The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) (12 page)

“Eighteen next month.”

“Eighteen long years working for the Mammoth Oil Company, handling equipment, working the heavy machines.”

“Guess I just about done it all.” Mister was nodding, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“About five years ago, Mammoth instituted a new policy. Random drug checking for employees.”

“Ain’t a bad policy,” Mister said. “Some of them young bucks come out to work pretty stoned. Mess you up real bad, they get their hands on some of that equipment.”

“Right,” Charlie said. “They get arrested on possession and sent to drug court. Long as they comply with the rules, tribe helps them get clean and go back to being productive members of society. We’re not protesting the company’s policy. They have the right to test employees. Only they don’t have the right to practice racism and discriminate.”

“What do you mean?” Vicky said.

Charlie’s gaze was still on Adam, as if he were the only lawyer in the office. “Don’t have the right to discriminate against Indians,” he said again.

Mister cleared his throat, making a low, growling noise. “Only employees have to take the drug test are Indians.”

“How do you know that?” Adam turned toward the thin man perched on the end of the wooden chair, hands clasped between bony knees that poked through his jeans.

“Got let go,” Mister said. “Said my test was positive, ’cause I was takin’ that drug the doctor give me for my heart. I seen that other guys got let go was Indians like me. Started askin’ around, talkin’ to some of the boys I worked with. Lotta white boys, and they tol’ me they never got no tests. They said, ‘What the hell you talkin’ about? Drug tests?’”

“Looks to me like we’ve got a major action against the Mammoth Oil Company for discrimination,” Charlie said. He’d made double fists over the papers fanned in front of him.

“If what you say is true…” Vicky said.

“Oh, it’s true,” Charlie said. “Every Indian working for the company tells the same story. No white guys out in the fields getting tested. I talked to other Indians who were terminated. Mister’s been a big help getting the names. We got the go ahead from the tribal council to bring an action against the company. We can’t let them get away with this kind of stuff. You interested?”

“We’ll look into it,” Adam said. “See if there are grounds.”

“What d’ya mean if? I told you…”

“We’ll need the names of Indians employed at the company. We’ll have to interview them about their experiences. We can file a complaint under the Civil Rights Act with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But before we do that, we’ll send a letter to Mammoth and ask for a response in order to forestall lengthy proceedings before the commission. We may be able to work things out. We’ll let them know that we expect Mister and any other Indian employees unjustly terminated to be reinstated with full back pay. We also expect all discriminatory practices to end. If Mammoth digs in their heels, we’ll go ahead with the complaint. Another option would be to bring a civil lawsuit.”

Mister reached out, grabbed the corner of the desk and pulled himself to his feet. “Count me in,” he said. “I’ll testify against them no-good sonsabitches. Just tell me where to show up. That’s all you’re wanting now?” He leaned over the desk, still gripping the edge.

“Appreciate your coming by,” Charlie said.

The man pivoted on the heels of his boots and started for the door, planting one foot after the other as if he were crossing a ditch on a log.

“Let him go with no retirement,” Charlie said after Mister had disappeared through the door. The slow, steady thud of his footsteps sounded in the corridor. “Eighteen years and all he got was a boot out the door.”

Vicky scooted forward in her chair. “He shouldn’t have been terminated for taking a prescription drug.” He was old, she was thinking, trying to hold on to a job until he could collect enough retirement to keep a roof over his head and food on the table.

“Tell that to Mammoth Oil. They have the lab tests—their own lab, of course—that say Mister tested positive for cocaine, an out-and-out lie. Mister never used coke, never was arrested. He didn’t know what to do, so he came to see me. Figured I might know how to help him.” He shook his head. “Issue here is that the only employees getting tested are Indians. That’s what this is all about. Indian rights, you understand?”

Charlie swiveled the chair from side to side before jumping to his feet. “We have to fight for our rights every day,” he said, as if his thoughts had gotten caught in a loop.

Vicky waited a moment before she said, “Were you at Pine Ridge in the early seventies?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Adam’s head snap toward her. She could feel the warning in his expression.

“Vicky, not now,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Charlie said.

“I was wondering if you knew any of the AIM members who were fighting for Indian rights back then?” Vicky said.

Charlie stared at her a moment, his eyes narrowing into pinpricks of black light. “Yeah, I knew a lot of them. My brother went to Pine Ridge. Got shot at Wounded Knee. I had cousins and buddies getting shot at by the Feds back then. Me? I was in Nam getting shot at by the gooks, so I missed all the fireworks at home. But they had guts, AIM people. They stood up for Indian rights, just like we have to do. Here’s a list of some of the Indians employed at Mammoth.” He handed a thick file folder across the desk. “I’ll get a complete list of Indians terminated for failing drug tests that nobody else had to take.”

Adam picked up the folder and said they’d get on it right away. Vicky felt his other hand tighten around her arm as he guided her toward the door. Then he was rushing her down the corridor and through the reception area toward the entrance.

“What’s it going to be, Vicky?” he said when they were outside, crossing the parking lot, gravel crunching under their shoes. “We gonna practice law, or are you going off on wild goose chases?”

“Her name was Liz,” Vicky said.

“What?”

“Liz! She had a name, Adam. She was Arapaho and she had a child. She probably went to Pine Ridge. There was a chance Charlie Crow might have been there. Indians from all over the West were there. He might have known who she was.”

“Okay. Okay.” Adam let go of her arm and ran the palm of his hand across the little beads of sweat on his forehead. “How do you know this?”

“John and I…”

“Father O’Malley? What’s he got to do with it?”

“We’ve been talking to people. There are people on the rez who know what happened back then. Someone knows what happened to Liz.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” A couple of women emerged from the building and started toward them. Adam took Vicky’s arm again and steered her closer to the Jeep. “The girl out in the Gas Hills was shot to death, Vicky. Anybody who knows about it has kept quiet for more than thirty years. They’re going to do everything they can to keep you from finding out. For godssakes, let Coughlin handle it.”

Vicky got behind the wheel of the Jeep and started to pull the door shut, but Adam was holding on, leaning into the opening. “I’m trying to tell you that bringing up the past could be dangerous. You shouldn’t get involved.”

“I’m already involved.” Vicky turned the ignition. She hadn’t told him about the message on her dashboard: STOP. It would only give him more ammunition. “I’ll see you at the office,” she said. The engine growled into life, and she slipped the gear into drive. God, she wished John O’Malley were here. He understood; she didn’t have to explain everything. The Jeep was moving as the door slammed. She could see Adam framed in the side mirror, hands jammed into the pockets of his khakis, waves of frustration and worry moving through his expression.

She turned onto Blue Sky Highway and headed south for Mill Creek Road.

THE COMPUTER BLINKED
and sputtered into life. Images formed and reformed until finally text and photographs filled the screen. Father John typed in American Indian Movement and waited while the machine went through another set of silent gyrations that displaced the initial images with a list of websites, American Indian Movement and AIM in bold, black print. He scanned the list. It would take all morning to read through them. He clicked on one that looked promising and sat back, the machine taking longer this time.

It was the quiet time of morning, the brief interval after Mass had ended, the half dozen pickups crawling around Circle Drive out onto Seventeen-Mile, and the day got under way, with other pickups driving onto the mission grounds. He always looked forward to this time to work on next Sunday’s homily, pay bills, catch up on a little reading. He was halfway through
Sitting Bull’s Pipe,
a new biography of Sitting Bull. It lay opened on the desk next to the stack of bills he’d taken a stab at paying, arranging them chronologically, paying the oldest bills first, always hoping that the donations—the little miracles—would tumble into the mailbox in time to pay the others before they went to the collection agency.

He was about to return to the list of websites when the one he’d clicked on came up, thick paragraphs of black type under an inch-high headline, “On the Trail of Broken Treaties: Remembering Our Fight for Indian Rights.”

He skimmed through the text, a discussion of the march to Washington, D.C., by a panel of Indians at a conference on Indian-government relations in Rapid City. The four-mile-long caravans led by the American Indian Movement had reached the capitol on November 3, 1972. AIM demanded that the government recognize the sovereignty of tribes and deal with tribes according to treaties made in the nineteenth century. Indians occupied the BIA building on Constitution Avenue for five days. Troops surrounded the building, guns trained on the windows and doors.

“Like we were still fighting the war on the plains,” said one panelist. “Troops versus Indians.”

“What did it get us?” asked another.

“Got us a lot of publicity. Maybe people sat up and started taking notice of us.”

“Well the government rejected all our demands. Handed out sixty-six thousand dollars to pay the cost of getting people back home. I’d say they bought us off real cheap.”

“Put the leaders on the FBI’s list of dangerous extremists.”

“FBI was just waiting for the chance to throw them into prison.”

“You think anything happened since then?”

“Wounded Knee happened.”

“I’m talking about racism, discrimination. You think that’s changed?”

“Maybe it’s never gonna change.”

Father John studied the postage-size photos of the panelists. They looked like college students with dark, intense eyes staring into a future already set into place, like concrete poured into a form. He felt a spasm of sadness.
Maybe it’s never gonna change.

He went back to the list and clicked on a site with Wounded Knee jumping out of the description. The site, when it came up, was composed of newspaper articles written during the siege itself. He skimmed through the articles, looking for something new, something different, something that might explain how a young woman ended up shot to death.

There were the explanations of events that led to the takeover at Wounded Knee: AIM demands that officials in Gordon, Nebraska, prosecute the white men who beat up a Lakota and paraded him around town half-naked before the man died; Indians riot in Custer, seeking justice for the murdered Lakota; Indians burn chamber of commerce building to the ground; AIM leads march on the BIA building in Pine Ridge protesting the low rents that the BIA collects on tribal lands; and finally, AIM leads the takeover of Wounded Knee.

There were other articles on the siege itself; Indians held the town for five weeks, with FBI agents, federal marshals, BIA police, and sheriff’s deputies surrounding the town.

Here was something new: an interview with one of the AIM spokesmen. “We have old men with us,” said Ernest Laughing Dog. “They are
with
us! They are the ones that have kept the memories of when our people lived free on the plains and ran our own lives, when there were no rules laid down by the Great White Father, no boundaries on our lands, when we were a great nation, a proud people with rights.

“We got lots of young people, too,” the interview continued. “We got Vietnam vets that come back to nothing. No jobs, no hope. Nothing but signs up at stores saying no Indians wanted. They’re with us at Wounded Knee, them vets, and they know how to shoot. We got women here, too. They’re cooking and washing clothes and looking after the little ones. Wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the women. They were the ones that said we gotta move forward and demand our rights. One of ’em said, let’s go to Wounded Knee, ’cause it was here where the people got slaughtered a hundred years ago. Might be we get slaughtered again, just like then, but we got no choice. We gotta stand up for what’s right.”

Father John read through the final article on the end of the siege. A lot of people had already left the town, sneaking past the FBI lines, fading into ravines and dry ditches and eventually making their way back to their homes on Pine Ridge. When the last holdouts came out, hands over their heads, they were thrown to the ground, handcuffed and hauled away. Within weeks, five hundred Indians were indicted on charges of arson, theft, assault, and interfering with federal officers. Almost two hundred went to prison. Those who eluded capture left Pine Ridge and sought refuge on other reservations.

Father John moved back through the articles, studying the photos of Wounded Knee taken with telescopic lenses. Some Indian men, standing guard, holding shotguns and rifles. Another photo of three women stooped over a campfire, preparing food, much like the photos he’d seen of women in the villages in the Old Time. There was even a photo of a woman carrying a baby on her back. He studied the faces, but the photos were blurred and grainy; they could be photos of anyone.

“Were you there, Liz?” he said out loud into the building’s quiet. He sat back, half expecting the sound of Ian’s boots clambering down the corridor to see who might have come in, then he went back to the website. He clicked through three pages before he spotted another article that looked promising: “AIM Member Shot.”

It was what he’d been looking for. The
Gazette
. August 13, 1973.
A Lakota man who went by the name of Brave Bird was fatally wounded by a Wind River police officer in a shoot-out in Ethete last night. According to a police spokesman, Brave Bird’s real name was Daryl Redman, whose last known address was Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

The local FBI office confirms that Redman was a member of AIM wanted by the FBI on charges related to the takeover of Wounded Knee last February. The FBI had believed he was hiding on the Wind River Reservation, but had been unable to locate him. The Wind River police received a tip about his possible whereabouts and had gone to a house in Ethete to check it out. “He came out firing,” said the police spokesman. The officer who shot Redman was identified as Jesse Moon.

“We think other AIM fugitives may be hiding on the reservation,” said a spokesman for the local FBI. “Like Redman, they adopt pseudonyms and try to blend in to the local population. They are armed and dangerous. People should not approach them, but should notify the police or the FBI.” The spokesman also cautioned that harboring such fugitives is a federal offense. “Anyone who helps them could be sent to prison with them,” he said.

“Got a minute?” Ian’s voice cut through the quiet.

Father John looked up from the computer screen. He hadn’t heard his assistant in the corridor, but now he was standing in the doorway, head thrust forward like a pony poised to lurch into the room.

“Take a seat.” He nodded toward one of the side chairs pushed against the wall, then clicked on exit and watched the site vaporize on the screen.

“Made up your mind yet?” Ian said. He folded his lanky frame onto the edge of the chair.

Father John shifted his gaze across the top of the screen to the other priest. He stopped himself from asking, “About what?” He knew Ian was talking about Rome. Forget about the sabbatical, he’d been telling himself, hoping the provincial would also forget, and everything would go on, the way it had for the last nine years. Who was he kidding? It had never left his mind; it had only been hiding in a shadowy place where he’d refused to look, and it had jumped out, flashing and screaming, before Ian had even finished his question.

He got up and walked over to the window. The cottonwood branches moved sideways in the breeze; little furrows of wind ran through the grasses. Walks-On sprawled next to the steps at the residence, intent on the bone wedged between his front paws. The sky was a dome of clear blue glass, and in the distance the peaks of the Wind River range shimmered in the sunshine. This was home. He turned back. “I’m not ready for a sabbatical,” he said.

Something like a shadow crossed Ian’s face. He swallowed and seemed to make an effort to assemble an expression that appeared neutral and unconcerned, but the effort left Father John with the sense that Ian was disappointed, that he was waiting for the chance to run the mission.

“I spent a wonderful month in Rome a few years ago,” Ian said.

“Did you?” Father John tried to keep his own expression neutral. He braced himself for a recitation of the interesting, historical, beautiful places in Rome meant to nudge him into taking the sabbatical.

“Wouldn’t mind going back.”

Father John held the other man’s gaze a moment, then he walked around the desk and dropped back onto his seat. This was new, a curveball when he’d been expecting a straight pitch. “You’d like to take the sabbatical?”

“What would you think?” Ian hurried on. “I’ve been reading up on the deliberations in Rome about ways the Christian message might be manifested in non-Western cultures. I haven’t been here as long as you…” He raised both hands as if to ward off an objection. “But I’ve been here long enough to contribute to the conversation.”

Father John swallowed back the impulse to laugh. An obvious solution, and it hadn’t even occurred to him. The provincial wanted someone in Rome with experience on a reservation, someone with insight on bringing Christianity to indigenous people around the world. And he had another Jesuit eager to come to St. Francis who could take Ian’s place.

“I’ll talk to the provincial,” he said.

“I’d like to come back, John. You know, after the sabbatical…”

“No guarantee,” Father John said. That was the thing that had made him ignore the whole idea. He could feel it now, like a hard knot in his stomach. If he left St. Francis, there was no guarantee that he would ever return. The same was true for Ian. Another Jesuit would come; everything would change, and the future would form and reform into shapes that would be different from anything either of them might imagine.

“I wouldn’t want to go unless I could be assured of a position here when I return.” A hard note of stubbornness sounded in Ian’s voice. He wouldn’t have to go at all, Father John was thinking.
He
was the one the provincial wanted to take the sabbatical. He could almost hear Bill Rutherford’s laugh when he told him that Ian wanted the sabbatical, but only on condition…

Ian got to his feet and started for the door. He set a hand on the frame and looked back. “I guess I shouldn’t pack my bags just yet,” he said, giving a half nod, as if he were reluctant to let go of the possibility.

Father John stared at the phone and listened to the sound of Ian’s footsteps receding in the corridor. Finally he lifted the receiver and pressed the keys for Bill Rutherford’s office. The voice on the other end sounded lethargic and bleary with the heat of the Milwaukee summer. “Sorry, Father O’Malley, the provincial isn’t available at the moment. What is this about?”

“He knows what it’s about,” Father John said. “Ask him to call me.” He could hear the relief in his voice. He wouldn’t have to speak to Rutherford right away, listen to the urgency pulsing down the line: “You’re the one I had in mind, John.” It was a brief, blessed reprieve from the inevitable. He still had time.

He hit the off button, then started over again, this time pressing the keys for the Wind River Police Department. “This is Father O’Malley,” he told the woman who’d picked up. “Let me talk to Chief Banner.” Art Banner had been the police chief on the reservation as long as Father John had been at the mission. He couldn’t imagine the police department without Banner, but then, in a reverse way that made him stifle a laugh, he couldn’t imagine himself without the mission.

“Sorry, Father.” The woman’s voice was friendly, as if she were chatting with him across the desk. He tried to picture the operator who sat behind the glass window, answered the phone, and buzzed in visitors: a little overweight, short black hair, always smiling. “Chief’s in a meeting,” she said. “Probably be tied up another hour or so. Want me to have him call you?”