The Dream Stalker

by Margaret Coel

  He grabbed the flashlight from under the seat and swung out into the rain, leaving the engine running, headlights bursting over the cabin. “Avant de quitter ces lieux” floated into the moist night air. His boots squished in the mud as he started toward the cabin. He could make out the squiggly patterns of tire tracks and boot prints. Somebody had been here a short time before. It crossed his mind the caller could have been in the truck he’d just passed. Maybe his ride had taken him to the hospital. Or maybe he had simply gotten tired of waiting and had decided the priest wasn’t coming.

  He waved the flashlight over the cabin: missing chinks; rotting logs; broken window pane; plank door hanging on its hinges, half opened. There was a faint odor of wet horses, a sense of life having passed by. Rain pinged on the tin roof.

  He pushed the door open. It squealed into the night, protesting the effort. “Anybody here?” His voice reverberated around him.

  The flashlight splayed across a room no more than twelve feet square, and he took it in all at once, like the jumbled flash of a dream: the plank table and wood chair toppled sideways, legs stiff in space; the cardboard carton stacked with a couple of cans of food and an orange box with white letters—Wheaties; the poster tacked to the wall, edges curled inward—an old pinup of a naked woman, the curving sweep of thighs and breasts; the red-black wetness next to the poster, like paint hurled against the log wall; and slumped beneath the poster, a man. A man in blue jeans and dark shirt, with half of his face blown off.

  2

  Father John heard the sound of his own heart pounding, of his own breathing—in and out, in and out—as he stepped into the cabin. He lowered the flashlight over the shattered face to the shirt soaked in blood, the blue jeans frayed and ripped, the brown cowboy boots, soles gaping at the toes. The man might have been pressing himself into the logs—cowering there—before he sank into death.

  Then Father John saw the blood pooling next to the body, sending grisly fingers across the floor. He went down on one knee, careful to avoid the blood, and lifted the man’s wrist, gently probing for a pulse. The skin felt warm and loose, like a branch dried in the sun, the bones close to the surface. It was the wrist of an old man. There was no pulse. Father John slipped one hand inside his jacket toward the container of the sacred oils—an automatic response. Slowly he drew his hand away. Sacraments were for the living.

  He made the sign of the cross over the body and prayed out loud. “Dear Lord Jesus, have mercy on his soul. Raise him up and forgive him his sins, whatever they may be, and gather him into Your everlasting love.” His voice mingled with the sound of the rain plinking on the roof, the music of an aria coming from far away.

  He got to his feet, backed through the doorway, and, head down, ran to the Toyota, slipping in the mud, catching himself from falling. Faust rose over the drone of the engine, the shush of the rain. He threw himself inside the cab and rammed the gear into reverse, then drive. The pickup shot down the middle of Johnstown Road, mud splattering the hood and windshield. The nearest phone was at Ethete. It would take a good twenty minutes to get there.

  He was filled with sadness and anger. Filled with regret. If only he’d arrived at the cabin a few minutes sooner. He’d known he must hurry; the sense of urgency had been like a physical presence beside him as he’d driven across the reservation. But he’d arrived too late. By some wordless logic, he knew it was the dead man who had called an hour ago. The thought left an acrid taste in his mouth, like smoke from a dying campfire.

  He could never get used to the sudden deaths. The sound of the telephone breaking through the night quiet always made his stomach lurch, and left him with a feeling of dread. It was always a marker in someone’s life: before, everything normal; then something terrible; then life never the same again. Tonight’s call had marked the end of a man’s life, a man he knew nothing about.

  That wasn’t true, Father John realized. From a two-minute phone call, he knew a lot. The man was an Indian, maybe an Arapaho. He’d seen something terrible: an old man being hit with a shovel. Today’s the day. It must have happened today. And it bothered him so much he’d wanted to talk to a priest. And someone had come to pick him up, which meant he wasn’t alone.

  And? And? Father John thought of how Father Logan, one of his professors at Boston College, had prodded the students, urged them to examine their own thoughts, to reach further and understand more. It was in Father Logan’s American history classes that he’d begun to dream about teaching American history at a Jesuit university himself someday.

  And . . . the caller hadn’t given his name, which meant he wasn’t from around here. He’d have thought his name wouldn’t matter. Nor did he ask for a specific priest. More proof he wasn’t from here—he didn’t know the names of the priests at St. Francis. One priest was the same as another. And the coughing and rasping, as if he were trying to catch his breath, hold onto life. He was dying. No priest could refuse to go to someone who was dying.

  In the darkness ahead, he spotted the sprinkle of lights at Ethete. Another mile, and he wheeled onto the concrete pad in front of the gas station and coffee shop. An overhead light illuminated the island with three gas pumps and the front of a cement-block building with a wide plate-glass window. White letters marched across the glass: BETTY’S PLACE. Beyond the glass was a well of darkness. The shop was closed. He skidded around the island, stopped next to the telephone mounted at the far corner of the building, and jumped out.

  Rain dripped from the brim of his cowboy hat as he slipped a quarter from the small pocket of his blue jeans, fed it into the phone, and punched in 911. The receiver felt slippery and wet against his ear. After a moment, the ringing stopped. “Wind River Law Enforcement,” a woman droned. The same greeting every call, a thousand calls.

  Father John identified himself and said there was a man shot to death in the old log cabin on Johnstown Road. He started to explain. Somehow an explanation seemed necessary—but the operator interrupted. Two police cars were on Highway 132. They’d be at the cabin in a few minutes. The police would want to talk to him. He said he would meet them there.

  He heard the sirens wailing as he turned onto Johnstown Road. Just past the curve, he saw the blue and red lights pulsing in the darkness ahead. He drove toward the lights.

  Drawn up at the edge of the road in front of the cabin were two white police cars with the gold insignia of the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the front doors. He pulled in next to the cars, shut off the engine, and hit the stop button on the cassette player. “Il était temp” shut off, leaving a blank quiet as Father John got out of the cab. The blue and red lights waved around him. Static and chatter erupted from the police radios. Three officers were moving along the front of the cabin, flashlights skimming the white-chinked log walls, the muddy ground. Another officer dodged past the police cars and came toward the Toyota.

  “How come you found the body, Father?” Rain pattered on the gray slicker the policeman wore over the navy blue uniform of the Bureau of Indian Affairs police. Watery threads ran off his cap and down the sides of his face—the round, flat face of the Cheyenne, or the Shyela, as the Arapaho called the people who had ridden with them across the plains in the Old Time. The BIA police force was made up of Indians from various tribes, not just from the Arapahos and Shoshones at Wind River Reservation. Father John read the real question in the man’s dark eyes: How come he was out here in the middle of the night?

  He said, “A man called the mission about midnight. He asked me to meet him here.” Another siren wailed in the darkness.

  “Say who he was?”

  “He said he was dying.”

  “He got that right. Somebody must’ve got tired of his face.”

  The comment struck Father John like a wrong note in a perfect aria. He said nothing as the siren grew louder. Abruptly it shut off, and another police car drew in alongside the Toyota. The red and blue flashing lights mingled with those from the other cars, projecting an eery, unreal quality to the roa
d and the dark spaces beyond. Art Banner, the BIA police chief, hoisted himself from behind the steering wheel. He wore a dark blue uniform jacket and slacks. No slicker. Below the rim of his cap were the narrow black eyes and the prominent cheekbones of the Arapaho.

  “What we got now?” The chief brought one gloved fist down on the hood of the Toyota as he came around the front.

  Giving a little nod toward the cabin, the policeman said, “Some old guy got his face blown off. Father John found him.”

  Banner’s black eyebrows shot up. “Hang around, will ya, John? I’m gonna want to talk to you.” The chief started toward the cabin, shoulders rolled inside his jacket. The policeman drew a flashlight from under his slicker and hurried to catch up, shining the thin yellowish beam over the wet ground ahead. The other officers followed the pair inside the cabin. For a long moment, Father John watched the figures move past the opened door, silhouetted against the flickering light, his thoughts full of the dead man: the worn blue jeans, the hard-used boots, the weathered hands. A cowboy. A cowboy with something on his conscience who had wanted to talk to a priest.

  The rain had begun to seep through Father John’s jacket, past his flannel shirt, into his skin. His hands felt numb with cold; exhaustion and sadness were beginning to overtake him. He got back into the Toyota. It smelled as dank and musty as the inside of a cave. He started the engine and nudged up the heat lever, watching Banner make his way back over the muddy ground. The chief crossed in front of the pickup and climbed in the passenger door, slamming it hard behind him. “Damn miserable weather.” He stared straight ahead at the wetness scrawled across the hood. “You know the victim?”

  Father John shook his head. “He called the mission tonight.”

  “How’d you know it was him?”

  Silence hung in the cab a moment, broken by the scratchy hum of the engine, the brrr noise of the heater. Father John had no proof, nothing that would lead to that conclusion. He drew in a long breath. “It was him.”

  The chief shrugged. “He give you a name?”

  “No.”

  Banner was quiet a moment, considering. “Cabin belongs to the Hooshie family,” he said finally. “I think it was Michael Hooshie built it back in the twenties. He was the grandson of Bull Bear—”

  “Hold on,” Father John interrupted. He didn’t need an excursion into Arapaho genealogy right now. Every family had a story; every Arapaho was related in unexpected ways to some other Arapaho. “You think the dead man is a Hooshie?”

  “Maybe. ‘Cept none of them Hooshies been around for years. Cabin’s been deserted long as I can remember. More’n likely he’s just some old cowboy movin’ around, pickin’ up ranch jobs. Decided to squat here awhile. Pockets clean. No ID. Nothin’ on him. Whoever pulled the trigger cleaned him out. Could be robbery. So, what exactly did he say?”

  Father John related the brief conversation: how the caller wanted to talk to a priest; how something was bothering him—something about an old man getting hit in the head with a shovel.

  “What old man?” Banner shifted in the seat, eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “All he said was that today was the day.”

  The chief gave a quick shake to his head, a dismissing gesture. “Nothing like that reported on the rez today. Might’ve been some cowboy fight didn’t amount to anything. What else he say?”

  Father John began again, but the moment he mentioned the caller’s coughing and rasping, Banner threw out one hand, as if he were directing a band. “Said he was dyin’. Right?”

  Father John nodded. That was right.

  “What the hell else he gonna say to get you out here? He probably got drunk in some bar, started feelin’ sorry for himself, wanted somebody to talk to. So he called a priest. Who else is gonna drive out here at midnight? Trouble is, somebody followed him from the bar and robbed him. You’re damn lucky you didn’t show up while it was happenin’ or you’d be dead, too.”

  Father John rolled his window partway down and drew in a long breath of cool air tinged with rain. Outside, the dark figures of the other officers darted about, stretching yellow tape around spikes set into the ground. He turned back. “The cowboy was scared, Banner. He had something he wanted to tell me. What are the chances somebody would rob him while he was waiting for me to show up?”

  Banner blew out a long puff of air. “Trust me, John. Things are usually pretty much what they seem.” He shrugged, as if the matter were settled. “In any case, this is one for that new agent the FBI sent us, Ted Gianelli. My boys’ll do the preliminary investigation, but it’s gonna be up to him to figure out what happened.”

  Father John nodded. He understood that murder on an Indian reservation fell into the FBI’s jurisdiction, as did burglary and robbery and other major crimes. All placed in federal jurisdiction a hundred years ago when the government realized the Indians were more interested in rehabilitating criminals than in punishing them.

  “Gianelli’s welcome to this sucker,” Banner was saying. “I got my hands full just keepin’ the Indians and them nuclear activist screwballs from tearing each other’s guts out. We probably got a couple hundred outsiders on the rez tyin’ up traffic and makin’ nuisances out of themselves with a lot of protesting and demonstrating.”

  “That explains the traffic,” Father John said, more to himself than to the police chief. Outsiders here to protest plans to store nuclear waste on the reservation. The tribal council—the business council, as the Arapahos called it—wanted to build a storage facility on the Legeau ranch in an isolated valley in the middle of the reservation, between the Arapaho and Shoshone communities. Father John had just finished reading the environmental report tonight when the cowboy called.

  “Either folks love the idea of storing nuclear waste here or they hate it.” The chief shrugged again, as if nothing made sense. “Folks that love it see all the jobs and money it’s gonna bring in. Millions of dollars, they say. Other folks don’t think it’s somethin’ Arapahos oughtta be a party to, no matter how much money’s involved. Jobs either. One thing’s for sure, all them environmental protesters aren’t gonna change the mind of any Indian. All they’ll do is stir things up. Could get real interesting at the public hearing tomorrow night.” Banner slid back the cuff of his jacket and glanced at the luminescent face of his watch. “Make that tonight.”

  Pushing open the door, the chief started to lift himself out into the drizzle. Then he leaned back inside, a look of fatherly concern on his face. “Why don’t you go on home, John. Get yourself a couple hours’ sleep. I guarantee Gianelli’s gonna be on your doorstep first thing in the morning.”

  3

  Father John awoke to a loud growling noise like the sound of a truck bearing down a mountain. It took him a moment to realize it was a chain saw. Leonard Bizzel, the caretaker, was probably pruning dead branches from the cottonwoods that sheltered the grounds of St. Francis Mission.

  Sunshine burst past the half-drawn blinds at the bedroom window and washed over the yellow walls, the faded brown carpet. The sunshine surprised him. He’d been dreaming of rain. Rain pattering on the tin roof of the old log cabin as the cowboy struggled to sit up, struggled to tell him something.

  He’d slept badly, and a dull ache crept across his shoulders and made its way up the back of his neck into his head. It had been close to four o’clock before he’d dropped into bed, every bone in his body screaming for sleep. But his mind had kept rerunning the telephone conversation, like a cassette player replaying the same tape, trying to fix the caller’s words, to understand how a man—a drifter, perhaps, a drunk, it didn’t matter—how he had ended up shot to death in a deserted log cabin. And hovering in the background, like some silent witness, was his own sense of failure.

  Now the hands on the alarm clock on the bedside table stood at 8:27. The day had started without him. Leonard was already tackling the spring cleanup on the mission grounds; Father Geoff would have said the early Mass and put in a half hour at the office; and
, judging by the sound of water swishing through the pipes, Elena, the housekeeper at St. Francis for more years than anyone could remember, was in the basement carrying out her self-imposed task of making sure no washable items in the priests’ residence escaped a frequent encounter with the washing machine.

  He swung out of bed. In twenty minutes he was showered and dressed in a clean, stiff pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt worn into comfort. He shaved quickly, hardly noticing the gray hair mixing with the red at his temples, the little lines at the edges of his eyes. He would be forty-eight in a couple of weeks, but he still stood close to six feet four and was as trim as in his pitching days at Boston College. He could still hurl a ball dead center over home plate.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, he stared through the window over the sink as he washed down bites of buttered toast with gulps of stale coffee, his sense of failure and guilt as sharp as the pain coursing through his head.

  Out in the yard, Walks-on-Three-Legs, the golden retriever who had stumbled into his life—one of the unexpected gifts life sometimes offers—lay on his side in the buffalo grass, basking in the sunshine. The dog had been on his side that day last fall when Father John had caught a glimpse of something in the barrow pit along Seventeen-Mile Road and stopped to check, fearing it might be a child. He’d scooped up the animal and laid him on the front seat of the Toyota. Then he’d broken the speed limit all the way to Riverton. The vet had saved the dog’s life, but at the cost of his mangled back leg.