The gunshot, when it came, splintered the air. Vicky realized she had closed her eyes, and she snapped them open and lifted her head. Charlie Crow lay sprawled on the ground, the rifle at his side, the toes of his boots pointing toward the sky. She couldn’t take her eyes away, and yet, at the periphery of her vision, she saw the men in dark uniforms walking into the floodlights, carrying rifles, some of them, others shoving handguns into the holsters on their hips. Some were walking toward her and John. And Father Ian, running toward them through the brush, dodging around the trees.
Then she understood what had happened. He’d heard the first gunfire and he’d called 911. There was a Wind River police car nearby—police were probably keeping an eye on the mission—and backup cars had arrived in minutes. Sheriff’s officers, Riverton police officers, an array of uniforms tramping about.
“He’s been shot,” Vicky shouted to no one in particular, to all of them. “Get an ambulance.” But somewhere out in the vast space beyond the lights, there was already the muffled noise of sirens.
She was still gripping the stone, keeping the tourniquet tight, she realized, when the ambulance rocked into the circle of light. Still holding on when one of the medics pried her fingers away.
VICKY STEPPED INTO the empty space at the rear of the crowd, Adam beside her, his hand firm against the small of her back, guiding her forward. From here she could see around the shoulders and the black heads of people standing close to the opened grave. The little white crosses that erupted over the bare-dirt graves shone in the hot August sun beating down on the mission cemetery. Even the breeze was hot, sweeping up the hill across the flat bluff, plucking at her skirt and blowing her hair. The crowd was quiet, reverent, heads bowed. Almost everyone was holding a flower of some kind, little flashes of purple and yellow and red next to the plaid shirts, blue jeans, and cotton dresses. She breathed in the perfume of the yellow rose she was holding. Yellow, for life.
In front, the casket that held Liz Plenty Horses’s skeleton stood poised over the grave on strips of thick, black plastic. Next to the casket were Father John and Father Ian, in the robes of priests—how natural John looked, except for the sling that held his right arm to his chest.
Father John dipped a sprinkler into the container that Father Ian held and started walking alongside the casket, sprinkling holy water over the top. She had to shift her position to keep him in sight, and each time she moved, she was aware of Adam moving with her, his hand firmly on her back.
“May the Lord receive your soul and hold you in his love…” Father John’s voice drifted through the sound of the wind. Then both he and Father Ian stepped back into the crowd, making room for Thomas Whiteman and Hugh Bad Elk. The elders moved close to the casket and Thomas held up a pan filled with burning cedar. Oh, she knew the ritual: there had been so many funerals.
Hethaithe hadwanenaidethe Jevaneatha jethuajene. Vicky closed her eyes and let the prayers warm her, like the sun on her arms and face. She understood the meaning; the prayers of the elders were part of the memories lodged in her heart. The good will go to live with God forever.
The crowd remained quiet as the casket dropped into the grave, the creaking of a motor punctuating the sounds of the wind. Then, almost in slow motion, people began filing toward the grave. Luna came first, head bowed, her black hair falling forward like a scarf. Behind her was a man probably in his thirties, dressed in a white shirt, leather vest, and dark slacks. His black hair was trimmed short around a narrow, Indian face. He held the baby in one arm—she fit comfortably on his hip—and he kept his other arm around Luna as they approached the casket. Maybe that was the way Jimmie Iron would have been with Liz, Vicky thought. It was possible. She watched Luna hold a clump of wild flowers over the grave a moment, before allowing them to float downward.
Inez Horn and Mary Hennings came next and tossed in little bouquets of flowers. The rest of the crowd had also begun moving forward, separating into makeshift lines, stepping back to allow room for an elder or a grandmother or a child, all of them letting the flowers drift downward over the casket. She spotted Diana Morningstar and the other women who had come to her office.
It had surprised her, the crowd that had jammed Blue Sky Hall last evening for Liz’s wake and had come to St. Francis Mission this morning for the funeral. Traffic had backed up on Seventeen-Mile Road—lines of pickups and sedans—waiting to turn into the mission. Vehicles had parked everywhere. They had jammed Circle Drive and crowded into vacant spaces in the field in the center of the drive. The pews had been filled. She and Adam had managed to get seats in the back. People were standing in the side aisles and across the vestibule. So many people, she’d thought, for a girl murdered more than thirty-five years ago, a forgotten girl. Who cared? Charlie Crow had said.
Vicky followed the last of the crowd to the grave, Adam at her side, and tossed the yellow rose onto the pile of flowers. “Rest in peace,” she whispered. “Beni’:i:ho. We have found you.”
THE CEMETERY WAS deserted now, the last pickups snaking out to the road, red taillights catching the sun. Vicky retraced her steps across the sun-baked ground, through the rows of graves to Liz’s grave. The smell of the flowers wafted around her. She’d told Adam she needed a few more minutes and had headed back up the bluff.
“You have a beautiful daughter,” she said. Now this is crazy, she was thinking, talking to a skeleton in a casket. And yet, she felt as if Liz Plenty Horses were an old friend, someone she’d known all of her life, a girl like herself at one time. “You have a granddaughter, too. Does that surprise you? And a son-in-law. He seems like a good husband and father. And Inez was a good mother.”
Vicky looked past the grave at the brown plains running into the distance and the blue sky melting down. It would have been nice—appropriate somehow, she was thinking, if Liz’s hair had been unbraided, all of her troubles released. And yet, Vicky had the feeling that it had been done.
When she turned around, she saw John O’Malley coming through the graves toward her, wearing blue jeans now and a light blue shirt, his arm strapped across the front.
“Thought I might find you here,” he said when he reached her. “I haven’t had the chance to thank you.”
“Thank me?” she said. “I should thank you for helping me find Liz’s killer. Robert Running Wolf had gotten away with murder for a long time. He would have always gotten away with it.” Then she told him that she’d spoken with Coughlin yesterday. Mister had been arrested in South Dakota and brought back to the rez. He would be charged with kidnapping, aiding and abetting first-degree murder, and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Conviction on any one of the charges would put him in prison for life.
“You saved my life, Vicky,” Father John said.
She smiled up at him. “Didn’t you know,” she said, “it was partly selfish. I couldn’t stand the thought of your leaving.” She glanced away for a moment. “When are you leaving, John?”
“In two weeks,” he said. He turned his head in the direction of the mission grounds, the white steeple rising over the edge of the bluff. The movement seemed to cause a stab of pain in his wounded arm because he grimaced and drew in his lower lip a moment, and she realized that this—the subject of his leaving—was not something they should talk about. It was not negotiable. They’d both known this day would come.
Still, she pushed on. “I thought you didn’t want to go to Rome.”
“It’s a sabbatical.”
“That means you’ll be back?”
“There are no guarantees.” Father John moved the strapped arm forward about a quarter of an inch, then let it drop back into place, wincing a little, she could see. “No pitching for a while anyway,” he said, and Vicky could feel the effort it had taken, that little joke.
They started walking back across the bluff, striking a zigzag path around the mounds of graves, right, left, then across the road. She reached out and slipped her arm around his good arm, wanting to hold him here for a while l
onger. The mission lay below, deserted now, except for Adam’s pickup truck parked in Circle Drive. The administration building, the church and museum, the residence looked like an assembly of old buildings on a picture postcard. She could see Walks-On sprawled on the grass near the front door of the residence.
“I’ll come back after the sabbatical for Walks-On,” Father John said. “I don’t want to leave him behind.” Then he added, “With everything else.”
“Yes,” Vicky said. She let go of his arm then. “At least you can take Walks-On.”
The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Page 30
