He wasn’t sure how long he had stayed in the pew. Time had collapsed into the flickering light, the quiet and the sense of the eternal that closed about him. The thirst seemed to withdraw into that place where he managed to keep it most of the time. He finally lifted himself off his knees.
It was when he turned around that he saw his assistant in the back, half sitting, half kneeling, hands clasped over the next pew. Father John made his way down the aisle. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, when he was a few feet away.
Father Ian pushed himself upright and headed into the vestibule. “I didn’t want to disturb you.” He threw the explanation over one shoulder as he pushed the door open and stepped outside.
“Heard you drive in,” the other priest went on, still holding the door, half in shadow, half in light, until Father John flipped the switch and the other priest was enveloped in the shadow. “The news has been all over the radio and television about two more bodies found at Bates, and the phone has been ringing all evening. I figured that’s where you and Vicky went this afternoon. Right?”
“Right.” Father John moved past and went down the steps, conscious of the other priest’s boots scuffing the steps behind him.
“Thought you might like to talk,” Father Ian said, falling in beside him as they started across Circle Drive.
Father John jammed his hands into his coat pockets. The front of his coat was open, and he left it that way. The cold air swept over his face and neck and bit through his shirt, calling him back to life. After a moment, he explained how Dana Lambert had murdered the four men, hoping to start a tribal war that would promote her husband’s book, how the professor had seen his world crumbling and had shot his wife, then himself.
Ian stopped walking. “You thought you could prevent what happened, and now you blame yourself, don’t you? How did you plan to stop it?”
Father John could still see the gun pointed at his heart. They might have all been dead, and that was the thing, wasn’t it? That was the thing that had propelled him into the church. It had made him open his coat to the cold, all to assure himself that he was alive. He was alive.
“When you drove in here,” Father Ian said, “there wasn’t anything you wanted more than a drink, right?”
Father John turned around and faced the light-colored eyes shining out of a face striped with shadows. “Yes,” he said.
His assistant was shaking his head, everything about him looking satisfied and vindicated. “Alcoholics love guilt, John,” he said. “We seek it out, look everywhere for it, and if we can’t find it, we invent it, because when we have the guilt, we have the excuse. I’ve found all the guilt I needed here at the mission. It was you that people wanted at meetings, you patients wanted in the hospital, so I told myself, I must be doing something wrong. It must be my fault. If I’m at fault, I must be guilty. And . . .” He shrugged. “There are a lot of bars. But I can’t change the fact that people here love you, and you couldn’t prevent a man from committing murder and suicide. Face it, John. We’re a couple of alkies trying to stay sober and looking for the excuse to drink.”
“We?” Father John said. It was the first time that his assistant had actually admitted to being an alcoholic.
“Had a long talk with the Provincial today,” Ian said. “Don’t worry,” he hurried on. “I didn’t mention you and Vicky Holden.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“I understand that, John. I’ve been watching you. I’m starting to understand some things. You’d like to stop in at the bars, that’s what I started thinking, but you don’t. Maybe you’d like to have an affair with her . . .” He tossed his head back toward Seventeen-Mile Road. “I have to believe what you say, that there’s never been anything between you. You’ve made a life for yourself here and, well . . .” He hesitated, his gaze roaming over the grounds and the buildings settled into the shadows and the quiet. “I’d really like to do the same. It’s like you said, whiskey won’t let it happen. So I’m going to a clinic in Casper.”
Father John clasped the man’s shoulder. “That’s good, Ian,” he said. “I need you here. The people need you. You’ll see.”
“I hope nobody’s going to need me in the next three weeks.” Father Ian started toward the residence again, then turned back. “There was another call after you left,” he said. “A young woman named Edie Bradbury. Sounded scared. Said you’d told her she could come to the mission. I offered to go and get her, but she said that she’d drive over. She’s at the guesthouse.”
“She’s here,” Father John said. Thank God, he thought.
He followed the other priest up the steps to the residence, waves of gratitude flowing over him for this assistant, after the years of hoping for another priest who would want to be here, and for Edie Bradbury and life and all the possibilities that lay ahead. The minute he and Father Ian stepped into the entry, Walks-On came scampering down the hallway.
Familiar, Father John thought. Everything familiar. He stooped over and scratched the dog’s ears as the other priest tossed his coat over the coat tree and started up the stairs. Then Father John hung up his own coat, set his hat on the bench, and started after the dog, who was already in the doorway to the kitchen, looking back at him with dog patience. Familiar and normal and expected, all of it—Walks-On and the old house creaking around them, the thud of the other priest’s boots on the steps, the faint odor of stale coffee lingering in the air.
VICKY JANGLED THE key in the lock, aware of the dim, orange glow of light in the empty corridor. She opened the door into her apartment and reached for the light switch. It was then that she saw the flicker of light in the living room. She gripped the doorknob, every muscle poised to bolt back down the corridor, but the figure rising off the sofa was familiar: the shape of the dark head and curve of the shoulders, the dark, thick forearms dangling from the rolled up sleeves of the light-colored shirt.
“I’ve been worried about you,” Adam said.
Vicky closed the door and leaned against it a moment. In all the hurry to end the law partnership, move out her things, find a new office, and—yes, this was the main part of it—end everything between them, she hadn’t gotten around to asking Adam for her key.
“Are you all right?” His voice seemed to come from far away, breaking through the torrent of her own thoughts. Vicky felt the gentle pressure of his hands on her shoulders, but still she clung to the door. Would she ever be all right? Would anything ever be all right?
“Have you eaten?” Adam tried a different tack.
“I’m not hungry.” Finally, she found the strength to push off the door and walk past the man into the living room. She sank onto the far end of the sofa, away from the imprint of his body in the cushion. The television was lit, but Adam must have pressed the mute key because there was a man standing in a floodlit circle, hair blowing onto his forehead, lips moving, arms flapping about in a grotesque mime.
Adam dropped onto the cushion that he’d just left and, reaching forward, picked up the remote on the coffee table. He pointed it toward the TV and, as if he’d willed sound to erupt, the man’s voice filled the room. A siren wailed in the background, mixing with the busy, purposeful noise of footsteps crunching snow and the sound of voices.
“We’re still waiting for positive identification of the two bodies here at Bates tonight.” The man’s voice cut through all the noise. “So far the spokesman for the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that the bodies are those of an elderly man and a woman most likely in her thirties . . .”
Adam pointed the remote again, and the sound went off. The screen went dark. For a half-second, they sat in the darkness, until Adam shifted around and flipped on the table lamp, sending a circle of light over the sofa. “Tell me about it,” he said.
Vicky turned toward him and let her gaze take a slow turn of his face, trying to glean from his eyes, the set of his mouth, the flare of his nostrils, some explanation of how he knew that she had gone to
Bates. She was aware that he was also studying her, and after a moment, Adam said, “I called two or three times to see how you were feeling. There was no answer, so I came over to check on you. It surprised me that you weren’t here. The doctor said you should rest. I decided to wait for you and turned on the TV.” He shrugged and looked away before hurrying on. “Two more bodies found at Bates. I called St. Francis Mission and learned that the good pastor wasn’t in. I can do the math, Vicky. What I can’t figure out is what made you and Father John go out to the battlefield today.”
Vicky leaned against the back of the sofa and stared through the circle of light at the small table and bookcase and desk swimming out of the shadows toward her and told him how she’d found out that it wasn’t Frankie Montana who had made the tapes at a recording studio, but Dana Lambert. She’d gone to John O’Malley, she said, rushing through this part. She could never explain to Adam Lone Eagle. She should have gone to Burton; surely that’s what Adam was thinking. But she and John O’Malley were stronger together, more convincing than either of them could be alone.
She rattled off the rest of it, all the way to Bates and the dead woman and Charles Lambert threatening to shoot John O’Malley until she’d let Frankie’s gun drop into the snow where the deputies would find it. They had probably already found it. It was at this point that she was aware of Adam reaching over and taking both of her hands in his. She told him how the professor had put the gun to his temple, but she didn’t try to describe the sound of the explosion or the shell burst of tissue and blood in the falling snow. As she talked, she felt a kind of relief coming over her, a lightening, as if she were setting down a burden. Finally, she said, “Frankie won’t be going to prison for homicide.”
“No,” Adam said, a thoughtful note in his tone. The warmth of his hands flowed into her own, and she realized that she no longer felt the chill of death. “But he’ll go to prison for resisting arrest, taking a hostage at gunpoint, breaking and entering. Frankie’s mother has retained another attorney, since you’ll be the prosecution’s star witness.”
Vicky turned to him. “Samantha Lowe?” she said.
He nodded. “She left a message on my answering machine a couple of hours ago that she’ll be representing Frankie. She’s already arranged to consult with a firm of criminal lawyers in Casper. She’ll give Frankie a good defense, Vicky.”
Vicky tried to pull her hands free, but Adam tightened his grip and held on. “There never was anything between Samantha and me,” he said. “I was her adviser, that’s all. A father figure.”
“Right, Adam.” Vicky yanked herself free at this and jumped to her feet. She walked over to the window and began threading the cord of the shade through her fingers. The sky was silver, lit with stars, and a faint glow lay over the snow covering the street and sidewalk below. Everything seemed fresh and new, almost as if spring were pushing through the snow.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Adam said. “I was attracted to her, damn attracted. I got the feeling that Samantha might have been interested, and you had become so . . .” He hesitated. “A big space has opened between us lately, Vicky, and I haven’t been able to figure out why.”
“You know why.” Vicky looked around. Adam had moved sideways into the corner of the sofa, arm draped along the back, leg crooked over the middle cushion. A polished black shoe dangled in the space between the edge of the sofa and the coffee table. A spark of anger flared inside her. They might have been chatting about the spring snow. “We want different things,” she said. “You want to be Crazy Horse riding in to save the village. You want to be the one people count on. You want to take care of the big problems, make them go away in the courts.”
Adam didn’t move, still relaxed, sitting back, comfortable. “So do you,” he said.
It was the truth, Vicky thought. She snapped her head back to the window. She wanted to lash out, tell him he was wrong, but it was the truth. He knew her. She wanted to be involved in the important cases that affected her people’s future—cases that involved the land and the natural resources. She wanted the cases that dealt with civil rights and tribal sovereignty. She wanted to advise the business council on issues such as wolf management. She wanted all of that.
She said, “I can’t turn my back on the Frankie Montanas. They still have rights.”
“I understand that.” Adam’s voice drifted behind her. “You were right about Montana. He’s not a murderer, but he probably would have been convicted.”
“Even if he were guilty . . .”
“He would still deserve all the protection of the law. I know that, Vicky.” She felt the slight change in the air. Adam got to his feet, and walked over. His arm slipped around her waist. “I want you to stay in the firm, Vicky. We’ll find a way to take both kinds of cases. We might have to hire another lawyer . . .”
“Not Samantha,” she cut in.
His laughter was low, a slight brush of air against her ear. “We can find someone else. This thing about the wolves is heating up. A rancher shot a wolf a couple of days ago out in the bluffs on the eastern edge of the rez. You know what that means. Wolves are here. I need you to stay with this, Vicky. The tribes need you to stay with this.”
She turned inside the circle of his arm and, at the same time, pulled away, the edge of the windowsill creasing her back. “The moving truck is coming tomorrow.”
“Cancel it.”
“I have to think about it, Adam.”
“Cancel the truck and think about it, and while you’re thinking about it, we have a meeting in two days with the fish and game people from Cheyenne.”
“Adam . . .” She started to protest, but she could hear the crack of indecision in her voice. “I’ll stay on the wolf issue until it’s settled,” she said.
“What about us, Vicky?” Adam said. “I want to be part of your life; I want you to be part of mine.” There was such intensity in his eyes that it took all of her strength not to look away. “I want to be the one you turn to when something comes up. I want to be the first one you think of.”
Vicky looked back at the window and the white world spreading below. She felt the cold air coming off the glass pane and wondered how it could be possible that the first man she thought to turn to was not John O’Malley but Adam Lone Eagle. It seemed as impossible as putting the snow back into the sky. And yet Adam kept his hand on her waist, his fingers pressing into her skin. He was here, and John O’Malley was at St. Francis Mission. Where they wanted to be, both of them.
Now moving around again within his arm, tilting her face up to his, laying her hands on his chest, the soft fabric of his shirt, waiting. “We can try, Adam,” she said. “We can try.”
38
THE SOUND OF drums and singing swelled through the canyon, bouncing off the slopes as if there were other drums, other singers among the boulders. Traces of snow lingered here and there, like the memory of winter, but the sun was warm in a sky scrubbed of clouds and as still and blue as a mountain lake. Father John led Edie Bradbury over to the crowd bunched together at the mouth of the canyon. The smell of burning sage drifted through the air. Father Nathan Owens, wearing a black raincoat, an umbrella poking out of the side pocket, as if the man couldn’t believe that warm weather had finally set in, stood a few feet away. The moment that Father John ushered the girl into a vacant spot, the Episcopalian priest stepped over.
“Can’t tell you how happy I am to see you alive and well.” He clasped Father John’s shoulder and reached for his hand. Then he gestured toward the front of the crowd, past the group of Arapaho and Shoshone elders around the small campfire, his gaze focusing on the canyon beyond. “A terrible tragedy,” he said. “I’ve lain awake nights worrying that I had sent you in harm’s way and praying for your safety.”
Father John thanked the man. He needed all the prayers he could get, he was thinking. You can’t pray too much, an elder had once told him.
People began shuffling about, pulling to the sides, and Father Joh
n saw Ethan Red Bull coming down an aisle of marshy grasses and sagebrush. The elder stopped in front of him. “Join us at the campfire, Father,” he said.
Father John motioned for Edie to follow him, but the girl shook her head and pulled back, shrinking into herself. He gave her a smile of encouragement, took her hand, and led her through the crowd to the front. The family of Trent Hunter and Eric Surrell stood together on one side, the relatives of the Crispin brothers on the other.
It was where the girl belonged, he was thinking. The mother of Trent’s unborn child, one of the family, and she was grieving, her face blanched and tight, eyes lowered, studying her hands clasped over her belly. She’d ridden out to the battlefield with him this morning, although at first she’d said that she couldn’t bear to see the place where Trent had died. Then, just as he was about to drive off, she’d flung open the passenger door and climbed into the cab.
The music stopped, the faint sounds of the drums and the voices lingering for an instant before receding into the stillness of the crowd. From far away came the noise of an engine throttling down.
The elders turned toward the crowd, and Ethan Red Bull lifted his hands toward the sky. “We ask the Creator to bless this place where the blood of our ancestors and the blood of the young Shoshones mixes with the earth,” he said, his voice strong and firm, the voice of a chief in the Old Time, Father John thought. “We ask the Creator to take the evil from this place so that there may be peace between our peoples and that we may go into the future as friends. We ask Hixce’e’ be niho’3o’o, the white man above, our Lord Jesus, to bless this place. Ani’qa he’tabi’nuhu’nina, Hatana’ wunani’na na hesuna’nin.”
Father John closed his eyes a moment, the old man’s voice rolling over him, a comforting sound. He recognized some of the words: “Our Father, we are poor. Our Father, take pity on us.”
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