Watching Eagles Soar

by Margaret Coel

  Father John followed Vicky through the trees to the campsite. The only sound was that of dried leaves crunching underfoot. The man didn’t move. His arms were crossed in front, hands lost somewhere in the folds of the blanket. A thick, gray braid ran down the hump of his back.

  “Clint,” Father John said when they were only a couple feet away.

  The man twisted slightly and glanced up, past the blanket bunched at his neck. Wrinkles cut deep furrows into his dark forehead. The black eyes narrowed in sadness. “I been waitin’ for you. You bring the police?”

  “No.” Father John dropped down on one knee beside the old man. “What happened?” he said.

  “I couldn’t let Junior sell the prayer pipe.” Clint turned back toward the frame. “I figured Junior was up to something when he didn’t come around the last couple weeks. So this morning I went out to his place. He was fixin’ to load something out of that camper of his, so I went over to give him a hand, you know. Then I seen what was on that old blanket. All the stuff that was in the museum, and the sacred pipe, too, just layin’ there, like it was nothing. Oh, I knew what was goin’ on. Junior was gonna sell the ancestors’ things. He didn’t deny it. ‘What the hell,’ he says. ‘Who cares about this old stuff anyway?’ And I thought all the time he was comin’ out here to learn the Arapaho Way ’cause he wanted to be a new man. All he wanted was to find out about the stuff in the museum so he’d know how much money he could get for it.”

  The old man tilted his head back and fixed his gaze on the pipe. “Truth was, Junior loved money more than anything, even more than the sacred pipe that sent smoke up to heaven and joined the people to the Creator Himself. Even more than that.”

  “So you shot him,” Vicky said. Her voice was quiet behind them.

  The old man had started shaking. He drew in his shoulders and dropped his head. “I didn’t mean to shoot him. I said, ‘Junior, we gotta talk this over.’ He said he didn’t have no time. I said, ‘It’s not the Arapaho Way, sellin’ the ancestors’ things.’ He just looked at me and said, ‘They’re goin’, old man.’ I said, ‘Not the sacred pipe, Junior. It’s gotta go back to the museum so the people can come and visit it.’ ‘Get outta my way, old man,’ he says, and starts pushing me back, pushing me hard. So I grabbed a skillet on the table and hit him on the side of the head. He went down on both knees and pulls out a gun. I hit him again, and the gun went flying across the floor. I was going after it when Junior knocks me down and starts pounding on my head ’til everything starts goin’ black, but I got my hand on the gun and then I hear a noise like thunder and I seen Junior laying real still next to me.”

  Clint stopped talking. The cottonwoods swayed in the wind; the air filled with the smell of smoke. “It was terrible,” he said.

  “You didn’t mean to kill him.” Father John reached out and patted the old man’s shoulder.

  Slowly Clint began unfolding the blanket. He withdrew a small, black revolver and turned it over in his hand, examining it, as if it were some alien object he couldn’t understand. Then he handed it to Father John.

  “I heard everything.” Gianelli’s voice came from the far side of the tipi. There was the slow, rhythmic crackling of leaves under his boots.

  Father John got to his feet and gave the revolver to the agent. “What brought you here?”

  “The way you and Vicky tore out of the parking lot.” He shot a glance at Vicky. “I figured you two were on to something, so I decided I’d better follow and see what it was.” The agent stepped around the frame and leaned over the old man. “You know I have to arrest you, Clint.” In a voice not much above a whisper, he began ticking off the old man’s rights—the right to remain silent, the right to have an attorney present.

  Clint started to his feet, struggling upright, reeling sideways. Father John gripped the old man’s arm to steady him, and Gianelli took hold of his other arm. Finally the man was on his feet, still swaying, boots set a couple of feet apart. Moisture trickled down his cheeks, and he dipped his head first one way and then the other, brushing against the edge of the blanket. Throwing his shoulders back, he turned to Vicky and nodded.

  “I’ll be representing Clint Old Bear,” she told the agent.

  My Last Good-Bye

  The Second Commandment: Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven images.

  WIND RIVER GAZETTE

  MAN’S DEATH DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES

  by Sam Harrison

  Jan. 16, 1972. Lander, Wy. An autopsy on the body of a forty-year-old man found on the Wind River Reservation indicates that he died of natural causes, according to Fremont County Coroner James Goodly. Cause of death was asphyxia.

  Leon Whiteman was found last Monday in the bedroom of his home on Givens Road. A police spokesman said that Albertine Whiteman discovered her husband’s body at two o’clock in the afternoon. The woman told police that Whiteman had been in good health, but had complained of shortness of breath earlier in the day.

  * * *

  The one-story pile of red bricks floated out of the ice fog that had pressed down over the streets of Lander all morning. It was now almost two in the afternoon, and snow was falling through the grayness. Mounds of snow lay over the ground and weighed down the evergreen branches. Father John O’Malley left the Toyota pickup in the circular driveway that curved along the front of the hospital. He patted at his jacket for the silver compact of sacred oils in his shirt pocket, then plunged into the fog and snow, across the ice-paved sidewalk and into the lobby.

  Waving to the receptionist at the desk, he started down the corridor—right, left—to the intensive care unit. He knew the way. He even knew the faint, antiseptic odors and the muffled clank of trolleys behind closed doors. How many times had he visited the hospital in the eight years he’d been at St. Francis Mission on the Wind River Reservation? Two, three hundred? He’d lost count.

  He found Rosemary Morningside in the waiting area next to the oversized steel door beneath the black-lettered sign that said ICU. The old woman sat huddled inside a bulky, tan jacket, weaving her fingers through the fringe of the red scarf that hung around her neck and puddled in her lap. She glanced up, a startled look in her face.

  “Oh, Father,” Rosemary said, sinking back into the chair. “I thought you was the doctor bringing more bad news.”

  Father John set a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then perched on the chair next to her.

  “How’s Darryl?” he said.

  It was as if a flood had started. The old woman dropped her face into her hands and began sobbing. Her shoulders shook inside the jacket. Moisture pooled around her fingers.

  “My grandson’s gonna die, Father.” Her voice was thick with tears. “He’s got the throat sickness.”

  “Throat sickness?”

  “It’s like his throat’s closing up on him. Like he’s being strangled.” She balled her hands and began jabbing at the moisture on her cheeks.

  A moment passed before she said, “Cindy’s with him now. Don’t matter that Darryl and her was gettin’ a divorce. She come to say her good-bye.”

  “Divorce? I’m sorry to hear that,” Father John said. The couple had been married only a couple of months. He could picture Darryl Morningside: twenty-five years old, tall and rangy, plunging forward always, never stopping to look back or question himself. Kept a job long enough to get money for a good binge. He’d visited Darryl in the Fremont County jail about six months ago after the man had been arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge. It was the last time Father John had seen him.

  “Darryl said it was best.” Rosemary was hurrying on, both hands lost again in the red fringe. “Said he didn’t know why he’d gone and gotten himself married. Didn’t hardly know Cindy, ’cause she just moved up to the rez from Denver a few months ago. He didn’t mean her no harm.” She was smiling through the tears now—an old woman dismissing the tantrum of a much-loved
child. “Darryl just ain’t ready to get himself settled down yet,” she said.

  The steel door moved inward. A smallish woman who might still be in her teens, with frizzed black hair, stood in the opening. She had on a baggy jacket and blue jeans that hugged her thin legs. A lattice of shadow and light fell across her face, which was hard-set like a plaster mask. She let the door swing shut behind her before she stepped into the waiting area.

  “This here’s Father John.” Rosemary glanced between him and the young woman. “He’s come to anoint my grandson.”

  “Well, he’s all yours.” The young woman—a girl, he thought—tossed her head back toward the door. “I’m outta here.”

  Rosemary scooted forward and lifted an anxious face to the girl. “What’re you talking about, Cindy?”

  “Darryl said we gotta move on, and I’m moving on. Got me a bus ticket back home to Denver today.”

  “Today! What if Darryl wakes up and calls for you?”

  “You think he’s gonna wake up, Grandmother?” The girl’s laughter was quick and brief—an expulsion of breath. “Well, if he wakes up, you tell him I said my last good-bye.”

  She whirled about and started down the corridor, almost skipping, Father John thought, hooking her fingers into the back pockets of her jeans as she went. Her boots made a schussing noise, like a wet mop slapping the hard floor.

  “What she says is right, Father.” Rosemary turned to him. The anguish in her face was so palpable, he reached out and took her hand. “Darryl ain’t gonna wake up.”

  After a moment, Father John stood up and let himself through the steel door. A series of rooms fanned in a half circle about the nurses’ station, which was bathed in a well of white light. Behind the counter, a nurse in a blue smock, hair caught in a blue cap, was flipping through the papers on a clipboard. She looked up and gave him a smile of recognition. Ah, the Indian priest.

  “You’ll find Morningside in there, Father.” She gestured toward the second door.

  He thanked her and, slipping the compact out of his shirt pocket, went into the room. Darryl was propped upright in the high, narrow bed, eyes closed, face blanched and drawn, a clear plastic tube jammed into his throat. Other tubes ran from a steel pole next to the bed into his arms, which lay at his sides like thin, brown logs. His chest rose and fell under the white sheet, the sound of his breathing as forced as the push-pull of a bellows.

  Father John dipped his fingers into the sacred oil and, praying silently, made the sign of the cross on the man’s eyelids, nose, mouth, and hands.

  When he had finished, he said, “May God have mercy on you, Darryl.”

  “Amen.” The woman’s voice came from behind.

  Father John glanced around. Dr. Emily Jordan, a tall, middle-aged woman with blond hair that brushed the shoulders of her white smock, stood in the doorway. “Can I have a word with you, Father?” she said.

  He followed her out to the nurses’ station. She turned and, leaning back against the counter, hugging a clipboard against her chest, looked up at him. “I’m puzzled, Father,” she began. “There’s no sign of a bacterial infection. It looks like an allergic reaction. There’s acute swelling in the ventricular folds within the larynx. He’s not responding to the intravenous steroids. The tracheotomy is keeping him alive now, but . . .” She shook her head. “If we knew what he might have ingested, we may be able to find an antidote. I’ve talked to Darryl’s grandmother. She said he’s never had an allergic reaction before. She has no idea what might have caused this. What can you tell me, Father? You know the Arapaho culture. Have they started using some new plant or herb in the ceremonies?”

  Father John shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  The doctor drew in a long breath and did a half turn toward Darryl’s room. “I’m going to lose him, Father. I don’t like losing a patient, especially when I don’t understand the reason.” She faced him again. “I did a search of the medical literature on unexplained allergic reactions. Thirty years ago, there was a similar case on the reservation. Another Arapaho. Leon Whiteman.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Dr. Jordan closed her eyes a moment. “The man was found dead at his home. Cause of death? Asphyxia due to acute swelling within the larynx. Look . . .” She lifted a hand, as if to detain him, although he hadn’t moved. “Darryl’s grandmother also said she never knew Whiteman. She was living in Oklahoma at the time, and the Whiteman family left the reservation before she moved here. But somebody on the rez must remember the man. Whoever it is might know what caused Whiteman’s reaction. If we can find the cause, Father, we might be able to help Darryl.” She paused. “It’s our only hope.”

  * * *

  Father John drove north through the fog and sputtering traffic toward the apartment building where Vicky Holden lived. They’d worked on dozens of cases together: adoptions, divorces, DUIs. He, the mission priest—the Indian priest, people called him—and Vicky, the Arapaho lawyer. She’d grown up on the reservation. The people, the culture—they were part of her. If anyone would know how to help Darryl, it would be Vicky.

  Inside the lobby, Father John leaned on the button next to her name. A mixture of cigarette smoke and wet wool lingered in the air. From somewhere inside the building came a faint vibrating noise.

  Then the familiar voice: “Who is it?”

  He bent toward the speaker. “John O’Malley.”

  There was a half second of silence before a buzzer sounded over his head. He opened the inner door, took the stairs two at a time, and hurried down the second-floor hallway. Vicky was standing outside the door at the far end—a slight figure in a blue sweater and khaki-colored slacks, with shoulder-length black hair that gleamed under the ceiling light.

  “What’s going on?” she said, motioning him inside to the sofa. She sat down beside him. The yellowish light from the table lamp cut through the afternoon grayness.

  “Darryl Morningside’s in the hospital,” Father John said. “The doctor thinks he’s had an allergic reaction. He’s dying.”

  Vicky let out a gasp. “How’s Cindy taking it?”

  “You know her?”

  “She came to see me a couple weeks ago. Darryl wanted a divorce and she needed a lawyer. She was devastated. I agreed to represent her. And then . . .” Vicky shook her head. “Last week Cindy called and said she wouldn’t be needing a lawyer, after all. I figured she and Darryl were getting back together.”

  “I don’t think so.” Father John told her what the young man’s grandmother had said. “Listen, Vicky,” he said, hurrying on. “Thirty years ago, there was a similar case on the reservation. An Arapaho named Leon Whiteman died from an unexplained allergic reaction. The doctor thinks someone on the rez might know the cause. Maybe some plant or herb . . .”

  The idea hung in the air between them a moment. Then Vicky got to her feet and walked around the sofa to the window. She pulled the slats of the blinds apart and stared out into the fog. “I was only a kid at the time,” she said, “but I remember when Whiteman died. The moccasin telegraph was filled with gossip. Everybody was talking about his death, but . . .” She glanced back at him. “When the kids walked in, the adults stopped talking. That’s how we knew it was bad.”

  “What did you think happened?” Father John stood up and went to her.

  Vicky was staring out the window again. The fog was rolling over the flat-roofed building across the street. Quarter-sized snowflakes stuck to the window. “The kids gossiped, too,” she said finally. “They said that Leon’s wife, Albertine—we all knew her, a skinny, crabby woman who used to glare at us at the tribal get-togethers.” She drew in a long breath. “The kids said that Albertine killed her husband.”

  “How, Vicky? How did she do it?” The doctor could be right, Father John was thinking. Both Darryl and Whiteman could have reacted to the same poisonous plant.

  Vicky
turned toward him. “Josie Yellow Calf would remember. She’s never forgotten anything.”

  Of course, Father John was thinking. Eighty-some years old, with a sharp wisdom about her, Josie was respected by everyone, even the other grandmothers. He said, “I’ll go see her right away.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Vicky said.

  * * *

  Vicky wondered whether Josie was home, the little house looked so dark and quiet in the fog and blowing snow. Father John guided the pickup through the snowdrifts in the yard and stopped a few feet from the ice-crusted stoop at the front door.

  Vicky hesitated a moment, reluctant to abandon the warmth of the pickup, but Father John was already out, walking around the pickup, ducking into the storm, his cowboy hat pulled low. She let herself out her door and, clutching her coat collar at her throat, followed him up the steps to the stoop. The sound of his hand rapping the door splintered in the cold. Flecks of snow clung to the shoulders of his jacket.

  A couple of seconds passed. Vicky exchanged a glance with the man beside her. Josie could be waiting out the storm at the home of one of her children. They should have called first.

  There was a squealing sound. The door was inching open. Peering around the edge out of the dimness inside was Josie Yellow Calf, a tiny woman with two thick braids of gray hair that hung down the front of her red sweater. The narrow eyes darted about: Vicky, Father John, Vicky again. Slowly the old woman’s lined face softened in recognition.

  “Get yourselves in here out of the cold,” she commanded, yanking the door wide open and motioning them into the small living room. She closed the door and, reaching up, began brushing the snow off Father John’s jacket. Flakes fluttered over the vinyl floor like white ash.

  “We have to talk to you, Grandmother.” Vicky shrugged out of her own coat and laid it over the back of a chair.