The Dream Stalker

by Margaret Coel

  Father John took a short draw from his mug. He kept his eyes focused somewhere beyond her shoulder, and Vicky regretted the sharpness in her tone, the precipitance. It couldn’t have been easy to find the body.

  “Was he a friend?” she asked, a consoling tone. There was so much she didn’t know about this man—a whole lifetime of people he’d befriended, places he’d been.

  Father John shook his head and brought his eyes back to hers. “He was just a cowboy. A drifter, I guess. He called the mission and said he wanted to talk to a priest. His name was Gabriel Many Horses.”

  It had a familiar ring; all Arapaho names had a familiar ring, but Vicky had never known anyone by that name on the reservation. “Oklahoma Indians,” she said. “Why was he at the Hooshie cabin? It’s been abandoned for years.”

  Father John gave a quick shrug to his shoulders, but Vicky could sense the bond he’d formed with the murdered man. This priest wouldn’t rest until he had the answers. Until he knew why Gabriel Many Horses had called him. She said, “I went to St. Francis with a girl named Hooshie. Tina Hooshie. I heard she married a Lakota and lives in Casper now. Maybe she would know why the murdered man had gone to the cabin. I can try to locate her. . . .”

  He gave her a lingering smile, as if he understood that she understood. Then he said, “It can wait, Vicky. You need to worry about yourself now.”

  “I’m not leaving here, John.” She exhaled a slow breath. This was a stubborn man sitting across from her.

  “For God’s sake, Vicky. If you won’t go to Denver, think about coming to the mission. You can stay in the guest house. No one will know you’re there. Whoever is trying to kill you won’t give up. You’re fighting a facility that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. People have been killed for a lot less.”

  “It’s not about money, John,” she said. “It’s about power. If the facility is built, Redbull will be the director. He’ll decide who gets the jobs. And Matthew Bosse will have a big say in who gets the houses and where the schools and roads and clinics will be built. He and Redbull will be like the chiefs in the Old Time, distributing the goods. They will be the most powerful men on the reservation.”

  Vicky took another sip of coffee, then continued. “As for Legeau, he’ll be heaped with honors at every powwow and celebration for having sacrificed the ranch he loved for the facility. It’s the most any man could hope for—to be thought of as good man. Don’t you see, John? Power and prestige and dignity. Very important to Arapaho warriors.”

  Vicky saw by the way he smiled over the rim of his mug that he understood: The days of the warrior had ended—they belonged to the Old Time—but the warrior spirit lived on. Abruptly his smile disappeared. “Important enough to take your life?”

  She set her mug down, spilling a black dribble of coffee onto the white counter. “If one of them is crazy enough . . .”

  “All of them.”

  “What?”

  “All of them, Vicky. Redbull, Bosse, Legeau. Even the president of the United Power Company, Paul Bryant. He and Redbull came to see me this morning. Bryant admitted he’s been investigating you.”

  Vicky’s hand tightened around her mug. Tonight, on the way out of Blue Sky Hall, Bryant had asked her to have dinner with him. And someone had followed her to Lander.

  “I tried to tell you about Bryant.”

  Vicky nodded. “I got the message you’d called, but the afternoon was jammed with appointments. I didn’t get the chance. . . .”

  Father John stretched one hand toward her: It didn’t matter. “They all have a lot at stake. They’ve been working for months to get the facility approved by the joint council. Maybe they want to make sure nobody gets in the way. You’re only one woman, Vicky. You can’t fight a conspiracy. My father used to say only a fool gets into a fight she can’t win.”

  “Your father said that?”

  His face broke into a smile. “A certain variation thereof.”

  Vicky took another sip of coffee, savoring the warmth that seeped inside her. “You’re wrong about Bosse.”

  “I don’t think so. It was Bosse’s idea to build a nuclear waste facility on the rez in the first place. He convinced the other councilmen to hire Lionel Redbull. The two of them went after a grant from the United Power Company to hire the experts who conducted the environmental studies. Looks to me as if Bosse has been the prime mover.”

  “But something has changed.” Vicky got to her feet, picked up the glass coffeepot and refilled both mugs. Settling back onto the stool, she said, “Oh, Bosse has backed the facility as if it were some kind of gift from the gods. But tonight . . .” She stopped, drew in a breath. “Tonight he kept saying ‘maybe.’ It puzzled me. He could be having second thoughts. Maybe he’s starting to realize that nuclear waste is not our problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that, John. It’s not our problem. There aren’t any nuclear power reactors within a thousand miles of the reservation. Most of the nuclear reactors are back East. The people who use the power should store the waste. It’s their problem.”

  “We all use the electricity.” His tone surprised her, almost a reprimand. “We’re using it right now.” She followed his glance toward the glass globe on the ceiling. “Electricity is shifted in grids throughout the day from one part of the country to another,” he explained, his tone patient now. “It doesn’t matter where it’s generated. Everybody in the country shares it.”

  “Then let everybody in the country share the dangers.” Vicky could feel the anger rising inside her. “Or should the radioactive waste just be sent to Indian country, where nobody important lives? Isn’t that how your people look at it?”

  “Vicky,” he began. She saw that he was struggling to maintain the patient, rational tone. “I’ve read the environmental reports. The scientists say . . .”

  “Don’t tell me what your scientists say.” Vicky jumped off the stool and crossed the kitchen to the far counter, then whirled around, facing him. “Your scientists once said the world was flat. My people always knew that every sacred space is round.”

  She pushed herself off the counter and began pacing the small tiled floor, feeling as if an electrical charge had coursed through her, as if she’d been shot with one of the “ghost bullets.” “Your scientists say the radioactive material can’t leak out of the casks, but the casks may only last a hundred years. Then what? They say not to worry. The facility will only be on the rez for thirty or forty years. But where are the plans for a permanent facility? And why should one ever be built, once the nuclear waste is stored here?”

  Vicky stopped pacing and gripped the edge of the counter in an effort to still her trembling as she leaned toward him. “How could I have been so wrong about you, John O’Malley? I always thought you were on the side of the People. On my side.”

  Father John got to his feet. “I am on your side, Vicky. But the potential benefits from this thing are so enormous. . . .”

  She threw out both hands to stop him. “Nothing is worth the risk of destroying a sacred place.”

  He stared at her a long moment, and she thought she saw something change in his eyes. “No. Of course not,” he said, suddenly reaching out and taking her hand. He pulled her along the counter to him.

  She was so close. So close she could make out the lights in his blue eyes, the reds and oranges and golds in his hair—she had been twelve years old before she’d seen anyone with eyes and hair like that—so close she could breathe in the faint odors of wool and after-shave and sense the warmth of his body. She felt a change in herself, a sense of having come home, of belonging.

  She placed her other hand over his and began examining the palm, the long fingers. She could feel the slight pulsing of blood beneath the skin. You could tell so much about a man by his hands. It was not the hand of a man who mended fences or tended to horses and cattle or baled hay, like the other men she had known. Yet there was a roughness in the creases, a man’s roughness.
She expected him to take his hand away, but he let it stay.

  His other hand moved to the side of her face and touched it tenderly. She felt the nerves in her body quickening as he placed his arms around her—to comfort her, she thought, to calm her. She wanted to allow herself to melt into him, to give way to the emotions flooding through her, but she couldn’t shake the awareness that they were crossing a line neither had wanted to cross. Once crossed, there would be no place for them—on this reservation, in this life.

  She laid her hands on his chest and gently pushed him away. “You had better go,” she said, her eyes locked on his, pleading for understanding.

  Vicky stood near the sofa, forcing herself to stop trembling, forcing herself to breathe normally as she watched him pull on his jacket, set his cowboy hat on his head. He opened the door and was about to step outside when he turned back, one hand gripping the knob. “Vicky . . .” He hesitated. His eyes held hers a long moment. Finally he said, “You know I’ll be there if you need me. Just call. . . .”

  She closed the door after him and absentmindedly threw the lock and inserted the chain into the narrow brass ridge. Then she leaned her forehead into the hard wood, awash in feelings of sadness and anger and loss. Of course she needed him. He was the only man she had cared about in so long—so long, the feelings seemed strange and unbidden. She had never intended to love him. How had this happened? Why had such a man come into her life when there could be no life for them?

  It seemed a long while before she heard the whine of the Toyota’s engine, the slow, muffled thrum of the tires on the asphalt as he drove away.

  15

  Father John drove north through Lander, rain glistening in the headlights, the shadows of houses, evergreens, and box elders passing outside the windows. He hardly knew where he was until he was speeding down Highway 789, the Toyota swaying on its axles. At Hudson he turned left onto Rendezvous Road, the diagonal cut across the reservation.

  On he plunged toward the darkness beyond the headlights, the music of Don Giovanni blaring through the cab. He could almost taste the whiskey in his mouth, the craving was so strong. This woman—he had lived a lifetime without even knowing she existed, and now she filled his thoughts. His body ached with the smells of her hair and skin, the memory of the softness of her body. She had been the one strong enough to fight the temptation, to pull away from his arms when he had wanted only to hold her.

  He was disgusted by his weakness. It was so unfair to her. He wanted only for her to be happy, to be safe. Which was why he had waited outside Blue Sky Hall tonight—to make sure she got into the Bronco and arrived home safely. He had been worried about her. He had felt the tension building during the hearing, the kind of tension that could erupt into violence, and Vicky was the object of so much anger. She refused to take her own danger seriously. She was so damned stubborn. He had thought his own people were stubborn—they could take lessons from her.

  That was what had drawn him to her, he realized, her determination and dauntlessness, the way she gave herself to what she believed in. Woman Alone, Hi sei ci nihi, the grandmothers called her. So small and fragile, she seemed to him, yet willing to wade into a den of bears if she thought it necessary. It had transfixed him—her passion for life, the force of her feelings. So unlike his own feelings, marshaled into place and guarded, surrounded by the rules of order and logical thinking, and, most of the time, controlled by sheer willpower.

  At Seventeen-Mile Road, he wheeled right. His whole being was dry with thirst. There was a time, he knew, when he would have gone immediately to a bottle stashed in the back of a closet, in a drawer among the clean shirts. When he’d believed no one knew. Not his students at the Jesuit prep school in Boston who had sat ramrod straight, foreheads creased in the effort to understand what in heaven’s name he was talking about. Not his fellow Jesuits who’d gone wide-eyed and slack-jawed and begun excusing themselves from the dining table as he’d hammered home point after point, until he was the only one left.

  Dear God, he thought. What a mess he’d made of his life. How he’d let down his students and superiors and everyone who had believed in him. But he’d been given the gift of another chance at St. Francis. Let there be no more broken vows, he prayed. Let there be no more pain to anyone who trusted him, to anyone he loved.

  The Toyota squealed through the turn into the mission. He slammed on the brakes in front of the priests’ residence, and the pickup skidded onto the wet grass. It was time for him to go away for a while, he thought. He would make a retreat somewhere else, sort out his thoughts and feelings, pray for the direction his life should take.

  But he couldn’t leave yet. Not until he’d seen that the cowboy had a decent funeral. And he wouldn’t be gone a week before his new assistant would begin preaching the value of tithing and calling bingo games in Eagle Hall. He had to get the mission’s finances in better condition before he left. He decided he would write to some of the former benefactors, throw St. Francis on their generosity.

  As he started up the sidewalk, he realized that either he or Vicky would have to leave. Was that the reason he’d tried to talk her into going to Denver? Was he concerned only about her safety? Or was he also worried about his own temptations? On the other hand, he’d also suggested she come to the guest house. What had he meant? These were the kinds of questions he might explore with someone he was counseling, not the kind he wanted to ask himself. He wasn’t sure of the answers. But one thing was certain: Avoiding her these last months had made it harder to see her again.

  The moment he walked up to the front stoop, before he’d touched the doorknob, he could sense the alcohol, as if it were reaching through the door for him. He let himself inside, a feeling of dread mixing with the other emotions of the night. A shaft of light floated down the hallway from the kitchen. His assistant was still awake. Awake and drinking.

  Father John took his time hanging up his jacket on the coat tree, setting his cowboy hat on top. He was trying to settle himself, gain control over the anger pulsing inside him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other priest swaying at the end of the hall, backlit by the kitchen light. “So you’ve returned.” The words were slurred, belligerent.

  The muscles in Father John’s chest tightened. What the assistants at St. Francis did, how they conducted their personal lives—it was their business. He demanded one thing: no alcohol at the mission. He started down the hallway. The sweet, acrid, familiar smell of Scotch washed over him, lodged in his nose and mouth, in his pores.

  “I know, I know,” Geoff said, his eyes narrowing behind the bone-framed glasses, as if he were trying to bring the room into focus. He stumbled backward as Father John brushed past him into the kitchen. “The no-alcohol rule. Well, I broke it tonight, but don’t worry. I’m not offering you any.”

  The man looked as if he’d been drinking all day: When did he start? Father John wondered. This morning after their quarrel in the office? Was this the first time? He decided it must be. Elena would’ve said something otherwise. Nothing got by the old woman.

  “Sometimes, sometimes . . .” Father Geoff began, the words drawn out, as if he were having trouble fitting his tongue into the right places. He dropped down on the edge of a chair, groped for the glass on the table, and took a quick drink of the pale yellow liquid. Father John felt as if the fireball had slid down his own throat. And then it was gone, a memory. His eyes fell on the half-empty bottle on the floor next to the table leg. He forced back the longing.

  “It gets so damn lonely,” the other priest said.

  Father John held up one hand. He was in no mood to deal with the maunderings of a drunk. “If you’ve got something to say to me, say it. I don’t want to hear about how lonely it gets.”

  “You don’t want to admit it.” The other priest lifted the glasses off the bridge of his nose and ran one hand under his eyes. “All that collegiality and brotherhood we’re supposed to have. What a bunch of crap. You know what? We’re in god-awful place
s like this, alone.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Father John said, starting for the door.

  “Wait. I’m trying to tell you for your own good.”

  Father John stopped, looked back. “What are you talking about?”

  His assistant lifted the glass, took another drink. “I’m talking about women. We’re out here on our own, by ourselves, and women know that.” He jabbed the glass into the air. “It’s been true for four hundred years.”

  “What’s been true?”

  “Women have been after us.”

  “For four hundred years? We must be very fast runners.”

  The other priest grabbed the edge of the table and propelled himself to his feet. “Joke. Joke!” he shouted. “You’re good at that. Make a joke, then you don’t have to face the truth.”

  In an instant Father John understood. Someone had called the mission, perhaps one of the men around Vicky’s Bronco. Maybe he’d guessed Father John would follow her home. You know where Father O’Malley is? He went home with a woman. And his assistant, who was probably already in his cups when the call came through, had decided to confront him with the truth about himself, and he had made a joke. . . .

  “Just say it.”

  Father Geoff shrugged. “I know, John. I know what it’s like. You’re lonely, and a woman makes herself available. I saw your face out there this afternoon.” He swung the half-empty glass of Scotch in the direction of the administration building. “The minute Chief Banner said someone had tried to run down that woman, your face turned as red as the lights on the police car. This Vicky Holden, whoever she is, isn’t just another parishioner. I got a call about you taking her home tonight. You’ve been with her since the hearing ended.”

  “I wanted to make sure she got home safely.”

  The other priest leaned down and grabbed the neck of the bottle. He tipped it into the glass. Father John watched the yellow liquid accumulate, rise toward the rim. He forced himself to breathe through his mouth to avoid the smell as his assistant set the bottle on the table and lifted the glass in a toast, a grand gesture. “Have it your way.”