“Want some?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. He wasn’t asking about potatoes, and they both knew it. She snatched the bowl from him and spooned a large helping onto her plate, then passed it to her father.
Adam managed to pretend disinterest as the meal progressed, but the truth was, he could have used another cold dip in the pond.
It wasn’t until they were doing the dishes that Franklin decided to stir the pot simmering between his daughter and friend.
“Hey, Adam, isn’t there a powwow coming up in a couple of weeks at the campgrounds?”
Adam was drying the last plate and answered before he thought. “Yes.”
“You gonna go?” Franklin asked.
“What’s a powwow?” Sonora asked.
“Kind of like a family reunion. There will be food and both men and women’s dancing.”
Sonora frowned. “What do you mean…men and women’s? Don’t they dance together?”
“No.”
“Isn’t that sort of antisocial?”
“Not when you see it,” Franklin said.
“Then show me,” she said.
Franklin sighed. “I’m sorry, Sonora. I would like to, but I’m afraid I will have to wait and see how I feel when the time comes.”
“I could take her,” Adam said.
Franklin pretended to think about it, when in fact it was his plan all along.
“Yes, that might be best,” he said. “If I feel well, I can come with you, but if I don’t, then you two can go on alone. Would you like to do that, daughter?”
Sonora wanted to know this side of her heritage, but she wasn’t sure she’d learn a damn thing with Adam Two Eagles except how much restraint she had left. Still, she wasn’t about to let either one of them know how much she wanted to be with Adam.
“Sure. Why not?” she said, then added, “But I hope you can come, too.”
“As do I,” Franklin said. “It would give me great pleasure to introduce you to some of our clan.”
“Clan? You mean the Kiowa?”
“The People are Kiowa, but we are of different clans. We belong to the Snake clan, as does Adam and his family.”
Sonora felt the blood draining from her face and thought she would pass out. There was a roaring in her ears and her legs suddenly went weak.
“Oh, God…oh, God,” she whispered, and staggered backward. Adam caught her, steadying her until she could sit down in a chair.
“Sonora? What’s wrong? Are you ill?” Franklin asked.
Adam knelt down in front of her, then looked up into her face. “Sonora? Sonora?”
She saw Adam’s lips moving, but she couldn’t hear anything but the thunder of her own heartbeat.
Franklin pulled up a chair and sat down beside her as Adam bolted from the room.
“Daughter…what did I say? If I offended you, it was unintentional.”
Adam came back with a wet washcloth and pressed it to Sonora’s forehead.
“Here, honey, see if this helps,” he said.
She grabbed it with both hands, and then swiped it across her face.
“This just keeps getting crazier and crazier,” she muttered. “Half the time I feel like the luckiest woman in the world, and the other half of the time like I’ve fallen into the Twilight Zone.”
She handed the washcloth to Adam, and then stood abruptly.
“You said you belong to the Snake clan?”
Both men nodded.
“What does that mean?”
Franklin frowned, then looked to Adam for support.
“Think of it like this,” Adam said. “You are an American, from the state of Arizona, right?”
“Right.”
“So then transpose that same identification process to your ethnicity. You are Kiowa, from the Snake clan.”
“So, what does the snake mean to people from the same clan?”
“It’s like our totem…what the white man might consider a mascot. But we believe it is like a conduit between us and the spirit world. That’s a little simplistic, and it means much more, but it’s the best way that I can describe it.”
“I see,” she said, and began rubbing her hands together nervously. “This is so weird,” she kept saying.
“What is it that is weird to you?” Franklin asked.
She shrugged and tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a sob.
“Wait until you see this,” she said, and stood up, then turned her back on the men.
Before they knew what was happening, she’d pulled her T-shirt over her head, revealing the tattoo of an elongated snake that traced the length of her spine. The snake’s tail was somewhere below the waistband of her jeans, while the head marked the bottom of her shoulder blades and was twisted toward the viewer with fangs showing and the forked tongue extended. It was so perfectly depicted that neither man would have been surprised if it had suddenly hissed and struck.
Franklin’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Adam inhaled sharply.
“This is strong medicine,” he said softly.
“Daughter, how long has this been on your body?”
“Since I was sixteen,” she said.
“Your parents let you do this?” Adam asked.
“I didn’t have parents, remember? At sixteen, I’d just run away from my third foster home in the same year. I think I was on the streets in San Francisco when I had it done,” she said, and pulled her shirt back down before she turned around. “Cost me a whole week’s worth of tips, too.”
Franklin stifled a moan. There were times when the plight of her childhood took his breath away.
“I’m so sorry,” he said softly.
She frowned. “About the tattoo?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” Franklin said. “When I hear you speaking of your growing-up years, it always saddens me. You should have been with family, learning the ways of The People and growing up knowing you were always safe and always loved.”
Adam was momentarily stunned to silence. That this woman, who knew nothing of her heritage, should choose such a mark for her body made her powerful. He suspected the Old Ones had always known where she was and were just waiting for the right time to show her the way home.
“Sonora.”
She hesitated, then shifted her gaze from her father to Adam. “What?”
“Why the snake?”
“You mean, as opposed to any other tattoo I might have chosen?”
He nodded.
“The reason just sounds silly,” she said.
“Try me,” he asked.
“Have you ever been in a tattoo parlor?”
He nodded.
“So…you