There was nothing about Alex in the mouth, in the shape of the fingers and feet, in the length of the torso. It was almost as if the lack of contact had diminished Alex's mark on his own infant.
The baby burrowed closer to Cassie, demanding her heat. And she thought about how she was his only means of support--for food and shelter and warmth right now, and later, for love. He would come to her when he drew his first crayon picture, coloring half the kitchen table as well. He'd hold out a scraped elbow and believe a kiss could quit the sting. He'd open his eyes every morning and know, with that sunny childhood certainty, that Cassie would be there.
He needed her, and that, Cassie realized, was the way in which he most resembled Alex.
But this time, being needed wasn't going to be synonymous with being hurt. This was her second lease on life. She and this baby were going to grow up together.
Will touched the baby's hand and watched his fingers close like a summer rose. "What are you going to call him?"
The answer came to Cassie so quickly she realized that she had simply been carrying it all along. She thought of the very first time she had been loved by someone who wanted nothing in return. Someone who had given her enough hope to believe, years later, that Alex still might change, that there might be someone like Will, that a child might consider her his very world. "Connor," she said. "His name's Connor."
WITHIN TWO WEEKS CASSIE WAS LIGHT ON HER FEET, JOYOUS. AFTER carrying around so much extra weight, she could not get used to the spring in her step. But she also knew that part of it came from a decision made only hours after she had given birth to Connor. She wasn't planning on leaving, not immediately. Maybe three months, maybe six, maybe longer. She told herself she wanted Connor to be strong before making the trip, and none of the Flying Horses challenged her. In fact, Cyrus had given her a traditional cradleboard as a baby gift, and when he passed it across his own bed, he had simply looked her in the eye. "It will be nice," he said, "to take him to next year's powwow."
She was going to contact Alex as she'd promised; she owed it to him, but she had put it off for a week, and then Will's truck had broken down and she didn't have a way to get into Rapid City. So, blissfully free from her obligations, she sat on the porch with Dorothea, shelling peas for dinner.
Connor was in his cradleboard, swaddled tight, wide awake. Most of the day he slept, so Cassie was surprised--she'd just finished feeding him and he was still alert, his light eyes surveying the landscape.
"Giving up your nap?" she asked. She popped a pea into her mouth.
"You," Dorothea scolded. "We won't have enough for tonight."
Cassie put her bowl to the side and stretched out, lying back against the rough pine boards and staring at the sun. She could not look at it now without thinking of Will, of the puckered pink scars that still frowned across his chest.
Connor started to cry, but before Cassie could even sit up, Dorothea had clapped her hand over the baby's mouth. Startled, Connor widened his eyes and fell quiet.
Dorothea took her hand away and looked up to see Cassie staring at her, furious. "What the hell do you think you were doing?" Cassie demanded.
It felt strange to be so self-righteous on someone else's behalf, especially when motherhood was such a new thing, like a pretty party dress you could take out of your closet and try on but felt nervous about wearing around all day. "He was crying," Dorothea said, as if this explained everything.
"Yes, he was," Cassie said. "Babies cry."
"Not Lakota babies," Dorothea replied. "We teach them early."
Cassie thought of all the archaic family values she'd run across in cultural anthropology, including the Victorian tenet that children should be seen and not heard. She shook her head.
Dorothea looked surprised herself. "I know it used to be done in the days of the buffalo because if one baby scared a herd away, the whole tribe would go hungry. I don't know why we bother anymore."
"Well, I'd rather you didn't," Cassie said stiffly. But she was thinking of all the times she had lain beside Alex in the dark, stifling tears of pain. She remembered hearing the sound of his hand striking her, and her intake of breath, but never hearing a cry. She considered the lesson she'd learned in her marriage: that if you were quiet and blended into the background, you were less likely to make waves.
She glanced at Connor, peaceful, willfully silent. One day, in the long run, it was a skill he might need.
The truth of that nearly broke her.
CASSIE SAT IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT OF ABEL SOAP'S JEEP, BENT FORWARD at the waist as if she'd been punched in the gut. She had borrowed the jeep to come to the feed and grain in town, which housed the nearest pay phone. Talking to Dorothea earlier had convinced her she could no longer put off the inevitable. She would call Alex and tell him where she'd been all this time. She would have to trust him with the truth.
The thought made her slightly dizzy. There was no proof Alex had changed during the past six months, no indication he wouldn't lash out at her--and Connor--during a rage. She had left Alex so that her baby wouldn't suffer before it was born. How could she even be considering taking Connor back now?
Her mind raced. She could leave Connor with Dorothea and Cyrus and go back to Alex herself, for a little while, just until she saw that things had changed. If she did it soon, in the first few months, Connor might never know the difference. But she couldn't leave Connor. She'd only too recently discovered him to be able to let go.
She got out of the truck and walked into the store. Horace waved as she struck through the cluttered aisles toward the pay phone. For several moments she held the receiver in her hand, as if it had the same power and irrevocable impact as a loaded gun.
When Alex's voice came over the line, her milk let down. Cassie watched the dark patches spread on her T-shirt and hung up.
A few minutes later, she tried again. "Hello?" Alex said, irritated.
"It's me," Cassie whispered.
She could hear the background noise--water, or maybe a stereo--being switched off. "Cassie. God. Did you just call?" Alex's voice sounded round, filled to a bursting point with shock and joy and relief and other touches she could not name.
"No," Cassie lied. This time, she could not let him sense her indecision. "You're all right?"
"Cassie," Alex said, "tell me where you are." There was a silence. "Cassie,please ."
She ran her fingers over the cold snake of metal that connected the receiver to the pay box. "I need a promise from you, Alex."
"Cassie," Alex said, his voice low and urgent, "come home. It won't happen again, I swear it. I'll see anyone you ask me to. I'll do anything you want."
"That's not the promise I need right now," Cassie said, stunned by the sacrifices he was willing to make to his pride just to have her return. "I'm going to tell you where I am because I don't want you to worry, but I want to stay here another month. I want you to swear to me that you won't come till then."
He was thinking of what she could possibly be doing that would require another month away: some underground activity, or a delayed visa, or a calculated goodbye to a lover. But he forced himself to listen. "I swear," he said, digging for a pen. "Where are you?"
"Pine Ridge, South Dakota," Cassie murmured. "The Indian reservation."
"Thewhat ? Cassie, how--"
"That's it, Alex. I'm going to get off now. I'll call in a month and we'll figure out how and when I'll come back. All right?"
No, she could hear him thinking.It is notall right. I want you here, now, mine . But he didn't say anything and she took this as a sign of hope. "You won't break your promise?" she asked.
She could feel him smile sadly all those miles away."Che`re," he said softly, "you have my word."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CASSIE pressed herself across Connor's fiery, wriggling body, pinning him to the examination table while two white nurses straightened his flailing arms to draw blood. Her head was just below Connor's mouth, and he was screaming conv
ulsively, his chest rising and falling in exaggerated rasps. Before they began, the nurses had asked her if she wanted to leave the room. "Some parents can't take this," one said. But Cassie had merely stared at them, incredulous. If she fainted right on top of her baby, so be it. "I'm all he has," Cassie said, the best explanation she could offer.
It was killing her. She couldn't stand to see his tiny form shaking with fever; she couldn't listen to cries that--even three weeks after his birth--seemed to come from deep inside of her. Cassie watched the vials of blood flow one after another. "You're taking too much," she whispered to nobody. She did not say what she really was thinking:Take mine instead .
The clinic doctor in Pine Ridge town had sent them to the hospital in Rapid City. Too young, he had said. Bacterial something or other. Maybe pneumonia. The nurses were asking the lab to do a full blood workup. Then there would be an X ray. They would keep Connor overnight, or as long as it took to bring down his temperature.
Cyrus, who had driven her all the way to Rapid City, was waiting downstairs in the lobby, unwilling to go any farther into the hospital after having watched his son die in it. So when the lab returned the results, she sat in a thin metal bridge chair, alone with Connor, who was connected by wires and tubes to a portable IV machine. He was being given saline solution, with an antibiotic. The doctor had pronounced him dehydrated, and this Cassie knew to be true, since her breasts were aching and had long since leaked through the front of her shirt. Connor had fallen into an unconscious exhaustion a few minutes before, and Cassie found herself wishing she could do the same thing. She thought of all the times she'd offered her body to Alex rather than see him suffer, and shook her head at the fact that this one time, when she so gladly would have taken the pain to spare Connor, she was not given the chance.
The door to the tiny room flung open, and Cassie turned her head with a slow grace born of fatigue to see Will standing at the threshold, his eyes wide and dark, his chest heaving. "My grandfather called," he said. "I came as soon as I could."
He took in the image of Cassie, straight-backed, feet wrapped around the legs of the frame chair, her arms clutching Connor to her stomach. He saw the little brace on Connor's arm, the point of the needle beneath the white surgical tape where it entered the vein, the fingerprinted smudge of blood on the baby's forearm.
Cassie looked up at him. Will threw his hat onto the linoleum and knelt at her side, turning her face against his neck and sliding his arms beneath hers in an effort to buoy Connor."Ceye sni yo," he said. "Don't cry. It's all right." He smoothed her hair and felt her tears soaking his collar.
Cassie's fingers gripped and released his light chambray shirt. Will tenderly brushed a kiss over the top of her head, forcing himself not to remember his father lying pale and fading in a hospital bed a few floors above them. He held his fingers to the folds of Connor's neck, seeking the simple pulse, and tried to act the way he thought he should in a situation he knew nothing about.
"DO YOU TRUST ME?" WILL ASKED FOR THE SECOND TIME.
Cassie stared at him from the other side of the hospital Isolette, a domed plastic bubble that had sealed her away from her child for the past two days. In spite of the Tylenol and the pediatric ibuprofen and the sponge baths, Connor's fever was still alarmingly high. The doctor had as much as said he didn't know what to do.
Cassie nodded and watched Will's face split into a dazzling smile. He came around to her side of the Isolette and held his hands over the warm plastic dome. From that angle, his stretching fingers blocked Cassie's view of the lines and tubes that were invading her son's body. She stared up at Will as if he'd already worked magic. "Do whatever you have to," she said softly. "Whatever you think will help."
The doctor was paged to tell Cassie this wasn't a wise idea, but she simply shook her head and leaned back slightly, where Will was standing for support. She watched the interns disconnect the IV from Connor. As she held her child again in her arms, his eyes opened for the first time in forty-eight hours.
"At least take this," the doctor urged, pressing into Cassie's free hand the tiny dropper of infant Tylenol. Cassie nodded, turned, and with Will, walked out of the hospital that had done nothing at all for her son. She very gently got into Will's pickup truck, careful not to jostle Connor. And as soon as they were on the open highway, she threw the bottle of medicine out the window.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, IN THE FLYING HORSES'LIVING ROOM, they sponged the heat from Connor's little body. Then Cassie pushed aside her nightgown so that the baby could nurse. Will sat across from her, his fingers stroking the hot smooth skin of Connor's bowed calves.
They laid the baby down in the middle of the fold-out bed when he fell into a fitful sleep, and then they sat, cross-legged, on either side of him. Outside, a brisk wind picked up, and a truck roared into the darkness.
"Is everything ready?" Cassie asked.
Will nodded, then rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "My grandmother says she's taking care of it." He started to speak, but hesitated and looked up at Cassie. "I don't have any right to tell you what to do. I'm not his father. If it doesn't work," he said, "I'll never forgive myself."
He was so intent on his thoughts that he did not notice Cassie getting off the bed, coming to stand behind him. He felt her tentatively touch the back of his head, her fingers thread through his hair. And his back stiffened involuntarily as he realized thatCassie was reaching out forhim .
He did not turn to look at her. "What are you doing?" he said, angry at the rough edges of his voice.
Almost immediately Cassie lifted her hand away, and Will swung around. She wrapped her arms around herself. "I--I needed--" Her voice broke, and she lifted her eyes to meet Will's. "I just wanted someone to hold me," she said. "Please."
The simple fact that Cassie had asked such a favor of him nearly brought Will to his knees, but that soft-spoken "Please" at the end of her sentence broke him. He stood up and folded her into his arms in one swift motion, pulling her against his hips.
After a few minutes Will stepped back, pushing Cassie against the edge of the bed. He let her stretch out on her side, facing the baby, and then he lay down close behind her. He pillowed her head on his arm and together they watched Connor's measured, ragged breathing. He mindlessly whispered Lakota endearments he knew Cassie could not understand, phrases he thought he had forgotten long ago. He fell asleep mouthing the words"Waste cilake," Sioux for "I love you," and did not hear the last thing Cassie said before she too drifted off. She had been looking at Connor, at the tipped curve of his nose and the tiny perfection of his fingernails, and feeling behind her the warmth of Will's body, like a safety net. "No," she had murmured past the constriction of her throat, "you'renot his father."
JOSEPH STANDS IN SUN WAS LYING PRONE ON THE SAGE-STREWN floor of Cyrus and Dorothea's living room, wrapped in a star blanket, pretending to be dead. The furniture was sitting in the front yard, so there was plenty of room even outside the string-cordoned sacred square for the onlookers. They sat on the floor, their backs to the four walls. Some of the people Cassie recognized as neighbors. Others were there simply to lend support during thisyuwipi ceremony, the finding out and curing of ills.
Beside her, Will squeezed her hand. Connor was lying in his cradleboard, no better than he had been when he left the Rapid City hospital. It had been four days now, four days of a spiraling fever and frightening convulsions and endless cries. When Will had driven up to his grandparents' house late last evening, Dorothea was waiting on the porch. She came down to the truck and held out her hands for Connor so that Cassie could step down easily. Clucking her tongue, she shook her head. "No wonder," she'd said knowingly. "This isn't the kind of sickness white medicine can fix."
Joseph's grandson, who sometimes acted as his singer, was chanting theyuwipi songs and beating the ceremonial drum. He stood in front of the makeshift altar, on which sat Joseph's buffalo skull, a red and a black staff, an eagle feather, and a deer tail. There was no lig
ht in the room, unless one counted the strips of moon that had made their way inside.
Cassie was dizzy, and she didn't know if it was from simple exhaustion or the overwhelming scent of the sage, which carpeted the floor and was worn in the hair of every onlooker. Will, who had done his best to explain the ceremony to Cassie before it began, had said that sage was the sacred plant of the spirits. Any messages they brought to Joseph, the representative of the "dead," would be carried along the sage.
In the shifting currents of the night, shadows and sounds filled the living room. The noises were high and strained, inhuman, urgent. "The spirits are here," someone said, a voice Cassie had never heard before but that could have been entirely familiar, could even have come from herself. She felt her shoulders pushed out of place by the ringing cry of an eagle, and although she squinted her eyes to see better, she could not tell whose hand had flung a string of stars across the ceiling. She kept one arm linked with Will's, the other wrapped around the frame of Connor's cradleboard, as if she feared that something might steal him away. But she could hear his deep belly giggle, and she turned to see his clear, shining face being brushed by the softest of wings.
When the ceremony was over, the lights were turned on and Joseph Stands in Sun was unwrapped from his star quilt. He shook the sage from the handworked pattern, taking his time to fold the quilt and rearrange the collection on the altar before he came toward Cassie. But instead of speaking to her, he walked to Connor's cradleboard and knelt in front of it. He pressed his hand against the baby's forehead, then reached for Cassie's wrist and urged her to do the same.
Connor was flushed and sweating, but making soft, happy sounds that buffeted through her heart. His fever had broken. Amazed, Cassie turned her face up to Joseph's.
"U yelo. His father is coming," Joseph said simply. "Like you, his body was burning with a fear of the unknown."
BEHIND THE FRAYED CURTAIN THAT SEPARATED THEIR BEDROOM from the rest of the house, Cyrus and Dorothea were still wide awake. They lay on their backs staring at the ceiling, their bony fingers knotted together between them.