The Dream Stalker

by Margaret Coel

  Father John stepped into his office on the right and dropped the books and folder onto the papers already spread over his desk. He tossed his cowboy hat onto the top of the bookcase, aware the tapping noise had ceased. There was the squish-squish sound of footsteps in the corridor.

  Suddenly the other priest stood in the doorway, looking much like a serious college student. He wore a blue polo shirt, khaki slacks, and sneakers. His blond hair was combed neatly to one side, his blue eyes outsized by pinkish, bone-framed glasses. He was thirty-eight, a priest for three years now—a responsibility, Father John knew, that this new assistant took seriously, like everything else.

  Father Geoff advanced into the office, one hand gripping a file folder. “Telephone’s been ringing all morning. Everybody wants to know who was killed last night. Seems to think you’d have the answer.” The younger priest shook his head in a slow, deliberate motion. “I tried to tell you not to go out. Looks like I was right. It was even more dangerous than I’d suspected. This the usual routine around here—middle-of-the-night calls? Murders?”

  “Not every night.” Father John shuffled through a pile of phone messages. He didn’t want to discuss the poor cowboy with half his face shot off. Anyway, his assistant probably already knew as much as he did. The moccasin telegraph was unpredictable; Elena hadn’t heard the news this morning—that’s why she’d made such a fuss, wanting all the fragments. He thought of news as always arriving in fragments, like a dream that had to be reconstructed. He preferred his news whole, which was why, he supposed, he’d chosen the field of history. The news had already happened in history. It was complete. It could be observed and analyzed, placed into context, with precedents and antecedents. It allowed the illusion that events were comprehensible.

  He was aware of his assistant’s eyes on him as the younger priest slapped a folder on top of the books and letters Father John had just added to the clutter on his desk. “St. Francis Mission,” Father Geoff began, “cannot continue to spend more money than it takes in. Nothing, with the exception of the federal government, can operate that way.”

  Father John slid back in his chair, bracing himself for the lecture sure to follow. “So I’ve heard.”

  Turning abruptly, his assistant walked over to one of the side chairs along the wall and sat down. “This is serious, John. I’ve gone over the accounts closely. The mission is this close to bankruptcy.” He held out one hand, rubbing the thumb and index finger together.

  “We’ve been that close for years,” Father John said. As long as he had been here, anyway. He’d never been good at schmoozing with the businessmen in Riverton and Lander. They had stopped inviting him to dinners and cocktail parties sometime during his first six months here . . . or had he just started turning down the invitations? He couldn’t remember. In any case, he had come to depend upon the kindness of strangers, to hope for the little miracles, which he always believed were about to occur. It never surprised him to open the mail and find a check—sometimes large enough to cover that month’s bills. Not a method of financial planning this new assistant was likely to endorse.

  “The Provincial—” Father Geoff began.

  “The Provincial?”

  “—is concerned, and rightly so, in my opinion, about the financial status of St. Francis Mission.”

  Father John leaned back in his chair. This new assistant with a background in finance hadn’t been sent here by chance. He had been sent to straighten out the mission finances and, in the process, to straighten out the way Father John managed things.

  “I suggest two viable solutions.”

  Father John gave the other priest his full attention.

  “First, we must cut back on certain programs.”

  “And what might those be? Al-Anon? Religious education? Adult literacy? Shall we put off the repairs, like fixing the church roof?” Now with the rainy season, the leaky roof had become a major concern. It had poured last Sunday, and the entire time he was saying the ten o’clock Mass, he’d watched the thin stream of water running down the wall next to the altar. Leonard’s cousin, Ralph Fox, had patched the roof a couple years ago. He’d tried to call him, but Ralph no longer had a phone. He would have to find some other way to get ahold of him.

  “If we can’t support a program,” Father Geoff was saying, “we should drop it. If we can’t fix the roof, well . . .” He shrugged. “We have to curtail our expenses until we institute new forms of revenue. I suggest tithing.”

  Father John was quiet. This was worse than he’d suspected. After a moment he said, “How can we ask the Arapahos to give ten percent of what they have? They don’t have that much.”

  “Many churches tithe. A perfectly respectable tradition. Biblical, I don’t need to remind you.” The other priest’s tone implied he did need to remind him.

  Father John shook his head. “It’s the Arapaho Way to be generous,” he said, thinking of the “feasts” he’d been invited to at Blue Sky Hall where the food often consisted of bologna sandwiches and coffee, all the people could provide. “They give what they can. I’m not going to ask them to make that kind of sacrifice.”

  “Life is a sacrifice.” The younger priest tossed out the words as if they had no weight.

  Father John looked away a moment, aware of the old building creaking and sighing, as if it had its own concerns. He was thinking of Edel Long, who had just lost his job with the state highway department, and Rosie Big Bear, who eked out a living for her three kids as a waitress in Lander.

  “There is another option. Less painful, but effective,” Father Geoff said.

  “Let me guess.” Father John turned back to the younger priest. “We could hold bingo games in Eagle Hall.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Not while I’m pastor here,” he said, getting to his feet.

  A look of acute disappointment came into the other priest’s face. Two weeks of careful financial analysis for nothing. He stood up slowly. “The Provincial has instructed me to remedy the abysmal financial situation here. He has already approved these options.” He pointed to the folder on the desk. “I suggest you take this up with him.” He turned and strode through the doorway. The squish-squish noise of his sneakers receded down the corridor.

  Father John picked up the folder and flung it across the office. It landed at the foot of the chair the other priest had just vacated, white pages splayed against the wooden legs. Then he grabbed his cowboy hat from the bookshelf and slammed out the front door.

  6

  He strode back across the mission ignoring the path, his boots flattening the short, wet fronds of buffalo grass. The Toyota was still parked outside the priests’ residence where he’d left it in the early morning hours, and he folded himself behind the wheel. Then he took a deep breath. St. Francis was sinking in red ink. Like any business, it had to be floated into the black if it was to continue operating. Logical. But how to do it? He knew his assistant’s conclusions were also logical, but he didn’t like them. “Dear Lord,” he said under his breath. “Spare me from take-charge assistants with financial degrees and perfectly logical conclusions.”

  Father John jabbed the key into the ignition and gave it a quick turn. The engine coughed and belched just long enough to make him think this could be the day the Toyota decided to break down for all time. More proof for the priest back in the administration building that drastic financial measures were needed. Finally the motor came to life, shaky and tentative.

  He wheeled around Circle Drive while yanking an opera tape from the glove compartment and inserting it into the player. Faust burst into the cab, flooding him with the emotions of last night. For an instant he was back in the dark cabin, rain plinking against the tin roof, the cowboy slumped in the corner, alone in death. He hit the Stop button, extracted the tape, and, glancing between the road and the other tapes, selected Carmen. As he turned right onto Seventeen-Mile Road, “Toreador en garde” rose around him, robust and certain, not unlike the attitude of his new assi
stant. Easier to handle, somehow, than the lonely, sad ending of a man’s life.

  He rolled down his window partway. The rush of air mingled with the voices of the chorus and filled the cab with the pungent odor of damp earth and wild, wet grasses, of rebirth and hope. The long drives across the reservation, his operas—usually any opera would do—always calmed him, brought him back to himself. Just past St. Francis cemetery, he saw the traffic slowing ahead as it approached the turn onto Highway 789. He let up on the accelerator and coasted behind a dark, mud-spattered pickup. In the rearview mirror, he watched another pickup roll close to his tailgate, a line of other vehicles slowing behind it. Ahead a crowd of demonstrators marched down the center of the road, jabbing signs into the air, shouting at the line of trucks and cars. Father John leaned toward the windshield, catching the black words on the signs: NUCLEAR WASTE KILLS CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS. NOW IS THE HOUR. STOP NUCLEAR POWER.

  The passenger in the pickup ahead was leaning out the window, shouting and banging on the door, as if it were a drum. One of the demonstrators whirled about and started toward the pickup. He looked to be in his forties, an aging hippie, T-shirt taut across a bulging stomach, long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. He waved his sign side to side, eyes bulging, cheeks flushed.

  The pickup’s passenger door snapped open. An Indian jumped out and lurched toward the demonstrator. Father John leaned onto the horn. The noise came like the blast of a steam whistle. Both men froze, then turned toward the Toyota, a mixture of surprise and irritation on their faces. The demonstrator shrugged—a change of mind—and started back toward the others. He thrust the sign high overhead, shouting something Father John couldn’t make out.

  The Indian stumbled against the side of the pickup and braced himself before pushing off toward the Toyota. Father John recognized him. He’d asked him to leave the Al-Anon meeting at St. Francis a few weeks ago, after he’d tried to pick a fight with everybody in Eagle Hall. He was drunk then, and, judging by the way he lurched around the hood, he was drunk now.

  Father John got out slowly and slammed the door. He kept one hand flat against the hard roll of metal below the half-opened window, sensing the vibration the motor sent through the pickup. The marching notes of Carmen mingled with the sound of honking horns, the shouts of the protesters, someone yelling, “Move it!”

  “You with us?” the Indian asked, leaning toward him. The sharp, sour odor of whiskey passed like an invisible cloud between them, and Father John stopped himself from stepping back. He would not give the slightest hint of backing away. Drunks were bullies and cowards. He’d learned years ago as a kid in Boston that when you stood up to the bully, the coward usually appeared.

  “You’re holding up traffic.” He kept his voice firm, neutral. His eyes still on the Indian, he gave a little nod toward the traffic stacking up behind.

  The Indian blinked, as if trying to bring the situation into focus. “Them outsiders don’t have no right comin’ here tellin’ us what to do.” He spat out the words. The saliva flew in the air like tiny silver beads. “You gotta decide which side you’re on, you wanna stay around here.”

  Other horns started to honk—a cacophonous chorus. Father John could feel the tension in the man in front of him, a warrior surrounded by enemies: demonstrators ahead, angry motorists behind.

  “Look,” he began, using the counseling voice, quiet and calm, “the public hearing’s tonight at Blue Sky Hall. That’s the time to talk about the facility.”

  The man blinked hard, as if he’d glimpsed a way out of the ambush but wasn’t sure whether to take it. From Seventeen-Mile Road came the wail of sirens, and the traffic ahead started to move onto the highway. The driver of the pickup leaned out his door. “Come on,” he shouted. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

  The Indian hesitated, his gaze traveling between the pickup and the sound of the siren. The scrunch of metal gears caught his attention as the pickup lurched forward.

  “Wait.” He whirled about and grabbed the tailgate, running alongside, finally yanking open the passenger door. Then he fell inside and pulled the door shut. The rear wheels ground against the asphalt as the pickup spurted into the highway traffic.

  Father John got back in the Toyota and drove past the demonstrators drawing into a circle at the side of the road. He turned north. In the side mirror he saw the BIA police car pull past the line of traffic and stop next to the demonstrators.

  Then they were out of sight—the police, the demonstrators, Seventeen-Mile Road. Lost behind the squat, frame buildings that lined the west side of Highway 789—the lumberyard and hardware store, the Cozy-U Motel and self-serve gas station, the package liquor store with its red-lettered sign: SIX-PACK SPECIAL. MALT LIQUOR. BEST PRICE IN TOWN.

  Milky rays of sunshine slanted across the buildings and the asphalt ahead. The sky was the lightest of blues, like faded silk; the air cool as it whipped around the cab. He turned up the volume on Carmen and thought of what the Indian had said: You wanna stay around here . . .

  Of course he wanted to stay. Everything he cared about was here. Not at the Jesuit schools where he’d taught American history, not in Boston where he’d grown up. He hardly had any family left in Boston, just his brother, and he hadn’t seen Mike and Eileen and the kids in nine years. Not since Mike had made it clear—more by what he didn’t say than by what he did—that he didn’t want him around. They both knew that if Father John hadn’t decided to become a Jesuit, he was the brother who would be married to Eileen.

  He felt a familiar stab of sadness: These were not memories he wanted. This was home now, the people here his family. And he seemed to have landed in the middle of a family squabble—the idea made him uncomfortable. It looked like most of the people wanted the facility. But last week at the senior citizens meeting, the old women had leaned their heads together and talked in hushed, tense voices as they beaded moccasins and key chains—arthritic fingers working in quick, jerky motions, not the smooth rhythms they usually flowed in. The grandmothers opposed the facility, he was sure, but it wasn’t their place to speak out in public. Vicky had become their spokeswoman. He smiled at the irony. They had ignored her when she came back to the reservation three years ago: a woman who had divorced her husband and become a lawyer. Like a white woman.

  She hadn’t returned his call, and he made a mental note to try her office again when he got to Gianelli’s. He swallowed back the sense of longing at the thought of her. He didn’t want to think of her. He’d had years of experience at keeping his thoughts in an orderly, logical, appropriate sequence, at blocking out inappropriate emotions.

  He had expected temptations as a priest; he’d been prepared for temptations. He knew he’d be tempted against the vow of obedience—he came from a long line of stubborn Irish men and women who ground in their heels and took a perverse pleasure in refusing to obey orders. He’d almost broken the vow when the Provincial had ordered him to an Indian mission. Thank God he’d kept it. Now he felt as if his coming here had been part of some unfathomable plan for his life that only he knew nothing about.

  He’d even expected to be tempted by alcohol, but that was one temptation he’d believed himself strong enough to overcome. He wasn’t his father, thwarted in his dreams and ambitions, a brilliant conductor reduced to coaxing symphonies out of the spoutings and hissings of the steam furnaces of Boston College. No, he’d had the chance to make his dreams come true, to become a Jesuit, to teach history—the subject he loved.

  But he hadn’t been strong enough. He hadn’t taken close enough measure of the enemy, or realized how devious it was, how it would lie in wait to snag him at his lowest points, at his loneliest, just as it had his father.

  But to be tempted by a woman—he had put the possibility out of his mind. There had been one woman for him, he’d convinced himself, and the day he had told Eileen of his decision to become a priest he had considered the matter closed forever. It was not a matter he wanted to reconsider.

&nb
sp; He parked the Toyota next to the curb on Main Street across from the two-story, red-brick building that housed the local FBI offices. Ted Gianelli’s office took up part of the second floor. The shades were raised, and Father John could see globes of light beaming off the ceiling inside. The agent would be waiting.

  7

  The first floor of the FBI offices cried out with efficiency—brown tweed carpeting, cream-colored walls with framed prints of horses, rivers, and mountains. A receptionist with short, stylish blond hair and wide-open blue eyes sat behind a wooden desk in the small office to the right of the entry. “Upstairs, Father,” she said as he stepped through the oak-framed doorway.

  He asked if he could make a telephone call, and she pushed the phone across the desk. He punched in Vicky’s number. The same tentative voice, the same message: Ms. Holden was still out on an emergency. He said he would call later and replaced the receiver with a sense of uneasiness, wondering what emergency had kept her out all morning.

  He started up the narrow flight of stairs that hugged the wall across from the entry. The carved oak railing felt warm and satiny under his hand, a relic of another, more leisurely time. The mournful notes of a soprano floated from the hallway above. He recognized the aria at once: “Vissi d’arte” from Tosca. On the landing stood Ted Gianelli, thick black eyebrows lifted in mock surprise, dark hair barbered close to his scalp, one fleshy hand resting on the knob of the bannister. “Saw the Toyota drive up,” he said. “Heard it. Smelled it.”

  Father John laughed. Nobody appreciated the Toyota, it seemed. That, and the fact it got him where he wanted to go, made him extremely fond of it.

  He followed the agent through the doorway on the right, directly above the receptionist’s office, toward the voice of Kiri Te Kanawa. The office was small and as neat as his was cluttered: an oak desk with a green-shaded lamp on the polished top, a single file folder positioned squarely in the center. Behind the desk, a swivel chair and a window that framed the peaked roofs of the buildings across the street. On the left wall, a bank of gray metal file cabinets. On the right, a couple of straight-backed chairs in front of an audio system sheathed in black glass. The music was so clear, the soprano and the orchestra might have stepped from behind the glass at any moment.