The Eagle Catcher (19 page)

“You see Melissa at the cemetery?”

“Didn't everybody?”

The young man shrugged. “I asked her not to come to the feast and giveaway. It's going to take some time for people to get used to us. She's been saying that all along.”

“How about Dorothy and Ned? Will they get used to you?”

“I'm going out to the Cooley ranch tonight so Melissa and I can talk to them together. If they see how much we love each other, maybe they'll come around.”

Father John doubted it. His heart went out to this young couple, burdened by the past.

“How about some fishing up at Washakie reservoir tomorrow, Father? I could really use somebody to talk to.”

“Sure,” Father John said. The magistrate's warning that Anthony should stay close at hand flitted to mind a moment, but he dismissed it. The young man wasn't running anywhere. He just wanted to go into the wilderness where he could think, and he wanted a sounding board to test his thinking on. Of course he wanted to go fishing at the Washakie. That was what he had done all his life with Harvey.

Nodding toward the elders in a far corner, Anthony said, “Grandfather wants me to be painted today.”

Father John followed the young man's gaze. Several elders were standing in a circle, each holding a buckskin pouch. They would begin the painting soon. Everyone who wished it would receive circles of sacred red paint on their foreheads and cheeks. The paint symbolized the gift of life given by the sun and placed all who received it under the sun's care. It renewed the happiness of the mind.

Father John never ceased to marvel at the wisdom of Will Standing Bear. The rest of the family would not receive the paint until the first anniversary of Harvey's death. It would mark the end of the half-life and give them the strength to move into the new life without Harvey. But Anthony needed strength now to move into whatever the new life had in store for him.

F
ATHER JOHN DECIDED to turn in early, but the temptation was strong to see how the Red Sox were doing. He flipped on the television in the living room. The game was still on. He sank into the overstuffed easy chair, removed the black wing-tipped shoes, and parked his pinched, sockenshrouded feet on the edge of the oak coffee table. It was the top of the ninth, the Red Sox leading the Mariners three-zip. With two strikes and a man on third, the pitcher wound up and sent a fastball across the plate. The batter laid a grounder out to left field as the runner pounded for home.

Now Father John's feet were planted flat on the floor. He was on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, jabbing one fist like a boxer. He always watched baseball on the edge of his seat, the way he and his Dad used to watch it at Fenway Park. On the edge of the seat, leaning forward, punching the air. He was only dimly aware of the phone ringing in the front hall.

Slowly he backed out of the living room, keeping his eyes on the screen. The runner scored easily. The left fielder had the ball and was throwing to second as the hitter hurtled toward the base. The tag was good. Fenway erupted in cheers. The Sox would hold.

“St. Francis,” Father John said, slightly out of breath. He always felt as if he were on the field himself when he watched the Red Sox.

A woman on the other end—he didn't recognize her voice—was talking about an emergency. It took a moment to focus on what she was saying. Something about an accident out on Seventeen-Mile Road and Charlie Taylor.

Fenway Park was still cheering as Father John slammed out the front door leaving the television blaring. The wind was calm, and a field of stars blinked in the dark sky. He slipped into the Toyota, turned the key and, ramming the gear into forward, shot out onto Circle Drive.

The compact of holy oil that he'd grabbed from the study rode light as a feather in his shirt pocket. Always carry your oils in an emergency—that was one of the first lessons he had learned at St. Francis. Steering the Toyota along Riverton's quiet main street, he thought about that summer six years ago when Old Man Wilson's daughter had asked him to come to the ranch because her father was feeling poorly. Feeling poorly! The old man had died in Father John's arms. It had taken a couple of hours to return to St. Francis, get his oils, and drive back to anoint the body.

A crowd of people hovered around Charlie's wife in the waiting area outside the emergency room at Riverton Memorial. Father John recognized a couple of parishioners. He could remember meeting Charlie's wife only once—about a year ago they'd come to Mass one Sunday. She had the look of a sleepwalker, dressed in a wrinkled pink pantsuit with long black hair bunched around her shoulders. She was weaving on her feet as one of the other women helped her to a metal chair.

“They're getting ready to take him into surgery, Father.” A nurse came around a counter and led the way into a maze of emergency treatment rooms. “Looks like the steering wheel crushed his chest when his pickup went off the road.”

Charlie lay on a hospital gurney, a hose stretched upward from one brown arm to a bottle of fluid dangling overhead from a silver pole. A black blood pressure cuff was wrapped around the other arm, and another nurse was pressing a stethoscope into the crook of the elbow.

“You only have a few moments,” the first nurse said. “The doctor is scrubbing now.”

Father John slipped the compact from his pocket as the nurse with the stethoscope stepped back, motioning him forward.

“Can you hear me, Charlie? I'm going to give you the last sacrament.” he said, leaning over the trolley. Charlie's eyes moved toward him, eyelids flickering as if he were making an effort to stay awake. There wasn't a mark on his face. His chest must have taken the full blow, Father John thought, as he made the sign of the cross on Charlie's forehead, touching it with the oil and softly repeating the prayers. “With this holy anointing, may the Lord in His love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

“No,” Charlie whispered.

Father John stopped. “Do you not wish the sacrament?”

Charlie's eyes were bright, desperate looking. He managed to nod his head slightly, and Father John continued the anointing.

“No.” Charlie's voice was louder, rough as sandpaper. “Accident.”

Suddenly the Indian stretched his fingers, clawing at the air, lips moving soundlessly. Father John bent over and placed one ear close to Charlie's mouth. “Three,” Charlie whispered. Father John heard the rattle in the Indian's chest, the death rattle he'd heard other times in other emergency rooms. Then a burst of whispered words came from the Indian. “Three.” “Three.” “Three.” “Ten.”

Two orderlies came through the door. “Ready,” they said, positioning themselves at both ends of the cart. Father John kept his hand on Charlie's shoulder as the gurney moved through the doorway and down the hall. The squish of rubber wheels on the tiled floor sounded like footsteps in soft mud. He watched the gurney disappear past two wide swinging doors.

 

“He gonna make it?” Charlie's wife asked. Her face pale, her eyes wide, as if she'd already guessed the answer.

“I hope so,” Father John said, wondering if he shouldn't, instead, try to say something that would prepare her. There were no words that could prepare her for what was coming.

An Arapaho woman who looked enough like Charlie to be his sister got up from a metal chair across the room and said, “Charlie must've missed that big curve on Seventeen-Mile Road. He's always drivin' too fast.” At this, Charlie's wife winced and drew in her breath. “Two kids came drivin' by and spotted the wreck. Happened maybe an hour ago,” the other woman went on.

Father John was thinking that Charlie had been at the funeral Mass this morning and at the cemetery with the other council members. He was sure of it, but he didn't remember seeing Charlie at the feast and giveaway.

“Where was he going?” Father John asked.

Charlie's wife turned in the metal chair, pointedly ignoring the other woman. “He was out on council business. He works hard. He's always out takin' care of council business.”

“He tried to tell me something,” Father John said. “It was hard to make out. He kept saying ‘three.' Then what sounded like ‘ten.'”

“It's about ten o'clock now,” the Arapaho woman who looked like Charlie's sister said. “You think he was askin' the time?”

That idea hadn't entered his mind. Father John glanced around the waiting room at the other Arapahos, their eyes on him, obviously following the conversation and waiting for his response. “I don't know,” he said finally.

In his mind, he was turning over the other words Charlie had uttered, but he decided against mentioning them. “No” and “accident.” Charlie was in shock, but those words were clear. Was he in denial, saying that the accident hadn't happened? Or was he saying he didn't want it to have happened? Or—the idea hit Father John like a fastball in the stomach—was Charlie telling him it was no accident?

The minute the green-garbed doctor stepped into the waiting room, Father John knew Charlie was dead. “Mrs. Taylor?” the doctor said, moving toward the councilman's wife. From the look of terror on her face, she also knew what the doctor was about to say to her.

T
HERE WAS NO traffic on Seventeen-Mile Road. The morning was hazy and cool, but a blinding sun was climbing out of the east. Father John snapped down the Toyota's visor. Ahead the plains, brown and parched, lengthened into the gray-blue sky. It was a kind of miracle how, at certain times of day, in certain light, the earth and sky flowed together as if they were one. A couple of white clouds with dark edges drifted along in a promise of rain that would probably come to nothing. More than likely, it would be another hot day.

Father John slowed the Toyota a short distance beyond the intersection with Goes-In-Lodge Road, just before Seventeen-Mile Road angled north. It was the only bend for miles in the two-lane road that shot straight as an arrow across the reservation. Charlie's gray pickup lay on its side out in the field a good fifty feet. He wondered how fast Charlie had gone into the curve.

He'd passed the site last night on his way home from the hospital, but it had been too dark to see anything other than the shadowy hulk of the truck. He wanted to walk around in the daylight before Banner and his men and a phalanx from the state patrol converged for an investigation. Not until Father John eased the Toyota off the road and down into the barrow ditch did he notice the blue pickup parked in the scraggly bushes.

He wasn't the only one checking out the accident. Father John slowly got out of the Toyota, taking in everything: the wrecked truck, the bushes, and the yellow sunflowers in the ditch, the road a few feet above. Just then Ned Cooley stood up on the far side of the pickup and began walking around it, cowboy hat pushed back on his head, hands in the pockets of his tailored gray pants.

Meadowlarks trilled to one another through the morning quiet as Father John made his way across clumps of sagebrush, avoiding the prairie dog holes. He could feel his muscles tensing, the way they did when he was a kid in Boston walking through a strange neighborhood.

The rancher leaned against the tilted tailgate of Charlie's pickup, waiting. There was no trace of surprise on his face, nothing but the complacency of a man used to being in charge.

“Charlie Taylor a friend of yours?” Father John asked as he approached.

Ned lowered his eyes, folded his arms, and crossed one leg over the other. Gravel scraped under his boots. “All these Indians are friends of the Cooley family.”

Father John walked slowly around the pickup. The sun flared off the tilted windshield. The hood and engine had been pushed back almost into the front seat. He wondered how they'd gotten Charlie out. “Think this was an accident?” he asked.

The other man guffawed. “Of course it was an accident.”

“What brought you out here so early?” Father John stopped next to the rancher, still leaning against the tailgate. Without answering, Ned squared his shoulders, dug his hands into his pockets, and began strolling along the pickup. his attention on the exposed axles and driveshaft. Finally he said, “Always hate to see something senseless like this.” A speech. He was the candidate in a roomful of supporters. “Soon as I'm governor, I intend to do everything in my power to erase the scourge of alcohol from this reservation.”

“Charlie didn't drink,” Father John said, studying the tailgate where Ned had been leaning. It had a deep, rounded dent that pushed into the bed itself. It was hard to tell if the gray paint had been scraped off, or if those were flecks of dark paint.

Suddenly Ned whirled around and took a couple of steps forward. He was squinting in the sun which had already burned off most of the morning haze. White clouds drifted like snow over the Wind River Mountains, but everywhere else the sky was radiant blue. “That so? You seem to know everything on this reservation. You make everybody's business your own and go around interfering in people's lives. That doesn't work here, Father O'Malley. We got our own ways, and we don't like outsiders interfering. That's why your boss is gonna send you back to Boston or someplace else real soon.”

“Maybe,” Father John said, locking eyes with the rancher. There were no maybes, and Father John knew that the other man understood this. It was Ned Cooley who was interfering in his life, calling the Provincial, telling him God knows what to get Father John removed from St. Francis. If the Provincial ordered him to another assignment ... Well, he had taken the vow of obedience. He would have to go. He swallowed back the anger rising in his throat like hot phlegm.