Witch Dance, page 13
Sweat poured off Kate’s forehead. By all the saints, would she be equal to the task? She lifted her eyes to Eagle’s.
“I need you,” she whispered.
“I’ll be right back.”
She was only vaguely aware of his leaving. Time stood still as she worked.
“Don’t you worry,” she said. “I won’t let you die. I won’t.”
“Kate?”
Eagle stood in the doorway, his eyes and face tragic.
“Scrub up, then get in that gown and mask and those gloves.” She nodded toward the supply closet. “I’ll need you to take the baby.”
Thank God, he didn’t ask questions.
Who was she, this pregnant woman? And why was Eagle carrying her?
“Her name is Anna Mingo,” Eagle said as if he’d read her thoughts. Kate jerked her head toward him.
“My brother’s wife,” he explained. Over the mask, his eyes held hers.
God would surely strike her dead for the selfish, immoral thoughts she was having even while she tried to save lives.
“I’m going to save your brother’s wife . . . and his baby.”
“I know you will, Kate. Your hands are skilled.”
Hell was tame compared to the fires Eagle Mingo kindled. Kate kept her hands and mind functioning, even while her body went up in flames.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She lifted the tiny, puckered baby from its mother’s womb, and, trembling, held the infant toward Eagle.
“It’s a girl,” she whispered, unaware of the tears streaming down her face. “A perfect baby girl.”
Eagle braced his hands under Kate’s, and together they held the tiny miracle, a miracle that might have been theirs.
For a moment man, woman, and child were bonded by magic, and then reality intruded.
“Suction her while I suture the mother,” Kate said.
“How?”
“That syringe with the bulb.”
They worked side by side until the angry mewling cry of the newborn rent the silence.
There was no basinet for the latest Mingo except a large box lined with towels. With her patient taken care of, Kate prepared the makeshift basinet, then tenderly cleaned the baby while Eagle held her.
All her maternal instincts came to the fore, and she cooed softly to the newborn as she swaddled her in a clean towel.
“Yes, my precious, yes.” There was tenderness in her voice and wonder in her face as she touched the tiny cheek. “You’re a fighter, that’s what you are.” Kate counted the baby’s fingers and inspected her toes. She ran her hands over the tiny rib cage, then lifted her face to Eagle.
“She’s perfect,” she whispered.
Two shiny tears traced down her cheeks. Aching with love and gratitude, Eagle reached toward Kate’s glistening face. She stood in the humming silence, waiting.
To touch her would be to undo everything he’d worked for, everything he believed in. He let his hand drop and pretended to be busy arranging the baby’s makeshift blanket.
“Will Anna be all right?”
“She’ll be fine.” Kate stepped apart, her face a mask of professionalism.
“You saved their lives. The Mingos won’t forget you.”
Nor would she forget them. Especially Eagle. Always, Eagle.
They put the baby in her box then called the boys, who immediately fell in love with their baby sister. By the time Anna awoke, Cole had arrived, breathless and terror-stricken.
“You have a daughter, Cole,” Anna whispered. “Her name is Mary Doe.”
Cole kissed his wife and his baby, then took Kate’s hand.
“I’ll always be grateful to you.”
Standing quietly in a corner, Eagle watched, remembering the sweet burden of the baby and the glow on Kate’s face as she counted the tiny toes.
She glanced across the room then slowly made her way to him.
“Thank you for helping, Eagle,” she said.
“Do you need me for anything else, Kate?”
She stood before him like a long-stemmed rose, and in that fragile crystal moment he hoped she would say, Yes. Yes, Eagle Mingo. Stay.
“No, Eagle,” she said, as he’d known she would. Kate Malone was too proud to beg. “I don’t need you.”
The moment shattered with an almost audible tinkle.
Eagle left her quickly, going out the door without saying good-bye. He got into his car and drove away at a terrifying speed, never stopping until he came to the Blue River.
And when he stood on its banks he lifted his clenched fists to the sky.
“Waka ahina uno, iskunosi Wictonaye,” he cried. “Waka.”
His lonely cries echoed through the hills and came back to him as the howling of a wolf.
With arms outstretched he sank to his knees and hid his face against Mother Earth.
She received his tears, taking them deep into her bosom, where they would transfuse and be sent up to Father Sky. And in the winter when the winds blew cold and the snows piled in drifts over the prairies of Witch Dance, Kate would gaze at the brightest stars in the heavens, never knowing she was seeing the tears of Eagle.
Book 2
The Witch Dance
Up from the waters rose a serpent, spewing his venom over the land,
And neither the hatchet nor the bow nor the cries of the people could break his back.
Stars fell from the sky like tears, and the lamentations of the women echoed over the land.
Two who were brave defied the death dance and were whirled away on the wind.
Chapter 18
Chickasaw Tribal Lands
Autumn 1994
“Can’t catch me . . . can’t catch me,” Bucky chanted as he ran.
“Can too . . . can too.” Mary Doe was right behind him.
Nothing ever stopped his little sister. She could do anything a boy could . . . almost.
Bucky glanced over his shoulder. She was gaining on him, and if he didn’t do something quickly, she was going to win. Surefooted as a mountain goat, he stepped onto the narrow footlog that crossed Witch Creek.
Mary Doe wouldn’t dare follow him, because she was afraid of heights.
Beneath him, the water skipped over the pebbles. Brown leaves and a rusty tin can floated by. And one big fish, belly-up.
Halfway across, Bucky turned to stick out his tongue at Mary Doe.
“You think I’ll let that old creek stop me, Bucky Mingo. Watch.” Mary Doe rolled up her jeans and waded into the water.
“Mary Doe! Don’t.”
“I’m not going to let you win.”
“Mama said don’t play in the water. It’s too cold.”
“It’s not cold . . . see?” Holding her nose, she plunged under.
Bucky felt his heart sink. Mary Doe was sure to win now. She could swim like a fish.
He ran as hard as he could across the log, but Mary Doe got to the other side first. She was waiting for him on the bank, wet and grinning.
“I won.” Bucky could see a big gap where her front tooth was missing.
He’d worried when Mary Doe first got that hole in her smile, but Daddy had said when he was little his teeth fell out too. Not to worry, he’d said, they would grow back.
“I knew that all along,” Bucky had told his daddy. “I was just checking to see if you did.”
Of course he hadn’t exactly remembered the details, but he certainly didn’t remember looking as ugly as Mary Doe with that big old hole in her smile.
Now she stretched her mouth from ear to ear, grinning because she beat him.
“I’m telling,” he said, feeling mean. “I’m telling you went swimming when it wasn’t even summer.”
Mary Doe stuck out her chin. Daddy always said she was the stubbornest of the bunch.
“If you tell, I’ll beat you up,” she said.
“You can’t whip me. You’re a sissy.”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
“Bucky! Mary Doe! Stop that fussing and let’s go.” Clint climbed down from the tree, shoved his knife back into his pocket, and took their arms. High up in the tree, where he’d been sitting, a newly carved heart shone white against the bark. C.M. loves L.W., it said. “Nobody’s going to tell anybody anything, understand?”
Clint looked as fierce as that old bobcat Bucky had seen up in the mountains the previous fall. He’d be glad when he got to be thirteen so he could boss everybody around.
They sneaked Mary Doe in the back of the house so Mama wouldn’t see her wet clothes. Later, after they’d all gone to bed, Bucky was dreaming about running across Witch Creek, winning.
“Bucky Bucky . . .” He opened one eye. Mary Doe was standing by his bed in her pajamas. “I don’t feel so good.”
“It’s ‘cause you got cold in the creek, Mary Doe. Hush up and go back to your own bed.”
“No, I really don’t.”
She fell onto the floor and just lay there.
“Mary Doe,” he whispered. She didn’t respond. “Mary Doe.” Bucky jumped out of bed and knelt beside his sister. She didn’t move.
Suddenly he didn’t feel too good either.
“Mama!” he yelled. “Daddy!”
His head got dizzy, and he felt the floor coming up to meet him.
o0o
All the beds in the clinic were occupied. Three years earlier, when Kate had added the six-bed unit to the clinic, she’d never dreamed it would have two people at one time, let alone six.
She moved from bed to bed, checking pulses, studying charts.
“Kate?” Deborah appeared in the doorway, her skin dark against the crisp white of her nurse’s uniform. “It’s the Mingo children.”
“Pull their charts, Deborah. I’ll be right there.”
After Deborah left, Kate stood amid the white beds and pressed her hand over her heart. The Mingo children! Not them too.
“Everything is going to be all right,” she assured Anna and Cole later as she examined the children, but in her heart she knew it wouldn’t. All the signs were there. The yellow-hued skin and eyes, the fatigue, the brown-colored urine sample.
Viral hepatitis. The same as all six children in her clinic.
Something terrible was happening to the children of Witch Dance.
“They’ll need total bed rest and medication. I’ll move two more beds into the clinic.”
“This outbreak of hepatitis is getting serious, isn’t it, Kate?” Cole asked.
“Yes, it’s getting serious.” She patted his hand. “But don’t you worry. I’ll take good care of your children.”
“You always have.”
Five years before, he’d been her biggest critic. Now Cole Mingo was her biggest supporter—and had been since the night Mary Doe was born.
Working side by side with him, making room for two more beds, Kate remembered how he’d gone all over town, making amends.
“She saved the lives of my wife and my baby daughter,” he’d told the townspeople one by one. “If it hadn’t been for Dr. Kate Malone, they’d be dead.”
First they made small concessions to her. Deborah’s father started leaving the cash register and greeting her personally when she went into the general store. Women who had avoided her on the streets turned to smile and wave. Small gifts began to appear on her doorstep—a loaf of freshly baked bread, a pair of beaded moccasins, a chocolate cake. Then old Mrs. Martin, who owned the needlepoint shop, stopped her on the street one day and handed her a sampler. HOME SWEET HOME it said.
“Take it,” she said, smiling her toothless smile. “It’s yours.”
And that was Kate’s official welcome to Witch Dance . . . six months after she’d arrived.
The sampler still hung in the reception room of the clinic. Everybody who came in remarked how kind Mrs. Martin was to make it for Kate, and Mrs. Martin herself called attention to it if nobody else noticed.
“See that,” she’d say, pointing a bony finger at the framed piece of needlework. “I did it for the medicine woman. I’m the first one in Witch Dance who ever did a thing for her.” Then she’d point to the knots on her fingers and lean over to whoever happened to be sitting next to her. “See that. Arthritis. The medicine woman gives me magic pills made from sunshine to make it go away. Not many women with arthritis can make a stitch as good as Bethany Martin.”
Kate treated their colds and their stomachaches and their headaches. And by the time Eagle Mingo was officially elected to replace his father as governor of the Chickasaw Nation, she was too busy to care.
Almost.
Sitting in front of the television, she’d watched him address the Tribal Legislature for the first time.
“We remember the greatness,” he said. “We remember the ancient times when the rivers ran sweet and clear, and the verdant forests yielded up their game to us. We remember the swift bark canoes and the bison dances and the sacred fires. And remembering, we are proud.”
With her bare feet tucked under her, Kate leaned toward the television, intent on Eagle’s face. Even the poor reception couldn’t mar the high, elegant cheekbones and the fierce eyes. Eagle Mingo was more than proud: He was noble.
“But we must not immerse ourselves in memories, or we will grow dull and stagnant. We must move forward. We must put all our intelligence and all our willpower to bear on merging old ways with new so that we go into the twenty-first century triumphant . . . as we have always been triumphant.”
Eagle paused to lift his fists upward. Kate held her breath, waiting.
“Unconquered and unconquerable!” he said.
The Chickasaw motto rang around the chambers, and the crowd roared.
“Eagle! Eagle! Eagle!”
The camera followed him as he left the podium and mingled with his people. They reached out to touch him, calling his name . . . just as she had done once.
“Eagle,” she whispered, but there was no one to hear. The camera cut to a commercial, and Eagle was lost to her.
Kate huddled on the sofa and cried until she was too weak to move. Then she dried her tears and swore she’d never cry for him again.
She’d kept her word. She hadn’t cried for him since, not even on those rare occasions when their paths had crossed.
“I’m scared,” Mary Doe said, bringing her back to reality, and Kate moved toward her bed. “I want my Mama and Daddy.”
“Shh, it’s all right, sweetheart. I’m here.” She pulled up a chair and sat by the little bed.
“Will they come back to get me?”
“Yes. They’ll come back to get you.”
“You won’t leave, will you? I’m scared of the dark.”
“No, my precious.” She took the small, feverish hand. “I won’t leave you.”
Mary Doe’s long eyelashes fluttered down to her pale cheeks, and soon she was fast asleep.
“Do you want me to stay tonight?” Deborah asked.
“No. You go home and get some rest.” Kate surveyed the room. Eight little beds, all in a row. “I’ll stay.”
The bell over the front door tinkled when Deborah left. Kate made rounds, then ate a light snack and returned to Mary Doe’s bedside. A sliver of a moon was riding high in the sky, and its pale glow fell across the child’s face.
How still. Like death.
Shivers ran down Kate’s spine, and she knew she had to be watchful. Death had beat her once. She wouldn’t let it win again.
o0o
The moment Eagle had scrupulously avoided finally came. In seeing his beloved niece and nephew, he would at last see Kate Malone. Alone. Without the buffer of large crowds. Long after everyone had gone home, Eagle left his office in Ada and headed toward the clinic.
He found her sitting there, by the bedside, her hair aflame in the moonlight. As he stood in the doorway, the five years they’d been apart vanished, and he was borne away by memories as vivid as yesterday.
As if she sensed his presence, she turned her head slowly. At that moment he couldn’t have said whether the greater agony was in being with her or being apart. Her eyes held his, burning, until he had to look away.
“Hello, Eagle.” Her voice was neutral, as if they had never held each other while they soared toward a black and gold sky.
“Kate.” He moved silently to the opposite side of his niece’s bed. “I heard about the children. How are they?”
“It’s viral hepatitis.”
He reached for Mary Doe’s tiny hand. Wary, he and Kate watched each other, connected by the still form that lay between them. After five lonely years, finally connected.
“So many beds,” he said, mentally counting.
“It’s approaching the epidemic stage.” She talked to him calmly, as if she didn’t feel the heat, didn’t see the sparks. “Have you heard of any cases in Ada?”
“No. Apparently this disease is confined to Witch Dance.”
In the bed next to his sister, Bucky stirred.
“Uncle Eagle?”
“Yes, Bucky. It’s me.” He knelt beside his eight-year-old nephew’s bed and smoothed the dark hair back from the child’s flushed face. “How’re you doing, pal?”
“Not too good . . . I’m scared.”
“It’s all right to be scared. Only the foolish are never scared.”
“I’m not foolish . . . but I did lie.”
“About what?”
“’Bout swimming in the creek. Mama said not to.”
“When I was a little boy about your age, I told a few whoppers myself. And so did your daddy.”
“Sure ‘nuff?”
“Sure enough.” Eagle smoothed the child’s hair once more. “Now, you get some sleep. I’ll be right here.”
How natural he was with children, Kate thought. How wonderful. She hated him for taking that away from her, for denying her the joy of seeing his tender love for the children she would have borne.
Children she would never bear. And all because of him. Eagle Mingo had spoiled her for any other man.
And now, there he was, not six feet away from her, sexy and delicious, making her melt inside with the same quick, hot lust that overtook her the summer of ‘eighty-nine. That still overtook her.
She hated him for that too.
