SIX
When Sully’s breathing became quiet again, Michaela took a few tentative steps in his direction. Now, like some disembodied spirit, he drew away from the tree, turned, picked up their sleeping pallets, and dropped them open in the general area of the fire. He pushed the coals together a bit and added one log. Without a word he lowered himself to one of the pallets, stretched out, locked his hands under his head, and closed his eyes.
Feeling wholly shut out, Michaela stood gazing at him. A glance at the empty pallet confirmed that he had spread them randomly and without thought. Hers was three feet from his and at an odd angle. She had assumed they would sleep in the lean-to, but no matter. In the open was fine, but no way was she was going to spend this night with such a distance between them. Quietly she relocated the second pallet besides his and slowly stretched out on it.
Sully’s arms were still above his head. Michaela lay motionless, her arms at her sides, trying to fathom what was transpiring in her husband’s soul. Pain? Of course. Sorrow? Undoubtedly. Regret? Perhaps. She felt at a complete loss to know.
Now, in slow motion, his arms came down from over his head and he settled them at his sides, the one between them touching hers. Two fingers reached out and closed over a couple of hers.
Both were so deeply in the grip of their emotions that their state of dress never crossed their minds. Besides, sleeping thus fully clothed was nothing new for them, but rather the norm when their travels involved anything other than an excursion with romantic intent.
But tonight sleep was the furthest thing from their minds. It was almost as if the immensity of what had happened to them a year ago was just now descending upon them with its full force. In the midst of the crisis itself, all their mental and physical energies had been focused on functioning, on staying alive, on hanging on from one tenuous moment to the next, on finding a way for Sully to be exonerated. And after Sully came home, life had crashed in on them with brutal force when Michaela was shot.
Now, looking back from the vantage point of one year, the magnitude of the catastrophe was overwhelming. Sully still did not remember falling from the cliff. He was grateful that his mind had chosen to bury that memory beyond reach. How he had survived the fall he could not tell. Given the severity of his injuries and his physical condition at the point where his memory once again kicked in, he could imagine no possible way that he had not been killed upon landing. Now, being confronted with the pain his family had experienced despite his survival felt like being kicked in the gut.
Michaela stared into the darkness and tried to shake the fresh realization of how close she had come to being a widow. What if Sully had landed on a rocky surface, as Sergeant O’Connor had? For her, the magnitude of the catastrophe had in one sense been real from the beginning. From the first moment, her husband had been missing, and he continued to be “missing” from her daily life for months to come. The emptiness of that time, of those interminable nights alone in their magnificent wedding bed, still haunted her.
“Sully?” she whispered, “Are you asleep?” She knew from his breathing that he was not. His only response was to squeeze her fingers. “What are you thinking about?”
He was silent for a long time. Finally he whispered, “Nothin’ I feel like talkin’ about.”
The words themselves stung, but the tender way in which he said them softened the sting. Torn between her longing for a glimpse into his heart and her promise that he did not have to talk if he did not want to, she was silent. Why wouldn’t he talk to her, at least give her some idea of what he was feeling? Why did he always want to confront his feelings alone? Did he really not yet understand that when people marry, they become a part of each other?
Eventually sleep claimed her, but it was not a restful sleep. In her dreams she seemed to be chasing herself around rocky rivers, high barren cliffs, and empty beds. Wind hummed in her ears and moisture dampened her face. Where was Sully?? She had to find him! A gentle rain awoke Sully in the middle of the night. At first he thought he was dreaming. Then the murmur of the wind and an accompanying chill brought him awake. Michaela was stirring restlessly.
“Michaela! Wake up, Michaela. We gotta get under the lean-to!”
Groggily they got to their feet and picked up their pallets. Sully spread his, then took hers and laid it close by. “Hurry!” he said as he nudged her in and they began to lie down in the small space.
He grabbed the blanket, which earlier had been tossed carelessly into the lean-to, and shook it open. As it settled on them, he drew Michaela into his arms and lay back. There would be no more sleeping apart tonight! Sleep had done its gentle, healing work on the tense emotions of their earlier conversation. For now, the shelter of the lean-to, the warmth of the blanket, and the comfort of each other’s bodies was all they cared about.
They knew they would have to talk more, even Sully did. But for now, all they wanted to do was seek rest for their bodies and their spirits in the warm security of their love.
SEVEN
Morning found neither of them eager to wake up or to face the day. They both knew the other was awake, but neither said a word. The rain had stopped, but the world outside the lean-to was soaking wet. Oblivious to the moisture and the two humans, the morning bird chorus was busy tuning up for the day.
Michaela lay with her eyes closed, unable to shake the memory of Sully, his back to her, despair in his stance as he leaned against the tree. For the first time it occurred to her that this effort to talk about the past year might have been a mistake. Her goal had been to ease or heal their pain, not magnify it. She could not understand his reactions. Didn’t he want to know what had transpired for his family during his absence? She wanted to understand, but if that was to happen, she needed his participation.
Sully, his arms still around his wife, was fighting his own battle. Grateful as he was for the time he could not remember, the weight for him of the pain of Michaela’s memories seemed worse than his own memories would be if he had them. The fact that his actions had caused his family so much suffering had haunted him beyond bearing while he was a fugitive. In the months since his exoneration, occupying himself with the activities of a busy life had allowed him to relegate those ghosts to some seldom-visited back closet of his mind. He was just now beginning to realize how much he had done that.
And now those ghosts were pounding on the closet door, demanding to be acknowledged.
The ground was hard beneath the pallet, and his body had begun to ache from lying in one position and holding Michaela so long. Moving and repositioning himself were a necessity. He drew his arm from under her head and, almost in unison, they rolled onto their backs and stretched to release the stiffness of the night. In the process, their eyes met, but no smile passed between them. Instead, when they were still again, he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them gently.
Michaela could stand the silence no longer. Neither could she bear the distance all this was putting between them. “Sully?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t care if we don’t talk any more.” She paused. “I’m sorry I started it. All I want to do—” now she turned towards him, a soft light in her eyes — “all I really want to do is to love you, to feel your mouth and your hands doing all those wonderful…”
She stopped. He had rolled on his side to face her, his own eyes soft and slightly moist. The back of his fingers caressed her cheek, then one finger delicately traced her lips. Then he lowered his mouth slowly to hers. In the soft light of dawn the kiss was at once gentle and intimate and intensely erotic, a slow and quiet nurturing of their love, a renewing of the bond between their souls. Here in their own private trysting place on the vast mountain, Michaela basked in the pleasure of it, all thought of discussion vanished.
She was not prepared for Sully’s next action.
After a sudden, fierce deepening of the kiss, he wrenched his mouth away and looked hard into her eyes. “So now you wanna forget about talkin’, huh?”
She grinned and raised one brow suggestively.
“No,” he said, firmly but gently. “If we gotta talk, I say let’s do it and get it over with.”
Her mouth opened in surprise, but he closed it with his own in a final, decisive kiss, then dropped once again onto his back and folded his hands behind his head.
Speechless, she waited.
Finally he spoke. “I s’pose ya wonder why I ain’t been much on talkin’ about all this.”
“Not really, “she began, “I—”
He cut her off. “I ain’t wanted to talk about it because I been tryin’ not to think about it.” It was a hard, clear pronouncement.
“I don’t like to think about it either, and I know it isn’t pleasant to remember—”
“So why do ya wanna get it out and talk about it?” he asked, his voice rising slightly.
A long pause. Finally, “I wish I could say,” she began slowly, “that I am sorry for asking us to…to do this, but…but I’m not. I am very sorry for the pain it seems to be causing you. I didn’t intend for that—”
“You didn’t think it would be painful for me?” The note of incredulity in his voice pricked her heart.
“Of course I assumed it would be painful. But not…but not…this much.”
“You thought hearin’ about the pain I caused my family wouldn’t upset me?” Now a hint of anger tinged his voice.
For a moment she was speechless again. Then, “Sully! I said we don’t have to speak of this any more if you don’t want to!” She glanced sideways at him, but he was staring stonily at the gray morning sky.
“Sully? I thought that talking about it would help to ease the pain. I’ve always believed that talking things out helps. I thought you did, too. I thought we could comfort each other—like we did about the miscarriage—and then we would both feel better. I thought—”
His silence was so total that she finally stopped, desperate for some sign of response from him. Finally he spoke, each word punctuated by pain.
“You cannot imagine what it was like being locked away from my family and accused of treason by my own country.”
A shaft of pain pierced her heart. After a long moment, “No, I can’t imagine it, Sully. But…that’s what I want to hear—what it was like and how you felt.”
Am I ready for this? she wondered, and her heart whispered that her love would see her through.
EIGHT
Dawn changed to day while they talked. The morning grayness slowly dispersed, and in time welcome sunshine kissed their faces.
When he tried to clothe his thoughts with words, Sully found he still wasn’t ready to speak of the treason or being a fugitive. But in the face of Michaela’s gentle, caring love, he found something he did feel able to talk about.
“When I first hauled myself out of the river,” he began, “I was in so much pain and mental confusion that I couldn’t think clearly. I think I must have slept or drifted in and out of consciousness for almost a day before my mind cleared enough so I could figure out what I had to do.”
Michaela rolled toward him, and he opened his arm so that she could lay her head on his breast and nestle close.
“I realized the first thing was to get somethin’ to drink and then to set my leg. Took me a while to figure that out!” He almost chuckled.
“Tell me again how you did it,” she asked softly, and he described step by step what he had done.
“Incredible!” she breathed, shaking her head. “I never cease to marvel how you figured that out. And I never cease to cringe at how painful it must have been!”
He paused before answering. “It was so painful, I think it was almost another day before I was able to think about gettin’ around and gettin’ somethin’ to eat.”
Any number of times over the past year he had fascinated the children with his accounts of how he had dressed his wounds, sought out plants and birds’ eggs to eat, and carved out his crutches. But the one they begged for most was always how he had actually eaten wiggly worms from a log.
“So for a few days at least you didn’t feel too bad?”
“Yeah. I thought I was doin’ a good job of stayin’ alive, and I figured that before long someone would find me. Only I kept stayin’ away from the obvious places cuz I didn’t want the wrong folks findin’ me!”
“We looked,” she said simply. “We looked, and looked, and looked.”
As comfortable as she was nestled against his heart, Michaela was becoming painfully aware of the hard earth beneath her hip and shoulder. As she gently pulled away and sat up, he did the same. She swung herself around so they were facing each other, their bent knees touching.
“Looking for you was…was…I can’t even find a word to describe how hard it was! A part of me kept insisting you must be alive, but that was mostly because I couldn’t face the idea that you might be…might not be…alive,” she finished lamely, unable to bring herself to say the word. Their eyes met briefly. “But all the while, I knew that we were—that everyone was really looking for…for a …corpse.”
Silence reigned for a long moment. Finally Sully spoke. “I knew that by stayin’ outa sight, by makin’ myself hard to find, I was makin’ it hard for the people who I wanted to find me. But…I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Did you have any idea where you were?”
“Not really. I’d been in those woods before, but not often. The first couple of days, I figured I’d soon come upon somethin’ familiar—but it never happened. And then…and then my physical condition began to deteriorate.”
She looked at him now, and her eyes filled with tears. The thought of him alone, in desperate need of medical care, his condition weakening, was more than she could bear. They gazed at each other, their hearts in their eyes and then, as one, their arms reached out and they embraced. With the sun warm on their backs and a gentle mountain breeze caressing them, they clung together.
It was not a clinging of desperation. It was a clinging that said, “We’re together! We did not lose each other!” It was a clinging that radiated a measure of comfort through their very beings.
When they drew apart, their faces were wet with mingled tears. She caressed his cheeks and wiped the moisture with her thumb. Framing her face in his hands, he gently kissed the tears from her cheeks. They grinned at each other tentatively. Suddenly she said, “I’ll bet you’re hungry! We haven’t eaten anything yet, have we?”
He nodded, and they agreed to make breakfast. With everything wet from the rain, she assumed there would be no fire, but he surprised her. From the back of the lean-to he brought forth three pieces of firewood that he had stashed away under extra brush. She complimented him on his resourcefulness. While he worked up a fire, she folded the blanket, prepared the coffee, and got out the remaining bread and cheese.
After they had eaten, he suggested they take a walk. As it had been last year, the meadow was a riot of color. Not wanting to crush blossoms beneath their feet, they walked along the edge. For a while neither said anything. Both were still processing the things they had heard. Finally he spoke.
“When I began losing ground physically, I began feelin’ some desperation. I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t come.”
Startled, she glanced up at him. “But you must have known we were looking! We were spending every daylight hour—”
“That’s what I had been sure of!” he interrupted. “But when the body is giving out on ya and ya have no way to stop what’s happenin’…ya begin to wonder.”
Once again, the vision was too painful, and Michaela drew a deep breath. “So what did you do?”
“Nothin’ I could do! I even…I even—” he stopped. She glanced at him again, but he stared resolutely ahead. “One night I was lyin’ there so weak I could hardly move. Picturin’ you in my mind had kept me goin’ every time before, but that time…that time, I found myself wonderin’ if ya had stopped searchin’ and…” his voice trailed off, “and had gone off with Daniel.”
She swung on him to protest vigorously, but he put his hand up to stop her. “No, Michaela! Desperation’ll do crazy things to a person’s mind, especially when the body is losin’ its ability to fight.”
She thought about that and then, much to his consternation, she burst out laughing. Seeing the incredulous look on his face, she hastened to explain.
“I know what you mean, Sully! I know exactly what you mean. When we looked day after day after day and found no trace of you, the thought actually crossed my mind once to wonder if you had survived the fall and…and had just decided to walk away from your life with me and the children!”
His mouth opened in disbelief, and then they were both laughing.
NINE
During his recovery, Michaela had shared with Sully her vision of the white flower and her sensing of his presence. He had told her about calling out her name as he felt his strength draining from him. More than once he had recounted to her and the children how he had crawled under the uprooted tree for protection from the rain.
Now, surrounded by a cocoon of his wife’s love, he felt ready to open his soul as he never had before. He took a few steps to a nearby tree and leaned against it. Michaela stood before him, waiting, but his eyes were on his feet. Taking a deep breath, he said,
“It took the last ounce of strength I had to get under that tree.” She caught her breath and held it. “I knew I was doing it for more than just protection from the rain.” Now he looked up and met her eyes. “I knew I didn’t have much time left.”
She closed the space between them, and his arms folded tightly around her. He sighed deeply before whispering huskily in her ear, “I kept thinkin’ about you, tryin’ to keep myself awake… tryin’ to hang on…The last thought I remember havin’ was of you smilin’ at me in your weddin’ dress while I pulled the shades down on the train…”
It was one of those moments that would live forever in their memories. Frozen in time and framed on all sides by both pain and love, desperation and devotion, it was so vivid that it would never dim.
At last she drew back and looked up into his eyes. Just before his mouth came down hard on hers, she caught a glimpse of relief and release, and her heart experienced a moment of grateful song.
They walked for a while in silence after that and eventually came upon an outcropping of rock with an inviting view of the valley below. As they made themselves comfortable, Michaela knew it was her turn to open her heart.
“During that week we looked for you, my heart was like stone. I almost made myself sick trying to eat, yet I knew I had to do it if I was going to have strength to keep up the search. Each time we found hope, my heart soared, and each time the hope dissolved, my heart crashed. I felt like I was being slammed against walls in several directions at once. At night I ached for you so much, I couldn’t sleep. I used to hug myself with my arms as tight as I could, just trying to make the emptiness and the ache go away.”
The memories and the sharing were coming more easily now. She recounted again her terrible panic when he stopped breathing, and he talked about the fragmented memory he had of coming to when she cauterized his leg. They even chuckled together when she described the looks on the faces of the three watching males when they realized what she was about to do with the red-hot poker.
The sun was high in the sky when the conversation drifted to Cloud Dancing and how he had managed to escape before Sergeant O’Connor came on the scene.
“Sayin’ good-by to him tore my heart out,” Sully said. “I knew he barely had the strength to stay on a horse, and I was worried that his wound might still become infected.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I was worried about him, too.”
“In fact, I suspect my mind was on him when I let Sergeant O’Connor sneak up on me like that.”
She looked at him, surprised, but said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Another moment of silence, and then he said, “You know I never meant for there to be an insurrection.”
The words hung in the mountain air, suspended in the sunshine as they both knew immediately that this new territory could carry them into a tinderbox of emotions.
“All I knew was I had to get Cloud Dancin’ outa there.”
“I know that.”
“I had no idea what the other Indians were plannin’.”
“I believe that, too.”
“When I think of all the preparations I made, roundin’ up horses, stockin’ supplies—”
“And you kept it all from me!” she broke in. “I never understood how you could do that!”
“I had to keep it from you!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t want you knowin’ information that would get you in trouble later!”
“Are you sure it wasn’t just that you didn’t want interference from me? That you didn’t want me attempting to talk you out of it?”
He stared hard at her, trying to fend off the angry reactions that were surging in on him. When he spoke, it was in measured tones and carefully chosen words.
“Sure I knew ya wouldn’t approve. But that was because ya didn’t understand the situation as fully as I did.”
“Didn’t understand!” She too was trying to reign in her emotions, alarmed that they were charging away on their own, threatening to destroy the treasured interlude of sharing and healing they had just come through. But her efforts seemed in vain. “I was the one who treated Cloud Dancing when he was beaten to a pulp! I saw how badly he was injured—long before you saw him!”
She paused, but she found she could not restrain the question that was about to leave her lips. “And just when was it that you saw him and started all that talk about helping him and the others break out?”
So here it was, the question he had always known would someday come. He knew that telling her would release another round of demons, but he suddenly felt too weary to battle with it any more. The weight he had carried for more than a year seemed too heavy to endure any longer.
“I slipped out and went to the reservation at night when you were sleepin’.”
The information was even more painful than she had anticipated. She struggled to process it. The idea that he had left their bed, had stolen away from her very presence to break his vow to the Army and set in motion the events that would nearly tear their family asunder in the months to come….
Suddenly she had to get away. Her mind was in control enough that she refrained from lashing out at him or giving voice to her thoughts, but she began scrambling down from the rock where they were sitting.
“Michaela!” Sully was on his feet. He started after her—and stopped.
“MICHAELA!”
Now his voice was anguished, pleading, not for her understanding but for her not to walk away from him, not to shut him out.
TEN
It was the anguish in his voice that stopped her.
She froze where she was, her back to him, her head down. He made his own way down and stopped behind her, his hands limply at his sides. “Michaela?”
She put her hands to her face, and her shoulders began to shake. With one sweeping motion, he turned her around and clasped her tightly in his arms. Awash in pain and anger and fear, they clung to each other, knowing that only in each other lay their hope of healing.
She raised her eyes to his and demanded through angry tears, “How could you have lied to all of us like that?”
His face fell, but before he could say anything, she continued, “It was one thing for you not to tell me what you were doing, but…but in order to keep it from me—us, you had to lie to us!”
She pulled forcibly away from him and again turned her back. He had agonizing flashes of an-other time when she had shut him out in pain and anger, when she had said she couldn’t “be with him.” An old pain reared its ugly head. But surely not now … not after all the love they had shared and the commitments they had made!
He held his breath as she slowly turned, glanced at him and then away, shaking her head. “Sully, I don’t want to talk to you like this!” she said through tears. “I love you too much! Frankly, when you were injured and a fugitive and all, I stopped thinking about all this. Perhaps I shouldn’t have started in on it again.”
He let his breath out in a long sigh. “You started in on it again,” he said, “cuz it’s still hurtin’ ya inside—an’ that’s reason to talk about it.”
He held out his hand. “Look, I think we need to make our way back to the lean-to and get ourselves some coffee and something to eat.”
She nodded, smiled wanly, and put her hand in his. On the way, he picked some meadow flowers and made a tender, comical show of presenting them to her. She thanked him with a stronger smile and a lingering kiss.
They said little while they ate and cleaned up. A covering of clouds had taken over the sky, and a chill wind had risen. He offered to make a fire, but they decided to wait until evening. Instead, they wandered into the woods where the trees provided some protection from the wind. There they came upon a large fallen tree, and he motioned for her to sit on it. Then he vaulted the log, took his place behind her, and began to massage her shoulders. What I wouldn’t give for the hot springs at this moment! he thought.
Each was reluctant to take up the conversation again. Finally Sully spoke.
“I can’t imagine what it would have been like if you had come chargin’ at me about all this when I was recoverin’.”
She shuddered at the thought, thankful that love and common sense had prevented her from doing anything so destructive.
He continued, “But now I think we need to—”
“Sully, maybe all this talking wasn’t a good idea after all. I mean, we’ve been doing fine with-out talking about it all these months, and I certainly don’t want to start driving any wedges between us now!”
He worked her shoulders in silence for a while. Finally he said, “Do you remember what ya first did to my leg when you found it so infected?”
The apparent change of subject startled her. “Yes, but—”
“Tell me about it again,” he insisted gently. “Well, I…I first had to clean the wound…”
“You had to do more’n that.”
“Well, yes. Some of the tissue was already so infected and foul that I had to cut it all away or it would have spread the infection further.”
He waited, giving her time to contemplate his analogy. After a while he said, “Gettin’ these feelin’s out—both yours and mine—and talkin’ about ‘em is painful, that’s true, just like it was when you cut away the diseased flesh on my leg. But if we don’t do it, there’ll still be festerin’ goin’ on inside.”
Marveling at his wisdom, she turned and motioned for him to come and sit beside her.
“Thanks for working on my shoulders.”
“My pleasure, ma’m.” He paused a moment and then went on. “Now that you started this talkin’ thing, I think you got a point. And I think we gotta finish it—” She looked like she might protest, but he put his hand up gently to silence her. “I know I wasn’t keen on doin’ it, and I know it won’t be easy. But it we do it real calm and adult-like, if we try to help each other, I think …at least I hope…we’ll end up better for it.”
She wasn’t as sure as he, but she had learned long ago to respect his wisdom. Now she would trust it and hope he was right. “Okay…so what do you suggest?” she asked.
“How about goin’ back to where you started before …about the lyin’.”
She expected him to continue, to defend himself. When he didn’t, she began reluctantly, “The fact that you lied to us about all those things really hurt me, Sully—and it still hurts if I let myself think about it!”
He picked up a stick and began tracing nondescript patterns on the forest floor. “Who did I lie to?” he asked, gently but deliberately setting her up.
“Who!” she cried. “You lied to Loren—you even lied to your own son! I have no idea how many others!”
“I ain’t happy about that,” he admitted. “I wasn’t happy about it back when I done it. And somethin’ that bothered me even more was that my friend Robert E had to lie, too, on my account.”
“I lost count of how many times I had to lie to protect you!” she put in heatedly.
After a moment he said, “But I never lied to you, Michaela.”
She stared at him, first in surprise and then in frustration. “So do you think that makes the other lies okay?”
“‘Course not! Ya gotta know me better’n that, Michaela!” Genuine hurt laced his voice.
“Yes,” she admitted, chastened, “I do. I’m sorry. But, Sully, you went directly against every-thing I had said! You did exactly what I had pleaded with you not to do!”
He said nothing, but his tempo with the stick had become agitated.
“What made it so confusing and painful,” she continued, “was that all the deceit, the breaking of promises, the outright.…” Words failed her. “It…it just didn’t seem like …like the honorable man I’ve always known!” she finished in a rush, gesturing helplessly with her hands.
He exploded to his feet, startling her. Snapping the stick in his hand, he heaved it as hard as he could at a nearby tree. Now it was his turn to stand with his back to her, a silent pillar in the shadowy forest.
“Sully?…”
No answer.
Like a delicate morning flower, understanding unfolded for her. As he had helped her through turbid emotional waters an hour before, she must now forget herself and try to help him.
If she could figure out how.
And if he would let her.
ELEVEN
Slipping up behind him, she caressed his back. “Sully? If you want to talk, I’m listening. Or if you’d rather take a walk … or anything…”
He turned slowly and gathered her in his arms. “I need some holdin’ ” was all he said.
She was more than willing to comply. Their bodies melded together as one, rocking gently in the arms of the sheltering forest, drawing solace and strength from the love that had sustained them through every imaginable challenge in the years since they had found each other.
When they drew apart, what she saw turned her heart over. He looked like a man torn between two forces—a strange combination of small, lost boy and fearless warrior. She reached up and touched his face.
“What can I do to help?” she whispered.
“You’re doin’ it,” he whispered back, his voice ragged. “Just be here with me.”
He took her hand and they began to walk, aimlessly, unaware of anything but themselves. Leaves rustled overhead, birds called to each other, and small forest creatures took cover at their approach, but they never noticed.
Finally he spoke, his voice a little more steady. “To hear ya say ya didn’t find me ‘honorable’ …” the pain in the words hung like a shroud over them both… “throws me back into the battle I fought with myself every day I was a fugitive.” Now each word came slowly, precisely. “The reason I did what I did is because I believed it was the honorable thing to do.”
He paused, expecting her to jump in with some protest or argument. When she did not, he finally understood that she had been serious about wanting to know what had gone on, not just in the cave, but in his heart. The realization gave him courage to continue.
“Knowin’ what my Cheyenne brother was goin’ through, livin’ out his life on that reservation, at their mercy, bein’ turned into a travesty of his true self—it tore me up inside every day I lived. When he got so ghastly beat up, so unjustly…” He paused, already fatigued with the effort of giving voice to the dark journey he had traveled.
He tried approaching it from another angle. “I abided by the Army’s order to stay away from the reservation—you know I did! A whole year! And I would have kept on doin’ it if it would have helped Cloud Dancin’! But my obeyin’ did not do one thing to prevent what they did to him!”
His voice had risen, and his torment echoed through the timbers. He drew a breath and resumed a little more slowly. “Suddenly it seemed to me …I was bein’ some kind of a coward for not comin’ to his aid.”
Now he turned to her, the blue of his eyes crystal sharp as they bored into hers. “Can you comprehend that at all, Michaela?”
The very suggestion that she did not understand his pain over Cloud Dancing hurt deeply. Now they were even—but it was not a time to keep score.
“I understood how much you ached to help him, Sully. But—”
“But ya didn’t understand … ya didn’t know when I got to the point where wantin’ to help was no longer good enough, right?” The statement could have been an accusation, but she chose not to see it as such.
“No, I wasn’t aware when you reached that point, Sully. And you thought you couldn’t tell me.” It was at once both a statement and a question.
“That’s right—an’ I still don’t think I should’ve. If you’d known what I was up to, not only would you have tried to stop me, but think what it would have been like when Sergeant McKay and Sergeant O’Connor confronted you!”
“By that time, I had a pretty good idea of your involvement!” Both their voices were rising, and they turned on each other. Emotions flashed in eyes as well as voices. “And,” she continued, “yes, it made it very difficult when I had to face the military, like when they came storming into our home smashing things and scaring the children to death!”
Little had been said to him about this, and his face registered dismay. Ignoring it, she charged ahead with a new thought.
“Tell me, Sully,” she demanded, “if you had known what the outcome would be—your nearly getting killed and your family suffering your absence for six months—would you still have done what you did?”
The question stopped him cold, and he stared at her. At the same moment her question echoed in her own ears, and she wanted desperately to call it back.
“Sully, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said that!”
He swung away from her in frustration and then back again. They stared at each other, and in the same moment both realized with regret how far they had strayed from their resolution to address all this in a calm and adult manner. If the topic of their conversation has been less somber, they might have broken into laughter. As it was, each gave the other a guilty half smile, and Michaela said,
“Guess we forgot our resolution, didn’t we?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Yes. But I don’t think that’s surprisin’, considerin’ we’re talkin’ about such painful things.”
“So what do we do now?”
