The Lost Bird (2 page)

Ahead the road butted into Circle Drive, which curved around the mission grounds, past the red-brick residence, the old school, the white church with the steeple framed against the sky, the yellow administration building, and, almost out of view behind the building, Eagle Hall. Beyond the grounds the flat, open plains of the Wind River Reservation stretched like sheets of burnished copper under the clear-rinsed blue sky. It was the last Monday in September, the Moon of the Drying Grasses, in the Arapaho way of marking time.

Shouts of laughter broke the quiet as kids jammed together to board the bus. Other kids were still straggling out of the red-brick Bureau of Indian Affairs school building with the white stucco entrance shaped like a tepee. A group of boys about thirteen years old started for the pickup. “You’re late, Father,” one called.

“Where ya been, Father?” Another voice. Brown faces pressed through the open windows.

Father John gave them a wave. He’d been at Riverton Memorial Hospital visiting Cyrus Elk. He’d anointed the old man last week, after doctors had informed the family that he was dying. But Cyrus was still hanging on. There was a day to die, Arapahos believed, and Cyrus’s day had not yet come. This afternoon, as Father John sat at Cyrus’s bedside and listened to the labored breaths and unintelligible sounds that burst forth, like forgotten, half-formed thoughts, he’d had the sense that the man was trying to tell him something, and that if he could only form the words, his spirit could depart.

At one point Cyrus had looked at him out of milky-brown eyes and called him Father Joseph, the only distinct words he had spoken. Father John had made a mental note to ask his temporary assistant, Father Joseph Keenan, to stop by the hospital. The seventy-two-year-old priest had been at St. Francis only two weeks, but, for a short while in the 1960s, Father Joseph had been the pastor here. He and Cyrus could have known each other. Maybe seeing an old friend would help the Indian unlock the words binding his spirit to the earth.

By the time Father John drove out of the hospital parking lot, he knew that even if he ran every red light
on Riverton’s main street, he would be late for confirmation class. He’d been teaching the class since mid-August, scheduling it around the games and practices of the Eagles, the baseball team he had started for the Arapaho kids during his first summer at St. Francis seven years ago. In less than two weeks the bishop would arrive for confirmation. He would question every candidate. And no matter what fastballs he might throw—What are the sacraments? What is the Eucharist?—Father John was determined his kids were going to hit home runs.

“You gonna cancel class today, Father?” the first boy asked. A wide smile exposed teeth too large for his face.

“Tell you what,” Father John said, “if you guys beat me to Eagle Hall, I’m going to let the class out on time.” The red lights flashed off; the bus started to pull into the road.

“All right!” the boy shouted. He and the others broke into a run through the cottonwoods that bordered the road, scooping up piles of leaves and tossing them into the air as they ran. The crackle of leaves mingled with the sounds of laughter.

Father John inched the pickup alongside a group of girls walking ahead. He tapped on the horn. Heads swung around, hands shot out as the girls pulled one another to the side of the road. “Hurry up, girls,” he called. “You’re late.”

“You’re the one that’s late, Father!” they shouted. Laughter rippled over the sound of tires scrunching gravel. As he turned onto Circle Drive, he spotted the blue Escort parked at the far side of the administration building. Father Joseph was back. He had left early that morning to visit parishioners, but nothing was
close on the reservation. Homes of parishioners stood thirty, forty miles apart. Father John was glad the older priest had finished the visits before the warm, sunny day had drifted into the biting coolness of an autumn evening.

He left the Toyota alongside the Escort and bounded up the concrete steps to the front entrance. The jangling sounds of a phone filtered from inside. By the time he’d flung open the heavy wood door and crossed the corridor to his office on the right, the ringing had stopped. He rifled hurriedly through the papers on his desk, half aware of Father Joseph’s low, cultured voice in the next office: “Yes, yes, of course.” A long pause, followed by a reassuring, “I’ll come right away.”

Father John slipped his class notes into a folder and lifted his Bible from the bookshelves behind the desk. The kids were probably tearing through Eagle Hall by now. It would take fifteen minutes of class time to settle them down. He started across the office just as the older priest appeared in the doorway. A slight man, half a head shorter than Father John’s almost six feet, four inches, he had an angular, intelligent face and a forehead that rose into thin, sand-colored hair. He wore thick, steel-rimmed glasses that gave him the owlish look of a philosophy professor accustomed to peering at scholarly texts in university libraries, which is what he had been doing until a heart attack last spring had forced him into retirement.

Three weeks ago, the Jesuit Provincial had called to say he’d found someone to help out temporarily at St. Francis. “You’ve heard of Joseph Keenan?” he’d asked, a tone that suggested he didn’t expect an answer.

Father John had heard of the man: scholar and philosopher; on the faculty at various times at Marquette and Georgetown and Boston College, even at the Gregorian University in Rome. Author of a number of weighty philosophical treatises that Father John knew he would never get around to reading. But lately he hadn’t seen anything about Joseph Keenan in the Jesuit newspapers.

“What’s he been doing?”

“Some health problems.” The Provincial had hurried on. “Look, John, it’s Joe Keenan or nobody. Could be a while before I find a permanent man.”

Could be never
, Father John had thought. There weren’t a lot of priests clamoring for an assignment on an Indian reservation in the middle of Wyoming. It was the last place he had expected to find himself, back when he was teaching American history at a Jesuit prep school in Boston and dreaming of teaching at a university himself someday. But something had intervened, canceled his plans. He thought of that time in terms of a fall—his fall into alcoholism. After spending the best part of a year in treatment at Grace House, he’d been eager to return to work, but no Jesuit superior had returned his calls. A recovering alcoholic? Always a worry. You never knew when . . .

And then the call had come from Father Peter, the pastor at St. Francis Mission. A mission to the Arapahos. Father John knew little about the tribe. A name in history books. One of the Plains Indian tribes? On a reservation where? And he’d never imagined himself doing mission work. But it was a job. A temporary job. Until he could prove himself, redeem himself in the eyes of his superiors. He had boarded a plane and flown to Wyoming, staring for the last hour of the trip
at the endless expanse of plains below. Three years later Father Peter had retired, and he’d become the pastor.

Now, with religious and adult education classes, Alcoholics Anonymous and counseling groups, and dozens of other programs under way for the fall, he was in the same position Father Peter had been in. He needed help.

But when Joseph Keenan had stepped out of the blue Escort, Father John had wondered how much help the retired scholar would be. He seemed robust—firm handshake, purposeful stride—but a deep tiredness shadowed his eyes, as if he had long labored under a crushing weight: the academic meetings attended and books written, the thousands of student projects evaluated. That first evening over dinner at the round oak table in the kitchen at the residence, he had mentioned his brush with death, his bypass surgery. “Guess the good Lord doesn’t need another windbag philosophy professor,” he said, throwing back his head and giving a brittle laugh, as if, by the choice of his profession, he’d played a clever joke on death.

When he reminisced about St. Francis Mission, a faraway look had come into his eyes. So many changes in the last thirty-five years: new people, more traffic. Hardly the quiet backwater he remembered. He was eager to take on his share of the work now, he’d said. He was as good as new—“surgeons work miracles these days.”

Father John worried about the man. He’d tried to give him the least tiring jobs—visiting with the elders at the senior center, saying the Saturday-evening Mass, the shortest Mass. Still, Joseph Keenan spent most days driving around the reservation. Renewing acquaintances,
rekindling friendships, Father John had assumed. The tiredness had taken up permanent residence in the old man’s eyes.

It was there now as Father Joseph stepped into the office. “I just received an emergency call.” A note of sympathy rang in his voice. “Annie Lewis is dying.”

Father John stared at the other priest. “Who?”

“Surely no one expects the pastor to know all of his parishioners.” Father Joseph waved a thin hand, as if to dismiss an impertinent question. “The poor woman’s son called. Says the cancer will most likely take her tonight, and she’s anxious to receive the last sacrament. They live on Thunder Lane. I’m going over there.” He turned into the corridor.

Father John followed. Thunder Lane was a deserted stretch of road that snaked along the foothills of the Wind River mountains at the far western edge of the reservation. Only a few families lived out there; he knew them all. No one by the name of Lewis.

“What’s the son’s name?” he asked.

Father Joseph glanced over one shoulder. “I don’t believe he gave a name, poor man. His only concern is his mother.”

But if she’s dying
, Father John thought,
why did he wait until the last minute to call a priest?
He held the door and waited until the older man stepped onto the stoop before following. “It’s an hour’s drive,” he said.

“It must be done.” Father Joseph started down the steps.

Father John hurried after him. “I’ll drive over to Thunder Lane after class.” The old priest had probably covered a couple of hundred miles today. Often in the afternoons, he disappeared for an hour or so—a much-needed nap in the residence, Father John suspected.
But there probably hadn’t been time to rest this afternoon, and Father John could see the exhaustion in the slump of the other man’s shoulders, the flat-footed, deliberate way in which he moved past the red Toyota pickup toward the Escort.

Suddenly Father Joseph turned toward him. “Perhaps you believe I’m too infirm to take this call. Perhaps you believe I’m the one on the deathbed.”

“Of course not. But surely the woman will live a few hours.”

“Suppose she doesn’t? Would you forgive yourself? A dying woman longing for the last comforts of the Church?”

Father John drew in a long breath. “You’ve been out most of the day, Joseph. Let me take the call. You can teach the confirmation class.” He held out the folder and Bible. “My notes are here. I’ve marked the Bible passages I want to discuss with the kids.”

A startled look came into the other priest’s eyes. Hands rose in protest, lips moved wordlessly. Before he could speak, Father John thrust the folder and book at him. “Take the class, Joseph. I’ll go.”

2

V
icky Holden hurried up the outside stairs that led from the parking lot to her second-floor law office on Lander’s main street. She let herself through the back door, dropped her briefcase onto her desk, and crossed to the window. Jiggling the frame until it clicked into track, she tugged the window open several inches. A hot, dry breeze flapped at the papers on the desk and on the filing cabinet, chasing the afternoon stuffiness from the small office.

Slipping into her chair, she snapped open the briefcase and extracted a legal pad. She had spent the last three hours taking depositions at another lawyer’s office a few blocks away. Her client, Sam Eagle Hawk, alleged that the Custom Garage had fired him—the garage body man for twenty-five years—because he was Indian. She had wanted to believe her client, but something nagged at her. If Sam was fired because he was Indian, why hadn’t he been fired years ago?

Then, in the deposition, the owner had mentioned something about Sam not relating to younger customers with new, expensive cars.