The Spirit Woman

by Margaret Coel

  The priest’s bruised face broke into a slow, painful smile. “If I got lucky tonight, I may have an interview with a murderer who confessed to two homicides and was about to shoot John and me.”

  Father John stared at the other priest. “How did you manage that?”

  Kevin shrugged, then winced as if the effort had reminded him of the boot kick he’d taken. “Crow Wolf walked into the office just as I was about to leave and introduced himself. I was glad to meet a Shoshone historian. Naturally I invited him to take a seat. I was even thinking about putting on a pot of coffee, expecting to have a good talk about the early days on the res.”

  He said “res,” Father John thought, as if he’d been around for a long time.

  “Next thing I know, he’s holding a gun. I swear I don’t even know which pocket he pulled it from. He demanded I take him to the library and give him some journal. I didn’t know what he was talking about.” He drew in a long breath. “That’s when you called, John. I tried to signal you that things weren’t right here.”

  “I missed it,” Father John said. Somehow he’d missed all the signals tonight. Surely there was a moment—when was it?—when he might have taken the Indian’s gun.

  “I said to Crow Wolf,” Father Kevin went on, “ ‘It’s cold out there, man. I need my jacket.’ So I took my jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. I expected him to check the pockets, but he didn’t say a word.”

  “Must’ve figured a priest wasn’t carrying a gun,” the chief said.

  “Yeah, well, he didn’t figure on a tape recorder.” Kevin gave a snort of laughter. “I managed to flip on the switch while we were walking across the grounds. Somewhere in front of the church, I believe. From there on”—he nodded at the chief—“we could have the entire conversation. It’s a marvelous piece of equipment, very sensitive.”

  The chief was turning the small block of metal over in his hand. “The fed’s gonna love this,” he said. Then he looked up at Vicky. “Since when are you in the habit of carrying a revolver?”

  Father John felt the little shiver in Vicky’s hand. “It’s not mine,” she said, her voice so quiet that the kitchen stayed silent a moment after she’d spoken.

  “She found it in my desk drawer.” Father John locked eyes with the chief. “It belongs to Alva Running Bull. I was keeping it for her.”

  “So she wouldn’t kill Lester.” One of the officers at the counter spoke up. “The bastard deserves it.”

  Banner threw a cautionary glance at his men, then turned his gaze back to Vicky. “Okay, so you took the gun . . .”

  “I saw that Crow Wolf had a gun on John and Kevin,” Vicky said, her voice still quiet. “I went into the office and found the gun.”

  “Why didn’t you call us right then?”

  “There was no time, Banner.” Vehemence seeped into her voice. “He’d killed two women. He killed my friend for the journal he thought was here. All I could think of was that the minute he found out John didn’t have the journal, he was going to kill him. I had to stop him.” Suddenly she dipped her face into her hands. Tears wound through her fingers. After a moment she looked up. “I thought I could make him drop his gun. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “We tried to get the gun,” Kevin said. “For a couple of Irish lads, we’re lousy street fighters.”

  Banner laughed. “You’re just out of practice.”

  “It’s all on the tape.” Father John locked eyes with the chief. “Why don’t you and Gianelli listen to it and ask the rest of your questions tomorrow.”

  Banner nodded slowly as he pushed himself out of the chair. “The agent’s gonna want to see everybody soon’s he gets back.” Turning to Vicky, he said, “You probably shouldn’t be driving. How about we give you a ride home?”

  “I’ll see that she gets home,” Father John said.

  Father John drove the Bronco west on Seventeen Mile Road, glancing every minute or so at Vicky huddled in the passenger seat, the way she’d huddled on the living-room sofa for the last two hours until the fleet of state crime lab and BIA officials had finally ferried out a stretcher with Crow Wolf’s corpse zipped in a gray bag. He’d divided his time between sitting with her, trying to get her to drink some water, answering questions in the study, and refilling his own mug in the kitchen. His thirst was boundless, unquenchable. He’d brewed a second pot and gulped it down.

  As he came around a jog the Toyota’s headlights behind them flashed in the rearview mirror, blinding him for a half second. Kevin was behind them. He adjusted the mirror and glanced over at Vicky again. In the glimmer of the dashboard lights, her eyes looked bruised and puffy from crying, but, oddly, her expression seemed more peaceful. She seemed to have gone off somewhere far away. “Are you asleep?” His voice was soft.

  “No.” Vicky shifted in the seat and laid her head back. A moment passed before she said, “Ironic, isn’t it? I always feared that one day I’d shoot Ben. So I left him, before it could happen. Now I’ve shot someone else.”

  “He was a killer.”

  “And I’m a lawyer. I believe in due process and all that, not in summary execution.”

  “That’s not the way it was,” he told her. “Try to think about what actually happened. Don’t make it into something else.”

  She seemed to shrink inside the black coat, going off again into that place within herself. A good mile of highway unfolded ahead before she said, “We’ve been through a hell of a lot together, John O’Malley. But neither of us ever killed anybody before.”

  He reached over and took her hand again. It felt warmer, but the Bronco was warm, heat pouring from the vents. “In time—”

  “Don’t tell me how time heals everything. It’s not true, and you know it.”

  “Well,” he began, another tack. “Perhaps, in time, we’ll learn to live with it.”

  She turned his hand over, gripping it so hard he could feel the tiny pinch of her nails against his palm. “I don’t want to be alone tonight, John.”

  He let his hand remain in hers. He didn’t say anything for a long time, guiding the Bronco with his other hand into the fastness of the plains. The mountains rose ahead, massive black shadows. They might have been the only people in the world, he thought, except for the headlights dancing intermittently in the rearview mirror. Several minutes passed. “I’m going to take you to Aunt Rose’s,” he said.

  35

  “That’s some bruise you got there, Father John.” Alva Running Bull leaned forward and reached out a hand, tracing in the air the eggplant-colored tender spot below his lip. Lester rearranged his weight on the chair beside her, embarrassment and concern mingling in the man’s face. “Bet that hurts.” Alva again.

  It hurts, he thought. He said, “Looks like I’ll survive.”

  “Oh, yeah, mostly we survive.” The woman laced her fingers over the floppy bag in her lap.

  “I don’t hit you anymore, Alva.” Lester was staring at the floor, hands folded between his knees. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  “I know,” the woman said.

  “You didn’t have to go get a gun.”

  “I was worried there for a while last week, when you started acting weird. I could tell; I can always tell.”

  “What’s bothering you, Lester?” Father John tried to bring the counseling session back to the source of the rage that exploded into fists pounding on flesh.

  Lester exhaled a long sigh and drew himself upright. “The job, you know. Looks like the boss might lay some people off. First ones to go are Indians.”

  “How are you dealing with that?” Father John prodded, hoping the man would realize that he had managed to deal with the rage.

  “Went back to the anger therapy, talked about what was going on.”

  “Did it help?”

  “Yeah,” Alva said. “It helped a lot. Lester got calmer.” She turned to her husband. “I wasn’t gonna shoot you. I just wanted to make you stop if, you know, if . . .” She hesi
tated, then looked back at Father John. “Anyway, good thing that gun was here.”

  That was true. He and Kevin and Vicky were alive, but Vicky—he hadn’t been able to reach her all week. She was nowhere. Not at Aunt Rose’s, at the office, at home. And she hadn’t returned his calls. He didn’t blame her. He could not be the man she needed. The realization came over him at the oddest times—during Mass, meetings, counseling sessions. Each time it seemed brand-new.

  “Thank you, Father.” Alva was gathering her floppy rug bag and levering herself to her feet. Her husband was standing beside her, one hand on her elbow, steadying her rise. Another crisis averted, Father John thought. Another stressful period navigated successfully. But the next one was always ahead. What might it bring? He could feel his jaw throbbing again. The woman was still tiptoeing through a minefield.

  Father John followed the couple into the corridor and held the front door as they filed through. Suddenly Alva stopped and looked back. “See you next week, then, Father?”

  “Yes,” he said. The assurance seemed to give her a renewed sense of confidence. She crooked one hand into her husband’s arm and allowed him to lead her down the steps toward a brown pickup.

  Father John stepped out on the stoop and drew in the pristine air, filling his lungs. A cold breeze plucked at his shirtsleeves. He felt invigorated by the cold, the blue sky, and the bright sun flooding the plains and melting the snow. Or was it still the effects of the call from the provincial the previous Tuesday, scarcely an hour before Kevin was set to take him to the airport—the other priest most likely at the wheel of the Toyota. He’d finished packing his belongings—books, tapes, and papers in boxes stacked and ready to be picked up by UPS. Everything in his room—a few changes of clothes, his clericals and shaving kit, some more books—in the duffel bag that he would carry.

  “Well, you won this round, John,” the provincial had said. “The conference—”

  “The Jesuit conference?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.

  “They didn’t appreciate all those faxes any more than I did.” Dear Lord, Father John remembered thinking. Howard Elkman had gone over the provincial’s head. “The conference decided you should stay there awhile longer, if that’s what you want,” the provincial went on. “Is that what you really want?”

  Father John remembered the space that had opened on the line, awaiting his response. I will go, Lord, if you send me. His voice, when he finally spoke, had been quiet. “I’d like to stay.”

  “You know my concern.” The familiar, warning tone. “You say the woman’s gone back to her husband, is that right?”

  Father John had remained quiet a moment. Vicky had left Ben before, and she had gone back to him. “I don’t know her plans.”

  That had elicited a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally the provincial said, “I want you to think about your decision.”

  “I’ve already thought about it.”

  “I trust there won’t be any problems.”

  “No more than usual.”

  “Is that supposed to allay my worries?”

  “I’ll notify you of the first problems that arise, Bill.”

  “I’m not leaving you out there much longer,” the provincial had told him after another pause. “You know that, don’t you?”

  He knew that. At any moment the phone might ring again, and on the other end would be Bill Rutherford, an old friend from seminary days, his boss now, issuing the logical, peremptory order. No amount of letters from the elders, no pleas about unfinished business would change the decision. It would be the time, in the Arapaho way of time, and he would be ready.

  Now he drew in another long breath, taking into himself the open spaces beyond the ring of cottonwoods and the ridge of mountains shimmering in the sun. He was at St. Francis now. And so was Kevin McBride.

  He went back inside and made his way down the corridor to the tap-tap-tap of computer keys. The news that he was to be the assistant pastor seemed to suit the other priest just fine. More time to finish his anthropological study, he’d told Father John, as if he believed that would be true.

  Father John rapped against the doorjamb. Kevin sat hunched over the blue computer screen, fingers pounding the keyboard, an earphone running from a cord to the tiny metal tape recorder next to the computer. It was a moment before he looked up, as if there were a time lag between the knock and his awareness of it. A swollen lump and purple bruise rose under one eye. The man looked as bad as he did, Father John thought. He said, “We should be ashamed of ourselves, a couple of Irish lads getting the worst of it.”

  Kevin seemed to consider this. He fingered the contours of the bruise, as if he were trying to make out just how inept they really were. “We could have taken Crow Wolf.” He might have believed that, too. “We’re just a little out of practice, like Chief Banner said.”

  “There’s something I’ve been wondering about,” Father John said, swinging a side chair over in front of the desk. He straddled it backward and laid his arms over the top. “Who do you suppose advised Howard Elkman to go over the provincial’s head?”

  “Well, that is a mystery, isn’t it, now?” Kevin McBride sat back and folded his arms across his blue shirt. The prism of sunlight in the window reflected in the man’s light blue eyes.

  “I doubt very much that Lindy Meadows would know how to contact the Jesuit conference,” Father John pushed on.

  “I doubt it,” the other priest agreed. Silence filled the space between them.

  “Well, if you ever find out who the guy is,” Father John said, swinging one leg over the chair and getting back to his feet, “tell him thanks for me.”

  Kevin said he’d be happy to do that.

  “Will you be here for a couple hours?” Father John asked.

  The other priest nodded and laid one hand over the tape recorder. “Got some good stuff I’m transcribing,” he said. “Did you know the Arapahos were forced to sell a lot of their land in the early 1900s?”

  Yes, he knew, Father John said, although until that moment he hadn’t remembered he knew. There were so many stories he’d absorbed since he’d been here, so much that had seeped into his consciousness and become as much a part of him as the color of his hair and eyes. He forgot about them.

  Father John had turned in to the corridor when Kevin said, “You haven’t heard from her, then?”

  “No,” he said, looking back. He could still see the anxiety in her face during the interviews with Gianelli and Banner. It hadn’t eased, even when the U.S. attorney had ruled Crow Wolf’s death a justifiable homicide in defense of others. “I’d like to make sure she’s all right,” he added.

  “She’s a tough woman, John.”

  “You think so?” He wasn’t sure, but then, he knew her.

  “She wasn’t about to let Crow Wolf kill us. She’s going to be fine.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Father John gave a quick wave and walked back to his office, where he retrieved his jacket and hat. Then he hurried out the door and across the grounds to where he’d left the Toyota.

  Vicky stopped the Bronco at the side of the narrow path that cut through the Shoshone cemetery. She gathered the small envelope she’d folded out of blue calico and stepped out into a cold gust of wind that whistled through the plastic flowers on the graves. She started toward the center of the cemetery, the sound of her boots on the earth punctuating the quiet. Layers of mountains rose into the sky on the west, sunlight outlining the humps and ridges and long, blue shadows drifting down the slopes. In the near distance were the roofs of Fort Washakie.

  She stopped at the foot of the grave with SACAJAWEA carved into the tall, granite marker. Little piles of prayer bundles, faded and soggy, were arranged on the bare-earth hump. Close to the marker were several plastic bouquets—red, yellow, blue flowers. Slowly and reverently she unfolded the calico envelope and withdrew the three small prayer bundles she’d tied out of circles of fabric. Inside each bundle were tiny stalks of
wild grasses and sage, symbolizing the earth, and clippings of her hair, symbolizing her own spirit.

  She leaned down and set the prayer bundles on the grave next to the others. A prayer for Laura, her friend; a prayer for Charlotte Allen; a prayer for Sacajawea. The bundles would remain here, after she had left, beseeching the Creator to remember the women. “Please take care of them,” Vicky said out loud, her words caught in the breeze.

  There was a growl of a motor in the quiet, and she glanced around. The red Toyota pickup was working its way up the narrow path. It stopped, and John O’Malley eased himself out from behind the wheel and started toward her.

  “How are you?” he said when he reached the grave. His eyes fell for a half second on the three new prayer bundles, then met hers again.

  “I’m okay,” Vicky said. She saw the barely concealed question in his expression.

  “I drove out to Aunt Rose’s,” he went on. “She said you were here.”

  “I wanted to pray.”

  He nodded. The fact that she hadn’t returned his calls swept into the space between them like a cold gust of wind.

  “All those interviews,” she heard herself explaining. “I’ve needed some time alone.”

  “I understand.”

  “How are you doing?” She reached up and touched the sore spot on his chin. “That’s ugly.”

  “So everyone’s been telling me.”

  She took her hand away. “How’s Father Kevin?”

  “Same ugly condition.”

  Vicky shook her head, then started walking toward the Bronco. His footsteps sounded behind her. “I would’ve come to the mission to tell you good-bye.” She spoke into the space ahead.

  “Good-bye? Do you expect me to believe the moccasin telegraph doesn’t reach you at Aunt Rose’s?”

  “I know you’ve been given a reprieve,” she said, still looking ahead. “I’m glad you’ll be here.”

  Vicky felt the gentle pressure of his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and faced him.