Father John waited for the woman to go on. He had counseled hundreds. He had lost track of the numbers of parishioners stopping by the office—Father, you have a minute? He could see Mikey Longshot stretching his legs for home, scoring the winning run, and the rest of the team crowding around, hoisting him up and carrying him around like the trophy they’d just won. When had that changed? When had the kids decided he was different?
“You don’t know how it’s been,” Darleen went on. “The bullying. Anything happen, the other boys ganged up and swore Mikey did it. Like the time somebody stole the seventh-grade teacher’s purse. The other kids swore they saw Mikey take it, so he ended up with a juvi record. He really wanted to play basketball in high school. The other guys tripped him, pushed him down, did everything they could to make him look like he couldn’t handle the ball, so he sat on the bench. Wouldn’t go back to school after that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Two years ago, he got shot. You remember?”
Father John said he remembered. He had sat with Mike at Riverton Memorial after the doctors had dug a bullet out of his ribs.
“White guy shot him in the park in Riverton. Lied to the police. Said Mikey was coming on to him. That wasn’t Mikey’s way, but some of his so-called Arapaho friends backed up the white guy. Raps backing up the white guy, saying that’s what they’d seen, so the cops said it was self-defense. Now they can say he had a motive to shoot a white man.”
She ran her fingers over her eyes and squeezed the rim of her nose. Then she looked at him and tried for a smile. “He can handle horses better than anybody on the rez. Been training mustangs since he was sixteen. He walks right out into the corral. Horse can be going crazy, pawing the dirt with fire in his eyes, and Mikey starts talking to him. Pretty soon, the horse calms down. Gets all gentle. Mikey saddles him up and rides him around. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times. He’s . . . what you call it? A horse whisperer. He can ride any horse and make it do what he wants. Horses love him. They have a sixth sense, you know. They see he’s special. Blessed by the Creator.”
Darleen leaned forward and clasped her hands in her lap. “That’s why they came to the house last week.”
“Who came to the house?”
“Colin Morningside and a couple other Raps. Said they wanted to talk to Mikey. I was about to tell them to get lost, but Mikey came down the hall and said, ‘What’s up?’ They went outside. I kept watch at the window. They hung around the pickup and talked for fifteen minutes, then Colin and the others drove off. Mikey came inside and told me they heard that Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were going to ride in the rodeo parade in Lander. They said they were getting warriors to ride. They wanted Mikey. Bad feeling came over me right then. I tried to talk him out of it.”
“You said he’s a great horseman.”
She nodded. “They needed him. When I saw what they did today, riding around the cavalry, racing toward one another. A dare ride, like in the Old Time. Mikey knew how to keep his horse under control and get the other horses to follow. Horses know who’s the leader, and they do what the leader does.”
“What are you saying, Darleen? You think one of the Indians killed Garrett?”
“They all killed him.” Her voice reached for hysteria. “That was the plan. Race around like an attack, dare the cavalry to do something. Scream. Yell. Make a big commotion so nobody sees Custer fall off his horse. They’ll get away with it, too. The cops start getting too close, the warriors will give them Mikey.” She jerked a little sideways, as if her own words had sent a shock through her. “Oh, my God, Father. He’ll go to prison for the rest of his life.”
“Look, Darleen,” Father John began. “Nobody knows yet what happened this morning.”
“Oh, Father.” She dropped her face into her hands. “Everybody knows.” Her voice was teary and blurred. “There isn’t anybody on this rez that didn’t want Custer dead.” Looking up, she seemed to make an effort to pull herself together. “That man thought he was Custer. He stood for everything Custer did to Indian people. Now they’ve killed him.”
* * *
THE SUN HAD disappeared behind the high mountain peaks, and a dusty yellow light slanted over the mission grounds. After helping Darleen into her car and watching the jerky way she drove around Circle Drive into the cottonwood tunnel, Father John started toward the Little Wind River. In the stillness, the mission seemed frozen in time. He could imagine Jesuits from the past, those of the austere photographs that lined the corridor in the administration building, walking to the river. The feeling that he was part of something larger than himself, the latest in a parade that would continue on, never left him. The past inhabited the reservation and clung to the mission like the invisible wind.
He headed through the coolness of the shadows between the administration building and the church. Little spits of dust rose around his boots and turned the toes gray. What Darleen had said made no sense, and yet, there was a sense of the past here, as if General George Armstrong Custer still rode across the plains, attacking villages, burning tipis and food supplies, shooting the picketed ponies. There were people on the rez whose ancestors had died in Custer’s attacks. Darleen was right about one thing: No Indian would mourn Custer’s death. Except that the man who’d died this morning wasn’t Custer.
And what about the rest of it? A plan the warriors had hatched and carried out? Under the leadership of Colin Morningside, dressed and painted like Crazy Horse, the Oglala chief who had defeated Custer? Detective Madden suspected an Indian had shot Garrett. Eventually he would focus the investigation on the Indian impersonating Crazy Horse. But the plan had covered that possibility. The warriors would give up Mike, someone dispensable because he was different.
Help us, Dear Lord. Guide us. Show us the way.
Walks-On came bounding toward him, stick in his mouth. Coming around a bend behind the golden retriever was the bishop. Baseball cap shading half his face, gray hair standing out below the rim. Father John sank onto his haunches, took hold of the dog and scratched behind his ears, then ran his hands over the back of his coat. When Walks-On dropped the stick, he scooped it up and tossed it ahead. Walks-On bounded after it as Father John stood up and fell in beside the bishop. They headed back the way Father John had just come. “What about the rodeo?” he said, trying for a lighter tone.
“I thanked Lou for the offer of tickets, but . . .” The bishop stopped walking and drew in two or three breaths before he started off again. “I’m afraid it would be too dispiriting. A man dead. Indians and cavalry impersonators pulled from the program. Everyone will be sad, I think.” He waited, then added: “And worried. But Lou said the purses are pretty big, so the rodeo will go on.”
Father John didn’t say anything. Cowboys and Indians came from across the West to compete in the rodeos. Bronco and bull riding, calf roping, dozens of events, once known as cowboy fun. Rodeos were the way rodeo riders made their living.
They walked in silence. Blue-black shadows had begun to drape the guesthouse and Eagle Hall. Walks-On raced ahead, the stick balanced between his jaws. They were crossing Circle Drive when Father John told the old man what Darleen had said, thinking how good it was to have an older priest to talk to. There wasn’t much Bishop Harry hadn’t seen as the bishop of Patma. Horrendous experiences that came up from time to time, as if the past were always present. Young girls taken from the mission school, sold into marriage, burned to death. Young boys with hands and legs amputated by their own parents to make them more successful street beggars.
“What do you think, John?”
Father John took a moment to marshal his thoughts into a logical sequence. There must be logic that deals with the present, explains the causes and effects that have nothing to do with the past. He shook his head. “It’s not logical for someone to shoot a man who had nothing to do with what happened in the past,” he said.
The
bishop stopped. He was half a head shorter than Father John with a rounded stoop to his shoulders. He started up the steps to the residence, then turned and looked Father John in the eye. “Still, it might be true,” he said. “Events move across time according to their own pathways. What will you do?”
Walks-On had dropped the stick at his feet. Father John picked it up, tossed it across the front yard, and watched the dog lope with surprising grace on two front legs and one hind leg. There was a logic here. Toss stick. Dog runs. Dog retrieves stick. But anything might intervene and stop the sequence. Nothing was inevitable.
“I don’t know,” he said.
From the time I was a boy, I knew I wanted to portray Custer, a great and noble American, courageous and daring. I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Father John sipped at the hot coffee he had brewed and read through the black text on the screen. When he had typed “reenactments” in the search box, a page of Web sites had materialized, and he had clicked on “My Life as Custer, a biography of Edward Garrett.” The first pages had been a travelogue of the cities and counties, parades, rodeos, and county fairs where Garrett had appeared as Custer. Sometimes with 7th Cavalry reenactors; sometimes with his wife, Belinda Clark, dressed like Libbie Custer; sometimes alone. Photographs dotted the text. Garrett, in buckskins and wide-brimmed hat, squinting in the sun, aiming a rifle at some distant point, serious-looking and straight-shouldered, a man in command.
I found an old buckskin jacket in the thrift store where we used to shop and begged Mother to buy it for me. It was perfect. Could have been worn by the great man himself. Mother wasn’t happy about laying out the money on what she called my wild dreams, but I promised to pay her back. I gave her every dime I made off my paper route until I had paid off that debt, and I was proud. I was sure Custer was the type of man who never welshed on a debt. From somewhere else, I got a wide-brimmed hat that looked like Custer’s. That was the beginning. I read everything about Custer. I knew how to walk and talk like him. Some of his famous Custer luck rubbed off on me, and I started acting like Custer in school shows. I talked myself into parades. Soon as I got out of the army, I found other reenactors as inspired by Custer and the 7th Cavalry as I was, and we started putting on mock battles based on the Little Bighorn battle.
“From those beginnings,” the article went on, “Edward Garrett has become the foremost interpreter of General George Armstrong Custer in the nation. He has appeared before crowds of thousands who no doubt wish that the fate of the great general might have been different. Look for Garrett at the reenactments of the Battle of the Little Bighorn . . .”
Father John closed the site. A wave of senselessness washed over him. Edward Garrett, alive on the Web site, reminiscing about how the larger-than-life image of Custer had taken hold of him as a kid, how he had wanted to be like Custer. Year after year, reenacting the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Custer’s luck had run out. Now Garrett was dead.
He read down the next page of Web sites and clicked on “Reenactments—Living History.” The text that popped up on the screen explained that hundreds of men and women participated in reenactments of famous military battles across the country. Most reenacted Civil War battles, such as Fredericksburg, the Battle of the Wilderness, Gettysburg. But reenactments were also staged of famous battles in World War I and World War II. The only reenactments on the plains, it seemed, were those of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Those who dedicate time, energies, and money to reenactments do so out of a love of history and the desire to bring history alive. “We are educators,” explained Herb Finer, part of the reenactment of the Battle of Bull Run. “We are living interpreters of the past, and our goal is to help people understand major historical events that shaped the present. When you see a soldier shot from his horse, it is real. The image stays in your mind, and you never think of history again as dull, dry, and unimportant.”
While it is true that reenactors portray battles in which many men died horrible deaths, the battles took place between armed combatants. The results might have gone either way because the combatants were equal. Civil War battles were fought between armed warriors, unlike the massacres of unarmed civilians by soldiers that occurred during the Indian Wars. Such massacres as Sand Creek and the Washita were hardly equal fights, and are unworthy of reenactment.
Father John closed the site, then typed in a new search: “Battle of the Little Bighorn reenactment.” Dozens of sites appeared. He clicked on “Historical Interpretation Video.” A panoramic view of the Little Bighorn River Valley swept across the screen. Bluffs, narrow ravines, slopes of tall grass surrounding the blue-green river that twisted through a valley at the base of sandy cliffs. The sound of drums and the Hi yi hi cries of the Indians coming from a distance, moving closer. The faint outlines of white tipis materializing alongside the river, like ghosts. Dozens of tipis at first. Hundreds. Thousands.
He tried to remember what he had once taught his American history classes about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Fifteen years ago, a different lifetime, and even then, he remembered, Custer and the Bighorn had seemed remote, a footnote. Now he had the sense of watching the actual camp come alive. Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho under the leadership of Sitting Bull, the spiritual leader, and Crazy Horse, the war chief. The largest Indian camp ever assembled. Four thousand Indians. What a sight the village must have presented to Custer’s scouts when they topped a bluff high above the village.
Cutting through the drums and the cries was the sound of a bugle playing the jaunty, familiar melody of “Garry Owen.” A column of troopers rode across the grassy slopes. Blue uniforms and a mixture of blue caps and gray wide-brimmed hats, rifles strapped on backs, metal harnesses and stirrups clanking with the music. Riding ahead were officers, Benteen and Reno. Father John recognized Osborne and Veraggi. Edward Garrett in the lead, blond hair almost hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, dressed in buckskin shirt and trousers with fringe running down the arms and legs.
He shut down the video. It was like watching men riding to their deaths.
5
ANGELA RUNNING BEAR concentrated on the man’s voice coming from the radio on the dashboard. The Honda shimmied. Engine humming, exhaust smells drifting. The news still seemed incredible. Edward Garrett shot to death at the rodeo parade yesterday while she had been curled on a lounge chair on the balcony of the condo in Jackson waiting for Skip to finish his meeting. They were going to dinner, fancy restaurant in a hotel. They would be seated on the patio, waiters hurrying about, wine stewards bowing to Skip Burrows, bringing the best wine. He was important. She felt important when she was with him. They had driven back to Lander in silence, music playing softly on the radio. Then the interruption, the news. A murder on Main Street.
Now the radio voice droned on with more details as she backed down the graveled driveway that led from the rental house—a one-room shack, really—past the old two-story where busybody Betty Black lived. Probably a hundred years old, with nothing to do but watch Angela’s coming and going and who she came and went with. Skip always parked a block away and walked down the back alley. She let him in the side door. It wasn’t good business for the town to know he was having an affair with his secretary. Half his age, Arapaho. People would talk, and one thing about Skip she had learned over the last months was that he liked to control the gossip about himself. Last night he had walked her down the alley. Stayed for an hour before he had swung out of bed, saying he had to get to the office early this morning.
It bothered her, a prick of discomfort in the happiness. He had broken off with his old girlfriend. Why did they have to sneak around, walk down alleys, spend weekends in Jackson where Skip said no one cared if they were having an affair? Why couldn’t they live like a normal couple, love each other in the open? Friday afternoon, she had left the office before he did—they never left at the same time. She had waited at her apartment. At every muffled sound from outside—the squea
l of a tire, the sound of an engine cutting off or a dog barking—she had thought, He’s here. Except she knew he would walk to her place. Finally he was there, filling up the living room, taking up all the space, breathing all the air. And something different about him, she had thought. Something on his mind as they had driven to Jackson making small talk.
She had dreamed about the house he was building on the beach in Cabo. They could live like other people there. Morning swims, afternoon siestas, cozy dinners with the last of the sunlight splayed on the water, and the nights alone, just the two of them. She wondered when they would move to Mexico. Trust me, he always said. He had made some big investments that would pay off soon. Money never seemed a problem for Skip. Big house in Lander, the silver BMW. She had seen the stacks of cash in the briefcase he had brought to Jackson this weekend.
Angela turned into the street, shifted into drive and took a side street to Main. The radio voice was like background noise. “It is believed the murder occurred when about thirty Arapahos broke ranks and started galloping around the cavalry. Hundreds of onlookers were on the curbs, and police have asked anyone who may have seen the shooting or noticed anything unusual to contact them.”
She hit the off button, dragged her bag onto her lap, and burrowed inside, steering with her knees to avoid the cars parked at the curb. She pulled out the cell and punched in Skip’s number. Everybody would be stopping by today. Edward Garrett—Call me General—murdered in the street! She could picture the man striding into the office in his fringed buckskins, like those worn by the Rendezvous guys who dressed up like traders and camped on the Wind River outside Riverton like it was the 1800s and the Indians were about to show up and trade buffalo hides for sugar and coffee. Living in the past, like the general. She wished she could do that, turn back the clock.
Killing Custer Page 4
