“Because I have a job in L.A. Because I hate it here.” Will smirked.
“Take your pick.”
She had to know it was going to come to this; he’d as much as said it straight out. But to his horror, Cassie gulped back a sob. “You can’t leave me here alone,” she whispered, knowing full well that he could and he would.
When she turned away from him, he stroked his hand over her brow, feeling guilty. Cassie was small and plain, the girl next door; he’d seen a hundred women prettier than she was. He wondered what it was about this woman that could rob his mind of set intentions, that could trap a movie star into marriage.
Will stared at the back of Cassie’s head, forcing himself to remember the way he’d kept his thumb over his grade school report cards when he carried them home, because the students were listed not only by surname but also by the percentage of Indian blood in their veins. He tried to think of the winter he and his grandparents had lived on beef jerky and canned squash because the government rationing program had gotten screwed up.Yes, he thought,I need the distance. But even as Will thought this he lay down beside Cassie until her quivering back was pressed tight against his chest. He did not move against her, not wanting to make this into something it wasn’t. Instead he listened to her heart, and to his grandparents’ soft snores, twisted around each other. He gently covered Cassie’s stomach with his hand. “You won’t be alone,” he said.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
DURINGMarch, while the snow at Pine Ridge melted to little patches and drifts caught between the cottonwood trees, Cassie grew accustomed to the reservation. Because it was her safe haven, she did not see it for what it was—a place with more murders per capita than anywhere else in the United States, a people bled dry by poverty and indifference. Instead she chose to notice how beautiful the nutbrown Sioux babies were, how the mud puddles reflected her growing form, how the sun became tangled in the branches of trees, and how the quiet had a noise all its own.
“You coming or not,wasicuηwi´nyan?”
Dorothea’s voice startled Cassie from her position at the window.
She still did not feel comfortable with Dorothea, but she wanted to get out of the house. “I’d love to,” she said, pulling her coat on and struggling with the tight buttons at the stomach. Dorothea was off from the cafeteria today, and because the ground had thawed considerably, she was going to replenish her store of roots and herbs.
In the weeks that Cassie had been staying with the Flying Horses, she had come closer to understanding them. And although Cyrus and Dorothea weren’t actually friendly, they didn’t cut her down, either; in fact, they went out of their way to make introductions when townspeople eyed her curiously. Cassie was beginning to see that things were different here—that a man might wear the same shirt five days in a row because it was his only one; that a mother was more likely to feed a child HoHos and orange soda than fresh grains and milk. She had altered her concept of time—set hours for breakfast and lunch and sleeping—to Indian time, which meant you ate when you were hungry and you rested when you had the need. And she was growing accustomed to the Lakota scarcity of words. She realized now that unlike whites, who chattered to fill up the spaces in conversations, the Lakota simply believed it was perfectly all right to say nothing. So Cassie moved through the woods in companionable quiet beside Dorothea, listening to the wind and the dry grass crunching beneath her feet.
“Waηla´ka he? Do you see that?” Dorothea called. She was pointing to a familiar tree, still bare.
“Cedar?” Cassie said, feeling she was being tested.
Dorothea nodded, impressed. “It’s too early now, but we boil the fruit and leaves and drink the remedy to cure coughs.”
For the next hour and a half, Cassie listened to Dorothea describe an ancient art of healing. Some of the items were still sleeping through the winter: cattail’s down, which was used like gauze; sweet flag for fever and toothache; slippery elm as a laxative; wild verbena for stomachache. Dorothea brushed off the roots of the false red mallow, which would become a salve for sunburns and open wounds. She picked wolfberry, because it soothed Cyrus’s tired eyes. When she sank back against the trunk of a cottonwood, oblivious to the wet earth seeping through her polyester pants, Cassie did the same.
“I didn’t know you were a medicine woman,” Cassie said.
Dorothea shook her head. “I’m not,” she said. “I just know some things.” She shrugged. “Besides, there is a great deal I cannot do anything about. That’s what a medicine man is for. We have Joseph Stands in Sun—Cyrus introduced you to him in town last week. There are some sicknesses that live here”—she pointed to her heart—”and there are some sicknesses that you can’t heal.”
“You mean something like cancer,” Cassie said.
“Hiya´,” Dorothea replied, scowling. “That’s just something evil in the body. Marjorie Two Fists went into Rapid City and had the cancer cut out of her breast, and she’s been fine for years. I’m talking about something evil. In theton. The soul.” She stared fixedly at Cassie. “The People believe that a baby is born either good or bad. And that is that.
You can make changes up until the time of birth, but afterward it can’t be helped. And a bad baby will grow up into a bad man.”
Dorothea’s eyes bored into Cassie, and she turned away. In a society where someone else’s children were a gift that could grace your own household, how could Dorothea fathom a father who demeaned his son?
A mother who forgot he existed? Cassie wanted to tell Dorothea that her husband hadn’t been born bad; that he had simply been convinced of it so many times he began to act the part.
A cold wind settled over the thicket, taking away Cassie’s thoughts.
She looked at Dorothea’s bulging apron. “You and Joseph Stands in Sun must take a lot of business away from the town doctor,” she said.
Dorothea picked at a twig, splitting the bark to reveal a tiny green bud. “Sometimes it is easier for people to come to me than to make the trip all the way to the doctor; some people don’t trust the doctor.”
“Why?”
Dorothea puffed out her cheeks. “Because we have always had medicine men, I guess, but we haven’t always hadwasicuη doctors.”
“Wasicuη. What does that mean?” Cassie said quickly, recognizing the Lakota word. “It sounds like what you call me. What everyone calls me.”
Dorothea looked surprised, as if an idiot would have picked this up before. “It means ‘white,’ ” she said.
Cassie turned the word over in her mouth, testing its dips and chirps, like a mourning dove’s call. “It’s pretty.”
