The Silent Spirit

by Margaret Coel

  The warm air inside slapped at her face. She made an effort to return the smile of the greeter in the navy blue shirt, yanked a cart free, and started toward the office supplies. Everything normal. God, had she spoken out loud? The young blond woman pushing a cart with a toddler in the front gave her a strange look as she passed. She had to relax, stop second-guessing herself. It was the water case that had made her so jumpy. Adam had stood behind her, and for that she was grateful.

  But it wasn’t only the case, she knew. She walked past the cameras and electronic games and turned into the row of envelopes, clipboards, and legal pads. Everything had been thrown upside down and out of place lately. Just when she had felt herself settling down, relying more on Adam, adjusting to a new life and a more certain future—John O’Malley had returned from Rome. He should have stayed away, she thought. He should just stay away. He had been back two weeks now. She hadn’t seen him yet. She had made a point of avoiding the mission. She stuffed the packages of yellow legal pads, pencils, pens, blotters, and brown envelopes in the cart and swung back into the main aisle.

  She saw him then. The man from the truck: the large shoulders and the knit cap pulled down to his eyebrows. Arapaho, she thought, but no one she knew, and young, not more than thirty. There was something desperate in the stiff-backed way that he stood, bulky gloves dangling at his sides, head pivoting slowly about. Something desperate and determined. He was looking for her!

  Vicky wheeled the cart into a side aisle and huddled against the display of women’s purses. Her heart was hammering. A heavyset, gray-haired woman glanced at her as she pushed her own cart past. This was silly, she told herself. There was no reason to suppose that the man had followed her into the store. He was only looking about, getting his bearings, trying to decide which section to shop in. And yet, he had turned into the lot and stayed close on her tail, as if he hadn’t wanted to lose sight of her. The prey can always sense the hunter. She could hear Grandfather’s voice.

  She pushed the cart back into the main aisle and started toward the cash registers. He was still there, holding his place at the edge of her vision. Then she felt the laser eyes looking directly at her. He took a few steps toward her, as if he intended to stop her, have a little chat. She swung her own cart in his direction. She would go to him, ask what he wanted, surprise him. The prey must hunt the hunter. He jerked his head backward. The gray-haired woman and her cart lumbered between them, and in that instant, he turned around and ran past the doors. Vicky watched until he had vanished into the sea of parked vehicles.

  She was still watching for him, she realized, as she waited in the line at the cash register and paid for her purchases. She gathered the bulky plastic bags against her chest and hurried outside, scanning the lot, half expecting the tan truck to drive up, the big-shouldered man to jump out at her. She had felt the desperation in the startled way he had looked at her before he’d run outside. But there was something else, something pent up inside him threatening to explode. She had encountered clients like that in the county jail. Desperate to be released, to have the charges dropped. Ordering her to see that it happened.

  She drove out of the lot, watching everything—the side-view mirrors, the rearview mirror, the vehicles parked on either side of the road, the road ahead. There was no sign of him, and she felt herself begin to relax as she drove south on Highway 789. Ahead on the right was the road to St. Francis Mission, and she realized that she had slowed down. Chances were that Father John O’Malley would be in his office in the administration building. How well she knew the place; she’d been there so many times. She could picture him behind the desk, bent over the piles of papers, the red hair going gray at the temples, the freckles on his hands and the long fingers, the eyes like blue agates. The phone would be ringing, and Arapahos would be coming and going—his parishioners. So many things that had brought them together: the DUIs and adoptions and divorces. The Arapahos who had been murdered, or charged with murders they hadn’t committed. He had cared about her people as much as she did, this white man. Perhaps that was what had drawn her to him.

  But that was over, and she meant to leave it behind her. She was part of Holden and Lone Eagle, Attorneys at Law, specializing in natural resources on Indian reservations. The criminal cases went to the assistant in the office, Roger Hurst. She pressed down on the gas pedal and sped up. If John O’Malley wanted the firm’s help on what Adam always referred to as the minor cases, even when they involved felonies, he would have to call Roger.

  THE OFFICE HAD the atmosphere of a busy law office in the business district of some big city, phone jangling almost nonstop, Annie talking into the little black mouthpiece that jutted from behind her ear and tapping on the keyboard at the same time, the door to Adam’s office closed, which meant he was either with a client or on the phone, and Roger emerging from his office, waving a clutch of papers to get Annie’s attention. Vicky stood inside the entry a moment watching the charade unfold. So this was who she had become: the partner in a very important law firm with offices reached by a steel-and-glass stairway or a steel elevator, carpeting thick enough for boots to sink into, and the bronze plaque: Holden and Lone Eagle, Attorneys at Law—on the front of a fancy brick building on the Main Street of Lander, a white town.

  Now her clients were the Arapaho and Shoshone tribal councils and other Indian tribes in places like Montana and Utah and Nevada and Arizona. Enough people from the rez found their way to the office to keep Roger busy, just as the trickle of clients had kept her busy in a one-woman law office before she had teamed up with Adam. But there were a couple of new lawyers in the area with small offices in converted stores. She wondered how many of her people turned to them, too intimidated by the fancy brick building and the word on the moccasin telegraph—oh, it carried all the news—about the important cases she and Adam handled. And maybe that explained the Indian in the tan truck: someone who needed a lawyer but preferred to talk to her in a parking lot or inside Wal-Mart rather than inside a fancy building.

  “Vicky! There you are.” Annie pushed the black mouthpiece to the side, so that it resembled a thick strand of hair springing from her head. Roger had set the papers onto the corner of the desk.

  Vicky gripped the bulky plastic bags in each hand, conscious of the way they were both staring at her. “Ran a few errands.” She blurted out the words, wondering why she felt the need to explain. She had taken a long lunch, that was all, except that she had forgotten to eat lunch. What she had wanted was to go to the reservation, find a piece of herself, she supposed, and she had found herself driving on Rendezvous Road, then Seventeen-Mile Road. Past the mission, but slowing down for a half moment, just as she had slowed down later, before speeding up. She had turned onto 789 and headed into Riverton. Well, Wal-Mart was there. The office always needed supplies.

  Roger took the bags out of her hands. He had to lean over to drop them on the floor next to the desk. He stood half a head taller than she was, with sandy marine-cut hair and tiny frameless glasses that made his eyes look like the green eyes of a giant grasshopper. He was smiling at her, but there was a wariness in his smile. “Everything okay?” he said.

  “Everything’s fine,” Vicky said.

  “You got three phone messages.” Annie’s pink fingernails clicked over the keyboard. She had shoulder-length black hair that shone like a mirror under the fluorescent lights, and dark, intent eyes that stared at the monitor. They might have been sisters, Vicky thought, they were so much alike: two Arapaho women, divorced and determined to make it alone. That was why she had hired her; she had seen herself standing in the doorway. “I’ve come about the secretary’s job you advertised,” Annie had said. No prior phone call, no appointment, just Annie, standing in the doorway, determination in every muscle. She had two kids to raise, she said, and Vicky had seen herself: Lucas and Susan, living with her own parents on the reservation while she was in college and law school in Denver, waitressing thirty hours a week and sending most of her earnings
to her mother for the kids. It never left her mind that her children had grown up without her.

  And there was Annie, raising her kids herself, in need of a job. She had hired her on the spot. She was an excellent secretary, and she was pushing for more responsibility. Recently, Vicky knew, she had helped Roger investigate several cases.

  “Call from Lawson Newman at the tribal engineers’ office.” Annie didn’t take her eyes from the monitor, and Vicky could sense the electricity between her and the man standing next to the desk. They were discreet, and Vicky appreciated that. One personal relationship in the office that everybody knew about was enough. “Adam took the call. And some other guy called twice. Wouldn’t give his name, just said he wanted to talk to you. I sent the calls to Roger.”

  Vicky looked at the assistant. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know,” Roger said. The thin brown eyebrows darted together in puzzlement. “The first call, the line was dead when I picked up. The second, I could hear him breathing at the other end. I asked how I might help, and he hung up.”

  Vicky started toward the closed door of her own office. “Adam’s been looking for you.” Annie called. “Shall I let him know you’re here?”

  “By all means,” Vicky said, letting herself through the door. She hung her coat in the walnut cabinet that occupied the wall behind her desk—an expanse of shelves and doors that held a collection of legal books and photos and a few mementos from what used to be her life. For a moment, her eyes fell on the pinecone that Lucas had found when she had taken the children on a hike in Sinks Canyon. He was about nine at the time, and Susan was six. He had carried the pinecone all the way home, a treasure, he called it. A small bracelet that Susan had beaded for her when she was about ten. She had kept them. She wasn’t sure why, memories of the precious moments she had spent with her children, she supposed. She felt a pang of loneliness for the kids, grown up now and on their own. Lucas working in information technology for a corporation in Denver, and Susan, making her way at a visual effects company in Los Angeles, excited by a man named Brett who had come into her life. She would have to make time to visit Susan soon.

  Even before she turned around, she could sense Adam in the office. She stepped over to the desk and dropped into her chair. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Annie could have gone to Wal-Mart.” Adam walked over and perched on the end of one of the upholstered armchairs she kept for visitors. He had on a white shirt, the sleeves rolled almost to his elbows and the collar open. She could see the blue vein pulsing in his neck. His black hair looked mussed, as if he’d been combing his fingers through it.

  “You wanted to see me?” she said.

  Adam shifted back in the chair, set his elbows on the armrests, and made a tipi with his fingers. “The water consortium has sent a notice that they intend to contest the tribal water plans. They plan to file suit in district court. Based on the Bighorn rulings handed down in the state courts, of course.”

  “We knew that might happen.” Vicky could feel the knot tightening in her stomach.

  “It will delay things for months, maybe years. In the meantime, the tribes have borrowed several million for the infrastructure to deliver water to Riverton.”

  “The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals will decide the Indian Country issue, and that will supersede the Bighorn rulings.”

  “Maybe not soon enough.”

  “We shouldn’t second-guess ourselves,” she said. God, she had been telling herself that for the last two weeks.

  “Our reputation’s on the line here, Vicky.”

  “If you didn’t agree with my opinion, you shouldn’t have gone along.”

  Adam shook his head. “The tribe isn’t paying us for conflicting opinions.”

  Vicky swung her chair sideways. He had left the rest unspoken, floating silently between them. Do what I say! I’m the one in control. She felt as if she had stepped back for a moment into that other life with Ben Holden. He was always in control. She stared at other mementos from that life lining the shelves. The porcelain doll with long black hair in the traditional Arapaho clothing: the beaded deerskin dress with fringed sleeves, the beaded possible bag and knife pouch. She had given the doll to Susan on her eighth birthday. When Susan had moved to California, she had asked Vicky to keep the doll safe for her.

  “I’ve been thinking about taking some time off.” Vicky turned back.

  “Time off?” Adam slumped against the chair and let his hands dangle off the end of the armrests. A little smile started at the corners of his mouth. “We’ll spend a week in Jackson.”

  “I was thinking,” she began—the smile froze on his face—“that you could handle things around here.”

  “I see. You want to go somewhere alone.”

  “California, maybe.” The phone buzzed. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Susan.”

  Adam didn’t say anything. Finally he pushed himself to his feet. “I got a call from a friend on the Crow reservation,” he said. “The tribe wants to develop coal on the reservation, and they’re going to need good legal advice. I think he was sounding me out as to whether we might be interested.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Advising tribes on the legal issues of developing their natural resources? That’s what we do, Vicky. I told him that if they wanted the best firm, they should call us. It would be another major client.”

  The phone buzzed. Vicky reached toward the plastic box at the edge of the desk and pressed the speaker key. “What is it?”

  Annie’s voice cut in as clear as if she were seated in the vacant chair next to Adam. “That caller’s on the line again. Won’t give his name.”

  “Won’t give his name?” Adam sat back down. “Roger can take the call.”

  “Put him through,” Vicky said. She could see the man with big shoulders and bulky gloves driving the truck behind her and standing at the entrance at Wal-Mart. Looking for her. One of her own people, needing a lawyer that he could talk to in a parking lot or a box store, not in a fancy building.

  “Vicky, this is the kind of call . . .” Adam hesitated. “These are the cases we’ve agreed that Roger will handle. We’ve got enough to keep us busy, and you just said you wanted to take some time off.”

  “He asked for me.” Vicky lifted the receiver and pressed it against her ear. “Vicky Holden,” she said. She could hear the sharp intake of breath at the other end. It was a half second before Adam got to his feet and walked out, closing the door firmly behind him.

  “How can I help you?” Vicky said into the sounds of breathing. She could almost feel the presence of the big-shouldered man at the other end of the line.

  “I didn’t mean to do it.” The voice was so low that Vicky held her own breath to listen. “You gotta help me. You’re Arapaho. I figure you’re gonna understand.”

  “What happened?” she said. “What are you talking about? I can’t help you unless I know what this is about.”

  The man was crying now, deep, shuddering sobs that broke down the line. “Listen,” she said. “Whatever it is, I’ll do my best to help you.” She waited a moment, listening to the sounds of sobbing. When they seemed to quiet, she said, “What is it that happened?”

  “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Vicky pulled a yellow pad across the desk and found a pen in the drawer. “You had better come in,” she said. Manslaughter, she was thinking. “I can help you.” She realized that she was talking into a vacuum and that whoever had been at the end of the line had hung up.

  She replaced the receiver, got to her feet, and went into the outer office. Adam’s door was closed. It loomed like a barrier between them. The clack of the keyboard stopped, and Annie looked up.

  “What’s the news on the moccasin telegraph?” Vicky said. If someone had turned up dead, Annie would have heard about it before the news could make its way to the radio or newspaper.

  Annie gave a little shrug. “I don’t know,” she said. “June Nes
tor left that no-good husband of hers, and . . .”

  “Any kind of an accident? Anyone been killed?”

  Annie rolled her eyes toward the corner of the office. “Two weeks ago, Cliff Many Moons drove into the river . . .”

  “Lately,” Vicky said. “The last day or two.”

  Annie shook her head, and Vicky went back into her office, sat down, and stared at the phone. On the other end of the line, there had been an Arapaho probably not much older than Lucas, with big shoulders and a tan pickup who needed a lawyer.

  6

  THE WIND BLEW a wave of snow off the prairie and across Givens Road. Fists of snow hit the windshield. Father John peered past the wiper into the glistening whiteness. It had snowed off and on during the past two weeks, alternating days of blizzard whiteouts with days of sunshine so bright he found himself squinting most of the time. The sun was beating down hard this morning, the sky the clearest blue. Every mile or so, a small house, snow piled on the roof, rose out of the whiteness. He’d driven past when he saw the turnoff, nothing more than a gray indentation on the white prairie. The rear wheels slipped and balked as he backed up, then lurched into the right turn. He tried his best to stay on the narrow road that led to the house, but it was hard to tell where the edges dropped off into the borrow ditches that ran alongside.

  He had taken the call an hour ago: Mamie Wallowingbull, voice tight with worry. “He’s not doin’ so good,” she’d said, launching into the reason for the call. There was no time for the usual pleasantries: How are things going, Father? You like being back in winter? He had known immediately she was talking about Andrew.