The Spirit Woman

by Margaret Coel

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, O’Malley. I know what you’re up to, and frankly I’m outraged. I want a straight answer.”

  Father John set both elbows on the desk. “Tell me what this is about, Bill, and I’ll do my best.”

  “You hear that?” The voice drifted away. A machine was rattling in the background. “The fax has been clogged the last two hours, letter after letter from people with names like Yellowtail and Standing Bull and Elkman and Knows-His-Horse. Don’t tell me you didn’t put your Arapaho friends up to this.”

  He understood. Howard Elkman had mentioned something about calling his boss. He said, “I won’t tell you I didn’t put them up to this.”

  “This has your historian’s fingerprints all over it. The letters are coming with letters from 1910.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. You’re very clever, digging in the archives for a situation similar to your own. Sure enough, you found one. The Arapahos didn’t want their favorite priest transferred in 1910, one Father Perelli, so they deluged the provincial’s office with letters. Probably took a couple of weeks to arrive. We’re more fortunate. We have fax machines, so the letters can arrive immediately.”

  Father John threw his head back and laughed. He’d badly underestimated the elders, and Lindy Meadows, for that matter. The elders are interested in some letters, she’d told him. While she was going through the files, looking for documents for Laura Simmons, she must have come across the letters about Father Perelli. She’d obviously called Howard Elkman, who, along with other elders, had spent the last two days at the museum reading through them. He’d thought the elders were interested in Arapaho history. Well, he’d been right, in a way.

  “I’m glad you find this humorous.” The provincial’s voice again.

  “What happened, Bill?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The letter-writing campaign in 1910.”

  “You know perfectly well what happened. The provincial backed down. Father Perelli spent the rest of his days out there in that godforsaken place. I thought I was doing you a favor by getting you back on the track you never should’ve fallen off of in the first place.” The line went quiet with anger and frustration. “I expect you in Milwaukee next Tuesday.”

  Father John replaced the receiver and leaned back in the chair, lifting the front legs off the floor. He ran a hand over the dog’s soft fur and sipped at the last of the coffee, trying to ignore the reminder always in the shadows of his mind. This is not whiskey, not the same at all. It was his decision, was it not? He was a free man, he’d taken the vows freely. For better or worse, he’d promised. I will trust in you, Lord, he’d promised.

  The phone was jangling again. Perhaps someone needing a priest, he thought as he lifted the receiver. “Father O’Malley,” he said. Instantly he knew that Vicky was on the other end, even before he heard the sound of her voice.

  It came like a sob. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to call.”

  “I’m on the way,” he said.

  24

  The Toyota skidded through the fresh snow on Rendezvous Road. There were no other vehicles in sight, only the pristine whiteness wrapping around the pickup and the tunnel of headlights ahead. He fought against the images crowding into his mind; he didn’t want them. Vicky walking into the living room; Ben Holden waiting. Dear Lord, don’t let him have been drinking! Vicky telling him it was over. She was so small and soft, and Ben Holden, my God hat had he done to her?

  He swung right onto the highway, sending the pickup skidding toward the ditch. He let up on the gas and turned in to the skid until the front end pointed west, then accelerated again. He had to think rationally. She had called. She was alive. Maybe Ben hadn’t hurt her. But the pain in her voice! He would always hear the pain, he knew. In the middle of the night, in the midst of prayer and meetings and classes, the unexpected sound of her pain would come.

  He banked south into Lander, the snow lighter now, faint traces of dark asphalt punctuating the whiteness. Another couple of turns and he was in front of the small house where she lived, slamming out the door and running up the snowy sidewalk. He pounded on the door, then opened it.

  He saw her the instant he stepped inside—huddled on the floor beside the desk, as if she’d slid down the wall, the phone on the carpet beside her, crumpled tissues scattered about. He crossed the small room in a couple of steps and went down on one knee, his eyes running over her face—the hollow spaces beneath her cheekbones, the shape of her mouth and slant of her jaw. There were no bruises or cuts, as far as he could see, only a membrane of moisture clouding the coppery tones of her skin.

  “What did he do to you?” he said. His voice was tight with anger.

  She lifted both hands to her face, shreds of white tissue curling in her fingers. “I was so scared.” The words came in a whisper; he had to lean closer to catch them.

  “Vicky, did he hurt you?” He placed his arms around her shoulders and reined her to him.

  “I’m okay.” She was crying softly into the front of his jacket. “He’s gone now, probably over at the Highway Lounge getting drunker.”

  “You’ve got to tell me,” he said. “Did he hit you?”

  He heard the effort for control in the sharp intakes of her breath. “I saw his fists.” Her voice was muffled against him, as if she were sheltering from some imaginary shadow of Ben Holden in the room. “He was so angry, and his fists came up. I could feel them pounding on me. I could taste the blood in my mouth. Everything was spinning around. I couldn’t see in the blackness. It was just like before, back in that other time. Everything the same, except that, all of a sudden, he turned and stomped out.”

  “Did he hit you?” White anger, like an electrical charge burned through him.

  “No. No.” She was shivering, as if cold had become a permanent condition. “God, I don’t know what made him stop. He never stopped before.”

  Father John didn’t say anything, aware of the slight weight of her leaning into his chest, the faint smell of sage in her hair. Finally he said, “You’re all right, then? He didn’t touch you?”

  She pulled away and blew her nose into a tissue. There was a soft finality to the sound. Then she tugged at the neckline of her dark blue sweater until the rounded ridge of her shoulder was exposed. He stared in disbelief at the purplish marks—fingerprints—imprinted in her skin, the anger rising again, swift and certain as an arrow at his heart.

  He grabbed the phone and started punching in 911.

  “What are you doing?” Vicky pulled at the receiver in his hand. “You can’t call anyone.”

  “You’ve been assaulted. I’m calling the police.”

  “The police!” She gave a shriek of pain and yanked hard on the receiver. “He grabbed me, John. That’s all. He never hit me.”

  “He grabbed you and threatened you, Vicky. There are bruises on your shoulder. You’ve been assaulted, and I’m going to call the police.” He took the receiver back and started jabbing again at the numbers.

  “No, John. No, please no.” She slumped back against the wall, both hands covering her nose and mouth, so that her sobs came in staccato bursts, as if he had been the one who had just hurt her.

  He replaced the receiver. The sobbing was less, barely audible above the sounds of a clock ticking somewhere and tires whining in the snow on the street.

  “Leave me this, please, John,” she said finally. “A little dignity. I don’t want it all over the newspaper. Local lawyer, Eagle Shelter board member, assaulted by ex-husband, foreman at the Arapaho ranch, well known and respected in the tribe.”

  “You have to report this, Vicky.” Father John fought for a quiet, rational tone.

  She shook her head so violently that her entire body was shuddering. “Somebody would send the paper to the kids, and I don’t want them to know. They never knew, and they can’t find out. I can’t let them find out.”

 
“Look at me, Vicky.” He took her chin into his hand and pulled her face around until her eyes found his. “Don’t fool yourself anymore. Your kids know. They’ve always known. I don’t care what you wanted to think. You have to hold him responsible for their sake, if not your own.”

  “You can’t call the police.” He could sense the firmness in the set of her jaw. “I won’t have it. You just can’t, John.”

  He saw it in an instant. It wasn’t the kids she was protecting, it wasn’t even her own sense of herself. It was Ben Holden. He let go of her chin. For a moment he didn’t say anything, not trusting himself. “What do you want of me, Vicky?” he said finally. “What exactly do you expect?”

  She blinked at the harshness in his tone.

  He stood up. “You knew the kind of man Ben Holden is. You knew what he’d done to you before, and you knew what was going to happen, but you went back to him anyway. What if he walked in right now? Would you go back to him?”

  “You don’t understand.” She started to get to her feet, a slow, weary movement.

  “You’re right. I don’t understand my role in all of this.” He had a sense of being outside of himself, lashing out at her. He kept on: “What do you want me to do? Watch you fall into his arms again, lie awake nights worrying about you, waiting for him to kill you or just hurt you enough to put you in the hospital? And then come running when you call? What is it, Vicky? I can’t make you forget about Ben Holden. I can’t take you away from him. I can’t save you.”

  “Don’t do this, John.” The pleading note made his heart turn over. She was leaning against the wall.

  He took his eyes from her, whirled around, and crossed the room.

  “Where are you going?” he heard her say as he slammed out the door.

  He drove south on Highway 287, peering through the half-moons carved out by the windshield wipers. Ahead the red-and-blue neon sign, HIGHWAY LOUNGE, blazed through the falling snow like a beacon. Cutting in front of a semi—the blaring horn—he skidded into the parking lot, barely missing two pickups parked in front of the log building. He let up on the gas, slowed the Toyota past a row of pickups and trucks, and stopped next to Ben Holden’s truck. The muffled beat of country music pounded through the log walls as he headed back to the entrance.

  The air inside was foggy with smoke. Conversations buzzed beneath the music thumping out of speakers in the far corners. The stale odors of whiskey and beer penetrated the fog, stinging his nose and mouth, his lungs. He scanned the clots of people huddled in the booths along the sidewalls. A man and woman were moving across the bare wood floor, holding each other up in a drunken pastiche of a dance. Across the lounge, cowboys ranged along the bar, gripping beer bottles. COORS DRAFT blinked in the mirror overhead. Ben Holden was alone at the far end of the bar.

  Father John walked past the swaying, lurching couple, the thud of his boots against the floor out of sync with the music’s rhythm. Ben Holden turned slightly as he approached—was he expecting him?—and Father John reached out and took a fistful of the man’s plaid shirt. He shoved him backward, pushing him into the wall, bracing himself for the fists sure to lash out in defense.

  “You want a piece of somebody, Holden? How about somebody your own size?” He tightened his hold on the shirt, leaning his fist into the man’s chest.

  “Vicky’s okay, isn’t she?” The man’s voice was sharp with panic. “Tell me she’s okay. I didn’t want to hit her. I didn’t hit her, did I? Oh, God, tell me I didn’t hurt her.”

  “You hurt her, all right.”

  The other man’s face began to crumble—a slow breaking into sobs. Father John felt him buckling beneath his grip, muscles and tendons and joints collapsing like those of a marionette. He grabbed him under both arms, holding him upright against the wall, steadying him.

  “I never meant to hurt her.” The sobs were loud and uncontrollable, bursting from a deep, hidden place—the remorse-laden sobs of the confessional. Father John had heard them before. “I wanted her to come back to me. I wanted us to be together like a real family, the way we used to be. Just Vicky and me and the kids, that’s how it was supposed to be, but I let her down again. I hurt her. I didn’t wanna do that.”

  Father John stepped back, his gaze fixed on the man leaning on the bar now, hands flat, a half-filled glass of whiskey at his fingertips. The sounds of a country band crashed around them. We’ve both let her down, he thought. We’ve both hurt her. A couple of alcoholics, battling their own demons. And he more at fault than Ben Holden. A priest. How could he have ever allowed her any hope that he could be the man she needed?

  “Any trouble between you and Ben, Father?” A burly man was beside him, thumbs linked in the side pockets of his blue jeans. He looked like a breed, black, straight hair slicked back, a light-complected, pockmarked face.

  “Ben’s gonna need a ride back to the Arapaho ranch,” Father John said.

  “Hey, Buster.” The man shouted past him at an Indian halfway down the bar, his arm around the waist of a thin girl with long black hair and a tight blue sweater that draped partway off one shoulder. “You goin’ back to the ranch tonight?” A glance at Father John: “Buster works up there.”

  The Indian drew the girl closer and kissed the bare shoulder. “Sure ain’t plannin’ on it, Wily,” he said. “Besides I just got here.”

  “Plans just changed.” This from the burly man. “Ben here needs a ride.” He turned to Ben. “Let’s have the keys. Don’t want anybody suing the place ’cause you run ’em down.”

  Ben fumbled in his jeans pocket and set a ring of keys on the bar, which the man tossed along the polished wood to the other Indian. “Okay, Father,” the burly man said. “I’ll make sure ol’ Ben here gets home safe and sound.”

  “Thanks.” Father John said.

  The music was still pounding, the couple still clinging together on the dance floor, when he stepped back outside into the snow.

  Wedges of snow flew out from the Toyota as he plunged north, trying to put as much space as he could between him and the lounge and the whiskey. He could taste the whiskey—I could taste the blood. Dear Lord, the burden of the past. Would they never be free? He held the accelerator down, ignoring the lift and sway of the rear tires. He had wanted to stay at the bar. One shot was all he needed, and the warmth would have spread into the nucleus of every cell, calming and focusing his mind. Everything would have fallen into place.

  Stay away from the liquor, lad. His father’s voice. It’s the devil’s own curse. He’d been three sheets to the wind, his father, when he’d dispensed that piece of wisdom, spilling another two fingers of whiskey into his glass.

  He might have been drunk himself tonight, he thought, lashing out at Vicky. Except that when he was drunk he didn’t go to bars looking for a fight. He’d been a quiet drunk, sunk in an armchair in his room, grading papers for some history class, sipping at the whiskey. How ironic, he thought. He could control his anger better when he was drunk. What had he been thinking, confronting a man like Ben Holden, who rode herd all day, branded cattle, every muscle a sinew of steel?

  He grimaced at what might have happened. The newspaper headline: MISSION PRIEST ARRESTED IN BAR FIGHT. He’d lived with humiliation before, but only in the eyes of his fellow priests, a few of his students. That was hard enough. His drunken bouts had never been broadcast to the public.

  All of a sudden he understood why Vicky had grabbed the receiver. The humiliation! It was too much to bear.

  He drove on, a homing pigeon, the route imprinted in his soul, only half-aware of the familiar swells of the earth beneath the snow. Gradually he began to feel calmer, enveloped in the vast white spaces and the endless black sky. His thoughts were steadier now. He’d lashed out at Vicky, he realized, because he couldn’t do anything else. Just as Ben Holden had lashed out, because he couldn’t do anything else. He and Ben Holden, paired failures at love.

  He turned in to the mission grounds and left the Toyota next to the Harley. Snow lined
the folds of the bike’s cover. Inside the residence, he headed for the kitchen, where he started a fresh pot of coffee brewing even before he took off his jacket and hat. The house was quiet; Kevin could be asleep over his computer. When the coffee was ready, he topped off a mug and headed for the study, where he stood at the window a long while, sipping at the hot liquid, trying to quench the thirst.

  He could break the vows; he wouldn’t be the first priest to break his vows. He could stay here, he and Vicky together. He could find other work; he was a good counselor. He shoved the thought away. Help me, Lord, he prayed. I am weak, and the temptation is strong.

  The clock on the mantel in the living room had chimed once—or was it two times?—when he’d finished off the pot of coffee and started up the stairs. He was halfway up when he remembered the phone. He went back, grabbed it from the hall table, and carried it up the steps as far as the cord would stretch. He would hear it ring if anyone needed a priest tonight.

  25

  There were more worshipers than usual crowding the little church: elders and grandmothers, gray-haired couples, young parents and kids wedged into the pews and standing at the back. The musicians huddled in a circle to the left of the altar, voices rising over the thud thud thud of the drum. Father Kevin sat in the front pew, head bowed in prayer.

  It was his last Sunday Mass at St. Francis. Father John offered the Mass for the people, that they would be safe in God’s care. For Laura Simmons, that she would be found safe. For Charlotte Allen, that she would have peace. For Vicky. For himself. He said the prayers out loud, reverently, quietly. The prophet Jeremiah: “I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.” And the gospel: “Jesus told the parable about a man who went on a journey . . .”

  He’d written a homily, but he left his notes on the lectern and walked into the aisle. An expectant quiet filled the church. He looked around the congregation, memorizing the brown, upturned faces. He thanked them for all they’d given him. He promised to come back for a visit—for many visits, he hoped. He told them he would always keep them in his prayers and asked them to pray for him. Then he walked back to the altar and began the Eucharistic prayers. As he raised the bread and wine overhead—behold, the body and blood of Christ—he knew that he would have to leave this place. He was a priest. “I will go, Lord, if you send me.”