Vicky heard the catch in her own breath. She could hardly believe what she had just heard. She had been carrying the guilt alone, a heavy burden. And now he had stepped up to shoulder his share. She felt the years fall away, and in the forty-six-year-old man with gray mingled in the black of his hair she glimpsed the young warrior with soft black eyes, so handsome she hadn’t dared hope he could ever notice her, the man she had crawled out of her bedroom window on summer nights to meet, the man she had run away with and married.
Vicky switched her eyes away. The cabin felt smaller, the heat from the stove oppressive. She would not be drawn into the circle of his charm. She forced herself to focus on the present. “Discussing who’s at fault won’t help Susan. We have to get her away from Lean Bear’s ranch.”
“Are you suggesting we kidnap her?” Ben set the slice of bread on the table.
“You could evict the white men.”
Ben shrugged. “On what grounds? They’ve paid six months’ rent. In any case, they would have thirty days to leave. Longer, if they took the eviction notice to tribal court. You know that. You’re the lawyer. And what if they did leave? Susan might go with them.”
Vicky sipped at the coffee still hot in her mug. Probably so. In any case, evicting the lot of them wouldn’t get Susan into drug rehab, which was what she needed. “Your turn,” she said, setting the mug down.
“Susan told me they’re going to start a business. It could work for her. I say let her have her chance.”
“Business? Don’t make me laugh. Where do you think she’s getting whatever drug she’s on? Those three men haven’t come here to sell Indian crafts. They’re here to sell drugs.”
Ben said, “We both know Susan would never bring drug dealers to her people.”
Vicky pushed her chair back and got to her feet. She turned and stared at the window, watching the flakes chain along the edges. What was she thinking? Just because Susan had slipped back onto drugs out of her own pain didn’t mean her three friends were drug dealers. Where was the evidence? She was jumping to conclusions. She almost laughed out loud thinking of the way an opposing attorney would tear something like this to shreds in a courtroom.
“Don’t worry so much, honey,” Ben said. There was the sound of chair legs scraping the plank floor and footsteps. In a heartbeat, he was behind her, slipping his arms around her waist, his breath warm on her neck. A rush of remembered feelings came over her: the comfort and excitement of the man who had been her husband. She tried to push them away. They belonged in the past, not in the Time Being.
“Don’t, Ben,” she said, turning within the little circle he’d made. Instantly his mouth was on hers, searching as if he would devour her.
She pushed against his chest as hard as she could, and he stepped back, a mixture of anger and bewilderment on his face. “You want me just as much as I want you,” he said. “You want us back together.”
Vicky slid sideways toward the kitchen stove, feeling the knobs against the small of her back. She didn’t trust herself to move, didn’t trust her loneliness. If he came toward her again, if he touched her, she might go willingly with him, just as she’d done all those years ago, and the woman she had become would no longer exist.
“I want you back, Vicky,” he was saying. “Any way you can come back to me, I want you to come. You tell me how it has to be, and that’s the way it’ll be. Hell, I’ll serve you supper every night.” He nodded toward the card table. “You know you want to come back. That’s why you came here tonight.”
“This isn’t about us,” Vicky said. The strength in her own voice surprised her. “It’s about our daughter. We have to find some way to help her.”
“That’s right.” Ben raised his voice. “The only reason Susan’s got problems is because we had problems—I had a problem. But I’m not drinking anymore. Soon as we’re okay, Susan’s going to be okay. Once her parents are back together, she’ll be able to help herself.”
Vicky let his words hang in the air without a reply. It was clear to her now, his view of the world. He’d seized the chance to tell her about Susan last night, knowing she would race out to Lean Bear’s ranch today, find Susan in trouble, and come here this evening. Who else could she turn to except Susan’s father? Who would arrange to be at the cabin in the upper pasture alone, would have the cook send up the stew. And everything in his world would be set right. They would get back together; Susan’s problems would disappear. It would be as if the past had never existed.
She stepped around him, by the little card table with the empty bowls and mugs, the margarine-coated bread, and slipped into her coat. “I know you love Susan,” she said. “But this isn’t the answer. The past is what it is.”
A blast of cold air hit her as she opened the front door and stepped outside. “Don’t go,” Ben said. She pulled the door behind her, feeling as if she had stepped back from the edge of a precipice.
* * *
Vicky drove through a white world. Whiteness drifted in the air, piled onto the hood, clung to the windshield and fell away at the whoosh of the wipers. She sat hunched over the steering wheel, feeling alone and scared for Susan, willing the Bronco across the white stretches of Wind River Reservation, down Highway 789, through the snow-shrouded streets of Lander.
How easy it would be to do what Ben and his family and all the grandmothers, even her own family, would celebrate—going back to Ben. She thought about what Grandfather had once told her: “We are edge people. We live at the edge of two worlds, white and Arapaho. It is hard to remember who we are when we dwell in the edge space.” Ah, Grandfather, You don’t know. You don’t know.
She parked in the driveway, aware of the tiredness seeping through her, and walked across the snow to the porch. The knob on the front door spun in her gloved hand before she’d turned the key. She stopped. She always locked the door here. On the reservation, she had never locked the door. If someone came to take your material possessions, well, that person must be in great need. That was the Arapaho Way, but this was the white world.
She had been so distracted this morning, she must have forgotten. She pushed the door open and stepped into the warmth. Even before she had snapped on the light switch, she sensed another presence, heard the quiet sounds of breathing. Her heart leaped against her ribs.
“’Bout time you got home, Mom,” Gary said. He sat at the end of her sofa, boots propped on the stack of magazines on her coffee table.
15
Father John saw the shadow dart through the trees. He ran after it, up the wooded hillside of Boston College, his heart pounding. He was close, but as soon as he reached for the shadow, it darted away. The sounds of traffic on Commonwealth Avenue, the clanging of a Green Line trolley, filtered through the trees. For a moment the ringing seemed a continuation of the dream. He sat up, disoriented. Then he realized it was the phone. Marcus, he thought. They’ve found Marcus. It struck him it was Marcus’s shadow he’d been chasing—the ghost was walking in his dreams.
He swung out of bed and made his way down the dim hallway. The phone perched on the stairway landing. He always trailed the extension cord up the stairs when he went to bed in case someone tried to reach him in the middle of the night. He went down on one knee, aware of the hard wood floor biting into his kneecap as he lifted the receiver.
“Can you come over?” It was Vicky. He heard the terror in her voice.
“Right away,” he said. As the buzzing noise sounded, the frantic feeling of the dream washed over him. This wasn’t about some Indian kid arrested for disturbing the peace or driving under the influence, or about arranging an adoption or counseling somebody thinking of divorce. This was about Vicky.
He could hear Father Peter moving around inside his bedroom, and he told the old man through the door he’d been called on an emergency. In a few minutes, he was dressed and out the front door. The metal gears screeched into the silence as the Toyota pickup lurched onto Circle Drive. It had stopped snowing, but a blanket of downy s
now lay over the earth. Seventeen-Mile Road and Highway 789 blended into the white open spaces. The occasional track of a squirrel or coyote or red fox dotted the snow. The eastern sky was lit with bands of scarlet and plum; the sun would be up soon. He thought of what Thomas Spotted Horse had once said: Each human being faces the rising sun and the day that it brings alone.
Father John kept the gas pedal down, ignoring the occasional loss of traction and sideways slip. He could still hear the terror in Vicky’s voice, and he knew he was trying to outrun his own alarm as he raced to Lander.
The Toyota slid against the curb in front of her house. Light seeped around the slats of the window blinds and fell in yellow stripes across the snowy yard. He jumped out and ran up the sidewalk.
“Thank God, you’re here,” Vicky said. Her breath came quickly as if she were sobbing. She still had on the dark suit from yesterday, but her hair hung loose, not clipped in back the way he was used to seeing it. There were black smudges under her eyes. She turned abruptly and walked over between the sofa and coffee table. Magazines lay scattered over the top, crowding the pottery bowl, which was filled with ashes and butts. A cigarette and matchbook lay to one side. She picked up the cigarettes and pulled one out. After fumbling with the matches, she finally managed to light up.
“I bought them yesterday, the cigarettes,” she said as if he wouldn’t know what she was talking about. After taking a long draw, she laid the cigarette in the bowl and began combing her fingers through her hair, pulling at it.
“What happened?” Father John felt his heart pounding against his ribs. This was not the Vicky he knew.
“I was so worried about Susan,” she began, and he realized with a kind of shock she was still explaining the cigarettes. She was hysterical. “So after yesterday morning at the ranch, I bought them at the Seven Eleven. But when I stopped off at home, I threw them away. I didn’t want to take them to the office. I didn’t want to start smoking again. But last night, after he left, I dug them out of the bottom of the wastepaper basket.”
Father John was at her side in two steps. He put his arms around her and held her close, trying to comfort her, as he would have comforted his own child perhaps, or his wife. Her hair smelled faintly of sage, and she was trembling. “Who, Vicky? Tell me. What happened to you?”
“He was here on the sofa. Gary. One of the white men with Susan. Sitting right here, waiting for me. I always lock the door. I don’t know how he got in. Maybe I forgot, or maybe he jimmied the lock somehow.”
“Did he hurt you?” Father John wasn’t sure what he would do, how he would react, if this Gary had hurt her. He could feel the anger waiting to flood over him, an enormous black reservoir held in check by such a thin membrane of rationality. For an instant, he glimpsed the force that might drive a man to kill another human being.
“He didn’t touch me,” Vicky said. The trembling was quieter now, and Father John let his arms relax around her. His own relief was like another presence in the room. He wanted only good things for her, prayed that only goodness would follow her.
She stepped back and sank into the middle cushion of the sofa. Reaching toward the bowl, she crushed out the cigarette, keeping her eyes on the little trail of blue smoke that floated upward.
Father John sat down beside her. “What did he want?”
“He said if I loved my daughter—” Vicky stopped a moment, then continued, “if I loved Susan, I would leave her alone. I would stay away from the ranch. He said Susan wanted him to tell me because she didn’t know how.” She paused, gathering strength for the dash into the heart of it. “He threatened to hurt her.”
Father John felt the anger rising in his throat. He swallowed hard, to keep it under control. “What did you do?”
Vicky moved to the edge of the cushion. “The minute that bastard walked out the door, I dialed 911, but I hung up. Before I start pressing charges, I have to get Susan away. She’s sick, John. She’s using drugs again, and she needs treatment. I have to make sure she’s safe before I nail Gary’s hide to the wall.”
Father John realized she’d probably walked the floor all night, turning over all the options. If she had Gary arrested now, she might alienate her daughter. Susan came first. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why would this goon show up here and threaten you?”
“Last night I tried talking Susan into coming home with me. With a little more time, I might’ve convinced her. But Gary and another man—Susan calls him ‘the professor’—and Ty, the man she’s involved with, showed up. It was pretty obvious Gary didn’t want her to leave. If I don’t get her away from there . . .” Vicky’s voice was rising, “. . . what will happen to her?”
“What about Ben?” Father John wasn’t sure why he’d asked, except that yesterday she had made it clear anything having to do with Susan was between her and Ben. He did not want to trespass where he knew he didn’t belong—in her family.
Vicky got to her feet and began circling the room. “Ben believes in miracles. Susan’s problems will disappear if only—” She stopped and looked at him. “I can’t count on Ben. I never could. All night I’ve been trying to figure out how to get Susan out of the clutches of that monster, and I think I’ve got it figured out.”
“Then let’s go get her,” Father John said. He was relieved she had called him, but he was also certain that, had she not reached him, she would have gone alone.
* * *
The sun hung low on the eastern horizon, like a laser shooting white beams over the snowy earth. Father John squinted against the glare as they headed north on Highway 287. Before they’d left, she had changed into jeans, a bulky red sweater, and a jacket patterned like an Indian blanket, while he’d invaded her kitchen and made himself a cup of instant coffee.
Now she sat beside him, gripping a pair of binoculars, talking about Susan. He listened quietly, allowing her thoughts to take shape, a habit of the confessional. He heard how Susan would crawl out of bed at night and crouch on the chest under the window to watch the stars, and how Vicky would find her there when she went to check on the children. How she would stay with her and hold her—Susan was so small then. And how they talked about Sister Moon and the Star Nations, the Star Men who had brought the people the sacred gift of sage, a symbol of the mysteries of the sky. All the things her grandmother had told her, she had tried to tell Susan. “But there was so little time,” Vicky said. “So little time together.”
Father John glanced at the woman next to him. She had the profile of her people, the high cheekbones, the fine nose with just a hint of a bump at the top, the dark, glistening eyes, the brown skin with the trace of red on her lips, the shiny black hair pulled back now into a beaded clasp. She was beautiful. “Susan will be all right,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t sense his own misgivings.
After a few miles of silence, Vicky blurted out, “Gary and the others are drug dealers. I’m sure of it. They’re supplying Susan.”
This could be, Father John thought. The idea had already started to play at the edges of his mind, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. He didn’t like the logical conclusion—that Susan Holden had brought drug dealers to the reservation. He said nothing as the Toyota started climbing up Sage Canyon, threading the narrow road between the mountainside and the steep drop-off into the creek. They’d gone about five miles when Vicky asked him to slow down. She had turned sideways and was staring beyond him, out his window. “There it is,” she said. “The old logging road.”
Father John saw the narrow cut, like a wagon road nearly lost in snow between the rock outcroppings. Easing up on the accelerator, he turned into the cut and started winding up the road. The wheels munched the snow, and the cedar branches scraped the roof. He hoped the Toyota wouldn’t get stuck.
Vicky sat forward, one hand braced on the dashboard. “Just ahead,” she directed.
The pickup lurched upward through the trees, groaning into the mountain stillness. “This is it,” Vicky said. Before he had brought
the pickup to a full stop, she was out the passenger door.
He followed her around a pile of boulders, ducking past the cedars. The wind sighed in the trees; snow sifted around them. It felt ten degrees colder. Vicky stopped, peered through the binoculars a moment, then started climbing the boulders. Standing above him like a sentinel in the Old Time, she raised the binoculars again. “Perfect,” she said.
He followed her up the boulders, so slick in the snow he had to grab a branch to keep from sliding backward. She handed him the binoculars, and he bent toward her slightly to see around the branches. A small frame house with faded gray-green paint came into view. The front end of a truck was visible behind the house.
“See anyone?”
“Not a creature stirring.”
“The truck’s still there,” Vicky said. “If I’m right, they’ll leave any minute. By the time I got here yesterday morning, the truck was already gone. If Gary hadn’t come back, I might’ve been able to talk to Susan then.”
They handed the binoculars back and forth, stamping their feet, clapping their gloved hands in the cold. Father John’s feet and hands felt numb. Suddenly Vicky leaned so far into the binoculars he was afraid she might tumble down. “The front door just opened,” she said. “Looks like the professor coming out. And somebody behind him, but I can’t tell who. He’s got on a blue parka like the one Gary wore last night, but his hat’s pulled down too far to make him out. They’re walking back to the truck,” she said, handing him the binoculars.
Father John watched the cloud of blue exhaust burst alongside the house. Out of the cloud rolled a gray truck, which gathered speed then stopped at the gate. A tall man in a blue parka jumped from the driver’s side, fiddled with the gate, then swung it open. The man looked familiar. He got back in, and the gray pickup spun out onto Sage Canyon road.
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