Never a good time, he thought, but must it be right now?
Gabriel quelled the growing anxiety in his belly, allowing more pleasant thoughts to surface briefly. He recalled vivid images and smells from a long childhood hike to the same spot. The nine year old Gabriel had worshipped his giant, half-Swede father.
As Little Bear, Gabriel had reveled in his father’s omnipresent pipe smoke, the smell of bacon, fry bread, and dense coffee, and the night stories by the fire at this very spot. Gabriel remembered how his official Standing Bear name had been conferred by the tribe only after a successful bow and arrow hunting trip in the Bitterroot Mountains.
“Coffee ready?” Snowfeather called out, her voice muffled by the tent.
Moments later, the sound of scalding liquid filling metal cups mingled with the rustle of pines in the gentle evening wind, as Gabriel poured from a blackened pot. “Come and get it, Princess!”
“Sounds funny to be called that.”
“So are you willing be demoted to Little Princess?”
“No thanks!” One of the pack horses snorted, testing its tree tether. “Sounds like you snoring, Dad,” Snowfeather said, poking her head out of the tent door.
“Mom and I were so happy and relieved to see you safe,” Gabriel said, remembering Alice’s joy at seeing Snowfeather in Sandpoint Idaho. Snowfeather emerged from the tent wearing a light parka and a baseball cap. “That somehow you found Fred Loud Owl was a miracle.” Gabriel handed her a cup.
“It was. And there is more to tell,” Snowfeather said, holding the hot metal cup by the edges of its loop handle. She blew across the surface.
“More than what happened to Lance McKernon?”
“Nothing that grim.”
“You want to talk about your Spirit Journey?”
“That’s certainly part of it, Dad. Plus it’s some news about me.”
“You’re pregnant?” he said, intending to joke, as he awkwardly avoided the bad news.
“What?!” Snowfeather’s smile was impish. When she noticed her father’s pained expression. Misinterpreting, she reached over and touched Gabriel’s arm. “Hey. You’re way too young to be a grandfather.”
“Don’t I wish,” he said, dropping to his haunches. Gabriel sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “But that wasn’t it…” Here it comes, he thought. God help her. “Here’s the thing—I have some…news,” he said.
“You first, then,” she said.
Gabriel looked up at his daughter’s sweet face and grimaced. “Bad news.” He sighed. “I couldn’t bring it up at the airport or on the drive. And I had just gotten the…report…as you arrived. I just couldn’t bear to ruin all the joy of our getting together.”
“How bad is this news, Dad?”
“Very. Let me get the hard part out of the way.” Gabriel straightened up, his expression wary. Snowfeather immediately caught the bitter scent of incoming disaster. Her face went opaque. “I’m afraid Mom doesn’t know yet.” Gabriel said. “I thought you should be the first to hear this.”
“I’m ready,” she said. Her eyes said otherwise.
“There is no good way to tell you this, Princess.” Gabriel was still stalling. He took a deep breath. “Vincent is dead. It was murder.” The words had just blurted themselves out, like missiles. “I am so sorry.”
Snowfeather stood frozen, her coffee cup canted at an odd angle, the contents spilling out in a narrow, black waterfall, sizzling into the fire…like her own blood. Her eyes became bright with tears. “Oh,” she said. “Oh… Oh…Vince.” Her hands started shaking.
Gabriel balanced his cup on a rock, and gently took Snowfeather’s cup, setting it down next to his. He hugged her, feeling the wetness of her eyes against his neck. “I am so damn sorry. I’d been wondering about him ever since he dropped out of sight.”
“How? When?” She stood back, biting out the words, staring into her father’s dark eyes. Her own eyes were a mix of horror, anger, and grief. She was barely under control.
“He was killed before the treaty ratification vote. That’s why he never contacted you. Never got in touch. It was Berker’s doing. After you and Mom left me at Sandpoint for your girl talk visit with Aunt Mary, I took an encrypted call from Thurston Smith—he was calling from Wyoming. Evidently, the investigation by his old Committee on Terrorism had turned up a witness just before their inquiry was closed down by the new leadership. Well, this witness, after all this time, surfaced only last week. He called one of the former investigators and described the…killing. Seattle police went from there and located Vince’s remains. Eventually they called Thurston and he called me the same day. I was so sick. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Snowfeather’s eyes were deep hollows. “Somehow…on the ferry. You know, after I had just seen…what they had done to Senator McKernon. It hit me then…that maybe…just maybe… Oh, Dad!” She began weeping. “God damn them.”
“Yes, damn them. It was The Sisters for sure.” Gabriel put a gentle hand on his daughter’s cheek. “I know all too well how it can be, Princess. Suspicion is only a cloud. Doesn’t matter how bad think we feel when it’s based on just a suspicion. But the confirmed truth hits so much harder.” He held her hand, and turned to face the sunset over the trees, pulling her to his side. His voice was very soft. “Vincent’s remains were found buried in a South Seattle junkyard, just where the informant said they would be found. I didn’t get details.” He shook his head, turned to face his daughter, his eyes damp. “Forgive me, Princess, I didn’t want the damn details. I knew that Vince was a good young man…but…shit…” He waited a moment, listening to the suppressed sobs from his daughter. “That’s all I know.” Gabriel hugged his daughter. “That is all I can know.”
Snowfeather ran from him then, stumbling past the tent, breaking branches as she disappeared into the trees.
“God damn them!” Gabriel said.
——
Three hours passed. Sometimes Gabriel heard his daughter’s sobbing carried by the wind over the rustle of the pines. One time he heard his daughter’s anguished howl. It wounded his heart.
Eventually, Gabriel tried to busy himself with the camp, heating a pot of water, preparing a supper they probably would not touch. Then as the first signs of dusk cast deep shadows over the tent and he stirred the fire, he heard the snap of a twig behind him and the rustle of a jacket being adjusted.
Chapter 43
“Yes. Damn them.” Snowfeather echoed her father’s parting words. Gabriel turned to find his daughter standing behind him. She had composed herself. Her tears had dried; their faint traces streaked down her dusty cheeks.
“Hi,” Gabriel said softly.
“Hi,” his daughter said. “I knew Berker was lying about Vincent at the time,” she said. “That bitch, Tan, Berker, whatever her cursed name is—she came in, almost gloating. She tried to tell me Vince had found someone else—that he was going to LA. Horrid, horrid witch of a woman. Oh, Dad, I should have tried harder to contact him.” Snowfeather began weeping. Gabriel walked over and hugged her.
“It couldn’t have made any difference, Princess. He was dead the same night he went into that witches’ nest. I am still sick at heart. But it is over.”
Snowfeather cursed unintelligibly, her voice muffled against his coat.
“I’m just glad you got out when you did, Princess.”
She stood back from him, rubbing her eyes. “Oh Daddy. I need to walk.”
Gabriel nodded. “Let’s go up to that ridge. The sunset will be spectacular from there.”
They hiked in silence for ten minutes, the sun dropping lower, the shadows growing deeper along the forest floor. The ridge, a rocky outcropping higher than the surrounding trees, afforded a sweeping view of the Idaho-Montana border area—rugged, forested and still pristine. Two falcons circled while Snowfeather climbed a sloping rock to its highest point. She sat on the sun-warmed stone in the rapidly chilling air. Gabriel followed her in silence, stopping just below her perch.<
br />
“Dad, remember that conversation you and I had on campus before the Treaty vote?”
“How could I forget?”
“I really thought we had all earned this, Dad. Whatever bad happened was deserved. Like Karl Marx said, about breaking eggs to make an omelet. I didn’t stop to think about just how far that idea could take me. Good God I was dumb.”
“How could these people have ruined a good thing, so completely? Gaia was a noble idea. ‘Gaia’s Revenge?’ What the hell is that? These people are so screwed up. How does this even happen? Smart people get taken in every day, Princess. Every good movement can be hijacked.”
“But I’m beginning to think that Berker herself is actually…”
“Evil?”
“Do you think evil is real?”
“Not a doubt about it,” Gabriel said.
“I do, too…now.”
“Life deals us some hard lessons.”
Snowfeather picked up a rock and threw it over the hill. She stared at the sunset a moment longer, watching the color spread. “About my news… God, I wish Mom were here, too.”
“Can’t your news wait?”
“I better tell you, first.”
“Okay, I’m listening,” Gabriel said quietly, looking up.
There was another long pause while the colors in the sky deepened, catching more clouds; Snowfeather, a few feet away, was a dramatic silhouette against that complicated sky.
“I think I’ve found my calling.”
“And?”
“I’m going to be studying for a…ministry.”
Gabriel took just a fraction of a second to absorb the news…then he exploded. “Hold your horses,” he said before he could stop himself. “You said ministry?” Gabriel climbed up next to Snowfeather.
Without turning from the sunset, she felt for and held her father’s hand. “Dad, I’d already made up my mind and now I was just reminded that evil is real. Do you know what that feels like from the inside?” She looked at Gabriel’s stricken face. “I’ve touched evil from the inside. Oh God, Dad, I feel so dirty.”
“Oh boy.” Gabriel’s sigh was like a very old tree in the wind. He sat very still for a very long time. “I understand and I don’t understand. But maybe you could deal with this in a different way?”
“My calling, Dad.”
“Oh boy,” he repeated. “Alice won’t get it at all. You know what she will say.”
“She can’t be against the church. She goes…”
“I know, I know,” Gabriel said. “She goes to church. Your mother is a Roman Catholic and she put up with me, so I guess that makes her a saint. Above all, Alice is a mother. Your mother. I can hear her in my head, can’t you? ‘I can’t hear of this! You, my only daughter. You would turn your back on family life?”
Snowfeather smiled at Gabriel’s spot-on imitation; then she bristled as the meaning penetrated. “You know how I love Mom, but I’ve about had it with her talk about her precious bloodline!”
“Please, please, cut your Mom some slack. Isn’t this is about our people? About the tribes, the long line of us all the way back? It’s about all our hopes for you. We injuns are fading out, Princess.”
The little anger storm passed and Snowfeather wilted. “Oh, Dad. After Vincent… I just couldn’t.”
“Mom will never tell you. You were too young to see it, but she was so deeply hurt when she found out she couldn’t bear any more children after you. And you should see her face glow when she talks about having grandchildren someday.”
“I’m so sorry, but this feels like wartime. Mom’s hopes and expectations need to be on hold. And, God, Dad, Vince may as well have been dead for years, so much has happened to all of us, but to me it feels like now. More than ever before in my life, I have to do something. Now.”
“I know, I know. But this plan of yours, it’s a huge thing you’re talking about. …A huge step.”
“Hey, you weren’t thinking this is going to be like being a catholic priest or nun or something?’
“Oh?”
“It’s not like that at all.”
“But Fred….”
“Fred Loud Owl got me admitted to a special underground resistance training center. It takes place at a seminary. They’re looking for Native Americans. Yes, it gets major support from the Catholic Church, but it’s also supported by a lot of other denominations and secular groups. It’s a consortium…a conspiracy—The Human Conspiracy.”
“You’re won’t be ordained, then?”
Snowfeather hesitated. “I’m not sure about that. But I will have a new identity, ordained or not, whatever it takes. The idea is to field-train a cadre of dedicated and well-vetted voices who can speak out against the G-A-N with moral authority. So there is an oath… It’s sort of like the military, sort of like the clergy.”
Gabriel was confused, frustrated and irritated; then he felt a crushing surge of weariness. He struggled for the right words. Too much to absorb, he thought. “You know what? I’m so tired, Princess, I can’t think straight tonight, let alone talk intelligently.”
“Can we talk in the morning?”
He nodded. “Sure. Let’s go back to camp. It’s getting dark.”
“I think I need to stay up here.”
He nodded. “Take my flashlight, then.” Gabriel pulled his hand lantern from its holster and gave it to her. Then he turned and slid down the rock.
“We can talk at breakfast, okay, Dad?”
“Sure.” Gabriel’s face was turned away. He waved to his daughter over his shoulder, his chest aching as if a deep weight had lodged there.
Gabriel was spent, having hit his personal wall, like the long distant runner who collapses on the trail. How much more can I do? He thought. My family is scattered to the winds. My people are betrayed…once again. My country has surrendered to a coalition of witches and compliant fools. Forgive me, Lord, how can I save my country, if I can’t even save my family?
Gabriel stood up; he was panting, his hands shaking with anger and frustration.
Eventually, Gabriel sat on a log and stared up through the trees as the stars began to emerge. And he remembered a camp long ago when he was alone with his father. “Remember who you are, my son. We are old, as old as our oldest ancestors all the way back to the Great Spirit. We are here because we refuse to go away, refuse to be something less. My fathers are still with me all the way back to the beginning. It will be the same with you. I promise…”
Chapter 44
Snowfeather was alone on the rock above the camp. She sat very still and quiet for another few minutes. The sky turned deep purple. The two raptors she had noticed earlier, silhouetted against the deep sky, still rode an updraft. Raptors had been swimming in the air over that Arizona canyon, too. Her mind ran back to Fred Owl and his Spirit Journey for her.
It was just too much to tell her father, Snowfeather thought. The journey came first, then much hard work and study. It had changed her.
She found her mind running back to the beginning of her Journey in the desert under the guidance of Fred Loud Owl. She had not yet exorcised the horrors of Senator McKernon’s assassination and the relentless anxiety of her bus ride out of peril from Seattle. That temporary refuge with Professor Kahn and his son was over all too soon. Snowfeather’s memories began parading across her mind, vivid as noon on a hot day. Time passed. Snowfeather noticed that the moon had risen and that, directly overhead, several stars had emerged. She adjusted herself on the rock, still faintly warm. Cradling her hands behind her neck, she watched the sky come alive with lights, and her mind drifted, her memories of the Spirit Journey came fast and vivid, like a waking dream, unfolding in real time.
——
Loud Owl was standing at the bottom of an immense sandstone wall, holding a worn leather pouch he had pulled from the back of the battered pickup.
“Do I really look like Mom did?” Snowfeather had asked.
“Oh yeah. I know your mother and father very well,�
� he said. “Ever since we were kids. I knew your grandfather Tall Bear. You have his eyes.” It was early spring and the scattered cactus and grasses were faintly moist as shadow claimed the lower levels of the canyon. “Your provisions are very minimal,” he said. “Mostly water and a notebook.”
“Notebook?”
“Yes. This is your Spirit Journey and you should record it as you gain insight. Much of the wisdom of our peoples was lost because of the fact we didn’t have notebooks.” He smiled.
“And the fading memories of old men?”
Loud Owl grinned. “That, too.” He pulled a battered pipe from somewhere and lit it with a match that seemed to magically appear in his gnarled hand. “Sit with me,” he said, dropping gracefully to the dirt in a squatting position. Snowfeather followed.
“Here is the deal,” he said. “You have a private journey to take. I will not be going along. You will record parts of this journey and I will never read your account. In the evening, if you are ready to have a supper, I will find you, wherever you are, and we will share something…in silence. This will go on for three nights or thirty nights—however long it takes, until your journey is complete.”
“How will I know that?”
“You will. I did when your great grandfather Fat Bear brought me here. We all do.”
“May I ask a question?”
“Afterwards. Only then. Now—” He paused to relight his pipe. “This is your tutorial. You need to remember only three things. They are the three intuitions. The intuition of the spirit presence, the intuition of deep unity, and the intuition of deep connection. You will find these on your journey, they will take shape for you, and your life direction will either change or not change.” He smiled. “End of tutorial.” Loud Owl stood.
A minute later, Snowfeather stared at the retreating form of the weathered pickup, then, in the silence and growing shadows, she picked up her pouch and began walking into the canyon.
Snowfeather walked for two hours until the canyon ran out.
The early evening sunlight was intense, and the earth itself seemed sunburned. Pausing to sample the water in her pouch, she noticed a possible path leading up a rocky wash to the canyon rim. It was a series of five sandstone ledges, linked by almost imperceptible ridges under the brush that, improbably, seemed to cling to bare rock. She removed her belt from her jeans and fashioned a shoulder sling for the pouch.
Gabriel's Stand Page 22