when a daughter becomes a woman."

"I know, but my memories of him are so sketchy. He died before I was really grown. And my mother and I were never close. I tried to do things in a way that I thought would please them. I tried to be good at everything I did, to outshine everyone else so that my parents would finally say that I was the best daughter anyone could possibly have." She pressed her lips together tightly and gave her head a little shake. "They never did."

"What is the need to compare? There is nothing to compare with a daughter." He coughed and patted the mattress restlessly. "My daughters are all different. Better, best, what does that mean? They are all daughters." He thought about it for a moment, then chuckled. "If I say that you are the smartest one, in a way it would be true, but in a way not true. You and Tara Jean are both smart, but about different things."

"I admire her independence and her tough-mindedness."

"And she admires you. So it's not a question of being the best, is it? We Lakota love a good contest. A basketball game, a foot race, a rodeo, even a fancy dance. But not everything has to be a contest." He rested his head back against the pillow and stared contemplatively at the gray TV screen on the far wall. "Your people make learning a contest. How can it be? There is so much. Each one learns what they can, what they need, what they like. Learning is not a competitive sport, it's... it's living, same as breathing, same as praying to your god." He turned to her again. "Same as being a daughter. It's part of being a woman."

"I'm not sure I'm very good at that, either."