“You know what the state courts said in the Bighorn Decrees,” Adam said, launching back into the conversation they’d had this morning. “The tribes are prohibited from selling water off the reservation. I think we have to advise the tribes to back off. They have no legal justification.”
“Not necessarily.” Vicky swiveled to the keyboard, brought up another screen, and pressed the print key. She waited while the printer spit out three pages, then handed them across the desk. “Another case is in the federal appeals court, asking for clarification of the term ‘In dian Country.’ If the court finds that the term applies to all land within the boundary of a reservation, then nothing will prevent the tribes from selling water to Riverton. They would be on solid legal ground.”
“The court hasn’t handed down the decision yet.” Adam flipped through the pages and tossed them onto the desk. “The decision could go either way. I think we should recommend that the tribes put any plans to develop and sell water on hold.”
“I disagree,” Vicky said. Silence fell over the desk like a low-hanging cloud. “I’ve checked with the federal clerk’s office. The decision isn’t expected anytime soon. But the U.S. Code defines Indian Country as all land within the limits of a reservation, and there’s no reason to think the court won’t uphold the code. I believe the tribes should go ahead with plans to offer water to Riverton.”
Adam got to his feet and leaned over the desk. “The tribes don’t want two different legal opinions, Vicky. We have to be united on this.” He spun the pages into the middle of the desk with his index finger, as if he were shooting marbles. “Let it rest for a while, okay? We’ll talk about it again Monday. Let’s knock off early and go to Jackson for the weekend. I’ll get on the internet and find us a nice condo. We can snowshoe, go cross-country skiing, relax, talk about something other than law.”
Vicky looked away from the shadows of pain and pleading in Adam’s eyes. She studied the piles of papers on the desk, the buttons lined in rows on the keyboard. She had been thinking about getting away. Going to LA to visit Susan for a few days. She hadn’t seen Susan in more than six months. Six months and so many changes in her daughter’s life. A new job at a company that created visual effects for the movies; a new man—somebody named Brett. She had told Susan she would fly out to LA the first chance she got.
“Shall I make the reservation?” Adam asked, still leaning close. She focused on his hands flattened against the desk, the sharp outlines of knuckles popping through the dark skin. What he had said was true. She wondered why it had gone that way between them, where it seemed that all they had in common was the law.
“Why not?” she said.
Adam swept one hand along the desk, as if he might sweep away like so much dust any problems lingering between them.
The door cracked open, and Annie Bosey, the secretary, leaned around the edge. “I was wondering if I might leave a little early,” she said. “Got a lot of cooking to do this weekend.”
Adam turned toward her. “Is there a feast on the rez we don’t know about?”
“At the mission,” Vicky said, and Adam looked back. “A welcome-home feast for Father John.”
“You didn’t tell me he was back.”
“He arrived earlier this week.” Vicky shrugged.
“Okay if I leave?” Annie said.
Vicky gave a little wave, and Annie stepped backward, pulling the door closed behind her.
“I didn’t think it was important,” she said. The pain in Adam’s eyes was so intense that she had to force herself not to look away.
“Not important? The man who . . .” He let the rest hang between them.
“We were friends for a long time,” Vicky said. “We worked together on a lot of cases. You know that.”
“You don’t think it’s important that your friend has returned?”
“I meant the feast isn’t important.” Vicky could feel herself stumbling over the words. There was no reason not to have mentioned that John O’Malley was back. She had been waiting, she realized, not for the right time, exactly, but until she had sorted out the feelings coiled and knotted inside her like a rope. He had been gone six months. She had been angry when he left, but that had made no sense. She had always known that one day he would leave. Gradually the anger had given way to something else, like the stages of grief. Anger and finally acceptance. She had come to accept certain things: a part of her life had ended, but a new life was waiting to begin. A life with Adam that had been on hold. The office six days a week. Dinner two or three times a week, and he sometimes spent the night. There were the out-of-town business trips that Adam took: Casper where he had rental properties, meetings in Montana and South Dakota with the Crow and Cheyenne and Lakota tribes on various cases. It was always Adam who wanted to attend the meetings. He liked moving about. It meant nothing, the way he always wanted to leave, she had told herself. We are traveling people. The Lakota, the Arapaho, all the Plains Indian people liked to move about. She had almost convinced herself that she and Adam Lone Eagle could have a life together.
And now, John O’Malley was back.
“Do you want to go to the feast?” Adam said. “We can leave Jackson early.”
Vicky was about to say yes, that she would like that. It surprised her, the sound of her own voice saying, “It’s not necessary.”
3
THIS WAS THE surprise. Pickups and cars nose to tail around Circle Drive, bumping over the snow-packed field that the drive wrapped around in search of parking spaces. People streaming down the alley between the church and the administration building, heading toward Eagle Hall with covered dishes and bulky brown paper bags cradled in their arms. Little kids running ahead or trailing behind, coats unbuttoned and thrown open in the crisp, cold sunshine. Father John stood on the stoop outside the front door of the church and watched the parade.
Ten o’clock Mass had been packed, people smashed in the pews, lining the side aisles and piled in the vestibule. Looking out at the brown faces turned up to him, the rightness of it washed over him. This was the destination he had been going toward all of his life. This was where he belonged. Yet he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling nipping at him like a wild dog at his heels. If he gave himself over again to the people and the place, how could he ever leave?
The feast would be held this morning, and he would act surprised, as if he had never guessed. Odd how the parishioners were determined to celebrate his homecoming, as if he were back to stay after having wandered about and gotten lost for a while. His own celebration would be different. Not because he was here to stay, but simply because he was here now.
After Mass, he had stood outside in the cold, parishioners gathering around, roughened brown hands grasping his own, enveloped in a chorus of voices: “Glad you’re back, Father. Glad you’re back.” Finally he managed to extricate himself and head back into the church. Silence had settled over the pews and the aisles. The faint odors of snuffed candles mingled with the leftover scent of damp coats and wet boots. He hung his vestments in the sacristy, then retraced his steps outside and headed toward Eagle Hall.
The doors stood wide open. Groups of men huddled outside, puffing on cigarettes cupped in their hands, cowboy hats pulled low against the glare of sun and snow. He could see people milling about in the half light inside. The buzz of conversations mingled with the odors of coffee and bacon drifting past the doors.
“Must be some pretty good donuts this morning,” Father John said, playing along with the surprise.
“Baked ’em ourselves,” one of the men said. Amusement flickered in his black eyes. They knew that he knew.
Father John was aware of the hush that had come over the hall, like an expectant pause. The moment he stepped inside, the noise erupted—clapping and shouting his name: Father John. Father John. Father John. A huge white banner with red letters floated above the crowd: Welcome Home. Hands rose in the air, waving him forward. He lifted his own hands and waved back, aware that a little
boy had wrapped himself around his legs. He scooped up the kid—Howie Black Bear, about five years old now, with black hair that stood straight up, a round brown face and white teeth; he had baptized Howie the day he was born, when the doctors didn’t think he would live. He set the boy on his shoulder and, holding on to him with one hand, began making his way through the hall, dodging the round tables and metal chairs, shaking hands, aware of the sound of his own voice: thank you, thank you. What a surprise! So glad to be back with you. So glad to be back. Howie was as light as a leaf on his shoulder.
“This way, Father.” Elena’s voice behind him. He turned halfway around and saw the housekeeper marching through a tunnel of people and nodding him toward the long table at the end of the hall. He swung around and went after her. Groups of elders sat at the tables around the periphery of the hall, paper plates stacked with food in front of them. Elena and the other women had seen to it that the elders were served first. Now it was his turn to fill a plate of food—he was the guest—then everyone else would line up to help themselves.
The table was filled with platters of sandwiches and bowls of stew with steam curling around the rims and plates of cookies and brown ies and cakes. Eric Black Bear had appeared at his side and was trying to coax Howie off his shoulder. Father John handed the boy a cookie and set him in his dad’s arms. Then he went about fixing himself a plate. All familiar, the chunks of beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions in the thick gravy, the bologna tucked between slices of white bread, the array of desserts—the comforting food of home. He poured coffee into a cup and carried the plate and cup toward the tables where the elders sat.
He spotted Andrew Wallowingbull and made his way over, smiling at the other elders, nodding in respect. “Okay to join you?” he said. Two other elders were also at the table: Martin Running Horse and Robert White Plume, wearing plaid shirts with silver bolo ties at the collars and tan cowboy hats pushed back from gray hair and brown faces. The cowboy hats nodded in unison, and Father John set the paper plate and coffee cup on the table and dropped into the chair he’d nudged over with his boot. He started on the stew and took part in the usual pleasantries, beginning with the weather. This was the in-between, Robert said, the sunny days that fell over the vast expanse of plains between the winter storms. The stew was hot and delicious, and even the bologna sandwich tasted good. “More snow coming,” the elder went on. “Feel it in my bones. Arthritis kicking up before the next snow.”
“You like Rome?” Andrew asked. The others sat very still, and Father John could see the answer they longed for in the dark, watching eyes. Rome was interesting, he told them. An ancient city, layers of civilization beneath your feet, the past all around you, but it wasn’t the reservation. What could he say? He shrugged. It wasn’t home. They smiled at that, as if he had confirmed what they had known all along.
When Robert went for more coffee and Martin turned his chair to talk to the elders seated nearby, Father John leaned across the table toward Andrew. “I saw Kiki the other day,” he said, an opening gambit. He hadn’t been able to get Kiki Wallowingbull out of his mind: a young Arapaho riding the rails to Los Angeles. Yet there was every possibility that Kiki hadn’t told his grandfather he was going to California, hadn’t wanted to worry him. “Gave him a ride on Seventeen-Mile Road. Looks like he’s trying to straighten out his life.”
Andrew set his elbows on the table and rubbed his hands together, pulling at his fingers, as if he wanted to restore the circulation that for some reason had stopped. “We been worrying about the boy.” He nodded toward his wife, Mamie, gray-haired and tight-lipped, bustling about the food table with the other grandmothers. There was a commotion in the corner where the drum group was setting up. A microphone squealed. The strong smell of fresh brewed coffee filled the air. “Been through some rough times last few years. Got himself mixed up with a bad bunch, drug gang selling drugs to the people. No good, those guys. Got Kiki sent to prison for two years. He’s done with all that now. He’s not messing with drugs anymore, Father.”
“Hope he stays out of trouble,” Father John said. Kiki was probably in Hollywood now, he was thinking. A drug user just out of prison, venturing into a place he didn’t know, looking for a past he didn’t understand.
“Got to let go of the anger first,” Andrew said. “That boy’s been eaten alive with a powerful anger he’s been carrying around since he was born. He came screaming into the world filled with anger.”
The old man was quiet for a moment, staring off into space, arranging something in his mind. Father John waited. Finally, Andrew said, “Came out of the past. Gathered itself up and settled inside my grandson, like a weight on his heart. Always talking about how the people need justice. We gotta get what’s due us from everything that we lost. All the land gone, all the old ways gone. Makes him feel helpless, ’cause he can’t do anything about it. Festers inside him, eating him alive. I told him, Grandson, you gotta let it go. The people had to let it go. We gotta go on and live. Everything that killed us in the past, it’ll keep on killing us if we don’t let it go. Step out ahead of it, I told him. Get on with your life.” Andrew picked up his foam cup and drained the last of the coffee. He looked old and weathered, yet there was something sturdy about him, like one of the old cottonwood trees around the mission.
Father John offered to refill his cup, but Andrew shook his head. “He tell you he was heading to California?”
Father John nodded.
“Crazy idea he could go off to Hollywood and find out what happened to my father. Charlie was his name. Went out there a long time ago to be in the movies. You heard about how Arapahos and Shoshones were in the movies?”
He’d heard a little about it, Father John said.
“Movie people wanted real Indians, so they came to Wyoming and talked to a cowboy named Tim McCoy. Sometimes Arapahos got cowboy work, whenever the government agent said they could leave the reservation. Couldn’t go nowhere without the agent saying it was okay. Couldn’t even go to town to buy groceries. Not that it mattered none. Most of the stores had signs up that said no dogs or Indians allowed. Couldn’t go see the relations in Oklahoma or Colorado. Couldn’t even ride the ponies off the reservation without soldiers or the sheriff throwing them in jail. Only time the agent gave permission for the boys to go cowboying was when people were starving. Sometimes they’d round up wild horses in the Red Desert outside Lander and drive ’em onto the trains that came through Arapaho. Sometimes Indians got work on the big ranches owned by white men. That’s how come some Arapahos got to cowboying with Tim McCoy. You heard of him?”
“Kiki mentioned him,” Father John said.
“Cowboy star, made lots of movies. Good man, McCoy. White man with a good heart. When he was cowboying around here, he treated Indians like everybody else. Even learned the sign language so he could talk to the old buffalo Indians that came from the Old Time and remembered how it used to be. Came to the reservation for celebrations. Camped with the people, got to be like family.”
Andrew slid his hand across the table, took hold of Father John’s hand, and gripped it hard. “White man like yourself,” he said. “People trusted McCoy. Pretty soon he had his own spread up in the Owl Creek Mountains. He was a big man when the movie people came around looking for Indians, so they asked him, did he know any Indians wanted to be in the movies? Well, he knew Indians that wanted to work. Indians that wanted to put food in their kids’ mouths. So he told the movie people, he’d get the Indians, and he seen to it they treated Indians fair, same as white men. They had to pay Indians more if they brought their own ponies and tipis.”
“They agreed?”
Andrew nodded. He was smiling at the memories. “McCoy talked three hundred Arapahos and Shoshones into going to Hollywood. First, he had to talk the agent into letting them go. Three hundred of ’em rode the train to Milford, Utah, to be in The Covered Wagon. That was 1922. My father went with them. Still a young pup, wasn’t even married yet, but he wore his hair long, a
nd movie people wanted longhairs. Said they looked like real Indians. All they had to do was be themselves, ride ponies, live in tipis, whoop and holler like white folks think Indians do, look like they were attacking wagon trains.”
“He must have returned to the reservation after that,” Father John said.
“Came home after the movie was finished, got himself married. The next April he went to Hollywood with other Shoraps, camped in a place called Cahuenga Pass and put on an Indian show at the theater where they showed the movie.”
“Kiki said your father didn’t come back.”
Andrew slumped backward, as if a weight had crashed down on him. “They all come home, ’cept for him. That’s how come I never knew my dad. Some of the Indians tried to get my mother to believe that he ran off. Just didn’t show up for the stage show one night. They said he must’ve gone off to Mexico ’cause he didn’t want to be a prisoner again on the rez. My mother never believed it. Besides, they was just saying what the movie folks told them. Charlie Wallowingbull was just another Indian. Nobody was too bothered about what might’ve happened to him. So the movie folks said he disappeared.”
“What about Tim McCoy?”
“Oh, he was bothered plenty, ’cause he come to the rez to see my mother. That was after McCoy was a big movie star himself. Told her he’d never stop trying to find out what happened. He raised a lot of hell, kept pushing for the truth, but he never could find out anything. I got a letter he wrote us. Said he’d tried his best, even went to the police, but there wasn’t any record of a dead Indian that April. I showed the letter to Kiki. ‘Listen, Grandson,’ I said. ‘If a big movie star like Tim McCoy didn’t find the truth back then, what makes you think you’re gonna find it now?’ ”
The Silent Spirit Page 3