Ride the Rainbow Home (14 page)

The snake was still poised. Meg had heard that a snake could strike to nearly its full length, and this was no small snake. She estimated it at a good three feet long, maybe four. It couldn't have been more than three feet away.

"I don't think so," Jim whispered. He was close now, his full length warming her, lending her his strength. All the strength had gone out of her from the moment she'd heard the first rattle. She needed Jim, needed to lean on him and feel him near. "I don't think it will strike," he repeated.

"Then why does it look like that?" Meg heard her voice becoming sharp.

"The rattle's a warning. The snake doesn't want you to step on it. It could easily have struck you without warning, but it preferred to ask you not to come its way. Really, it's more frightened of you than you are of it."

"Right," she stage-whispered. "Side with the snake. Jim, get me out of here!"

"Okay." Jim's voice was patient. "We're going to take a small step backward now. I’ll lead back with my left foot and you follow with your left. Keep your eyes on the snake and try not to make any unnecessary sounds."

Meg's knees felt like Jell-O. "Can't you get in front of me?"

"Not without threatening it into striking."

Meg swallowed. "Okay then, let's go." She took a breath and braced herself. "Come on. Let's go!"

"One moment. I want to look behind us first, just to be sure there isn't another one back there. Sometimes they come out in pairs."

Meg felt dizzy. "Oh, no. Not that, please."

"It looks like we're okay. Ready now?"

She nodded, composing herself.

"Okay, on the count of three. Move your left foot back slowly. Follow my lead. One, two..."

As he said "three," he half-lifted her, moving his own left foot backward and drawing her with him. The snake watched them warily and rattled again, but made no move to strike.

"Okay, right foot now. One, two..."

They did it again, then followed with another left foot and another right. By then the snake had relaxed its posture. Meg turned and ran, Jim close behind her. Forty yards down the trail, she paused, gasping for breath and trembling. When Jim reached her, she threw both arms around him. "Oh, Jim! Hold me, hold me!" She pushed herself against him, needing his warmth, unable to get close enough.

"There, there," he said, stroking her hair and rubbing her back, comforting her as he might have comforted a frightened child. "It's all right. Nothing happened."

"I was so scared!" She looked up at him with terror in her eyes.

"It's all right, Meggie," he whispered, tenderly holding her against him. The sky was growing dark as they hurried their steps toward the small house. Clara was already in bed when they returned, but she had left a light on for them. "She's like a lot of older people," Jim explained. "She gets up with the chickens, so she goes to bed with them too. She'll expect things to be quiet in here."

Meg looked at the narrow cot in the second bedroom. "Jim? I don't want to be alone tonight. I have a real phobia about snakes and I’ve never been this close to one in the wild. I'm still shaking. Please don't make me go in there alone."

Jim hesitated only a moment. Perhaps it was her gray pallor that moved him. "Okay. You take the couch, and I'll put my sleeping bag on the floor. You can be first in the bathroom. When you get back, I'll have a place ready."

"Thank you." She smiled and ducked into the bathroom.

Half an hour later, she lay snuggled in her sleeping bag on the sofa, listening to the sound of Jim's steady breathing. Both of them still wore their day clothes, and Jim warned her that they'd have to wake before dawn to avoid scandalizing Clara. But in the comfort of Jim's nearness, Meg finally relaxed. "Jim?" she said as they drifted toward sleep.

"Hm?"

"Thank you for taking care of me today."

"Any time."

A few moments later, she thought she heard him add, “Any time you’ll let me.”

Chapter Seven

This is how mornings should always be
, Meg thought as she helped Jim load their things. They had shared Clara's simple breakfast of frybread with wild sage honey, then Clara sent them on their way with a promise that Jim would return soon. The desert was alive in the fresh, pink light of dawn, bees singing praises to the morning as they flitted among the greasewood and creosote, birds winging high. The air was fragrant with the desert scents of earth, greasewood, dew, and an occasional wisp of wood smoke from someone's cooking fire.

They drove to a hogan near Lukachukai where a kinswoman of Clara's, Lucy Nez, was working on a new pattern Clara had asked Jim to see. Lucy came out to meet them and quickly led them to her loom. It stood outdoors beneath a mesquite tree and Meg could tell from its size that Lucy planned a large rug, maybe six feet wide and twice that in height, though less than twelve inches had been completed so far. The interesting thing, Jim translated for Meg as Lucy talked, was its unusual pattern. It began with a stylized thunderbird, but in Lucy's pattern, which he showed her in a smaller finished rug, the birds' wings overlapped and spread in lifelike motion, as though flying right out of the weave.

The moment Meg saw the rug in its patterns of natural colors: off-white and deep red-brown with accents of black, she thought of the mated hawks she'd seen over the valley in Rainbow Rock. The sense of motion was there. So was the pairing, the completeness, the sense of two becoming one. Lucy had captured it all in hand-spun woolen yarn. "It must be marvelous to do something you love so much," she said later as they left Lucy's hogan.

Jim, who had already promised to purchase the rug upon its completion, agreed heartily. "I predict that rug will begin a whole new trend in the art," he said. "Other weavers will be copying and adapting Lucy's pattern into the next generation."

"It was beautiful," Meg agreed, thinking of the motion, the intricate weave, the inspiring sense of—what was it she was feeling? "I admire Lucy." She sighed. "I think I envy her too."

"Envy her?" Jim's look was questioning. "You, Meg? Why?"

Meg sighed, unready to share the dissatisfaction she'd recently felt in her own work. "I guess I envy her autonomy. She can create what she wishes and on the schedule she plans. She doesn't have to please anyone but herself."

"In the long run, that's not quite true," Jim corrected. "She must turn out a pleasing product if she's going to sell it."

"But if it pleases only her, she can keep it in her own home and pass it down to her daughters. She can choose her own art." Meg faltered, her face warming with the intensity of her speech.

Jim smiled slowly. "I do believe there's an entrepreneur hiding in you, Meg. Have you ever thought of starting your own consulting practice?"

"Jim! I wouldn't know how to begin." Meg dismissed the idea as soon as she heard it, but it refused to go away. As the morning waxed and warmed, she rode at Jim's side, consumed by the fascinating what-if questions that kept popping into her head.

Near Tsaile, they stopped at the homes of two silversmiths, brothers, each of whom had prepared some fine pieces for Jim to examine. The second man, who insisted on feeding them more beans and frybread, showed Meg some of the most elegant spiderweb turquoise she'd ever seen. Then while she was still admiring it, he lit a match and focused it on the bottom of the stone. Meg drew back in horror. "Jim, what's he doing?"

"He's showing me it's true turquoise," Jim explained. "I told him he didn't have to. I've worked with Emil for years. If he tells me it's turquoise, it's turquoise."

"But how could it be anything else?" Meg asked, still awed by the exquisite clarity of the stone.

"Some fake stuff has turned up lately, even in some of the finer boutiques. It's made of ground plastic, like the kind used for cheap dishes. It looks real enough until you touch a match to it, but then it smolders and melts. It’s nasty stuff, and it gives off the same smell you'd get if you dropped a plastic spoon in a campfire." Jim turned to the artist and spoke in Navajo. "I told him that's enough. Clearly this is good turquoise, nothing synthetic about it."

"Clearly," Meg repeated, feeling slightly shaken. After all, if one couldn't trust turquoise to be turquoise, what could one trust? "Jim, how do you know these things?"

"It's pretty basic in my business," he said. "I'm sure you have knowledge and expertise in your own field."

Did she? Meg wondered as they drove back toward Rainbow Rock. While Jim navigated the washboard roads, Meg reviewed times when her knowledge presented in a seminar had turned around floundering companies, when her awareness had been all a client needed to spot trouble areas. She thought of the artists she'd met in the past three days, people who worked for the love of it, who directed their own course. Was Jim right? Did she have an entrepreneurial spirit after all? Was that part of the reason she had become so unhappy working for Monty? By the time they reached Sally's home, Meg had resolved she would call Monty first thing in the morning. Maybe if she presented clear, organized ideas, they could talk about the changes she'd like to bring to the Montgomery Adams company.

Jim stopped in front of Sally's house and came around to open her door, lifted her down from the cab, then caught her in a quick hug. "Thanks for coming with me, Meg."

"It was my pleasure. I learned so much." What an understatement! She'd learned about Navajo life and art, about the kind of man Jim was, even about herself. "Thanks for inviting me."

"Speaking of invitations, the class reunion is next Saturday. Will you go with me?"

"I'd love to," Meg said softly. "Will I see you before then?"

"I'm headed for Phoenix tomorrow. A gallery down there got some of that plastic turquoise I told you about, and they want me to authenticate the rest of their stock. I expect to be back Thursday, though. If you and Sally are up to it, I'd like to take you and all the Garcias to the park for a picnic."

"That sounds great."

"And maybe you'll go to dinner with me Friday too?"

"Try to talk me out of it," Meg said, both arms tightly about him.

For a moment the light feeling slipped and Jim looked as serious, as intent, as he'd been during their heated moments beside the well. "Meg, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but I'll miss you when you go back to California."

She swallowed hard, determined to be honest with herself. "I'll miss you too."

"Well," he said, releasing her. "Let's get you inside before Sally calls the tribal police." Reluctantly, Meg let him go.

* * * *

Only three days had passed, but Meg felt she'd been away a long time when she entered the house again to be immediately swamped by Sally and the kids. Frank, home for the weekend, asked Meg if she'd had a good time and Meg responded dreamily. Later she drifted into sleep, wishing she could feel Jim's arms around her, wondering if her life in California—even if Monty made the changes she wanted—could possibly compensate her for what she would lose when she left Rainbow Rock behind her. Again.

"So you've decided to let Monty have it?" Sally asked the next morning as the two women washed the breakfast dishes. Frank had been gone for less than three hours and already Sally had wrung out of Meg all the details she could get about the weekend.

"Yep," Meg answered with more confidence than she felt. "I want him to understand that he's wasting my talents with the same-old same old. I can make Monty money if he'll let me." In the back of her mind, she heard Jim's voice repeating, "Have you thought of starting your own practice?" Was it possible she could earn that money for herself? Meg shook the thought away and finished sweeping the breakfast nook. Then she helped Sally get the children busy outside so she could have quiet on the phone. She was just going inside to make the call when her cell phone rang.

"Meg?" a man's voice asked. “Is this Meg Taylor?”

"Monty, is that you?"

"Meg, how are you doing? Had enough vacation?"

"Not yet," Meg answered. Then she drew a deep breath, amazed at the coincidence that had dropped this opportunity into her lap. "As it happens, I was about to call you."

"Let me guess," Monty said. "You were going to tell me how bored you are in Arizona and how you can hardly wait to get back into the trenches, right?"

"Not exactly," Meg answered. "I wanted to talk about some of the changes I'd like to see in the company. I know if you'd let me teach team—"

"No time for that now," Monty broke in. "We have a small crisis on our hands and we really need you here this weekend."

"This weekend? No way. I have three more weeks of vacation coming. Besides, the class reunion is part of what I came for, and it's not until this Saturday."

"I need you here, Meg. It's been a big sacrifice to have you away this long. AeroTech just called. They want to do an update of the seminar you did last spring and they've asked for you by name."

Meg felt anger rising. It was the same can't-get-along- without-you line she got whenever she wanted a day off. Monty's guilt trips had kept her from taking a vacation for years. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to remember how indispensable she was when she wanted to discuss changes, or even a raise. "Then tell them to wait until I get back," Meg said calmly. "Monty, I need this break. I've earned it and I'm going to take it."