Winter's Child (7 page)

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Through the tunnel
of cottonwoods shimmering in snow, Father John spotted the dark maroon truck in front of the administration building. He turned onto Circle Drive and pulled up alongside the truck.

“Looks like you have company.” Shannon had talked nonstop on the drive back to the mission, recalling everything Wilbur had said, exclaiming over the emptiness of the reservation, the small houses, the abandoned cars and trucks and appliances in the yards, laundry stiff as cement on the lines.

“How did you get used to this place?” she had asked at one point.

He wanted to say it had been easy. It seemed easy now, but ten years ago, fresh out of rehab for the second or third time, frightened that this was his last chance, an Indian reservation nobody had ever
heard of—at least no one he knew—in the middle of nowhere. The truth was, it had been hard.

“I like it here,” he said. Then he told her that James Two Horses, a parishioner, had stopped by to fix his Wi-Fi.

“A parishioner? I'd like to meet him.”

Father John got out and started around the pickup toward the passenger side, but Shannon had already jumped out. She bounced ahead of him up the steps and into the administration building.

“Hey, Father. You
have Wi-Fi again.” James leaned into the corridor from the doorway to the bishop's office. “Just saying my good-byes,” he said, walking toward them. “This must be the niece I've heard so much about. You're uncle's pretty proud of you.” He took Shannon's hand; a large brown hand enclosing the small whiteness.

“I can't imagine why.” Shannon tossed a glance over one shoulder toward Father John. “I mean, he's the historian. I'm just getting started.”

“Well, getting started can be the hardest thing to do.”

Shannon left her hand in James's, and for an instant Father John felt as if he had stumbled on a live wire with electricity shooting around. Finally, Shannon withdrew her hand. “You fix computers?” She tilted her head back, staring up at the Arapaho.

“Pretty much keep the computers up and running for the school districts in the area.” James hadn't taken his eyes from her. Was this
the way it happened? Father John had forgotten, or maybe he had decided not to remember. Eileen walking across campus, red hair blowing back in the breeze, and everything about her perfect somehow. He had known before they had spoken a word to each other that she was the woman he wanted to marry.

Some memories were better left forgotten. He had been called elsewhere. In the middle of the night. And he had broken off their engagement and answered the call, and two months later—he was still settling in at the seminary—Eileen had married his brother, Mike. And here was one of their six kids, this beautiful young woman, as close as he would ever come to having a child of his own.

He had many children. He tried to grab on to the idea. A whole reservation full of children. He was a father in a different sense. God help me. Let these memories pass.

James was saying something about installing a different router. No problem. He had a whole closet full of routers the school district had discarded. This one worked just fine.

“I'm in your debt.”

“How about dinner one of these days? I hear Elena's a great cook.”

“She has a good assistant.” Bishop Harry made his way down the corridor. “And her assistant hereby invites you to dinner anytime.”

James was still watching Shannon. And this, from a man who believed he had a calling to the priesthood. Odd how the calling to the priesthood went, Father John was thinking. It didn't always encompass everything.

“I was thinking you and I could go out to dinner this evening.” James said.

Shannon hadn't stopped smiling. “I think I'd like that a lot.”

“Good. I'll look forward to hearing about your research on Lizzie Brokenhorn.”

“You've heard of her?”

“Hard to find anybody on the rez who hasn't. White woman with blue-eyed, blond-haired Arapaho descendants.”

“I'd love to hear your stories.”

“I'm not a descendant.” James looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “At least as far as I know. See you later.” He edged past them.

“Six o'clock,” Shannon said just before the door closed. She was still smiling when she turned back.

“Let me show you where we hang out.” Making an effort now to break the spell that had dropped over the corridor, Father John gestured toward the doorway to his office on the right.

“May I issue a formal invitation to visit my abode at the end of the corridor?” The bishop made a little bow and started back toward his office.

Shannon moved past Father John. She took a moment, surveying his office, the desk and chair, the worn visitors' chairs scattered about, as if a strong wind had blown them onto the brown rug with the path worn down the middle, the bookcases along the back wall, crammed with books that stood upright and fell against one another, the CD player on the top shelf, the little metal table with the coffeepot and jars of creamer and sugar.

She turned on her heels. “I assume he isn't married.”

“The bishop?”

Shannon rolled her eyes at his attempt at humor, like one of his students in the Jesuit prep school where he had taught American history.

“If you mean James, he's been busy getting an education and starting a career, I suspect.” It was on the tip of his tongue, the fact that James Two Horses was considering the priesthood, but he didn't say anything. James would have to tell her.

“There's more to see.” He nodded her back into the corridor and around the corner into the side hallway. A small kitchen. Bath. And over there, the mission archives. She was welcome to use them. “Lizzie was a traditional,” he said, “but even traditionals sometimes came to the mission. They prayed both ways, the old way and the way the early missionaries taught.”

Shannon smiled up at him. Light flickered in her eyes. Another place to do research. The reservation, a treasure trove of the past.

She took a minute, new thoughts flitting through her expression. “He seems very nice.” She hesitated, then pushed on. “Centered. Yes, that is how I would describe him. Centered. I mean, he looks like he knows himself and what he wants.”

Maybe not, Father John was thinking. James, struggling with what he wanted. It was not an easy struggle.

“Let me show you the rest of it.” Father John retraced his steps past the bath and kitchen and headed across the corridor, the tap-tap of Shannon's boots following him. He opened the door into a storage closet—a hoarding place, really—where generations of Jesuits had dropped old, broken equipment, used-up light bulbs, stacks of newspapers and magazines they no doubt intended to read someday, three-legged chairs and cracked tables, and more junk than he had wanted to wade into, but he had waded into it anyway. Now it was a small office. Desk, chair, filing cabinet, and crooked-neck lamp that flooded the room with light.

“You're welcome to work here”—he stood back and ushered Shannon inside—“anytime you'd like to be in the center of things, rather than off by yourself in the guest house.”

“Parishioners dropping in all the time? Phone ringing? A buzz of activity?”

“Pretty much.”

“I think I'd love it.” She stepped back into the corridor and eyed the door. “I'd better start recording my notes while the interview is still fresh.”

“First, the bishop's abode.”

“Oh yes.” She laughed, and her laugh was like music, he thought. It was her mother's laugh. She headed down the hall and disappeared through the last doorway.

Father John followed and poked his head around the door frame. Shannon was examining the laptop, the easy chair, the braided rug the bishop had resurrected from the storage closet, the wall poster of Arapaho dancers whirling about at a powwow, a blur of bright reds, blues, and yellows. A cozy office Bishop Harry had made his own. But then, the bishop could probably make any place his own. Wasn't that part of the calling? To go wherever you were sent, and make the place your own?

“Very comfy,” Shannon said with the bishop beaming under her approval. She was used to charming her way, Father John was thinking.

“I look forward to more of your home cooking.” She pushed the edge of her coat sleeve back and checked her watch again, and then she was through the doorway, leaning back. “Just not this evening. Sorry.”

Bishop Harry let out a bark of laughter. “I'd say she's got the number of a couple of bachelors.”

“She's like her mother.” Father John perched on the seat of the wooden chair in front of the bishop's desk.

“Oh yes. I believe you've mentioned her. Eileen, wasn't it? She married your brother after you went to the seminary. I assume it has been a happy marriage.”

Father John took a moment before he said, “I hope so.” He
pushed on, as if the topic were unimportant, a thing of the past not worth considering. “There's something I would like to talk to you about.”

The bishop lifted a hand and pulled it toward his chest; he might have been waving the words forward. “About Shannon?”

“James,” Father John said. Odd how Bishop Harry had jumped ahead. Perhaps the topic would eventually be about Shannon. “Has he mentioned he believes he might have a calling to the priesthood?”

“I gathered as much.” The bishop shifted about, settling himself against the back of his chair. “Serving Mass almost every morning before going off to work. Yes, it makes sense he is grappling with a possible change in his life.”

“I believe you could be a great help to him. I'm sure you've counseled many young men thinking about entering the priesthood.”

“As have you, John. I can see how the man looks up to you. You're his ideal priest.”

“I hope that isn't the case.” Father John heard the sound of his own laughter, forced and choked. “You have far more experience and the wisdom that comes with it.”

Bishop Harry tipied his fingers under his chin and swiveled toward the window. The sun had disappeared behind a sky as flat and gray as a sheet of metal. The bare cottonwoods looked like streaks of brown painted on the exterior of Eagle Hall.

He swiveled back. “I would have to pull out my notes and read through them, refresh myself about some of the issues James may be grappling with. It has been a long time since I went down that path myself, and the times were different then. There's been a lot of research on how to counsel young men considering the priesthood since my day. I would have to read the most recent literature. Quite a project, I would say.” The old man's eyes had come alive. “Of
course, if you believe I could be of help, I will be glad to offer James my services.”

“Thank you.” Father John got to his feet and started toward the corridor.

“By the way, you had a call this afternoon.”

He stepped back, took the small piece of paper the bishop handed across the desk and read the message scribbled down the middle:
3 p.m. Father Jameson. Please return call as soon as possible
.

“Father Jameson in the provincial's office?” He looked over at the bishop, waiting for confirmation, snatching at time—a little more time here at St. Francis. “Did he say what it was about?” He knew what it was about; the call that had always been coming, down through the weeks and months and the years at the mission.

The bishop shook his head. “Very businesslike, Father Jameson. Said an important meeting had been scheduled. One of my seminary students thirty years ago when I was teaching theology . . .” He shook his head. “Well, one never knows what the Holy Spirit has in mind.”

Father John stuffed the message into the pocket of his jeans and glanced at his watch. “I have to go out again,” he said. “Should be back in an hour or so.”

“Something else has occurred to me,” the bishop said as Father John started into the corridor. He swung back. The old man was rocking in his chair, hands clasped over his chest. “It strikes me this new project of counseling James will take quite a bit of my time. I may have to give up other projects, like my cooking lessons.” He gave Father John a wide, knowing smile. “But you knew that, didn't you?”

Her name was
Dolly. At least that's what Vince told his mother. Dolly was all she knew, Betty said, when Vicky had tried to push for some other identification. Dolly lived in an apartment on the northeast side of Riverton, that two-story building with brown shingles on the outside walls, like they had run out of bricks or cement blocks and just kept putting on shingles.

Vicky knew the building. Friendly to Indians; a number of Arapahos lived there, moving in and out, piling in with friends for a time. Dolly lived on the ground floor, first door on the left, a fact that Betty White Hawk remembered from the time Vince had called and said he was sick and she had picked him up there.

“How do you know he's there?” Vicky had asked. She could still feel the raw irritation she had felt after Vince threw her hard-won deal with the prosecuting attorney out the window and took off.

“Jason Eagle, you know him?” Betty hurried on, not waiting for
an answer. “He didn't want to tell me. You know, boozers don't snitch, sort of a code, cover each other's tracks. I convinced him you were the only hope Vince had for staying out of Rawlins. Nobody wants to get sent down there. The county jail looks like a resort compared to prison, so Jason stalled and tried to make me believe he'd call me back. I said, ‘Jason, I know too much about you. Tell me where Vince went.' The minute he said, ‘Dolly's place,' I thought, geez, I should've figured he'd go running to his ex-girlfriend. I called over there and Dolly picked up. Took ten minutes to get her to admit Vince was sleeping it off in the bedroom.”

That had been thirty minutes ago. Vince White Hawk was like a shadow that crossed time zones, disappeared in the blink of an eye. Vicky had thrown on her coat, grabbed her bag, and, on the way out the door, told Annie to have Roger handle her afternoon appointments—there were two: Mo Standing Bull seeking workmen's compensation for injuries at the loading dock where he worked, and Mara Whiteman, facing a third DUI charge. Roger was perfectly capable of explaining options and consequences and suggesting possible steps.

And Vince could already be gone. Vicky tightened her grip on the steering wheel and pressed down on the gas pedal, pushing the Ford as fast as she dared, past the pine trees drooping under pillows of snow, past the bungalows that resembled her own office, to Main Street. She followed the wide curve out of town, through Hudson and north onto Highway 789.

On instinct now. She had a sense of where the brown-shingled apartment building was located, but not the exact address. God, she could be driving up and down side streets for fifteen minutes before she happened across it, and Vince would melt away.

She wondered why she cared. She had done her best to help this
twenty-two-year-old, despite the message drummed into her at the law firm in Denver where she had worked after graduating from law school: save your energy and time—the firm's precious, expensive time—for appreciative clients who work with you, not against you. And wasn't that exactly what Adam Lone Eagle had said when they practiced together in Lander? Holden and Lone Eagle, specializing in natural resources law, important matters. Losers don't deserve you, Adam used to say. Which she supposed made logical sense, in Adam's world. But weren't they the reason she had gone to law school? The losers, the people who
couldn't
help themselves? They had gone separate ways: She, back to what Adam always called “little cases,” and he, to a large natural-resources law firm in Denver.

Up ahead, on the corner, she spotted the brown-shingled building. The street was unplowed, thick with snow, crust-hardened and slushy at the same time. She steered the Ford alongside the curb, got out, and hurried up the sidewalk to the door. She rapped twice, hard, and leaned in close, listening for footsteps, the scrape of a chair. Nothing. She glanced about. No sign of Vince's tan pickup on either side of the street. She could feel her heart hammering. The friend would have called Dolly, who would have told Vince, and Vince would have taken off.

She removed her glove and knocked again, and this time, the thin wooden door jumped beneath her fist. “Vince,” she called. “I know you're here.” That was a laugh. There was no reason in the world to believe he was still here. “It's Vicky Holden. Open up.”

She heard it then, a slow shushing noise, like wind blowing through a tiny crack. The door slid open the width of a chain lock, and part of a face appeared, a single eye, a Cyclops, blinking at her. “Dolly? I'm Vince's lawyer. I have to talk to him.”

The door slammed shut. There was the rattling, disengaging noise of the chain breaking loose, then the door opened wider. Filling up the narrow space was a young woman, slender, bent forward, as fragile-looking as a twig that might snap in two. Blond, with eyes like pewter, flat and opaque. It took Vicky by surprise, the blond hair and white face and arms that hung from a tee shirt with ragged edges where the sleeves had been. She had expected Dolly to be Indian. Arapaho. This was an apartment building where Arapahos lived.

“He's not here.” The woman could have been anywhere between eighteen and forty, vacant-looking, with sunken eyes above sharp cheek bones and the sucked-in look of a woman who no longer had back teeth. Meth did that to people.

Vicky could almost taste the defeat rolling off the woman. “Are you Dolly?”

She hunched her shoulders and gave a slow, obsequious nod. Yes, she was Dolly.

“Where is he?” Vicky tried to push past the sadness of it, the loss of a life.

Signs of a struggle worked through Dolly's expression: the desire of an addict to please warring against the desire to protect a man she might love, who might even love her. “I'm trying to help him,” Vicky said. God, Vince could be miles away, heading to some obscure house on the rez where no one would think to look for him. He could hide out for days. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen, one of his buddies would give him up and the cops would show up and Vince would fight or run or try to do both, and he could be shot.

“I can't help him if I don't know where he is. Look . . .” Vicky leaned in closer. There was the acrid smell of some half-dead thing about the woman.

The pewter eyes blinked against the moisture welling at the corners. “I promised not to tell anybody.”

“If you care about Vince, help me to help him.”

That seemed to convince her. The signs of struggle disappeared, the pale face hardened in a new resolve: She would have to help Vince because, yes, he loved her. She was sure he loved her. She said, “You just missed him.”

“I need to know where I can find him.”

“He left to get some more booze. He needed a drink real bad, and I didn't have nothing left.”

“Is he coming back?”

She gave a weak smile and shook her head. “Like I said, I didn't have nothing around. He'll go drink somewhere else 'til he gets enough of it and is sick as a dog, then he'll come back around. He always does.”

“Where did he go for the booze?”

She lifted her thin shoulders. “He was pretty thirsty.”

The nearest liquor store, Vicky was thinking. She tried to picture where that would be. On Federal, a few blocks away. She thanked Dolly and hurried down the sidewalk, barely aware of the door cracking shut behind her. Vince had a good ten or fifteen minutes on her.

Vicky spotted him as she turned into the parking lot in front of the liquor store. Stooped forward like an old man, wearing a dark sweatshirt, clutching a brown bag to his chest. The door swung shut behind him as he started weaving toward the tan pickup at the curb.

She drove down the rows of parked vehicles and braked in front of Vince, who jumped sideways, surprise and fear stamped on his face. She jumped out, walked around, and stood between him and the driver's side of the pickup. “We had an appointment,” she said.

He tossed his head back and forth, as if there might be someplace to run, fright and desperation in his eyes. “I got other things to do.”

“We have to talk. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.” Vicky set her hand on the man's arm. Pulling him forward, guiding him along the snow-patched sidewalk, past the liquor store, the barber shop, the knitting store to the coffee shop. She could feel the trembling deep inside him. And something else: the hard metal of a gun beneath his jacket.

“This is no good.” He yanked himself free.

“It's important, Vince. You can use a cup of coffee.” She held the door open and gestured him inside. The booth next to the door was empty, used napkins and cups with traces of coffee in the bottoms piled in the center. The next booth had been cleared, but it was a good three feet farther into the shop, an extra moment in which he could swing around and run back outside.

She handed him into the red plastic seat and sat down on the other side of the table. “The sheriff is expecting us,” she said.

“Well, I changed my mind.” Vince was still holding the brown bag close to his chest, leaning over it so that the top of the bag crumpled under his chin. “No way am I going there.”

“It's your only chance.”

The waitress appeared and scooped the dirty cups and napkins onto a tray, then waited, as if words weren't necessary for the obvious.

Vicky leaned toward Vince. “Do you want something to eat?”

He threw her a dismissive look. Food wasn't what he wanted. She couldn't decide where he was in the cycle of alcoholic addiction: Coming off a bender? Going into a bender? Not yet sick enough to have been drinking for a while, she realized. Vince was still getting started.

“Two coffees.” Vicky waited until the waitress had turned on her heel and disappeared into the back of the shop, then she said, “I've worked out the best deal possible.” She kept her voice low, confidential. “Now is not the time to walk away.”

“I don't want nothing to do with the law.”

“You don't have a choice.” My God, what was he thinking? The whole legal system would just ignore an attempted robbery charge? “You tried to steal a woman's grocery money at the ATM outside the supermarket. You're all over the video. You were there, you did it, and the prosecuting attorney can't overlook it.”

“Jeez, Vicky. You're supposed to be my lawyer. I told you what happened. I just asked if she had any extra change 'cause I was . . .” He bit on his lower lip a moment. “I was bad thirsty. I needed a bottle.”

“A good story.” Vince White Hawk could charm snakes. He could conjure any scenario he wanted. “The prosecuting attorney has watched the video and so have I. You were aggressive and threatening. The woman threw her purse at you and ran for her life.”

Vicky leaned back. The waitress was at the table again, delivering cups of coffee, a metal pitcher of milk, a bowl of sugar packets. She rummaged in the pockets of her apron and pulled out two spoons, which she dropped next to the cups.

“Look . . .” Vicky said, moving forward against the edge of the table when the waitress had left. “You turn yourself in, and Peters will consider lowering the charges from attempted robbery to a misdemeanor.” She was thinking she would have to find a way to get the gun before she took him in. “It's your choice whether you do time in Rawlins,” she went on, “or in the county jail with a rehab program thrown in. We have to be at the sheriff's office this afternoon, the sooner the better. Not tomorrow after you've finished off the bottles.”

He was shaking his head, and Vicky realized he had been shaking his head the whole time, denying, refusing. “I'm telling you, there's no way I'm giving myself up.”

“What is it? You were willing to go along with the deal. What's changed?”

“I got plans.” Vince tried to lift his coffee cup, then set it down, hands shaking. Brown liquid sloshed over the top and ran in rivulets along the table. She knew what had changed. Vince had been desperate for booze. So desperate last week he had tried to rob a woman at an ATM. There was no money for booze, so he had agreed to the deal. Since then he had somehow come into money to buy the three bottles in the brown bag. And he had a gun.

“I'm laying low on the rez until I can get out of here. So far away the cops'll never find me.” He bent his head over the bag and slurped at the coffee.

“Listen to me, Vince. They will find you. They will find you at whatever drinking house you hide out in. One of your buddies will snitch on you to get some kind of a deal for himself. Every cop in the county will be looking for you. You'll never make it out of here.” She took a moment, watching for any sign that what she'd said had sunk in. “Where did you get the money?”

Vince slurped at the coffee, his eyes on the table.

“The money for the booze. The money to leave here. Gas. Food. Motels. Booze. Where did you get the money?”

“You're crazy.” He had started shaking, as if the trembling she had felt earlier had worked its way to the surface and spread over him like a rash.

“Your mother's worried sick.” Vicky tried a different tack. “She wants you to take the deal.”

“You don't get it. Everything's different.” Vince went back to his coffee. “There's no more deal.”

“I can take you to the prosecuting attorney's office and he can explain your options.”

Vince pulled himself upright, still shaking. “I got my pickup here,” he said, as if that were the most important matter.

“I'll arrange to have your pickup taken to your mother's.”

He didn't protest. She had worn him down, she was thinking. He really didn't have any options. She glanced around for the waitress, but there was no one at the counter. The shop was empty. Then the waitress sauntered out from the back, as if she had been summoned, and took up her place behind the cash register.

Vicky dug several bills out of her wallet. “Wait here.” She slid out of the booth, walked over to the counter and plopped down the bills. She told the frozen-faced waitress to keep the change, then turned back.