Elizabeth had spent an agonizing week and when the returning troops were finally spotted, she joined the other wives who were lined up waiting to see if their husbands had come home safe and well. The men looked exhausted as they came through the gates. They weren’t marching proudly, but limping in on frostbitten feet. It seemed to Elizabeth it took forever for the unfamiliar faces of the volunteers to file past before she recognized the men of Michael’s troop.
Tired as they looked, none seemed to be injured and by the time she saw Michael’s face, her heart was beating at close to its normal rate. He looked as worn out as the others, but he was back, whole and alive, and she offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving before turning away. She could go home now and prepare supper and dream a little of what it would be like to have his arms around her again.
When he walked through the door she was appalled at how thin and drawn he looked. She helped him take off his coat and scarf and hung them up while he was pulling off his boots.
“Here, let me help you,” she said, kneeling down and pulling. The boots were stiff and hard and when she got the second one off, she was upset, to see that his socks were bloody from where his feet had been rubbed raw.
“Thank God, ‘twas only blisters I got and not frostbite,” he said reassuringly when he saw the look of horror on her face.
“Thank God, even if it was frostbite. You are safe and whole and that’s all I care about,” she said as he pulled her up and into his arms.
“ ‘Tis so good to be home, muirneach,” he whispered.
“Your poor face, Michael,” she cried as she reached up to stroke his cheek. “It is almost as red and raw as your feet.”
They both smelled something burning at the same time.
“The soup!” said Elizabeth, pulling herself away.
Michael wanted to say, Damn the soup, but the truth was he was as hungry for food as he was for her and so he let her go.
He ate three bowlfuls despite the slightly burned flavor.
“You look like you lost almost ten pounds, Michael.”
“I am sure we all did. ‘Twas hard going and I was one of the ones breaking through the snow and ice,” he told her, leaning back in his chair.
“Was there any fighting?”
“Only some firing at those who were foolish enough not to pull out of sight after dumping rocks on top of our heads.”
“What was the point, then, of such a march in the middle of winter?”
“The point was to show the ‘Johnny Navajo’ that even in the deep snow we can reach their strongholds,” said Michael with some bitterness. “Surrender or be burned out. ‘Tis what Pheiffer and his men are doing now, burning every hogan and destroying the peach orchards.”
“The peach trees Serena told us about?”
Michael nodded. “Almost one hundred Navajo surrendered to us while we were there. After Carson is finished with them, they will have nothing left to stay for.”
After dinner, Michael excused himself to have a “decent wash,” and Elizabeth cleared the table. She didn’t want to read tonight, she wanted her husband. But he was exhausted. Much too tired to make love to her, she was sure.
When she went into the bedroom, she found him asleep in the copper tub they kept in the corner of the room, leaning back against the rim, his mouth open and gently snoring.
Elizabeth smiled at the sound and shook his shoulder. “Michael, the water is getting cold. You must come to bed.”
He awoke instantly. “Día, I didn’t realize how tired I was,” he said sleepily as she handed him a towel.
“I’ve hung your nightshirt by the stove to warm it. Let me get it for you.”
When she came back, he was sitting on the end of the bed, half asleep again, and she slipped the flannel over his head as though he were a child.
“Lift your arms, Michael. Now get up so I can pull the covers back.”
As soon as she did, he crawled into bed and was out like a light.
She stood there, amused and disappointed. However was she to tell him she loved him when he fell asleep on her! She slipped on her own nightgown and crawled in next to him.
* * * *
They were standing there, sunken-eyed, just looking at him. Their clothes hung from their skeletal frames. They said nothing, just looked at him. There was no expression on their faces, no appeal in their eyes. They were the living dead and he thought he had left them long behind.
Elizabeth was not sure what woke her but she was immediately aware that Michael was no longer next to her. He could have gotten up to relieve himself, she thought. But she lit the kerosene lamp next to their bed and went into the parlor.
He was sitting in the chair, his head in his hands.
“Michael,” she called softly, “are you all right?”
When he didn’t lift his head, she put the lamp down on the table next to him and rested her hand gently on his shoulder.
“Come to bed, my dear, my dear. You’ll get a chill.”
He lifted his head and she reached down and took his hand. When he didn’t immediately respond, she said again, “Come back to bed with me, Michael. Please.”
He could hear the concern in her voice. He would go back with her, he thought. Pull the covers over him. Pull her to him. Fail asleep and forget his dream.
But when they were under the covers, she wouldn’t let him.
“What was it, Michael? A bad dream?”
Just nod, he thought. Just reassure her that he was fine. Just cling to her and he would forget.
But he could still see the faces, so it wasn’t just a bad dream. He needed her to think he was all right, though. So he tried to say, Yes, it was just a dream, but he choked on the words. He was choking on grief and rage that seemed to have come out of nowhere and he started to turn away to hide it. He needed to protect Elizabeth…he needed…. Em, he needed her arms around him, he thought, and he turned back as she pulled his head down and murmured his name. Then he was in her arms and sobbing and she was comforting him.
“Hush, Michael, hush, I am here and I love you,” she murmured over and over.
She didn’t realize what she had been saying until his crying stopped. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to have heard it or not.
When he pulled away abruptly, her heart stopped. He didn’t love her and didn’t want her to love him. But she had no choice in the matter. She had said the words without thought, right from her heart.
He sat up against the wall and she lay very still. It seemed like an eternity before he said anything.
“Elizabeth?”
She could say nothing. He slid down again and pulled her against him. “Did ye mean what ye were saying, Elizabeth?”
She nodded against his chest. And now it was her turn to cry, hard enough so that she couldn’t hide it from him.
“ ‘Tis all right, muirneach,” he said comfortingly.
“It is not all right for me to have told you,” she cried. “Not when you don’t love me.”
“Don’t love you? Don’t love you? Haven’t I been loving you for a long year or more? Haven’t I been hazarding my immortal soul for the love of you, Elizabeth? Why in the name of God do you think I married you?”
“Because we were friends, Michael. That’s what you said.”
“And what else could I have said to a newly widowed woman? That I was dying for love of her? You didn’t need to be feeling responsible for my feelings, Elizabeth. You needed a quiet place to be mourning your husband. You needed a home and a husband’s protection.”
Elizabeth was quiet. He was right. She had needed him as a friend, first and always. But now she also needed him as a lover.
“Do you really love me, Elizabeth. As much as you loved Thomas?” Michael was ashamed of himself for even asking that question.
“So much more than I loved him, Michael. So much more,” she sobbed, turning and burrowing into his shoulder. “I have felt so ashamed of myself that I wanted you the way I did. I never wanted Thomas like that and I felt so disloyal to his memory.”
“I love you, Elizabeth. With all my heart and soul. I always will.”
She could feel him getting hard through his nightshirt. “I didn’t want to make love tonight, Michael.”
“Then we won’t,” he reassured her.
“Because I thought you’d be too tired,” she added.
“Sure and since I fell asleep immediately, why wouldn’t you think that,” he said with a soft laugh.
She reached up and stroked his face. “Do you want to tell me what woke you, Michael?”
He groaned and clung to her. “I can’t speak about it now. Not even to you. Maybe one day….”
Elizabeth pulled herself out of his arms, and unbuttoning her nightgown, pulled it over her head. When he realized what she was doing, Michael took his own nightshirt off. Her body was warm and welcoming and he buried himself in it, taking her slowly and gently. Or maybe she took him. He couldn’t tell and neither could she. When they climaxed, it was together and for the first time the release was as emotional as physical, for they both cried out words of love as they shuddered in each other’s arms.
* * * *
Her uncle’s hogan was burned and the peach trees destroyed. Antonio had told Serena twice, but she still couldn’t take it in. She could close her eyes and almost smell the scent of peach blossoms that filled the canyon in the spring. She could remember how the fuzz of the peach skin felt against her lips when she bit into a ripe one and the sweet juice ran down her throat. Serena had spent all the summers of her childhood visiting her mother’s brother and had expected to bring her children there and watch them climb trees and play in the warm, wet sand of the creek. And they would have brought their children. Something more than the orchards had been destroyed, she realized. The trees were important for something beyond the fruit they bore: they had been there for so many years that they held the memories of past generations and promises for the generations to come.
“So many are going in to Fort Defiance. What will we do, husband?” she asked Antonio that night as they huddled together for warmth. They had taken refuge in a small cave, once the home of the Ancient Ones. It was early to go to sleep, but it was so cold that they had crawled under the few blankets they had and kept the baby warm between them. They had scattered their fire after cooking the last of their food. Firewood was scarce and smoke might have led the bilagaana to them.
“Manuelito will not surrender,” said Antonio.
“I admire him for that. I don’t want to leave Dinetah either. But I do want to eat,” she added sharply. “Manuelito is not the mother of a new baby.”
“Your milk is still coming in strong. We can gather piñon nuts and wild potatoes to keep us going.”
“I feel cowardly, husband. But a new baby makes you feel that way. What I would do if I were alone is different. The soldiers have promised food and clothing at the Bosque.”
“I will leave it up to you, wife,” said Antonio after a heavy silence.
Serena sighed. “Let us see how the winter goes. If we do not have to travel too much and if we can forage enough food so that I can feed her,” she said, stroking their sleeping daughter’s head with trembling fingers, “then we will stay.”
“You are an amazing woman,” said Antonio, holding her close.
“No,” she said tartly, “I am Diné, and no more than you or your uncle do I think it right to leave this land. But I am also a woman who has lost one child. I don’t think I can survive the loss of another.”
“Nor I,” Antonio whispered.