“Not the same, George. Wovoka urged Indians to live good lives and work hard for their people while they waited for the new world. Orlando . . .” Father John glanced away a moment, the images of the shadow ranch imprinted in his mind. “Orlando has armed guards on the ranch. The dancers looked drugged, and he’s taking advantage of the women. Wovoka believed a new and better world would come eventually. Who knows what Orlando might do to hasten the coming.”
Father John stood up and swung the chair back into place against the wall. “You’re right, George. The man could be dangerous.”
The other priest was nodding. “We have to take a strong stand in the pulpit.”
“We have to work with the Arapaho elders,” Father John said.
It was midafternoon when Father John heard the tires skittering over the gravel on Circle Drive. He got up from his desk and went to the window. A blue sedan slowed past the administration building, then turned into the alley. Before the sedan disappeared past the corner, he caught a glimpse of the dark-haired, young-looking man with the round face and the fleshy chins folding over the white clerical collar.
He hurried out of the office, around the building, and down the alley. The sedan was parked in front of the guest house. Bishop Lawrence McCall was hauling his stocky frame out of the front seat. He shut the door and headed to the trunk, the top of which was rising in the air.
“Bishop, good to see you,” Father John called.
The man swung around, set his left hand over his forehead, like the brim of a hat, and peered through the brightness. The breeze pulled at the front of his black suit coat and smashed his trousers against his thick legs.
“Father O’Malley,” he said, extending his right hand. “Didn’t see any reason to bother you. I know my way to the guest house.”
Father John shook the man’s hand. He had a firm grip, at odds, somehow, with the smooth, clean-shaven face, the round, reddish cheeks. A couple of times a year, the bishop managed to escape, as he put it, from the telephones and endless meetings in Cheyenne and spend a few days fishing on the reservation. He always stayed at the guest house.
“Let me get your bag.” Father John lifted the small black bag from the trunk. Then he ushered the bishop toward the door and followed him inside. The one-room house was cool and drenched in shadows.
“Just what I need.” The bishop spread his arms, as if the sofa bed, table, lamp, and closet-sized kitchen were his congregation. “Peace and quiet for twenty-four hours.” He gestured toward the black suitcase. “Peaceful morning on the river, just me and the fish. Good mystery novel. And don’t plan on me for dinner tonight. I’ll be meeting friends in Riverton. In fact, don’t plan on seeing me until the meeting tomorrow night. When do you expect the other directors?”
“Sometime tomorrow,” Father John said.
“Good.” The bishop gave him a conspiratorial look. “Don’t tell them I’m here.”
Father John smiled. “Enjoy fishing,” he said. He let himself out, closing the door behind him, and headed back to the office.
The moment he sat down at his desk, he checked his phone messages. No word from Gianelli. Nothing from Vicky. He’d tried to call her all day, leaving messages with her secretary—Ask her to call me. And what is this about, Father? the secretary had wanted to know. Just ask her to call me, he’d said again. He wanted to hear her voice and know that she was safe.
17
Vicky could hear the rhythmic sound of the drums as she threaded her way among the parked pickups and sedans in front of Blue Sky Hall. She slipped past the solid wood door and stood next to a group of men leaning against the back wall. The hall was jammed: families crowded into the rows of folding chairs on both sides of the center aisle, other people standing along the walls. Most were Arapaho, although a few white people were scattered about.
The opened casket stood at the far end of the aisle. She could make out the crown of Ben’s head, the black hair against the shiny white fabric inside the casket. Her heart lurched. An immense sadness and regret mixed with the flood of memories that washed over her. She’d seen Ben for the first time at a rodeo at Fort Washakie. She was seventeen, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. The way he’d hung on with one hand to the bronco bucking out of the chute, the other hand waving his cowboy hat overhead. Whooping with the sheer madness of it, shouting into the sky, and she’d fallen in love with him then. Then—she’d been so certain—he was everything she wanted.
He’d seen her, too, because after he’d slid off and the Bronco was bucking its way around the arena, Ben had walked straight over to her and said, “You and me, girl, we’re gonna get together.” Later, after the first time they’d made love, he’d told her he was whooping and shouting out of that chute because he’d spotted her over in the stands.
She pressed her fist against her mouth. From the front of the hall came the slow, deliberate beating of the drum that matched the rhythm of her heart. The singers’ voices rose in the same song of grief that the ancestors would have sung for the fallen warriors.
She could see the Holden clan in the front: Susan and Lucas seated in the first row, next to Hugh, Ben’s brother, which meant he was also their father, in the Arapaho Way. The realization made her flinch.
The air was stuffy. Fluorescent lights shone through a kind of fog that hung below the ceiling. The faint odor of coffee mingled with the smells of roasted meat and sugary cakes.
She’d missed the food. A couple of men beside her were still sipping from Styrofoam cups. Plates and boxes of leftovers were stacked on the tables in the back corner for people to take home to family members who hadn’t been able to come. “We always eat first,” she remembered her grandmother explaining. Years later she had understood. In the Old Time, the people never knew when they might eat again. They ate when they had the opportunity, then did whatever else they had gathered to do.
The song ended. Amos Walking Bear rose from the front row and, leaning on his cane, made his way to the casket. The hall was quiet. The old man stood with head bowed, light glinting in his gray hair, black bolo tie pulled tightly against the collar of his white shirt. And then his voice boomed into the hall. “Ani’qu ne’chawu’nani, Ani’qu ne’chawu’nani.”
Vicky set her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and let the comforting sounds flow over her. She’d never learned to speak Arapaho—her parents were progressives—but she recognized the style. Formal and correct, the style in which the chiefs had addressed the villages. She caught snatches of words and phrases. The elder was calling the people to peace and forgiveness.
The voice stopped, and she opened her eyes, conscious of people turning in the chairs toward her, then looking away. The whispers sounded like the rush of the wind. Several men leaned out from the wall and craned their heads in her direction.
Amos was coming down the aisle, tapping his cane. Smoke curled over the top of the iron pan he held in one hand. Inside the pan, she knew, were smoldering chips of cottonwood and dried sage. He lifted the pan, allowing the smoke to drift over the people, to comfort and cleanse. Heads began to bow, and for a moment, Vicky felt free of the unwelcome glances.
The elder reached the end of the aisle. He stopped and held out the pan toward her. The sweet odor of sage floated over her. She felt a surge of panic. She wasn’t sure if he was condemning her or forgiving her. Either way, her people believed she was guilty.
As he started back up the aisle, Vicky saw the thick-set man, muscles bulging beneath his denim shirt, striding down the side aisle toward her. One of Ben’s cousins—she recognized the sway of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. He planted himself in front of her. His breath had a sour smell. “Hugh wants you out of here,” he said, making no effort to lower his voice.
She moved sideways along the wall, aware of the rough concrete catching at her blouse. Heads turned again in her direction.
She gasped. Lucas had come up behind the man, and for a moment, she’d thought he was Ben. Ben, twenty years ago. He took h
er arm. “You stay if you want, Mom,” he said, looking hard at his father’s cousin, who shrugged his shoulders and started back toward the front.
“You can sit with me.”
Vicky shook her head. “Not with the family.”
Lucas stepped back and nodded toward someone farther down the wall. A moment passed before two folding chairs were pushed toward them. He guided her to one and took the other. Gradually she felt the gazes move away, like a breeze shifting in another direction.
The singers’ voices rose over the beat of the drum. The elder was leaning over the casket now, applying the circles of sacred red paint to Ben’s forehead and cheeks, marking him as one of the people so that the ancestors would recognize him in the shadow world.
Vicky closed her eyes and searched for the words to pray for Ben Holden. Have mercy on him, she managed. Then she said the prayer silently over and over again like a mantra. After a moment she opened her eyes and glanced about.
She saw the woman at once—when had she come in?—standing along the wall on the right, in a black, long-sleeved dress with a black scarf framing the pale, beautiful face and nearly obscuring the strip of blond hair along her forehead.
She looked vaguely familiar—a white woman from the area, no doubt. Vicky had the feeling that she should know the woman, and yet she couldn’t remember any occasion in which they might have met. She’d never known a lot of white people in the years she’d spent married to Ben. Their life had revolved around family, powwows, rodeos, celebrations—all on the reservation. Occasionally white faces had appeared in the crowds, but no one she knew.
Now she was with white people every day: her office was in a white town, her apartment a few blocks away. She’d opened her office in Lander almost six years ago. Still she couldn’t place the woman. Client? Opponent? The woman was nowhere in her life.
But Ben knew her, Vicky was certain. The truth of it sat like a weight against her heart. This was Ben’s woman.
She was aware that the painting ceremony had ended; the drumming and singing had stopped. Quiet settled over the hall for a moment. Then, chairs scraped the floor and people started to their feet, grabbing purses and jackets, lifting sleeping toddlers. Groups of people surged into the center aisle.
Lucas stood up and leaned toward her. “Susan and I”—he hesitated—“and Uncle Hugh are going to stay with Dad.”
Vicky nodded. Someone always stayed with the body through the night, until the burial in the morning. She kept her eyes on the woman in the crush of people at the side door.
“Do you want to see him?”
“What?” Vicky turned to her son.
“You know, to say goodbye.”
Vicky glanced back toward the woman. She was about to slip outside and into the oblivion from which she’d come, taking with her anything she might know about the Lakotas.
“Yes,” she said, getting to her feet and pulling her eyes toward the casket almost hidden behind the groups of people making their way out of the rows and down the aisles. “I’d like to say goodbye.”
Lucas took her hand and led her against the crowd flowing toward the entrance. A reverent quiet lay over the hall, broken by the shuffle of footsteps, the occasional hushed voice. Vicky saw the eyes turn away as she passed.
The Holden clan—two rows deep—remained seated, barely concealed anger rippling in the muscles of their clenched jaws. Hugh Holden sat ramrod straight, eyes locked on the far wall.
Vicky went to the casket, Lucas still beside her. Her breath jammed in her lungs. Ben was dressed in a blue, Western-cut jacket, and white shirt with a bolo tie—the tie she’d given him on their tenth anniversary. A white satin pillow had been arranged around his right temple where, she knew, he’d been shot. His hair was parted on the left, neatly combed and fanned over the edge of his shoulders. There were red circles painted on his forehead and cheeks. He looked like Ben and yet, not-Ben. Smaller, sunken, diminished by death.
She ran her fingers along the cool edge of the metal casket, then along the rough fabric of his sleeve. “Go in peace, Ben,” she whispered. “Go in peace.”
She felt Lucas’s arm slip around her shoulders, and she leaned against him a moment. Then she stepped over to Susan in the front row. Her daughter lifted her chin and stared at her out of eyes clouded with incomprehension. Moisture glistened on her thin cheeks. Vicky took her face in both hands, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. The dampness clung to her lips as she hugged Lucas a moment, then made her way past the rows of empty chairs and trailed the last of the crowd outside.
The white woman was nowhere in sight. Vicky waited in front a few moments, watching the parade of vehicles turning into the road. Finally she crossed through the beams of headlights to the Bronco.
She knew how to find Ben’s white woman.
Thirty minutes later, Vicky parked in front of the Peppermill Restaurant and let herself through the double-glass doors. Faint odors of onions and spices floated into the quiet in the entry. A few couples were lingering over cups of coffee and half-eaten plates of dessert in the dining room. The waitress from Monday evening was carrying a tray loaded with dirty dishes toward the swinging doors in the rear.
“One?” The brown-haired hostess with her hair pulled into a bun beckoned her toward the dining room.
Vicky followed the woman past several other tables littered with dirty plates and coffee-rimmed cups. She felt a sense of relief when they passed the table where she and Ben had sat.
“Coffee?” The hostess laid the menu on a small table near the swinging doors that concealed the kitchen.
“That would be fine,” Vicky said, taking the chair that faced the dining room. There was a low hum of conversation from the nearby tables, the sound of clanking dishes and gushing water behind the swinging doors.
The hostess returned and set a cup and saucer on the table, then poured a stream of coffee from an aluminum pot. “The waitress will take your order in a moment,” she announced before heading toward the front.
The doors pushed open. The waitress stood between them a moment, balancing a tray of dinner plates, black hair curled around the wary expression on her face. She pulled her gaze away, crossed the restaurant, and began distributing the plates in front of three men. Another moment passed before she came over, her gaze fixed on the small pad in her hand.
“What can I get you?” she said, a peremptoriness in her tone. “Kitchen’s about to close.”
“You recognize me, don’t you?” Vicky said. “You saw me here Monday night with Ben Holden.”
The woman didn’t say anything. Vicky could see her throat muscles working as she swallowed. “Why’d you come back?”
“I want you to give me the name of the white woman Ben brought here.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about . . .”
“Yes, you do,” Vicky said. She’d seen the quickly covered-up surprise in the waitress’s face when she’d found someone else with Ben. She’d seen the conspiratorial look he’d given the woman.
“It’s important,” Vicky hurried on. “I have to talk to her.”
The waitress glanced over her shoulder toward the hostess. Someone let out a long laugh that lingered over the muffled clanking of dishes. “I don’t wanna get involved in murder,” she said finally. “I don’t need the cops in here asking me questions.” She leaned over the table. “What I need is this job,” she whispered. “I got a kid to take care of.”
“I have two kids,” Vicky said. “A lot of people think I killed their father. The white woman may know something that will help me.”
The woman stood up straight and began flipping through the notepad. “You better give me your order.” She held a pencil over the pad, as if she were already writing.
“Bring me a bowl of soup.”
“We got creamy potato, vegetable—”
“It doesn’t matter. Who is the woman?”
“Only time I ever seen her is when she come in here with”—she hesitated
—“your husband.”
“Ex-husband.”
At this, the waitress gave her a smile of recognition. “I got me two of ’em,” she said. “Roving eyes, both of ’em. I sure know how to pick ’em.”
“Do you know her name?”
“I’ll get your soup.” The waitress stepped back, then disappeared behind the swinging doors.
Vicky took a sip of the coffee. Bitter, barely warm. This was a mistake, she thought, a long shot. How many white women lived in the area around the reservation? Ten thousand, at least. The waitress couldn’t know them all.
The woman was back. She set down a bowl of butter yellow soup and an oblong dish stuffed with cellophane-wrapped crackers. “I heard him call her Marcia once,” she said, positioning the dish in the center of the table.
“Anything else?” Vicky prodded. Marcia, she was thinking. There was something familiar about the name.
“I don’t make a practice of listening in on my customers’ conversations.” She moved the dish closer to the bowl, and Vicky took a package of crackers.
“Of course not.”
“She might’ve been a rancher. I’ll get you some more coffee.” The waitress hurried to the serving table, lifted the coffee server, and headed back, stopping to refill cups at another table, throwing quick glances over one shoulder toward the hostess in front.
“What makes you think the woman’s a rancher?” Vicky asked, watching the brown liquid rise in her own cup.
“I heard them talking about ranch stuff, you know, cattle prices, best kind of hay, that kind of thing. One night . . .” She hesitated.
“What? Tell me, please.”
The waitress drew in a breath. The rim of her nostrils inflated. “I heard her going on about her daddy dying and leaving her the ranch, like it was this big burden, and I’m thinking, I wish my daddy’d left me something other than a shit pile of bad memories, and Ben, he was giving her all kinds of sympathy, saying he sure knew how hard it was for a lady like herself to run a big ranch like the—” She stopped, eyes widening into circles of memory. “The Bishop Ranch, is what he said.”
The Shadow Dancer (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 14