The Eagle Catcher (15 page)

In the headlights he saw Dorothy Bennett swing out of the front seat of the white Cadillac parked in front of the priests' residence. Father John pulled in alongside her. He took his time turning off the ignition, pushing the button on the tape player to stop
Don Giovanni
in the middle of “Il Mio Tesoro,” and flipping off the headlights. Immediately Circle Drive, the Cadillac, and the house were swallowed in darkness.

“This is a surprise, Dorothy,” he said, getting out of the pickup. It wasn't a surprise at all. He knew he'd hear from her eventually.

“Is it?” Dorothy's voice was cold. As his eyes adjusted in the light from the stars and the full moon, he saw she had stepped back against the side of the Cadillac, shoulders rigid, jaw thrust out. Her eyes were flashing.

“I can put on a pot of coffee,” he said.

“This isn't a social call,” she snapped. “I just want you to tell me one thing. What gives you the right to mix in people's lives?”

“Why don't you come inside and we can talk,” he said soothingly, the same tone he had just used on Ernest.

“We'll talk here,” she said. “How dare you encourage my daughter and some Indian in this preposterous romance. You just don't get how things are around here, do you?”

Father John swallowed hard, trying to keep his temper in check. It was so quick to flare, to interfere with the reasonable, logical way to handle a situation. “How are things around here?” he asked finally.

“Melissa Bennett will never marry an Arapaho, that's how things are. Anybody with any sense would know that. But you ... ”

Dorothy was spitting out the words, and Father John could feel the tiny stings of saliva on his face. “You encourage an Arapaho, and not just any Arapaho—a murderer—to think he can actually marry a girl like Melissa.”

“Hold on,” Father John said. He could feel the heat rising in his face. “Anthony Castle is no murderer. He's a fine young man. Any girl would be lucky to have him as a husband.”

“Oh, my God,” Dorothy said. She seemed to sink against the Cadillac, her whole body collapsing. “You really believe that, don't you? Your trouble is you've been here too long. You're nothing but an Indian masquerading as white.”

Father John had to step back to keep from getting hit as she swung open the car door. She marched around and stood in the fold between the door and the seat. “Well, you've gone too far this time. You've taken sides against the wrong people. My brother can snap his fingers”—she put one hand over her head and snapped her fingers, like a flamenco dancer—“like that, and you'll be out of here. So pack your bags, Father O'Malley.” She dropped into the seat and pulled the door after her. The heavy thud of metal filled the air.

Father John stepped aside as she raced the motor, backed up, and pulled onto Circle Drive. He could hear the gravel scattering under her wheels like bursts from a shotgun.

He let himself into the house, switched on the hall light, and set his cowboy hat on the little table. The hallway was cast in shadows, and the whole house had the stillness of evening about it. Elena would have gone home by now, but not before frying some chicken and leaving it in the fridge. Sunday was fried chicken day. The sharp odor of burning flesh lingered in the air. He wondered where Father Brad was, then remembered that someone at Cooley's pig roast had invited the priests at St. Francis to a barbecue tonight. He had declined, but Brad had probably gone.

He went into the study and slammed the door, more to confine the space for himself than to keep out anyone else. There was no one else here. He didn't bother to turn on any lights. Slivers of moonlight filtered through the window and lay across the carpet. Sinking into the old leather chair, he thought about Ned Cooley. He would call the Provincial; he wouldn't bother with a letter. And the Provincial would take a call from the next governor of Wyoming who would tell him how the superior at St. Francis Mission was causing problems. What kind of problems? Just problems that made it extremely difficult to work with him, and of course it's important to have a man on the reservation state officials can work with. When it comes to allocating funds for social programs and such, it's good to have someone on hand who is—trustworthy.

Then Ned Cooley would call all the important people he knew in Wyoming and all the bigwigs in Denver, including the archbishop, and ask them to call the Provincial. The Provincial would say, well, your six years are up September first anyway, and we'll just stick to the rules on this one. Better to stay on the right side of the next governor. The Provincial expected superiors to run things smoothly. He didn't like having to step in, and when he did he moved people around.

Father John studied the way the moonlight flowed along the carpet and cast the faintest light over the blue wing chair, the draperies, the stacks of paper on his desk. The thought of leaving Wind River made him inexpressibly sad. He knew if there were any alcohol in the house, he would drink it now. He understood how Ernest must have felt.

D
ENISE AND HOMER Lone Wolf's baby was dying. The phone had jangled in the hallway at about six just as the sun had started to cast a red glow over the kitchen. Father John had already been up for more than an hour. He didn't remember sleeping, only mentally pacing off the night until light rimmed the curtains at the bedroom window. He'd already showered, shaved, and brewed a pot of coffee when the call came. It took him about twenty minutes to get to Riverton Memorial Hospital.

Three nurses and what looked like the entire Lone Wolf family were crowded in the tiny room off the nursery: grandparents, Denise's two sisters and their husbands, Homer's cousin and his wife. Denise sat in a wheelchair at the foot of a crib, looking like a child herself, bewildered by an incomprehensible adult world. Homer stood behind her, gripping the bar along the top of the wheelchair. The infant lay with eyes half closed in a wavy, dreamlike manner, tubes running from the tiny body to machines on a nearby roller.

“His heart don't know how to work,” Homer said, slicing his index finger under one eye, then the other, to wipe away the moisture. “They're gonna fly him down to Children's Hospital in Denver. I'm goin' with him.” Father John caught the sharp odor of the Indian's breath, a distillation of morning and coffee and whiskey.

Slipping a folded white stole and the silver compact containing bottles of holy water and oil from the pocket of his windbreaker, Father John asked the baby's name. Denise answered so quietly he had to lean over and ask again. “George,” she said.

Denise's grandfather, in his sixties with gray hair combed straight back from a pockmarked face, spoke up. “I was sickly, too, when I was born, and my grandfather gave me the name Little Wing. The name made me strong, so I give it now to my great-grandson.”

Father John draped the stole around his neck and opened the compact. He handed the bottle of holy water to Homer. Then he placed a drop of oil on one finger and made the sign of the cross on the baby's forehead. The skin felt as soft as the silk stole that folded over the top of his hand. He took the bottle of holy water and, letting one or two drops fall on the forehead, said, “I baptize you, George Little Wing, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Afterward he and Homer walked down the hall of the hospital and out to the parking lot. Suddenly the Indian doubled over coughing. Father John winced at the thought of this alcoholic Arapaho, used to the open spaces of the reservation, surrounded by his own people, alone in a big city like Denver. How long before he wandered into the nearest bar and got himself rolled and beaten up?

Father John opened the door of the Toyota and fumbled among the opera tapes in the glove compartment for a tablet and ballpoint pen. He jotted down a name and telephone number, and, ripping off the page, handed it to the Arapaho who had just spit a ball of green phlegm onto the asphalt. “This is a Jesuit at Regis. You call him soon as you get to Denver,” he said. Watching Homer reverently fold the paper, as if he'd just received a sacred gift—a friend—Father John hoped that Father Dave Kelly would come through one more time. Homer wasn't the first Arapaho he'd asked Dave to keep an eye on in Denver. So far. the other Jesuit hadn't objected, even though he and Dave were no longer good friends. He couldn't say they were friends at all, not since the Great Fall. His, not Father Dave's.

Homer bent over again in the throes of another coughing spell. After a moment he straightened partway up and, clasping his chest, said, “Little Wing's gonna need me, and I'm gonna get myself together, don't you worry, Father. I wanna take the pledge.”

Standing on the asphalt, with a cool breeze sighing through the evergreens at the edge of the parking lot and the sun climbing in the clear blue morning sky, Father John heard Homer pledge not to take a drink for thirty days. Taking the pledge was solemn and serious to Arapahos, almost a sacrament. Homer wouldn't take it unless he felt he had the spirit to honor it.

“I'm gonna do it this time,” Homer said.

“You bet you are,” Father John said as the Arapaho disappeared through the hospital's front door. He started up the Toyota and backed it out of the parking place. “Dear Lord,” he prayed silently, “give Homer the grace he needs. Give us all the grace we need.”

 

“Got a minute, John?” Father Brad poked his head around the door to the superior's office in the white brick administration building at St. Francis Mission. He looked as if he didn't know whether to come in or disappear down the hallway.

“Help yourself,” Father John said, nodding to the small metal table cluttered with a coffee pot, foam cups, creamer, and a box of sugar cubes.

Father John had just poured himself a cup of coffee and was about to tackle the papers on his desk: bills, letters, phone messages. The message on top read: “Lou Ann Red Cloud called. Can you find a family in Denver for her son to live with while he goes to Regis High School?” That wasn't going to be easy, he thought, shuffling through the stack. Many more requests for favors from Father Dave and he would tell him to get lost for sure.

“The Provincial called this morning. You just missed him,” the younger priest said as he poured a cup of coffee and settled himself into the chair on the other side of the desk. He was methodically stirring a plastic spoon around the Styrofoam cup as if to create a design of some kind. “We had a chance to chat ...”

“The Provincial?” Father John felt as if a yawning pit had opened beneath him. Ned Cooley had clout, but he hadn't expected him to exercise it this fast. Just then the phone rang, and Father John reached for the receiver. His hand was shaking. His assistant wouldn't miss it.

“We might have gotten us a break.” It was Art Banner on the line. The chief sounded excited, his words spilling over one another. “I'm gonna need your help again. Can you get right over here?”

“Where are you?”

“Tribal headquarters. Harvey's office.”

Father John was on his feet even before he'd replaced the receiver. Whatever Father Brad and the Provincial had talked about would have to wait. He didn't want to know anyway. He grabbed his cowboy hat from the rack behind the desk and was on his way out the door before he said, “Sorry, something's come up.”

The young priest had turned partway around in his chair, disbelief on his face. “Hey, no problem.” he said. Father John could feel the wave of sarcasm at his back as be hurried down the hallway and out of the building.

He parked the Toyota outside the red-brick tribal offices at Ethete. The pickup had made good time on Seventeen-Mile Road, although after being pulled over yesterday, he had kept an eye on the speedometer.
La Bohème
poured from the tape player.

Banner was grinding a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk as Father John got out of the Toyota. Inside, the building was arranged in a V-shape with the lobby at the base and tribal offices down two hallways. The receptionist at the front desk, intent on a telephone conversation, was staring off into space. Two Arapaho women sat on metal chairs beneath a long window that captured a stretch of flat. open plains. They flipped through magazines, bored and impatient.

Banner led the way down the hall on the right. By the time they reached Harvey's office, the chief had pulled a small key ring out of his shirt pocket. It held two keys. “Wait 'til you see this,” he said, jamming one key in the lock and pushing open the door.

Papers, file folders, and photographs spilled across one side of the tiled floor. Against the far wall was a metal file cabinet, its three drawers empty and tilting downward. Next to the cabinet sat a large oak desk with a swivel chair pushed against it. Nothing seemed out of place on the other side of the office where two file cabinets stood against the wall, drawers closed. Books were arranged on shelves in neat rows. Except for the filmy orange powder glazing everything in the room, half the office looked as if Harvey had just stepped away for a cup of coffee.

Father John picked up some papers by the toe of his boot. They were manuscript pages, each numbered in the top right-hand corner. He glanced down the top page: That
winter of 1878 was very hard. The children were crying with hunger. Warriors rode great distances looking for food and often returned to camp empty-handed. There was no place on the plains anymore for Arapahos, so the government told Chief Black Night to take the people to the Wind River Reservation and stay with the Shoshones. Chief Black Night went there first and said to Chief Washakie, “We want to come under your robe. ”

“This is Harvey's history,” Father John said, glancing up.