Night of the White Buffalo: A Wind River Mystery (7 page)

FATHER JOHN SPOTTED
the woman in front of the blue bi-level house surrounded by pink, orange, and green bi-levels in what was known as Easter-Egg Village, the federal government's idea of a residential neighborhood. He swung the Toyota to the side of the road. The old pickup had been balking and kicking down Seventeen-Mile Road. Now the engine gasped and went silent, like a dying patient fed up with the effort of breathing. “Di Provenza il mar”
faded into the shush of the wind over the half-open windows. He turned off the CD player and got out, hoping the pickup would get a second breath in a little while.

“Appreciate you coming over.” Miriam Many Horses watched him come up the weed-cracked sidewalk, cigarette smoke curling from the fist next to her thigh. “Lunch is ready. Dad's waiting inside. He doesn't know I'm still smoking. That quitting thing isn't working so good.” She gave a little laugh and nodded him up the concrete steps to the front door. “Don't tell him.”

Father John smiled and shook his head. Addictions were hard to kick. Often quitting didn't go well. “I'm trying to think what I could tell your father that he doesn't already know,” he said.

“He doesn't know what's going on on the rez.”

Father John stopped and looked down at the woman at the foot of the steps. She came to his shoulders, drawing hard on the cigarette, cheeks caved in. “What's going on?”

“Moccasin telegraph's being real cagey. Bits and pieces of information all morning, but nobody's got the whole story.”

“What's the half story?” The telegraph could be erratic. Sometimes St. Francis Mission was the first to hear the news. Usually bad news. Sometimes the mission was the last, which meant this could be good news. He didn't think so by the frown lines etched in the woman's forehead.

“Vacations, time off, even sick leaves canceled at the BIA police department. Getting ready for something, but not saying what. I don't remember the last time my niece's husband got an order like that. Get ready, it's coming, whatever it is.”

Father John looked out across the dirt yard. A tumbleweed skittered one way, then another. He could feel the woman's eyes burrowing into him. Chief Banner must have called an all-departments meeting this morning and given the directive. There would be other directives. Meetings to discuss traffic control measures, the onslaught of drunken drivers from across the country, hordes of people lined up to buy gas or hot dogs at the convenience store in Ethete. How many people—hundreds? thousands?—coming to see the white buffalo calf? He remembered reading about a white calf born on a farm in Wisconsin a few years ago. Thousands and thousands of people had come. Arapahos and Shoshones had loaded up pickups and set off for Wisconsin. The minute the word was out, people would start coming here. All he had to do, he realized, was tell Miriam Many Horses what he had learned last night at the Broken Buffalo Ranch.

“I'm sure we'll know eventually,” he said.

“Yeah, eventually. While we're waiting, we might like to get prepared. Big storm? Tornado brewing? Flood?” She gave a sharp, raspy laugh; Father John laughed with her. It was hard to imagine enough rain on the dry plains to worry about a flood. “See, when we don't know, we get crazy imagining stuff.” Miriam stamped the cigarette butt into the dirt, then picked it up and slid it into the pocket of her blue jeans. “Go on in. Door's never locked.”

The living room was narrow, running to the kitchen in back, but comfortable looking, with a worn sofa and chairs and a couple of throw rugs spread over the vinyl floor. Clifford sat at a small yellow table beneath the kitchen window. The old man made a motion toward getting to his feet when Father John walked over and set a hand on his shoulder. The bones felt sharp and fragile at the same time. “Don't get up, Grandfather.” He used the term of respect for elderly men on the rez, who deserved respect for their long lives and hard-won wisdom. Just like the grandmothers.

“Sit yourself.” Clifford waved a brown, long-fingered hand toward the chair at the corner.

Father John started to sit down, then asked Miriam, bustling along the counter, if there was anything he could help her with.

“Help me by eating a big lunch, make the work worthwhile.” She stopped slicing sandwiches into triangles and glanced over one shoulder. “Not that there's much work in making bologna sandwiches. I didn't have to butcher the cow. Coke or coffee?”

“Coke sounds good.” A cold drink and a little caffeine might keep him alert, Father John was thinking, with the warm sun slanting through the window and laying a bright path across the tabletop.

Miriam set a plate with triangular sandwiches, a handful of potato chips, and a dill pickle in front of her father. The elderly were always served first in the Arapaho Way. As if their time to partake in the joys of life were limited. An identical plate appeared before him. She set down two glasses of Coke. “Brownies for dessert,” she said, sliding a plate of chocolate brownies into the middle of the table. “You promise you'll eat your sandwiches first. Dad?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” The old man waved her away. “You done good, Daughter.”

“Well, I'll be back soon as I get off my shift at the restaurant.” She cupped the old man's shoulder. “Don't worry about supper. I'll bring you something.” Then, to Father John: “You hear about what's going on, you let me know, okay?”

He smiled up at the serious-looking face. She would hear the news as soon as Sheila Carey tended to the burial of her husband. He thanked her for lunch.

After the front door had closed, Father John waited while Clifford devoured half of his sandwich and sipped at his Coke. It was not polite to rush the conversation and inquire as to what was on the old man's mind. The time was not yet right. He worked at his own sandwich, surprised again at how good a bologna sandwich slathered in mayonnaise could taste. It took him back to his childhood, eating bologna sandwiches at a table not much larger than this yellow table, his mother bustling around the kitchen preparing dinner, with lunch not yet over. He shook away the memory, as if it didn't belong to him. So long ago. Another time, another life.

Clifford finished the sandwich and started pushing the chips around the plate with one finger. “I've been wanting to talk to you.”

“What is it, Grandfather?” Father John could feel his muscles tense. The old man was ninety. The news could be anything. A bad diagnosis, bad news about his nephew in Afghanistan, worry over someone in the younger generation following the wrong road.

“Miriam don't know what's going on, but I do.”

Father John didn't say anything. He waited for the old man to collect his thoughts.

“Seen a vision a couple weeks ago. Early morning, starting to get light. I was sitting out back watching the sun rise and praying, like usual.” Father John nodded. The elders prayed every day that good things would come to the people. “Then I seen a beautiful young woman with black hair and black eyes come across the prairie toward me. She wasn't walking; she was floating. That's how I knew she was a spirit. She had on a white deerskin dress decorated with beads and embroidery more beautiful than I ever seen. She spun around three times, and I saw that she was a buffalo. A beautiful white buffalo. Then she was gone, like she melted into the air. So I knew she came to tell me she was coming back as a white calf, like she promised to do whenever the people needed help. I knew a white buffalo calf was going to be born. She is a sign of the Creator among us. She is like a visitation of the Blessed Mother.”

The old man stared across the table into space, as if the White Buffalo Woman might reappear. After a moment he waved a hand against any objection Father John might make. “White Buffalo Woman came to the Lakota. She gave them the sacred ceremonies and left them the sacred pipe. But she came for all the tribes. That's why we revere her. Now with the troubles, some crazy guy shooting at cars for the fun of it, man getting murdered, she's come back, just like she promised.” He craned his head and stared at Father John, a pleading look in the rheumy black eyes. “It's true, isn't it?”

Father John took a couple of seconds before he said, “It's true.”

“The sacred calf, here with us.” The old man started nodding, something peaceful and rhythmic in the motion, and for a moment Father John thought he might drop off into sleep. Instead, he straightened his shoulders, and said, “I got the news on the moccasin telegraph that the cops are canceling vacations and leaves. I knew they're getting ready for the visitors. Won't just be Indian people. White folks, all kinds of folks will come to see the sacred calf. I figure the calf is out there on the Broken Buffalo Ranch, and I heard you and Banner went there last night after that white man got killed. The widow tell you about the calf?”

“She isn't ready to make it public.”

“Can't stay secret forever. The cops know. Word's already starting to leak out.”

“She wants to see that her husband is buried and at peace.”

Clifford pushed the chips around the plate and studied the design he had made. It resembled a buffalo head. “I seen something else in the vision,” he said. “A cloud black as a storm. The cloud moved real slow off to the west before it turned into a black hole that looked like it had been drilled into the sky. Then it was gone. Soon's I heard about the rancher getting shot last night, I understood the vision: something sacred has come to the rez, but evil is still among us.”

Father John sat very still for a long moment. There was no rational, logical way of explaining visions. Since he had been at St. Francis Mission, he had learned to accept that not everything could be explained.

He left the old man in the living room sitting in his recliner, the toes of his boots splayed in opposite directions. He could hear the faint snoring sounds as he let himself out the front door. In the pickup, with the driver's door hanging open, he checked his cell. A message from Sheila Carey. Could he stop by the ranch this afternoon? He had to jiggle the key in the ignition before the engine kicked over and the pickup shivered around him. He made a U-turn onto the dirt road, headed back to Seventeen-Mile Road, and turned west.

*   *   *

THE STACCATO SOUNDS
of a hammer thumped through the soft noises of the wind. Father John slowed the pickup over the rough mounds of dirt that passed for a road across the plains to the Broken Buffalo Ranch. He could see two cowboys working on the fence that enclosed the pasture north of the barn. Out in the pasture, several buffalo nosed among a clump of cottonwoods and willows. By the time he pulled next to the house, one of the cowboys, brown straw hat pushed forward, came walking toward him. It was Sheila Carey.

“Looks like we're going to need some extra hands,” she said as he let himself out of the pickup. Beyond the house, he could see the tractor, flatbed, forklift, and trucks standing idle near the barn. “That agency in Riverton, Ranchlands Employment, is supposed to send over cowboys. Haven't seen one yet. Don't know any cowboys looking for a job, do you?”

He stopped himself from saying, “White cowboys?” The woman looked flushed from the heat and the sun; little specks of perspiration glistened on the V-shaped patch of skin that showed at the collar of her blouse. A widow, her husband not dead twenty-four hours. “I can ask around.”

“You do that.” She tossed her head back toward the fence where Carlos was positioning another post. “I hear word is out on the moccasin telegraph. People know something's going on.”

“It won't be long before they figure out the white calf is here. When do you plan to make the announcement?”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about. The coroner released Dennis's body today. I made arrangements to have him cremated. It was what he wanted,” she added hurriedly. “I'm planning to bury his ashes here tomorrow. There's a real pretty place behind the barn, a kind of meadow. I was hoping you'd be willing to say a few prayers. Dennis wasn't what you'd call a believer, but prayers would be nice. I thought maybe you could talk one of the Arapaho elders into doing a little Indian blessing. Give Dennis a proper send-off.”

“I can ask Clifford Many Horses. I'm sure he would like to see the calf before the crowds come.”

The woman was squinting up at him past the brim of her cowboy hat. “He can give Spirit the stamp of approval. Ten o'clock in the morning? You'll arrange it?”

“I'll ask him.”

NIGHTTIME SETTLED OVER
the mission. The Boy Scout meeting at Eagle Hall had ended an hour ago; pickups taking the kids home had stuttered through the cottonwood tunnel onto Seventeen-Mile Road. Father John had locked up Eagle Hall and checked to make sure the front doors of the administration building and the church were locked. In the residence, the bishop carried a cup of coffee upstairs and, for a little while, Father John had heard the faint tap-tap-tap of a keyboard. Then footsteps overhead, followed by silence. The bishop was usually in bed by ten o'clock. Father John poured himself another cup of coffee and carried it into the study across the front hall from the living room. He opened his laptop and watched the icons people the screen. Pipes gurgled somewhere in the walls of the old house.

He searched for sites about white buffalo calves and their significance to Plains Indians. Dozens of sites came up, and he clicked on one that looked promising: the video of the keynote talk at a symposium on Indian spirituality by Professor Harold Jumping Elk of South Dakota State University. Father John recognized the name. Professor Jumping Elk's book on the Indians as the Creator's chosen people was in the stack of books on his bedside table waiting to be read.

The video flickered and settled into the image of a wide-chested man with black hair slicked back into a ponytail and intense black eyes. He wore a black suit with a white shirt buttoned to the collar and no tie, like the chiefs in the bronzed photos from the Old Time. Dropping his gaze, he took his time checking the papers on the podium in front of him. Turning over one page, then the next. The audience was still.

Finally the professor looked up, cleared his throat, and began speaking:

When I think of the sacred white buffalo calf, I think of the beautiful young woman with the yellow-and-red scarf tied around her bald head. She stood at the fence next to the pasture on a farm in Wisconsin. Hundreds of people milled about, and I remember how this beautiful woman waited her turn to get close to the fence. She leaned against the post and stared out at the herd of buffalo. Off to the side was the new white calf, about the size of a lamb, sheltering in the great, protective shadow of her mother. The beautiful lady did not take her eyes away. I saw that she was crying.

Later she told me that she had heard about the birth of the white buffalo calf as she finished chemotherapy. She got into her car and drove from Houston to Wisconsin because, as she said, she believed the sacred calf would be a blessing on her life.

When I looked at the other visitors lined along the fence, staring off into the pasture, I saw that most had tears in their eyes. All kinds of people, not just Indians, although Indian people had come from across the country, Mexico, and South America. Whites, African Americans, Asians—a microcosm of the whole world. In some way, all these people understood that what they saw out in the pasture—a smallish, unassuming animal—was the most sacred creature they would ever see.

I first learned about the sacred white buffalo calf from my grandfather. I remember sitting in a circle inside the tipi that Grandfather kept in his back yard. The government had built frame houses on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but many of the old Lakotas preferred to sleep and eat in their tipis. It was rumored that some of the old ones stabled their horses in the houses while they continued living in their tipis. Anytime Grandfather began a story about the Old Time, the circle inside the tipi became very quiet. We knew the story was about us.

In the very long ago time, Grandfather told us, when the people were alone and hungry, a beautiful woman came from the West. She was dressed in a white deerskin dress decorated in beads and quills. Her moccasins did not touch the earth. She floated toward the village, and the people knew she was a spirit. She was Wakan. She came from the Creator. The woman taught the people many things. To be respectful of creatures, the four-leggeds and the wingeds, who are our relatives, and to be respectful of the living Earth. She told us to be in a holy way. She spoke to the women especially and said their work was as great as that of the warriors who procured food for the people. It was the women's work and the children they bore that kept the people alive. She taught us the sacred ceremonies and gave us the sacred pipe. The smoke from the pipe is the breath of the Creator.

Before she left, the beautiful woman promised she would return in times of trouble so that we would know the Creator remained with us. She started off in the direction of the setting sun, then stopped. She rolled over and became a black buffalo. She rolled a second time and became a brown buffalo. The third time, she became a red buffalo, and the fourth time she became a white buffalo calf.

After her visit, the plains were filled with buffalo. Enormous herds stretched as far as the eye could see. The ground rolled and shook like thunder under their hooves. The buffalo gave the people everything we needed to live. Food, clothing, shelter, tools. Today archeologists say seventy million buffalo once existed. The ancestors saw the herds and said the people would live forever. When the wars of the plains ended and the people were sent to reservations, the great herds had been reduced to a few straggly animals, one thousand or less. It seemed that the buffalo had been swallowed by the Earth, and that the Indian people would die.

But throughout the generations, White Buffalo Woman kept
her promise, and from time to time, a white buffalo
calf was born. Scientists look to genetics and try to
determine how many white calves might have ever been born,
but the ancestors did not keep track of such numbers.
They knew only that the white calf came to remind the people that the Creator was with them.

White Buffalo Woman came to the Lakota, but the message she brought was meant for all people. All the other tribes, and all the non-Indian people. For that reason, the beautiful white woman with a bald head, a yellow-and-red scarf and tears in her eyes, had driven a thousand miles to see the sacred calf and pray for healing. For that reason, thousands of people had come, all of them praying for healing in their lives. They believed that the small white calf was a sign of the Creator among his creatures.

Father John closed the site and glanced through the list of other sites, finally settling on one called Buffalo Today. “Walking Lightly on the Earth”
ran across the top of several pages of text. He scanned the paragraphs. Buffalo were at home on the plains, with the lack of moisture and sparse vegetation. Once accustomed to roaming vast areas, they grazed as they moved without destroying the fragile environment. Confined to smaller areas today, buffalo feed sometimes had to be supplemented with hay. Still, environmentalists pointed out that buffalo lived in greater harmony with their surroundings than cattle. The low-fat, low-cholesterol buffalo meat was considered a healthful delicacy.

Father John closed the site and sipped at the cool, bitter coffee. He swiveled toward the window and stared out at the streetlight dancing in the wind over the wild grass. A small white animal, a sacred sign that would bring thousands of people to the rez. He wondered if Sheila Carey had any idea of what was coming. Chief Banner might mobilize the entire police force, but he wondered if it would be enough.