The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  She sat up and turned on the lamp. A puddle of light settled around her and pushed the shadows back along the dresser and chair, her white robe draped over the armrest. “Tell me how I can help you. Don’t hang up. Just talk to me.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t mean to kill him. He made me do it.”

  Vicky waited, half-expecting the line to go dead. But he was still there, the raspy breaths, the choked sobs at the other end. “Who?” she said finally, barely breathing the word. “Kiki Wallowingbull?”

  Silence. And in the silence, Vicky knew that she was right.

  “Look,” she said. She was awake now; had she been asleep two minutes ago? “Come to my office tomorrow.” She stopped. That was the problem: the shiny, modern, and intimidating building on Main Street. “I can meet you wherever you say. You’ll have to tell me everything that happened. You have to trust me.”

  Another rasping noise at the other end, then a long coughing spell. Finally he said, “Now.”

  “What?”

  “Right now. I gotta talk to you right now.”

  Vicky yanked open the table drawer and withdrew a notepad and pen. She propped the pad on her knees. “Start by telling me your name.”

  “Not on the phone,” he said. “You gotta come here.”

  “I’ll meet you in the morning.”

  “I’ll be dead then.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I got a gun. I been staring at it all night. I been thinking all I have to do is pick it up and stick it in my mouth and pull the trigger. I been thinking it’ll be real easy, and there won’t be nothing but blackness. Except I heard a teacher say once that, you know, when you get shot in the head, you hear a big explosion first before the blackness comes. You think that’s right?”

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “Ethete. The house at the far end of Yellow Calf Road.”

  SNOW HAD STARTED falling sometime in the night, and a thick blanket of new snow lay over Highway 287. Vicky peered past the wipers that scrubbed a half arc on the windshield. There was no sign of life, no other traffic, and the few houses that she had passed were nothing more than dark shadows floating at the side of the road. Except for the hum of the engine and the sound of the tires grinding through the snow, the quiet was deep and pervasive, almost like its own kind of sound. She realized she was following the beams of her own headlights—long yellow lights spilling over the snow—and that the headlights could take her into the ditch. She forced herself to concentrate on the edge of the road, but it was difficult to tell where the edge melted into the borrow ditch and the white prairie that ran away under the moonlight. She gripped the steering wheel hard, her fingers curled stiff inside her leather gloves.

  A beam of light shone ahead, then gradually dissolved into two headlights weaving toward her. She slowed a little, holding her breath as the truck lumbered past. Great gusts of snow lifted off the rear tires and plastered the windshield, plunging her into darkness, as if she had suddenly gone blind. It was a moment before the wipers pushed the snow to the side and cleared small half circles. She stared into the white world that stretched into the gray metallic sky.

  Hi sei ci nihi, the grandmothers had named her. Woman Alone. How appropriate, she thought. She was absolutely alone. Nothing but a truck that had passed and was probably a mile down the road, a few houses scattered here and there, all of them dark and quiet, as if the inhabitants had picked up and left one day, along with everyone else, and no one had thought to tell her. She could feel the lightness of the pepper spray she had jammed into her coat pocket as she’d left the apartment. A last-minute thought. She was already in the hallway, and she’d had to let herself back into the apartment and rummage through her desk drawer for the small metal cylinder. And all the time, Adam’s voice playing in her head—it was still there—Are you nuts? Going to the rez in the middle of the night, in a blizzard to meet a killer? Alone? Don’t be foolish. Don’t go!

  She had been trying to compose a response, something that made sense, the kind of explanation a rational person would have. But there was nothing. Nothing except the desperate, halting tone of the man’s voice and the image of the muzzle of a gun jammed into his mouth. An Arapaho, like herself, in some kind of terrible trouble and needing her help. Wasn’t that the reason she had chosen law school? So that she could use the white man’s own laws to help her people?

  Adam would never understand, she realized, but the irony was that she understood him. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, the rift growing between them. It was just that he had a different idea of how they should help Indian people. And he was right; that was the thing that gnawed at her and made it impossible to come up with any explanation that made sense. Of course he was right. Using the law to make certain that the tribes had the right to manage their own resources, like any other Americans, was the real way to help their people, not driving off in the snow alone to meet an anonymous Arapaho who threatened to kill himself.

  She should have called the cops, Adam would say. She could almost see him: beet red with anger, pacing up and down the office. What was she thinking? She had an obligation . . .

  It was stupid not to have called the cops—she shuddered at the truth of it. She’d started to dial 911, then had hung up. He would be in the house, waiting for her—the lawyer he counted on to help him—and the suicide prevention team would show up, surround the house, and who knew what might happen? He could put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. She couldn’t shake the image.

  She slowed down for the turn onto Blue Sky Highway, the tires slipping and finally digging into the snow. After a half mile, a pickup came around a bend, headlights dancing toward her. She squinted hard trying to see through the lights and snow as the pickup passed. Coming over the horizon was the faint glow of lights in Ethete.

  She had to pump the brakes to keep from sliding through the red light and into the main intersection. Then, lightly pushing on the gas pedal to ease the Jeep back into motion, she drove past the Sun Dance grounds—snow weighing down the branches of the cottonwoods and more snow falling. She turned left, then took another left into the tire tracks that ran up a short driveway to a small house washed gray in the moonlight. The front windows gaped black. A tan truck stood next to the house.

  She parked behind the truck and waited, engine whining, warm air blowing from the vents and barely keeping the cold at bay. Her arms and legs felt numb. Surely he had heard the Jeep’s engine. He was probably watching from the edge of a window, waiting to see what she would do. The lights would flick on in the house, the front door would open, and he would wave her inside. Everything normal. She would simply meet with a client who needed help.

  The lights didn’t go on. No movement, no sound, nothing but the unfathomable silence. Vicky waited another minute, then, leaving the motor and the headlights on, she got out. Snow piled around her boots as she followed the yellow glare of the headlights to the door. She stumbled over the stoop hidden under the snow and grabbed at the air to right her balance. Snow ran like fire down the inside of her boots. She knocked on the door, then dipped her chin into her scarf and stomped about for warmth. Her boots made a thudding, muffled noise. No sounds from inside, nothing but the faint gusts of wind and the silence of vacancy and desertion. She knocked again, waited a couple of minutes, then tried the knob with her left hand, her right hand wrapped around the pepper spray inside her pocket.

  The door squealed open a few inches. “Hello!” She leaned close and shouted into the shadows. The faint light from the headlights ran across the vinyl floor. “It’s Vicky Holden. Are you here?”

  No answer. She found herself stepping a little ways inside, snow dripping around her. “Hello!” she shouted. Still no sounds, and yet there was something—an ungraspable sense of another presence. She started backing out to the stoop, conscious of the snowy outline of her boots on the dark vinyl. Madness. The voice on the other end, the threat of suicide—all a ruse to get he
r here alone in the middle of the night. Someone wanting to harm her, maybe the relative or friend of a client she hadn’t been able to keep out of prison. Somebody wanting revenge.

  Then another thought; he could already be dead. And it was all another kind of ruse, a macabre pretense to lure her here so that, for some perverse reason, she would be the one to find the body.

  “I’m going back to my car,” she heard herself shouting into the vacancy, her own voice booming around her. “I’m going to wait for two minutes. If you don’t come out . . .” She stopped herself from saying, I’ll know you’re dead. “I’ll drive away,” she said. And then what? she was thinking. Call the cops, explain why she had come to a vacant house in the middle of the night instead of reporting a suicide threat?

  She swung around and, chin still tilted into the freezing folds of her scarf, followed her own footsteps back to the Jeep. He was dead, she was certain of it. She could feel death around her, seeping out of the house, permeating the air. She pulled her cell out of her pocket as she crawled behind the steering wheel and slammed the door.

  “Don’t move!” He was in the backseat of the Jeep, so close she could feel the rush of his breath on her cheek. “I said, don’t move!”

  Vicky stayed still, the cell clasped in her gloves. The pepper spray— God, the pepper spray was still in her pocket, her coat folded around her. She could feel the lump of the metal cylinder against her hip.

  “Don’t turn around,” he said. She could hear the shaky desperation in his voice. Out of the side of her eye, she caught the slightest glint of the gun in his glove.

  “Who are you?” she managed. Her own words sounded forced and breathless.

  “I told you, it don’t matter.”

  “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are or what you’ve done.” So brave sounding now, she thought, as if she were in her own office and in control, not in the Jeep with a man with a gun.

  A rustling sound of movement, as if he had slumped back against the seat. “Something happened that shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t start it, but I had to finish it.” His voice was tentative, laced with fear and uncertainty and the desperation that, she knew, had brought her here. “Next thing I knew he was dead, but I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “Kiki Wallowingbull,” she said.

  He had moved in close again, and she had the sense of his size—a large man with broad shoulders looming behind her. She had seen him in Wal-Mart, cap pulled low around his face, collar pulled up. “He was crazy. I didn’t mean it to happen.”

  “What do you want from me?” she said.

  “I need assurances.”

  “Assurances?”

  “They’re gonna put me back in prison and throw away the key.” There was a sobbing note in his voice. “I can’t go back there. I’m gonna be dead first. I’m not gonna die inside like some rat in the toilets.”

  “If it was an accident or self-defense . . .”

  “Don’t turn around,” he shouted, and she realized that she had shifted sideways. She righted herself and stared straight ahead at the snow that had covered the windshield, locking her into the Jeep with a madman. She realized that he had adjusted the mirror upward so that she couldn’t see into the backseat. The warm air coughed and rattled in the vents.

  “What kind of assurance are you talking about?” she said.

  “I’ll go to the fed, I’ll tell him everything that happened. First you get his word there won’t be any charges. I’m gonna walk outta his office a free man. He’ll have what he wants, the truth about what happened. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “That won’t work,” Vicky said. “He’ll have to investigate. He’ll want the details. Names, dates, places. Look”—she caught herself before she’d shifted again—“you have to level with me. Give me the particulars.”

  The man made a choking noise, as if he were strangling, and she realized he was choking back the sobs. “I got a little boy. I gotta take care of him. I can’t go back to prison and leave him. You gotta help me.”

  “I understand,” she said. “You have a child; you want to be able to raise him.” And something else, she was thinking. The man was on parole.

  “Easy for you, ain’t it. You and that Lakota with all your education, sitting in your big fancy offices, talking to the chiefs all the time, doing the big cases. Win a few cases, lose a few. Money keeps rolling in, no matter what.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, yeah? You think there’s any Arapaho around that don’t get the picture?”

  “Then why did you come to me?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, something changing in his tone, the fear and grief that she had heard on the phone creeping in: “I heard you were good. If I’d had a decent lawyer, I wouldn’t have gotten dumped into the sinkhole I was in. You know how many Indians are dragging themselves from the cell block to the mess hall to the yards, wishing they were dead? All because they had lousy lawyers the court give ’em? Takes money to hire a lawyer like you. I don’t have money.”

  “We do pro bono work,” Vicky said, and yet, there were so few pro bono cases she and Adam had time for now.

  “You gotta make it happen,” he said, the sound of tears breaking against the words. “You gotta go to the fed, get me some assurances. If you don’t . . .” He left the thought hanging behind her. The rear door opened, cold air swooped into the Jeep.

  “How do I reach you?” she said.

  “I’ll reach you.” There was a rustling noise and the door slammed shut, sending a rocking motion through the Jeep. She flipped on the windshield wipers and watched the large figure—hunched forward, the same black cap pulled low—getting into the truck. Then the growl of a cold engine turning over, the black exhaust spitting into the snow, and the truck was making a U-turn. She hunched forward trying to make out the license, but the numbers were indecipherable behind the snow and ice on the plate. He drove past, shimmying over the icy ridges. She straightened the rearview mirror and watched the truck turn left and vanish on Yellow Calf Road before she shifted into reverse and backed down the drive.

  10

  1922

  “WHAT IS THE meaning of this?” James Cruze looked like a gigantic creature upright on hind legs, William thought, silhouetted against the red sun rising out of the east. Next to him was Tim McCoy, tall, slim, dressed all in black, except for the white Stetson. “I gave the order,” Cruze shouted, his voice drumming through the quiet groups of Arapahos and Shoshones gathered around the food table. “All tipis should face the circle. The cameramen are ready to shoot, and look at the sunrise!” Cruze turned his massive bulk around and waved both arms overhead, the creature about to lift himself off the ground. “Perfect for the shot I want, but the damn tipis still face east. I’m paying you to deal with these Indians.”

  William waited until a band of the old buffalo Indians had helped themselves to the bowls and coffee mugs stacked at the end of the table and started down the line, heaping the bowls full of the oatmeal steaming in kettles, filling the mugs with coffee. He took his place in the line and tried to ignore the white men about thirty feet away. An old Indian trick. Watching and listening, invisible, and all the time taking in everything whites said and did.

  Cruze shouting about the wasted time and money on setting up the cameras early, and McCoy—voice calm and firm—saying the Arapahos and Shoshones had been facing their tipis toward the rising sun since time immemorial, and they weren’t about to change for a moving picture.

  “I’m paying them to do what I say!” Cruze, still shouting.

  “They’re doing a good job,” McCoy said, and that was the end, because Cruze hoisted himself around and marched off toward one of the cameras mounted at the edge of the Indian camp on wooden platforms with wheels that Cruze called carellos.

  From halfway down the table, William could smell the hot, sweet odors of oatmeal and fresh coffee. McCoy had walked
over to the elders at the far end of the table, hands gripping bowls and mugs. McCoy’s hands were flying, his fingers dancing. William caught part of what he said: they shouldn’t worry, Cruze would get over it. He wouldn’t send them home. What would he do without them? Hire a bunch of white men, paint them brown, and put long black wigs on them? Teach them to ride?

  The elders started laughing. Laughing and making their way toward a stretch of ground where somebody had spread a canvas blanket. Other Arapahos and Shoshones had already gone through the line and were seated cross-legged in little groups. The early birds, William thought. Every meal, first at the tables. Diving into the fantastic spread of food. More food and more kinds than they had ever seen—pickled herrings, deviled eggs, potatoes bubbling with cheese, fish that had been baked, boiled, or cooked in green herbs, lamb and pigs roasted with apples in their jaws. The first day in the desert, they had stood back, not daring to believe it was all meant to be eaten. Mr. Cruze had urged them forward. Still they had stayed back until the director had motioned McCoy over, and McCoy had said the food was for all the players, including the Indians. And that was also fantastic, the fact that they were treated like the white people.

  James stood a little way off, bent over the black box camera that McCoy had given him, peering into the lens that was pointed toward the food table. He was taking pictures of everything. For the people on the rez, he had told William. “They’re not gonna believe what they see.”

  William filled his own bowl with oatmeal, sprinkled on some raisins and brown sugar, and poured cream over the top. They had helped themselves to the food ever since, he was thinking. The tipis were stuffed with sacks of fruits and vegetables and cans of food—leftovers and discards the Indians picked out of the trash barrels—that they meant to take back to the reservation for the winter. Sometimes there was hardly anything to eat, but this winter, the families would have food.