Watching Eagles Soar (12 page)

“Ms. Holden?” It was Alice Berkel's voice, as steady as a recording. “I'm so sorry to have to tell you that your grandmother passed away a few minutes ago.” She paused. “Ms. Holden?” she said again when Vicky didn't say anything.

“Was anyone with her?” Vicky walked around the counter and sat down at the dining table. It was so sad to die alone. She should have stayed longer with Grandmother Anna, but she and Father John had been concerned about Tammy. They had walked her outside and offered to drive her to Grandmother's house. She'd insisted that she was fine. Down the elevator, through the lobby, and across the parking lot to the U-Haul truck, wiping at her tears the whole time. She needed some time; that was all. She wanted to be alone.

Vicky had gone back to Grandmother Anna's room, and Father John had come with her. But Grandmother Anna had seemed to be asleep. She'd looked peaceful, and they hadn't wanted to disturb her. They'd shut the door quietly and left her alone.

“Mrs. Running Fast didn't die alone.” The voice at the other end of the line cut into Vicky's thoughts. She felt the wave of relief rush over her like a warm gust of wind.

“Fortunately, her other granddaughter was with her.”

“Tammy?”

“She returned shortly after you left. Said she wanted to stay with her grandmother. But when Mrs. Running Fast's heart gave out, well . . . it was more than the poor girl could take. She came running into the office crying. Collapsed in the chair. Naturally the nurses went immediately into Mrs. Running Fast's room. They confirmed that she was gone. Tammy was inconsolable. Such a shock, losing her husband and her grandmother in the same day!”

“Where is she now?”

“She ran out of here a little while ago. She really shouldn't be alone in the state she's in.” A long sigh came down the line. “I can't imagine where she might have gone to.”

“Don't worry. I'll find her,” Vicky said. Then, before she hung up, she asked the woman to call the elder Will Standing Bear and Father John and ask them to bless Grandmother Anna's body. Five minutes later she was in her Jeep driving north to the reservation.

* * *

P
lunkett Road ran straight ahead, disappearing into the darkness beyond the yellow sweep of headlights. The lights in Grandmother Anna's house glowed in the distance, like the beacon of a lighthouse rising over the dark sea of the plains. Vicky slowed as she neared the turnoff. Parked in the bare dirt yard was the U-Haul truck. Then she saw the faint light winking in the windows of the house across the road. She drove ahead a few yards, turned right, and bounced across the dirt to the little rectangular house with white siding and a wooden stoop with sloping steps at the front door.

It was several seconds before Grandmother Mamie cracked the door about an inch and peered out. “Vicky!” she said, hauling the door back into the shadows of the living room. Light flickered from a mute TV somewhere. “I was hoping you'd come.”

Vicky stepped inside. She was surprised at the strength and determination in Grandmother Mamie's thin arms as they wrapped around her and drew her close, the way they had drawn her close when she was a child. She held on for a long time before she let her go. “Phone's been ringing for an hour,” she said. Her voice was raspy, as if she'd been crying. “Everybody's talking about how Jackie got killed and how Anna's gone now.”

“I'll miss her,” Vicky said. The truth of it struck her like an unexpected blow. She would miss the past filled with people like her own grandparents and Grandmother Anna and Grandmother Mamie. It was as if part of her own life were slipping away. She blinked back the moisture thickening in her eyes.

“I saw her just yesterday,” Grandmother Mamie said. She was as small and slight as ever, with the same silvery hair framing her narrow face, the same pinpricks of light in her brown eyes. “That white woman at the counter wanted to know if I was family,” she went on. “Yeah, Anna and me are sisters, I told her. Only she was never gonna understand the Arapaho Way, so I didn't say anything else. She let me see her. It was the last time.”

Mamie started to cry then, long, choking sobs that shook her narrow shoulders. Vicky put her arm around the old woman and led her past the TV to the sofa. She waited while Mamie pulled a tissue out of the pocket of her blouse and dabbed at her eyes. When she leaned back against the cushion, Vicky asked whether Anna had ever mentioned Jackie's wife.

For a long moment, Mamie stared at the two vacant chairs across the room. Finally she said, “We had a real good visit before she had to go into the hospital. Spent all afternoon sitting here talking. She told me Jackie got mixed up with some white woman named Tammy. Kept following her around the country. They were always on the move, that woman and Jackie after her. Gonna hit it big here, there, and everywhere. Never lightin' anywhere, just running, running to the next big deal. Suited Jackie just fine, 'cause he never liked staying in one place anyway. But Tammy was worse than him. He couldn't keep up with her, Anna said. Like trying to keep up with a whirlwind.”

“Neyo:xe't,”
Vicky said, remembering now. “It means whirlwind.”

“You remember the story?” Grandmother Mamie turned toward Vicky. Her dark eyes danced with surprise and even a hint of joy. “Whirlwind was always running, running, and the man that loved her went running after her. Until . . .” Her features became rigid. She raised her hand and covered her mouth, as if she wanted to stop the rest of it.

“She killed him,” Vicky said. And Grandmother Anna had sensed the truth of it, she was thinking.

“It's only a story,” Mamie said. She was waving her hand, pushing the story away. “One of the old stories.”

Vicky took a moment before she said, “Did Anna mention why Jackie and Tammy decided to come back to the rez to live?”

“Where'd you get that idea?”

“Tammy told me they planned to live in Anna's house. She's there now. The U-Haul is parked in the yard.”

The old woman looked back at the chairs across the room. “Anna told me she wrote Jackie a long letter.” She was speaking slowly, as if she were listening in on the conversation from an afternoon two weeks ago and repeating it word for word. “Told him that after she was gone, the house was gonna be his. She was hoping he might be ready to come home and settle down, give up all that runnin' around. She told him her time was getting close. Three days later, they put her in the hospital. Next thing I heard, they moved her to the hospice floor so she could die.”

Mamie closed her eyes and sank back against the sofa. “Jackie called her up in the hospital,” she said. “Told her he didn't want the house. Couldn't see him and Tammy settling down in one place. Just about broke Anna's heart, the idea of him never coming back to the rez. Surprised me when I heard him and that woman had decided to come visit. Too bad Jackie never got there. She would've died happy.” She started crying again, a soft gurgling noise that ran through the gnarled fingers pressed to her mouth.

Vicky put her arm around Mamie's shoulders. She could feel the fragile bones pressing through the thin fabric of her dress, and something else: the almost physical sense of grief. She'd sensed it in Anna that afternoon, she realized. In the frail, knobby hand had been the fluttering of grief for her grandson.

And now . . . With Jackie dead, Grandmother Anna's house and all the contents would go to his wife. It wasn't much—a small house with a leaking roof and a cracked stoop; an old sofa and chairs with springs pushing through the fabric; two or three small tables and the kitchen table where Anna had rolled flour into fry bread; a couple of sagging beds. But it was something.

Vicky waited until Mamie seemed calmer, as if she were beginning to settle into a kind of acceptance. She'd lifted the old woman's feet onto an ottoman, refilled the glass of water on the table next to the sofa, and told her to try to rest. She should call her if she needed anything. Yes, yes, Granddaughter. Mamie had smiled up at her, already half-asleep.

* * *

A
white ball of light shone in the darkness ahead and gradually dissolved into two headlights riding high—the headlights of a pickup. Vicky slowed down and turned into the yard in front of Grandmother Anna's house, the headlights flickering in the rearview mirror. She parked next to the U-Haul truck, and the pickup pulled in alongside her.

Father John was coming around the hood by the time she'd gathered her bag from the passenger seat and gotten out. She slammed the door shut. The air was warm and clear, the stars bright overhead. It didn't surprise her that he was here. He would want to make sure that Tammy was all right.

“I think Tammy shot her husband and pushed his car off the road,” Vicky said.

“What?” Father John moved closer and leaned toward her. “What makes you think that?” he said, but in the way that he said it, she sensed that he'd been wondering whether it might be true.

“Grandmother Anna tried to tell me.” Vicky took a gulp of air to stop the sob forming in her throat. “She whispered whirlwind to me in Arapaho.
Neyo:xe't
. It refers to one of the old stories where a man follows a whirlwind woman everywhere, until she finally kills him.”

Father John turned toward the little house set back in the shadows. Light shone in the two front windows and leaked around the edges of the door. “The house would have been Jackie's,” he said, and she could see that he was starting to put everything together.

“Jackie didn't want it. He had no intention of moving back to the reservation.”

The door juddered open; Tammy peered around the edge, her thin figure backlit by the light inside. “Who's out there?” she called.

“Father John and Vicky,” Father John said. They walked over to the stoop and started up the steps. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm okay.” She flung the door back. “Guess you can come in.”

“You've had a hard day,” Vicky said as they stepped inside. There was a pile of cardboard boxes in the center of the room. The top box was open; the sleeves of what looked like a man's plaid shirt hung over the flaps. “What are your plans now?”

“Plans?” This seemed to take her by surprise. She stepped backward around the pile of boxes and sat down in the middle of the sofa. “Guess I'll be taking off,” she said, “soon's I get my money outta the house.”

“What about the funerals?” Father John said.

“Oh, yeah. After Jackie and Grandma get buried and everything's settled.”

Vicky took the worn upholstered chair next to the sofa, and Father John pulled over a wood chair and sat down. “What makes you think the house is yours?” Vicky said.

“Oh, I get it.” Tammy crossed one jeans-wrapped leg over the other and squeezed her hands together on top of her thigh. “You're looking to get a piece of it, but I'm on to you. I asked Grandma if you was a blood relative, and she shook her head. I seen her shaking her head. That's how I know her only blood relative was Jackie, and now that he's dead, it's just me, Jackie's wife.”

“You'll have to prove that,” Vicky said.

“What're you talking about?”

“Do you have a marriage certificate?” Father John said.

She smiled at this, as if she'd anticipated the strongest argument. “We didn't need no certificate to prove we was married. We was man and wife in the Arapaho Way—that's what Jackie said. And the Arapaho Way is what counts on the rez.”

“But not in court,” Vicky said.

“What're you talkin' about?”

“All your actions were for nothing,” Vicky said. “You murdered Jackie for nothing.”

“You don't have no proof,” Tammy said, and Vicky marveled at the calmness in her voice, like the calmness in the eye of a storm. “The guy in Rawlins . . .”

“The sheriff has already gotten a warrant to compare the dents and paint marks on Jackie's car with the U-Haul,” Vicky said. She was guessing that was the case, probing for a way to break through the invisible shield the woman had pulled around her. “He'll find a perfect match, won't he?”

At this, Tammy jumped to her feet. She swiveled her head about, glancing between Vicky and Father John. “What do you know about it? Who the hell are you to judge me? I never had nothin'. I been lookin' all my life for what other people got. Some security, isn't that what rich folks call it? Security? So I don't have to dig in a Dumpster for enough scraps to keep alive. Sleep in an alley with the rats crawling over me. You know what that's like? I'm worn-out traveling around, looking for a score so me and Jackie'd both have some security. That fool, he got security dropped into his lap, and he says, ‘No way am I gonna live on the rez. The tribe can take the stupid house!' That's what he was gonna do. Sign over the deed to this house and all the stuff.” She swung her arms in a half circle, taking it all in. “All he had to do was sell it all. Sell it! Then we'd have our stake. We'd get some security, but he said no. He didn't want nothing to do with it. He didn't give me no choice.”

“So you packed your things in a U-Haul and started for the reservation,” Vicky said. “You knew he'd come after you. He always followed you. You were close to the rez by the time he caught up. Were you waiting for him at the side of the highway? As soon as he pulled up, you got in his car and shot him. Then you pushed the car down the embankment.”

“Shut up!” Tammy was swinging her arms about again.

Father John stood up. “Take it easy,” he said, but she was stomping around now, circling the pile of boxes, like an animal circling the blown-in debris in a cage.

She knocked the top box to the floor, stooped over, and pulled out a pistol. “I'm getting out of here,” she said.

“Don't make things harder for yourself,” Vicky said. “The court will appoint a lawyer who will get you the best deal possible.”