Silk and Stone (11 page)

“Alexandra has offered to hire a private speech therapist for her. But it means we’d have to stay in Pandora, maybe for months.”

Jake heard nothing but silence for what seemed like a long time. Finally Mother said, so softly he had to cup a hand behind his ear to catch it, “You take your little
girl and go back to your husband, Frannie. Your sister is closing doors faster than you can
even find
them.”

“No, I swear, it’s not like that. I can’t turn down a chance to give my child all the help she needs.”

“Don’t you get it, Frannie? Alexandra doesn’t want her sister married to an army sergeant whose parents worked in the mills. Dukes don’t marry into a class of people they
own
. And I’d bet money that Carl figured that out a long time ago. He’s got to hate the fact that you came back here to ask for your family’s help.”

“He does,” the lady answered, her voice so sad it sent shivers down Jake’s back. “But everything will be all right if Samantha learns to talk.”

“Carl agreed to let you stay here awhile?”

“He said”—the lady made a snuffling sound—“he said I’m looking for excuses to give up on our marriage. But I’m
not
. What kind of marriage do we have as long as he blames me for Samantha’s problem? I blame myself too.”

“Let’s get down to brass tacks.” That was Father’s voice, deep and calm. Jake felt proud. Granny had always told him and Ellie that Father had a gift for looking at only one tree at a time.
He can’t see the forest for the trees
. That was how Granny put it. “There’s no love lost between your sister and the Raincrow family. From the day she married Sarah’s brother, she’s caused nothing but hard feelings. I suppose as long as she holds on to William and the old ruby, that won’t change. I’ve watched Sarah mourn the situation for years, and I’m not going to put up with anything that makes her grief worse. So, Frannie, have you come to ask us to meddle in your affairs? I can’t see how that will cause anything but more trouble.”

Jake’s heart fell. Father wasn’t going to fix the lady’s little girl? He wouldn’t even try?

Mother said quickly, “I’m sure Hugh will take a look at Samantha if you want him to. He doesn’t mean he’d turn his back on an innocent child.”

“Never have, never will,” Father answered, sounding exasperated. “But I’m no magician. I just meant—”

“I appreciate your feelings, I really do, Dr. Raincrow,”
the lady said. “But I didn’t expect you could accomplish some miracle. I … I came here to ask about, well,
different
help. I heard you have a relative over at Cawatie who’s a medicine woman. I was hoping you’d ask her to look at Samantha.”

Jake slapped both hands to his mouth to cover a gasp of surprise. This lady wanted Mrs. Big Stick instead of Father? Boy, she had just stuck her head in a hornet’s nest.

“Frannie,” Father said slowly, as if the breath had been knocked out of him, “it would make more sense for you to sit on a hill and bay at the moon.”

“Clara and Hugh don’t see eye to eye,” Mother added. “She wants to consult on all his patients at Cawatie, and most of them won’t let him touch them without her peeping over his shoulder.”

“I didn’t become a doctor to work in the shadow of ignorance and superstition,” Father said. “I grew up watching Indians die because nobody gave a damn whether they survived the twentieth century or not. My own father died of the measles when he was fifty years old. The
measles
. And it’s well-intentioned old-timers like Clara Big Stick who keep pulling the people back into the dark ages.”

“But … but,” the lady said, “Dr. Raincrow, I’ve read a lot about alternative medicines, and I think, well, I think there’s something
unnatural
about just poking people with needles and dosing them with drugs. I mean, there’s a
lot
of research into herbs, and vitamins, and, uh, spiritual healing, and—”

“Clara talked my mother into throwing away her blood pressure pills,” Father announced, his voice getting louder. “I’ll tell you what’s unnatural—letting your ‘patient’ die of a stroke.”

Jake was stunned. Surely Father was wrong. Mrs. Big Stick hadn’t hurt Granny. Granny would have known better than to trust Mrs. Big Stick’s medicine if it wasn’t good.

“I’m sorry,” the lady whispered. Then she cleared her throat and added, “But
please
. Clara Big Stick can’t
do any harm to Samantha. She might help her.
Please
. I’m desperate.”

“I won’t have any part of hocus-pocus,” Father said. His chair creaked. His heavy footsteps clumped across the porch’s wide wooden planks. Jake slid behind the heavy wooden door and flattened himself to the rough wall. “
Hugh,
” Mother called in her don’t-rock-the-boat voice. The footsteps halted. “I want to do this for Frannie.”

“Not inside this house,” Father answered. Jake held his breath. Father and Mother never argued. Jake touched them sometimes when he saw them frowning at each other, and he always felt a warm, shared space between the frowns. “In the yard,” Father said finally. “Just keep her in the yard, where I won’t have to watch.”

Father stalked into the house and disappeared into the living room. Jake scooted out from behind the door, eased the screen door open, and ambled out as if he just happened to be passing through. He wanted to get an up-close look at the little girl who’d caused all this trouble.

Mother gave him a squint-eyed look with one eyebrow cocked, as if she knew he’d been listening. “This is Jake,” she said. “Master of the oh-so-casual arrival. Honey, this is your aunt Alexandra’s sister, Mrs. Ryder.” Jake offered his most solemn Hello, ma’am. The lady was crying, but she smiled at him. Reassured, he asked, “Can I … 
may
I take your little girl to see our cow?” He was amazed at the amount of words he managed in one sentence. He was a watcher, not a talker, everyone said. What a strange day this was turning out to be.

The lady looked at Mother. Mother nodded. “Jake won’t let her out of his sight. And if he did, he’d find her.”

Taking that as permission, Jake ran to the big car, slowed to a dignified walk, and circled it carefully, his eyes riveted to the passenger window.

So this was Samantha “No-Talking” Ryder. She was pretty small, and very still, with her little hands clutching the window’s edge and her big blue eyes staring right back at him without blinking.

“My name’s Jake,” he offered. Her mouth crooked up at one corner. “Want to see a cow?” he added.

She didn’t say a word. He tugged the door open with both hands and gave her a good look-see. Her ruffled white collar was part of a white shirt, and she wore pink shorts with white sandals. Sunshine slid back and forth across her pulled-up hair, but even her ponytail didn’t move.

He’d never seen a kid so gold and pink and, of course, quiet. “Well?” he said.

She hopped out and stood with both feet planted apart, then watched him like a hawk while he shut the door. He held out a hand, tanned and big compared to hers. She looked up at him as if he were some kind of jigsaw puzzle she hadn’t quite put together yet. “Cat got your tongue?” he asked slyly.

Her eyes crinkled, and she smiled. She closed her hand slowly around his, each small finger curling tight. Jake knew what to expect when he touched people—a tingle of feelings that weren’t his but
were
his, like smoke creeping into his thoughts, so that he suddenly knew things he hadn’t planned to know, but most of the time the smoke faded before he could decide what it meant.

But not this time. He judged her for a thinker—she made up her mind, then she wouldn’t let go. Strangely enough, that made him not want to let go either.
We’ve been together as long as I can remember, and for as far as I can see
.

Now, that didn’t make sense, and it startled him so much he pushed the thought and the smoke away.

He tied Blossom to an iron ring in the milking stall, proud to demonstrate his fearless command over a huge animal who could have stomped anyone to pieces if she weren’t too fat to move that fast. Samantha watched from a few feet away, and he hoped she was impressed. “C’mere,” he said, crooking his finger. She sidled closer to Blossom’s orange and white side. Jake bent down and wrapped a
hand around one of Blossom’s dangling pink teats. “Want to see where milk comes from?”

Samantha squatted and stared at the teat. Jake squeezed expertly, and a stream of milk shot out. It hit her in the mouth. She bolted up. Her eyes widened. She wiped her chin and made a face. Jake bent his head to Blossom’s side and chortled loudly. The next thing he knew, Samantha was behind Blossom, reaching for the long switch of white hair at the end of her tail. Her mouth set in a firm line, she wound her small fingers into the thick hair and began braiding it.

Jake watched in awed silence. When she finished, she held the end of the braid and looked up at him with a satisfied nod. He nodded back. “All she needs is a ribbon, and she can go to a party.” He found a piece of baling twine among the matted straw of the stall’s dirt floor, and handed it to her gallantly.

She tied a bow around the end of Blossom’s tail, then stood back, eyeing her work. Jake sat down in the straw and studied her quietly. “You’re not putting any bows on me,” he announced.

She cocked her head back and studied him the way she’d been studying Blossom’s tail. Like she would fix him up, too, one of these days.

If anything could make a person talk, being dunked in the cold water of the Saukee would do it. Jake watched anxiously from a knoll under a sassafras tree, his knees drawn up and arms wrapped tightly around them. Samantha looked over Mrs. Big Stick’s shoulder at him, her mouth clamped shut. She didn’t look scared, she looked mad, as if he should have warned her about this.

Her mother stood on the bank beside his mother, holding all of Samantha’s clothes and her sandals. Mrs. Big Stick, her jeans rolled up to her fat brown knees, stood in a dark pool, where the river barely moved. She had her head thrown back, and she’d been talking to the wind for a long time. Jake knew enough Cherokee to pick out a sentence here and there. She was telling the spirits
to fix Samantha’s voice, ordering them around as if she might come looking for them with a baseball bat if they didn’t do it.

Suddenly she stopped, nodded so hard that her long braid of gray-black hair bounced over her shoulder, then bent down and shoved Samantha underwater.

Jake grimaced. He knew what
going to water
was about. It cleaned you outside and inside, Granny had said. It made you think, and feel new all over, and remember how to breathe. All the old folks at Cawatie did it every morning, even if they could only get to a little pee-trickle of branch water outside their cabins and house trailers. He and Ellie had gone with Granny to a spring in the hollow every day, and boy, you could breathe like nobody’s business after sitting in that spring in the wintertime.

When Samantha came up, she took a big gulp of air and latched on to Mrs. Big Stick’s braid with both hands. Jake covered his mouth to hide a laugh. She wasn’t going under again without taking Mrs. Big Stick with her.

Mrs. Big Stick grunted and carried her back to the bank. “She’s done.” Jake looked away politely as the medicine woman handed poor Samantha, who still looked mad, to her mother. Naked girls of all sizes were interesting to study, and he didn’t get that many chances, but Samantha was special. He wouldn’t forget the strange idea that had come to him when she took his hand; maybe there’d be chances to see her
nekkid
in the future.

He glanced over after her mother scrubbed her dry with a towel and put on her clothes. While her mother combed her wet hair back, Samantha stared straight at him, eyes narrowed, her hands knotted in little fists by her shorts.

“She’ll talk,” Mrs. Big Stick announced. “Sooner or later.”

“Sooner, I hope,” Mrs. Ryder said. “Thank you for coming.”

“Faith is a powerful tool,” Mrs. Big Stick told her. “If you believe in something strong enough, it will happen.” She looked at Mother solemnly. “I believe I’ll have that drink now.”

“One bourbon on ice, coming up,” Mother said. “We’ll sit on the porch.”