A Man Without a Wife Read online

  Ricky shrugged. For the first time he looked uncomfortable. “Dumb stuff. He calls me a redskin and says I eat live animals.”

  Beautiful, Dallas thought. Where did kids come up with this stuff?

  So prejudice was alive and well in the best of academies, he thought. Redskins and freebies. Dallas shook his head. He’d thought he’d circumvented a lot of that crap by sending Ricky to a private school—that and the fact that he really was smart as a whip and Dallas thought he’d be better off with a more advanced curriculum. Something more open-minded, less plodding. He cringed at the very idea of sending him to a reservation school, or any public educational mill, for that matter.

  He rubbed at the headache behind his forehead and asked the question anyway. “Would you rather go to school with other Navajo kids?”

  Ricky looked horrified. “Leave Ashford?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I don’t want to do that, Dad. No, please.”

  He kept shaking his head long after he finished protesting. He was starting to get that wild look around his eyes, Dallas noticed, the look that had torn his heart out after Mary had died.

  Dallas changed the subject.

  “So what did you do when Randy said all this?” he asked.

  Ricky ran his toe along the bottom rung of the chair, then he hopped on one leg to inspect the dust on his sock. His gaze slid halfway up to Dallas, but didn’t quite meet his own.

  “I nailed him,” Ricky sighed.

  “Nailed him,” Dallas repeated.

  “Yeah. You said never to throw the first punch, but if someone came after me first, then I could nail them. So I did.”

  “Randy swung first?”

  “Well...he didn’t actually swing really. But saying that was sort of like hitting first, you know? He provoked me, Dad.”

  Dallas decided he would leave that discussion for later. “What did Mr. Smithson say?” he asked. The Ashford principal was notorious for his pacifist tendencies.

  “I got three after-school study halls.”

  Dallas blew out his breath. “Where was I when all this was going on?”

  “Phoenix. I was with Mr. and Mrs. Wythe that week. Remember? I told you, Dad. Sort of.”

  Dallas vaguely remembered a conversation to that effect, and he made yet another vow to cut down on his traveling time. He was a commercial architect and Flagstaff was not Arizona’s biggest metropolis by a long shot. A good deal of his work was down in Phoenix. He had to start giving more of it to his partner.

  But at the moment he had more immediate problems. “So how do you feel about all this?”

  Ricky looked at him warily. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think you’re a redskin?”

  “I got adopted,” he said with the pure exasperation of a child.

  “Yeah, but do you ever wonder about...” Dallas trailed off again. Wonder about what? What would the Our Lady people ask him? “About the Navajo people?” he finished lamely.

  Ricky screwed his mouth up, thinking. “Nah. Not really. But we studied them in history once. Only it wasn’t actually the Navajo, not really. It was Kit Carson. Mrs. Katz said something about him being a hero and all, about how he subdued all these wild Indians. So when we went to the library I looked it up. She lied, Dad. You know what he did? He starved them. He burned up all their corn and stuff, so they went and hid in this big canyon, and then he came and caught them and made them go to a place like Hitler did, a place where they could concentrate.”

  Dallas blinked. “A concentration camp?”

  “Yeah. And it was a real bad place. They got sick from white-people diseases and they died. It’s called the Long Walk.”

  Dallas felt dazed. Surprises. “You, uh...you found all this out on your own?”

  “That’s what the library’s for. We’re supposed to use it for our own interests.” Ricky didn’t think he ought to mention that Benny’s interests were often a neat comic book series about a kid detective, books he brought from home, and that sometimes they got sidetracked with them.

  “Okay,” Dallas said carefully. “So why didn’t you tell me all this?”

  “Well, I hardly ever tell you what I read in the library.”

  Dallas wanted to be relieved, but in fact he wasn’t sure he should be. What would Our Lady of Guadalupe think? And how had all this been going on right beneath his nose without him realizing it? Was he lacking as a parent? Should he and Mary have been tutoring him all along in the cultural history of his birth parents?

  Suddenly the rage came back, nearly blinding him. Damn it, no. They had taught him the things that mattered to any —Anglo or Chinese, Navajo or otherwise. They had taught him values and self-worth and confidence. They had been a family. They were still a family, a little shorthanded, maybe, but Ricky had survived the trauma as well as any kid could.

  No, Dallas thought, he had done nothing wrong. This screwed-up world was wrong, this world where people overthought and overcompensated and created problems where none had existed before.

  Well, he wasn’t going to let them mess with his kid. He wasn’t going to let them twist him, hurt him, muddy the sweet innocence of his curiosity and his mind. No.

  “Go play Nintendo,” he said a little too harshly. Ricky bolted, clearly relieved to be finished with the discussion. Dallas snatched the letter up again, looking for the name of the meddling, shortsighted imbecile who had wrote it.

  Ellen Lonetree. Then he noticed something else for the first time. There was an LPN at the end of her name.

  Licensed practical nurse? The pain behind his eyes started to scream. She wasn’t even a social worker or whatever those people had to be these days. He didn’t have to call Nelson back to know that this letter was therefore unauthorized, illegal as hell, and that Ricky was none of Ms. Lonetree’s business.

  He grabbed the phone and punched in the number at the top of the letterhead. Almost unconsciously, he realized that he felt strong again, empowered, for the first time in too, too long. He thought briefly of what he had taught Ricky about not swinging first. He considered that it was a very good thing that Ms. Lonetree was in Albuquerque while he was in Flagstaff.

  If he could get his hands on her now, he doubted very seriously that he would split hairs about provocation and first punches, either.

  Chapter 2

  Patients stood three deep in the waiting room of the Navajo Indian health-service clinic. Normally Ellen preferred to be busy, rushing from one ailment to the next injury without pause, fast enough that she couldn’t think, relentlessly enough that the patients were just nondescript faces. Today was different.

  She rubbed a hand over her eyes, almost stabbing herself with the syringe she held. She flinched reflexively just as the doctor stepped out of one of the two exam rooms.

  “Ellen? I’m ready for that vaccine now,” Catherine Bedonie said softly.

  “All right,” Ellen muttered. “It’s right here.” She started to hand over the syringe, then realized that she hadn’t filled it yet.

  It was going to be a long day, she realized. She could spend it torturing herself, or she could get a grip.

  Had he gotten her letter yet?

  “Ellen?” Catherine pushed again.

  “I said it’s right here,” she snapped, shaking herself mentally. She felt Catherine’s eyes follow her to the supply cabinet where she finally filled the syringe. Oh, go back to work. Don’t ask me about it. Don’t—

  “Is something wrong?” Catherine asked. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Ellen almost laughed, but the sound would have been decidedly wild. There was no way Catherine Bedonie would ever be able to understand her problems, she thought. They were, quite literally, from two different worlds. Cat’s was one where rules applied and everything had a happy ending. When something nasty did happen to her, it somehow got fixed right up, as neat as you please, before you could blink. She was a good doctor, Ellen allowed. She was Anglo, but she cared enough to humo
r Navajo superstitions and Ellen suspected that she was coming to embrace a few of those superstitions herself. She had even married their local shaman. Ellen might have liked her, but she was just so...noble and perfect. She reminded Ellen of her own inadequacies and failures without even trying.

  Inadequacies such as acting purely on emotion, she thought. But the emotion in question had virtually demanded that she do something, and then the opportunity had presented itself, a serendipity of a Supreme Court case.

  Ellen finally finished with the syringe just as the telephone rang.

  “I’ll get it!” She whirled about to look at the mobile unit. The contraption was perched on the far desk. The syringe dropped from her suddenly nerveless hand, splattering Diptheria-Pertussis-Tetanus vaccine all over the floor. She was pretty sure that if the orphanage director heard from him, she would hear about it right away.

  “Ellen, for heaven’s sake!” Catherine burst out. She crossed to her and bent down for the needle.

  “Leave it,” Ellen breathed. “I’ll get it. Later. Just go—go doctor somebody.”

  Three rings. Four. Don’t hang up. She finally managed to reach the phone, pushing her way through the knots of people.

  “Hello?” she demanded. “Shiprock Clinic.”

  “Ellen?” The voice on the other end of the line was female and refined, noble and perfect. Barbara Bingham. “You sound...odd.”

  “We’re busy.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s Saturday. Normally I wouldn’t bother you, but I just had a disturbing phone call and I was thinking that perhaps you ought to drive down here today.”

  Ellen’s heart started galloping. “Disturbing?”

  “From a Mr. Dallas Lazo. You haven’t sent out any of those letters by any chance, have you?”

  There was something faintly accusing in the smooth voice now. Ellen closed her eyes. She always seemed to antagonize the saintly people of this world, she thought. Couldn’t any of them understand what it was to simply fly by the seat of your pants once in a while? Didn’t any of them ever get...well, caught up and carried away?

  Then again, there was a possibility that she had gotten carried a little too far on this one.

  “Is that a problem?” Ellen asked carefully.

  “It may be. Mr. Lazo isn’t happy.”

  “Well,” she said, “that’s to be expected. None of the parents have been.”

  “This parent has something of a leg to stand on. You simply don’t have the authorization or credentials to be involved with this study.”

  Oh, God, she hadn’t thought of that. How could she not have thought of that?

  It was time to lie. Ellen said a silent prayer to her Navajo Holy People and hoped they would understand. They generally did.

  “You were in Santa Fe seeing those other people,” she explained. “I found some files that had been overlooked. I copied the same letter you were sending out, but of course I signed my own name. I was just trying to help.”

  Barbara sighed. “Those files weren’t overlooked, Ellen. They weren’t relevant.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, in the Lazo case the adoptive mother is Navajo, so Tsosie-McNally scarcely applies to them.”

  “No. The adoptive mother is deceased.” As soon as she blurted the words, Ellen winced. The home would have no way of knowing that. Only someone interested in that particular child, only someone who had tracked him through the years would know. Someone like her.

  Suddenly she felt faint. She eased herself carefully into the desk chair. She had the very strong feeling that she had just blown it.

  She lied again, blatantly enough this time that she was sure lightning would burst right through the clinic roof and skewer her to the floor. And she would deserve it.

  “Clan,” she said blithely. “Mary Lazo was Towering Rock, same as I am. I heard about it through the reservation grapevine.”

  “Ah.” Barbara thought about it a moment. “Then this child should be included in the study. In any event, Mr. Lazo will be coming to Albuquerque this afternoon.”

  “Coming? To Albuquerque?” She’d been pretty sure he’d call and tell Barbara how the child was doing. And of course Barbara hadn’t sent the letter herself, so she would mention it to Ellen, if only to find out what was going on. That was all Ellen had wanted, all she had figured would happen. She had never imagined that he would come to Albuquerque.

  “Why?” she asked warily.

  “Well, to see us, of course.”

  “Us?” Suddenly the colors in the room seemed to fade.

  “Mr. Lazo seems to be the type to take the bull by the horns.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? I simply must reprimand you in his presence. It may be the only way to appease him.”

  “Is he bringing Ri—the child?”

  “Well, of course I have no way of knowing that. But he was quite insistent that you be present, although I agreed with him that you have no authorization, not being a social worker. I have his number here. You must call him back and set a time. It will have to be dependent upon you two—how long it will take him to get here and when you can possibly get away from that clinic.”

  Barbara began reciting a phone number. “Wait!” Frantically, Ellen began pawing around the desk for a pen and a piece of paper. As a last impulse, she dragged open the center drawer. It was Catherine’s desk, and Catherine was as neat and orderly and perfect as a saint. Sure enough, scratch paper was neatly piled up inside. She snatched one of the pens and wrote the number.

  “Of course, I must be present, too,” Barbara went on, “so please call me back and let me know what time I can expect you both.”

  “Right.”

  “And in the future, could you kindly consult with me before you do something like this?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I know you will, dear.”

  Ellen tensed. Dear? Oh, she hated saints.

  She disconnected and stared at the phone. Dallas Lazo. She was starting to feel less panicked than overwhelmed. Sweet Holy Ones, she would actually have the chance to talk to the man herself.

  “Ellen?”

  She jumped and looked up to see Catherine watching her from the door of the second exam room. “In a minute,” she said again, impatiently.

  “I don’t have a minute. I really need that vaccine now. This kid’s climbing up the curtains in here and we’re backing up. If you can give him the shot, I’ll just go on to the next patient.”

  “I’ll get Shadow to help you.”

  “But Shadow can’t—”

  Ellen didn’t hear the rest of her protest. She launched herself from the desk and bolted out the trailer door, then she stood blinking in the brilliant sunlight of a desert April. Think.

  First she would get Shadow, then she would drive into Shiprock, she decided. She would make the calls from there, then head south again to the city. It was easily a four-hour drive from Flagstaff. She would still get to Albuquerque long before Dallas Lazo, but that was okay. In fact, it was good. She could have a cup of coffee and pull herself together before she faced him.

  A wry smile touched her mouth. Even she had to concede that sometimes it was best to navigate rather than fly by the seat of your pants.

  “Ellen?” came a curious voice. “What are you doing?”

  She looked around vacantly to see Shadow Tshongely standing on the little porch in front of the other clinic trailer, the one that provided temporary housing for the health-service staff. Catherine had become permanent and had married Shadow’s brother, Jericho, so the house trailer had been standing empty. Shadow’s husband had insisted that they use it for a while. Mac wanted her to be closer to civilization—a relative word on the reservation—and to medical intervention. Shadow was immensely pregnant with twins.

  Now she tried to balance Catherine and Jericho’s eight-month-old son on a hip she no longer had. “What’s going on?” she pushed. “Is something wrong?”

  The ques
tion of the day, Ellen thought. But maybe, for once, things were going very, very right.

  “I need to run into Shiprock, then Albuquerque,” she answered. “It’s an emergency. Can you give Saint—Cat an extra pair of hands?”

  Shadow looked almost dumbly at the jammed parking area. “I can try.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ellen didn’t wait for any more questions. She slid behind the wheel of her old Toyota and cranked the engine, praying. For once, it turned over immediately. A good omen. She shot out of the parking area, dust pluming behind her.

  * * *

  Dallas drove with careful control, keeping his temper at a healthy, steady level and the speedometer needle at sixty-five. As a general rule, cops loved his car. More specifically, they seemed to enjoy chasing down the owners of Jaguars. Dallas’s was seven years old. It had taken him the first six months and four tickets to come to that conclusion. He no longer had a heavy foot.

  Today, however, the needle kept trying to inch upward. It happened whenever he thought about that woman’s voice on the phone.

  Not the orphanage director—what was her name? Barbara something. She had had a soothing, placating, bureaucratic tone, as she damned well should have, Dallas thought. He was in a position to sue her pretty pants off and he hadn’t entirely decided not to. But she hadn’t actually written the letter and it wasn’t her voice that was bothering him like a bad itch. It was the other one. The nurse.

  Ricky chattered beside him. He scarcely heard him.

  He hated people in the medical profession. They had failed him one time too often. But beyond that, when Ellen Lonetree had called back to tell him that she could be in Albuquerque by four o’clock, she had sounded wary—naturally—and breathless. That was the only way he could really describe her voice, breathless, soft, throaty—seductive.

  He remembered another voice like that. It had belonged to a female disk jockey with his favorite radio station when he had been a teenager. She had done a late-night program called Pillow Talk. He had loved that voice, had become so hopelessly obsessed with it that he would lie in bed night after night, listening to her, getting hard practically as soon as she breathed. Then she had announced that she was going to be at the grand opening of a local record store. Dallas had gone and she had been there, all right—all two hundred kinky-haired pounds of her.