Whitehorse Part 24

"That's obvious," Shamika replied softly. "He's crazy about Val, and Val's crazy about him."

Leah smiled dreamily as she recalled the many hours they had lain together, too much in love to think of anything beyond the merging of their bodies and souls. "When we were young we vowed to have several children."

Moving around her, Shamika crossed her arms, leaned one hip against the counter, and waited for Leah to continue.

Leah shrugged and avoided looking at her concerned friend. "He'll want more children, Shamika."

"And that's what's got you worried?"

Looking over her shoulder at Val, watching him struggle to pluck Cheerios off the table, struggling even harder to put them in his mouth, Leah shook her head. "The doctors have already said that I'll always have problems carrying a child full term."

"And you're frightened that this will happen again." Shamika took Leah's hand in hers. "The doctors have a.s.sured you there are remedies for the problem. There's no reason why you shouldn't be capable of carrying a baby for nine months. Besides, it wasn't the premature issue that caused Val's problem. It was the meningitis."

"But we both know that extreme premature babies are at high risk for CP."

"It won't happen again, Leah."

"I just don't think I'm strong enough to go through this again, Shamika."

"So what does that mean? You're going to spend the rest of your life alone, refusing to marry any man who wants children?"

The phone rang and Shamika left the room. Leah followed, hoping Jake had not decided to renege on his decision to give her the day off. She'd promised Val a picnic lunch at the park, Johnny to join them as soon as he finished his business meeting.

Shamika laid the receiver down and looked around. "It's your father," she said in an exasperated tone.

"Leah, darling. Have I caught you at a bad time?"

Leah glanced at Shamika where she stood in the doorway, hands on her hips and terry robe fallen open, revealing her pink flannel nightgown. "No, Dad. Not at all. What a surprise to hear from you this morning."

"I'm in town for a few days and would love to meet you for lunch."

"Gee. I would have liked that, with a little notice. I'm afraid I have plans for lunch."

"Now what, or who, could be more important than your old man?"

"My son," she replied pointedly. "I promised him a picnic at the park."

"I see." A familiar silence ensued. Leah could imagine her father sitting behind a desk in some posh hotel room, surrounded by his fawning aides, stiff as a poker in his dull gray suit, mouth pressed in an effort to contain his irritation over not getting his way. It was that same look that had made her, as a child, dig her heels into the carpet to keep from running from the room-but that would have given him far too much satisfaction.

"What about dinner?" he finally said.

"What's the occasion?"

"Do I need an occasion to share some time with my daughter?"

"Normally."

He laughed, ignoring her sarcasm. "Shall we meet at La Hacienda, say sevenish? That is is still your favorite restaurant, isn't it?" still your favorite restaurant, isn't it?"

She nodded, aware that Shamika was watching her like the proverbial hawk and not liking what she was hearing one little bit. "Fine," she finally responded.

"I'll have a car pick you up at six-thirty sharp. And by the way, we'll discuss that funding idea for the special-needs issue that was recently proposed by your friend-what's her name? Darmon?"

The phone clicked in her ear before she could recover from her surprise enough to respond.

"Leah, if I didn't know better I'd think that man had bugs planted in this house. It's just a little too coincidental that he shows up out of nowhere to see you the very morning after Johnny proposed."

Leah dropped the receiver onto the hook. "You're actually starting to sound like Johnny, as if there is some conspiracy behind my father wanting to have dinner with me."

"Well? Don't you think it's a little little coincidental?" coincidental?"

She scanned the room, feeling a niggling of unease raise the hairs on her arms. There were dozens of photographs scattered over the tables and on the walls: smiling images of Leah and her mother, her grandparents, and Val. A few sickly Boston ferns lightened up dark corners; the sadly sagging sofa and matching chair with ottoman had been the first household items she and Richard had purchased from a garage sale shortly before their marriage. All appeared so normal and safe and familiar: no listening device buried like a reclusive spider within the leaves of ferns or behind heartwarming photographs.

"You've been reading too many Robert Ludlum and John Grisham novels, Shamika. He said he has some time off."

"When is the last time he did that, Leah? I'm telling you, he's come to town for a reason and that reason is you and Johnny."

"Why would he spy on me? I'm his daughter, for heaven's sake."

"It's not you he's worried about, Leah. Is it? It's Johnny that's got him jumpy, and you'd better believe he's going to do whatever he can to make certain Johnny doesn't cause him any more grief than necessary."

"So what has all that got to do with me?"

"If he can't get to Johnny through Johnny, he'll get to Johnny through you."

Leah turned her back on Shamika and retreated to her bedroom, closed the door behind her and leaned against it, her gaze fixed on the unmade bed, sheets and blanket a tangle, the pillow Johnny had slept on still showing the indentation of his head. Even the smell of him lingered in the room, the slightly musky, spicy scent of his cologne, his sweat, the odor of the hot fierce s.e.x they had shared throughout the night.

"No way," she said aloud, shaking her head. "He's my father, for G.o.d's sake. No way could he know about me and Johnny." Closing her eyes, she repeated, "No way."

The idea of picnicking at the park had been a good one: a blanket spread under a tree overlooking the meandering river, enjoying fried chicken, potato salad from the local deli, and Twinkies, Val's choice for dessert, with strawberry Kool-Aid for a beverage. A time to relax, forget about the mounting pressures in their lives, reminisce about the old days, and plan for the new ones, should Leah allow herself to consider Johnny's proposal.

But Leah had no more spread the red-and-white checked blanket out over the trimmed gra.s.s, and Johnny had no more situated Val in his brace on the blanket when a group of teenage girls in brief bikinis and pina-colada-scented suntan oil recognized Johnny, despite his dark gla.s.ses and Roy's old sweat-stained cowboy hat that he had pulled down over his brow, and screamed loud enough to bring every woman with or without a camera running as fast as they could.

Within minutes they were swamped. Women thrust pen and paper at Johnny, and if they had no paper they offered miscellaneous body parts. Leah was forced to collect Val and rush him back to the truck, where they sat in the front seat and watched Johnny fight his way toward them as if he were swimming through piranhas. The blanket and picnic lunch did not fare any better. The blanket was torn into souvenirs and the food was scattered for the ants and lurking squirrels.

By the time Johnny climbed into the truck, slammed the door and locked it, his hat was gone and so were his gla.s.ses. The black-and-orange T-s.h.i.+rt boasting "Apache Rodeo Champions.h.i.+p June 1-5" had been ripped in two places. There were fingernail scratches on his arms and one across his cheek.

He reached for the ignition just as a girl climbed onto the hood of his truck and flattened her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s against the winds.h.i.+eld.

Johnny looked at Leah, his dark eyebrows raised.

Leah covered Val's eyes with her hands and began to laugh.

"This isn't funny," Johnny said, motioning to the girl to get off his truck, then hitting the winds.h.i.+eld wipers, causing the blades to swipe at the girl's nipples. Still, she didn't budge, just pressed her lips against the window and proceeded to tell him exactly what she was willing to give him if he'd just autograph her crotch.

Leah laughed harder as Johnny's face turned red. Her eyes watered and her ribs ached, and the idea occurred to her that she couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so hard.

He s.h.i.+fted the truck into first gear and revved the engine, then popped the clutch, causing the truck to buck like a p.i.s.sed mule. The girl tumbled off the side and Johnny floored the accelerator. The tires spun momentarily on the asphalt, spitting gravel before the truck careened toward the highway, leaving the waving, jiggling, squealing women behind.

Johnny glanced down at Val, who grinned back at him. "You okay, pal?"

"Okay, pal."

He looked at Leah as she bit her lip to keep from laughing again. "What's so funny about getting torn limb from limb?"

"I was just remembering how shy you were in school. You blushed every time a girl looked at you."

"I hate it. What makes women behave like that?"

"That's what you get for posing half-naked on Fifth Avenue and exposing your cute a.s.s on NYPD Blue." NYPD Blue."

"Thanks for your support."

"Hey, you studm.u.f.fins make yourselves into G.o.ds to these women, then you whine because you can't saunter through life with some semblance of privacy. If they weren't tearing your clothes off you'd be whining about their indifference. There's no pleasing you."

"You don't write for tabloids, do you?"

She pursed her lips and looked thoughtful. "I just might if you're not nice to me. I think they'd pay a pretty sum for the juicy details of our meeting last night."

"Just as long as you tell them I'm the best you ever had. I have my reputation to think about."

"Best what?" Val asked, looking from Leah to Johnny, making Leah grimace and Johnny grin like the Ches.h.i.+re cat.

"Friend," Leah declared, tweaking his nose. "Best friend I ever had."

"Val is Mama's best friend," Val announced, giving Johnny a stern look, then smiling. "Johnny can be Val's best friend."

Smiling, Johnny slid his arm around Val's shoulder, and his tone became conspiratorial. "I'll be more than your best friend soon if your mom will stop being so stubborn."

"I'm not stubborn," Leah argued, shaking her head. "I'm simply being ... cautious."

"You've never been cautious. Stubborn, yes. Cautious, no."

"I just don't want to throw open some Pandora's box, Johnny. There's a lot to consider. And if you deny that, that, then you're not thinking with your head." then you're not thinking with your head."

"You sound like my agents."

Leah raised her eyebrows. "Oh? Then I take it they aren't exactly jumping with joy over the possibility of our..." She glanced down at Val who watched her intently. "I just think we need to discuss the situations that might arise. We should take our time. Get to know one another again. We're not the same people we were twelve years ago."

"I know I never stopped loving you," he said softly, and reached for her hand. "Will you sit there and deny to me that you feel the same?"

"No." She shook her head and wrapped her fingers around his.

They rode in silence as Johnny wove the truck through traffic, heavy due to the influx of weekend tourists. He pulled through a Jack in the Box and ordered hamburgers and French fries to go, piled the warm, fragrant sacks of food on Val's lap so the boy could filch himself some fries, then directed the truck down the highway and onto the Mescalero reservation.

Leah said nothing, just watched the mountainous scenery flash by, hardly questioning in her own mind why Johnny would head for the reservation. Like so many years ago, it was the one place he could lose himself. There wasn't a trail, a river, a valley, or a mountain for that matter, that he had not explored thoroughly, mostly to escape his father's drunken rages. Just as he had done after Dolores's death, he would search for and find a place that would provide them emotional comfort and physical security. He needed to be on his his ground to deal with her so-called stubbornness. ground to deal with her so-called stubbornness.

The actual town of Mescalero was a compilation of modern buildings and rock-and-frame structures. Heat radiated off the street and the cracked, meandering sidewalks, bleaching color from the surroundings. A scattering of small stores boasted barriers across their windows, and signs: FOR SALE. OUT OF BUSINESS. CLOSED. Johnny drove by them slowly and pointed to an adobe building with dull red shutters and a bright orange door, the windows broken out despite the lumber that had been nailed over them.

"Bill Crow's place. He sank every dime into it five years ago. His wife made baskets and pottery in back. They netted twenty five thousand last year, enough to send their daughter to college out east. Anna made the finest baskets in New Mexico. They were bought by tourists from all over the world."

Frowning, Leah looked over the weed-infested, trash-littered building. "What happened?"

He pointed to a small grocery across the street-the mom-and-pop sort that roused images of creaky wood floors and penny bubble gum. Ragged, faded GOING OUT OF BUSINESS banners flapped like tattered flags from their moorings on the dusty windows. "Last year Hank and Helen Crookneck finally saved enough money from the store to build them a nice house on the mountain. They sank their savings into the house, but no sooner did they move in than they were forced to close the store. They went bankrupt and are now subsidized by the government."

Turning off the main street, he moved by a parking lot jammed with Native American men, women, and children, all idling under whatever shade they could find, fanning themselves with anything that might provide them a breeze. There were young men with dark, angry faces, old men with haggard expressions, and women who stared blankly out over the countryside, ignoring the crying children who tugged on their skirts that were as faded of color as the GOING OUT OF BUSINESS banners.

The sign posted on the employment office behind them read: Closed until Further Notice By Order of the United States Government.

"The ... government felt that since there really are no jobs to provide these people it would do no good to staff the office. So the office was closed four months ago. These people congregate here waiting for the occasional contractor or builder to come looking for a worker for a few hours or a few days.

"The old men work cheap, usually half of minimum wage. Anything to put food on the table, but the work is hard on them, so the builders are forced to hire the younger men who demand a higher wage. The women will scrub floors and toilets for food for their children. Some of the restaurants in the area will bring them in after closing and pay them with food that was left over from the day's business.

"Two years ago these people looked very different. Their faces weren't hollow and their eyes were bright. The children laughed instead of cried. Two years ago you would not have found these people loitering around parking lots. They had jobs then, working for the businesses that are now closed."

He directed the truck north, following the highway into the hills, through expanses of towering trees where the heat became a cool, dim relief. As the air conditioner hummed and the tires droned, Val's eyes closed and his head nodded. Only then did Leah look directly at Johnny, who stared straight ahead, one wrist hooked over the steering wheel, one hand lying on Val's knee.

Upon exiting the tunnel of trees, Johnny slowed the truck and pulled off the road, onto a vast empty parking lot that wrapped around an expanse of partially constructed buildings, their frames and beams fast being overtaken by wildflowers, weeds, and thistle trees.

Johnny stopped the truck and killed the engine. Without looking at Leah, he reached for the door and said, "Get out."

Leah did not get out. It had occurred to her as she'd studied the weary faces of the unemployed Mescaleros just what Johnny was getting at; the point he would try to make concerning the welfare of his people and their future. A sickness settled in her stomach. The greasy French fries in the sack on Val's lap didn't help, any more than the vision of the Mescalero dream gone bad. The corroding steel ribs of the buildings rising up behind weeds as tall as a man resembled a dinosaur graveyard.

Johnny walked around the truck and opened the door. He offered his hand.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked in a dry voice.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I have no intention of listening to you character-bash my father."

"I don't intend to. I simply intend to show you what a people's failed dream looks like."

She left the truck, easing the door closed so as not to disturb Val. Johnny walked away from her, toward the stretches of partially constructed walls made all the more bleak by the flocks of birds that rose up in a cloud of caws and popping wings from the stark steel structures high over Johnny's head. s.h.i.+vering, Leah hugged herself and glanced at the dark blue sky with its feathering of thin clouds, and the conversation she had shared that morning with Shamika came back to her. No matter how much she wanted to ignore or deny that there were problems between Johnny and her father, the evidence sprawled out before her now was a reminder that there were more reasons than Johnny's career to avoid any talk of marriage.

A fallen billboard lay on the ground. "Future Home of Apache Casino and Resort. Financing by Formation Media."

"What do you think, Leah? This is all that's left of the people's dream."

Johnny jumped onto a pile of rubble, spread his arms and slowly turned. "The casino alone would have offered twenty-five hundred slot machines and two hundred tables, roulette, blackjack, big six, poker. Six restaurants would have offered guests everything from Native American fare to French cuisine-open twenty-four hours a day."

He pointed to an arch of steel beams some distance away. "That was to be the theater where major concerts and gaming tournaments would have been held. It could have seated fifteen thousand. There would have been forty shops selling everything from pottery, baskets, and beadwork, all made by the New Mexico tribes, to designer originals from Paris. The hotel would have had fifteen hundred rooms. An eighteen-hole golf course was planned, as well as a riding stable, a theme park for kids, and an outdoor theater where the People would perform their dances in a setting that represented the different Apache villages of a hundred years ago."

Turning his face into the breeze, Johnny looked down on the crystal-clear lake in the valley below. Sun danced upon the surface like silver glitter. "The lake would have offered swimming, boating, fis.h.i.+ng, water skiing. And in the winter we would have provided trams to the slopes for a day of snow skiing."