Killing Custer

by Margaret Coel

  Father John made his way around the hall, chatting with the adults, high-fiving a couple of the kids, watching the bishop show the boy how to slam back a serve. He helped himself to a cookie and thanked the women for preparing the food—stacks of hot dogs and fry bread, chips with melted cheese, cake, cookies, and coolers of soda.

  “It’s good,” Imelda Plenty Horses said, gripping his hand. “Ni isini.”

  He left the music pounding, the kids swaying, gathering in groups, breaking apart, moving on to other groups. The noise receded, filled in by the soft whoosh of the wind as he walked back along the graveled path. He took the concrete steps to the administration building two at a time, fished the keys out of his jeans pocket, and let himself into the coolness of the corridor.

  In his office, he pulled out his cell and tried Angela’s number again, dropping into the chair at his desk. The buzzing noise, the same forced cheerfulness in the voice, the familiar message only reinforced the uncomfortable feeling he couldn’t shake. “Father O’Malley calling again,” he said. “I thought you’d like to know your nephew Ollie is staying with the Makepeace family.” He paused. He had already told her everything. “Let me know if I can be of any help.” He had the sense that he was speaking into a black void.

  19

  FATHER JOHN OPENED the laptop on his desk, tapped the on button. The screen turned bright blue. He could feel the music vibrating through the floorboards of the old building. Finally the icons danced into place. The laptop was several years old now and slow, a relic, he supposed, but he had grown fond of it; he knew its ways.

  He clicked on the browser, glanced at the silent mobile he had set next to the laptop, and tried to ignore the uneasy feeling. He forced his thoughts back to this afternoon in the RV camp. A whole camp of reenactors without a leader, no doubt wondering what might come next, which events would be canceled. A season of appearances lost. The most important event, the reenactment at the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn—how could it take place without Custer?

  And Veraggi and Osborne, slouched in webbed chairs, drinking beer. Veraggi’s eyes reddened with inebriation. Osborne’s mannered way of steadying himself. Across the road, Belinda Clark had been tight-lipped, shaking with anger. So much animosity toward the men who had been with her husband when he died. She had seemed to alternate between anger at the murder of Edward Garrett and anger at the death of Custer.

  He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, yet something about Edward Garrett’s widow had stayed with him, like a sharp burr in his skin. Just sat on their horses and let my husband die! Veraggi and Osborne? Because they’d happened to ride side-by-side with Garrett? They said they’d had all they could do to control the bucking, rearing horses spooked by the circling Indians. It hadn’t surprised them to see Garrett on the street. They assumed he had fallen. What had surprised them was that they had managed to stay mounted and weren’t on the street with him.

  He wondered who Belinda had been referring to. The red-eyed, inebriated men in webbed chairs, or Benteen and Reno, two men in history? A vague memory floated through his mind like a moth, hard to pin down, from the American history classes he had taught. After the battle, a short-lived, national outpouring of grief for the loss of Custer and his troops had erupted across the country. But there had been something else: hints and rumors that blamed Custer for the army’s worst defeat in the Indian Wars. Then Libbie Custer had stepped into the controversy and spent the rest of her life—fifty years, if he remembered correctly—defending her husband’s reputation. Father John had read that army officers who blamed Custer for the loss of his troops had backed off out of respect for another officer’s widow. Custer became an American icon. The brave, faultless leader massacred by savage Indians. Libbie had never forgiven Benteen and Reno for not coming to her husband’s defense. They had let him die.

  Father John typed “Benteen and Reno, Battle of the Little Bighorn” in the search box. The thumping sounds of music had stopped. The teenage party was breaking up. He could hear engines coughing into life, tires spitting gravel, kids shouting and laughing. Dozens of Web sites materialized. It would take hours to read through them all. He clicked on a site and read how Benteen and Reno had been under siege, pinned down on Reno Hill. It had been impossible for them to come to Custer’s aid.

  But that wasn’t the whole story, he knew. Maybe they could have joined Custer earlier, before they were pinned down. Is that what Libbie had blamed them for? Was it possible Benteen and Reno could have helped Custer, and chose not to? Could Libbie have been right?

  Indians weren’t the only ones that hated Custer. He could hear Lou Morningside’s voice in his head. He refined the search by deleting the Battle of the Little Bighorn and adding Washita to Benteen and Reno. There it was, halfway down the first page:

  Animosity developed between General Custer and his sub-commanders, especially Captain Frederick Benteen. During the battle, Benteen’s friend, Major Joel Elliott, had taken sixteen men and gone after escaping warriors. The attack on the Washita raged on until the 7th had destroyed the small Cheyenne camp, burned the tipis and winter food supplies and slaughtered the pony herd—seven hundred horses. By the time Custer and the 7th pulled out, the ground was littered with bodies of dead Cheyennes. The frozen bodies of Chief Black Kettle and his wife floated in the Washita River. There was no sign of Major Elliott and his detail.

  When Custer gave the order to turn the cavalry around, Benteen inquired whether the general intended to send a detail out looking for Major Elliott and his troops. The general refused. Weeks later, Custer and his men returned to the Washita. Two miles from the site of the Cheyenne camp, in the tall grass, they found the bodies of Major Elliott and all of his men. To Benteen, Custer’s abandonment of Elliott and the troops was unforgivable, a black mark on the regiment, a decision on the part of the general that he could never forgive. Later, Benteen would write that, one day, Custer’s recklessness would doom the 7th Cavalry.

  Father John closed the site and stared at the long list of other sites. Debates among historians, theories, conjunctures. Nothing in history was easy or clear-cut, or settled. Everything was subject to new interpretations. What had actually taken place at the Little Bighorn? What had been going on in the minds of Benteen and Reno? No one would ever know. But Libbie Custer thought she knew.

  He shut down the computer and walked over to the window, aware for the first time of the evening quiet settling over the mission. The kids gone. The grandmothers had packed up the leftovers and driven away. They would take the food to the elders who might be running low on food. Light from the streetlamps flared over Circle Drive. It was still hot outside, he was sure, even though the thick old walls of the administration building kept his office cool. His thoughts kept running back to Belinda Clark. How much of Libbie Custer’s belief about Benteen and Reno had influenced Belinda? Did she really blame Veraggi and Osborne for not coming to her husband’s aid? Or was it Benteen and Reno she blamed?

  My God. He was in a house of mirrors, with reflections that twisted and turned back on themselves, bursting into the present and resolving into the past. But maybe it was simpler than he’d realized. Maybe what Veraggi and Osborne had said was closer to the truth—Belinda Clark only wanted her husband’s money.

  A shadow appeared at the edges of the light, moving across the field of grass in the center of Circle Drive. It was a moment before he could make out a horse and rider, the rider bent over the horse’s neck, reins loosened. The horse turned left, crossed Circle Drive, and disappeared past the corner of the building. He could hear the steady, rhythmic scrape of hooves on gravel.

  He left on the light in the corridor, went outside, and locked the front door. The wind gusted around him, hot and dry, crackling in the branches of the cottonwoods. He walked over to the driveway between the administration building and the church and stopped, listening for the sounds of hooves, the whinny of a horse. Nothing. Arrows
of light shot from two streetlamps that stood across from each other, and a lattice of shadows fell over the driveway. The door to Eagle Hall was closed, but he walked over and tried the knob. One of the grandmothers had locked up. He headed down the driveway toward the guesthouse, windows dark and cottonwood branches dancing against the white stucco walls. He tried that door. Also locked. Then he started back. A quick movement at the far corner of the church! He hoisted himself over the log fence that closed off a patch of wild grasses and made his way alongside the back of the building.

  “Who’s there?” he called. People came to the mission for all sorts of reasons. Running away from abuse. Struggling with problems—alcohol, drugs, gambling. Looking for counseling. Looking for food. Someone had ridden in here tonight and looped the reins of the brown horse around the top log of the fence. The horse shifted and stamped its feet and snorted into the wind. There was no saddle. The rider had ridden bareback, which took a lot of skill. A lot of experience and confidence with horses.

  He patted the horse’s shoulder. Clammy and hot. The animal needed to be brushed and cooled down. He glanced around, half expecting the rider to jump out of the shadows, but there was no sign of anyone. He retraced his steps and, at the beginning of the driveway, turned left and took the concrete steps in front of the church two at a time. The door hung open a couple of inches, and he pushed it wide open. The interior was dark except for the tiny red light flickering in front of the small, white, deerskin tipi that served as the tabernacle at the side of the altar. He waited in the vestibule a moment, listening for the sounds of movement, of breathing. The church was silent, but he could sense the presence of someone in the shadows. He moved into the church and opened the door to the confessional on the right. It was empty.

  “Hello?” His voice echoed around the empty pews. The stained glass windows glowed in the dim light from outside. For an instant, he thought he heard the scuff of a boot, the rustle of someone adjusting his position. “I saw you ride in,” he said, starting down the center aisle. He knew the small church—a chapel, really—by heart. The soft sound of his footsteps on the carpet, the faint smells of incense and sage. He could have found his way blindfolded. “How can I help you?”

  He heard the slight movement then, like a nervous twitch. Up ahead in the front pews. He kept his pace steady, glancing along the empty pews on either side. Before he reached the third pew, he spotted the hunched shape.

  “What’s going on, Mike?” He stepped into the pew and sat down beside the young man crumpled beside him. He’d guessed right. Not many men on the rez could handle a horse like Mike Longshot.

  The young man let out a sob that sounded like a tire deflating. Face buried in his hands, looking as if he wished he could disappear into the wooden pew.

  “Mike?” Father John set his hand on the man’s shoulder. He could feel the tremors rising from somewhere deep within. “What happened?”

  Another sobbing noise, and the tremors turned into shivers. Father John waited. He was used to waiting for a penitent in the confessional or someone he was counseling to muster the courage to unravel the pain or grief or fear that tied them into knots.

  “They’re coming for me.” Mike lifted his head off the pew, leaned back, and stared straight ahead, as if he were talking to himself. “Tribal cops came by the store this morning looking for me. My shift didn’t start ’til three this afternoon. Lucky my buddy called, so I got out of the house before they showed up. Took Brownie out of the corral and rode up into the hills and kept going. Stopped for a couple hours to let Brownie graze some sweetgrass. Took a nap by the creek. There’s nowhere for me to go. Rode back by the house and Mom told me what they said. Scared her half to death. Said they wanted to talk to me about Garrett’s murder. If I didn’t come in voluntarily, they would issue an arrest warrant. Conspiracy to commit murder. They can’t arrest you in a church, right?”

  Father John was quiet a moment. He wasn’t sure that if the BIA cops got wind Mike was hiding out, they wouldn’t burst through the door, march down the aisle, and handcuff him. If they had an arrest warrant. He pushed the thought aside and tried to fit Mike Longshot’s dilemma into a logical sequence that might have transpired. Colin Morningside had taken off. Was that what had directed the police attention to Mike, the only other Arapaho who had gone to hear Edward Garrett speak? The BIA Police might pick him up, but it was Madden who was investigating Garrett’s murder. What had Detective Madden learned that made him want to talk to Mike again?

  He could still picture Darleen Longshot in his study, her voice edged with hysteria. The cops start getting too close, the warriors will give them Mikey.

  “Have you called Vicky Holden?”

  Mike started shaking his head. “I was scared. She’s in Lander. No way I’m crossing the border.”

  “She would come to you.” It was the truth, he knew. She would go wherever she could help her people. “You can stay in the guesthouse tonight,” he went on, parsing the implications. Mike hadn’t been arrested; technically he wasn’t a fugitive, which meant Father John wouldn’t be hiding a fugitive. He shunted aside the thought that the Provincial might not agree. “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll call Vicky,” he said.

  * * *

  FATHER JOHN FOUND a brush and some rags in the storage closet, and an old bucket that surprised him by its presence. While Mike brushed Brownie and wiped her down, he filled the bucket from the water spout at the side of the administration building, sloshing water on his boots and the legs of his blue jeans. He hopped the log fence again and lifted the bucket over. Mike dropped it in front of the horse. “Plenty of good grass here,” he said, rubbing the rags across the horse’s back as tenderly as if she were a child. “Good girl, good girl.” He might have been singing a lullaby. “She’s gonna be all right until morning.”

  They left the horse drinking out of the bucket and headed over to the guesthouse. Hopping the fence, walking down the driveway, boots scraping the gravel. Father John fished his keys out of his jeans pocket, opened the front door, and reached in to turn on the lights. A lamp flicked on next to the worn, sagging sofa that, at one time, he suspected, had been blue and was now the color of the cottonwood fleece that floated across the mission grounds.

  “Did you eat?” he said as the young man stepped into the small living room.

  Mike nodded. “Mom brought me dinner in the barn.”

  “Make yourself at home,” Father John said. “Try not to worry.” He could tell by the slope of the young man’s shoulders that would be impossible. He closed the door and walked back through the shadows and light, down the driveway and across Circle Drive to the residence. Walks-On was waiting in the front hall. He followed the dog into the kitchen and let him out into the backyard. He would smell the horse, he was thinking and, sure enough, Walks-On bolted down the steps and started barking. What new, strange thing had come to the mission?

  20

  ANGELA BOLTED UPRIGHT. She held herself still, hardly breathing. A noise of some kind outside, but now there was nothing but quiet, shades pulled partway down, shadows on the driveway, an occasional car floating down the street like a ghost. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She squinted at the bleary red numbers on the clock—1:33—as if they were a trick someone had played on her. She had intended to stay awake all night, waiting for the call. Everything set in her mind, as real as if it had already happened. As if the man in the black ski mask had called, and she had known his voice immediately, a voice from hell.

  But the call hadn’t come. She felt drained and limp, hair damp and matted against her head, eyes caked with sleep. She checked the messages on her mobile. Five calls from St. Francis Mission. She didn’t know the priest at the mission. He was nothing to her. Why was he calling? She had wanted to scream, Stop calling! What if he was trying to call?

  She sank back against the sofa. The call would come tonight. It had taken a while for the intruder to figu
re out what she had. He would have found what he was looking for on the computers. He had to make sure there were no copies. No flash drives. He had gone back to the office and searched in the desk drawers, the file drawers. Now there was only one other possibility. He would call.

  Today had been a disaster. Madden sniffing around like an old dog. How long before he stumbled upon the possibility of a flash drive? The idea gripped her like a sudden, sharp pain. He could get a warrant, search her place, and what was she supposed to do? She had no lawyer. No one.

  Her heart was thumping, and she made herself draw in a long breath. It was just as well Vicky Holden had dropped her. Always probing, insisting she was hiding something. Well, she was hiding the flash drive, and if Vicky had hung around any longer, she probably would have figured it out.

  A scratching noise came from outside, as muffled and faint as a pebble rolling inside a drum. She felt her muscles tense. She pushed herself off the sofa bed, legs wobbly and unsure. She went to the front window and pulled back the edge of the stiff, grayish curtain. The odor of dust came at her. Through the slit between the curtain and the window frame, she scoured the outside. A faint light from the rear windows in the house fell over the driveway. Weeds sprouted through the cracks; a patch of grass looked like dried plastic. She could see the bumper of her car, but there were no other cars in sight. She let the curtain fall back and breathed in another whiff of dust. She was imagining things. She was upset, nervous, that was all; worried about Skip. The terrible waiting, the uncertainty.