"Hmm. Kestrel has a hasty temper, like her spirit-animal. If you touch her nesting pole, she will scold you even before she sees whether or not you intended to climb it." Mooncrow's full attention seemed to be on the kids lined up across the yard with their handmade bows, but David knew better.
However, that was the best way he'd ever heard of describing Jennie's tendency to shoot first and sort things out later.
"She's got a lot on her mind," David replied, feeling as if he ought to defend her. "People who have bad tempers and know it can usually keep their temper under control, unless they're already handling too much. ... I guess we both know she's a workaholic, and this Calligan thing is really getting to her. There's something going on there, a lot more than shows on the surface, but we can't seem to get past the surface. Yet. But I can't blame her for being a little short on temper, you know?"
"True." Mooncrow sighed. "I wanted to thank you. For getting her to enjoy herself a little more, and work a little less. It makes her less difficult to live with."
David had to chuckle at that. "I'm not saying a word," he replied. "Anything I say is only too likely to get me in trouble!"
He brushed some imaginary dirt off the legs of his jeans, and waited for Mooncrow's reply. There would be one. The old man wasn't finished yet; he sensed it in the way Mooncrow kept watching him without seeming to watch him.
"I don't think it would hurt if you two were more than friends," Mooncrow said at last. "I don't think it would hurt if you backtracked in some ways to when you were younger." He looked slyly at David out of the corner of his eye. "I can't say I'd mind if you didn't need that spare room for anything but storing your things."
David blinked, and licked his lips. Well, that was certainly an unexpected development! He felt rather stunned. "I can't say that I'd be unhappy about things coming around that way." He paused for a moment. "Just how would you suggest I go about doing that?"
But Mooncrow only shrugged. "I'm an old man," he replied. "Things are not the same as they were when I courted her grandmother. Jennie is a warrior in her own right; her grandmother was a simpler woman with simpler needs. I have no suggestions. If I say anything to her, she is likely to throw you out; she is just as contrary at times as she accuses me of being. So it is all in your hands, young Spotted Horse."
Thanks a lot, he thought wryly, but not with a feeling of being offended. He liked Mooncrow; more than that, he trusted the old man, far more than he had trusted Mooncrow when he had been a child. Then, the old man had just been Jennie's grandfather who told good stories. Now he was a Teacher, a Medicine Person. ...
Hmm. I wonder if he was suggesting that as Jennie's grandfather, or as Mooncrow, Kestrel's Teacher? It would make a difference. . . .
He could even be suggesting it as both.
He would have been a lot more surprised at the oblique suggestion that he heat the situation up, if he hadn't already gotten the same "hints" from another of Jennie's relatives. Although he had never thought he'd hear Mooncrow suggesting he should share Jennie's bed! The other "hints" had been a lot more pedestrian. . . .
"If I didn't know better, Little Old Man," he said lightly, "I'd suspect you of being a shoka from Jennie's father."
"Oh?" Mooncrow replied, far too casually. "Why is that?"
David made a face. "Because I happened to 'run into him' three times in the last week-probably because he heard on the grapevine that I'm in your spare room. He dropped a few bricks-I'm sure he thinks they were hints."
Mooncrow chuckled at that. "My son was never known for subtlety," he told David. "Some day I must tell you how he proposed to Jennie's mother. But what were these unsubtle hints about?"
"Nothing much-just that it seems that the entire family would really approve if Jennie and I patched things back up again." He shook his head, ruefully. "If these were the old days, I have the horrible feeling that instead of me riding out to capture a bride, I'd be the one hog-tied and bent over Jennie's saddlebow, gift-wrapped by her loving family!"
And at that, Mooncrow broke into loud and hearty laughter, much to David's embarrassment, and the surprise of all the kids, who turned to see what on earth could be so funny.
David blushed a little, but felt impelled to tell Mooncrow all of it, however embarrassing it had been.
"He said that Jennie's mom and brothers always did like me, and that everybody wishes things would go back the way they were between us when we first started college." He sighed. "Back before we had that big fight, and I threw that stupid Huey Long quote at her, anyway. I guess she told her father about that. ..."
"Only recently," Mooncrow said serenely. "She told me about it later, after she had brought home the Hell's Angel-"
"What?" David yelped, taken completely by surprise.
The kids turned to look at them again.
"Well, perhaps he was not a Hell's Angel," Mooncrow amended. "But he did have a Harley Hog, and he did belong to a bike club. At any rate, when I did not approve of the young man, she told me what you had said; to show me how much better this man treated her, I think." Mooncrow nodded thoughtfully for a moment. "He did treat her well," he admitted, "but he was too interested in the 'instant enlightenment' and not in real achievement. He did not last long."
"Oh," David said, weakly. "Well ... ah ... I suppose I wasn't much better. I have to admit, I even knew at the time that it was a stupid thing to say, but-"
"But you were strutting and flashing your antlers, and she was not sufficiently impressed, so you decided to turn the antlers on her." Mooncrow nodded. "Well, you were young."
"Young men do stupid things," he agreed, and sighed.
Mooncrow grinned at him. "Even not-so-young men do stupid things, David," he replied, and left him on the back steps to go and correct his young archers.
_CHAPTER THIRTEEN
jennie locked the door of her office, turned up the radio, and buried her face in her hands. A headache had just begun in one temple. The name of her headache was-her family.
Right now, she was beginning to envy a client of hers who was an orphan.
Just once, she would like it very much if no one cared about who she was seeing or not seeing. Certainly having a family, an intelligent and curious family to boot, brought with it liabilities.
Like having a yentafor a father, she thought sourly, head in hands. My father, the matchmaker. He could have sent a shoka in full regalia, and been less obvious. He could have trotted out the whole family with courting gifts. I feel like I'm in a damn sitcom.
David. They all liked David. They were all making it perfectly clear to her how much they liked David, and how happy they would be if she and David would just go back to being the happy couple they'd been in college. Never mind that they really hadn't been all that happy a couple.
The worst part was, it would have been funny, if it had been happening to someone else. It would even be funny if she didn't like David so much.
She was getting at least three calls a day from one member of the family or another, and before the call was over, the topic of David Spotted Horse would somehow have worked its way into the conversation. How was he doing, had they gone anywhere together, did she think they might come over to Claremore for dinner some time in the next couple of days. . . . Even from her brothers; they were going fishing, would she and David like to join them-they were going to a powwow, would she and David like to come along.
Mother's bad enough, but Dad is worse. Her father thought he was being subtle; he was about as subtle as a billboard.
I don't know why he doesn't just rent a billboard. She could just see it now, out on I-44. Forty-eight feet wide, sixteen feet tall. Jennie, when are you and David going to-?
At least Mooncrow was keeping his mouth shut. He kept giving her looks, but at least he kept his mouth shut. It seemed as if everyone in the Talldeer family was trying to throw Jennie into David's bed-or vice versa-and no one was going to take "no" for an answer.
She expected that kind of thing out of David; after all, it wasn't as if he hadn't been hinting. But her own family?
/ thought they were supposed to want me to preserve my so-called honor! Not go jumping into some guy's bed!
Well, she wasn't having any. She could be just as stubborn as any of them, and she was not, by god, going to get herded into this as if she were the prize mare and David the champion stud!
I suppose by now Dad has waylaid David at least once, telling him how nice it would be if we got back together again, she thought forlornly. That's probably why he's been looking like a hopeful puppy these past few days.
The worst part of it was, if she'd wanted him before, now she really had it bad for him. This business with finding his spiritual direction was not just for show; he'd made an enormous amount of progress, and it made him all the more attractive to her. He'd been treating her the way she suspected he normally treated other women; as competent equals. He, at least, had managed to unload all that old baggage and start fresh, even if she had not.
She'd forgotten, deliberately, all the things about his personality that had attracted her to him in the first place. Now all those things were coming back with a vengeance, and if he was frustrated as hell, sleeping all alone just down the hall from her, she was twice as frustrated.
"We're just working colleagues," she kept telling him. She kept trying to convince herself of that. "We need to keep a certain distance to keep this professional."
She kept repeating that to herself, like a mantra. It wasn't working.