The Ashtons: Walker, Ford & Mercedes: Betrayed Birthright / Mistaken for a Mistress / Condition of Marriage

Three

Walker studied Tamra’s profile. He had so many questions about her, about his mother. He was even curious about Lakota protocol. Although he wasn’t sure why.

“Who told you I was looking for my mom?” he asked.

“I heard it through the moccasin telegraph. Someone who knew someone who knew someone else.” She turned onto the highway. “You’re lucky that Mary works at the PHS. That people are familiar with her. It’s not easy to locate someone on the rez.”

“No, I suppose not.” Which was what he had been counting on. “Everything is so spread out.”

She continued driving. By Walker’s standard, her pickup was old, an early-eighties model with plenty of mileage. But it seemed reliable enough. At least, he hoped so. He knew there were places in Indian Country where neither cell phones or CB radios worked. But for now they were still in Nebraska.

“Did you forget about my lesson?” he asked.

“No. I’m just deciding where to start.”

He examined her profile again, thinking how striking she was. Her prominent cheekbones, the slight imperfection of her nose, the way her hair framed her face. Her eyes fascinated him, too. Whenever she looked at him, heat surged through his veins.

A sexual response, he thought. Lust in the first degree.

“We’ll start with respectful eye contact,” she said, making him blink, making him realize how closely he was watching her. “In the old way, you’re supposed to avoid eye contact with your elders. And children were taught not to stare. When you stare at someone, you’re challenging them.”

He glanced away. He’d been staring at her from the moment they’d met. Of course, she’d done her fair share of locking gazes with him, too.

“As for pointing,” she went on to say, “the Lakota gesture with their lips.”

He frowned. “Their lips?”

“Like this?” She moved her mouth in his direction.

He tried it and made her laugh.

“You’re overdoing it, Walker. You look like Mick Jagger.”

He laughed, too. “What other social laws should I know about?” he asked, deciding he enjoyed her company, her relaxed sense of humor.

“Addressing a family member by a kinship term is part of the old way.”

“Like mother, son, daughter? That sort of thing?”

“Yes. But some of the terms are quite specific. Older brother. Younger sister. Male to female. Female to male.”

He leaned back in his seat, knowing this would be important to Charlotte. “What’s the term for younger sister?”

“From a male to a female? Tanksi, I think. Sometimes I get confused. I’m still learning the language.”

Walker nodded. He suspected that Mary hadn’t raised Tamra in a traditional manner. Not after the things she’d said about his mother avoiding the Hunka and other Lakota ceremonies. “Does my mom speak the language?”

“She’s not fluent, but she’s working on it. We’re both trying to make up for the past. For the years we didn’t embrace our culture.” She kept her hands on the steering wheel. “But we’re still not overly traditional. We just do the best we can, trying to respect others.”

Walker tried to picture Tamra in San Francisco, far away from the Lakota. Knowing that she’d chosen SFSU because of him and Charlotte made him feel closer to her. But it made him uncomfortable, too. She’d grown up in his shadow, and now he was struggling to survive in hers.

“Are their different types of Sioux?” he asked, still trying to absorb his culture. “Or are they all Lakota?”

“There are three branches,” she responded. “Lakota, Dakota and Nakota, who are also called the Yankton Sioux.”

“So where does Oglala come into it?”

“It’s one of the seven Lakota bands. It means ‘they scatter their own’ or ‘dust scatters.’” She sent him a half-cocked smile. “But the Oglala have seven bands of their own, too.”

“Okay, now you’re confusing me.” He shook his head and laughed. “So much for Indian 101. This is turning into an advanced course.”

She laughed, too. “It’s not as complicated as it sounds.”

“If you say so.” He glanced out the window and noticed they were on the reservation, heading toward the town of Pine Ridge. He recognized the road.

“What kind of work do you do?” he asked. “What keeps you busy around here?”

“I’m the director of volunteer services for a local nonprofit organization. We supply food and clothing to people on the reservation.”

He raised his eyebrows. “An Indian charity?” Was that the extent of her life? Everything Lakota?

“It’s important,” she countered. “It’s meaningful.”

“Yes, but being the director of volunteer services doesn’t require a marketing degree. Sounds like a waste of your college years to me.”

She gave him a quick, sharp look. “I coordinate media events, too.”

Small-time stuff, he imagined.

By the time they arrived in downtown Pine Ridge, tension buzzed between them. So much for enjoying her company, he thought. For her easy sense of humor. But he supposed it was his fault. He’d criticized her job.

He considered apologizing, then decided that would be dishonest. Her education wasn’t being utilized, not to its full potential. She’d cheated herself by coming back to the reservation, by living on her homeland.

The town of Pine Ridge had one traffic light and four water towers. There was plenty of activity, generated from the Billy Mills Auditorium, tribal offices and the Oglala Department of Public Safety, but Walker noticed that a lot of people were doing nothing, just sitting on a bench, talking away their boredom.

Tamra stopped for gas at Big Bat’s, a convenience store, eatery and gathering place for locals. He’d heard it was Lakota owned and operated, unlike some of the businesses on Pine Ridge. He had to admit it was impressive, something he hadn’t expected when he’d first arrived. But even so, he hadn’t been inclined to hang out there.

The pizza place was in town, too. As well as a taco stand and a market.

“Are you still interested in having pizza with me?” he asked, as they left the gas station. “Or did I blow it?”

“I’ll eat with you. But after we go by my friend’s house, remember?”

Yeah, he remembered. “Is this a traditional friend? An elder? Should I avoid eye contact?”

“Michele is the same age as me. We went to high school together, and she won’t care if you stare at her. She’ll probably like it.”

A smile twitched his lips. “The way you do?”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

She ignored his last comment, so they drove in silence, past empty fields and into a hodge-podge of unattractive houses.

“So what’s the deal with Michele?” he wanted to know. “Why are we visiting her?”

“I’m loaning her some money. Her daughter’s birthday is coming up, and she’s short right now.”

He looked out the window, saw sporadic rows of wire fences, garments hanging on outdated clotheslines. “Is she on welfare?”

“She’s a single mom. And, yes, she receives Aid to Dependent Children.” Tamra’s truck rattled on the roughly paved road. “Does it matter?”

“I just wondered.” He couldn’t imagine not having any money for your child’s birthday. But he knew his parents had been destitute at the time his dad died. If he looked deep within himself, he could recall the shame it had caused him, the feeling of despair.

For Walker there had been nothing worse than being poor.

Michele’s house was a pale-blue structure with a set of worn-out steps leading to the front door. It was, Walker thought, a stark contrast to the diversity of the land. The grassy plains, rolling hills, buttes and mesas. The beauty he’d refused to appreciate.

A little girl, maybe three or four years old, sat on the steps, with a loyal dog, a mutt of some kind, snuggled beside her.

Although a group of older kids played in the yard, he sensed she was the upcoming birthday girl.

“How many kids does Michele have?” he asked Tamra, as she parked her truck in a narrow driveway.

“Just one. The rest are her nieces and nephews.”

Walker watched them run through the grass, tagging each other with laughter and adolescent squeals. “Do they all live here?”

She nodded. “Along with their parents. There’s a shortage of houses on the reservation. They don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He thought about his trilevel condo, the sprawling rooms with French doors and leaded-glass windows. The redwood deck and private hot tub. The enormous kitchen he rarely used.

He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it away from his face, trying to shed the sudden guilt of having money. “That’s a lot of people in one house.”

“It’s a common situation.”

“How common?”

“The Tribal Housing Authority is trying to provide homes, but they have a waiting list of at least twelve hundred people. It’s been like that for a long time.” She turned to look at him. “When I was growing up, before Mary took us in, my mom and I drifted, trying to find a permanent place to stay. In the summer we camped out, but in the winter we had to find some sort of roof over our heads.”

He pictured her as a little girl, living like a half-starved gypsy. “Why are these houses so close together and my mom’s by itself?”

“Mary lives on her family’s land allotment, which is what most families did in the old days. They had log cabins, with gardens and animals.” She sighed, her voice fading into the stillness of her truck. “But as time passed, it became increasingly difficult for people to remain on their land allotments. They couldn’t afford to improve their homes, to stay in the country with no running water or electricity. And some families lost their land altogether, so they had to move into government projects.”

“Like this?”

She nodded. “It’s called cluster housing. It was instituted in the 1960s to provide modern conveniences. But the lack of economic infrastructure created reservation ghettos.” Tamra reached for her purse. “Cluster housing is only a portion of the problem. There are families who still don’t have electricity or running water. People staying in abandoned shacks or old trailers. Or camping out or living in their cars, the way my mom and I did.”

He couldn’t think of an appropriate response. He’d witnessed the poverty, seen signs of it all over the reservation, but until now he hadn’t let it touch him.

They exited the vehicle, and Tamra called out to the older kids. They grinned and waved at her. Walker wondered why they seemed so happy, so lighthearted and free. He could barely breathe.

The little girl on the steps grinned, too. She wore a pink top, denim shorts and a couple of minor scrapes on her knees. Brownish-black hair fell in a single braid, neatly plaited and shining in the July sun. Her feet, dusted with soil from the earth, were devoid of shoes.

When Tamra sat next to her, the child wiggled with familiarity. The dog got excited, too, slapping his tail against the splintered wood. Was the mutt a stray? A hungry soul Michele’s abundant family had taken pity on?

Walker moved closer and crouched down. Tamra told him the girl’s name was Maya. A bit shy, she banged her knobby knees together, ducked her head and gave him a sweet hello.

He wanted to scoop her up and take her home, spoil her with clothes and toys and fancy ribbons for her hair.

But at this point he wanted to take Tamra home, as well. He envisioned spoiling her, too, making up for her past, for the hardship she’d endured.

As she turned to look at him, he considered kissing her. Just a soft kiss, he thought. Something that wouldn’t alarm the child.

The front door flew open, and Walker’s heart jack-hammered its way to his throat. Romancing Tamra was a crazy notion. They’d already agreed they weren’t going to sleep together.

A young, full-figured woman came out of the house and greeted Tamra. Like most of the people on the rez, she had distinct sound to her voice—a flat tone, an accent Walker was still getting used to.

“Why are you sitting on the stoop?” she asked. “Why didn’t you come in?”

“We wanted to visit with Maya first,” Tamra told her, rising so they could hug. A second later she introduced Walker.

But the other woman, the infamous Michele, had already taken a keen interest in him. He shook her hand, and she flashed a smile that broadened her moon-shaped face.

“Where did Tamra find you?” She tossed a glance at her friend. “You show up with this yummy iyeska and leave me in the dark?”

Yummy iyeska?

It was better than being a stupid one, Walker supposed. But since that Lakota word still eluded him, he wasn’t sure how to react.

Tamra didn’t react, either. “He’s Mary’s son.”

“No shi—” Michele started to cuss, then caught herself. Her little girl was watching the adults like a fledging hawk.

Dark eyes. Rapt attention.

“So you’re the boy who was stolen by that mean wasicu,” Michele said to Walker.

He tried not to frown, to let his emotions show. Wasicu. White man, he thought. That was easy enough to translate. “Uncle Spencer raised my sister and me.”

Michele stuffed her hands into the pockets of threadbare jeans. “Well, it’s good to have you here.”

“Thanks.” He glanced at the kids playing in the grass, then at Maya, who still sat on the steps with the big mangy dog. “I live in San Francisco. And I’ll be going home in a few weeks.”

“Too bad.” Michele bumped Tamra’s shoulder. “Ennit, friend?”

Tamra nodded, then made eye contact with Walker. But he knew she wasn’t challenging him. It was a look of confusion, of an attraction that was sure to go awry.

Michele guided Walker and Tamra into the house, looping her arms through theirs. Maya popped up and followed them. In no time the other kids came inside, too, joining their parents, who gathered around a TV set with snowy reception.

Two of the older women bounded into the kitchen and began preparing a snack of some kind. Walker hadn’t expected them to cook for him. With all the mouths they had to feed, he felt awkward about being fussed over. But he appeared to be an honored guest.

Mary Little Dove’s son.

Maya warmed up to him, sitting beside him in a tired old chair. He moved over to accommodate her, and the lopsided cushion sagged under his weight, making him even more aware of his run-down surroundings. The faded brown carpet was worn to the bone, and sleeping mats were stacked in every corner.

He glanced across the crowded room and noticed the exchange of a twenty-dollar bill going from Tamra to Michele. The birthday loan. Walker tipped bellmen at hotels more than that.

He thought about the stocks Spencer had willed to him. Was it blood money? Payment in full? Or was he just lucky that his uncle had given a damn about him?

The Ashton patriarch. The mean wasicu.

The snack was a platter of fry bread, a staple among most Indian tribes, accompanied by bowls of wojapi, a Lakota pudding made with blueberries, water, sugar and flour.

Following young Maya’s lead, Walker dipped a piece of fry bread into the wojapi and realized he was surrounded by people who seemed genuinely interested in him. Still seated in the sagging chair, with Maya by his side, he talked and laughed with Tamra’s friends.

And for a few surprisingly stress-free hours, he actually enjoyed being in Pine Ridge.

The sun had begun to set, disappearing behind the hills, painting the sky in majestic colors.

For Tamra, this was home. The land, the trees, the tranquility. The impoverished reservation. A place she used to hate. But she would never hate it again. She knew better now.

Maka Ina, she thought. Mother Earth.

She glanced at Walker. He sat next to her, watching the horizon. They occupied a rustic porch swing at his mom’s house that complained every so often, the wood creaking from age.

He hadn’t said much since they’d left Michele’s house, but he seemed reflective.

Sticking to their original plan, they’d gotten a pepperoni pizza. But instead of eating it, they’d put it in the fridge, saving it for later, waiting for Mary to come home from work. But for now, their bellies were still full of fry bread and wojapi.

“What’s an iyeska?” Walker asked.

“A half-breed.”

“That’s it? That’s all it means?”

“Yes. Do you want me to translate yummy, too?”

He smiled, just little enough to send her heart into a girlish patter.

When his smile faded, she sensed the hurt inside him, the pain that often came with being a mixed blood. “Michele wasn’t trying to insult you.”

He gazed into the distance, at the land of his ancestors. Tamra waited for him to respond. Somewhere nearby, birds chirped, preparing for their evening roost.

“I know Michele wasn’t putting me down,” he said. “But the first day I arrived, a wino called me a stupid iyeska. It never occurred me that it meant half-breed. In San Francisco, people think I’m this major Indian. No matter how much I downplay my heritage, they still notice, still comment on it. But here I’m not Indian enough.”

“It’s the way you carry yourself, Walker.”

He shifted on the swing, scraping his lace-up boots on the porch. He wore comfortable-looking khakis and a casual yet trendy shirt. A strand of his hair fell across his forehead, masking one of his eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s always been dissention between the full bloods and the mixed bloods on the reservation.” A war she understood all too well. “But sometimes iyeska refers to someone’s attitude, not his or her blood quantum. Full bloods can be iyeskas, too. Indians who think white.”

Edgy as ever, he frowned at her. “Fine. Then that’s what I am.”

“You didn’t seem like an iyeska once you got to know Michele’s family. You seemed like a full blood.”

“I did?” He smoothed his hair, dragging the loose strand away from his forehead. Then he laughed a little. “I really liked Michele’s family, but they weren’t totally traditional. I don’t know if I could handle that.” He released a rough breath. “I’m too set in my wasicu ways.”

“Maybe so.” She grinned at him. “But you’re starting to speak Lakota.”

He grinned, too. “A few words. My uncle is probably rolling over in his grave.”

For a moment she thought his good mood would falter. That his grave-rolling uncle would sour his smile. But he managed to hold on, even if she saw a deeply rooted ache in his eyes.

“What does ennit mean?” he asked.

“It’s not a Lakota word. It’s an interjection a lot of Indians use. Ennit? instead of isn’t it?”

“You don’t say it.”

“I’ve never been partial to slang.”

“Thank God,” he said, and made her laugh.

She looked up at the sky and noticed the sun was gone. Dusk had fallen, like a velvet curtain draping the hills. Beside her, Walker fell silent. She suspected he was enjoying the scenery, too. The pine-scented air, the summer magic.

He interrupted her thoughts. “I almost kissed you earlier.”

Her lungs expanded, her heart went haywire. Fidgeting with the hem on her blouse, she tried to think of something to say. But the words stuck in her throat.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes.” Beneath her plain white bra, her nipples turned hard—hard enough to graze her top, to make bulletlike impressions.

“Would you have kissed me back?”

“No,” she lied, crossing her arms, trying to hide her breasts.

“I think you would’ve,” he said.

Tamra forced herself to look at him. A mistake, she realized. An error in judgment. Now her panties were warm, the cotton sticking to her skin. “We’re supposed to get past this.”

“Past what?” He leaned into her, so close, his face was only inches from hers. “Wanting each other?”

She nodded, and he touched her cheek. A gentle caress. A prelude to a kiss.

She waited. But he didn’t do it.

He dropped his hand to his lap and moved back, away from her. “We are.” He brushed his own fly, tensed his fingers and made a frustrated fist. “We’re past it.”

She stole a glance at his zipper, looked away, hoped to God she wasn’t blushing. “Then let’s talk about something else.”

“Fine. But I can’t think of anything.” He spread his thighs, slouching a little. “Can you?”

“Not really, no.” And his posture was making her dizzy, ridiculously light-headed. She could almost imagine sliding between his legs, whispering naughty things in his ear.

He cleared his throat. “How about San Francisco?”

She fussed with her blouse again. “What?”

“We can discuss San Francisco.”

“You want to compare notes?” She told herself to relax, to quit behaving like a crush-crazed teenager. “About what? Our alma mater?”

He shook his head. “I went to UC Berkeley.”

“Then what?”

“I want to know what happened in San Francisco. Why you didn’t stay there.” A slight breeze blew, cooling the prairie, stirring the air.

She squinted, saw a speckling of stars, milky dots that had yet to shine.

“Will you tell me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, drawing the strength to talk about her baby, the infant she’d buried in Walker’s hometown.

Four

Tamra took a deep breath, fighting the pain that came with the past. Walker didn’t say anything. He just waited for her to speak.

“I had a baby in San Francisco,” she said. “A little girl. But she was stillborn.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. I had no idea.” He reached over to take her hand, to skim his fingers across hers.

She closed her eyes for a moment, grateful for his touch, his compassion. “She’s still there. In a cemetery near my old apartment.”

“Do you want me to visit her when I go home?” he asked. “To take her some flowers?”