“Just got off the phone with Dad,” Damien was saying. “He had zero trouble getting past Senator Evans’s staff. Chatted with the senator himself this afternoon.” He paused, allowing the unspoken importance of his father to settle between them.
Father John took another draw of coffee. The milk made it barely drinkable. Lately the news had been filled with speculation about whether Wyoming’s senator, Jaime Evans, intended to run for president. Local newspapers could hardly contain the glee at the prospect of a local man in the Oval Office. There had been a series of articles on the Evans family and the ranch north of the reservation that they’d run for a hundred years. Not long after the senator’s grandfather, Carston Evans, had started the ranch, he’d gotten wealthy on the oil seeping into the pasture. One article had quoted the senator telling about how his grandfather had ordered the ranch hands to shovel out the black, gooey mess and clean up the fields, and how somebody had finally figured out what the black, gooey mess was.
“It’s all set,” Damien said. “The senator will be at the mission next Tuesday. The day before, he’ll be in Cheyenne, where he plans to announce that he’s running for president from the capitol steps. Tuesday morning, he’ll go to Fort Washakie and give a speech on the importance of extracting methane gas from the coal beds on the reservation. Plans to appeal to everyone’s sense of patriotism. You know, the importance of developing our own natural resources. There’s sure to be a big crowd. Drilling for methane gas would mean jobs on the rez. Of course he’ll be taking on T.J. Painted Horse and the rest of the Arapaho Business Council and their demands for additional environmental impact studies. It’ll be controversial, but that’s what attracts the media.”
The other priest sat back and stared at the ceiling, his face breaking into a slow grin, as if he were picturing the controversy. He pushed himself to his feet. “Maybe I’ll have some coffee after all,” he said.
There was the sound of coffee sloshing into a mug, glass clanking against the counter, then Damien was back in his chair. “T.J. and Savi Crowthorpe are working with the senator’s campaign staff on his visit to the rez,” he said. “I went to the tribal offices and asked them to request that the senator put in an appearance at the mission. They passed on the request, but the senator’s people nixed the idea. Well, that’s changed now.”
“How’d your father manage it?”
“You kidding?” Damien took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “Campaign contributions, John. It’s all about money and . . .” The man broke into a wide grin. “Dad controls a lot of air time, a fact that wasn’t lost on the senator’s campaign staff. Think about it, John. There’ll be reporters and TV cameras following the senator around. We’ll give them a tour of the mission. Show them our programs—AA, parenting classes, literacy and adult education, the teenage club. We’ll fill up the classrooms at Eagle Hall so it’ll look like the actual classes and meetings. We’ll give the senator a tour of the Curtis exhibit. Monday evening we’ll be on the TV in about twenty million homes. And who knows how many newspapers will run the story?”
The man leaned into the table until the edge creased the front of his blue shirt. He looked up again, as if the scene were playing out on the ceiling. “You can bet that the senator’s campaign will use the television clips to bolster his image as a candidate concerned about minorities. Helps to emphasize the importance of the new jobs that drilling for methane gas will bring. There’ll be a steady stream of donations flowing into the mission. We can build a new community center, remodel the church, finance more programs. Hire professionals, John. Social workers, psychologists to help people . . .”
“That’s our job,” Father John said.
“Absolutely.” Damien took another sip of coffee. Another grimace. “We’ll have time to concentrate on the spiritual aspects. Let the professionals handle the rest. We can have a first-class museum on the Plains Indians with more exhibits from outside. Offer good exhibits, and the crowds will come. We can pay Christine the kind of salary she deserves.”
“Whoa!” Father John put up one hand. “The donations haven’t arrived yet.”
“Oh, but they will, John.” The other priest pushed his mug into the middle of the table, got up, and started for the door. He turned back. “You have to have a little faith,” he said.
Father John drained the last of his coffee, his eyes on the man making his way down the hallway, confidence in the set of his shoulders, the way he gripped the knob on the banister and pulled himself around. Confidence in the rhythmic tap of his boots on the stairs.
After a moment, Father John got to his feet, rinsed out both mugs, and let in Walks-On, who darted past, shaking cold air out of his coat. The dog folded himself onto the rug in the corner, and Father John patted the animal’s head. Then he flipped off the light and started down the hall. Moonlight washed over the walls and floor, creating patterns of shadow and light that spilled into the study at the front of the old house. He sat down at his desk, turned on the lamp, and pulled a stack of envelopes toward him. Bills to pay, thank-you notes to write to people who had sent checks—unfamiliar names from towns he’d never heard of. The little miracles. He laughed. He had faith all right. Faith in the little miracles that arrived when he least expected them, when he most needed them.
He opened the bill from the telephone company, surprised at the uneasiness tugging at him. Even the changes Father Damien had suggested to the planning committee this evening had made him uneasy. New community center. Remodel the church. He tried to shrug off the feeling, but it clung to him, like a leach fastened onto his skin. Maybe he’d been at St. Francis too long. Eight years altogether—six as pastor, longer than he’d ever been in one place as a priest. Maybe the Arapahos needed a new pastor, someone with new ideas and exuberance. Someone like Damien.
Ah, there it was, the real cause of the uneasy feeling. Not that he might have to leave St. Francis, but that it might be best for the mission if he did.
He tossed the telephone bill onto a stack of bills-to-pay-immediately, next to the stack of bills-to-pay-as-soon-as-possible, and tried to swallow back the old longing. A thumbnail of whiskey, no more than a tablespoon, and the unease, the uncertainty, would be banished. There was courage in whiskey. “God help me,” he said out loud.
He jabbed the letter opener into another envelope, tossed another bill onto the second stack. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the yellow headlight flash through the window. An engine hummed outside. He got up and went to the front door. A Wind River Police officer was coming up the sidewalk, moonlight laying like snow on the shoulders of his dark jacket.
“Sorry to bother you, Father,” the officer said as he came up the steps to the concrete stoop. “Chief Banner sent me to notify you.”
Father John moved back into the hallway and motioned the man inside.
Stopping in the doorway, the officer removed his hat. His face was round and red with cold, his eyes squinted into slits above the fleshy cheeks. He might have been Cheyenne or Crow, Father John thought, assigned to the Wind River Reservation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“We got a body at T.J. Painted Horse’s place. Looks like suicide. Chief’s already there, along with the FBI agent. Chief said you’d want to come over, most likely.”
“I’m on my way.” Father John reached around the door and pulled his jacket off the coat tree. Then he followed the officer out into the moonlight.
4
A BODY AT the home of T.J. Painted Horse. Father John pressed down on the accelerator and stared at the silvery asphalt rolling into the headlights of the Toyota pickup. The rear tires yawed and squealed around a curve.
Suicide.
It was hard to imagine. T.J. was one of the leading men on the reservation. He had been on the tribal council—the business council, the Arapahos called it—for four or five years, and before that, he’d represented Fremont County in the state legislature. Everyone knew T.J. and his wife,
Denise. She taught third grade at Fort Washakie school, and she came to Mass almost every Sunday. Sometimes T.J. came with her.
Ahead, a single yellow light gradually separated into two headlights, coming closer. He let up on the gas pedal, blinded for a half-second as the headlights swept past. Then the moon came into view again, hanging in the sky outside the passenger window, bathing the open spaces that stretched around him in a pale, gray light.
Leading man. Father John couldn’t get the words out of his mind. He gripped the steering wheel hard. Leading men made enemies, and T.J. had spoken out against drilling for methane gas in the coal beds on the eastern edge of the reservation. He’d gone to Cheyenne to try to convince the state legislature to oppose the drilling. He’d made a trip to Washington, D.C., to convince the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When the plans continued to move forward, with the support of Senator Jaime Evans, T.J. had gone to the newspapers. There had been a rash of articles about the necessity of more environmental studies, and the BIA had finally agreed to consider another environmental impact study. But people on the rez were waiting for the jobs and for the per capita payments they’d get from the royalties, people who could have gotten tired of T.J. Painted Horse holding everything up.
Dear Lord, Father John thought. Suppose it wasn’t suicide. Suppose someone had decided to stop T.J. permanently.
Father John made a right onto Ethete Road. Another mile and he could make out the dense block of a house against the gray sky, light shimmering in the windows. Getting closer now. It might have been a party. Vehicles parked in front, dark figures milling about. A party interrupted by the police, red, blue, and yellow lights whirling on top of the cruisers.
He turned into the yard and corrected for another skid on the wood planks laid over the barrow ditch. He slid to a stop behind one of the cruisers and got out into the cold. The coroner’s SUV stood a few feet away. A couple of police officers stepped over the yellow police tape forming a barrier across the front of the house and came toward him, gloved fists clenched. Circles and stripes of colored lights whirled over their faces and dark uniforms.
“Chief Banner and the fed are inside, Father,” one of the officers said.
Father John nodded. “Okay if I go in?”
“They’re talking to T.J. in the kitchen, but I can take you to the bedroom . . .”
“T.J.?” Father John heard the relief in his voice sliding toward a new kind of horror. That meant . . .
“Coroner’s in the bedroom with Denise’s body,” the officer said.
Father John jammed both hands into his jacket pockets, vaguely aware of the cold prickling his face. “What happened here?” His voice sounded low and hollow.
“We’ll have to wait on the coroner’s report.” The other officer moved in closer. “You want the unofficial version? Looks like the woman put a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol to her head two or three hours ago and pulled the trigger. She’s on the floor where T.J. says he found her when he got home from the office. You wanna say some prayers?”
Father John followed the officers into the small, tidy living room with sofa and chairs arranged around a TV, books lined up in the bookcase against the far wall, and on the table in front of the sofa, a briefcase that looked as if it had been dropped by accident, knocking the porcelain knickknacks askew. A murmur of conversation flowed through the archway from the kitchen in back.
As he headed into the hallway, he caught sight of the three men at the kitchen table—Chief Banner at one end, Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent, at the other. T.J. sat between them, shoulders hunched, eyes locked on his hands clasped on the table. The man was in his forties, Father John guessed, with black hair combed back, curling over the collar of his tan shirt, and the profile of one of the leading men in the old photographs: hooked nose and prominent cheekbones, the handsome face frozen in sadness, as if he’d failed his people somehow and the enemy had invaded the village.
The officers were waiting halfway down the hall. Father John walked past them into the bedroom jammed with uniformed officers and several men in blue jeans and heavy jackets that hung open. Lying on her side next to the bed was Denise Painted Horse, dressed in black slacks and a light blue sweater, the color of the morning sky. She still had on her shoes, black and a little scuffed. For a crazy instant, he felt as if he’d blundered into the bedroom of a woman who’d decided to lie down on the floor and take a nap. She might awaken at any moment and find him staring at her shoes. Or the small, black pistol a few feet from her curled fingers.
A man in a dark leather jacket was darting about, snapping photographs. Two other men hovered in the corner, heads bent toward the notepad that one was holding. Down on one knee, close to the body, was Tom Enslow, the county coroner, gray-haired, with muscular shoulders beneath his flannel shirt, balancing a notepad on a bluejean-clad thigh.
Enslow leaned over Denise’s head a moment, then peeled backward and jotted something in the notepad. It was then that Father John saw the dark, sticky mass in the black hair behind Denise’s right ear. Little red tentacles reached from beneath her head into the gray carpet, like grasping, bloody fingers. He looked away, aware for the first time of the faint smell of blood. Folded over the back of a chair in the corner was a white quilt with a blue-and-yellow star in the center, like the star quilts he’d seen in Arapaho homes across the rez. Draped over the armrest was a flimsy, pink robe that Denise might have tossed there at some point in an ordinary day.
“There you are, Father.” Enslow pushed to his feet. “We’re about finished here. You want to bless her before we put her in the body bag?” There was a weary, off-key note in the man’s tone, as though the job would never be normal, never routine.
Father John walked over to Denise. He felt the muscles tighten in his stomach, his mouth go dry. The woman’s eyes were open, locked in shock and fear. She looked sunken in death, smaller than he’d remembered, and more vulnerable, her skin almost pale, like plastic. She’d been beautiful. Lively and intelligent, quick to express an opinion. Every fall—usually on a day flooded with sunshine with leaves shimmering red in the cottonwoods—Denise brought her students on an outing to the mission. A yellow school bus full of kids shouting and laughing, snapping the jackets they’d untied from their waists at one another. They’d head down the dirt road between the church and the administration building, he and Denise walking in front, the kids shouting behind. Past the guest house and into the stand of cottonwoods along the banks of the Little Wind River. It was here, Denise would tell the students, waving both hands toward the cool expanse of shade, that the people had camped when they first came to the reservation. Chief Black Coal and Chief Sharp Nose themselves had chosen this sacred place. The kids would become quiet, wide black eyes taking in the trees and underbrush dappled with sunlight, the river rippling over the rocks. In those moments, he could almost sense Denise’s love for Arapaho history taking root in the kids.
“Tell us about the church,” she’d say, turning to him as they walked back, and the kids would circle around as he told about how the Arapahos had built the church themselves and painted the walls in Arapaho symbols. At that point, the kids usually started telling him about the symbols: red and blue geometric lines for the roads in life, blue circles for the sacred center, white tipis for the people, brown V-shapes for the buffalo.
Ah, Denise. He made the sign of the cross over the still body. What kind of darkness had engulfed you? “Loving and merciful God,” he said, “please accept this beautiful woman that you created into your presence, forgive her sins whatever they may be, and let her share in the everlasting joy and peace that is yours alone. Amen.”
The chorus of amen’s startled him, breaking as they did into the silence. Father John nodded to the coroner, who was already unfolding a large, gray plastic bag, then stepped past the other men and went back down the hall. Chief Banner stood in the middle of the living room, talking to two officers, a serious, subdued tone. Then, dismissing the officers with an
impatient wave, he turned toward Father John. He might have been a chief in the Old Time, Father John thought, or one of the warriors in the Curtis photographs, with black hair; high, thick cheekbones; and the humped nose of the Arapaho. A stocky man, medium height with broad chest, wide shoulders, and big hands that hung beneath the cuffs of his navy-blue uniform shirt. A thin silver wedding ring was embedded in a fleshy finger. The man had headed up the Wind River law enforcement as long as Father John had been on the reservation. “God help me, I love the job,” he’d once told him. “I want to get the bad asses out of here.”
“You saw her?” Banner asked.
Father John nodded. “How’s T.J.?”
“Pretty broken up.” The chief gestured with his head toward the kitchen. Through the archway, Father John could see T.J. still at the table, face dropped into his hands.
“Gianelli’s been talking to him.” There was resignation in Banner’s voice. Unexplained deaths on the reservation fell within the FBI’s jurisdiction, even probable suicides, which put Gianelli in charge, a fact that, Father John knew, rankled the chief.
“T.J. claims he was working late tonight on council business,” Banner went on, nodding toward the kitchen. “Came home about nine, found the front door unlocked. Not unusual. You know how Arapahos are.” He shrugged. “People wanna come in and help themselves to your stuff, well, they must need it real bad. T.J. says he was surprised to see Denise’s car out front because she was supposed to be at the college in Casper for a teacher’s workshop today and tomorrow. He walked back to the bedroom, and that’s when he found her.”
Wife of Moon Page 3