The Lost Bird

by Margaret Coel

  The odor of fresh coffee filled the small room. In one corner was the kitchen: sink, stove, refrigerator, rectangular table, and two chairs. Across the room, the bed covered with the star quilt Ben’s mother had given them for their wedding. A fire crackled in the stone fireplace on the wall close to the bed.

  Vicky sank into one of the chairs at the table and waited while Ben poured a couple mugs of coffee.

  “I found James and his white girlfriend for you,” he said, placing the mugs on the table and taking the chair across from her. His dark eyes reflected the firelight.

  “Where were they?”

  “Hiding out at a cousin’s ranch. Scared of Sonny Red Wolf. I took them to the fed’s office this afternoon to make sure they got there. The girl gave a statement about seeing Sonny’s white truck on Thunder Lane about the time of the priest’s murder.”

  Vicky took a sip of the hot coffee. She could be wrong. Maybe Father Joseph’s murder had nothing to do with Markham’s clinic. Maybe her theory was some half-baked notion that Gianelli and the other white authorities would dismiss as preposterous. Yet John O’Malley hadn’t dismissed it.

  Ben said, “Does he mean that much to you?”

  Vicky kept her eyes to his. “Who?” she asked. She knew who he meant.

  “The priest you’re worried could get killed.”

  “No.” She stopped herself from adding, Not anymore. The room was quiet, except for the snap of the fire, the muffled sounds of the wind outside. She was debating whether to tell him about her theory. An hour ago it had seemed so logical: enlist Ben’s help in proving her theory had merit. She had been certain of the truth as she’d read through the newspapers today. And when she’d learned of the birth and death certificates, she’d been convinced that Jeremiah Markham had left nothing to chance.

  But Sonny Red Wolf had been seen on Thunder Lane. What if her theory was wrong? What if the infants had died? She had driven out here to ask Ben to agree to exhume his brother’s grave, to relive the pain of the past. In the waves of warmth from the fireplace, she felt a cold shiver run across her shoulders.

  “What is it, Vicky?” Ben reached across the table, as if he were reaching for her hand, then stopped. “What brought you out here?”

  In his eyes she saw a reflection of her own searching, questioning. He had a right to know. Even if it was only a slim possibility that his brother might be alive, only a theory, he had the right to know. “I’ve something to tell you, Ben,” she said finally. Then she began explaining what she’d found: the sealed caskets, fifteen dead babies in one year, all born at the Markham Clinic, the possible murder of the nurse and the coroner, the murder of Father Joseph. As she talked, she felt him grow stiller, leaning back against the chair, moving away from her into someplace inside himself. He remained quiet for a long while after she’d stopped talking, his eyes fixed on some point across the room.

  “I don’t want to have the grave dug up,” he said, finding her gaze again. “Mom’s old and sick. I don’t want her to get her hopes up that her son is alive somewhere. Not until we know for certain that this happened.”

  Immediately Vicky regretted having told him. She had raised his hopes, given him the possibility that his brother was alive, and if her theory turned out not to be true, he would lose his brother again. The air seemed cooler; the fire had died back. Ben asked if Sharon David was one of the infants.

  “I think so,” she said. “But there’s so little to go on. She found a piece of paper in her mother’s things with some notations she thinks are about her birth. It has the initials ‘WRR.’ She thinks that could refer to the reservation. There are numbers that could be her birth date, and the name Maisie.” Suddenly Vicky realized who had written the note that had stayed with the infant girl, tucked among a tiny shirt, a blanket, piles of diapers: the person who had delivered the baby to Markham’s contacts—a nurse, Dawn James.

  “Maisie.” Ben repeated the word. “Don’t know anybody by that name.”

  “There was also a small drawing of a bird,” Vicky said. “I checked the obituaries on the babies. No families with bird names. No Crows or Hawks or Eagles. No Redbirds or Yellowbirds.”

  “Ummm.” Ben made the sound he always made, she remembered, when he was trying to recall something. He took a draw of coffee. Then: “Used to be some Indians lived down the road from us. One of their babies died same time as”—he hesitated—“my brother. Mom used to visit the woman. I went along sometimes. I remember them crying together in the living room. After a while the people moved away. Went to Casper, I think. Their name was Mason. But their Indian name, if I remember right, was something like Little Bird.”

  Vicky held her breath. Mason was one of the names on the list. In her mind she saw the tiny figure of a bird. “Was the woman named Maisie?”

  Ben shook his head. “I think it was Marie.”

  “Marie!” Vicky leaned over the table. “The name could have been misspelled. My God, Ben. Sharon’s mother could be Marie Little Bird.”

  Now Ben reached over and took her hand. “You might be able to find the Little Bird family in Casper. If they turn out to be her people, well, we’ll know it happened. Then I’ll talk to Mom about the grave. I’m sorry, Vicky. It’s the best I can do.”

  “It’s okay.” Vicky nodded. He’d already helped her more than she had guessed he could.

  “It was so hard on Mom, losing the baby.” He tightened his grip on her hand, and she felt the warmth of him spreading through her body, chasing back the coldness. Something inside her began to melt: the reserve, the determination.

  “Hard on all of us,” he was saying. “I don’t want Mom to go through it again unless there’s a real chance my brother’s alive.”

  “We never talked about these things before,” Vicky heard herself saying.

  “There were lots of times I wanted to tell you what I was thinking and feeling.” He gave his head a hard shake. “I guess I didn’t know how.”

  Vicky allowed her hand to stay in his a long moment. Then she pulled away and got slowly to her feet. She walked around his chair, set her hands on his shoulders, and leaned over him, kissing the top of his head, the warm curve of his neck. “Oh, Ben,” she said. “There’s so much we didn’t know about each other.”

  They made love on the bed pushed against the far wall, under the star quilt. Afterward Vicky huddled close to him, the palm of her hand resting on the smooth, light brown skin of his chest. Outside the wind rose and fell, an eerie, disjointed chorus. There was the occasional tap-tap sound of a branch against a window. An occasional ember crackled in the fireplace.

  Vicky listened as Ben talked about his life since she’d left, about his longing for her. The past—the years of their marriage—remained a silent presence between them. She knew that sooner or later they would have to confront that time. But not now. Not tonight.

  • • •

  The soft daylight filtering through the ponderosas glowed in the window when Vicky awoke. The bed beside her was empty, and she realized the swishing noise she had thought was the wind had been the sound of the shower. There was a strong odor of freshly brewed coffee, a small fire burning in the grate. She got up and pulled on an old woolen robe thrown over a chair, tying the belt tightly at her waist. Ben was gone. On the table she found a note in the familiar, generous handwriting: I love you. Come back to me.

  From outside came the growl of an engine turning over. She stepped to the window and watched the brown truck move through the ponderosas, the metal trim catching the sun until finally the truck disappeared from view. Still she stayed at the window, thinking of other times when she had watched Ben’s truck drive away. She had been someone else then, not the woman she was now, not a lawyer with an office in Lander and clients waiting to see her. That other woman’s days had been planned for her: caring for the children; looking in on her own parents and on Ben’s; helping the other women prepare the feasts for the tribal celebrations.

  It had been a busy l
ittle life that she had assumed would go on until she was a grandmother, sitting back at the feasts, waited on by the younger women. She had given scant thought to the wider world—a quick glance at the morning papers, a TV newscast—until she had found herself thrust into it: hisei ci’ nihi, woman alone. And now, here she was in Ben’s life again, where she had sworn she would never be. What a mess she had made of things. She had seen the future she had hoped for with another man slip away, and so she had tried to reclaim the past. As if the past could ever be reclaimed.

  “It will take some time, Ben,” she said out loud to the empty cabin. Her voice punctuated the quiet. “I’m going to need some time.”

  She walked over to the phone mounted next to the kitchen cabinet, dialed directory assistance, and asked for the number of a Mason in Casper. Within a couple of seconds she was dialing the number for Russ Mason. She gripped the receiver. One ring, two, three.

  Finally, a voice. “Hello?”

  She asked to speak to Mr. Mason.

  “Dad’s at work.” The voice might have belonged to a girl somewhere between adolescence and maturity.

  “How can I reach him?”

  Vicky heard the hesitation. “I guess you can call Capco.” Then, the number.

  Capco. Vicky knew the company. They collected oil from storage tanks on the reservation and delivered it to refineries in other areas. If Russ Mason was a driver, he could be anywhere between the res and Cheyenne or Denver.

  Vicky thanked the girl, hit the disconnect bar, and dialed the company’s number. A woman answered, and Vicky asked again to speak to Russ Mason. He was out in the field, the woman said.

  “I’m an attorney,” Vicky said into the line. “There’s a very important matter I must speak to him about.” She hesitated, then added: “It’s an emergency. Where can I reach him?”

  Vicky could hear the indrawn breaths, the considering. Finally the woman said, “He handles the storage tanks over by Winkleman Dome.”

  27

  Vicky drove south past the buttes that erupted out of the plains on both sides of the road. Winchester Butte. Bighorn Butte. She crossed the flat expanse of the Bighorn draw, still moving south, squinting into the sun that broke the windshield into a rainbow of colors. The Winkleman Dome oil pumps came into view ahead, black sculptures rising out of the earth.

  As she neared the pumping area, the shape of a large white truck loomed ahead, shimmering in the sun like a mirage. She pulled to one side and jumped out, waving her hands overhead, the wind whipping out her skirt and snapping at her jacket. She set one hand on her forehead to keep her hair out of her eyes. The tank truck drew close, lumbering through the wavy air, and slid to a stop, tires kicking out little pieces of gravel. A large man—an Indian—in a cowboy hat leaned across the seat toward the open passenger window. “Trouble, lady?”

  “Are you Russ Mason?” Vicky approached the driver’s side.

  “Wish I was, if you’re lookin’ for him.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  The man pushed his hat back and seemed to ponder the windshield. “Seen him earlier. Probably finished up around here and headed up to Maverick Spring Dome.”

  Vicky groaned silently. She had passed the area an hour ago. Thanking the man, she started for the Bronco.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” the driver called.

  She swung around. He was staring in the rearview mirror. She followed his gaze to the truck coming over a rise in the road. “You might be gettin’ lucky. That could be old Russ comin’ now.”

  Vicky gave the man a wave. The gears ground heavily into place, and the truck started past her, gaining speed. Gravel spattered her leg, forcing her back toward the Bronco. She hugged her jacket in the wind as the other truck drew close. Then she walked back into the road and waved at the driver.

  The truck stopped—a jerky motion that sent the hood bucking up and down. “I’m looking for Russ Mason,” she called, walking to the driver’s side.

  “Who wants him?” The man leaned over the arm crooked on the door ledge and fixed her with dark, narrow eyes. He was somewhere in his sixties, she guessed, with a long, sun-etched face and gray hair that showed below the rim of a black cowboy hat. He had a prominent nose and cheekbones—the sculptured features of her people. In a crowd, she would have picked him out as Arapaho.

  She gave him her name and asked again if he was Russ Mason.

  “Maybe.” His tone had a sharp edge. “Depends on what you want.”

  “I’m an attorney. I’m trying to help a client who’s searching for her natural parents.” She was stammering, groping for the words to explain why she was standing in the wind on an empty road, waving down his truck.

  The Indian threw back his head and gave a snort of disbelief. “You that lawyer lady I seen on TV. You’re workin’ for that movie star, what’s her name . . .” His eyes glanced around the cab.

  “Sharon David.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. I seen in the papers she found her real parents.”

  Vicky shook her head. A gust pushed her sideways. She shouted into the wind: “They’re not her parents! She was born into the Little Bird family.”

  The man reared back, as if he’d touched an exposed wire. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “Sharon has a few clues to her identity,” Vicky said hurriedly. The wind burst around them. “She has the drawing of a tiny bird.”

  The thin cheeks puffed out, and the man exhaled a long breath. “That don’t make her a Little Bird. We don’t give away our babies. Not this family. Me and the wife raised six kids. Still raisin’ a couple of ’em.”

  Vicky saw his hand moving to the gear knob, and she laid one hand on the door next to his arm to prevent the truck from pulling away. “Sharon is one of the people,” she said. “I’m certain of it. She may not have been given up for adoption. She may have been taken from her real parents.”

  The Indian leaned into the window space, the dark eyes narrowing into accusation. “What’dya mean? Kidnapped?”

  Vicky gave a little nod. She didn’t want to alarm the man. She didn’t want to start a rumor on the moccasin telegraph that would send the reservation into a panic, a rumor that might not be true.

  She said, “Is there anyone in your family named Maisie or Marie?”

  The door snapped open—a wind-amplified thud—and the Indian slid out, planting heavy boots onto the road. “You better tell me what you’re gettin’ at, lady,” he said in a tone of barely controlled anger. He was looming over her, a powerful man with broad shoulders inside a brown corduroy jacket and white-knuckled fists hanging at his sides.

  Vicky fought the urge to back away. “I told you, I’m trying to help Sharon David find where she belongs.”

  “What do you know about Marie?”

  Vicky kept her voice steady. “Only that Sharon found a name that could be Marie on a scrap of paper among her adoptive parents’ things.”

  The man said nothing. He stared down the empty road a moment, then brought the narrow eyes back to hers. She saw the moisture brimming at the corners. He raised one fist and ran a knuckle along the ridges of both cheeks. “Marie was my first wife.” His voice was so soft she had to lean toward him to pluck the words from the wind.

  “Where can I find her?”

  “You can’t.” A gust cracked between them, and he seemed to stagger back, grabbing the door handle to steady himself. “Marie’s been dead a long time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vicky muttered.

  “So the Marie on that woman’s paper can’t be my Marie.” Opening the door, he set one boot on the running board, ready to launch himself into the seat.

  Vicky grabbed the man’s sleeve. The corduroy was warm and smooth. “Mr. Mason,” she said, “I’m sorry to bring back painful memories, but I must ask you something. It’s important to a woman who is very lost and alone. Did Marie ever lose a child?”

  The man wrenched his arm from her grasp. The boot slid from the running board and
stomped onto the ground. “You sayin’ this movie star thinks she was our baby?” He bent close; the sour smell of his breath floated toward her in the whirl of the wind. “Well, tell her for me to get out of here and go back where she belongs. What business she got comin’ ’round here and upsettin’ folks? She don’t belong with the people. What kind of woman shows up and starts claimin’ she’s somebody’s dead child? What kind of woman does that?”

  “She was born at the Markham Clinic in 1964,” Vicky said.

  The Indian was staring at her. “Nineteen sixty-four?”

  “September fourteenth.”

  “Oh, God.” The Indian sank back against the door, crumbling downward, folding onto the running board. Vicky set her hand on his shoulder to steady the fall. “Our baby girl was born in the middle of September,” he said. “In that fancy clinic in Lander. Supposed to be safe, but that doctor couldn’t save the baby. Said her brain got some infection. Said there wasn’t nothin’ he could do. She was a real pretty little thing. She looked real healthy.”

  “When did you see her?”

  “Right after she was born,” the man said. “Before the doctor said she was real sick and he was gonna put her in isolation. Couple hours later he comes into Marie’s room and says our baby’s dead.”

  Vicky’s jaw clenched. She blinked back the tears blurring the figure of the man slumped before her. “It’s possible,” she began, then hesitated. His eyes searched hers a long moment. “It’s possible your child did not die. It’s possible Sharon David is your daughter.”

  The Indian hunched over and dropped his head into his hands. His shoulders shook. Low, gravelly sobs punctuated the sound of the wind. After a moment the sobbing stopped, and he glanced up. “Marie always said our little baby was alive. She just knew it. But I didn’t pay it no mind because Marie got so strange after the baby died. She was never the same, staying locked up in the house all day, not wantin’ to go anywhere. Couple nice ladies used to come visit. One of ’em had her own baby die. I thought, maybe, we move to Casper, where there’s more people around, she’d come out of it. But I come home from work one day and found her out in the garage. She’d took an old sheet and hung it over the rafters and was danglin’ there.”