Killing Custer (4 page)

Father John pulled in next to the car and got out. By the time he'd walked around the front of the Toyota, Darleen Longshot was leaning on the top of the open door of her car. She looked shaky and pale, reluctant to let go of the door.

“You okay?” he said.

“I gotta talk to you, Father.”

4

DARLEEN LONGSHOT WAS
small with nervous hands that ran up and down the thighs of her blue jeans. Her eyes were dark, red-rimmed, and sore-looking, as if she hadn't been able to stop crying. “I've been waiting for you, Father,” she said in a husky, smoke-ravaged voice. “I'm going crazy.”

“Come in.” Father John ushered her up the front sidewalk to the concrete stoop at the front door. He reached past her, pushed open the door, and followed her inside. The quiet of late afternoon suffused the residence. No sounds of Walks-On, the golden retriever he'd found by the side of Seventeen-Mile Road five years ago, scrambling down the hallway on three legs. No music, no television voices. This was the time of day the bishop and Walks-On walked down to the Little Wind River at the edge of the mission.

“We can talk in the study.” He nodded the woman into the small room on the left. After she had settled in one of the visitor's chairs, he walked around and sat down in the old leather chair behind the desk. Stacks of papers, folders, envelopes spilled across the surface, nearly burying the laptop. He tried to keep up with the routines of the mission—bills to pay, thank-you notes to write for checks that spilled out of envelopes from people he had never heard of, phone calls to return, elders to check on, parishioners to visit in the hospitals—but it was like riding across the plains, topping each bluff only to spot a higher bluff ahead.

The chair creaked as he leaned back. He grasped the armrests and waited while the woman across from him dabbed a tissue at her eyes and blew her nose.

“I'm sorry,” she said, leaning sideways to stuff the tissue into her jeans pocket. “I don't mean to be a nuisance.”

“You're not a nuisance. Tell me what's going on.”

“It's Mikey.” She drew in a long breath and held it a moment before blowing it out like smoke. “You remember my kid?”

“Of course.” A small kid with a wedge of black hair that hung in his eyes. Not much good at batting or throwing the ball, but he could run like the wind. If a pitcher put him on base, the Eagles could count on Mikey scoring a run. It had been several years since Mike Longshot had come around the mission. On those Sundays when Darleen came to Mass, she came alone.

“Mikey never came home from the parade this morning,” Darleen said. Her voice so small he had to lean forward to catch the words. “I been waiting for him all afternoon. I'm so worried I don't know what to do.”

“You expected him home right away?” Father John tried to keep his own voice soft, like a blanket that might absorb the woman's fear.

“I didn't know what to expect after . . .” She clasped and unclasped her hands, then dipped her mouth against her fist. “I was there. I seen what happened to Custer. I seen what the warriors did.”

Father John looked away a moment. He could see it still: warriors galloping around, cavalry stalled, horses plunging. “Are you worried that Mike had some part in it?” he said.

She looked up. Her dark eyes were clouded with fear. “He didn't have anything to do with it. Mikey would never be part of murder. He's not dead inside. He couldn't kill anybody. He can't even stomp on a spider. He likes watching all kinds of living things, just watching and seeing how pretty they are.”

“What worries you, Darleen?”

“They're going to say he did it.”

“Who?”

“The warriors. I know how their minds work. The cops start coming around, asking a lot of questions, getting too close, one of them will swear he saw Mikey pull out a pistol and shoot Custer. All the others will back him up, and the cops are going to be so happy they solved the case. Big newspaper headlines about how clever they are. Another Indian thrown in prison. Who cares?”

“What's going on, Darleen?”

Her hands were kneading the air above her lap. She opened her mouth and emitted a muffled strangling noise, as if she were choking. Father John jumped to his feet, but she threw out one hand. “You know . . .” she began, then sank back against the chair and dropped her eyes in a gesture of defeat. “Mikey's different. He was never like other boys.”

Father John nodded.

“He's special, my Mikey. Rob and I knew we'd been given a special child almost from the time he was born. And we were grateful that the Creator had trusted him to us. He's sensitive. When his daddy died in that car wreck, I thought Mikey was going to lay down and die, too. It was a long time before I could get him interested in doing anything. You remember how you came to the house and talked him into playing with the Eagles?” She had started crying, blurring the words and running her palms over her eyes. “Best thing ever happened to Mikey,” she managed. “He started coming out of it. Made friends. But as he got older, boys turned on him. They saw he was different. They forgot. Lots of Raps forgot the Old Time. The ancestors would've treated Mikey like a holy person. They would have respected and admired him because the Creator gave him two spirits. Male and female.”

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.