The Ghost Walker

by Margaret Coel

  She walked into her private office and greeted her client in as cheery a voice as she could muster. After depositing her brown wool coat and black bag over the coat tree, she settled into her swivel chair and withdrew the agreement from the briefcase.

  “That bastard gonna let me and the kids have the house?” The Arapaho woman looked middle-aged; her face was leathered and wrinkled, her lips were pulled into a tight line, and her black hair hanging over the yellow parka was streaked with gray. She was thirty, the mother of two kids, about to be divorced, and furious at the dreams crumbled at her feet. Vicky recognized the signs.

  Patiently Vicky began to explain the different points in the agreement. Yes, Mary would have the house, but only until the kids became emancipated, at which time the house would be sold, the profits divided between the parties. It was a small house in Lander; the profits wouldn’t be much. The good news was that Herman had been working for the state highway department nearly two months, and he could pay child support.

  “As long as he has a job,” Mary interrupted.

  “Yes, as long as he has a job.” That was the problem. Jobs for Indians had a way of vanishing overnight. If there was anything the Hinono eino needed, it was jobs.

  Mary said, “That bastard should pay for all the times he drunk up everything and didn’t come home, and me and the kids went hungry.”

  Vicky went over the points again. This wasn’t about revenge; why was it always about revenge? This was about getting the best deal possible so that Mary and the kids could move into a new life. Vicky could tell by the look of resignation creeping across the other woman’s face that she was beginning to understand. It was another thirty minutes before Mary got to her feet, leaned over the desk, and signed the agreement.

  An hour later, Vicky guided the Bronco up the winding, snow-glazed road in Sage Canyon. She could feel the rear wheels slipping, and she steered toward the center, halfway between the jagged boulders and the drop-off into Sage Creek. The sense of place flooded over her. She hadn’t driven here since the day she’d taken the two kids and fled down the canyon like a madwoman. Yet it was familiar: the rock formations washed in sunlight, the snow like downy feathers on the branches of the ponderosas, the soft mountain air.

  She turned onto the white road that led to Lean Bear’s ranch and hit the brake pedal. The Bronco slid in a half circle before stopping at the metal gate blocking the road. It was over five feet high, with three horizontal bars, and it hung between the posts of the barbed-wire fence Ben had set out the first summer they were married.

  Vicky slammed out of the Bronco. The only sound in the mountain stillness was that of the breeze hissing in the trees. She walked along the gate, running a gloved hand over the top bar, her boots sinking into the powdery snow. At one end, metal hinges held the gate against the fence post; at the other, a large chain, secured by a combination lock. Squinting into the sun, she studied the green house that squatted in the meadow a short distance beyond. She could make out what looked like fresh tire tracks leading to the house.

  Ben hadn’t mentioned a gate, but no gate would have stopped him. He must have climbed over, which was what she was now contemplating. She’d climbed over fences and gates before, but not in an attorney suit. She gripped the middle rail, feeling the bite of the icy metal through her gloves, and was about to pull herself through the rails when she heard the distant thrum of an engine.

  She walked back alongside the Bronco to the road. Perhaps Susan was coming, or one of the three white men. The noise swelled into the quiet. Then there was a momentary lull and a ratchety gearing down.

  As she waited for what sounded like a truck to come around the bend, a crack appeared in her memory: She was driving the old pickup up the canyon and over the narrow dirt road that wound to the upper pasture, the high meadow surrounded by mountain peaks, with a creek purling among the aspens and willows. It was where Ben pastured the sheep in the summer, a cool oasis even on burning days, with grass the color of emeralds. She had stashed a basket of fried chicken and bread and jam, along with a thermos of hot coffee, in the bed of the pickup. Susan lay in a blanket in a cardboard box on the seat beside her.

  Ben heard the pickup’s engine and came galloping across the meadow, head bent low over the neck of the mare, like a warrior in the Old Time. He dismounted by the cabin he’d outfitted as a bunkhouse next to the old barn, and, with the mare grazing nearby, they sat on the blanket she’d spread over the grass and ate their picnic. And they’d made love there in the grass, with the baby asleep in the box beside them.

  Vicky stamped her feet hard into the snow. These were not memories she wanted. Suddenly a gray truck rounded the bend and headed downhill toward her. Then it skidded sideways into the turn, spraying snow as the brakes grabbed. It was still rolling when the driver, a white man somewhere in his twenties, hopped out. He had on blue jeans, a jean jacket with a sheepskin collar, dark leather gloves, and hiking boots. Wisps of blond hair hung out from his blue cap. There was a swagger in his shoulders as he came toward her.

  “You lookin’ for somethin’?”

  Vicky sensed the charge of hostility in the air. “I’m looking for Susan Holden,” she said in her courtroom voice. “I’m her mother. Who are you?”

  The young man seemed to consider this a moment, then shrugged. “A friend.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Don’t have the faintest.” Another shrug.

  “I’d like you to open the gate so I can see if she’s at the house,” Vicky said.

  “She ain’t at the house.”

  “I’m not here to play games, Mr. . . .” Vicky waited for him to fill in the blank. He said nothing.

  “Whatever your name is. I’m here to see my daughter, and I don’t intend to leave until you tell me where she is.”

  The young man hooked his gloved thumbs into his jeans pockets and regarded her through lowered eyelids. A chill crept down her spine. She was alone with this man, who might or might not be a friend of her daughter’s, off a mountain road that might or might not see another vehicle before spring, and she had issued an ultimatum.

  “Susan ain’t here,” he said after a long moment. “She probably went into Riverton to get some groceries.”

  Vicky looked past him, beyond the gate. What he said was not outside the realm of possibility, although Susan could also be at the house. Vicky knew she was not about to get by this white man who had planted himself like a chunk of granite between her and the gate. Her uneasiness grew. It bordered on fear. Who were these white men her daughter had brought home?

  “When will Susan be back?”

  “Later,” the white man said. “Indian time.”

  Vicky drew in a long breath and started past him for the Bronco, the uneasiness approaching a kind of panic as she turned her back. She forced herself to take a deep breath. Why did she think he might grab her? Other than surliness, he hadn’t shown any aggression. Still, she felt her muscles tensing involuntarily. If he grabbed her, she would fight like a mountain lion.

  She flung open the Bronco door and slid onto the seat, slamming the door behind her. She felt the anger rising in her face like flames in a campfire. Backing the Bronco to where the man stood, thumbs still hooked in his jeans pockets, she rolled down the window.

  “I’ll be back to see my daughter,” she said. “Six-thirty this evening. White time.” She stepped hard on the accelerator, and the Bronco churned backward through the snow. Then she shifted into forward and squealed onto the canyon road.

  9

  As soon as Father John reached his office, he put in a call to the Provincial. No answer. An hour later he tried again, this time connecting with a young Scholastic in the Provincial’s outer, outer office. The Scholastic delivered a lecture, the gist of it being that the Provincial was a good shepherd concerned about the well-being of his flock at St. Francis Mission. Unfortunately the Provincial was tied up in meetings from now until the end of time and could not be disturbed. Father
John could be assured everything would be done, however. . . .

  Father John hung up.

  No matter how much confidence the bishop’s delegate and the corporate lawyer had exuded yesterday, Father John knew they couldn’t shut down the mission overnight. Nevertheless, the wheels were in motion. He didn’t have much time to try to stop them.

  And there was the missing young Arapaho. Father John had found himself wide awake in the middle of the night wondering what Marcus had gotten himself into this time. What was it Banner had said? Kids gave you gray hair and kept you awake nights. That was the truth. How much worse was it when they were your own? What he kept coming back to, what bothered him the most, was that while Marcus might be irresponsible and unreliable, might take foolish chances and look for trouble, he would never abandon his old people. It was not the Arapaho Way. If Marcus didn’t visit the Depperts, it was because he couldn’t.

  * * *

  Father John picked up the receiver and tapped the number for Riverton Memorial Hospital. He had met the director a number of times, and he asked to be put through to her office. After a few seconds, she was on the line and he asked whether Marcus Deppert had been treated during the last week. She put him on hold. He waited to the purr of canned music that made him long for an aria—for real music. Finally she was back: Sorry, Father. No one by that name had been seen last week.

  He hung up and tried the Lander Hospital where he knew one of the staff doctors. It was the same routine: question, canned music, answer. Marcus had not been seen there either.

  He replaced the receiver, feeling an odd mixture of relief and concern. At least Marcus wasn’t sick or hurt. But where was he? Maybe he’d returned home, in which case Ike might have seen him. The problem was, Ike’s house was not one of the few on the reservation that had a phone. Father John called Jake Littlehorse’s garage, then the gas station at Fort Washakie, and the little coffee shop at Ethete, leaving messages for Ike if he happened by.

  Thirty minutes later, Ike returned the call. Easter Egg Village was nice and quiet, he reported. First time in weeks he and his wife were getting a good night’s sleep. As far as he was concerned, Marcus and his drunken friends could stay away forever.

  Father John replaced the receiver, the heavy feeling settling over his shoulders like a leaden cloak. Nobody had seen Marcus Deppert for more than a week. And there was the frozen, lonely body in the ditch. Until Marcus showed up, or the body was found, Father John knew they would remain connected in his head. He wished he hadn’t promised Joe and Deborah he’d keep the police out of it, even though he understood their worry. The last time the police started looking into Marcus’s life, he went to jail for three years.

  In midmorning, Father John pulled on his parka and cowboy hat and walked outside. Father Peter was just coming up the front stairs, leaning onto the metal railing, setting one foot next to the other on each stair. The morning sun splashed across the mission grounds and warmed the air. On the western horizon, the Wind River Mountains stood out in relief against the light blue sky. The sounds of children at recess floated over from the schoolyard.

  “‘There is, sir, an aery of children,’” the old priest said, grinning.

  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Father John said as he held the front door open. He pulled the guess off the top of his head. Once in a while, he guessed right.

  Father Peter laughed out loud and shook his head. “Oh, my, my,” he said when he reached the top stair. “I’m afraid you must take your place at the bottom of the class, my boy. It is with despair I contemplate your knowledge of the great bard.”

  Father John thought about asking where, in the mighty canon of Shakespeare, the quote might be found, then dismissed the idea. The old priest, like any Jesuit teacher, would tell him to look it up. “’Tis not the will I lack,” he said.

  Father Peter patted his arm as he stepped inside. “And that, my boy, is not Shakespeare.”

  Father John sprinted down the stairs and out to Circle Drive. He was grateful to the old man who had welcomed him here after his career had careened off track and no superior at any Jesuit high school or college would return his call. He had left Grace House with the memory of whiskey still on his tongue and flown into Riverton, at the edge of the world. “You can begin again here,” Father Peter had told him.

  Close to where Circle Drive emptied into Seventeen-Mile Road stood the elementary school, a pile of cement blocks that probably resembled every other BIA school on every reservation in the West. Except for the entry. The Arapahos had insisted the entry resemble a tipi, with the door facing the east and the rising sun, like the dwellings in the Old Time.

  He cut across the school grounds, following a path the kids had probably trampled earlier. It looked as if all the kids were on the playground. A group of boys, sixth-graders by the size of them, ran back and forth along the mesh fence, kicking up clouds of snow. One of the boys, Howard Bushy, spun around and darted past the others. A successful feint. He was hugging a basketball.

  All of a sudden, he stopped. “Hi, Father,” he called, running toward the fence. The other boys followed. They were all looking into the far distance. It was disrespectful for a child to look directly at an adult.

  “What’re you playing?” Father John crossed through the snow to the fence.

  “Basketball,” Howard said. His blue parka sported a gray iron-on patch across the front. Both sleeves were frayed. He had pulled a knit cap down around his ears, but his cheeks had turned rust in the outdoors.

  “That a fact.” Father John smiled. These Indian kids were great. No court, no hoops, just a basketball and a snow-packed playground. They couldn’t dribble in the snow, but they could run and dodge and pass.

  “Me and the other guys, we want to ask you somethin’.” Howard wrapped one mittened hand through the wires, gripping the basketball with the other. His eyes looked beyond Father John.

  “Shoot.”

  “Well, we was wonderin’ . . .” Howard turned toward the other boys, as if for confirmation. They gathered closer, stomping their feet in the snow, looking down. “We was wonderin’,” Howard plunged on, “if we could use the old gym after school.”

  The old gym was in Eagle Hall. Father John had kept it padlocked the last couple of winters. It was a struggle just to heat and electrify the meeting rooms in Eagle Hall, as well as the church, offices, and priests’ residence. Every month it was a toss-up which bills he paid. This month he’d paid the telephone company. Next month he hoped to pay something on the heat and electric bill.

  “We need a place to practice since they won’t let us use the gym anymore.” Howard tilted his head toward the school.

  Father John got the picture. The BIA had cut back on funds, and frills such as afterschool activities for the kids were the first to go. But where would he find enough money to heat the gym even a few hours a day? And he couldn’t turn a bunch of kids loose without supervision; they would need a coach. What’s more, if they stayed after school to play basketball, they would miss the bus, which meant he would have to figure out some way to get them home. The problems were mighty.

  “Listen, kids . . .” he began haltingly, aware they were waiting for an answer. He hated to let them down.

  Disappointment descended over the young faces like a roiling cloud of dust. It would be better to tell them the truth now, rather than later, but a part of him persisted in believing in the little miracles that sometimes occur when everything seems impossible. He said, “Let me see what I can work out. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Howard shrugged. The kids turned back toward the schoolyard, kicking at the slabs of snow. A couple of them looked back and waved as if to wave him away.

  Father John followed the fence to the white stucco tipi, the laughing, yelling voices of the children behind him. Howard and the others needed a place to play some real basketball and a coach to develop their skills, get them ready for basketball at Indian High School in a few years. Of all the problems, finding
a coach would be the hardest.

  For a second he flirted with the idea of coaching them himself. He liked coaching. He did a pretty good job with the Eagles baseball team, which went 22-3 last summer. But basketball? He’d only played one year at Boston College Prep, after the coach, who was also the math teacher, had pulled him aside and explained that any kid over six feet tall had a duty to play basketball. And if he didn’t play, he could expect an F in math. It was another two years before Father John had topped out at almost six-feet-four, but by then he’d proved his talent on the pitcher’s mound, and, he suspected, the baseball coach had warned his colleague against any more creative recruiting. Baseball was his sport. He could have pitched in the majors—that was a fantasy he sometimes allowed himself. But then, he wouldn’t have been who he was.

  The irony struck him as he swung open the glass door of the tipi and stepped onto the concrete floor. He was trying to figure out how to start a basketball program when, at the same time, two fancy suits were plotting to shut down the mission. He made his way along the empty school corridor, between walls draped in papers covered with crayon drawings and numbers and letters and gold stars. There was a faint odor of barbecue sauce.

  The corridor led into the cafeteria, a spacious square with rows of tan formica tables glowing under fluorescent lights. Behind the metal counter at the far end, Loretta Dolby was stirring something in a large pot. The smell of barbecue sauce was so thick he could almost taste it.