The Silent Spirit (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Margaret Coel

  “I want to talk to you about Dede,” Vicky said.

  “You heard what Babs said. Dede hasn’t come to work for a while. I gotta go.” She put her head down and started walking past the neon words blazing in the plate-glass window: Best Pizza in Town.

  “Dede’s in trouble. You’re her friend, aren’t you?” Vicky stayed in step beside the girl. “What’s your name?” she said.

  The girl stopped and turned toward her. They were in front of a dry cleaner, closed for the day, the window a black sheet speckled with snow. The girl’s breath hung like a little cloud between them before she said, “I don’t know anything, so leave me alone.”

  She shrugged away and started walking again. Vicky caught up. “I went to Dede’s place. Somebody trashed it pretty bad. You know that her boyfriend was killed. I think whoever did it is looking for Dede.”

  The girl sprinted forward, crossed in front of Vicky and headed toward a maroon-colored pickup. Vicky stood on the sidewalk and watched her jab the key into the lock and yank open the door. “Leave me alone,” the girl shouted.

  “She’s in danger,” Vicky said. “The man that trashed her house will find her eventually, and he will kill her.”

  The girl threw herself behind the steering wheel and started the motor. A couple of seconds passed before the motor coughed and sputtered into life. She was reaching for the door when Vicky said, “He’ll come for you first, as soon as he figures out that you and Dede are friends. How long do you think it will take him? It didn’t take me very long.”

  The girl held the door open. She was hunched over, staring at the dashboard, a gloved hand tightening over the door handle.

  Vicky stepped off the curb and moved around the open door. “Tell me where she is,” she said.

  “I don’t want nothing to do with any of this,” the girl said. “I never asked her to dump her troubles on me. None of my business. Month ago, I never heard of Dede Michaels. So we worked together, so what? Sure, we went out sometimes, had a few drinks and some laughs at the bars. That’s how she met Kiki Wallowingbull. I don’t know why she got mixed up with that Indian. I told her it wasn’t gonna come to any good, but did she listen? Hell no. Then she comes running to me, crying, wanting a place to stay. Needs protection, she says, and I said, protection from what, and she says, the guys that killed Kiki.”

  She lifted her head and gave Vicky a sideways look. The lines of moisture at the corners of her eyes shone black in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “You can follow me,” she said.

  FATHER JOHN TURNED off Seventeen-Mile Road and drove past the sign that leaned into the darkness and falling snow: Goes-in-Lodge Road. He stared past the wipers. The whole area had once been the site of Goes-in-Lodge’s camp, he knew, and some of his descendants still lived in the houses set back from the road, holding on to a small part of the land that had belonged to the family. It was easy to imagine what the area had looked like a hundred years ago—circles of tipis with flaps facing east and campfires burning in front, kids yelling and running about and dogs yapping. Horses out in the corrals behind the tipis. The Wind River rushing past the northern edge of the camp.

  He had heard the stories from the elders—so many stories of when the people had first come to the rez. At the convergence of two roads—the red road and the white road—knowing they must follow the white road. “We were traveling people,” old man Walking Bear had said, “and we had to settle down. We was hunters, and we had to learn to get our food out of the ground. We spoke Arapaho, and we had to learn English words and write them down in little books that we was supposed to read. We lived in tipis, and we was told to live in wood boxes.” But some of the old buffalo Indians, Walking Bear said, refused to coop themselves up like chickens in boxes. So they put their ponies in the boxes and went on living in tipis. For many years, they kept their camps, same as in the Old Time, with family all around and everybody living in tipis.

  Father John tried to stay in the tracks that cut through the snow. He could feel the snow pushing against the tires. Lights glowed in the windows of most of the houses, and yellow cones of light lay over the snowy fields. The sky had turned the blue-gray color of steel. Apart from the thumping noise of the tires and the whine of the engine, a soft quiet enveloped the whole area. He had the sense that he was moving toward the edge of the world. So different from Rome, pedestrians everywhere yelling into cell phones, motorbikes revving up and squealing, cars spurting past, horns honking. The noise even managed to penetrate the thick stone walls of the former palace. And in the Vatican Library, the background noise of the city had floated over the voices of the missionary priests discussing ways to incorporate Chris tianity into ancient spiritual beliefs.

  It was at the St. Ignatius church where he found the quiet he had gotten used to on the reservation. Sometimes in the late afternoon he would find himself in the church, he and a few elderly women scattered here and there, rosary beads tangled in their gnarled fingers, the stone columns rising overhead and the outdoor noises muffled and far away. He would pray for his parishioners at St. Francis, the old people, the younger generation, the kids. And he prayed for himself, for the strength and the courage to let them go. Then, almost four weeks ago, he had gotten a call from the provincial. Father Ian would be leaving St. Francis for a mission in Guatemala. Would Father John be interested in returning for an indeterminate length of time—however long it might take to find a permanent pastor? Of course he was interested. Strange the unexpected ways prayers were answered.

  He would not have to let the people go, not yet.

  The yellow, blocklike house loomed out of the falling snow. Lights shone in the front windows. The driveway had been plowed, and tire tracks ran to a small shed at the back. He could see Ella Morningstar moving about the kitchen as he drove up the driveway. He stopped close to the house and left the pickup running. She would have seen the headlights and heard the engine and the tires on the hard-packed snow. She would do whatever she wanted to get ready for a visitor. It was a couple of minutes before the door opened and Ella leaned out, waving him inside.

  “ALL OF A sudden, everybody wants to talk about when Arapahos and Shoshones were in the movies.” Ella Morningstar was a small woman with gray hair parted in the middle and caught into thick braids that ran over the front of her white sweater, a grandmother with children older than Father John. She had small brown eyes that lit up when she talked and reddish hands that fluttered over the table. “Kiki Wallowingbull came around a couple times asking for my grandfather’s stories. He was real interested, wanted to find out about his own family. Poor guy.” She shook her head slowly.

  “When was Kiki here?” Father John took a spoonful from the bowl of hot stew she had set in front of him. Aromas of coffee and simmered potatoes, carrots, and beef and hot fry bread had hit him the minute he stepped into the living room. She had taken his jacket and hung it over a straight-back chair, then motioned him to the kitchen. She had figured he would need some hot food, she told him, so she had warmed up the stew, fried a little bread, and put on a fresh pot of coffee after he called and asked if he could stop by.

  “A few days before he got killed.” Ella took a bite of stew and chewed slowly, her eyes contemplating the bowl in front of her for a long moment. “I think he was trying to turn his life around. It’s a good sign, young people getting interested in the past. Means they’re starting to care about where they came from, the kind of people the ancestors were. Helps them get a hold on their own lives. He died too soon.”

  Father John cut a piece of beef with his fork. The beef fell into pieces. He mixed the beef with pieces of potato and carrot and took a bite. Somehow he had missed that part of it, he was thinking. Kiki had said he wanted the truth for his grandfather—a gift for Andrew, a kind of plea for redemption. But Kiki had also wanted the truth for himself, as if what happened to his great-grandfather would open the way to understanding his own life.

  He realized that Ella had said something else abou
t Kiki asking for the stories. “He was jumpy, you know. Real nervous. Couldn’t sit still. I told him, you’re asking for a gift. You need to ask in the Arapaho Way. Respectful-like,” she said. “He said he was only asking ’cause his own great-grandfather had gone to Hollywood with my grandfather, Goes-in-Lodge, only his great-grandfather never came back. He started talking real nice then, but I didn’t give him everything at first. Gave him one story and waited to see how he acted. He thanked me and didn’t ask for any more. He came back the next day.”

  Father John set his fork down, took a bite of the hot fry bread, and leaned over the table. “Grandmother,” he said after a moment, “I’m also here to ask for a gift. The fed thinks Kiki was killed over drugs, but Andrew says that Kiki wanted to turn his life around. I’m trying to find anything that might convince the fed that Kiki’s death wasn’t part of a drug deal.” He took a moment. His own words sounded preposterous, hanging over the table between them.

  The woman across from him was nodding. She gripped her coffee mug in both hands and peered at him over the rim. “The second time he came,” she said, “I gave him one of my own stories. Told him about how I remembered Tim McCoy coming to the Goes-in-Lodge compound. I was maybe eight or ten, and we lived in one of the houses over there . . .” She nodded toward the window and the expanse of fields under the falling snow. “All the relatives lived in the houses nearby. I remember one of my cousins knocking on the door. Hurry up, she said. The white movie star’s come to visit Grandfather. We ran all the way over to Goes-in-Lodge’s house. He had a brush shade out back. You seen brush shades the way they used to make ’em?”

  She hurried on, not waiting for an answer. “Poles stuck in the ground, willow branches on the roof and the walls. Real cool in brush shades, don’t matter how hot it gets outside. The people used to make brush shades in the Old Time, and we keep trying to make ’em as good as they did.” She set the coffee mug down, picked up her fork, and took another bite of stew. “Anyway,” she went on after a minute, “we slipped inside the brush shade and sat in the corner. We made ourselves real small. McCoy was sitting across from Grandfather, and they were talking mostly in signs. It was something to watch. Hands moving real fast, and everything quiet. Except every once in a while they’d bust out laughing. They was talking about the time in the movies. I understood parts of what they said, ’cause the old people used to talk to us in signs. They was afraid we wouldn’t know how to make signs when we grew up. Used to talk to us in Arapaho, too, for the same reason. That’s how come some of the old people like me . . .” She gave a shrug and a little laugh. “We still talk Arapaho. We still use signs sometimes.”

  Father John smiled at her. So many times he had watched the elders signing across the crowd at a celebration at Eagle Hall or at one of the powwows. He could understand a few of the signs, but the elders’ hands moved so quickly that it was difficult to get most of it.

  “Grandfather trusted McCoy,” Ella said. “He had a good heart. Looked out for the Indians when they were working in the movies. He was a big man, I remember that. Wore a black shirt and black trousers and had a white Stetson that he kept on his knee. I seen some of the old movies he was in, and he always wore a white Stetson. I remember Grandfather saying people didn’t want to leave the rez. They didn’t know how white people was gonna treat them. Every time we left the rez, it was bad. Signs up everywhere that said, No Indians.”

  She gave him a little smile and went back to eating for a moment before she said, “Only reason they went to work in The Covered Wagon was because my grandfather told ’em it would be okay. He trusted McCoy.”

  Father John finished his own stew. It was delicious. Hearty and smooth and just enough spice for the taste to linger on his tongue. The food in Italy was also delicious, yet he had missed the simplicity of fry bread and stew and strong, fresh coffee.

  “I told Kiki some of the things that Grandfather and McCoy said about when they were making The Covered Wagon. How the Arapahos and Shoshones had their own camp next to a tent city where the whites lived. Set up just like a town, with streets and intersections. Grandfather said the dust was something awful, and it drove the whites crazy. They wasn’t used to living in tents with horses and wagons stirring up so much dust, but it didn’t bother the Indians, he said. It reminded them of how it was on the plains when they were kids.”

  Ella got to her feet. She stacked the empty bowls, took them to the counter, and picked up the coffeepot. “Grandfather and McCoy talked about how they went to Hollywood and lived in Cahuenga Pass eight months and put on an Indian show every night. White folks crowded into the theater to see real Indians, like they were aliens from another planet.”

  She refilled the coffee mugs and sat back down. “The Indians used to hang around the studio when they weren’t working. The place looked like a barn, but out in back was a big field where they had all kinds of sound stages. There was everything on those stages—city blocks, villages, farmhouses, hotels. Grandfather said it was like magic. They used to watch the actors playing out different scenes. They had curtains they pulled around the stage to let in the light they wanted. Lot of times they used what they called klieg lights, and the actors’ eyes got real red and swollen. The cameras made a whirring sound when they were cranked.”

  Ella worked at her coffee a long moment and stared past him into the shadows of the living room, summoning the past, he thought. A little girl folded in the corner of a brush shade, listening to her grandfather and a movie star reminisce about a fantastic world and imagining . . . what? That she might go to Hollywood one day? Be in the movies, like her grandfather?

  “I told Kiki some other stories,” she said, bringing her eyes back to his. “I told him Grandfather said Charlie Wallowingbull didn’t like playing by the white man’s rules. Grandfather said there was whispers about him and some white movie star. He said he kept going over and over in his mind what he could have done to keep Charlie from going off like he did, not telling anybody, just disappearing from his tipi one night.”

  Father John set his own mug down. Goes-in-Lodge was a respected elder, the man who trusted Tim McCoy and convinced the others to be in The Covered Wagon. One of the Indians had disappeared, yet neither Goes-in-Lodge nor McCoy had known what had happened to him.

  “Do you know JoEllen Redman?” he said. “I understand she’s a descendant of Thunder’s.” He had been hoping the woman would hear on the moccasin telegraph that he wanted to talk to her. He had checked his messages today. Nothing from JoEllen Redman.

  Ella smiled at him and shook her head. “There’s lots of Redmans around, but I never heard any of ’em was part of the Thunders. They went to Oklahoma a long time ago. Grandfather always said they were a strange bunch.”

  “Did Kiki happen to ask about her?”

  The old woman pursed her lips, still shaking her head. “What Kiki wanted to know most of all was if my grandfather left any letters. I told him buffalo Indians never learned how to write. I told him, you gotta talk to descendants of the younger generation that was in the movies. They was the ones went to the mission school and learned how to read and write. Felix Painted Brush is the one he oughtta talk to. Over on Sand Butte Road where it dips south.”

  Father John thanked the woman. He pulled on his jacket and gloves, let himself out the door, and set his cowboy hat on his head as he made his way through the snow stinging his face. The pickup coughed a moment before it finally burst into life. Ella was peering out the window as he backed down the drive. Everything about the pickup felt frozen, the thumping tires, the steely coldness of the steering wheel through his gloves.

  Charlie didn’t like playing by the rules, Ella had said. He could have run off, started a new life somewhere. He wondered if Kiki would have told his grandfather the truth, if that was what it had turned out to be.

  17

  THE TAILLIGHTS OF the blond-haired girl’s pickup blinked red in the hazy snow. Vicky stayed as close behind as she dared, giving herself en
ough room to grind to a stop at the stoplights. They were creeping uphill in a parade of snow-piled vehicles when a truck switched lanes and slid between the pickup and the Jeep. She tapped on the brake, the Jeep shaking around her, inched into the oncoming lane to pass the truck, then pulled back, blinded for an instant by headlights looming toward her.

  She should have gotten the girl’s name. If she lost the pickup, she would have to hope the girl showed up for work tomorrow at the nail salon. But by then, she would have told Dede that a lawyer was looking for her, and Dede could be hundreds of miles away. The right-turn signal ahead started flashing. The truck turned into a parking lot where neon lights from a bar flickered over rows of parked vehicles. Vicky pressed down on the gas, swung into the other lane, and passed two sedans. If the girl’s pickup turned into a neighborhood, it would vanish into a driveway or garage and she would never find it.

  The pickup was just ahead now. They were nearing the edge of town—blocks of warehouses, shops, and garages interspersed by open stretches of snow. The red taillights grew brighter as the lights of town fell away. A scattering of stars poked through the haze. Then the pickup made a left turn across the road. Vicky waited for an oncoming truck to pass and followed.

  Fresh tire tracks shot down the road past open fields that were flat, white sheets of snow. Ahead the pickup made another turn and as Vicky drew closer she spotted the one-story house with white siding and a black roof. The pickup stopped and the girl got out. She slammed the door, a low thud that reverberated like a drumbeat. Before Vicky had pulled up, the girl was inside the house.

  Vicky followed the footsteps through the snow and knocked on the door. A muffled scream came from inside, like the scream she had once heard from a coyote caught in a trap. She knocked again, louder this time.