The Spirit Woman
Page 23
“You’re taking the job in Denver.” There was an unaccustomed tightness in his tone.
“It’s time for me to leave, John, with the shooting and all. And the firm’s made me a great offer. I’ll be working on natural-resources cases that are important to my people. Laola’s coming, too.”
“You went to Denver once before to get away from Ben,” he said. “Do you have to do this again?”
“Sometimes we have to leave.” Vicky let her eyes rest for a moment on the granite rising out of the earth. “I’ve been reading about Sacajawea. Things went better for her after she got away from Toussaint. She married a Comanche, and he was a good husband to her. She lived with the Comanches until her husband died, then she returned to her own people. Sooner or later Alva will realize that she has to get away from Lester and that her life can be better. Then she’ll start looking for another lawyer.”
She started to turn again, but he held her in place. “That’s not why you’re leaving,” he said.
What he said was true. This time she wasn’t leaving because of Ben. In any case, Ben would be gone for a while. He’d stopped by Aunt Rose’s after he’d heard about the shooting and told her he was going to enter a treatment clinic in Salt Lake City, then spend some time in Los Angeles with the kids.
“These are your people, Vicky,” Father John said. His voice was soft. “You should stay. I’ll tell my boss I want to go to Milwaukee.”
“You, a priest, telling a lie?” She shook her head and laughed.
“I’ll be sent there sooner or later anyway.”
“John O’Malley, you’re the one the people want here.” She kept her gaze steady on his. “You have to stay, don’t you understand? I have to go. Besides, I’m looking forward to some legal cases that have nothing to do with real-estate leases or divorces or”—she paused—“women with black eyes.”
She shrugged away from his hand and started back toward the Bronco. He walked beside her, their boots scuffing up tiny pieces of leftover snow and earth.
“You’ll stop by the mission on visits home, won’t you?” he said.
“Of course. I’ll want to check up on you, see what kind of trouble you’re in.”
They walked around the Bronco to the driver’s side. He held the door as she slid in. “Go in God’s care, Vicky,” he said.
“You, too, John O’Malley.” She smiled up at him and closed the door.
Author’s Note
The written records and the oral histories of the Shoshones do indeed provide different accounts of Sacajawea’s life following the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific Ocean in 1805-1806. The records suggest that Sacajawea was the Shoshone wife of Toussaint Charbonneau who, in 1811, accompanied him to Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota. And she was “the wife of Charbonneau, a Snake squaw,” who died at the fort in December 1812. However, neither of these records mentions Sacajawea by name.
William Clark himself believed that she had died. In 1828, he listed in a journal the names of those who had gone on the expedition. Next to Sacajawea’s name he wrote “dead.” However, Captain Clark also wrote “dead” next to the name of Patrick Gass, who died in 1870, after outliving the captain by three decades.
The stories passed down among the Shoshones say that the wife of Toussaint referred to in the written records was not Sacajawea but another Shoshone wife, Otter Woman. Even the records agree that Toussaint had several wives. According to the Shoshones, Sacajawea eventually left Toussaint and went south to the Staked Plains to live among the Comanches, who were related to her people. In the 1860s, she returned north and rejoined the Shoshones. She went with them to the Wind River Reservation in 1871. The wife of the government agent did indeed record the old woman’s stories of the expedition, and the “memoirs” were destroyed in an agency fire. Sacajawea died on the reservation in 1884 at the age of nearly one hundred. She is buried in the Shoshone cemetery in Fort Washakie.