Watching Eagles Soar

by Margaret Coel

  Mamie closed her eyes and sank back against the sofa. “Jackie called her up in the hospital,” she said. “Told her he didn’t want the house. Couldn’t see him and Tammy settling down in one place. Just about broke Anna’s heart, the idea of him never coming back to the rez. Surprised me when I heard him and that woman had decided to come visit. Too bad Jackie never got there. She would’ve died happy.” She started crying again, a soft gurgling noise that ran through the gnarled fingers pressed to her mouth.

  Vicky put her arm around Mamie’s shoulders. She could feel the fragile bones pressing through the thin fabric of her dress, and something else: the almost physical sense of grief. She’d sensed it in Anna that afternoon, she realized. In the frail, knobby hand had been the fluttering of grief for her grandson.

  And now . . . With Jackie dead, Grandmother Anna’s house and all the contents would go to his wife. It wasn’t much—a small house with a leaking roof and a cracked stoop; an old sofa and chairs with springs pushing through the fabric; two or three small tables and the kitchen table where Anna had rolled flour into fry bread; a couple of sagging beds. But it was something.

  Vicky waited until Mamie seemed calmer, as if she were beginning to settle into a kind of acceptance. She’d lifted the old woman’s feet onto an ottoman, refilled the glass of water on the table next to the sofa, and told her to try to rest. She should call her if she needed anything. Yes, yes, Granddaughter. Mamie had smiled up at her, already half-asleep.

  * * *

  A white ball of light shone in the darkness ahead and gradually dissolved into two headlights riding high—the headlights of a pickup. Vicky slowed down and turned into the yard in front of Grandmother Anna’s house, the headlights flickering in the rearview mirror. She parked next to the U-Haul truck, and the pickup pulled in alongside her.

  Father John was coming around the hood by the time she’d gathered her bag from the passenger seat and gotten out. She slammed the door shut. The air was warm and clear, the stars bright overhead. It didn’t surprise her that he was here. He would want to make sure that Tammy was all right.

  “I think Tammy shot her husband and pushed his car off the road,” Vicky said.

  “What?” Father John moved closer and leaned toward her. “What makes you think that?” he said, but in the way that he said it, she sensed that he’d been wondering whether it might be true.

  “Grandmother Anna tried to tell me.” Vicky took a gulp of air to stop the sob forming in her throat. “She whispered whirlwind to me in Arapaho. Neyo:xe’t. It refers to one of the old stories where a man follows a whirlwind woman everywhere, until she finally kills him.”

  Father John turned toward the little house set back in the shadows. Light shone in the two front windows and leaked around the edges of the door. “The house would have been Jackie’s,” he said, and she could see that he was starting to put everything together.

  “Jackie didn’t want it. He had no intention of moving back to the reservation.”

  The door juddered open; Tammy peered around the edge, her thin figure backlit by the light inside. “Who’s out there?” she called.

  “Father John and Vicky,” Father John said. They walked over to the stoop and started up the steps. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay.” She flung the door back. “Guess you can come in.”

  “You’ve had a hard day,” Vicky said as they stepped inside. There was a pile of cardboard boxes in the center of the room. The top box was open; the sleeves of what looked like a man’s plaid shirt hung over the flaps. “What are your plans now?”

  “Plans?” This seemed to take her by surprise. She stepped backward around the pile of boxes and sat down in the middle of the sofa. “Guess I’ll be taking off,” she said, “soon’s I get my money outta the house.”

  “What about the funerals?” Father John said.

  “Oh, yeah. After Jackie and Grandma get buried and everything’s settled.”

  Vicky took the worn upholstered chair next to the sofa, and Father John pulled over a wood chair and sat down. “What makes you think the house is yours?” Vicky said.

  “Oh, I get it.” Tammy crossed one jeans-wrapped leg over the other and squeezed her hands together on top of her thigh. “You’re looking to get a piece of it, but I’m on to you. I asked Grandma if you was a blood relative, and she shook her head. I seen her shaking her head. That’s how I know her only blood relative was Jackie, and now that he’s dead, it’s just me, Jackie’s wife.”

  “You’ll have to prove that,” Vicky said.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Do you have a marriage certificate?” Father John said.

  She smiled at this, as if she’d anticipated the strongest argument. “We didn’t need no certificate to prove we was married. We was man and wife in the Arapaho Way—that’s what Jackie said. And the Arapaho Way is what counts on the rez.”

  “But not in court,” Vicky said.

  “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “All your actions were for nothing,” Vicky said. “You murdered Jackie for nothing.”

  “You don’t have no proof,” Tammy said, and Vicky marveled at the calmness in her voice, like the calmness in the eye of a storm. “The guy in Rawlins . . .”

  “The sheriff has already gotten a warrant to compare the dents and paint marks on Jackie’s car with the U-Haul,” Vicky said. She was guessing that was the case, probing for a way to break through the invisible shield the woman had pulled around her. “He’ll find a perfect match, won’t he?”

  At this, Tammy jumped to her feet. She swiveled her head about, glancing between Vicky and Father John. “What do you know about it? Who the hell are you to judge me? I never had nothin’. I been lookin’ all my life for what other people got. Some security, isn’t that what rich folks call it? Security? So I don’t have to dig in a Dumpster for enough scraps to keep alive. Sleep in an alley with the rats crawling over me. You know what that’s like? I’m worn-out traveling around, looking for a score so me and Jackie’d both have some security. That fool, he got security dropped into his lap, and he says, ‘No way am I gonna live on the rez. The tribe can take the stupid house!’ That’s what he was gonna do. Sign over the deed to this house and all the stuff.” She swung her arms in a half circle, taking it all in. “All he had to do was sell it all. Sell it! Then we’d have our stake. We’d get some security, but he said no. He didn’t want nothing to do with it. He didn’t give me no choice.”

  “So you packed your things in a U-Haul and started for the reservation,” Vicky said. “You knew he’d come after you. He always followed you. You were close to the rez by the time he caught up. Were you waiting for him at the side of the highway? As soon as he pulled up, you got in his car and shot him. Then you pushed the car down the embankment.”

  “Shut up!” Tammy was swinging her arms about again.

  Father John stood up. “Take it easy,” he said, but she was stomping around now, circling the pile of boxes, like an animal circling the blown-in debris in a cage.

  She knocked the top box to the floor, stooped over, and pulled out a pistol. “I’m getting out of here,” she said.

  “Don’t make things harder for yourself,” Vicky said. “The court will appoint a lawyer who will get you the best deal possible.”

  “Give me your keys.” She pointed the pistol at Father John. “Your keys!” she shouted.

  Father John pulled a ring of keys out of his jeans pocket and tossed it across the boxes. She caught the keys in midair and turned to Vicky. “You’re next,” she said.

  Vicky unzipped the outside pocket of her bag, extracted her key holder, and set it in the hand stretched toward her.

  “I’m gonna have to shoot both of you.” Tammy waved the gun back and forth. “Shoot you and be done with it. I’ll be in Nebraska before anybody finds you.”

>   “Then what will you do?” Father John said.

  “Just keep going,” she said, prowling past the boxes like a cat. She reached the door and yanked it open without taking her eyes from them. “Keep on runnin’, like before. I can run forever.” She gripped the gun in both hands and pointed it at Vicky’s chest.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Vicky said. She tried to keep her voice steady; she felt as if she were looking down an endless black pipe. “You could be lucky enough to get twenty years. If you kill us, you’ll get the death penalty.”

  Tammy seemed to think about this for a moment. Then she walked back into the room, yanked the phone off a table, and pulled the cord from the wall. Vicky held her breath, waiting for her to demand her bag with the cell phone inside. But Tammy went back to the opened door. “You stay here for one hour. Hear me? One hour!” she said, backing out onto the stoop. “You leave sooner, and I swear, I’ll come back and kill you.” She reached inside and pulled the door shut. It was a moment before an engine rumbled into life followed by the sound of tires crunching the dirt, then the heavy noise of the U-Haul driving away.

  Vicky felt herself starting to breathe again, but her legs had turned to liquid. She sank back into the chair and fumbled with her bag, aware of Father John’s eyes on her. Finally she managed to pull out her cell phone. She pressed the keys for the Wind River police, gave the operator her name, and said that the woman who called herself Tammy Running Fast had just confessed to her and Father O’Malley that she had killed Jackie Running Fast. She was driving a U-Haul truck on Plunkett Road.

  Vicky closed the phone lid and glanced up at Father John. “How long before the police stop a U-Haul on the reservation?” she said.

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “We’d better report what happened. Come on, I’ll take you to the sheriff’s office.”

  “Are you planning to walk me there?”

  “I’m planning to hot-wire the pickup,” he said.

  Stories from Beyond

  Yellow Roses

  She had wondered how long it would be before someone came to tell her what to do. It had required two weeks. Two weeks to the day that the horse-drawn cart had carried the plank coffin down Larimer Street and out onto the gold and red hills that wrapped around the settlement. The men had dug a hole in the hard earth, lowered the coffin inside, and shoveled the sandy dirt on top. She had grasped Little Mary’s hand and followed the small crowd of mourners to the cabin on Larimer Street that she and Jed had moved into only a month before.

  Now Tom Holt sat on the other side of the plank table that Jed had nailed and glued together a week or so before he had died. The coughing had been so bad he’d had to stop and catch his breath every few minutes. When she’d washed their clothes in the tub outside, she had found blood on the rag he used to cover his mouth.

  “Have you thought on what you will do, Mrs. Salton?” Tom Holt looked uncomfortable. Forehead creased like an accordion, eyebrows drawn together in a bushy line. He had deep-set brown eyes that surveyed the chinked logs in the walls and the hard dirt floor.

  “You may call me Mary Ann,” she said, trying to put him at ease. She gathered Little Mary onto her lap. Fitting that Tom Holt was the one delegated, she thought. She had half expected old Mrs. Ericson with the stone-carved face and the gray hair tightened into a knot on top of her head. But it was Holt who had guided the wagon train safely across the plains into the gold region. Only two families in the train—the Ericsons and the Saltons, and all the rest single men bragging about how they were going to strike it rich, go back home, and live like kings. They had all pitched canvas tents in the tent city not far from Larimer Street, but that was only temporary. In a few days, most of the single men had started for the mountains, and Jed had gone out looking for a suitable cabin where they could pass the winter.

  “Nothing else I’ve been thinking on,” she said. The door stood open, allowing the early October warmth to flow inside. She was aware of the carts and wagons passing outside, the sound of metal wheels grinding into the dirt street and the footsteps pounding the wood sidewalk. “I’m afraid I don’t have a plan.”

  “In that case, Mrs. Salton—Mary Ann—may I suggest . . .” Holt cleared his throat, making a loud, strangling noise.

  Mary Ann felt her heart beating in her ears. Now Captain Holt would tell her what to do, just as Papa had always told her exactly what she should do.

  “Next few days,” Holt said, “I expect to organize the last train for the States before winter sets in. Number of men coming down from the mountains. Tired of standing in the creeks all day, freezing themselves, for a few nuggets and a lot of fool’s gold. They’re wanting to go back. It’ll be best for you and the child to join the train.”

  “I see,” Mary Ann said. They had passed the go-backs on the way out here—shoulders hunched in discouragement, mouths set in bitter lines, poorer than when they had started out. She and Jed had watched them pick up some of the leavings along the trail—heavy pieces of furniture that folks had pulled out of the wagons for fear the oxen would collapse before they got to the Denver settlement. Jed had set out her mother’s mahogany desk and the organ he had loved to play. She wondered whether some of the go-backs had picked them up. She had never thought she would be one of the go-backs.

  She brushed her lips against Little Mary’s silky yellow hair. Such a docile child, holding on to a cloth doll. Not yet four years old, but listening to the man across from them with such calm acceptance that, it seemed, she grasped the way her future was now changed. How easily they would mold her at Madame Sylvestre’s school in St. Louis into a proper young lady who spoke French and knew how to make lace. She would grow into a pinched and placid woman, like her grandmother, who took her pleasure every afternoon at the front window, watching the world pass by.

  “This was our dream, Jed’s and mine,” Mary Ann said. They had wanted something different for their child. A new land with new ways. Even on the trail, the women had worked alongside the men. She had loved striding next to the wagon, the swinging movement of her legs and arms, the blue sky all around, and Little Mary running ahead.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Holt said. “But respectable women alone don’t belong in a rough, uncivilized place like this. Indians everywhere. Never know when a fight with the Indians might break out.”

  He glanced about the cabin, and Mary Ann followed his gaze. More like a store than a home, she’d thought when Jed had let her through the front door. Dark log walls, pieces of chink falling onto the dirt floor. He’d given one of the go-backs eighty dollars for the cabin and its contents—an iron stove in the narrow room attached to the back and the iron safe that took up one corner of the front room. Too heavy to move out, the safe claimed its space, squat and ugly, an unwelcome guest. The only safe in the settlement, Jed had told her, as if that would make it more acceptable.

  Next to the safe was the barrel packed with sacks of flour, sugar, salt and hardtack, winter clothing, quilts and good china, everything she’d brought across the plains to make their new home. There had been no time to unpack. Jed was already in the last sickness by the time they had moved in. They’d laid the feather mattress and blanket on the dirt floor, and she had set about nursing him as best she could.

  “The Indians seem friendly enough,” she said. She’d seen the Arapaho village at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte. She’d heard that the chief—Left Hand was his name—and some of his warriors had attended the play at the Apollo Theatre down the street. After the play, he’d jumped onto the stage and given a speech in English. Told the gold seekers to take their gold and go home. Once, when Jed had felt up to it, they had walked to a racetrack outside the settlement and watched the Arapahos and gold seekers race their ponies. The Arapahos had won. Every day on Larimer Street, Arapahos traded buffalo robes for tobacco, coffee, sugar, and whiskey that the gold seekers had brought.

  “Friendly
enough so far,” Holt said. “But hostiles have attacked out-lying ranches, killed innocent families. I hear Governor Evans is real worried that a full-scale war’s gonna erupt. Like I say, this is no place for a lady and a little girl. Lots of desperate men on Larimer Street. Get drunk on Taos lightning and shoot up the place.”

  That was true, she thought. There was a night when gunshots had rattled the paper that passed for glass in the windows. Sick as he was, Jed had pulled her and Little Mary close, shielding them with his own body. But Jed was gone now.

  She looked over at the two tiny yellow rosebushes, still in the porcelain cups, that she had set on top of the safe. She had brought three roses from St. Louis, sparing her own drinking water to keep them alive. One was planted on Jed’s grave. She meant to plant the others in front of the cabin before she had to go back.

  “Best be ready in the next few days,” Holt said, getting to his feet. He worked the brim of his hat through his fingers. “I’m waiting for a family of go-backs with room in their wagon. Figure you’d be more comfortable with another woman around. Wouldn’t surprise me none if the Ericson family decided to leave. Old man didn’t have any luck in Gregory Gulch.”

  Little Mary scooted off her lap as Mary Ann started to get up. The stern image of Mrs. Ericson ordering her about on the crossing was almost more than she could bear. She could feel the freedom that she and Jed had hoped for slipping away. She would return to her parents’ home a failure, just as Papa had predicted. Craziest notion I ever heard, traipsing across the plains thinking you’re gonna find gold, he’d said when she had told him that she and Jed and Little Mary would be leaving Westport in the next wagon train. Nothing but Indians, buffalo, and desperados out there. You belong here with your own kind of people.