A Long and Winding Road Read online

  But he didn’t like being alone these days, not to read or do anything else. Half the time he and Paloma talked and played and roamed and loved. Half she stayed to herself, face pensive and dark.

  In this way they came inevitably in late April to their last night together. She sent the servants away and cooked supper for the two of them herself, an old standby that was Sam’s favorite, shredded pork in a sauce of green chiles and onions, with goat’s cheese on the side. She got out a bottle of the brandy brought from El Paso del Norte, the region’s finest, and got an early start on it. She set the dining table with her best china and silverware, and they sipped brandy while supper simmered.

  Paloma said to him, “Don’t act like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Long-faced. Not tonight.”

  She looked directly into his eyes. “You know what I want on this night of all nights?”

  “No.”

  “Dumb jokes. Good stories. Maybe a silly game. And love, lots of love.”

  The love of the body, he thought, when your body is dying. “It’s hard…”

  She interrupted. “Nonsense! I will do the hard part tomorrow. Leave what I love most in this world, and my land, Rancho de las Palomas, and my lover, Sam Morgan. But tonight!” Her eyes were wild. “By all that is holy we will have tonight!”

  She danced around the kitchen, skirts whirling. Sam almost believed he heard music.

  Coy gave a little yip. Paloma circled the table, took up the brandy bottle and poured for each of them again. “No sombrio!” Nothing somber!

  “I offer a toast! To everything that is bright, gay, and beautiful!” They drank. Then she began to tell stories of her childhood—not stories that were touching or splendid, but silly ones. The time her mother dressed her beautifully for Easter mass. Then her father took her and Rosa outside to see the new buds of the cottonwood trees, and Paloma slipped in pig shit and sat straight down in it, silk skirt and all. About how her sister, though older and bigger, could never win at king of the hill. About her father’s fondness for puns, and how he embarrassed her mother by making them in front of company.

  To Sam the stories may have been ordinary, but her rapture in telling them wasn’t. After half an hour and three glasses of brandy, she wasn’t telling the stories but acting them out.

  She took a break to stir the chile verde. Then, suddenly, she whirled on him and shoved him half way across the room. Crash!—he landed backward on the dining table. Glasses and dishes flew e floor. The brandy bottle toppled, shattered, and splashed the tiles. Sam’s back and butt told him some silverware or broken china had not, unfortunately, fallen off.

  She jumped on top of him and glared into his eyes, grinning and wild-eyed. “I want you now!”

  They squiggled against each other. She kissed him hard, and he gave her full measure back.

  Paloma reached down, unfastened the belt that held up his breechcloth and leggings, and flung it against a wall. Coy howled.

  She seized the breechcloth and quickly tied his hands with it.

  She looked eagerly at what she’d exposed. Then she jumped him.

  A few minutes later they stopped crying out, quit moving, and cuddled up on the table.

  “Enjoy yourself?” whispered Paloma.

  “I think my ass has been tomahawked.”

  She looked under him and found two forks, tines up. “Whiner!” she said, and snuggled back up to him.

  Later they untangled, and she served dinner. He loved the chile, the cheese, the tortillas, and the flan and strong coffee afterwards. He quaffed another glass of brandy and held the liquor on his tongue. But he could feel his mood change. Tomorrow gnawed at him.

  “Bed time?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She picked up the bottle of brandy, and they headed down the hall.

  They undressed silently. When they crawled beneath the covers naked, he spooned up behind her.

  Mechanically, he caressed her right breast, the one that was healthy, with one hand.

  She wiggled her tail against him. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with this, you’re crazy,” she said.

  “This?”

  “Sam, turn me over, or I’m going to fart on your cock.”

  He was stunned—she had never said either of those words before.

  She twisted her face toward his. Her eyes wild, she made a buzzing sound with her lips.

  He started laughing.

  She flipped over completely, trapped him with arms and legs, and glared into his eyes. “Ravish me!”

  He was frozen.

  “I’m warning you!” She made the buzzing sound again.

  I’ll play!

  He made the same sound, they both burst out in laughter. The laughter bubbled like a creek. Then it sang like a river. Finally it roared like a waterfall.

  As the water sailed into the sky and fell glistening through the air, Sam fell upon her and kissed her in every imaginable way. She kissed him back hungrily. Then she bit him in several places. He took her fiercely, and at the great moment they howled, both of them, mad with passion, wild with love.

  Sometime between midnight and dawn their bodies softened. She put her head on his shoulder. After a while they slept sweetly.

  Sam’s last thoughts were the words to a song he might write, about fixing the stars in the heaven, stopping the moon in its arc across the sky, and making one moment last forever and ever.

  4

  The next morning Hannibal’s caravan stopped at Rancho de las Palomas. This time the train picked up not only sheep, cattle, and grains, but the proprietress herself.

  Sam rode along with them for half a day, to the Rio Grande. When the carts turned south along the river, the shrieking of their dry wheels seemed to speak for his soul.

  Sam and Paloma stopped their mounts and watched the sheep plod by. He held her hand, thinking, This is the last time.

  “Let me go now,” she said, taking her hand back. Everything was in her eyes, more than any words could express, his or hers. She stroked his hair and gave him a light kiss. “My beautiful, white-haired lover. Your gift, the silver dove in flight, it will always be around my neck.

  He looked at it now. Then he spoke the last words he would ever speak to her. “I love you.” He was surprised at how light they sounded.

  She returned the words she had never said to him. “Te amo.” And in memory of last night, or of all they had meant to each other, there was a wild gleam in her eyes. She said, “We did something great. We stole happiness away from time.”

  Then she touched her heels to her mare and moved along with the caravan. She did not look back.

  Hannibal turned and rode back to Sam. For several minutes they sat their horses, side by side, silent. Coy sat beside Sam, fidgeting.

  “I’ll take good care of her,” Hannibal said.

  “I know.” Paloma’s enemies were inside, not outside.

  They watched her get smaller for a while.

  “Down in Chihuahua I found something I thought you’d like.” Hannibal handed Sam a small, wooden box about a foot long.

  Sam lifted the lid. “A telescope?”

  “No. Have a look through it.”

  Sam peered into the eye piece and saw… He gasped. The world was a amazing geometrical design in six-sided shapes and an amazing array of bright colors.

  “Turn it.”

  He did.

  An entirely new world of shapes and colors dazzled his eyes.

  “Turn it again.”

  Another world! He turned the cylinder again and saw a fourth world.

  “Unbelievable,” he said.

  Coy whined, as though he wanted to see.

  “It’s called a kaleidoscope,” Hannibal said. “From the Greek words kalos, beautiful, eïdos, form, and skopeïn, to view.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Optical mirrors reflecting bits of colored glass, not that it matters how it works. Here’s what does matter. No
matter how many times you rotate it, the design never repeats itself. Every image is entirely new. And when you turn the kaleidoscope”—Hannibal pantomimed a turning motion—“the last design, that piece of beauty is gone forever.”

  “My God. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Thanks will be enough.”

  “Thanks.”

  “An old Mexican gentleman gave it to me, an extra after a big trade. Here’s what he told me: ‘The meaning of life is hidden in there.’”

  Hannibal reined his horse Brownie away.

  “Whoa! said Sam.

  Hannibal stopped.

  “The meaning of life?” called Sam.

  “That’s what he said. I thought such a thing should be passed around, so I gave it to you.”

  “The meaning.” Sam couldn’t help smiling a little.

  “Yep.”

  The friends looked into each other’s eyes.

  “Next time I see you, tell me what it is.”

  Sure, thought Sam.

  Hannibal touched his heels to his horse.

  Sam lifted the Kaleidoscope and held it where he thought his friend might be. Only bright colors. He turned it further, in the direction of the love of his life. Bright colors, and no meaning he could see.

  5

  Sam Morgan sat on the bank of the Rio Grande, looking into the water. He didn’t see the light glittering off the swift, faceted waves. He didn’t notice the delicate new leaves of the cottonwoods over his head. He cared nothing for the balmy spring day. The kaleidoscope lay behind him, forgotten.

  He jerked a leaf of sagebrush off a bush and ground it with his molars. He loved the smell of sagebrush and hated the bitter taste. The juice went down his throat and burned. He spat the pulp out and stared at the river.

  The water churned past his feet, making whirlpools and suck holes.

  “Everything is whirlpools and suck holes,” he said to Coy.

  The coyote squealed.

  “You miss her, too, don’t you?”

  The mare Paladin, staked on nearby grass, turned her head and looked at Sam. She was big with foal, and beside her grazed one of her colts. Now larger than his mother, he belonged to Tomás and was named Vici. Tomás took the name from a phrase quoted by Hannibal MacKye, “Veni, vidi, vici”—I came, I saw, I conquered.

  For Sam the coming birth was bitter irony. Six winters and springs with Paloma. Now she was gone to Mexico City to pray before the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe and die.

  “I hate the Virgin of Guadalupe,” he told Coy.

  Coy panted.

  “Why hate?” he asked himself.

  “Why not?” he answered.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Sam jumped at the voice behind him. Then he recognized it—Tomás.

  “Nobody. I’m sitting here until my ass grows a tap root.”

  The boy didn’t sit down, so Sam turned his head curiously. Tomás was one roiled up, pint-sized eighteen-year-old, but right now his face was twice as angry as usual.

  The river still sucked and twisted at Sam’s feet. Coy rolled over in hopes that Tomás would scratch his belly “Sam. Dad. You can’t mope any longer,” said Tomás. “Lupe and Rosalita, they’ve been kidnapped.”

  6

  Sam looked over Paladin’s neck at the little village. It was still smoking. The raiders had set fire to the shacks along the water. The ruined buildings smoldered, and the grass around it was blackened.

  “One of the four sacred peaks of the Dinetah,” said Baptiste. Meaning land of the Navajo. Sam was surprised at how many languages this French-Canadian spoke, or knew a little of. “The New Mexicans call it Cebolleta. The Navajo call it Turquoise Mountain.”

  “Ought to be called Bloody Mountain,” said Sam. A generation ago the Spanish had put a military post and a mission on the east side of the mountain, and were forced to fight a big campaign to keep them. This village, on a lake fed by a warm spring at the southern base of the peak, was a much bigger intrusion into Navajo country. The Dineh knew this place as Tosato, a place celebrated in their sacred stories.

  To the government of New Mexico Tosato was a place to make a declaration. We thumb our noses at you, we claim the land this far west.

  “Bloody Mountain,” Sam repeated.

  He looked at the three riders with him, Tomás, Baptiste, and Sumner. Baptiste and Tomás were veteran trappers, good men to ride the river with. Sumner was far better at dealing from the bottom of a deck than hitting what he shot at.

  “In an affair like this,” Baptiste said, “extra rifles are always good.”

  Shaking his head, Sam said, “I like my men few, hard, and sly.”

  Sumner put an end to the discussion. “This here, it’s about slavery. I’m coming.”

  Sam knew it was a bond. What an irony. Freed slaves everywhere in Sam’s life. Even Baptiste was the son of a slave woman, Sacajawea. My father always said slavery is a curse.

  Now he clucked to Paladin. Coy and three mounted men followed him into the small village.

  So tempting. Offer a plot of ground and a few sheep and goats to the peasants. Make them bait.

  Now Lupe and Rosalita were kidnapped, Joaquin and Ernesto probably dead.

  The four rode into the single lane between the swatch of a dozen huts and the lake shore. The black and crumbled ruins of buildings looked the way Sam felt.

  “Probably drove off the sheep and goats too,” said Baptiste.

  They clopped the length of the lane, and there—

  Joaquin, Lupe’s middle-aged husband, sat propped against the wall of a shack. Sam couldn’t believe the rest: A naked infant sucked on Joaquin’s dry nipple.

  Sam swung out of the saddle, went to the man and child, and squatted, wordless.

  The black-haired baby turned its head and whimpered.

  Sam shook the man’s arm.

  Joaquin’s face was blank. If he had shed tears over his wife, they were dried and gone. He made no acknowledgement of Sam.

  Sam took the baby. A girl, he saw. His mind flashed to Esperanza, his own daughter, living far to the north with her Crow relatives. It’s best for her, he told himself for the thousandth time.

  “Joaquin.”

  Nothing.

  “It’s Sam Morgan.”

  Nothing.

  “We’ve come to help,” he said in Spanish.

  The wrinkled face contorted into a bitter smile. “Too late.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “No. Francesca was born to Ernesto and Rosalita.”

  “Where’s Ernesto?”

  “Dead.”

  “Where are the other men?”

  He shrugged. “Mostly dead.”

  Sam knew one had escaped and ridden to the military post at Cebolleta, probably on a burro, maybe the only burro in the village.

  “Where are the men who are alive?”

  “Walking to Cebolleta. They said they would send someone back.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “I sprained my ankle.”

  “Where are the women?”

  “Taken, every one.”

  “The children?”

  “All taken but Francesca.” His mouth contorted again. “She’s too young to trade for pesos.”

  “Navajos?”

  “Sí.”

  Sure, this would be Navajos. Their land.

  Sam looked at Baptiste. Utes, Apaches, New Mexicans, Chihuahuans—all of them stole women and children, all of them sold human beings, all kept them as slaves. Each tribe’s story was, ‘They started it, we only do it to get even.’

  The New Mexicans, who were Catholics and regarded the Indians as barbarians, took slaves from every tribe and believed they were elevating them to civilization.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Joaquin’s lips barely moved, and the words sounded neutral, numbed. “When the Navajos came, some of us men were gone with the sheep and goats. Others were close by, working in the fields. The raide
rs came very fast, mounted. They grabbed the women and children. Our men, they ran in from the fields, but they had only hoes and knives against bows and arrows, spears, war clubs, and one or two rifles. Now they’re all dead.”

  Sam couldn’t say a word.

  “Those of us out with the herds, we’re alive. Isn’t it wonderful? They left us alive, with nothing to live for.” Joaquin’s emotions were always all over the place.

  “Help will be here soon. Your man got the message through. We just moved out quicker than they did.” It was Sam’s opinion that a handful of mountain men could act faster than any government, with its rules and rigmaroles, and get more done.

  “And why,” said Joaquin theatrically, “should I care?”

  7

  The government of Nuevo Mexico decided to send a treaty delegation to the Navajos. The delegation, well-armed, would be led by former provincial governor Manuel Armijo.

  Sam and Baptiste rode out to Armijo’s rancho to see the great man. Sam left Coy with the horses, and the men trod softly, in moccasins, into the office where Armijo waited.

  Sam’s first words were blunt. Leaving out the friendly greeting “Don Manuel,” he said simply, “We’re going with you.”

  The ex-governor pursed his lips into a half smile and came out from behind his desk. “Greetings, my friend Sam Morgan.” He spoke in English, a gracious gesture. Armijo accepted an introduction to Baptiste Charbonneau. Baptiste’s elegant Castilian Spanish made El Gobernador’s sentences sound unrefined.

  “You are new to our province, and you wish to go with us to the Navajo. I believe that to engage an enemy successfully you must know him. Do you know the Navajo, Monsieur Charbonneau?”

  “I hope to learn, Gobernador.” Baptiste spoke politely, without detectable sarcasm. He did not mention that he spoke Navajo.

  “Have you seen these beautiful blankets?” Armijo picked up a large weaving from the back of a sofa. The ex-governor had a fleshy face with drooping eyelids and a sensuous mouth. “This one is what is called a storm pattern.”