The Thunder Keeper

by Margaret Coel

  Two months ago he’d been teaching mathematics in a Jesuit prep school in Milwaukee. After the last assistant, Father Kevin McBride, had returned to Marquette University to teach anthropology, and after Father John had called the Provincial three, four, six times, pleading for help, and the Provincial had gotten good and tired of taking his calls, Father Don Ryan had arrived.

  “Have a minute?” Father John said, hanging his jacket over the coattree. The smell of wet wool mingled with the odor of chilis, onions, and seared meat that drifted down the hallway from the kitchen. A cabinet door slammed shut, and there was the noise of water gushing into the sink. Elena, the housekeeper, was still here. And Walks-On, the golden retriever he’d found in the ditch a couple of years ago, padded down the hall on his three legs and stuck a cold nose into the palm of his hand.

  “Well, I’m on my way out . . .” The other priest made an exaggerated motion of pulling back the sleeve of his raincoat and peering at his watch. “A minute.” He seemed to consider this. “Sure, why not.”

  Father John patted the dog’s head, then walked into the study, flipping on the wall switch as he went. A white light flooded over the twin wingback chairs that he kept for visitors, the bookcases along the walls, the desk with papers spilling over the top. He dropped onto the leather chair behind the desk. His shirt felt cold and clammy against his back.

  Father Don was standing just inside the door, leaning against the frame, arms folded across the front of his raincoat. “Shoot,” he said.

  “Confessions today . . .” Father John began.

  The other priest walked over and sat down in the chair across from the desk. He leaned forward. “Somebody came to the confessional and told you something that you don’t want to know. Am I right?” Concern worked through his voice.

  Father John nodded.

  “That’s tough, John, but you can’t repeat what you heard.” The man’s pale eyes darkened like the thunderclouds outside. “We’re bound by the seal of the confessional, two thousand years old. You can’t break it.”

  “Suppose someone were to die.”

  Father Don took a few moments. Then, as if he’d come to a decision, he said, “We’re speaking hypothetically, right? Did the penitent give you any details? Did he say someone in particular was in danger? Is there anything a hypothetical priest could do to prevent a death?”

  Father John shook his head.

  The other priest shrugged and pushed to his feet. “Well, there you are. You can’t be blamed for keeping the information to yourself. If you knew somebody was in danger, you might have to find some way to warn him. Fact is, you don’t know.” He started moving to the entry, rechecking his watch. “I really have to go. I’d like to invite you along, but”—he jammed both hands into his coat pockets—“I’m having dinner with a friend.”

  Father John waved away the explanation, and the other priest disappeared into the entry. The sound of the front door shutting was like a clap of thunder that rippled through the floorboards of the old house.

  His assistant was right, Father John thought. Every instinct, every sense of logic, told him so, and yet. . . There’s gonna be more murders. The words kept running through his mind.

  He got up and walked over to the stack of Gazettes on the table beneath the window and began scanning today’s paper for an article on a body found in the mountains. He’d glanced through the paper this morning; he hadn’t seen anything, but there could have been a small article, easy to miss. There was nothing. He thumbed through yesterday’s paper, the previous day’s, working his way back through the week. He was halfway through the stack when he felt another presence in the room, a pair of eyes boring into his back.

  He glanced around. Elena, the housekeeper, stood in the doorway, hands on her waist in a perfect imitation of his own mother at the end of her wits with the redheaded, stubborn, analytical kid who was her son. The image made him smile. Elena was probably seventy, although she claimed to have lost track of her age years ago. Old enough, she would say, for eight kids, seventeen grandkids, four great-grandkids. She knew all the names and birth dates and there were times when she insisted upon listing them for him. The family was half-Arapaho, half-Cheyenne, or Shyela, as the Arapahos called the tribe they had lived with on the plains in the Old Time, and she’d managed them all as well as the succession of priests at St. Francis Mission for years now—exactly how many years was also a figure she claimed to have forgotten.

  “Your supper’s waiting,” she announced, bending her head sideways and wiping both hands on the white apron tied around her waist. The light glinted through her tightly curled gray hair.

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  “Yeah? Well, so’s Christmas.”

  He had to laugh. He could almost hear his mother’s voice.

  She said, “The chili’s gonna be cold before you get yourself to the kitchen.”

  He tossed aside the last newspaper—nothing about a murdered man—and followed her down the hallway to the kitchen. She walked with shoulders squared, elbows at her sides pumping back and forth, propelling the short, stout body forward.

  “Sit down,” she ordered, and he took his usual chair at the round oak table. Walks-On was snoring on his blanket in the corner. The smell of chili made Father John realize how hungry he was. Elena ladled the thick soup into a bowl and set it in front of him. He took a spoonful, savoring the spicy warmth that settled in his stomach, his thoughts still on what he’d heard in the confessional.

  “I said it’s a shame.” Elena set a plate of bread and a mug of coffee next to his bowl, and he realized her voice had been droning in the background and he had no idea what she’d been telling him.

  “You eatin’ supper all alone again,” she said. “Nobody here but the dog.”

  He made an effort to give her his attention. “Why don’t you join me?”

  “I was just sayin’ how it’s Saturday night, and my granddaughter Elsie is bringing the babies, Nathan and Jordan, over for a visit. And besides, I gotta finish some beading for the arts-and-crafts fair tomorrow, so I gotta get home.” She turned back to the stove and began pouring the chili into a refrigerator bowl. “Enough chili here to feed a horse,” she went on, making a clucking noise, “and Father Don out to dinner.”

  “You’re saying the man eats like a horse?” Father John took another spoonful.

  “Out last night and the night before. Going here, going there. Visiting folks all over the res. The man doesn’t have the sense to stay home.”

  “He’s a popular fellow,” Father John said absentmindedly. He was thinking that the Indian’s body hadn’t been found yet. It was somewhere on a mountainside. It could be weeks or months before some hiker spotted it. Precious time in which others could die.

  “You ask me, he’s gonna be gone permanently.”

  “What?” Father John tried to catch up.

  Elena leaned toward him, both hands flattened on the table. “Father Don. You mark my words. He’ll be leaving here soon.”

  She had his full attention now. What she said surprised him. Father Don seemed to have taken to the job here. Chatting with Elena in the kitchen over mugs of coffee, trailing Leonard, the caretaker, over the grounds, asking questions about trimming trees and touching up the paint and probably a lot of other things that, Father John suspected, he didn’t really care about. He’d taken over the education committee, the liturgy committee. He was handling the mission finances. A mathematician. The man actually liked handling the finances.

  He said, “What makes you think Father Don’s going anywhere?”

  “He’s got that look in his eye.” Elena whirled around and began running a dishcloth over the edge of the sink. “You know what I mean.” She draped the cloth on the faucet, untied the white apron, and folded it on the counter. “When he don’t know you’re watching, he stares out at the plains. He sees someplace far away. That’s where he’s gonna go.” She spread her hands wide, as if there was no help for it, and starte
d down the hallway.

  Father John scooped the last of the chili from the bowl and took a bite of bread. Less than an hour before, Father Don had been in the study, listening intently. Then he’d seemed to shift gears, his attention on the evening ahead, the dinner he was off to. Elena could be right. Father John hated to admit it. The prospect of pleading with the Provincial again for a new assistant filled him with dread.

  “There’s fried chicken in the fridge for your supper tomorrow.” The housekeeper was back in the doorway, her dark raincoat buttoned tight across her chest, fingers tying a plastic hood over her gray hair. She always prepared chicken for Sunday dinner. A habit he’d gotten so used to, he figured that for the rest of his life he’d expect to eat cold fried chicken on Sundays.

  “Before you go, Elena,” he said, getting to his feet, “have you heard of anybody on the res who might be missing?”

  She stared up at him, eyes widening with understanding. “So that’s what’s on your mind. Somebody’s gone missing. Who is it?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “I don’t know everything that’s going on around here.”

  He doubted that was true. Elena seemed to have a direct connection to the moccasin telegraph. She always had the news hours, sometimes days, before he heard it. Strange that something about the murdered Indian hadn’t flashed over the telegraph.

  “Soon’s I hear anything, I’ll let you know.” Elena gave him a wave and turned down the hallway. In a moment the front door opened and shut, sending a wave of moist air floating into the kitchen.

  Father John washed out his bowl, set it on the drain, and walked back to his study. His desk was piled with matters awaiting his attention. Letters to answer. Phone calls to return. He sank down into the old leather chair, pushed the papers aside, and wished—the trace of a wish that came on him when he least expected it—that he had a sip of whiskey. A sip or two would clear his mind.

  He forced his mind back to the murdered Indian. Maybe somebody had only reported him missing this afternoon and the news hadn’t gotten to the moccasin telegraph yet. The police could have already found the body. And if that was the case, a murder investigation would be under way. The authorities would warn anybody else who might be in danger and . . . He drew in a long breath. He could sleep peacefully tonight.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Wind River police. Within a couple of minutes, he was patched through to the home of Chief Art Banner, and the man was crackling over the line about how he was off duty and how this had better be an emergency.

  “Look, Banner,” Father John began, “I’m wondering if anybody was reported missing today.”

  “Missing?” A long whistle sounded at the other end. “You trying to ruin the first peaceful Saturday night I’ve had in months, O’Malley? What’re you talking about?”

  “Somebody who might have disappeared . . .” He selected his words carefully.

  “What d’ya know that I oughta know?”

  “Look, Banner, I’m just asking if anyone filed a missing person’s report.”

  “You heard some rumors, that it?”

  Father John didn’t say anything.

  “There’s always rumors floating around the res, John, but nobody’s come in to make a report in the last month. That satisfy you? I got Sherlock Holmes on TV.”

  Father John told the chief to go back to his mystery, then he set the receiver in the cradle. There were people walking around this evening, settling down to a pizza maybe, watching TV, who were about to be killed. A man had already been killed. An Indian. Sooner or later somebody on the res was bound to start asking questions.

  He planned to visit the arts-and-crafts fair tomorrow anyway. Now he thought the fair would be a good opportunity to catch up with the latest news on the moccasin telegraph.

  3

  Great Plains Hall rose out of the prairie ahead. Father John had heard the drums as soon as he’d come around the bend on Seventeen Mile Road. The rhythmic thuds reverberated through the sounds of “Quando me’n vo” coming from the tape player wedged in the front seat of the Toyota pickup. The thuds grew stronger. He reached down and pressed the off button, allowing the beat of the drums to fill up the cab.

  On the horizon, the Wind River mountains, azure blue and green with the recent rains, poked into the clouds, but patches of sunshine lay over the flat, open plains that ran into the distances on either side of the road. The air was cool, tinged with both the coming warmth of summer and the promise of more rain.

  Father John made a right turn onto the dirt road that ran past the senior citizens’ center to Great Plains Hall. The field in front was filled with vehicles parked at odd angles. Old trucks and pickups next to shiny SUVs and sedans. The Arapaho arts-and-crafts fair always drew a mixture of Indians from the res and white people from the adjacent towns of Riverton and Lander.

  He parked next to a brown pickup as rusted and dented as the Toyota and made his way around the vehicles toward the hall, his boots sinking into the soggy ground. The faintest roll of thunder in the distance mingled with the sound of the drums.

  The hall was packed, and a crowd of brown and white faces moved along the tables that had been arranged against the side walls. He could see the jewelry on the table just inside the door—beaded necklaces, bracelets, earrings: a white woman holding up a hand mirror and staring at the beaded earrings that dangled from her ears, nodding to the grandmother behind the table, handing the old woman a few bills.

  Across the hall, the drummers and singers sat huddled around a large drum. The steady thuds bounced off the cement walls, punctuating the hum of voices. A group of kids dressed in dance regalia was lining up alongside the musicians, their shiny shirts and dresses, feathered headdresses, and bustles flashing through the crowd.

  The smells of fresh coffee and fried bread permeated the air. In the far corner was the food table, and Father John caught sight of his assistant, Father Don, chatting with several Arapahos, tilting his head sideways—that way of his when he was listening—sipping from a Styrofoam cup, then throwing his head back and laughing. Other Indians started crowding around. The man seemed completely at ease, as if this was home. Elena could be wrong. Father John hoped so. People here liked the new assistant, and he liked them. The man was good with people.

  Father John started along the tables, stopping to chat with the Arapahos seated on folding chairs on the other side. Old people, kids, men and women in their twenties and thirties—the artists and craftspeople who had beaded the jewelry and vests, painted the shirts and dresses and small drums, sewn the Arapaho star quilts, and fashioned the bows and arrows and coup sticks, just as their grandparents had done in the Old Time.

  On one table were several oil paintings that captured the beauty and loneliness of the plains and the hidden valleys of the Wind River mountains. As beautiful as any paintings of the area he’d seen. He gave a thumbs-up to Stone Yellowman, the young man watching him from the other side of the table, and the brown face broke into a wide, reassured grin.

  He turned toward the next table, then stopped. For an instant he’d thought Vicky Holden was across the hall: the slim figure and shoulder-length black hair, the finely sculptured brown face, the shining, intelligent black eyes. A woman who resembled her, that was all, and he realized he’d been half expecting to see Vicky here. She wouldn’t have missed the arts-and-crafts fair if she still lived in the area.

  He shook away the sense of loss that came over him at the most unexpected moments. Vicky Holden had gone back to work at her old law firm in Denver five months ago. It was the way it should be. Still, he missed their friendship, missed working with her—lawyer and priest: they’d been a good team—missed being able to pick up the phone and run something by her, test some far-fetched theory against the toughness of her mind. He could have talked to her about a missing Indian.

  “Father John, over here.”

  He swung around. Louise Little Horse was getting
to her feet, beckoning him toward her table.

  “How are you, Grandmother?” he said, walking over.

  The old woman picked up a bolo tie and held it out in her small pink palm. The round disk was covered with tightly woven white beads. In the center—it might have been soaring through the clouds—was the blue-beaded figure of a thunderbird, the symbol of thunder, the guardian of the atmosphere. Radiating out from the bird figure were red lines, symbolizing the sun and life.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  “I made it for you.” She looked up at him, the narrow, dark eyes shining in the furrowed face.

  “Please let me pay you for it,” he said, fishing in his jeans pocket for some bills.

  “Oh, no.” An aggrieved look came into the dark face. She reached out, took his hand, and folded his fingers around the tie, and he thought of what the elders always said: accept the gifts offered you and be grateful.

  “Thank you, Grandmother.” He slipped the beaded rope around his neck and pulled the disk up under the collar of his shirt. “I’ll wear it with pride,” he told her.

  “It’ll protect you,” she said. Then: “You look real Arapaho now. Only you gotta grow black hair.”

  “I hear there’s other ways.”

  “I hear shoe polish works.”

  He laughed.

  “What’s worrying you, Father?” The old woman leaned across the table.

  “It shows?”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me, Grandmother,” he began. “Any news on the moccasin telegraph that the pastor at St. Francis hasn’t heard yet?”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. The brown face crinkled into the lines that fanned from her eyes and mouth. “Oh, I’d say there’s always something that folks’d just as soon the pastor didn’t know about.”

  “Have you heard that anybody’s missing?”