Winter's Child (6 page)

“Oh, more than that.” Elena shook her head at the obstinacy of the white people at her table. Her table, Father John knew. Her kitchen, her house to keep, and her white priests to marshal about. “Grandmother said Lizzie loved her husband, and he loved her. He got scared the government agents would take her away after it dawned on them she was white, so he found a place in the mountains that was real hard to get to. No roads. You had to go cross-country on horseback. He built a shack. Of course, Indians weren't supposed to go anywhere without the agent's permission. Darn near needed permission to go to the outhouse. But Brokenhorn swore he would do whatever was necessary to protect Lizzie. Sure enough, the agent started snooping around, asking questions, so Brokenhorn took his family to the mountains. Grandfather kept denying Brokenhorn had gone anywhere. Just off helping neighbors round up cattle. After a while, the agent stopped coming around, and grandfather went up in the mountains and told Brokenhorn it was all clear. Before winter set in, Brokenhorn, Lizzie, and the five kids came back. Grandmother said she was sure glad to see Lizzie again. The house next door had seemed lonely without them.”

Elena got to her feet and began clearing the table, and Father John understood this was the end of her story. He stood up and took his dishes over to the sink. “Thank you, Elena.” He waved a hand to indicate both the lunch and the story, everything that had taken place in the kitchen.

“Yes. Thank you very much.” Shannon cleared her dishes and went back for the bishop's.

“A very delicious lunch.” The old man lumbered to his feet. The white apron still hung from his neck and was looped about his waist. “A most interesting story and, I must say, a most enlightening cooking lesson. At what time shall we start preparing dinner?”

Elena threw a glance over her shoulder at Father John. There were layers of meaning in her glance. He could write a whole sermon on how we are made holy by the way we claim our place in the world and do our work the best we can. Another glance from Elena, and he decided he would have a talk with the bishop.

He motioned Shannon ahead and followed her down the hall, Walks-On between them. The dog had an uncanny sense for adventure, and he didn't want to miss out. Most days he climbed into the pickup and accompanied Father John on rounds of visits to the elders and the sick and those needing someone to stop by for a chat and a cup of coffee.

But not this afternoon. Father John didn't know if Wilbur Horn would welcome a visit from a dog. He helped Shannon with her jacket and pulled on his own jacket before he leaned down and patted the dog's head. “You have to take care of Elena and the bishop today,” he said. Then he opened the door for Shannon, followed her out into the bright, cold air, and set his cowboy hat on his head.

Shannon hurried ahead down the snowy path. “I have to get my laptop,” she called over her shoulder

“You won't need it.”

“To make notes during the interview.” She stopped in the middle of Circle Drive, shadows of impatience on her face. Did she have to explain the obvious?

He placed an arm around her shoulders and steered her along the drive to the passenger side of the old pickup. “You can make notes when you get back.”

He closed the door behind her and gave her a smile through the windshield as he walked around to the driver's side. “So that was the look you were shooting at me over the table,” she said as he jiggled the key in the ignition and tried to coax the engine into life. “I recognized the O'Malley look. Dad used it on us kids when we asked too many questions. It was his way of saying, ‘Stop talking and you might learn something.'”

Father John laughed. The pickup jumped ahead as if it knew the way through the tunnel of cottonwoods, out to Seventeen-Mile Road. In his mind was a flash of memory: his own father shooting the O'Malley look across the table to him and Mike.

“I get the way it works around here,” Shannon said. “Ask no questions and pray for answers. Write it down later.”

A cottonwood branch scratched at the top of the pickup, and a pile of snow slid down the windshield. He flipped on the wipers and tried to keep the pickup steady through the tunnel. Then he turned left onto Seventeen-Mile Road and glanced over at Shannon. “That's about it,” he said.

Wilbur Horn stood
at the edge of the driveway, gloved hand waving them forward. Across the barrow ditch and along the two-track that marked the driveway. The old pickup shuddered and jumped over the ice-hardened snow. “Lizzie's great-grandson?” High notes of excitement rang in Shannon's voice.

He glanced over and smiled. For an instant he was back in grad school at Boston College, researching some obscure event in American history, and with a turn of a page or an idle remark, he'd be plunged backward in time, as if the past itself had reached out and grabbed him. He could still feel the excitement.

She gripped the door handle with one hand, bracing herself against the dashboard with the other and nodding, excitement shooting off her like fireworks. He stopped at the end of the driveway in a clear spot Wilbur had waved to. Then the man yanked the door open. He might have been a doorman at a hotel. “Nice
to see you, Father.” He had a wide grin and black eyes that sparkled with light in the shade of his cowboy hat. His denim jacket was lined with fur that poked out around the collar. “This your niece?”

“Shannon O'Malley,” Father John said, but Wilbur was already advancing toward Shannon, who had let herself out on the passenger side.

“Sure a lot prettier than you.” Wilbur smiled at Father John while he pumped Shannon's hand. “Well, let's not waste good daylight. Come on inside.” He dipped his head in the direction of the rectangular house with yellow siding and a three-step stoop at the front door, like most of the houses on the rez. Inside two bedrooms, bath, living room, kitchen. Larger than the log cabins and tiny shacks that, for nearly a hundred years, the government had considered satisfactory houses for Indians.

Wilbur led the way across the hardened snow and up the steps. He pushed open the door and gestured them inside. The house was warm, suffused with smells of freshly brewed coffee and sizzling oil. “I put on a pot of coffee.” Wilbur took a few steps across the living room toward the kitchen. “Belle made fry bread before she went to work this morning. She's going to stop by on her lunch break.” He motioned them through the arched doorway, tilting his head in the direction of a round table and four wooden chairs in the corner of the kitchen. Shannon took one of the chairs, and Father John sat next to her. When he had spoken with Belle Horn at a powwow last summer, she told him she had just taken a job as the nursing supervisor at the health clinic.

“Belle's got a bug about all this history stuff.” Wilbur was bustling about the counter, pouring mugs of coffee, setting them on the table. “You'd think she was the one descended from Lizzie and
Brokenhorn. She was always telling stories to the kids about their great-great-grandmother, the white captive. You like fry bread?”

Shannon nodded, and Father John caught the flash of curiosity and amusement in her eyes. Indian reservation, fry bread, the descendant of Lizzie Fletcher Brokenhorn. Exactly what she would have imagined. This girl had a big imagination and, he was learning, a big appetite for life.

“Bread's nice and warm.” Wilbur lifted a plate stacked with fry bread from the oven and set it in the center of the table. The chunks of bread were rounded and irregular, like biscuits. Then, a stack of small plates, paper napkins, a bottle of honey, and a plate of butter and a knife appeared on the table. “Belle's proud of her fry bread. Used to watch her grandmother make it in a pot of hot oil on the campfire. Help yourselves.” Wilbur dropped onto the chair next to the window. “She'll expect a good review.” He nodded toward the vacant chair, as if Belle were about to materialize.

“I'm not sure how to do this.” Shannon took a chunk of bread, set it on a plate, and studied it as if she might unlock its mystery.

“Butter first.” Wilbur pulled a piece of bread apart, lathered on a slab of butter. “Honey next.” He held the bottle of honey over his plate and let the golden liquid drizzle over the bread. “Then, good eating.”

Shannon had followed along. She took a bite of the honeyed, buttered bread and sat back, a look of contentment flowing over her like water. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “Nothing like this in Boston.”

Father John helped himself and bit into the warm bread. Fry bread always came with the memory of the first time he'd eaten it: a brush shade at the Sun Dance, temperatures hovering around a hundred degrees, a little breeze stirring the cottonwood branches that covered the ceiling and three walls, the Fast Pony family
gathered around, proud of the family's fry bread recipe—no one could make it like Grandmother—waiting for his confirmation. Like Shannon, he had realized how much he had been missing. Odd how such memories crowded him lately. He had an urgent sense that he should capture every experience, keep it safe so that he wouldn't forget.

Then came the whoosh of the front door opening. A stream of cold air shot through the kitchen, and the door clacked shut. Belle Horn, younger than her husband by a few years, clutching a brown bag of groceries, walked into the kitchen, and Father John got to his feet. “Good to see you,” he said as the woman set the bag on the counter. She turned and took his hand. A handsome woman, on the stout side with a strong grip, broad shoulders, and shoulder-length black hair streaked with gray.

“No way was I going to miss this.” She let go of his hand and turned to Shannon. “I'm Belle, the better half.”

Shannon started to get up, but Belle placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don't let me interrupt. Keep on talking about whatever you were discussing.”

“I was just about to ask how our guest likes the rez.” Wilbur kept his eyes on Shannon, took another bite of bread, and washed it down with coffee. Now would come the polite preliminaries, before the conversation moved to the topic that Shannon, Father John knew, was eager to talk about.

Belle pulled a carton of milk out of the bag and set it in the refrigerator in a slow, relaxed motion. She hadn't missed anything important. Then she hung her coat on the back of the vacant chair, sat down, and helped herself to the fry bread, switching her gaze between her husband and Shannon.

Father John tried to give Shannon another look. He hadn't
warned her about the polite preliminaries, but she was sipping at her coffee, eating her fry bread. Nodding and smiling at Wilbur Horn. She liked the rez fine. Wide spaces that go on forever. She'd never seen so much space and so few people. “Beautiful,” she said, and Wilbur and Belle grinned. Oh, this niece of his had an instinct for fitting right in, picking up the reins, and riding along.

Shannon looked over at Belle. “The fry bread is delicious. Thank you for making it.”

Belle smiled and shrugged. After all, it was what she did, saw to it that guests were fed, like any other woman on the rez.

After a few minutes on weather, the snow expected tonight, Wilbur said, “I understand you're writing a report on my great-grandparents.”

Great-grandparents. Shannon glanced over at Father John, something new in her eyes. They were a pair, weren't they? Part of each other's lives, Lizzie and John Brokenhorn.

“Yes.” She turned back to Wilbur and told him she was researching the lives of Lizzie and her sister, Amanda, both captured by the Plains Indians. “I'm looking for the details. Personal stories that make the women human and help us to understand them.”

“History books get things wrong,” Wilbur said. “They make out how bad things went for captives, like all Indians were barbarians. Sure, some of the white women had it tough, especially when the warriors went on the rampage after that terrible massacre in Colorado.”

Silence dropped over the kitchen. Shannon kept her eyes on the last piece of bread on her plate, then looked over at Father John. He had read about the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, the massacre that drove the Arapahos and Cheyennes from their Colorado homelands. “It was a terrible time,” he said.

“I'm not saying the Cheyennes didn't mistreat white captives.”

“Plenty of white men mistreated Indian women,” Belle said.

Wilbur leaned forward. “History books lump all the tribes together. Arapahos traded for white captives. They returned them or kept them with the people. Those old Arapahos knew it was a good thing to have new people and fresh blood. Good to strengthen the tribe. You see Arapahos with blond hair and blue eyes on the rez today. They come down from whites, some of them captives. Like my family. Blue eyes here.” He lifted a hand to his eyes. “I'm proud I came down from Lizzie Brokenhorn. I got cousins with hair the color of pink sand, like hers. We're all proud.”

“I'm not sure how Lizzie came to the Arapahos,” Shannon said. A comment, not a question. His niece was a quick study.

Wilbur sipped at his coffee. Finally he said, “She wasn't captured by Arapahos, like the history books say. My father did his own research. Talked to some of the elders that went back to the time of Sand Creek. Lizzie was captured the next summer in 1865. There were some Arapaho warriors riding with Cheyennes that day, but it was a Cheyenne attack. After Sand Creek, there was no peace. Cheyennes had been raiding on the North Platte that summer, and Arapahos joined them.”

“Lizzie never would have been captured if her father had used common sense.” Belle shook her head and pulled apart a piece of bread. “Tell them what your dad found out.”

“Jasper Fletcher, Lizzie's father, decided to move his family from Illinois to California so he could find gold and get rich. He and Mary Ann had five kids. Jasper had joined a large wagon train that no Indians with any sense were gonna attack. He should've stayed with the train, but he decided to pull ahead. Stop along the river, have lunch. That's when the Cheyenne Chief Sand Hill and his
warriors rode down on them. Killed Mary Ann and wounded Jasper. The boys got away. The Indians took Amanda Mary and Lizzie and rode off.”

“Seven months later”—Belle was shaking her head—“a trader found Amanda Mary in a Cheyenne camp and ransomed her. But there was no sign of Lizzie.”

“My father told me the old Indians he talked to said that Cut Nose, another Cheyenne warrior, gave Lizzie to his wife as their new daughter. She was a real pretty little thing, with blue eyes and light-colored hair. Cut Nose called her Little Silver Hair. He always treated her kindly, and his wife kept her dressed in fine clothing. She grew up speaking Cheyenne.”

Shannon sipped at her coffee. Holding the cup in both hands, she said, “I didn't realize she grew up Cheyenne.”

“Cheyenne, until Brokenhorn and some other Arapahos went to Cut Nose's camp to trade. Great-grandfather always said the minute he laid eyes on Lizzie, he knew she would be his wife. At first Cut Nose refused. There weren't enough ponies or robes or glass beads or tobacco to make Cut Nose give her up.” Wilbur shook his head and smiled to himself, a faraway look in his eyes, as if he could see the Cheyenne warrior standing firm, refusing to trade his daughter. “Brokenhorn didn't give up. He kept coming back to Cut Nose's camp. He trailed a half dozen ponies packed with pots and pans and food he'd gotten trading with other bands. Everything he owned, he brought to Cut Nose. It still didn't persuade him.”

Belle tilted her head back and laughed at the ceiling as though she were reliving the bargaining herself. “The one who persuaded Cut Nose was Lizzie,” she said. “Brokenhorn had taken the opportunity to talk to her alone. Followed her to the creek when she went for water, waited for her in the brush when she went to pick berries.
They fell in love. Finally, Lizzie convinced her father to let her marry Brokenhorn, and Cut Nose himself presided over the wedding. There was a big feast, and afterward, Brokenhorn and Lizzie went to Brokenhorn's village. Her father gave her the ponies Brokenhorn had given him because Cut Nose did not want his daughter to come to the Arapahos as a beggar. She rode into the village as a proud and much-loved Cheyenne woman. She was fifteen when she became Arapaho. After that, she was called Kellsto Time.”

“White folks always want to know, were they happy?” Wilbur clasped his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Like that's all that matters. My father told me that great-grandfather always looked after Lizzie. They were traditionals, stayed close to the old ways. In the summers, Brokenhorn pledged the Sun Dance and Lizzie cooked for the dancers. Even after the government outlawed the Sun Dance and threatened people with prison if they took part, Brokenhorn and Lizzie and the other traditionals went into the mountains, where the government agent couldn't find them, and held the Sun Dance anyway. That's the kind of people they were. After she married Great-grandfather, she never spoke another word of Cheyenne. She took pride in being Arapaho.”

The coffeepot made a rhythmic blipping noise in the quiet that dropped over the kitchen. Wilbur had told the story he intended to tell; there was nothing else. “Thank you,” Father John said.

“Oh yes.” Shannon jumped in. “Thank you so much.”

Belle shifted sideways toward her husband. “You suppose your relation Daisy might talk to them?”

Wilbur drew in his lips and shrugged. He took a moment before he said, “That old lady makes it her business to keep track of family history. Spends most her time off visiting her grandkids. Not sure you can catch her.”

Belle had turned toward Shannon. “Daisy's a granddaughter. She thinks she's an expert on the Old Time. She likes telling stories.”

“Self-proclaimed expert.” Wilbur started to his feet. “Doesn't think anyone else has a right to poke into family history. I'll give her a call and see if she's around. You might want to see if you can talk to another old granddaughter. Theresa Horn is pretty sharp sometimes, and other times not so much. Give her grandson, Thomas, a call and see if the old lady will talk to you.”

Father John stood up and pushed his chair into the table, catching Shannon's eyes as he did so. That was the way research went, just as Shannon had said. You start somewhere and are sent somewhere else. You never know where you might go. He thanked Wilbur and Belle, and Shannon joined in. Praising the delicious fry bread, the generous gift of information, the Arapaho hospitality.