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

This story owes much to many wonderful people on the Wind River Reservation and in Fremont County, Wyoming, whom I wish to thank for allowing me into their lives over the years and for their never-failing kindnesses and hospitality.

I especially want to thank Edward R. McAuslan, Fremont County coroner, and Edward L. Newell II, Fremont county and prosecuting attorney, for their willingness to answer my questions and set me straight on many procedural matters.

Thank you, also, to Robert Pickering, Ph.D., forensic anthropologist, deputy director, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming, for enormously helpful information, suggestions, and advice.

A special thank you to the wonderful Missy Martin who generously shared with me her experiences of the Wind River Reservation in the 1970s. And to my baseball expert and nephew, John Dix, who is Father John’s coach; to Michael Carrigan for guiding me through many aspects of criminal law; to Edie Stevens for helpful information on employment law.

As always, I am indebted to those trusted friends with keen instincts on what makes a piece of fiction sing and who were willing to read all or parts of this manuscript and make astoundingly good suggestions: Karen Gilleland and Beverly Carrigan, Boulder; Philip F. Myers, Fairlawn, Ohio; and Virginia Sutter and Jim Sutter, members of the Arapaho tribe. I am also indebted to Father Anthony Short, S.J., for his friendship and never-flagging encouragement.

And to my husband, George, for so much of the above.
Ho’hou’!

1973

SHE HAD TO
get off the rez.

The truth of it was so simple that Liz Plenty Horses started to laugh. Odd how the choked sound of her own laughter was lost in the noise of tires scraping the dirt and wind pumping the old Ford and whistling through the cracked windshield; it gave her the sense that things were almost normal. Everything would be fine. She kept her eyes focused on the cone of yellow headlights stretching into the darkness ahead. A misunderstanding, that was all. They’d gotten it all wrong—gotten
her
all wrong. Didn’t they know her? She would never betray the American Indian Movement, never betray the others. AIM meant everything to her. Salvation. Life itself.

Liz gripped the steering wheel, aware of the sharp pain of her nails digging into the flesh of her palms and of the fear rushing over her, like a blackness closing in, as if the borders of the Wind River Reservation themselves were folding up around her, trapping her in a gulley and suffocating her.

The baby started to cry. Holding the wheel steady with one hand, Liz reached back, gripped the edge of the cardboard box that she’d padded with scraps of blankets and turned into a crib. She rocked the box slowly, gently, careful not to pull it off the seat, and started singing. “Baby mine, beautiful girl, the sun is gonna shine on you and me, and we’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna be fine.” Her voice sounded cracked and tear strained, but she forced herself to keep singing. Songs were reassuring; they made you less afraid. If she could reassure Luna, hardly a month old—wasn’t yesterday her birthday? My God, she’d forgotten her own child’s first birthday, the passing of her first month. If this tiny girl wasn’t afraid, then she wouldn’t be afraid either.

But the black fear was there, like a presence seated beside her. She could feel the icy sharpness. She’d felt it the minute she’d stepped into the house. She’d gotten the message an hour earlier; one of the members had knocked on the door of the trailer. Meeting at the house on Yellow Calf Road. She’d better be there. She’d shown up late; the meeting had already started. The living room was jammed with members, perched on the sofa and chairs, slouched on the floor, legs stretched out, so that she saw the scuffed soles first, then the frayed blue jeans and the bright red, blue, and yellow shirts trimmed with ribbons, then the long black hair trailing over the shoulders and the red headbands stretched across the brown foreheads.

Oddly, the coldness had made her conscious of her own hair, long and thick and black. She’d pulled it back and worked it into a single braid—working all of the troubles and problems, all of the uncertainties into the braid that hung almost to her waist. Putting the troubles away for a while, she’d told herself. Yet it was the braid that made her stand out, look different, even though she’d worn a red headband, like the others. She should have left her hair hanging loose.

“Sorry, sorry,” she’d heard herself saying, clutching the baby to her chest—and thank God, Luna was sleeping—as she’d stumbled over the stretched legs and dropped into a vacant spot on the floor, aware of the brown eyes following her like searchlights. She’d heard the voices when she’d stepped onto the front stoop, but the conversations had stopped when she’d walked inside. Smells of tobacco and sweat and stale coffee sucked the oxygen from the room.

She remembered looking around for Robert Running Wolf and Brave Bird, but neither of the leaders was there. Jake Tallfeathers was there, though, he and two other Arapahos leaning shoulder to shoulder across the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. It had been Jake and Ruth Yellow Bull and Liz, herself, Arapahos all of them, who had brought Lakotas to the Wind River Reservation after the standoff at Wounded Knee. They’d grown up on the rez; they knew where the Lakotas could hide out. They’d helped them blend in with the Arapahos. The Feds had chased all over Denver and Chicago and Minneapolis, sure that the AIM warriors had gone back to where they’d come from. They weren’t looking on another rez. Lakotas had been here for months now, and no one had been arrested.

She’d searched Jake’s face for some clue to the iciness in the room, but there was only the blankness of a stone.

“What is it?” she’d managed. Now, thinking about it, she could still feel Luna’s lightness against her chest, the soft blanket falling over her arm, the almost imperceptible motion of the baby’s breathing.

“Brave Bird got killed.” A man’s voice had cut toward her, and she’d turned her head, scanning the room. The other brown faces were set like Jake’s, unreadable masks. She wasn’t sure who had spoken.

“Killed?” She’d heard the disbelief in her own voice. Brave Bird was strong. He’d done so much since he came to the rez. Led the protests and demonstrations, organized the AIM warriors that listened in on the police calls, then raced to the crime scenes to make sure no one was beaten up or shot by the police, saw that food and firewood got to people who didn’t have any, called on the members to be brave, to stand up for their rights as Indians. He was the heart of AIM, the soul of everything the movement stood for.

“Got shot couple hours ago.” Another voice, from across the room. “Police shot him in Ethete.”

“I didn’t know,” Liz had said into the quiet pressing around her. But in that instant she’d known everything. What it meant, what they had assumed. The Wind River police had stopped her last week, tried to pin a DUI on her, but she hadn’t had anything to drink. Still they’d taken her to the jail in Ethete. Luna, too. Kept her in jail for twelve hours, sent Luna off with some social services woman Liz had never seen before, asked her a lot of questions. Where’s Running Wolf? They’d wanted to know. Where’s Brave Bird? How many Lakotas hiding here? Tell us where the safe houses are. You cooperate and we’ll make things easy on you, drop the DUI charges. Nobody’s gonna know. You don’t talk, no telling what the judge is gonna throw at you. Put your kid in a foster home. Gonna be tough, Liz.

She’d told them she knew her rights, and she had the right to a phone call. She’d been shaking; her voice trembling. But she’d been a member of AIM for almost a year, and the most important thing AIM had taught her was that she had rights.

A policeman had finally led her to a phone in the corridor. It surprised her how easy it was. All she had to do was demand her rights and they were hers! She’d called Ruth Yellow Bull, knowing that Ruth would find Brave Bird or Robert. Within the hour, a lawyer had burst through the door to the room where they’d been questioning her. “DUI?” he’d said. “You got evidence, file a charge. Otherwise we’re out of here.” It hadn’t been that simple. They’d kept her in jail until the court hearing in the morning.

Liz reached back and rocked the baby’s box. They’d assumed—all the stone-hard faces crowded in the house—they’d all assumed she’d snitched, that she’d told the police where Brave Bird was staying in Ethete. It was a horrible mistake. Robert would straighten it out, just as she knew it had been Robert who had sent the lawyer and later had sent Ruth with the money to bail her out. She had to talk to Robert. Where was he? She had to get off the rez until she could find him. Give him time to talk to the other members, convince them of her loyalty. She couldn’t just hang around, waiting, waiting, waiting…

She started singing again: “It’s a long night coming. Train’s rolling on into the darkness. Gonna get on that train, gonna roll on outta here. Roll on through the darkness and into the light, just you and me, baby, on that train.”

She couldn’t shake the image of Jake moving his head—a slow, methodical nod—as if she’d said exactly what he’d expected: I didn’t know about Brave Bird. The other eyes had pulled away, darting about the room and staring down at their boots, but Jake had fixed her with a black, steady look. She’d had to look away. She’d pressed Luna’s tiny body so tightly against her that it was as if the baby were part of her own body, a third breast she’d grown, wrapped in a faded pink blanket.

She had no idea, she’d said. The words sounded choked and hesitant. The stale tobacco smells filled her lungs. No idea whatsoever. “How did the police know where to find him?” she’d managed. He’d been using the name Daryl Redman. All the Lakotas used different names. “How had the police known?”

“Someone gave him up.” There had been a steely coldness in Jake’s voice.

“Nobody’d do that.” She’d stumbled on, fear squeezing her throat like a rope. “Nobody on the rez would turn an Indian over to the police.” And all the time she’d understood that they had already come to a conclusion and made a decision. The conversations she’d heard outside on the stoop were about her.
Liz Plenty Horses is the snitch
. Jake had looked at her as if he were staring into space, as if she were no longer there.

After a while, they’d started to leave—uncurling from the floor and getting out of the chairs. Liz had pushed to her feet, holding on to the baby plastered against her, and begun weaving her way past the sweat-soaked shirts and through the odors of cigarettes and hair oil. She got into the line filing out the door and started across the yard toward the Ford wedged behind two trucks, hurrying from the footsteps behind her. Engines stuttered, then roared into life. Headlights streaked across the bare dirt and cut through the darkness. Tires started skidding in the dirt.

The footsteps had come closer. Loreen Yellow Bull—Ruth’s cousin; she recognized her in the flare of headlights—had walked past, then glanced back. “Watch yourself,” she’d whispered.

Loreen had hurried ahead and climbed into a brown truck, headlights on, motor running, the truck shaking like a bull ready to burst out the gate. Jake was behind the wheel.

The other trucks and cars had turned left onto the road, but Liz had turned right, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror, the breath burning in her throat. She’d pressed down on the accelerator. They knew who she was. She’d thought they knew her.

The baby was still crying. Liz kept jiggling the cardboard box, tears stinging her face. She was on Seventeen-Mile Road, the lights of Arapahoe blinking in the distance. What was she thinking? She couldn’t go to the trailer where she’d been staying since she’d come back to the rez. Grandfather’s trailer. When she was a kid, she’d explored every inch of the rooms that ran one into the other—kitchen, sitting room, bath, and finally the bedroom with windows that curved around the back just below the ceiling. Grandfather had died while she was at Pine Ridge, and the trailer was hers, all that she had. She’d found the key under the rock in front of the kitchen window.

They would be waiting for her there.

Luna was quiet now, which made it easier to think. Liz wiped at the moisture on her face. She had to pull herself together. She couldn’t fall apart; she had a baby to think of. She slowed along the side of the road and waited for the oncoming headlights to sweep past. Then she swung the Ford in a U-turn and drove west. The gas needle bounced just above empty. She could make it to Ruth Yellow Bull’s house and spend the night. Ruth hadn’t been at the meeting; maybe she hadn’t heard the news. She’d leave first thing in the morning. Ruth might even have gas she could siphon.

She swung left onto Plunkett Road, her gaze frozen to the pavement bending around the curves. After a couple of miles, she tapped at the brake pedal, turned right and bounced over the barrow ditch and across the dirt yard that spread in front of the small house. The white siding shone in the headlights. The windows were dark, and for a moment, she stayed in the car, trying to work out another plan if Ruth weren’t home. Finally she got out, pulled the rear door open and slid the cardboard box across the seat. She lifted it in both arms and, holding it close, made her way to the house. She kicked at the base of the wooden screened door.

There were no sounds apart from the wind flapping a towel against the pole of the clothesline that jutted from the side of the house. Liz kicked at the screened door again. “Be here, Ruth,” she said out loud. “Please be here.”

A light switched on inside, sending rectangles of light out onto the dirt. The inside door opened about two inches, and a thin slice of Ruth’s face appeared in the crack. She stared at Liz with one eye. “What’re you doing here?”

“I need a place for tonight. I thought…”

“You crazy? You can’t stay here.”

“It’d only be for a few hours,” Liz said, trying to squeeze the desperation from her voice. “We’ll be gone soon’s it gets light.”

“Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with Brave Bird gettin’ shot.”

“They’re gonna put a snitch jacket on you.”

“You know me, Ruth. You know it’s not true. I’d never betray any of the members.”

“You gotta go somewhere else. Jake hears you stayed here, he’ll beat the shit outta me.”

“Ruth, please…” The door slammed shut.

Liz stared past the screen at the dark wood for a long moment. It was as if a black wall had risen in front of her. The glow of lights disappeared from the windows. “Please, Ruth,” she said again, but she was speaking to the wall.

Liz stumbled back through the darkness to the car. The baby began stirring in the box, emitting little chirping sounds, like those of a baby bird. She shoved the box onto the backseat and slid in behind the wheel. Maybe there was enough gas to get to Lander. She would head for Highway 287 and drive south, get as far away as she could before the gas gave out. A snitch jacket, Ruth had said. They wanted her dead.