Winter's Child (5 page)

A sheet of paper materialized from the woven bag on Myra's lap. She scooted forward and handed the paper across the desk. “Does this mean you have to start all over? We were hoping to have the adoption finalized by now.”

Vicky glanced down the sheet. A number of Little Shields scattered among other familiar names on the rez. No one she knew, but she supposed that, at one time or another, she had crossed paths with most of them. “I'll see if I can find out if Clint ran into any obstacles.” She glanced up and tried for a smile of encouragement. “I'll be in touch.”

It took a moment before the Little Shields seemed to realize the appointment was over. Myra crunched the woven bag, then swung the strap over one shoulder and got to her feet; Eldon gripped the armrests and propelled himself upward into the sunlit motes of dust. They started toward the beveled glass doors.

Vicky walked them out. She watched Myra bundle Mary Ann into a pink coat, pull a blue hat over her hair, and help her with her mittens. Then the family was out the door into the glare of sunshine and snow, Mary Ann between her parents, holding their hands. A peaceful family picture, yet she could still feel the turmoil and anxiety in Myra and Eldon Little Shield.

She went back to her desk, another image crowding into her mind: the dark figure in the falling snow, the headlights snapping on, the truck roaring down. What is it you learned that you had to die for?

“Vicky?” Annie stood in the doorway. “Are you all right?”

She was not all right; she was thinking, but she tried for a reassuring smile.

“Rick Masterson wants you to call him.” Annie walked over and placed the message on the desk.

She had turned back when Vicky said, “See if you can reach Clint Hopkins's secretary and set up a time when we can meet at Clint's office. The sooner, the better.”

Shannon O'Malley was
like her mother, kicking up white clouds as she came down the alley, the same air of confidence and assurance Father John remembered in Eileen, as if she would soon make the world turn her way. He went to meet her. “You're early,” he said, falling in beside her. She was tall beside him, filled with energy, sunlight shimmering in her reddish hair. Elena wouldn't serve lunch for ten minutes. This could be the first time, he realized, that he was on time for a meal. “All settled in?”

“Doesn't take long to unpack a backpack.” She glanced up at him. “Can't wait to transcribe my notes and start writing.” She tossed her head about. “You didn't tell me about the buffalo herd on the other side of the fence.”

Ah, the buffalo. The rancher next to the mission had raised buffalo for decades. Quiet animals, grazing in the pasture in the summer and fall, nibbling on bales of hay the rancher tossed out. If you
stood close enough to the fence, you could sometimes hear a buffalo snorting, but most of the time he forgot the herd was there. “What did you think?”

“I landed in the Wild West. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday could show up at any minute. Any gunfights lately?”

“Not lately.” You never knew. You never knew. “Did you see the church?”

She stopped walking and turned toward the white stucco church across the alley. “Looks interesting.”

“Come on, we'll have a look.”

“Do we have time?”

“It's a small church.” Father John ushered her up the frosty concrete steps that sparkled in the sun. Opening the heavy oak door, he nodded her into the vestibule. It was chilly inside. The furnace he had adjusted this morning and the sun splashing through the stained glass windows were not enough to banish last night's frigid temperatures.

Shannon started down the center aisle, taking in the windows on one side, then the other. “The geometric symbols are Arapaho,” he said, staying with her. “Horizontal lines for the roads we must travel. Rectangles for the buffalo that give their lives so the people could live. Tipis for the people and the villages.” Dozens of different symbols; he was still learning the meanings.

Shannon nodded and walked over to the small tipi the women had made from tanned deerskins, the finest skins. Geometric symbols painted in red, blue, black, and yellow, decorated the outside. “The tabernacle,” he said.

“And that's the altar?” She nodded toward the large drum next to the tabernacle, then twirled about, taking it all in again, before she began walking back down the aisle. “It's beautiful,” she said when they were outside. “Like a church in a fairy tale.”

“Fairy tale?” He walked her across Circle Drive, over the hardened ridges of tire tracks, and through the snow-mounded field, following the footprints he and the bishop had left that morning.

“Where Cinderella marries Prince Charming. Nice, if you believe in fairy tales.”

“And you don't?”

“Come on, Uncle John.” She stopped in her tracks and was looking up at him. “No one in my generation believes in fairy tales.
Ever after
just doesn't happen. It never did, really. Your generation was the last to cling to that belief. My generation, we take things as they are. Don't expect the impossible. People change and grow, and they need to move on. What works for a while doesn't work forever.”

She was looking away now, out across the mission grounds and the open, snowy plains where the buffalo herd grazed, and he caught the shadow of disappointment in her expression. She covered it up quickly—she was a good actress, like her mother. He had never been certain where he stood with Eileen. Always off balance.

“Anyway, David and I . . .”

“David?”

She took a moment, as if this was a road she wasn't sure she wanted to start down. “I guess you'd call him my boyfriend. We've been together three years now. We live together. We knew it wasn't forever, and that was okay. It's been great, but now it's time to move on. He'll finish his Ph.D. in religious studies this spring and take a position at the University of North Carolina.”

They started up the shoveled sidewalk to the residence. “You could write your dissertation anywhere,” Father John said.

“Maybe for your generation things were that simple, Uncle John, but we accept that everything has an end.”

They took the steps side by side, and he pushed open the front
door. No, things were never simple, he wanted to say. Twenty-five years ago, he had come to that same point, where it was time to move on.

“I'm just saying we don't pretend to believe in
happily ever after
. We're okay with the present.” She was pulling off her jacket, and he took it from her and hung it on a hook. He set his own jacket on the bench and placed his cowboy hat on top. Maybe that was the real difference in their generations: the ability to move on without regret. With gratitude, even. But in the smile she gave him, he detected the smallest flicker of sadness and disappointment, which disappeared as quickly as it had flared up.

“If you ever want to talk,” he said, but Walks-On came clicking down the hallway, and Shannon swung toward him.

“And who might you be?” She leaned over and ran a slender hand over the dog's coat. “My, you're a handsome fellow. What happened to your hind leg?”

“He lost it on Seventeen-Mile Road when he was a puppy.” The conversation about fairy tales and going forward without regret—oh, yes, without any regret that this niece of his would ever admit to—was over.

“Let me guess. You found him and brought him home.”

“After a trip to the vet's. He pretty much patrols the mission, keeps us in line.”

“Of course you would have a dog. I can't imagine you without a dog.”

Walks-On had pivoted about. Looking back to make sure his two charges were in line, he headed down the hallway to the kitchen. The air was filled with smells of tomato soup and grilled cheese, the lunch his mother used to make, Father John was thinking, on frosty winter days.

“Shannon.” He kept his voice low, a few feet behind her. “If there is anything you would like to talk over . . .”

“There isn't.” She glanced back and flashed the same knowing smile he had found so annoying and attractive in her mother.

“Welcome.” Bishop Harry, wrapped in a white apron, pushed himself off the edge of the counter and plunged toward Shannon, hand extended. “A pretty Irish lass, I see. I'm the pastor's assistant.”

“Bishop Harry Coughlin,” Father John said. “I may be the pastor, but he's the bishop. This is Elena, our housekeeper.”

Elena stood at the table, holding several plates. She nodded in Shannon's direction and went about placing the plates on the table. The Arapaho Way, Father John knew. She would hold back until she decided what type of character Shannon had, whether her heart was good. There was no sense in giving yourself to a bad heart. As soon as she decided Shannon had a good heart, Elena would take her in and love her like an orphaned child.

“We've prepared a sumptuous lunch in your honor.” The bishop waved at the stove, where grilled cheese sandwiches browned in the frying pan. Father John glanced over at Elena, who looked up and rolled her eyes. “I am pleased to say I am learning to prepare new dishes today. Cooking is not hard if one applies himself. Do sit down.” The bishop made a courtly gesture of pulling a chair from the table. “Make yourself at home, because this is your home for as long as you like.”

Shannon smiled and shrugged and thanked the old man, then settled herself on the chair. Father John took his usual chair across the table. “I hope the cooks will join us,” he said.

“Yes, yes. Naturally.” The bishop scooped the sandwiches onto a platter, which he set in the middle of the table, while Elena moved over to the stove and began ladling soup into bowls. One by one,
the bishop delivered the bowls. Finally he dropped onto the chair next to Shannon. Fingers of steam curled above the thick red soup.

Elena took her usual place across from the bishop. “Eat up,” she said, scooting her chair into the table. Since Father John had been on the reservation, Arapahos had been placing food in front of him and telling him to eat up. Just like in the Old Time, he knew, when no one was sent away from an Arapaho village hungry. You never knew, heading onto the plains, when you might find food again.

Shannon had dipped her spoon into the soup when Bishop Harry said, “Let us pray.” Father John bowed his head, conscious of a sense of contentment flooding over him. Shannon O'Malley, not much more than a girl, carrying with her a connection to his family, to his own past, and to an essential part of himself that, he realized, he sometimes forgot to remember. He had settled in here, at a remote mission on a remote Indian reservation that many of his classmates in the Jesuit seminary, bound for teaching positions at Georgetown or Marquette or some other university, would have considered the dead-end of a career, where priests like Bishop Harry Coughlin went to recuperate from the frailties of old age.

“We thank you, Lord, for blessing us with the presence of Shannon O'Malley, and for allowing us to share this meal together.”

“Amen,” Elena said. “Dig in.”

Shannon took a sip of soup and told Elena how delicious it was. “I would love to know how to make it.”

“One cooking student is all I can manage at the moment.” Elena stirred her own soup and stared at the bishop.

“A very fine teacher you are, I may add,” the bishop said. “I had no idea toasted cheese sandwiches could require so much effort. Why, you must watch them like a hawk or one may burn.”

“Or two.” Elena reached over and pushed the plate of
sandwiches in Shannon's direction. A first step, Father John was thinking, in accepting her.

The bishop helped himself to a sandwich and shoved the plate toward Father John. “I understand you are researching the lives of white sisters held captive by the Plains Indians.”

“There were a number of captives between 1860 and 1880.” Shannon's voice sparkled with excitement as she moved into familiar territory. “I'm interested in how those who survived viewed their captivity. In what way did it influence or change their lives? I'm especially interested in Elizabeth Fletcher, who was never rescued. She lived here on the reservation.”

“Lizzie Brokenhorn.” Elena spoke softly, as if the name had triggered a memory.

Shannon gave a smile of acknowledgement, which Elena ignored. “She lived as an Arapaho. Married an Arapaho man when she was only fifteen.”

“John Brokenhorn,” Elena said.

Father John could feel the excitement building in his niece as she shifted sideways toward the housekeeper. He could almost read the questions popping in her eyes. He stared so hard at her that finally she glanced his way, and in her glance he saw that she had some comprehension of what he was trying to convey. Be patient. Wait. Elena was still making up her mind about Shannon's heart.

“I wonder if it was hard for her to leave her own family and culture behind and live in a completely different world. Oh, I know she was practically a baby when she was captured, but still, a part of her must have known she was different from the people she thought of as her family. Like a blood memory that stayed with her, shadowed her. I can't help but think there were times when it was hard for her.”

This seemed to do it. A young white woman's sympathy for an Arapaho captive. Father John watched the lines in Elena's face soften into a smile. She reached over and touched Shannon's hand. “My grandmother was a friend of hers.”

Shannon sat upright, questions jumping in her eyes, and Father John shot her another look. Elena had offered a small gift of information. She would offer more if she wished, and all the questions Shannon might come up with wouldn't pry another piece of information out of the housekeeper if she didn't want to provide it.

“My grandfather's ranch was next to Brokenhorn's,” Elena said after a moment. “They had been scouts for General Crook when he was chasing the Sioux around, so they went back a long ways.” Elena nodded as if to punctuate the friendship. “Only natural the women were friends, too. Grandmother tended to Lizzie when she gave birth, and Lizzie did the same for her. Giving birth was women's work. The men went down to the river, smoked pipes, and waited. Grandmother and Lizzie raised their kids together. Kids went back and forth from house to house. Felt at home wherever they went. Always a mother to feed them, put them to bed when they were tired, make sure they were doing okay.”

Elena lifted her head and stared at the ceiling as though an old black-and-white movie were playing there. “It was a hard time when the people first came to the reservation,” she said, still watching the ceiling. “Government had already sent the Shoshones here, and they weren't looking to share the rez with Arapahos. We had no place to live. All our lands gone. The hunting grounds, the villages, all gone. Everywhere we went, the people were hunted down. Soldiers, white posses, ranchers, homesteaders. Open season on Indians back then. Shoshones say Chief Washakie's heart was so big he couldn't turn us away.”

Elena lowered her eyes and turned toward Shannon. “Hope you'll get it right when you tell your story.”

“I want to very much. I'll do my best.”

Elena patted Shannon's hand again. “Remember that Lizzie was Arapaho. She lived Arapaho. Grandmother said Lizzie hated the way she looked. She rubbed dirt on her face and arms to make them dark. She washed her hair in mud to turn it black, but she still had light skin and hair as golden red as wild grass in August. But no one thought of her as anything but Arapaho.”

The bishop had finished eating. He stacked his soup bowl on top of the empty sandwich plate. “I'm thinking she must have been a remarkable woman to make the best of what life had dealt her.”