The Lost Bird (28 page)

“It will take some time, Ben,” she said out loud to the empty cabin. Her voice punctuated the quiet. “I’m going to need some time.”

She walked over to the phone mounted next to the kitchen cabinet, dialed directory assistance, and asked for the number of a Mason in Casper. Within a couple of seconds she was dialing the number for Russ Mason. She gripped the receiver. One ring, two, three.

Finally, a voice. “Hello?”

She asked to speak to Mr. Mason.

“Dad’s at work.” The voice might have belonged to a girl somewhere between adolescence and maturity.

“How can I reach him?”

Vicky heard the hesitation. “I guess you can call Capco.” Then, the number.

Capco. Vicky knew the company. They collected oil from storage tanks on the reservation and delivered it to refineries in other areas. If Russ Mason was a driver, he could be anywhere between the res and Cheyenne or Denver.

Vicky thanked the girl, hit the disconnect bar, and dialed the company’s number. A woman answered,
and Vicky asked again to speak to Russ Mason. He was out in the field, the woman said.

“I’m an attorney,” Vicky said into the line. “There’s a very important matter I must speak to him about.” She hesitated, then added: “It’s an emergency. Where can I reach him?”

Vicky could hear the indrawn breaths, the considering. Finally the woman said, “He handles the storage tanks over by Winkleman Dome.”

27

V
icky drove south past the buttes that erupted out of the plains on both sides of the road. Winchester Butte. Bighorn Butte. She crossed the flat expanse of the Bighorn draw, still moving south, squinting into the sun that broke the windshield into a rainbow of colors. The Winkleman Dome oil pumps came into view ahead, black sculptures rising out of the earth.

As she neared the pumping area, the shape of a large white truck loomed ahead, shimmering in the sun like a mirage. She pulled to one side and jumped out, waving her hands overhead, the wind whipping out her skirt and snapping at her jacket. She set one hand on her forehead to keep her hair out of her eyes. The tank truck drew close, lumbering through the wavy air, and slid to a stop, tires kicking out little pieces of gravel. A large man—an Indian—in a cowboy hat leaned across the seat toward the open passenger window. “Trouble, lady?”

“Are you Russ Mason?” Vicky approached the driver’s side.

“Wish I was, if you’re lookin’ for him.”

“Where can I find him?”

The man pushed his hat back and seemed to ponder the windshield. “Seen him earlier. Probably finished up around here and headed up to Maverick Spring Dome.”

Vicky groaned silently. She had passed the area an hour ago. Thanking the man, she started for the Bronco.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the driver called.

She swung around. He was staring in the rearview mirror. She followed his gaze to the truck coming over a rise in the road. “You might be gettin’ lucky. That could be old Russ comin’ now.”

Vicky gave the man a wave. The gears ground heavily into place, and the truck started past her, gaining speed. Gravel spattered her leg, forcing her back toward the Bronco. She hugged her jacket in the wind as the other truck drew close. Then she walked back into the road and waved at the driver.

The truck stopped—a jerky motion that sent the hood bucking up and down. “I’m looking for Russ Mason,” she called, walking to the driver’s side.

“Who wants him?” The man leaned over the arm crooked on the door ledge and fixed her with dark, narrow eyes. He was somewhere in his sixties, she guessed, with a long, sun-etched face and gray hair that showed below the rim of a black cowboy hat. He had a prominent nose and cheekbones—the sculptured features of her people. In a crowd, she would have picked him out as Arapaho.

She gave him her name and asked again if he was Russ Mason.

“Maybe.” His tone had a sharp edge. “Depends on what you want.”

“I’m an attorney. I’m trying to help a client who’s
searching for her natural parents.” She was stammering, groping for the words to explain why she was standing in the wind on an empty road, waving down his truck.

The Indian threw back his head and gave a snort of disbelief. “You that lawyer lady I seen on TV. You’re workin’ for that movie star, what’s her name . . .” His eyes glanced around the cab.

“Sharon David.”

“Yeah, that’s the one. I seen in the papers she found her real parents.”

Vicky shook her head. A gust pushed her sideways. She shouted into the wind: “They’re not her parents! She was born into the Little Bird family.”

The man reared back, as if he’d touched an exposed wire. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“Sharon has a few clues to her identity,” Vicky said hurriedly. The wind burst around them. “She has the drawing of a tiny bird.”

The thin cheeks puffed out, and the man exhaled a long breath. “That don’t make her a Little Bird. We don’t give away our babies. Not this family. Me and the wife raised six kids. Still raisin’ a couple of ’em.”

Vicky saw his hand moving to the gear knob, and she laid one hand on the door next to his arm to prevent the truck from pulling away. “Sharon is one of the people,” she said. “I’m certain of it. She may not have been given up for adoption. She may have been taken from her real parents.”

The Indian leaned into the window space, the dark eyes narrowing into accusation. “What’dya mean? Kidnapped?”

Vicky gave a little nod. She didn’t want to alarm the man. She didn’t want to start a rumor on the moccasin
telegraph that would send the reservation into a panic, a rumor that might not be true.

She said, “Is there anyone in your family named Maisie or Marie?”

The door snapped open—a wind-amplified thud—and the Indian slid out, planting heavy boots onto the road. “You better tell me what you’re gettin’ at, lady,” he said in a tone of barely controlled anger. He was looming over her, a powerful man with broad shoulders inside a brown corduroy jacket and white-knuckled fists hanging at his sides.

Vicky fought the urge to back away. “I told you, I’m trying to help Sharon David find where she belongs.”

“What do you know about Marie?”

Vicky kept her voice steady. “Only that Sharon found a name that could be Marie on a scrap of paper among her adoptive parents’ things.”

The man said nothing. He stared down the empty road a moment, then brought the narrow eyes back to hers. She saw the moisture brimming at the corners. He raised one fist and ran a knuckle along the ridges of both cheeks. “Marie was my first wife.” His voice was so soft she had to lean toward him to pluck the words from the wind.

“Where can I find her?”

“You can’t.” A gust cracked between them, and he seemed to stagger back, grabbing the door handle to steady himself. “Marie’s been dead a long time.”

“I’m sorry,” Vicky muttered.

“So the Marie on that woman’s paper can’t be my Marie.” Opening the door, he set one boot on the running board, ready to launch himself into the seat.

Vicky grabbed the man’s sleeve. The corduroy was
warm and smooth. “Mr. Mason,” she said, “I’m sorry to bring back painful memories, but I must ask you something. It’s important to a woman who is very lost and alone. Did Marie ever lose a child?”

The man wrenched his arm from her grasp. The boot slid from the running board and stomped onto the ground. “You sayin’ this movie star thinks she was our baby?” He bent close; the sour smell of his breath floated toward her in the whirl of the wind. “Well, tell her for me to get out of here and go back where she belongs. What business she got comin’ ’round here and upsettin’ folks? She don’t belong with the people. What kind of woman shows up and starts claimin’ she’s somebody’s dead child? What kind of woman does that?”

“She was born at the Markham Clinic in 1964,” Vicky said.

The Indian was staring at her. “Nineteen sixty-four?”

“September fourteenth.”

“Oh, God.” The Indian sank back against the door, crumbling downward, folding onto the running board. Vicky set her hand on his shoulder to steady the fall. “Our baby girl was born in the middle of September,” he said. “In that fancy clinic in Lander. Supposed to be safe, but that doctor couldn’t save the baby. Said her brain got some infection. Said there wasn’t nothin’ he could do. She was a real pretty little thing. She looked real healthy.”

“When did you see her?”

“Right after she was born,” the man said. “Before the doctor said she was real sick and he was gonna put her in isolation. Couple hours later he comes into Marie’s room and says our baby’s dead.”

Vicky’s jaw clenched. She blinked back the tears blurring the figure of the man slumped before her. “It’s possible,” she began, then hesitated. His eyes searched hers a long moment. “It’s possible your child did not die. It’s possible Sharon David is your daughter.”

The Indian hunched over and dropped his head into his hands. His shoulders shook. Low, gravelly sobs punctuated the sound of the wind. After a moment the sobbing stopped, and he glanced up. “Marie always said our little baby was alive. She just knew it. But I didn’t pay it no mind because Marie got so strange after the baby died. She was never the same, staying locked up in the house all day, not wantin’ to go anywhere. Couple nice ladies used to come visit. One of ’em had her own baby die. I thought, maybe, we move to Casper, where there’s more people around, she’d come out of it. But I come home from work one day and found her out in the garage. She’d took an old sheet and hung it over the rafters and was danglin’ there.”

Vicky sat down next to the man and placed one hand on top of his. It was trembling. The wind muffled his quiet sobs.

28

S
t. Francis Church was filled with people packed shoulder to shoulder in the pews. As Father John came down the center aisle wearing the white vestments of mourning, he heard the barely concealed coughs and nervous clearing of throats. Leonard walked ahead, holding out the Mass book. The Indian stepped up into the sanctuary and set the book on the large drum that served as the altar. Then he moved back, and Father John took his position at the altar, facing the congregation: elders and grandmothers, young couples with youngsters squirming in the pews. Megan sat in a back row, head bowed. To the right of the altar, the singers and drummers were bent over a small drum. Sunlight streamed rays of reds, blues, and golds through the stained-glass windows.