The Spirit Woman (30 page)

“The Jesuit conference?” He wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.

“They didn't appreciate all those faxes any more than I did.” Dear Lord, Father John remembered thinking. Howard Elkman had gone over the provincial's head. “The conference decided you should stay there awhile longer, if that's what you want,” the provincial went on. “Is that what you really want?”

Father John remembered the space that had opened on the line, awaiting his response.
I will go, Lord, if you send me.
His voice, when he finally spoke, had been quiet. “I'd like to stay.”

“You know my concern.” The familiar, warning tone. “You say the woman's gone back to her husband, is that right?”

Father John had remained quiet a moment. Vicky had left Ben before, and she had gone back to him. “I don't know her plans.”

That had elicited a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally the provincial said, “I want you to think about your decision.”

“I've already thought about it.”

“I trust there won't be any problems.”

“No more than usual.”

“Is that supposed to allay my worries?”

“I'll notify you of the first problems that arise, Bill.”

“I'm not leaving you out there much longer,” the provincial had told him after another pause. “You know that, don't you?”

He knew that. At any moment the phone might ring again, and on the other end would be Bill Rutherford, an old friend from seminary days, his boss now, issuing the logical, peremptory order. No amount of letters from the elders, no pleas about unfinished business would change the decision. It would be the time, in the Arapaho way of time, and he would be ready.

Now he drew in another long breath, taking into himself the open spaces beyond the ring of cottonwoods and the ridge of mountains shimmering in the sun. He was at St. Francis now. And so was Kevin McBride.

He went back inside and made his way down the corridor to the
tap-tap-tap
of computer keys. The news that he was to be the assistant pastor seemed to suit the other priest just fine. More time to finish his anthropological study, he'd told Father John, as if he believed that would be true.

Father John rapped against the doorjamb. Kevin sat hunched over the blue computer screen, fingers pounding the keyboard, an earphone running from a cord to the tiny metal tape recorder next to the computer. It was a moment before he looked up, as if there were a time lag between the knock and his awareness of it. A swollen lump and purple bruise rose under one eye. The man looked as bad as he did, Father John thought. He said, “We should be ashamed of ourselves, a couple of Irish lads getting the worst of it.”

Kevin seemed to consider this. He fingered the contours of the bruise, as if he were trying to make out just how inept they really were. “We could have taken Crow Wolf.” He might have believed that, too. “We're just a little out of practice, like Chief Banner said.”

“There's something I've been wondering about,” Father John said, swinging a side chair over in front of the desk. He straddled it backward and laid his arms over the top. “Who do you suppose advised Howard Elkman to go over the provincial's head?”

“Well, that is a mystery, isn't it, now?” Kevin McBride sat back and folded his arms across his blue shirt. The prism of sunlight in the window reflected in the man's light blue eyes.

“I doubt very much that Lindy Meadows would know how to contact the Jesuit conference,” Father John pushed on.

“I doubt it,” the other priest agreed. Silence filled the space between them.

“Well, if you ever find out who the guy is,” Father John said, swinging one leg over the chair and getting back to his feet, “tell him thanks for me.”

Kevin said he'd be happy to do that.

“Will you be here for a couple hours?” Father John asked.

The other priest nodded and laid one hand over the tape recorder. “Got some good stuff I'm transcribing,” he said. “Did you know the Arapahos were forced to sell a lot of their land in the early 1900s?”

Yes, he knew, Father John said, although until that moment he hadn't remembered he knew. There were so many stories he'd absorbed since he'd been here, so much that had seeped into his consciousness and become as much a part of him as the color of his hair and eyes. He forgot about them.

Father John had turned in to the corridor when Kevin said, “You haven't heard from her, then?”

“No,” he said, looking back. He could still see the anxiety in her face during the interviews with Gianelli and Banner. It hadn't eased, even when the U.S. attorney had ruled Crow Wolf's death a justifiable homicide in defense of others. “I'd like to make sure she's all right,” he added.

“She's a tough woman, John.”

“You think so?” He wasn't sure, but then, he knew her.

“She wasn't about to let Crow Wolf kill us. She's going to be fine.”

“I hope you're right.” Father John gave a quick wave and walked back to his office, where he retrieved his jacket and hat. Then he hurried out the door and across the grounds to where he'd left the Toyota.

 

Vicky stopped the Bronco at the side of the narrow path that cut through the Shoshone cemetery. She gathered the small envelope she'd folded out of blue calico and stepped out into a cold gust of wind that whistled through the plastic flowers on the graves. She started toward the center of the cemetery, the sound of her boots on the earth punctuating the quiet. Layers of mountains rose into the sky on the west, sunlight outlining the humps and ridges and long, blue shadows drifting down the slopes. In the near distance were the roofs of Fort Washakie.

She stopped at the foot of the grave with SACAJAWEA carved into the tall, granite marker. Little piles of prayer bundles, faded and soggy, were arranged on the bare-earth hump. Close to the marker were several plastic bouquets—red, yellow, blue flowers. Slowly and reverently she unfolded the calico envelope and withdrew the three small prayer bundles she'd tied out of circles of fabric. Inside each bundle were tiny stalks of wild grasses and sage, symbolizing the earth, and clippings of her hair, symbolizing her own spirit.

She leaned down and set the prayer bundles on the grave next to the others. A prayer for Laura, her friend; a prayer for Charlotte Allen; a prayer for Sacajawea. The bundles would remain here, after she had left, beseeching the Creator to remember the women. “Please take care of them,” Vicky said out loud, her words caught in the breeze.

There was a growl of a motor in the quiet, and she glanced around. The red Toyota pickup was working its way up the narrow path. It stopped, and John O'Malley eased himself out from behind the wheel and started toward her.

“How are you?” he said when he reached the grave. His eyes fell for a half second on the three new prayer bundles, then met hers again.

“I'm okay,” Vicky said. She saw the barely concealed question in his expression.

“I drove out to Aunt Rose's,” he went on. “She said you were here.”

“I wanted to pray.”

He nodded. The fact that she hadn't returned his calls swept into the space between them like a cold gust of wind.

“All those interviews,” she heard herself explaining. “I've needed some time alone.”

“I understand.”

“How are you doing?” She reached up and touched the sore spot on his chin. “That's ugly.”

“So everyone's been telling me.”

She took her hand away. “How's Father Kevin?”

“Same ugly condition.”

Vicky shook her head, then started walking toward the Bronco. His footsteps sounded behind her. “I would've come to the mission to tell you good-bye.” She spoke into the space ahead.

“Good-bye? Do you expect me to believe the moccasin telegraph doesn't reach you at Aunt Rose's?”

“I know you've been given a reprieve,” she said, still looking ahead. “I'm glad you'll be here.”

Vicky felt the gentle pressure of his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and faced him.

“You're taking the job in Denver.” There was an unaccustomed tightness in his tone.

“It's time for me to leave, John, with the shooting and all. And the firm's made me a great offer. I'll be working on natural-resources cases that are important to my people. Laola's coming, too.”

“You went to Denver once before to get away from Ben,” he said. “Do you have to do this again?”

“Sometimes we have to leave.” Vicky let her eyes rest for a moment on the granite rising out of the earth. “I've been reading about Sacajawea. Things went better for her after she got away from Toussaint. She married a Comanche, and he was a good husband to her. She lived with the Comanches until her husband died, then she returned to her own people. Sooner or later Alva will realize that she has to get away from Lester and that her life can be better. Then she'll start looking for another lawyer.”

She started to turn again, but he held her in place. “That's not why you're leaving,” he said.

What he said was true. This time she wasn't leaving because of Ben. In any case, Ben would be gone for a while. He'd stopped by Aunt Rose's after he'd heard about the shooting and told her he was going to enter a treatment clinic in Salt Lake City, then spend some time in Los Angeles with the kids.

“These are your people, Vicky,” Father John said. His voice was soft. “You should stay. I'll tell my boss I want to go to Milwaukee.”

“You, a priest, telling a lie?” She shook her head and laughed.

“I'll be sent there sooner or later anyway.”

“John O'Malley, you're the one the people want here.” She kept her gaze steady on his. “You have to stay, don't you understand? I have to go. Besides, I'm looking forward to some legal cases that have nothing to do with real-estate leases or divorces or”—she paused—“women with black eyes.”

She shrugged away from his hand and started back toward the Bronco. He walked beside her, their boots scuffing up tiny pieces of leftover snow and earth.

“You'll stop by the mission on visits home, won't you?” he said.

“Of course. I'll want to check up on you, see what kind of trouble you're in.”

They walked around the Bronco to the driver's side. He held the door as she slid in. “Go in God's care, Vicky,” he said.

“You, too, John O'Malley.” She smiled up at him and closed the door.

T
he written records and the oral histories of the Shoshones do indeed provide different accounts of Sacajawea's life following the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean in 1805-1806. The records suggest that Sacajawea was the Shoshone wife of Toussaint Charbonneau who, in 1811, accompanied him to Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota. And she was “the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake squaw,” who died at the fort in December 1812. However, neither of these records mentions Sacajawea by name.

William Clark himself believed that she had died. In 1828, he listed in a journal the names of those who had gone on the expedition. Next to Sacajawea's name he wrote “dead.” However, Captain Clark also wrote “dead” next to the name of Patrick Gass, who died in 1870, after outliving the captain by three decades.

The stories passed down among the Shoshones say that the wife of Toussaint referred to in the written records was not Sacajawea but another Shoshone wife, Otter Woman. Even the records agree that Toussaint had several wives. According to the Shoshones, Sacajawea eventually left Toussaint and went south to the Staked Plains to live among the Comanches, who were related to her people. In the 1860s, she returned north and rejoined the Shoshones. She went with them to the Wind River Reservation in 1871. The wife of the government agent did indeed record the old woman's stories of the expedition, and the “memoirs” were destroyed in an agency fire. Sacajawea died on the reservation in 1884 at the age of nearly one hundred. She is buried in the Shoshone cemetery in Fort Washakie.