Her voice trailed away over the clicking of the wheel trucks. The male passengers stared at her as though she carried cholera. The man with the paper said to the others, "Didn't know there was squaws who could pass for white women, did you, boys?"
Willa started to retort, but before she could, the man with the paper leaned forward and spat a large gob of tobacco pulp on the floor.
In times past, that kind of behavior would have challenged her to fight all the harder. Not now. She felt despondent, even foolish, caught in a battle that couldn't be won.
She stared out the window at white barns and cattle grazing in the twilight. She tried to close her ears to the sarcastic jokes the man continued to make about her. She felt miserable. Somehow he reaches out to poison everything.
Maybe her often-impractical partner was wiser than she knew. Maybe she should stop chasing doomed dreams. Maybe she ought to make this visit to Leavenworth her last.
"No, the brigadier's not heard from him in weeks," Maureen said when Willa arrived on a gray, gusty morning. "Is the general here?"
"No. He's riding the pay circuit again."
"Where's Gus?"
"I put him to hoeing the vegetable garden in back. It's entirely the wrong time of year — we've already harvested our squash and potatoes — but the poor thing needs something to fill his hours."
"He needs a normal life." Willa set her valise near the cold iron stove. "He needs schooling, parents, a home of his own."
"No disputing that," Maureen said. She looked older; the harsh prairie weather had wrinkled and aged her skin. "He'll not find those things here, I fear."
A low-pitched howling underlay their conversation. The front door rattled in its frame. Maureen twisted her apron. "Mary and Joseph, I hate this place sometimes. The heat. That infernal wind. It's blown for weeks."
Willa went to the back door. From there she could observe little Gus, a sturdy, strong boy bending over a corner of the garden patch and listlessly poking at the dirt with his hoe. Dust and debris whirled over the garden and the nearby buildings. Gus's little round-crowned hat threatened to blow away at any moment.
Watching from the open door, Willa felt her heart near to breaking. How forlorn he looked. As hunched as a little old man. Digging, chopping — to no purpose.
She stepped outside. "Hello, Gus."
"Aunt Willa!" He dropped the hoe and ran to her. She knelt and hugged him. Charles's son was almost four now. He'd lost his baby pudginess. Although he was outdoors a lot, he tended to fair skin and paleness.
Despite the wind, she took him walking along the bluff above the river. She was asking questions, which he answered with monosyllables, when she heard a hail behind them. She turned.
"Oh good Lord."
Down the path lurched Charles. Over the back of his gypsy robe he wore some sort of canvas sling from which the stock of his rifle jutted. His beard was long again, and unkempt.
Little Gus spied his father, a smile burst onto his face, and he ran toward him. He'd gone but halfway when Charles stumbled over a rock and fell. Only a jarring stop with his hands kept him from slamming face first on the ground.
Gus halted, confused. Willa's expression grew strained. From the way Charles weaved as he stood up, she knew he was drunk.
"Hallo, Gus. Come give your pa a hug."
The boy continued to advance, but cautiously. Charles crouched down, enfolded the boy in his arms. Gus turned his head and Willa saw his eyes close and his mouth purse, as though he feared the man hugging him. The moment of spontaneous exuberance was gone.
Willa held her feathered hat against the gusting wind. That wind brought her a ripe whiskey smell. Drunk, all right. Gus quickly wriggled away from Charles. He looked relieved.
Charles stared at her, almost unfriendly. "Didn't expect to run into you. What're you doing here?" He spoke thickly, slowly.
"I wanted to see Gus. I didn't imagine you'd be around."
"I just rode in. Gus, go on back to Maureen, I need to talk to Willa."
"I want to stay out here and play, Pa."
Charles grabbed his shoulder, spun him, and flung him toward the row of officers' houses. "Don't sass me. Go along."
Little Gus looked ready to cry. Charles yelled, "Go on, goddamn it."
Gus ran. Willa wanted to upbraid Charles, strike him, horsewhip him. The intensity of her emotion upset her, both in its own right and because she knew she wouldn't feel it if she didn't love him.
Somewhere on the post, artillery pieces fired practice rounds. Charles took Willa's elbow and turned her almost as rudely as he'd turned the boy. He all but pushed her down the weed-grown path toward the river. Fighting for control, she said, "Where've you been, Charles?"
"Oh, do I answer to you about that?"
"For God's sake, I'm curious, that's all. Can't you recognize a polite question anymore?"
"Abilene," he muttered. "Been in Abilene. Had a job, but I quit it."
"What kind of job?"
"Nothing you'd care to hear about."
In a clump of willows near the edge of the bluff she stopped, confronting him. The wind stripped yellowing leaves from the weeping branches and flung them into the dusty gray distances.
She hated the whiskey smell on him, the odor of unwashed clothing. Emotion overwhelmed her again.
"Why are you so angry all the time?" She braced her gloved palms on the front of the gypsy robe and, on tiptoe, she kissed him. His beard scratched. She might as well have kissed marble.
"Look, Willa —"
"No, you look, Charles Main." Something warned her not to give rein to her feelings. She couldn't stop. "Do you think I'm here out of charity? I love you. I thought you loved me once." His eyes swept past her, to the dust-hazed river. "I want you to stop this wild life you're living."
"I came to see Gus, not hear lectures."
"Well, that's too bad. You'll hear this one. You don't belong on the Plains. Find a job in Leavenworth. Take care of your son. You've frightened him. You have to win him back. Can't you see that? He needs you, Charles. He needs you the way you were two years ago. I need you that way. Please."
He tugged the brim of his black hat low over his eyes, holding it against the roaring wind. "I'm not ready to come back here. I've got unfinished work."
"Those infernal Cheyennes —" She was nearly in tears.
"For whom your heart bleeds. You go take care of your Friendship Society and your goddamn petitions."
Not an hour here, and it's all going wrong she thought. "Why are you yelling at me, Charles?"
"Because I don't want you interfering with my son."
"I care about him!"
"So do I. I'm his father."
"Not much of one."
He hit her, open-handed, not hard. But she felt a pain beyond description.
Holding her cheek, she stepped back. Her small feathered hat blew off. He stabbed a hand out automatically but the hat sailed by, lifting on a gust, spinning on through the willows toward the Missouri. "Oh," she said, a small, forlorn sound. Then she looked at him again. Something hard kindled in her blue eyes.
"You've turned into a complete bastard. I used to wonder why it was happening. I used to care. I don't any more. Your boy doesn't either, but you're too stupid and drunk to see that. If you keep on, he'll hate you. Most of the time he's terrified of you."
"Christ, you're superior." He was loud, scornful. "First you had all the answers about the Indians. All the wrong answers. Now you're telling me how to raise my son. I don't need you. Take care of your own problems. Find some other man to drag into your bed."