The Lost Bird

by Margaret Coel

  Suddenly she spotted the thin silver pole glinting at the edge of the moonlight. She tapped on the brake and turned onto the gravel road. Another half mile, and she was parking in front of a frame house that rose like a small butte out of the dirt yard.

  She rapped at the door, hugging her black bag to her chest against the cold snap of the wind. “It’s Vicky,” she called, knowing Aunt Rose would have heard the scrunch of gravel, the hum of the engine in the night.

  The door slid inward and an elderly woman with a round, fleshy face and narrow, dark eyes stood in the flickering light of a television. Two fleshy arms reached out for her. Vicky could sense her own thinness in the older woman’s embrace. Then she felt herself being pulled inside, as if her aunt wanted to protect her from the cold wind, or whatever had brought her to the door.

  Vicky clung to the older woman. Everything about her was familiar: the blue-print housedress, the black hair streaked with gray, smelling of wildflowers and wind. Her mother’s sister, which, in the Arapaho Way, meant Rose was also her mother. When her own mother had died three years ago, leaving her stumbling in space, unable to get a foothold, it was Aunt Rose who had led her back to herself.

  “You had your supper?” The woman stepped back, assessing her with narrowed eyes.

  She gave her head a little shake, and Aunt Rose took her hand and led her through the living room, past the television propped in front of a plaid-upholstered recliner, past a little table covered with family photos and into the kitchen.

  They sat at the wood table pushed against the window next to the counter. Vicky nibbled at the cold fried chicken and buttered bread Aunt Rose had extracted from the refrigerator while the older woman sipped at a cup of tea and talked about the weather: winter was coming, but, oh, September was beautiful. The teakettle made a small hissing sound over the laughter bursting from the television. She went on: the wild grasses so pretty, all golds and coppers. The sky turning softer blue every day.

  “Real sad about Father Joseph,” Aunt Rose said, finally turning the conversation to the matter that they both knew had brought Vicky to her door.

  Vicky was quiet. She sipped at the hot tea, wondering at the cold fear still inside her, like a chunk of ice in her heart. “What if the killer made a mistake?” she said, finally giving voice to the fear. “What if he shot the wrong priest?”

  A look of comprehension crept into the older woman’s expression, followed by shock and disbelief. “You sayin’ the killer was after Father John?”

  “He drives the Toyota.”

  “Nobody wants to hurt Father John.” Aunt Rose shook her head, as if to banish an intolerable idea.

  “Father Joseph had been at the mission only two weeks. Why would anyone want him dead?”

  “He used to be here.”

  “Thirty-five years ago.” Vicky got to her feet and began to circle the small space that divided the refrigerator and stove from a bank of cabinets. “I remember. I was in the second grade. He used to visit the classroom and tell us to be good students, a credit to our families. Do our people proud.”

  “He was a nice man.”

  “Well, he didn’t know anything about kids.” Vicky slapped the palm of her hand on the counter. “He was arrogant and—” She swallowed, surprised at the idea that had come to mind. “A little scary.”

  “Scary?” Aunt Rose threw her head back and gave a little laugh. “He was real shy, that’s a fact. Used to talk in big words. Half the time nobody knew what he was talkin’ about. I heard he went away to become a professor in some university. Maybe they understood him there.” She reached out and grabbed Vicky’s hand. “He had a good heart, Vicky. Used to drive all over the res, just like Father John, checkin’ on people, seeing who might need help. Soon’s he come back, he went out visitin’ people, just like before.”

  Vicky exhaled a long breath and nodded toward the phone on the counter. “What have you heard?”

  Aunt Rose shook her head again. “Moccasin telegraph’s so loaded, it’s likely to fall down. But nobody knows anything. Nobody can figure it out. An old man like that. Who’d want to kill him?”

  Exactly, Vicky thought, withdrawing her hand and starting to circle the kitchen again. The cold knot of fear tightened within her. It wasn’t Father Joseph the murderer was after. She swung around and faced the older woman. “Maybe it was Sonny Red Wolf who tried to kill Father John,” she said.

  “What makes you think so?”

  Vicky stared at the older woman. She hadn’t disagreed. “Sonny wants whites off the reservation. St. Francis Mission has been here more than a hundred years. It’s a symbol of white presence. Father John is a symbol. Last summer Sonny blockaded the mission. Banner had to run him off. That must’ve made him angry—the Arapaho police chief helping the white mission.” She smiled to herself at the irony.

  Aunt Rose got to her feet, picked up the teakettle, and filled both of their cups. Little curls of steam rose in the air. After setting the kettle back on the stove, she pulled two tea bags from a box on the counter and dropped them into the cups. Sliding back onto her chair, she said, “Sonny Red Wolf don’t speak for folks around here. He had his way, we’d all be livin’ in the Old Time, out huntin’ buffalo. Well, I don’t wanna spend all day butcherin’ buffalo meat and tannin’ hides, thank you very much. I like my modern-day comforts.” She tilted her head toward the television noise in the living room. “Besides, there ain’t enough buffalo left.”

  Vicky felt the conversation lurching into small talk. “Have you heard any talk about Sonny?” she asked.

  “Talk? Sure. There’s always talk about Sonny. He’s so full of hate, only natural his name comes up.”

  “Tell me what you’ve heard.”

  The older woman studied the steaming liquid in her cup. “Somebody might’ve seen Sonny’s white truck ridin’ up in the air on those big, fat tires out on Thunder Lane this afternoon.”

  “Who, Aunt? Who saw the truck?” Vicky felt her heart turn over. The demonstration last spring, the truck in the vicinity of the murder. It was adding up to what Gianelli liked to call a preponderance of evidence.

  “Don’t know any names. Just somebody lives out that way.” The older woman raised her eyes; there was fear in them. “Sonny Red Wolf’s real mean, Vicky. He killed a man once. You gotta stay out of this.”

  Vicky drew in a long breath, fighting back the panic rising inside her. “Whoever saw the truck is probably scared. The only witness could disappear.”

  “You gotta get hold of yourself, Vicky.” Aunt Rose fixed her with a stern gaze. “You got yourself so worked up about Father John, you’re half-sick. You got that peaked look about you, like white blood was flowing in your veins. You gotta put that man out of your mind. He’s a priest.”

  Vicky took her eyes away. It was true, all true. She still felt limp from the waves of pain that had crashed over her when she thought he was dead. She had seen the people streaming into the mission that afternoon, the grief and fear in their faces mirroring her own. How many had come, as she had, believing John O’Malley had been killed? He belonged to them; he was their pastor.

  Suddenly the phone screeched, like an alien presence in the kitchen. Aunt Rose turned toward the counter and lifted the receiver. “Hello,” she snapped. Then: “Vicky’s here now. Call me later.”

  Vicky laid a hand on the other woman’s arm. “Can you get a name?”

  Aunt Rose drew in a long breath, then lowered her eyes to the receiver. “Guess somebody seen Sonny Red Wolf’s truck on Thunder Lane,” she said. “You hear about that?”

  A burst of television laughter spilled through the kitchen. Vicky held her breath.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Aunt Rose glanced up. “Lucy Travise? Don’t know as I know her. She live out there? I see. Near the big bend on Thunder Lane.”

  Vicky dug through her bag hanging from the back of the chair and pulled out a pen and notebook. She flipped to a clear page and wrote: Lucy Travise. Big bend. Thunder Lan
e.

  The minute Aunt Rose hung up, Vicky picked up the receiver. It was still warm and moist. She punched in Gianelli’s number. An answering machine interrupted the rings. “You have reached the local offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Leave your name and number . . .”

  “I’ve got something,” Vicky said when the machine voice stopped. Hurriedly she gave the information: the name, the location of the house—a lifeline for John O’Malley. Her whole being surged with hope.

  “You oughta be thinkin’ about Ben,” Aunt Rose said as she replaced the receiver.

  “Ben!” Vicky swung around. Struggling for a calm tone, she said, “Ben and I have been divorced thirteen years.”

  “He still loves you.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “He was your husband.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she managed.

  “You think Ben’s still drinking, but you’re wrong,” Aunt Rose persisted. “I see his mom over at the senior citizens’ center on Thursdays. Rayleen says Ben helps her out all the time, now she’s been sick. He’s a good son. Sober as the day he come into the world. Hasn’t had a drink since the drunk he went on last winter, Rayleen says. After you turned him down again.”

  Vicky glanced toward the doorway to the living room: the TV sounds of brakes squealing, men shouting. Was it always her fault? Her fault when Ben had gotten drunk and hit her?

  Bringing her gaze back to Aunt Rose, she said, “Ben and I are no longer married. I’ve made a different life.”

  “Some life, longin’ for a priest.”

  Vicky closed her eyes a moment against the sharp sting of the words. There was no response to the truth. Slowly she got to her feet, lifted her bag, and started through the living room, aware of the soft padding of footsteps behind her. At the door she remembered Sharon David. The earlier part of the day, her own work, she realized, had been swept from her mind.

  She turned toward the woman behind her. “Something else, Aunt. A woman came to see me today.” She paused. She did not want to mention the woman’s name. She did not want the news flashed over the moccasin telegraph. “The woman seems to think she was adopted from this reservation in 1964.”

  “We don’t let our babies get adopted out of the tribe,” Aunt Rose said.

  “I told her that. But maybe there was a girl who thought she had nowhere to turn. Did you hear of anyone like that back then?”

  In the pale white light of the television, Vicky saw the other woman’s expression change as she clicked back the years, searching her memory. She shook her head. “No girl would’ve done that. Not then. Not with all those babies dying. We was goin’ to funerals and prayin’ over those little caskets every few weeks. It was terrible, losin’ the future generation all because of bad water.”

  A thin memory stirred in Vicky’s mind: her mother boiling pans of water on the stove—the only water she was allowed to drink or use to brush her teeth or wash her face. “What was wrong with the water?”

  “There was lots of talk.” Aunt Rose shrugged. “Health-department people comin’ on the res and givin’ opinions. Said those old gold mines in the mountains was poisoning the water. You ask me, it was that uranium processing mill that used to be on the res. Whatever it was, a lot of people was sick with bad stomachaches, and a lot of new babies died.”

  The older woman gazed across the small living room, into the shadows. “Rayleen lost a boy. Lots of families lost babies, even though most of the women went to that fancy clinic in Lander ’cause they was so worried. That doctor that went off and got famous ran the clinic. You know, Jeremiah Markham.”

  Vicky nodded. It was a source of local pride that Jeremiah Markham, the baby doctor, had gotten his start in Lander. Was there a book rack in any store, any airport, that didn’t stock the books he’d written—Let’s Deliver Healthy Babies or Your Infant’s Health or The First Weeks of Your Infant’s Life? A new mother who didn’t keep a Markham book on her bed table? Only a few weeks ago she had seen Dr. Markham interviewed on television. A stately, grandfatherly man with wavy white hair and a commanding voice, exuding the wisdom and kindness that had made his books so popular. Markham had left Lander years ago, but the clinic he’d started was still open. She had met the director, Dr. Roland Grace, on several occasions.

  “With all that sickness goin’ around, people was in a panic,” Aunt Rose was saying. “Everybody wanted to make sure the pregnant women got the best care possible. So anybody had insurance went over to the Markham Clinic. There was some families didn’t have insurance, I remember. We took up a collection so they could go to the clinic and not have to stick with the Public Health Service doctors. We wanted to make sure they got real good care. That’s why I know, any girl got pregnant, the people did everything for her and that baby. No way did we let any babies go.”

  Vicky thanked the old woman. What Aunt Rose said had only confirmed what she knew, what she had told Sharon David. She let herself through the door with the usual good-byes, the promises to come again soon, the promises to take care of herself.

  “You promise to think about what I told you about Ben,” Aunt Rose said.

  Vicky gave her aunt a smile and pulled the door closed behind her. Then she hunched her shoulders against the wind as she made her way across the dirt yard in the darkness to the Bronco. The last was a promise she had not made. She would not think about Ben. She had other matters to fill her mind. Tomorrow she would call Sharon David and suggest she take her search to another reservation. She would have to return the movie star’s check. Tonight, she wanted to talk to a woman named Lucy Travise.

  8

  The bi-level house hugged the ground, like a shadow splayed on the earth. As Vicky turned into the dirt yard, her headlights shone on the pale green siding, the cement steps, the little stoop. A faint light filtered through the curtains in the front windows. Red reflectors of a truck gleamed in the darkness at the side of the house. She parked behind the truck and slid out into a gust of wind that felt as if it had swooped down off a glacier. The clack of her heels on the steps mingled with the staccato thumps of rap music coming from inside.

  Just as she was about to knock, the door swung open. A young man in his twenties stood in the slant of light. Arapaho, by the narrow face, the finely honed cheekbones, the little crook in the nose. There was a familiar look about him. She tried to place him in one of the clans, but she couldn’t find the right one.

  She said, “Is Lucy Travise here?”

  “Who wants to know?” The tone was insolent, challenging. The music pounded behind him.

  “My name is Vicky Holden. I’m a lawyer. I have to talk to Lucy.”

  The young man’s eyes bored into her. “I know you. You used to be married to my uncle.”

  Oh, God, Vicky thought. He had probably eaten at her table when he was a kid, played with Susan and Lucas. The clan she’d been searching for was her ex-husband’s. She forced a smile. “Which nephew are you?”

  “James.”

  The nephew she’d once forbidden her kids to play with, he was so mean. The nephew always in trouble. The last she’d heard of James Holden, he was in jail in Denver.

  “I want to see Lucy.” Vicky raised her voice over the pounding music. The woman was probably somewhere inside.

  “Sorry, Aunt Vicky.” The tone was harsh. “Lucy ain’t here, so you better be runnin’ along.”

  “That your aunt, James?” A woman’s voice, small and childlike, came from behind the door.

  “Lucy, it’s important I talk to you.” Vicky moved sideways, attempting to see around the man blocking the door. She caught a glimpse of the room: green sofa, crumpled cushions; small table littered with foam food boxes; rap sounds filling the air like a physical presence.

  Suddenly a girl came into view. A white girl, not much more than a teenager, with pale skin and long blond hair that hung in clumps down the front of her black T-shirt. She had on blue jeans that hugged her thin hips and exposed a slip
of white midriff. Her feet were bare. Laying a hand on James’s arm, she tilted her face toward him. “Can’t she come in a minute?” she asked, a pleading voice.

  James jerked backward, bringing the girl with him in a kind of dance, and Vicky stepped into the room. Reaching around, he gave the door a shove. The thwack punctuated the monotony of rhythms coming from speakers on either side of the sofa. A stereo stood against the right wall, next to a couple of webbed metal chairs, and the black halogen lamp between the chairs splashed light over the ceiling.

  “Are you Lucy?” Vicky locked eyes with the girl a moment.

  “Yeah, that’s me.” The girl glanced hurriedly at James, then stepped over to the stereo and turned one of the knobs. The music receded to a buzz, like the noise of a chain saw in a distant field. “You here about that shooting up the road?” she asked, tucking her hands into the back pockets of her blue jeans.

  “I told you to shut up about that.” James whirled toward her. “It’s none of our business.”

  Lucy’s gaze shifted uneasily around the room. “Well, that’s what everybody’s been callin’ about.” Her voice was tentative. “Everybody’s wantin’ to know where the old man got shot.”

  “I told you, I’m gonna rip that phone out, you don’t do what I say.”

  Vicky stepped toward the girl. “A priest was murdered this afternoon, Lucy. If the killer isn’t found soon, another priest might also die.”

  “White men,” James said, a kind of snort. “Let white people take care of it. What do we care if they kill one another off?”

  Your girlfriend’s white, Vicky thought. She said, “Tell me what you saw.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, she didn’t see nothin’.” James moved to the girl’s side and slipped an arm around her, pulling her toward him. “So, Aunt Vicky, why don’t you just get outta here?”

  Vicky didn’t take her eyes from the girl. “Why didn’t you tell the FBI agent you saw a white truck this afternoon? You could be in a lot of trouble for withholding information about a murder.”