Watching Eagles Soar

by Margaret Coel

  Father John took a moment. He could sense the unspoken words hanging in the air like mist: the good son, the one who had stayed home, helped his father on the ranch, branded the cattle, loaded the trucks and drove to market, bred and cared for the horses, watched his mother die and looked after his father, witnessing his father’s love poured out to his brother. He waited for the old man to go on, and when he didn’t, Father John said, “Want to talk about it, Otto?”

  “I was thinking we’d be a family again,” Otto said, trying to staunch the cracking in his voice. Moisture pooled in his eyes, and he wiped it away with the pads of his fingers, surreptitiously, as if he were brushing away a mosquito. “Mame’s gone, but ever since Robert got back, I been feeling like her spirit’s with us, like she knows our boys are back on the ranch. Robert’s real sorry for staying away. Spent time in prison in Colorado. Got mixed up with a bad sort and did time for breaking and entering, assault. That’s why he never got in touch. He was too ashamed, and to tell the truth, if Mame had known, it would’ve killed her even sooner. But all that’s past now. Robert got his life turned around. Even got himself a son down in Denver. Wants to bring him home soon’s he can work it out with the boy’s mother. Bring the boy home to the ranch.” Otto waved one hand in a wide arc. “Things are like Mame and me always dreamed they’d be. Our boys running the ranch together. I turned the deed over to them last week, one of those quit claims that Rap lawyer helped me with. Equal shares for each of ’em.”

  Father John set his elbows on the armrests and looked at the old man over the tipi he made with his fingers. Surely Vicky Holden would have suggested he might want to go slowly, give Tom time to adjust. Before his brother’s return, Tom would have inherited the entire ranch. “How’s Tom taking it?” he said.

  “I thought he was gonna be real happy. Ranch is big enough for him and Robert. It’s easier running a spread if you got somebody alongside you that loves it much as you do. Only Tom don’t like it.” Otto laid his head back, gulped in some air, and exhaled slowly, as if he were exhaling cigarette smoke. “He hates Robert,” he said, and Father John could hear the pain in the old man’s words. “Don’t want him around. Yesterday I heard him tell Robert, ‘Go on back to whatever hole you crawled out from. We got along fine without you. We don’t need you.’” He ran his knuckles over his eyelids again and stared up at the ceiling a moment before he said, “Trouble is, I need both my boys.”

  “How about Robert? What did he say?”

  “Nothing. Looked real sad. Glanced over and seen me in the hallway. Give me a little smile, like he wanted to encourage me and make me think Tom was gonna change his mind sooner or later.”

  “Maybe he will, Otto.”

  “You don’t know my boys.” The old man spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “They’re stubborn as mules. Clamp their minds shut like traps. Take a crowbar to pry them open.” He shifted sideways a little as if to readjust the weight on his hips. His expression was filled with desperation. “You think you could talk to Tom, Father?” he said. “Might be you could get his mind open.”

  * * *

  The ranch sprawled across acres of sun-dried plains that rolled on a gentle upslope into the stunted pines and rocks of the Wind River range. The Toyota pickup shuddered as Father John tapped on the brake pedal and drove through the opened gate with Hunting Bear Ranch carved on the overhead post. The skies were alive: the sun, a great orange ball, riding over the mountain peaks; orange, magenta, and purple flames shooting across the western horizon. The air was bright and intense. He drove down a narrow dirt road, squinting past the visor, swerving to avoid the potholes and slowing almost to a crawl over a section of washboard. The road dead-ended in a Y. On the left was the ranch house, two stories of blue siding and a sloping front porch huddled under a canopy of cottonwoods, white blossoms blazing against the orange sky. He took the road that branched right and led directly to the double doors of the raw-board barn ahead. The doors were closed. Everything about the place looked deserted.

  “Best time to see Tom alone will be around seven,” Otto had said. “He’ll be in the barn like usual, pitching hay for the horses. I got a meeting over at the senior center, so Tom won’t think we was expecting company. It’ll be like you were in the area and dropped by.”

  Father John veered off the dirt road and parked alongside the barn. A gust of wind sent a tumbleweed skittering past the front of the Toyota. There was no sign of any other vehicle, and he wondered whether Tom had finished the chores and gone up to the house. The pickup door made a loud thwack when he shut it. He walked over to the front of the barn and waited. If Tom was inside and wanted company, he’d come through the doors. It was polite to wait, not hammer on the doors and push himself on anyone. If Tom didn’t show in two or three minutes, he’d get back into the pickup, drive off, and return tomorrow. It was the Arapaho Way.

  The door on the right flew open a couple of feet and stopped, as if the wind had pushed against it, then caught and held it. A man bolted through the opening. Tall and broad-hipped, black cowboy hat, dun-colored jacket, jeans—a blur dashing down the front of the barn and darting around the corner.

  “Hey!” Father John ran after him, but when he reached the corner, the man was already racing across the pasture. He leapt over a gulley without breaking stride, the black hat bobbing against the orange horizon, the dun-colored jacket flashing green in the brightness. He was like a cartoon character, fading into the plains until he was lost altogether in the fringe of trees that bordered the far side of the pasture. It had all happened so fast, a matter of seconds. There was nothing distinctive about the man. The cowboy hat, jacket, and jeans—almost every man on the rez dressed the same. He could be anybody, Father John realized. He hadn’t seen the man’s face.

  Father John swung around and walked to the door that juddered in the wind. An icy sense of foreboding gripped him like a steel vise. He jammed the door hard against the side of the barn and stepped inside. “Tom,” he called. “You in here?” The inside of the barn seemed pitch-dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light that glowed in a bank of windows beneath the ceiling and shone past the bales of hay stacked overhead. “Tom!” he shouted.

  There was no sound except for the quiet shuffling of the horses in the stalls and a muffled snorting noise that mingled with the drip-drip-drip of a water pipe somewhere. He took several steps across the dirt floor, taking in the whole place: the tack hanging on the walls, the horse blankets draped over benches, the tools arranged above a workbench, the bin of loose hay, the faucet over the metal tub half-filled with water. A neat, tidy barn, a working barn that someone took pride in.

  He moved deeper inside, the foreboding changing into a certainty. He could hear his heart thumping. He knew what he would find before he spotted the body of a man facedown, legs bent at odd angles, as if he had fallen in midstride, arms flung ahead to fight off his attacker. Next to the body was a pitchfork, stone gray, inert and yet as menacing as an instrument from hell.

  Father John dropped onto his knees. Part of the man’s face was pressed into the dirt, but Father John could see who he was. He laid a finger on the man’s carotid artery. There was no pulse. Blood had puddled in the deep gash that ran down the side of his head, and there was a dark wetness glistening along the edge of the pitchfork. “God have mercy,” he said, making the sign of the cross over the body of Tom Hunting Bear. “God have mercy.”

  He got to his feet, dug in the pocket of his jacket for his cell, and tapped out 911.

  * * *

  “My boy Tom’s dead.” The old man’s voice was strangled with grief, barely audible, as if the words had made their own way down the line without any effort on his part.

  “I’m so sorry,” Vicky said. She leaned into her desk and pressed the receiver against her ear. The moccasin telegraph had been zinging all morning: Tom Hunting Bear killed last night in the barn. Robert must’ve done it. Never
should’ve come back, that man. Always was trouble.

  “Robert’s all I got left now,” Otto said. “They’re gonna try to take him away. You know the fed?”

  Vicky said yes, she knew FBI agent Ted Gianelli.

  “Knocked on the door this morning. It wasn’t much after dawn. Told Robert to get dressed. He was taking him in for questioning. Questioning? Robert didn’t have nothing to do with Tom getting killed. Somebody else done it. We got cowboys coming by all the time looking for work. Sometimes they’re desperate. Haven’t landed a job in months. Things have been tough on ranchers in the area. Some of ’em are barely holding on, so they’re not hiring. Since Robert got back, we don’t need any extra hands. Could’ve made a guy real mad when Tom told him that, could have sent him over the edge. The fed says it looked like Tom put up a fight for his life until the guy got hold of the pitchfork and hit him in the head. But it wasn’t Robert. He woudn’t’ve done that.”

  Otto stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, and made a couple of stabs at beginning again before he managed to say that Tom and Robert had gotten into a couple of fights. “We was still adjusting, working things out,” he said.

  “A couple of fights?” Vicky said. “Where?”

  She could hear the slow, deliberate exhalation at the other end. She held her own breath and waited for the old man to go on. It didn’t look good for Robert Hunting Bear. She could have listed the reasons Gianelli had for questioning him. Robert had disappeared for twelve years, while Tom had stayed and helped his father run the ranch. Still, Otto had insisted upon deeding the ranch to both sons. Now, with Tom dead, the ranch would be Robert’s. That could be construed as a motive as big as the side of a barn. Even Otto admitted his sons weren’t getting along. They had gotten into fights. There were probably witnesses. Gianelli had all the elements of a strong circumstantial case against Robert Hunting Bear.

  “The casino parking lot.” Otto’s voice was a whisper. “Last week, I sent Tom over to the casino to get his brother home before he lost half the ranch on the tables. Tom did like I said. He was a good son. He asked Robert politely to leave, but Robert was a hothead. He threw a punch, the security guards took ’em both outside, and . . .” He smothered a sob. “I guess they fought it out pretty hard. Took four guards to separate ’em. Guards told ’em to get off the property and not come back.”

  “Anybody call the police?”

  “Nah. I guess the guards figured it was a family beef.” The old man’s voice dissolved into sobs a moment before he cleared his throat and said, “None of it means anything. They was brothers, and sooner or later, brothers come together. Just needed a little time, that’s all. Please, Vicky, you gotta help Robert. He’s all I got in the world.”

  * * *

  Vicky parked in the asphalt lot that abutted the dark brick building with Wind River Law Enforcement plastered across the front in tall, black letters. A row of white BIA police cars stood at the back of the lot. She let herself into the closet-sized reception room and waited until the gray-uniformed officer behind the glass window looked up. Before she could say that she represented Robert Hunting Bear, the officer was on his feet, as if he had been expecting her. In an instant the inside door swung open, and the officer nodded her into the hollow, concrete-walled corridor that led to the tribal jail on the right and the BIA police headquarters on the left. She could have found her own way to the conference room, but that would have broken the rules. She followed her escort down the corridor past rows of closed doors that faced one another like silent guards. A phone rang over the scraping noise of their footsteps. He opened one of the doors, and she brushed past him into a windowless room that might have been an underground cavern lit with white fluorescent lights. The local fed, Ted Gianelli, sat on the far side of the long metal table across from a thick-necked Indian with wiry, black hair that fell into the collar of his red plaid shirt.

  “I believe your lawyer has arrived,” Gianelli said, holding her gaze.

  Robert Hunting Bear shifted in his chair and glanced up at her. “Lawyer?” he said.

  “Your father has retained me,” she told him.

  “I don’t need any lawyer. I’m not responsible for what happened to Tom.”

  “Any evidence that implicates my client?” Vicky looked past Robert to the man with black, gray-streaked hair, methodically closing a notepad, as if he were folding a piece of laundry.

  “Your client has motive and no alibi,” Gianelli said, finally lifting his eyes to hers.

  “There could be others with motive. Any fingerprints on the pitchfork?”

  “Tom’s.”

  “The killer would have worn gloves, wouldn’t he? You’re telling me you don’t have any physical evidence against my client. Nothing with which to press charges. We’re leaving.” She nodded to Robert, who shoved his chair back and scooped up the black cowboy hat and folded jacket from the chair next to him.

  “We have a witness,” Gianelli said.

  “A witness?” This was the first she had heard about a witness. “My client can’t possibly be placed at the barn when his brother was killed, since he wasn’t there,” she managed, hoping it was true.

  “Father O’Malley saw the killer run away.” Vicky felt her heart jump. She sucked a breath through her teeth. John O’Malley would be a reliable witness. Whatever he said, the fed, the U.S. attorney, the judge, everyone, would believe. It would be impossible to discredit testimony from the pastor at St. Francis Mission. “Are you saying he has ID’d my client?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly!” She could feel the tension begin to drain away. “That means you don’t have jack. We’re out of here.” She motioned Robert toward the door.

  * * *

  Vicky turned the ignition and listened to the Jeep spurt into life. Then she drove out of the parking lot, eager to put as much distance as possible between her client and the cold, implacability of the brick building dedicated to law enforcement. The large, dark figure of Robert Hunting Bear hovered in her peripheral vision, filling the passenger seat with enormous jeans-clad knees that jutted against the dashboard, shoulders that rose beneath the dun-colored jacket, and pawlike hands he kept clasped in his lap. He kept his black cowboy hat pulled low and stared out the window as she slowed through Fort Washakie, then turned south onto the highway and clamped down hard on the accelerator.

  “Who did Father John see?” she said.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You weren’t there?”

  “That’s what you told the fed.”

  “I can’t help you unless you level with me.” Vicky glanced over at the man. He kept his face turned to the window, and it struck her that she was looking at a man whose identity she was certain of, and yet she could never testify that Robert Hunting Bear was in her Jeep if she didn’t see his face. She wondered how much of the fleeing man John O’Malley had actually seen. She pushed on: “The fed knows the ranch will go to you. He knows about the fight at the casino. He’s going to build a strong, circumstantial case against you. Defendants are convicted every day on circumstantial evidence. If you and Tom got into another fight at the barn, if you picked up the pitchfork to protect yourself, you need to tell me now.”

  He turned his head and she could feel the laser heat of his eyes boring into her. “What? And go back to prison? I’m never goin’ back. I got my life straightened out. I got me a kid to think about now. I’m gonna run the ranch, take care of my father, and bring my kid here. His mother will be okay with it. Her boyfriend don’t want my kid around anyway.” He exhaled as if he had been holding his breath for a long time. “I’m sorry about Tom. I thought we’d be ranching together, me and my brother, the way it was supposed to be. I never wanted nothing bad to happen to him.”

  “So it wasn’t you Father John saw at the barn,” Vicky said.

  Robert Hunting Bear went back to staring out
the passenger window.

  * * *

  Otto was slumped in a recliner, ragged boots with torn stitching protruding into the living room. The house had filled with Arapahos—relatives, neighbors, elders who had spent their lives, like Otto, running ranches, brigades of grandmothers who arrived whenever someone died, wearing faces of practiced sympathy, carrying casseroles and cakes. People jammed themselves into the living room, spilled into the kitchen and down the hallway. The odors of coffee and fried bread and hot stew drifted through the low buzz of conversations. Father John perched on the edge of an ottoman in front of the recliner and sipped at the mug of coffee someone had handed him.

  “Robert’s all I got left,” Otto said. That was how it had been all afternoon, spurts of conversation that alternated with long periods of silence while the man wandered through his own thoughts. But now it seemed a torrent of words had worked their way up into his throat and were about to burst out. “I lost him once, but he came back. Never thought I’d lose Tom. He was always here with me. It looks like now I’ve lost both my sons.”

  “Vicky will do her best to bring Robert home,” Father John said. He had already tried to assure the old man, but it was obvious that his assurances hadn’t cut through Otto’s fear. “Could I get you some more coffee?” he said.

  The old man blinked at him as if he were trying to comprehend something so normal, so ordinary as coffee in the enormity of his loss. He gave a half nod. Father John had set his own mug on the lamp table and gotten to his feet when the front door opened. Beyond the Arapahos circling about, he watched Vicky Holden step inside. She glanced around the living room, her expression unreadable, yet fixed with determination. She caught his eye for a moment; then her gaze flashed to Otto in the recliner. She started over, and the crowd seemed to fall to the sides making a straight path across the linoleum floor. Conversations died back, like the wind lying down, and Father John realized that all the eyes were turned on the big Indian who had just come into the house, as if he had waited outside a moment before following Vicky.