Watching Eagles Soar (11 page)

“Gloria got that story down just right.” Regina Old Bear rearranged herself on the couch, patting her blue dress over the bony knobs of her knees. “The woman was unhappy, married to Moon. She wanted to come back to her people on earth. But Moon said no. He said he'd kill her if she left.”

“She left anyway.” Vicky kept her eyes on Gloria. “The woman took a stick.”

Vicky hesitated, Phillip's words burning in her mind:
What'd I use to dig a hole? A stick?
“She dug a hole in the sky. Then she looped a line over the stick, set the stick over the hole, and swung down to earth on the line. Remember the rest, Gloria?”

The young woman didn't say anything, and Vicky went on: “Moon killed her, just as he'd said. He threw a boulder down and crushed her.”

Gloria jerked sideways, knocking against the edge of the table. The buffalo skull skidded over the top, and she grabbed at it and set it upright.

For a long moment, there were only the sounds of breathing—in and out—in the room. Finally Father John said, “You wanted to change the story, didn't you, Gloria?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” A note of hysteria worked into the woman's voice.

“You can't change the stories.” Regina Old Bear set both hands on the edge of the couch and leaned forward. “Gloria's gotta pass 'em on truthfully, like she learned them.”

Father John pushed on: “The story meant a lot to you, Gloria.”

“It's your favorite,” the old woman said. “You been telling me how you know the woman.”

“Grandmother, don't . . .”

“You understand her, 'cause she's like you.” Something new—a tightness—had come into the old woman's voice.

Gloria swung around and opened the door. “Why don't you get out, Vicky. You, too, Father. All you care about is Phillip. You don't know anything about me.”

Vicky stood up. “If you hadn't taken a stick and dug the hole, Gloria, Phillip would have paid for a murder he didn't commit. But you wanted to leave a sign that the story could turn out differently. The woman didn't have to die. Moon died instead.”

“You're crazy, both of you.” Gloria was shouting now. “I tell you, Phillip killed my husband.”

“That's what you'd hoped would happen,” Vicky said. “Phillip has a quick temper, and he was in love with you. You arranged the meeting at the garage, knowing your husband would rush over and start a fight. You were counting on Phillip going for the gun and shooting him. But he didn't. Instead, they got into a fistfight outside.”

Vicky stopped. It was clear now. She could almost see the story unfolding. “You had to change your plans. You ran back inside and got the gun while they were fighting. Then you drove to Cedar Butte Road, knowing James would be right behind you. When he got out of his truck, you shot him.”

Gloria let out a scream of laughter. “You can't prove anything.”

Father John said, “Not true, Gloria. How did James know when to come to the garage, unless you called him? There'll be a record of your call. And I suspect Martin Greasy, when he thinks about it, will remember that you ran back into the garage before you drove off.”

“I got a witness,” Gloria said, turning toward the old woman. “Grandmother knows I got here at three o'clock. Tell them, Grandmother.”

“How can you know, Grandmother?” Vicky said. “I don't see any clocks here. You don't wear a watch.”

“Of course there are clocks . . .” Gloria began.

“I don't need clocks.” The old woman pushed herself off the couch and walked stiff-legged over to Gloria. “Sun comes up, I know the day's started. Sun's high in the sky, day's half over. Sun drops behind the mountains, I know night's coming on. That's all I need to know.”

“Please, Grandmother . . .” Gloria swallowed back the rest of the plea.

“You come rushing in here, said your husband and Phillip got in a fight, said it was three o'clock. I believed you was telling a true story, but you changed the time, just like you wanted to change the story.” The old woman drew herself upright in a rictus of rage. “You forgot the ending, Gloria. The woman gave birth to a son before she died. He grew up in her village. He was called
Hiiciisisa,
Moon-child. He was brave and strong, like his mother. He lived a hundred years and taught the people good things—only good things.”

Regina Old Bear grabbed Gloria by the shoulders and pulled her forward. She looked small in the old woman's grasp, limp as a rag doll. “The woman brought goodness to her people, you hear me, Gloria? Not murder.”

Gloria slumped forward, hands clawing behind her at the table, the buffalo skull, and for a moment, Vicky thought she would crumble to the floor.

“He wouldn't let me go, Grandmother.” She was sobbing, shoulders heaving inside the old woman's grasp. “He was just like Moon. He was gonna kill me. I had to change the story.”

Regina Old Bear stared at her a long moment, then wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. The sound of sobs, muffled and intermittent, drifted into the silence.

“She's going to need a good lawyer,” Father John said.

Vicky felt the pressure of his hand on her shoulder.

She drew in a long breath. “As soon as I get Phillip's case dismissed,” she said, “I'll be available.”

Whirlwind Woman

The Tenth Commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

H
ospitals. Nursing homes. Hospice centers. They had a sameness about them, Vicky thought. The same vinyl floors gleaming under fluorescent ceiling lights, mop marks visible in the wax; the same dust motes floating in columns of sunshine that shot into the middle of the seating areas; the same odors of disinfectant mingling with the smells of half-dead roses on a stand somewhere. She signed in on the register that the gray-haired woman in the dark blue business suit pushed across the counter toward her. Under Patient, she wrote,
Anna Running Fast
.

“Vicky Holden?” the woman said, her eyes on the register. “Are you family?”

“Granddaughter,” Vicky said.

The woman looked up, skepticism pinging in her gaze. The name on the white plastic badge shimmering on her lapel was Alice Berkel. She said, “We didn't realize that Mrs. Running Fast had any granddaughters.”

Vicky kept her own expression immobile, her gaze steady. She didn't say anything. There was no explaining to a white woman the complicated relationships of the Arapahos, relationships that had nothing to do with blood ties. Anna had been her grandmother's friend. She and her family had lived down the road from her grandparents' ranch. Another friend, Mamie Yellow Bird, had lived across the road. They'd gone back and forth, the three families, visiting and eating and looking after one another's kids and grandkids. She could still see herself, a small brown child, tugging on one of the women's skirts, staring up into warm brown eyes, saying, “Grandmother. Grandmother.” She would keep tugging until either Anna or Mamie would scoop her up, prop her on one hip, and nuzzle her neck. “My, you are a persistent little girl,” Anna would usually say.

And now Anna was dying. Another patient at Riverton Memorial moved to the hospice floor where only family members were allowed to visit.

Vicky knew the white woman was waiting for some explanation, some proof, perhaps—birth certificate, marriage license—that would give her the right to a final visit with Anna Running Fast. There was no proof, nothing but tradition and the way things were on the Wind River Reservation. She remained silent, knowing she could outwait the woman. Silence made white people nervous.

Finally, the woman shrugged. “Room three twenty-two. I must ask you not to stay too long. She has to save her strength.”

Save her strength? Vicky was thinking, but she didn't say it. For dying?
She turned toward the corridor.

“Her other granddaughter's with her now.”

Vicky looked back.

“You know, Tammy,” the woman said, as if to reassure herself that she hadn't allowed two non-family members into Anna Running Fast's room.

Vicky gave a little nod and started down the corridor, past the closed doors on either side that muffled the whispered voices and the labored breathing of the dying. She tried to place Tammy. Anna's only child, Justice, had been killed in an accident out in the oil fields twenty years ago, two months after the heart attack that had killed his father. She'd been left with only her grandson, Jackie, who, as far as Vicky knew, hadn't come around the reservation in years. Tammy could be another family friend close enough to call Anna Grandmother. Or maybe Jackie had gotten married. Odd, Anna hadn't said anything about Jackie getting married, even though she talked about him nonstop, hardly catching a breath, every time Vicky had visited her: Jackie was in Nashville trying to get into the music business; Jackie had gone to Arizona, a real good job on a ranch; Jackie had moved to Las Vegas to deal blackjack. Jackie was smart. He could do anything he set his mind to.

Vicky was about to knock on the door with the bronze numerals 322 canted slightly to one side. She stopped; her hand hung motionless in the air. The smell of disinfectant was pure and undiluted, emanating up from the floor and out from the walls. From the other side of the door came the sound of a woman's voice, high-pitched and quick, followed by notes of laughter that rang up the scale and dissolved into a sharp squealing noise.

Vicky rapped once, then opened the door and stepped into a room that would have been bare without the small chest under the window and the metal-rimmed hospital bed that jutted into the center. Leaning over the bed, smoothing the white blanket that covered the sticklike contours of Anna's body, was a woman who might have been in her thirties or forties; it was hard to tell. She was as slim as a boy, with narrow hips and stovepipe legs wrapped in tight blue jeans and the outline of breast buds beneath the front of a red tee shirt. She swiveled toward Vicky, her lips a red O of surprise in her powdery white face. She had dark eyes outlined in black, thin black eyebrows, and coal-black hair cut short with little black spikes that crawled down her forehead.

“You're Tammy?” Vicky said.

“Yeah, that's me.” She went back to smoothing the blanket. “Been lookin' after my grandma today.”

Vicky went to the other side of the bed. Anna appeared to be asleep, her face as quiet and peaceful as a mask of brown pottery. Yet there was the faintest twitch in her eyelids, as if she were making an effort to keep them closed. Her hair looked like thin strands of gray silk spread over the white pillow. “How is she today?”

“Oh, she's doin' great. I mean, as great as you can expect in the circumstances. Been sort of unconscious most the time, but I been talkin' to her, telling her jokes and stories about me and Jackie traveling around, all the places we seen and the things we done, you know, just in case she can hear. 'Cause you know what they say.”

“What do they say?”

“How people in comas, they can still hear you. They know everything that's goin' on. It's just they can't talk. So how're you related?”

Vicky looked at the woman on the other side of the bed. “She's my grandmother.”

The red lips formed another O; her forehead creased into a frown, the black eyebrows darting toward each other. “Jackie never said nothing about a sister or a cousin or whatever. He's alone, he told me, except for me and him. Only relation on the rez is Grandma Anna.”

“Grandmother,” Vicky said.

“Yeah, whatever.” Tammy shrugged.

“You must be Jackie's wife.”

“One and only. Tammy Running Fast.” She flung her hand across the bed and flexed her fingers. They looked bony and raw, the nails bitten down over reddened knobs.

“Vicky Holden.” She took hold of the outstretched hand for a moment; she could feel the quivering energy beneath the roughened palm. “Is Jackie here?”

“I been tellin' Grandma he's on the way. I think it makes her happy, Jackie being her only grandson and all. Stopped off in Rawlins to see a guy about some money he owes him. Frigging Internet, can't trust nobody. Jackie sold the guy a real nice harness and never got a check. He was gonna pay the creep a surprise visit, you know, collect what he's got coming. Told me to take the U-Haul—it's got all our stuff—and go on to Grandma's house, 'cause we're gonna be living here now. So I drove to the rez this morning, unloaded a couple boxes, then come to town to see how Grandma's doin'. Jackie'll be here any minute now.”

She drew in her lips and took a breath as if she were sucking air through a straw. “How'd you say you and Jackie was related?”

Vicky laid her hand over Anna's. She had the sense that, somewhere deep inside, Anna was taking in everything. The old woman's fingers fluttered beneath her own. “I told you,” Vicky said.

The door swung open and Alice Berkel stepped into the room. She held on to the edge of the door and closed it behind her, keeping her gaze on Tammy. “Mrs. Running Fast?” she said, her voice leaking sympathy. “Would you step outside a moment?”

Tammy crossed her arms and tilted her head back, as if she were weighing her options. “What's it about?”

“Father John O'Malley, the priest from St. Francis Mission, would like to speak with you. I've told him you're here.”

“What's he want me for?”

“Please . . .” Alice Berkel nodded toward the bed. Keeping her voice low, she said, “He's waiting in my office.” Then she opened the door. The silence of the corridor floated into the room.

Tammy let her arms fall to her sides. She moved slowly along the bed and walked past the woman, who stepped behind her and pulled the door shut.

A soft, raspy sound came from the bed.

“What is it, Grandmother?” Vicky leaned closer.

The old woman was struggling to lift her head; her eyes were wide-open, staring across the room. For a moment, her thin lips worked around soundless words, as if she were savoring the taste of them. “Jackie,” she said. “Jackie. Jackie.”

“His wife says he'll be here soon,” Vicky said. She eased Grandmother Anna's head back into the pillow.

“Neyo:xe't!”
What sounded like a guffaw bubbled up from the old woman's chest.

“Shhh,” Vicky said, trying to pull the meaning of the word from her memory. Something to do with the wind, but it made no sense. There were so many stories that her own grandmother and Grandmother Anna and Grandmother Mamie used to tell in Arapaho when Vicky was a child. The ancient language had washed over her, caressing her, and somehow she'd understood the stories. They had always made sense.

She clasped Anna's hand and held it lightly in her own, half afraid that the birdlike bones might snap. “Don't upset yourself,” she whispered.

A scream, like the high, shrill sound of an animal caught in the steel jaws of a trap, came from the direction of the lobby. Vicky felt Anna's hand stiffen inside her own. “I'll go see what's happened,” she said, trying for a neutral tone that concealed her own misgivings. She let herself into the corridor, closed the door, and hurried toward the lobby.

The chair behind the counter was vacant, swung sideways as if Alice Berkel had gotten up in a hurry. The phone started to ring. Vicky half expected the woman to burst past the door behind the counter, but the door remained closed. The noise of the phone mingled with the muffled sound of sobbing.

Vicky stepped around the counter and rapped on the door. The sobbing stopped, and in its place came the measured rhythm of footsteps. Then the door opened, and standing in front of her was Father John, more than six feet tall with reddish hair and blue eyes and the look about him of sadness and compassion that she had often seen him wear.

“I'm afraid it's bad news,” he said, nodding her into the office. Tammy was hunched forward in one of the side chairs in front of the desk, her dark head cradled in her hands. The white woman stood behind her, patting and caressing her shoulder with the confidence of someone accustomed to consoling the grieving.

“Jackie?” Vicky said.

“He was found dead this morning on the highway about twenty miles south of town,” Father John said. “His truck ran off the road.”

“I never should've let Jackie go see that guy alone.” Tammy lifted her head and twisted around in the chair, looking from Father John to Vicky. Black mascara tears ran down her cheeks. “I should've gone with him. I wanted to go, but he was real worried about Grandma. Told me to go on and tell her how we was gonna be living here now and how we was gonna take real good care of her house. But I should've . . .”

“You mustn't blame yourself,” Alice Berkel said, smoothing the red tee shirt over Tammy's shoulder.

“You don't understand.” Tammy shrugged away from the woman's hand and locked eyes with Vicky. “That guy must've followed him,” she said, a pleading tone now. “He run him off the road and killed him. I bet he made sure he got his money out of the truck before he took off.”

“Jackie's truck was forced off the road?” Vicky dropped onto the chair next to Tammy.

It was Father John's voice behind her: “He was shot in the head.”

“My God!” Vicky said. “Why would anyone do that?”

“I told you. That guy in Rawlins tried to rip us off.” Tammy curled back over herself and dropped her face into her hands.

The room was quiet a moment. Then Father John said, “The sheriff will want to talk to you.” He kept his voice low and steady.

“Me?” Tammy's head snapped back. She squared her shoulders. “What do I know? I told you, I should've been there, but I wasn't.”

“He'll want to know about the man in Rawlins. Name. Address. Any other information you can give him.”

Tammy squeezed her eyes shut and started sobbing again. Her thin chest rose and fell in spasms beneath the red tee shirt. It was a moment before she took the tissue that Alice Berkel held out to her and began swabbing at her cheeks. “It was Jackie's deal.” She was staring straight ahead across the desk. “He was the one sold the harness. I didn't have no part of it.”

“The sheriff will still need your statement,” Vicky said. “It could help him find the man.”

Tammy took a moment before she started nodding, the way she might have nodded at the inevitability of a thunderstorm moving in. “It's gonna kill Grandma,” she said.

“We think it's best not to tell her.” Alice Berkel glanced over Tammy's head at Vicky. “I've explained to Father John that Mrs. Running Fast is in and out of consciousness, and she's very weak. She's hoping to see her grandson again before she dies. I'm sure the family would agree that there isn't any reason to rob her of hope in the little time she has left.”

Vicky nodded. She couldn't shake the feeling that, somehow, Grandmother Anna already knew.

* * *

T
he call came about eight o'clock that evening. Vicky had just finished some Chinese takeout at the kitchen counter in her apartment in Lander when the phone started ringing over the music of Clint Black on the CD player. She turned down the volume and lifted the receiver, some part of her knowing what she was about to hear. She could feel her stomach muscles clench, and for a moment, she thought she might be sick.