The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste)

by Coel, Margaret

  Liz settled against the backseat watching the shadows and light move across the tiny face and the hungry way the little pink mouth worked at the nipple. For a moment, the fear and worry gave way to a sense of hope. “Baby, baby,” she sang. “We’re on the train to happiness now. See the light shining ahead for us. You got that light in your eyes, baby. I see it shining there for us, just for us…”

  She shut her own eyes and there was Jake Tallfeathers, watching her from across the room at the meeting, his fist knocking the countertop—tap, tap, tap. Her eyes snapped open. The white man was leaning down, tapping on the window.

  “Get your gas and move on,” he yelled. “Can’t have no loitering around here.”

  Liz pulled the bottle away and laid Luna back in the box. The baby was gulping screams as Liz got out. She opened the gas tank, jammed in the nozzle and stared at the black numbers jumping in the white box on top of the pump, conscious of the muffled sound of Luna’s crying, the white man watching her from the other side of the car. It was never like this when they were together—Arapaho, Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet, Ojibwa, and a lot of tribes she’d never heard of, gathered together, standing up to the white man.

  The hose bucked to a stop in her hand. She put it back into place, closed the gas cap, and got in behind the wheel. The white man loomed in the side mirror as she drove past the pump. She pulled into the vacant lot next to the station, and crawled into the backseat. She gave the bottle to Luna again and made herself sing, trying to focus on the song she’d written when she’d learned she was pregnant. Her voice was trembling; she couldn’t keep it calm: “Baby, baby, it’s a long way to go. The road is hard, I’m telling you now. I love you so. Pick up your pack and keep on going. Keep on going. Keep on going.”

  She thought Luna’s eyes were drooping, but she couldn’t be sure in the darkness pressing around the car. Beyond the darkness, across the vacant lot, the gas station stood in a well of light, red and yellow neon lights flashing through. The sucking noise stopped, leaving only the trace of her own voice humming the song. She was singing at the bar in Rapid City when Jimmie Iron had walked in. Another song she’d written—Mama said, you get in the car, girl. We’re gonna ride outta here, ride into a new life and everything’s gonna be fine. I promise you, promise you. Mama lied. Girl, there’s a new man gonna take care of us and everything’s gonna be fine. He’s got eyes like diamonds and gold in his pockets. I promise you, promise you. Mama lied.

  She could see Jimmie smiling as he lowered himself onto the bar stool. He spoke out of the side of his mouth when the bartender walked over, because he hadn’t taken his eyes from her. Pretty soon he was drinking a bottle of beer, but she could tell he wasn’t paying attention to the beer. And that had made her want to laugh right in the middle of the song. She’d strummed a wrong note on the guitar, thinking that the bartender could have handed Jimmie any kind of drink and he wouldn’t have even noticed.

  She switched to another one of her songs, one she usually didn’t feel like singing, but that night, with Jimmie watching her, it had just come out, almost on its own. Indian girl, you’re a long way from home, that’s what they told me. Indian girl, you’d better get along. I didn’t listen, no I didn’t listen, ’cause there were dreams I had, dreams waitin’ for me. Oh, I had dreams waitin’ for me.

  It was good then. Ni isini. She’d felt warm all over, like summer sunshine coming over her after the long, freezing winter. When she’d finished the set, he’d walked over. “What’s an Indian girl doing here?”

  “Singing. Didn’t you hear?”

  “Yeah, I like what I hear,” he’d said. “Like what I see, too. Like that long braid you got down your back.”

  “You from around here?” She’d never seen the likes of Jimmie Iron at Pine Ridge. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but strong looking with dark eyes that looked straight at her and a feeling of power in the way he held his head and walked, like he owned a piece of the world. He was from Minneapolis, he’d said. Moved onto the rez for a while to get things organized. She ever heard of the civil rights business going on? Happening for everybody ’cept Indians. Now things were gonna be changing, did she know that? We’re gonna get what’s ours, get our rights. White folks don’t think we got any rights. We gotta teach ’em otherwise. It’s gonna be a good ride. You wanna come along?

  And she’d said, yeah, sure. Why not? Rights? What was he talking about? White folks didn’t think Indians had any rights, well neither did Indians. Not any she knew. They’d been living in a two-room shack on Pine Ridge after her mother decided to leave the Wind River Reservation and go find Ray, the Lakota she’d met barely two months after her father had been killed in that car wreck. She’d pushed Liz into the back of an old Pontiac with torn seats and trash littering the floor and said, “We’re gonna get us a new life.” Liz remembered singing to herself all the way to Pine Ridge, to keep from crying because Mom didn’t like crying. She always said, “You gotta be tough to be an Indian girl.” Liz had made herself concentrate on Grandfather and the trailer where they’d been living, and for a long time after Mom had taken her away, she’d put the images of Grandfather and the trailer in her mind at night so she could sleep when Mom and Ray were drinking and fighting.

  “Meeting tomorrow night,” Jimmie had said. He described the house off the road that ran south out of Wounded Knee. “You’ll see the cars parked out in front. There’s gonna be a lot of us. We’re goin’ to Washington, caravans of Indians from all over the country. Gonna pay a visit on our Great White Father.” He’d laughed at that, a deep rumbling noise that had bubbled out of his throat.

  Liz had laughed with him. She understood even then that there was no Great White Father.

  “You wanna come to the meeting? Might wanna join up?”

  “Why not?” she’d told him again.

  Something was moving at the edge of her vision now. Liz glanced over at the convenience store. The white man had come outside and was looking her way. He swung around, yanked open the door and strode inside. She saw him moving toward the cash register, dragging the phone along the counter, clamping the receiver to his ear.

  God. She had to get out of here. The white man would have the police here in a couple of minutes. They’d arrest her for loitering or trespassing or being Indian. She settled Luna back in the box, got behind the wheel and drove out of the lot, tires squealing as she pulled onto the asphalt. She headed onto Main Street, trying to remember the street they’d turned on when she and Ruth and Loreen had come to see Ardyth. The brick buildings looked eerie in the yellowish wash of the streetlights. Black plate glass windows looked like the entrances to dark tunnels.

  She took a right and drove into the darkness of a residential neighborhood, searching for some landmark, something to point the way. There was nothing.

  7

  THE SUN BLAZED overhead by the time Father John drove into the mission, “Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja” blaring from the tape player on the seat next to him. He’d spent the morning visiting parishioners at Riverton Memorial—Molly Boggles and her new baby girl, Esther White Horse, still in intensive care after the automobile accident. He’d given the sacrament of the last rites to James Fox, eighty-one years old, body ravaged by diabetes and kidney failure, an old man waiting to die, and at peace about it. He’d thanked Father John for the sacrament. It made him feel better, he’d said, as if Father John were the one who needed to be comforted.

  The mission buildings around Circle Drive stood out in relief against the brightness: the administration building and the church, the museum, the two-story, redbrick residence. He parked the Toyota pickup in front of the residence, alongside the blue sedan that his assistant, Father Ian McCauley, drove, turned off the tape and got out.

  Walks-On, the golden retriever he’d found in the ditch after he’d been hit by a car several years ago, lay stretched on the lawn in a patch of shade, head framed by his front paws. The vet in Riverton where Father John had taken him managed to save his life,
but not his hind leg, something the dog hadn’t seemed to notice, or had considered not worth noticing compared to the fact that he was still alive. Father John had brought him to the mission and named him Walks-On-Three-Legs—a tribute to the dog’s courage, he thought. He, himself, was still shaky at the time—well, that hadn’t changed—with moments coming out of nowhere, like a brick wall dropping in front of him, when all he wanted in the world was a glass of whiskey. Oddly enough, watching Walks-On lope across the mission grounds on three legs, well, it still gave him a sense of courage.

  The minute Father John got out of the pickup, the dog ran toward him, then pivoted on his hind leg and sprinted for the house. Father John ran up the sidewalk after him. It was a game they played—who could get onto the front stoop first. Walks-On usually won, leaping over the two concrete steps and positioning himself wide legged on the stoop, tail flapping against the door. Father John had to nudge him aside to let them both inside.

  The aroma of fresh coffee rolled down the hallway and gathered in the entry like invisible fog. He set his cowboy hat on the bench and followed Walks-On into the kitchen. Father Ian sat at the round table in the center of the room, working at what looked like a bologna sandwich. He gave Father John a little nod. Elena was at the sink, hands plunged into soapy water. The suds crawled up her brown arms almost to her elbows.

  “Sandwich’s in the fridge, whenever you’re ready,” she said, glancing over one shoulder, swishing a plate through the water. A breed, people hereabouts called people like her—half Arapaho and half something else. In Elena’s case, the other half was Cheyenne, which showed in her rounded, flat face, and squared build. She had the high forehead and hooked nose of the Arapaho, and the black eyes that, when she trained them on him, had a way of penetrating into his soul, much the way his mother used to look at him when he was a kid. Elena had been taking care of the priests at St. Francis for at least three decades, Father John figured, although she claimed not to remember how long she’d been the housekeeper. “Long enough,” she’d told him once, “to know the peculiar ways of you Jesuits.”

  “I was hurrying to get back for lunch,” he said, making his way past her and the corner of the stove to the cabinet. He found the dog food and poured some into the dish on the floor. Then he found his sandwich on a plate in the refrigerator and took it over to the table. Ian, who always seemed to be on time, had already eaten his sandwich. A good priest, Father John had to give him that, the kind of assistant he’d been praying for, one who would make the effort to fit in, get to know the people, like the place.

  “I heard that before.” Elena turned halfway around and gave him another knowing look.

  “Provincial called this morning,” Father Ian said. He was about forty, younger than Father John by eight or nine years, with thinning sandy-colored hair and bushy brown eyebrows that climbed toward his forehead, and a determination that flowed into everything he did, from counseling parishioners and keeping track of the mission’s finances, or lack thereof, to saying Mass and staying sober. He’d arrived six months ago, straight out of rehab, eager for a job, eager to prove himself, hurrying up the sidewalk lugging an old suitcase and a box of books, the hint of alcoholic flush still in his cheeks. My God, Father John had felt as though he were watching the rerun of an old movie in which he’d starred, and the pastor waiting in the doorway was Father Peter, willing to give him a chance when nobody else would take the risk.

  “Any message?” Father John was aware of the sound of dishes clinking together and water swirling down the drain. He took a bite of his sandwich.

  “Said to call as soon as you got in.”

  He could feel his heart speeding up now. There was always the possibility that this was the call, the one that would send him away from St. Francis. He’d already been here three years longer than the Jesuits usually left a man in place. Too many entanglements, relationships, involvements—it was always a danger. Better that the priest remained always free to go on. Here I am, Lord. Send me. But the provincial had let him stay while he’d cast about for a replacement, sending one assistant after another, a bit like throwing darts against the wall, hoping that sooner or later one would stick.

  And now there was Father Ian McCauley.

  “Any other messages?” Father John asked, feeling a conscious urge to change the subject.

  “I got one.” Elena dried her hands on a towel, poured some coffee into a mug and set it in front of him. “You didn’t get your coffee,” she said.

  “Pour some for yourself,” he told her. It was a routine they’d developed over the years. Whenever Elena wanted to sit down and talk to him, she always made a big point of pouring him some coffee or refilling his mug.

  She filled another mug and dropped heavily onto the chair between him and Ian—Ian watching the scene play out, Father John realized, as if he were taking mental notes. Father John could almost read the thought behind the other priest’s eyes: So this is how it goes.

  Elena sipped at her coffee, taking a moment before she said, “How come nobody knows that poor dead woman’s name?”

  “You’re talking about the skeleton?” Father John said. “Is that the message?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we want to know.”

  “We?” Father Ian said.

  “Women hereabouts.” Elena gave Ian a quick look, before bringing her eyes back to Father John’s. “They told me, ask Father John how come nobody cares who she was or what happened to her.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case,” Father John said.

  “How come nothing’s happened? They’re gonna leave her bones on a shelf in that county building out by the airport, like she was nobody.”

  “The sheriff’s detective—”

  “Hasn’t done squat. Two weeks it’s been now since you went out to Gas Hills and blessed her bones. Couple of articles in the newspaper. Anybody know a woman gone missing? You heard anything?”

  Father John shook his head. He took a drink of his own coffee.

  “It doesn’t mean—” Ian said.

  “It means they’re gonna forget about her. Only we can’t forget. The younger women, they’re really upset, ’cause you know what they’re thinking? Something happens to one of ’em, you know what I mean? Boyfriend starts pounding on ’em, and they could end up out in the Gas Hills like that girl, and nobody cares. Well, some of ’em got together and went to see Vicky. You and Vicky, you’re the ones that gotta let that sheriff know we’re watching him. There’s not an Indian woman on the rez gonna vote for him next election if he don’t find out what happened to that girl.”

  “Investigations take time,” Father John said. Still, he’d been thinking about the skeleton himself, wondering why there hadn’t been any new developments. Now he wondered if Elena and the women didn’t have a point, if the sheriff’s office hadn’t moved the investigation to a back burner. It was probably an old murder. It wasn’t going to be easy to solve.

  “I’ll give Detective Coughlin a call,” he said. “See if he’s found anything.”

  “Tell him—”

  “I’ll tell him,” Father John said.

  AFTER LUNCH FATHER John headed to his office across the field of dry grass enclosed by Circle Drive. The sun beat on his arms, and a hot wind whipped at his shirt. He would call Coughlin first, he decided. Then he would return any other messages on the machine. He’d take a stab at the work on his desk—letters to answer, bills to pay, classes to arrange for the fall—then he would call the provincial. He’d wait as long as possible to get the news. He’d already waited a long time, hoping it wouldn’t come, starting every day with the same prayer: Let it not be today, Lord.

  He could hear the phone ringing as he crossed the drive. He took the cement steps in front of the administration building two at a time and hurried across the wide corridor to his office on the right. A ringing phone had its own insistence, its own sense of emergency. There was always the possibility that whoever was calling needed a priest. He cros
sed the office and lunged for the phone on his desk.

  “Father John,” he said. He could hear the out-of-breath note in his voice.

  “Ah, you’re back.” It was the voice of Father Bill Rutherford, the provincial of the Wisconsin Province, which, through a decision by the powers-that-be, had come to include Wyoming. “Something has come up. I trust you have a moment?”

  Father John stepped around the desk and dropped into the old leather chair with the depressions and ridges that conformed to his own body. Yes, he had a moment. His senses were sharpened; his voice sounded loud in his own ears. He could hear a truck rumbling past on Seventeen-Mile Road. A chair scraped the floor down the corridor in Ian’s office.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “What would you think of a sabbatical?”

  “A sabbatical?”

  “It’s been nine years since you’ve had a break,” Father Rutherford said. There was a pause, and Father John could hear the unspoken words clanging like a bell over the line: your last break was the year you spent in rehab at Grace House. “Everyone needs a break now and then.” The provincial hurried past the awkward silence. “How does Rome sound?”

  Father John stared across his office out into the corridor at the photo of a past Jesuit at St. Francis and wondered if Ian would fit his photo somewhere in the lineup with the other Jesuits who used to be here. “I’m not ready for a sabbatical,” he said, trying to keep the conversation on the topic. He didn’t want to leave St. Francis, that was the point. Everything else was meaningless.

  “What a great time we had in Rome,” Rutherford went on. “You remember? Walking all over the city with those heavy backpacks. Must’ve walked ten miles every day. Took in everything. Vatican. Forum. Coliseum. Pantheon. Piazza Navona. Trevi Fountain. What’d we miss? Not much, I’d say. Ate a lot of great Italian food, and never gained a pound, we did so much walking. You remember?”