Silence again, neither of them desiring to traverse the topic of politics, which would lead them to her father, which would ultimately cause a fight.
Johnny made a sudden turn down a gravel-topped road that was little better than a footpath, or so it seemed in the dark of the crowding forest. Had anyone else been driving, she would have questioned his motives. But Johnny Whitehorse knew the region around the reservation better than most people knew their own backyard. After ten minutes of bouncing over rocks and splashing through remnants of previous rains, they came out on Carrizo Canyon Road and headed south, passing signs pointing to Mescalero Lake and the Inn of the Mountain Gods.
Laying her head back against the seat, Leah closed her eyes.
"Where is your husband?" Johnny asked.
"I don't have a husband," she replied sleepily.
"Your ex-husband then."
"I'm not sure. The last I heard he was living in the Florida Keys with some nineteen-year-old swimsuit cutie of the month and trying to write the great American novel. I think he believes he's Hemingway reincarnated. I expect to hear anytime that he's in Spain running with the bulls."
"You married a writer? I thought you had better sense than that."
"I married a petroleum engineer with a master's in business who, at the time, was vice-president of an independent oil company. Just after our son's third birthday he decided life was too short to waste it doing something he didn't enjoy. His dream had always been to live in the Keys and write. So bye-bye marriage and responsibility. I'm outta here for the good life. I'll drop you a line when I get settled. That was four years ago. The only correspondence I've gotten is a sad tale of his inability to pay his child support because 'those fools in New York publishing couldn't see a good book if it leaped up and hit them between the eyes.'"
"So you're getting nothing in the way of child support from the jerk?"
Leah opened one eye and found Johnny frowning, his hands clutching the steering wheel as if he were strangling it. "No," she replied, sounding much too weary for her own liking. "And when he quit his job there was no more insurance…" Clearing her throat, Leah sat up again and rubbed her eyes. "I really don't like to talk about it. There isn't any point. I learned a long time ago not to get mired down in what ifs and if onlys. You can drive yourself crazy wallowing in self-pity."
"Fucking loser," Johnny mumbled.
"My sentiments exactly," Leah replied, laughing softly.
"So how did you meet such a prize?"
"I hesitate to tell you."
He looked at her with his dark eyes, which were not amused, and something inside her trembled. "My father introduced us. He approved of Richard, so naturally I told myself that I could, eventually, come to love Richard."
"And did you?"
"Hey, for someone whose replies to me were made up of little more than 'no comment,' you sure are getting personal."
"I just want to know if you loved him."
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"Just curious, I guess, over how a woman could marry a man she didn't love … and have a child with him."
"That's hardly unique in this day and age."
"If you're gonna make a baby you'd damn well better love who you're making it with, don't you think?"
"I goofed, okay? In a moment of lust we got too carried away to stop and take precautions. That, however, has nothing to do with how I feel for my son. He's my reason for living. My universe. I couldn't love him more if he had been planned."
Johnny veered off the road and onto a dirt driveway that wove over cattle guards and around cactus gardens. He hit the brakes hard, skidding toward a small white frame house with a porch crowded with clay flowerpots. Shoving open his door, he said, "I hope to hell you like goats." Then slammed the door so hard the truck rocked.
SIX
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As Johnny used wire cutters to peel the rusty strands of tearing teeth out of the dying goats' hides, he could not help but wonder how Leah would have managed the bloody, stomach-turning task on her own. Somehow, he suspected that she would have found a way. As she went about the somber business of euthanizing most of Ramona Skunk Cap's goat herd, her calm, soft-spoken professionalism reminded him of a surgeon—hands gentle and deft, eyes watchful, mind