The Spirit Woman (8 page)

“You sure the fed's telling the truth?” Howard asked.

Father John said he was sure.

There was a long pause, then: “I'll tell the other boys.”

Father John had just hung up when the phone started ringing.

“Father O'Malley,” he said into the receiver.

“Okay, Detective O'Malley. What do you know about the identity of the bones?” It was Gianelli.

T
he odor of seared meat and the sound of grease popping against metal filled the living room. Vicky closed the front door, tossed her briefcase on the sofa, and shrugged out of her coat, which she laid next to the briefcase. In the kitchen, she found Ben at the stove, a fork poised over two bloodred steaks in the frying pan. He gave her a sideways glance. “Dinner's about to be served,” he said.

Vicky stood motionless at the counter that divided the kitchen from the small dining alcove. The scene was surreal, nonsensical—
ho:ho:ke:
—like a crazy dream where none of the fragments fit together. Ben Holden in the denim shirt and blue jeans and cowboy boots he wore on the Arapaho ranch, descended from warriors and Arapaho chiefs—this was the man standing in her kitchen cooking dinner. “I don't believe my eyes,” she said.

Ben flipped the steaks before setting the fork on the counter and slipping an arm around her waist. He pulled her toward him. “Told you if you came back to me, I'd make dinner for you.” He leaned over and kissed her neck, her cheeks, and finally her lips. His mouth was soft on hers, and she found herself struggling against the familiar rush of warmth and the urge to melt into his touch that burst through all bounds of reason, of what was sensible and orderly and right, and left her not knowing who she was or what she wanted.

She ignored the questions in his eyes as she stepped back, freeing herself. She said, “I've brought some work home to finish tonight.”

Ben turned back to the steaks, disappointment outlined in the hunch of his shoulders beneath the denim shirt. “Lawyers have to eat like everybody else, don't they?”

Vicky slid two plates out of the cabinet. Then she gathered knives and forks and napkins from a drawer and carried the stack into the dining room. The phone on the counter started ringing as she set the table. She reached over and picked up the receiver just as Ben was about to grab it. “Hello,” she said, sensing his eyes burning into her.

“Ben there?” The woman's voice was tentative and uncertain.

Vicky gripped the receiver hard a moment, feeling shaky at the confirmation of the old fears. Then she handed it across the counter. “One of your girlfriends,” she said.

Turning toward the kitchen, Ben cupped the receiver between his neck and shoulder. “Who's this?” A long pause. “I told you, I'll talk to you later.” He wheeled around and dropped the receiver into the cradle. “One of my girlfriends? Is that what you think?”

Vicky went back to arranging the table. Knife here, fork there. Napkins folded with corners meeting precisely. Suddenly Ben was next to her. “I want an answer, Vicky,” he said, taking her arm.

She moved along the table, disengaging herself. “What am I supposed to think? A woman calls you here. My secretary tells me her friend has been asking about you at the Highway Lounge.”

“Who?”

“It doesn't matter.”

The quiet exploded between them. After a moment he said, “What do you want of me? Do I have to swear never to talk to another woman? I deal with women all the time.” He nodded toward the phone. “That was Cerise at the ranch.”

“There's a woman working at the ranch?” Vicky didn't try to hide her skepticism.

“The bookkeeper, Vicky. The goddamn bookkeeper. She was calling about this month's statements. Do I have to explain every time I talk to another woman?”

Vicky blinked and looked away. In the sliding-glass doors that led to the patio outside, she could see the faintest trace of two figures—a man, a woman, and the dark space of the table between them. She had the sensation of floating backward through time. Another house, other explanations, other women. Only the glib justifications that cast her as the doubting, mistrustful wife were the same. She had known then—and she knew now: if she wanted her family together, if she wanted Susan and Lucas close by, this was the way it would be. She was no different from Alva Running Bull, willing to look away from the bleak reality hurtling toward her like an eighteen-wheeler coming down the highway. The realization gave her a sickening feeling.

She locked eyes with him again. “Can we eat?”

“Not until this is settled.”

“It's settled.”

He reached along the table and ran his fingers gently over her cheek, pushing back a strand of hair. “No more jealous outbursts?”

She managed a nod. Blinking hard at the tears starting behind her eyes, she sank onto the nearest chair and waited while Ben brought the steaks, a bowl of salad, and a loaf of French bread to the table.

He took the chair across from her. “Alva Running Bull come see you today?” he asked, holding out the plate of steaks, waiting while she lifted one onto her own plate.

The question caught her by surprise. Her clients, the problems they brought to the office—they were confidential. She never discussed them. Even an inadvertent slip could set the moccasin telegraph humming. Before she could say anything, Ben said, “Lester drove out to the ranch today to see me. The man doesn't want a divorce. Neither does his wife.”

Vicky had been about to take a bite of steak. She set the fork down. “That's completely inappropriate.”

“You could discourage her.”

“I can't discuss this.”

Ben sliced a piece of meat and brought it to his mouth. After a moment he said, “Divorce is ugly business. Look what happened to us. All those years apart when we should've been a family. Kids growing up with your folks instead of with us, going off to Los Angeles, away from their own people. Whole family's scattered, just because you wanted to go down to Denver and become a—” He stopped.

“What, Ben? A white woman?” Vicky pushed her plate away. She was no longer hungry. She had never wanted to leave the reservation, had never dreamed that one day she would find the courage to walk away.

“Lester's not a bad sort,” Ben went on.

“He's going to kill her.” Vicky could feel her heart thumping against her ribs. She hated the man across from her at that moment for making her violate her own rules, a part of herself.

“You're exaggerating.” He bit off a chunk of bread and began chewing it. A second passed, another. “He hits her once in a while.” He raised both hands. “I'm not saying it's right. He shouldn't do that. But he's a good man, and they've got three kids. He's going to counseling. You could talk to Alva, tell her not to make the same mistake you made.”

Vicky pushed herself to her feet, fighting to catch the breath stuck in her throat like a sharp bone she could neither swallow nor spit up. “You're saying the divorce was my fault?”

“I would've never left you.” Ben threw his napkin onto the half-empty plate and stood up.

“You ran around on me. You got drunk and slapped me and pushed me down. You hit me with your fists.”

“Do we have to keep going over this?”

“We've never gone over it. It's still between us.”

“Well, I've spent the last two months trying to make things right. The kids'll never move back, Vicky, until they've got a family again. We should be setting a wedding date, not going on about the past. What do you want me to say? I'm sorry. I've said it a thousand times. I was drunk when I hit you.”

“Does that make it okay? Should I forgive you?”

“You should forget.”

“The way you have.”

Ben brought one fist down hard on the table, rattling the fork against the plate. Vicky flinched and stepped back, her heart pounding in her ears.

“We both have to forget and move on,” he said. His breath came in short gasps, his chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm beneath the denim shirt. He tightened his lips into a thin line and stared at the sliding-glass doors a moment. Bringing his eyes back, he said, “I'm trying, Vicky. I want us to be a family again, the way we used to be.”

“Sometimes, Ben,” Vicky began, reaching for the words, struggling against the tremor in her voice, “I think it's too late, too much has happened between us. Sometimes I think there's nothing else for us.”

“No, Vicky. Don't say that.” He walked around the table and took her hand. Then he ran his fingers along her arm, across her shoulder, and under her chin, turning her face toward him. In the warmth of his body close to hers, the memories started to blur, melting into a half-forgotten longing and the sharp pain of her own loneliness.

“We belong together,” he said, “and don't you ever forget it.”

T
he Bingo Palace sat back from the highway, a low, white structure with the look of a truncated shopping mall. The violet shadows of late afternoon spread over the parking lot that wrapped around the building. Father John slowed between rows of pickups and twenty-year-old sedans. He found a vacant space and got out, taking a minute to work the kinks out of his legs.

He'd spent the morning showing Father Kevin around the mission, giving him a tour through the files: the programs and classes, the meeting schedule. He'd also handed him the financial records—a long list of bills to be paid that would gradually work themselves off the list as donations floated in. Then they'd gone to the senior citizens' center, Kevin following on the Harley, the motorcycle roaring over Puccini. Father John introduced the other priest to the elders and grandmothers. When he left, Kevin was sitting with three elders, the miniature silver tape player in the middle of the table.

Father John had driven north on Highway 132 and stopped at Theresa Redwing's. A dark-eyed young woman had answered the door. It was Grandmother's bingo day. He'd find Theresa at the Palace.

Now he made his way past the parked vehicles to the entrance. Inside, a cloud of smoke hung over the large hall with tables arranged in front of the stage at the far end. People were scattered along one side of the tables, peering at the cards flattened in front of them. The caller sat on stage, his attention on a framed-glass box with small, white balls tumbling inside. Numbers lit up the bingo board behind him. “Under B, fourteen.” The voice boomed into the microphone. “B, one four.” Hands flew over the cards, quickly daubing the number.

“Wanna play, Father?” A middle-aged woman walked over, disbelief and confusion in the dark face. “Next game's a blackout. Pays real good. Mission could use the money.” That was true. St. Francis could always use an infusion of funds. “I'm looking for Theresa Redwing,” he said.

The woman nodded toward the gray-haired woman seated at the front table. “Always sits over there in her lucky place.”

Father John waited until the blackout game had ended before making his way along the rows of tables.

“Gonna take a little break, folks.” The microphone screeched back on itself. “Stand up, stretch, get yourselves a cup of good, hot coffee.” People were already getting to their feet, chairs scraping the floor. Father John slid into the chair next to Theresa Redwing.

“These old eyes must be gettin' worse.” The woman blinked at him through thick lenses that made her pupils seem blurred and outsized. “That you, Father John, or am I seein' ghosts? Here, let me pinch you.” She reached out and pulled at his jacket sleeve.

He laughed. “I'm here, Theresa.”

“Get yourself a card, then. You got the luck of the Irish.”

“And it's all bad.”

“So I hear.” The woman kept her eyes on his. “Moccasin telegraph says you're leaving these parts.”

“They want me to teach history again.”

She nodded, as if it made perfect sense, his going. “You like history, don't you?”

“I like it here. History matters here.”

Theresa Redwing pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her gray sweater and wiped at her nose a moment. “You hear about that history professor on the res asking a lot of questions?” For a moment he wondered if she was referring to the new priest. “She was up at the cultural center yesterday afternoon, wanting to know about my ancestor Sacajawea. The director give me a call soon's she left.”

He started to explain that Laura Simmons was working on a biography that another historian had begun, then stopped. The old woman already knew, by the indulgent look she was bestowing on him.

“I remember that other historian comin' 'round about twenty years ago, askin' my mother a lot of questions,” she said.

“Now Laura Simmons would like to talk to you, Grandmother,” he said.

“About the old stories?”

He nodded. “She believes Charlotte Allen found someone who may have Sacajawea's memoirs written in a notebook—someone named Toussaint.”

Theresa Redwing sat motionless, her eyes on some point across the room. “Never heard of nobody by that name.” Looking back, she said, “Why ain't they enough, Father, the old stories? Why do them white historians always gotta have something written down? The people kept Sacajawea's stories, but the historians don't care about them. They say those old people that remembered the stories didn't know what they was talkin' about. Now this Laura Simmons comes along wanting written memoirs? What difference? Memoirs wouldn't tell nothin' that the old stories don't tell.”

It was true, all true, Father John thought. Historians wanted written records. Laura Simmons hadn't said anything about wanting the Shoshone stories. He drew in a long breath. “Could she come to see you, Grandmother? You could help her understand.”