The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  He topped off his mug with the hot coffee and started toward the circles of Indians. The sky was getting lighter, bands of oranges and pinks and magentas fading into the faintest blue. It was still cool, but there was a hint of October warmth in the air. So much of the desert reminded him of home: the way the sun lifted itself out of the east, glowing red and yellow, the campfires flickering here and there, giving off little circles of light, the field of white tipis set apart from the city of tents where the whites stayed, like the white towns around the reservation. Most of all, the quiet of the Indians hunched over bowls of oatmeal. Heat from the campfires licked at his legs as he passed.

  No sign of Charlie anywhere, and that was odd. Charlie was always one of the first in line for meals.

  The old buffalo Indians had formed a circle of their own, sitting cross-legged on the canvas blankets, voices low and confidential, speaking Arapaho. Discussing the attack scene today, no doubt. In the Old Time, there would have been buffalo robes to sit on, soft and warm. They would be discussing the day’s hunt, where the buffalo herds could be found, which they knew by the odors in the wind and the faint tremors in the earth made by hooves.

  William spotted Matthew Lone Bear, Mike Goggles, and James Painted Horse seated just beyond the elders. Members of the younger generation, like himself and Charlie. Not as mature and wise as the elders—would they ever be so wise? As he started toward them, he saw the old man, Goes-in-Lodge, turn his head and give the slightest lift of an eyebrow, almost imperceptible, William thought, but there nevertheless.

  He veered sideways and dropped down on his haunches next to Goes-in-Lodge. “What is it, Grandfather?” He used the term of respect, speaking quietly, words meant only for the elder’s ears.

  “The other warrior with you,” Goes-in-Lodge began, jaws chewing on each word before he spoke. “Most the time, he eats with you.” Concern rang through the old man’s voice. Anything might happen out here in the white world, surrounded by whites, whites in charge. Arapahos and Shoshones had to stay close. “Maybe he’s sick, couldn’t get outta his blanket.”

  William nodded. Steam curled off the bowl and mug in his hands. “I’ll find him,” he said, pulling himself upright.

  He went over and dropped down next to James. “Seen Charlie this morning?” he said.

  James shook his head, tilted his bowl upward and drained the last of the creamy oatmeal. He had the brown skin, the black hair slicked back behind his ears, and the hooked nose of a full blood. Chest caved in a little. Tuberculosis as a child, William had heard. Maybe he still had it. No one talked about it. “Not here yet,” James said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “You ask me, he better be coming. White man starts on white time. Getting ready now.” He glanced in the direction of Cruze, loping past the campfires toward another camera, arms flailing as if he could part the air ahead. “Charlie’s gonna get us all sent home, if he ain’t careful.”

  William set his oatmeal and coffee on the ground. He could feel the hard lump forming like a rock in his stomach. “He with the girl?”

  “Heard him leave the tipi in the middle of the night,” James said. “Heard his footsteps going toward the white tents.”

  William stopped himself from asking if James was sure. Of course he was sure. James could track a deer through the forest by the sounds of hooves scratching the rocks and twigs and branches snapping off the ponderosas.

  William looked around at the other Indians finishing breakfast, some carrying bowls and mugs back to the table where a couple of white men dressed up in white shirts and pants would plunge the dishes into tubs of hot water before stacking them in the wood cabinets a few feet away. Still no sign of Charlie.

  “Listen, players!” James Cruze’s voice burst through the quiet. The sun was a blurred globe in the overcast sky, but already the air was warmer. A perfect day to make the moving picture. “Fifteen minutes call for the attack scene. Everyone in place! Indians, no clothes but breechcloths for you. Bare skin is what I want, so you look like savages. Terrify folks when you start crawling down the rocks toward the wagon train. That’s what I want—terror. Don’t forget your weapons. Bows and arrows, hatchets, spears. You know how to handle them. You done it in real life.” He gave a growl that might have been an attempt at laughter.

  Fifteen minutes, William was thinking. He got to his feet and started weaving through the players—Indians and whites—milling about, some of them heading in the direction of the rock outcroppings where the filming would take place. Others headed toward the corral. A lot of the Indians would ride across the desert to attack the wagon train. Everyone seemed to be talking. Conversations buzzed around him like a hive of bees. He could see the cameras set up on the carellos. Another camera was up on top of the rocky ridge, like a gnarled tree backlit against the sky. He went in the opposite direction, keeping an easy pace so that he wouldn’t draw attention.

  In a moment he was walking down the narrow dirt streets in tent city, past the rows of tents with flaps closed and waves of dust around the lower edges. Smoke trailed out of the dead campfires that had burned in front of some of the tents. He headed toward the area where Mr. Cruze and the big movie players stayed, not sure which tent was hers. It would be close by, he thought. They would want to keep an eye on her. What was it that McCoy had said? Mr. Lasky’s girlfriend, here on a lark because there was nothing else to do, and he couldn’t say no to her?

  The whirring sound of voices had died back; silence as heavy as a buffalo robe hung over the dirt paths and tents. William passed the director’s tent and slowed down, listening for the smallest sound or motion that disrupted the silence. He had moved past two other tents when it came, the faint ring of her laughter, like a bell tinkling nearby. He followed the sound, making his own footsteps soft so that his moccasins didn’t scratch the ground. The tinkling noise came again, and he veered across the path and stopped in front of the tent.

  “Charlie,” he said. His own voice slapped at the silence.

  A rustling noise, faint and hurried, came from inside. Then the flap pulled back an inch, and Charlie peered out with one eye. “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “It’s starting,” William said. “We have to get to our places.”

  “A few minutes.” The flap fell back into place.

  “Now, Charlie.” William said. “You have to come right now before Mr. Cruze sees you’re missing.”

  The girl was laughing, an outburst of gaiety and lightness that floated out into the dusty path. What did it mean to her? Nothing. A bunch of Indians sent back to the rez without money for their families, and she would go on playing in the next moving picture, the Big Man’s girlfriend, with lots of money, and food always on the table.

  “Now,” he said again, rattling the flap. “Come out now or I’ll drag you out.”

  The flap opened and Charlie stepped out. William caught a glimpse of the girl, huddled on top of a narrow bed that stood on metal legs, blue blanket wrapped around the curves of her hips and chest, long blond curls straggling over her face and white shoulders. She was beautiful.

  Then something else: boots thudding the earth, coming down the dirt path. In a half breath, the boots would intersect with the path they were on. “Missy!” The man’s voice boomed like the shot of a cannon. “Where are you!” William grabbed Charlie’s arm and pulled him around to the back of the tent. Still pulling him toward the path that paralleled the one with the boots, walking fast yet quietly. And Charlie was walking quietly, too.

  “Get out here!” The cannon voice again.

  “Leave me alone.” There was a mixture of defiance and amusement in the girl’s voice. “You don’t own me.”

  “The Big Man owns you. I’m looking out for his interests, like he pays me to do. Get outta bed. Cruze wants you on the set. You gotta be in the wagon train, so the Big Man knows you weren’t in bed with one of the Indians.”

  “Leave me alone,” she shouted, and there was something new in her voice: notes of pa
nic and fear.

  “Get up!” he shouted. There was the whack of a palm against flesh.

  Charlie swung around. It took all of William’s strength to grip him hard enough to keep propelling him forward. The food table was just ahead, and beyond, the crowds of players, the wagons pulled into a circle, and Indians already in their places up in the rocks.

  “None of our business,” William said.

  “Let me go.” Charlie wrenched his arm free.

  There was a view of his naked back, the knots of bone and ropes of muscle, the brown legs starting to kick into a run as William hurled himself against the man, knocking him to the ground. He sat on top of him and lifted his fist like a hammer. “I’ll kill you,” he heard himself say, a hissing noise erupting out of his clenched teeth. “You’ll ruin everything. For what? The girl means nothing to you. You got a woman waiting for you on the rez. What are you doing?”

  He could feel Charlie start to relax, his muscles dissolving into the earth. A kind of terror came into his eyes, then he closed them. “Let me up,” he said.

  William shifted his weight and got to his feet. Leaning over, he gripped Charlie’s arm and pulled him upright. Charlie opened his eyes and stared at the crowds and commotion beyond the food table a long moment, then he ran the palm of his hand over his forehead, smearing the sweat into dark wavy lines. “I’m not going back to the rez,” he said, starting toward the tables.

  “Not goin’ home? Are you crazy?”

  Charlie stopped and turned toward him. “It’s not what you think. It’s the dream.”

  “What dream? You’re not making sense.”

  “I had a dream. It was all darkness around me in the tipi, and people running around outside, lots of crying and yelling. I could hear Anna crying. All the people were crying. That’s how I knew I was dead.”

  William bit at his lower lip. Dreams were power; the spirits came in dreams. Dreams told the truth. “Maybe you didn’t understand,” he said. “Don’t think about it.”

  “I think about it all the time,” Charlie said. “This is it right here. This is all the sun and the blue skies, this is all the earth I’m gonna get. She’s the last woman I’m gonna have. This is life, and I’m taking what’s left for me.”

  William threw a glance behind them, half-expecting the bodyguard and the girl to appear in the path. There was no one. “Come on,” he said, grasping Charlie’s shoulder. “We got to get to our places.”

  HE WAS HIGH on the rock-strewn hill that erupted out of the desert, like a bulge in the earth. All around was nothing but the expanse of dusty earth studded with prickly cactus and dried brush rolling into the horizon. The sky had settled into a deep blue; the sun was white in its slow arc overhead. The whole hill was crawling with Indians. At the base of the hill was the wagon train pulled into a circle, the defensive position Mr. Cruze called it. And there was Mr. Cruze himself, stomping about, arms waving. The white players scurried into place inside the circle.

  He spotted Kerrigan sitting on his horse the way McCoy had taught him. He looked like a real cowboy. Walking along one of the wagons in that fluid way she had, gray dress billowing about her, was Lois Wilson. Dark hair shining in the sun, the open, trusting look on her face. More beautiful than the yellow-haired girl, he thought, with a sense of power about her that was all her own. Untouchable, while everything about Missy Mae Markham begged to be touched.

  The cameras on the carellos at the base of the hill creaked and groaned in the breeze. He could see the cameramen standing spread-legged, trying to balance themselves. One camera was turned uphill, but two others faced the wagon train. The cameramen leaned in close, pulled back and looked around, then leaned in again.

  Charlie crouched behind one of the rocks about twenty feet below, and that was good, William thought. He could keep an eye on him. When Charlie turned sideways, he could see the dark bruise spreading across his chest where he had hit the ground. The fool—willing to throw everything away, and not just for himself. For all of them. Oh, Mr. Cruze would send them home if he found Charlie with Missy Mae Markham. Maybe the director would keep the buffalo Indians, less likely to get into trouble. Maybe a few of the younger generation, but most would be sent packing. And painted white men with black wigs would take their places. And they would look like fools falling off their horses. McCoy had made a joke of it, but it would happen. The yellow-haired girl belonged to the Big Man.

  He felt his muscles tense, his fingers tighten around the hatchet. The girl was inside the circle of covered wagons, tossing her head about, the blond curls flying in the breeze. She had on a blue dress that fell off one shoulder and draped along a white arm. The white skin gleamed. She swung her shoulders about and looked around at the other players moving into place, smiling and laughing. Then the bodyguard moved close to her wagon, said something into her ear, and yanked the top of the blue dress over her shoulder.

  William could see Charlie start to haul himself upright, the spear in his hand rise overhead. He started around the rock, planting his moccasins one after the other in the slow, deliberate movement of attack. Leaning forward now, the muscles in his back and down his legs focused on a single intent.

  “Easy!” William called. He found himself moving downhill at the same pace. Focused and deliberate. When Charlie started running, he would run. He would stop him.

  “Places, all you Indians!” Mr. Cruze shouted through a bullhorn, his voice reverberating around rocks.

  Charlie stopped in place. Below, Missy was leaning out of the wagon, pointing a rifle at the Indians about to attack over the hill. The bodyguard huddled with a group of white men, all of them holding rifles. A long moment passed before William sank back into place. Charlie turned and climbed back up the rocks.

  “Cameras!” Cruze shouted.

  Everyone started moving. Hundreds of Indians racing ponies across the desert, spears and bows and arrows lifted high, clouds of dust swirling about. Other Indians jumping from the rocks, running downhill through the brush, hollering and yelping, swinging hatchets overhead, pointing bows and arrows at the wagons. The buffalo Indians were in the lead, just like in the Old Time. William ran after them, his moccasins pounding the rocks and hard ground, something free and wild in it, something real and honest.

  11

  THE DRUMBEATS THUDDED into the quiet. The three musicians hunched over the drum at the foot of the gravesite, beating out the rhythm meant to call the hi nono eino to the cemetery. A little crowd huddled around the rectangular grave that three of the volunteers had dug yesterday, breaking through the layers of wind-crusted snow into the hard, frozen earth. The canopy overhead snapped in the wind. Andrew and Mamie sat in the front row of the folding chairs arranged on one side. A few other mourners—mostly old people—occupied the other chairs.

  Father John could feel the cold biting through his vestments, shirt, and blue jeans and into his skin. Clouds had built up over the mountains, the sun breaking through for a few moments before disappearing. He had said the funeral Mass for Kiki in the church this morning. Afterward a line of vehicles had wound out of the mission grounds and onto the bluff where St. Francis cemetery was located. He had half-expected Dede to show up, but she hadn’t appeared. He removed the prayer book from the backpack he’d brought to the site and glanced over the group of mourners, brown eyes turned up to him, shoulders hunched inside bulky jackets, gloved hands clasped together. Then he read: “In those days, I heard a voice from heaven saying, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Let them rest from their labors, for their works follow them.”

  He let the words hang in the frigid air a moment before sliding the book into the backpack and pulling out the small pottery bowl and the bottle of holy water. He poured the water into the bowl—the eyes following him, the air heavy with silence. He found the sprinkler at the bottom of the backpack. Sprinkling the holy water over the coffin, he said, “Dear God, we ask for your mercy so that Kiki and all our relatives who have passed out of this world may enj
oy everlasting happiness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end.”

  Then he stepped back and waited. After a moment, Ernest White Eagle and Thomas Willow, two of the Holy Old Men—the elders who preserved the Arapaho spiritual beliefs for the next generations—walked over to the grave. The smoke of burning sage drifted out of the pans they carried. They lifted the pans overhead, allowing the smoke to waft across the grave, then over the crowd. Last night, at the wake at Eagle Hall, the Old Men had saged Kiki’s corpse as well as the mourners. Then they had painted circles of sacred red paint on Kiki’s face and on the V-shaped patch of skin that showed past the top of his shirt. Marking him for the ancestors, so they would recognize him and take him into the afterworld.

  “Ichjevaneatha Nesteed hichjeva nau vedawu,” Ernest White Eagle said, his voice low and clear in the cold. He was as tall as Father John, nearly six feet four inches, stoop-shouldered and thin-looking inside the massive down jacket. Thomas Willow barely came to his shoulder, with a wrinkled, calm-looking face and eyes accustomed to looking at sadness.

  “Jevaneatha nethaunainau, Jevaneatha Dawathaw henechauchaunane nanadehe vedaw nau ichjeva, Kiki Wallowingbull.”

  There had been so many wakes and funerals in the nine years Father John had spent at St. Francis Mission. Some of the Arapaho words were familiar, and he could guess at the rest. God is the Maker of heaven and earth. His spirit fills everywhere on earth and above us. Go to the Creator. Go with the ancestors, Kiki Wallowingbull.

  The Old Men placed lids on the pans. Smoke smoldered about the edges for a moment, then vanished. They set the pans on the earth and took seats on either side of Andrew and Mamie. The three men who had dug the grave yesterday—volunteers he could always count on to help at funerals—began turning the crank that let the coffin down. The drums started up again, thumping into the squealing noise of the crank. One by one, the mourners began filing past, dropping items onto the coffin. Pieces of hair tied in a ribbon—a sign of life. Slips of folded paper with prayers written on them. Messages for Kiki to convey to relatives in the afterworld. And other items, all of them gifts: a keychain, Father John thought, by the metallic clink it made against the coffin, a book, and a red scarf. Finally Andrew got to his feet. He carried a brown cowboy hat over to the grave and let it drop. Kiki’s favorite thing. It would go with him into the afterworld.