Another ten miles and he saw the clump of buildings on a rise ahead: white house, storage shed, pitched-roof barn. He took a right, bouncing across the rutted, muddy yard, and stopped in front of the house a couple of feet from the stoop. Slowly he unfolded his long legs and let himself out. He stood by the pickup, waiting. If Gus was ready to see him, someone would come out.
The door opened. Theresa Iron Bear, a small woman with white hair in thick braids that hung down the front of a red blouse, stood in the opening. “Come on in, Father,” she called.
“How are you, Grandmother?” he said, using the polite term. Removing his cowboy hat, he stepped into the rectangular living room. A table lamp cast a dim circle of light over the upholstered chairs, sofa, and television arranged around the Indian rug in the center of the linoleum floor. The odor of burned sage permeated the air.
“Have a seat, Father.” The old woman gestured toward the sofa. Then, disappearing down a hallway that led to the bedrooms, she called out, “I’ll get Gus.”
Father John sat down and waited, turning his hat between his knees a few minutes before tossing it on the cushion beside him. Beyond the window on the other side of the room, the plains, tinged with green, rolled like waves into the sky. The clouds had turned black, filled with rain.
A couple of minutes passed before the stooped figure of the medicine man emerged from the hallway. He looked older than Father John remembered—drawn and frail, dark eyes sunken beneath the curve of his brow. Father John got to his feet. “It’s good to see you, Grandfather.”
He waited until Gus had settled into the worn-looking chair by the lamp before resuming his own seat. For one crazy moment—the way the light washed over the old man’s forehead and cheekbones—Gus resembled a spirit. An untrue person, the Arapahos would say.
After the usual exchange of pleasantries—the rain, the crafts fair; it was never polite to come to the point right away—Gus said, “You come about Duncan, didn’t you?”
Father John shifted forward on the sofa and clasped his hands between his knees. “What can you tell me about him, Grandfather?”
The old man cleared his throat and rearranged his slight frame in the chair. “The kid drove into the yard. Stumbled out of the truck, crying like a woman. I says to myself, he’s drunk, but he was sober as the day the Creator give him breath. He was like a wild horse that finally give up and let himself be led into the corral. A wild one that got sick of his wildness.”
Gus took a gulp of air, his eyes turned away, remembering. “Kid says to me, ‘Help me, Grandfather.’ Says, ‘I wanna get off the white road and on the Indian road.’ Says, ‘I need the spiritual power to keep on livin’.’ My heart went out to him. I said, you take instructions, learn the right ways, then you can go on a vision quest to the rock carvings where the spirits are. I told him the spirits would give him the power he needed. So he started taking instructions. Moved out here and bunked in the barn.”
“When was that, Grandfather?” It had started to rain. Drops of water speckled the windowpane.
“Three weeks to the day before he was killed.” The old man’s lips worked around the words. “It wasn’t long enough, but he was in a big hurry to go on the quest. Summer isn’t come yet, I told him. That’s the best time for a vision quest. But he’d been with white folks that want everything right now. Don’t have patience to wait for the right time. He had soul sickness.”
The quiet lengthened between them, like the gray daylight creeping through the window and mingling with the lamplight. After a long moment Gus started talking again. “Go to Bear Lake, I told him. Take your pipe and some sage. Cleanse yourself in the lake and climb up the path to the ledge below the spirit rock. You won’t have nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Just smoke the pipe and pray to the spirit in the rock. You must make yourself ready, I say, in case the spirits decide to come and give you power.”
Gus lifted his head and stared at the ceiling. The rain beat hard on the roof. “After he went to Bear Lake, I heard the first thunder, before the rains started. Means a long life, when you hear the first thunder. I figured it was a good sign. Duncan would’ve heard it, too. But the thunder got louder, crashing around the sky, real angry. I knew the spirits was angry ’cause the boy wasn’t ready yet. I let him go too soon. I knew they was gonna test him. He was supposed to be patient. Be accepting. Keep praying. But he wasn’t strong enough. He got scared and tried to get away.”
Suddenly the old man dropped his head into his hands and began sobbing quietly. The thin shoulders twitched against the back of the chair. After a moment he looked up. “The spirits could’ve come like eagles, swooping down on him, or badgers or deer running after him, or rattlers. They was testing him.” His voice was so soft, Father John could barely hear the words. “Or maybe the thunder keeper came. Thunder is strong when it gets angry. It can kill.”
Father John looked away. This was not the information he’d hoped for. He could imagine the white detective’s expression when Gus explained that Duncan Grover couldn’t have committed suicide. He was killed by the spirits. Ironically both the medicine man and the detective had come to the same conclusion: the kid had hurled himself off the cliff.
The old man was watching him, waiting for his reaction. “Grandfather,” he began, taking a different tack, “Ben thinks Duncan was running from something. Did he mention any trouble in Denver? Say that somebody was following him?”
The old man blinked into the lamplight and shook his head. “Maybe Duncan was the one following somebody.”
Father John could hear the sound of his own breathing. It would explain why Grover had run to the reservation, instead of to Oklahoma, where he had family. He was following somebody.
“What makes you think so, Grandfather?” he said.
“Three days ago the phone rang.” The old man shifted his gaze sideways to the phone on top of the TV stand. “A girl. Says she has to talk to Duncan. I told her Duncan wasn’t back from Bear Lake.” The old man’s eyes clouded over. “Didn’t know he wasn’t ever coming back,” he said. Then, his voice stronger: “The girl says have him call me at the convenience store.”
Convenience store. There must be a half-dozen convenience stores in the area. He could visit them all, but who would he ask for? A girl who had wanted to talk to a murdered man? She didn’t come forward when Duncan’s body was found, or Banner would have mentioned her. Whoever she was, Father John decided, she didn’t want to get involved.
He said, “Duncan ever mention her?”
“Not in words.” Gus shook his head. “But I been doin’ some thinking. I think that’s why he wanted to get on the straight road, ’cause there was a woman that didn’t want him otherwise.” The old man held his gaze a long moment. “Duncan said he’d been stayin’ in Lander before he moved his bedroll into the barn. I been thinking. Maybe he was staying with her.”
“Did you tell this to Detective Slinger?” Father John suspected the answer.
“Told the detective about the spirits and Duncan’s vision quest. He didn’t wanna hear any of it.” A kind of hopelessness came into the old man’s eyes. “I’m afraid it’s my fault the boy’s dead.”
Father John got to his feet and set his arm on the old man’s shoulder. “Listen to me, Grandfather. It is not your fault.”
Gus tilted his head back and looked at him with a mixture of grief and trust. He nodded.
Father John thanked the old man and let himself out. He checked his Timex. One-thirty. Another hour and he could be at Bear Lake. Before he paid a visit to Detective Slinger, he wanted to see the sacred place where Duncan Grover had been murdered.
10
Leaving the Wind River Reservation.
Father John passed the sign and continued north on Highway 287 through a landscape of flat-topped buttes that glowed pink in the aftermath of the rain. The sounds of Faust—“De l’enfer qui vient”—mingled with the hum of the Toyota’s engine, the thump of the tires. He crossed Bear Creek, Indian Meado
ws passing outside the window. A few more miles, and he turned west off the highway and started up a narrow road into the foothills, the Toyota straining against the climb. Black clouds still formed over the mountains, threatening more rain.
More rain. That meant a day or two before he could call another practice for the St. Francis Eagles, the baseball team he’d started seven years ago, that first summer at the mission, when he’d needed a baseball team to coach. Only three practices so far this season. The kids were looking good: Chester Wallowing Bull sprinting for a grounder, sliding through the mud, coming up grinning, the ball gloved. Joseph Antelope covering first like a pro. The kid’s dad, Eldon, had played first base in the minors twenty years ago, and he’d agreed to help coach this season.
Father John felt the old excitement at the prospect of the new season, and yet—Duncan Grover was still on his mind. Alone in the mountains, on a cliff, hungry, thirsty. Lightning flashing, thunder erupting. Thunder kills. But it wasn’t thunder that had killed Grover. It was the boss. There’s gonna be more murders. The words cut through his thoughts like a harsh, dissonant melody.
Ahead, the road emptied into a high mountain valley, ringed with slopes of pines, topped by red sandstone cliffs—the place of the spirits. Bear Lake lay ahead, placid and self-contained in the gray afternoon light. He came around a bend and pulled off into a clearing near a clump of willows. In the distance was the sound of thunder, as crisp as a drumbeat.
It might have been here, he thought, getting out of the pickup, that Duncan Grover had waded into the lake, hands grasping at the willows for support, feet sinking into the sandy bottom. He had cleansed himself in preparation to meet the spirits.
Father John tilted his head back and scanned the red sandstone cliffs above. The spirits don’t show themselves to everybody, the elders had told him. Only to those who are worthy.
It was a couple of minutes before he saw the petroglyph: a large, white humanlike figure carved onto the flat face of a red sandstone cliff. The guardian—the keeper—of the valley. In the Old Time, an elder had once explained, the spirit had kept the deer and sheep in the valley so the people could find food. Now the spirit protected the valley from harm.
Father John walked along the shore looking for the path up the mountain to the petroglyph. He’d gone about fifty yards when he spotted the depression in the ground, a mud-filled gully that meandered upward through the pines. The thunder crashed again, shaking the ground. There was a flash of lightning above the cliffs.
He started uphill, walking fast. He didn’t want to be on the mountain during a storm. The path lay in shadow, disappearing at times, then reappearing. Pine branches grabbed at his jacket and scratched at his hands and face.
He’d gained about three hundred feet in elevation, he guessed, when he stopped. His boots were caked with mud. He gulped at the thin air, his heart pounding against his ribs. Bear Lake floated in the shadows below, and on the cliffs across the valley, he could see other white figures emerging out of the red sandstone. Symbols of other spirit guardians: the deer, keeper of the animals; the eagle, keeper of the wingeds; the thunder, keeper of the atmosphere. In the winter, the elder had said, you could hear the spirits chipping out their own reflections in the cliffs.
He resumed the climb, pacing himself now. The path was steep, and he had to dig his boots into the soft earth to keep from sliding backward. His calf muscles protested, and his breath came in ragged, painful spasms that punctuated the sound of the wind in the pines. At an outcropping of boulders, he stopped again and looked up.
He could see the petroglyph clearly: squared body, arms extended in a kind of blessing. There were three fingers on each hand, three toes on each foot. An elaborate headdress fanned around the squared head. Large, round eyes looked out from the masked face. Below the petroglyph was a rock ledge that jutted from the cliff like the proscenium of a stage.
He took in another gulp of air and started climbing up the boulder field, pulling himself hand over hand, jamming his boots into the cracks between the large rocks to keep from falling backward. Finally he hoisted himself onto the ledge. He’d been climbing for over an hour.
The valley spread below, nearly lost in the blue-black shadows creeping down the mountainsides. A sense of peace came over him, the peace Duncan Grover must have felt, he thought, as he’d lifted his pipe to the four directions and asked the spirits for the power to change his life. The same prayer he himself had made during his own retreat in Boston two years ago, he realized.
He moved along the edge, his eyes sweeping over the drop-off, searching for the place where Duncan had fallen. On the far side of the ledge, the boulder field sloped onto the top of a perpendicular rock wall that dropped a couple hundred feet into the trees. Detective Slinger was right. If Grover had accidentally stepped off the ledge, the boulder field would have stopped his fall. He would have had to take a running jump to fly out over the field and fall down the wall.
The boss killed him. Father John crouched down, keeping his gaze on the wall, trying to picture exactly how it had happened. Grover, praying, smoking his pipe. Semiconscious, perhaps, waiting for the spirits to come in a vision.
Instead, two men climb onto the ledge. The boss approaches, strikes him with a pipe. Then drags his body to the far end and hurls him over the ledge. A strong man, the boss. Ben Holden said that Grover looked in good shape.
As he stood up, Father John saw a flash of motion, like that of a deer or coyote darting through the trees on the far side of the valley. He kept his eyes on the spot. There was a clap of thunder, another bolt of lightning, and he saw the figure of a man running across an opening, then he was gone. Father John had the odd sense that the person he’d seen across the valley had also seen him.
He climbed off the ledge and started down through the boulder field, leaning into the rocks, grabbing the sharp edges for support. The air was hazy with rain. Thunder rolled across the peaks, like a giant coughing himself awake.
He reached the base of the field and started walking down the path, the thunder following, crashing behind him. Lightning split the sky, and the first drops of rain stung his face and hands. Another possibility worked its way into his consciousness: maybe somebody didn’t want Duncan Grover in this place, on the ledge, close to the petroglyph. And maybe the man across the valley just now hadn’t wanted him in this place either.
He rejected the idea almost as it formed. People came to the valley all the time. They drove up the road, stopped at the lake, stared up at the cliffs hoping for a glimpse of the spirits. Why would anyone kill Duncan Grover for coming here?
By the time he reached the Toyota, the rain was hard and cold, the thunder more insistent. A streak of lightning was so bright that for a second it seemed as if the sun had suddenly broken through. His jacket was soaked; even his shirt clung to his skin.
He drove back down the mountains, threading his way through streams washing over the road. He knew what had happened to Grover: it was as clear as a vision. But some of what he knew he couldn’t talk about. He was going to have to find another way to convince a white detective in Lander that Grover hadn’t killed himself. Somebody had hurled him off the ledge.
It was dark when Father John turned into the mission. The rain had stopped a few miles north of Riverton, but gray fog had pressed down on the highway, swallowing up the remaining daylight. The street lamps around Circle Drive sent wan circles of light over the grounds. He parked next to the dark sedan in front of the administration building. A parishioner to see Father Ryan, he thought.
As he started up the front steps, a dark-haired woman in a red raincoat burst through the door, weaving against the railing, nearly stumbling on the steps. He reached out to steady her, but she ducked past and kept going.
“Wait a minute,” he called, starting after her. She was already at the sedan, flinging open the door, folding herself inside.
He caught the door and held it open against her efforts to yank it shut. “Let me go!”
she screamed up at him. Tears ran down her cheeks; green and black smudges rimmed her eyes. She was probably about thirty, and beautiful, he thought, despite the anguish in her face.
“Can I help you?” He made his voice calm.
She was still looking at him, blinking with comprehension. Her nostrils flared in anger. “You’re Father O’Malley,” she said.
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” She pulled at the door, but he held on to it. “Let me go.”
“Tell me what happened. Who are you?”
She kept her hand on the handle. “Mary Ann Williams. Remember the name, Father O’Malley, because you’re going to hear it again. You and Father Ryan are going to pay for what you’ve done.”
“What’s this all about?” he said, but he was talking to himself. The door shut, the engine turned over, and the sedan lurched backward, then forward onto Circle Drive. Gravel sprayed his hands and face. The car sped toward Seventeen Mile Road, flashing past the grove of cottonwoods, and then it was gone.
He whirled around and went inside to find Don Ryan.
11
Father John strode down the corridor lined with portraits of the early Jesuits of St. Francis Mission, faces set in certitude, eyes solemn behind rimless glasses. The far door was open. His assistant stood at the window, looking out into the dim light, one hand braced against the frame.
“What’s going on?” Father John stopped in the doorway.
The other priest remained motionless: there was only the smallest twitch of a muscle beneath his blue polo shirt. Finally he walked over to the desk. He kept his eyes straight ahead. “Just finished a counseling session,” he said, sitting down, methodically rearranging a stack of file folders.
The Thunder Keeper Page 6
