The Spirit Woman (9 page)

The woman studied her hands a long moment. “Since you're askin', Father, you tell her to call me up, and we can set up a time. But I gotta warn you, my granddaughter—her name's Hope Stockwell—has been asking for the old stories. She's working on her dissertation at the university in Laramie. She's gonna be one of them historians.”

The young woman with serious eyes who had sent him to the Bingo Palace. Father John leaned back against his chair. She had seemed so young. But she was getting her doctorate. He would be in classes with kids while he finished his own doctorate.

“Hope's gonna get all the stories and records she wants,” Theresa was saying, her eyes following the caller now making his way up the steps to the stage. “She come down from Sacajawea. Folks around here know she's gonna write the truth.”

Father John was quiet a moment. “Are you saying the memoirs exist, Grandmother?”

“Lots of us descendants around, Father. We don't tell everything we know. Somebody might've been keeping the memoirs till the right one come along to tell the story. Hope's gonna be the one.”

A shriek burst through the microphone and people began wandering back to the tables, settling into the chairs, realigning the cards. An air of expectancy and concentration settled over the hall. Father John thanked the old woman and made his way past the tables to the door.

 

The Toyota's headlights cast a cone of yellow into the darkness settling over the open spaces as Father John drove toward the mission, past the lights blinking in the windows of the occasional house along Seventeen Mile Road. He replayed the old woman's words in his mind. If the memoirs did exist, they would go to Hope Stockwell, a descendant of Sacajawea. It was as it should be.

And yet—he felt a stab of disappointment. Vicky had asked him to help a friend. A last favor, and he'd failed. Theresa had agreed to see Laura, it was true, but he doubted the old woman would help her. Whatever she knew about Toussaint or the memoirs, she would tell her granddaughter. Which meant that Charlotte Allen's biography would remain unfinished.

He slowed for the turn in to the mission grounds, waiting until an oncoming pickup had shot past. So many things unfinished, he thought. The programs he'd hoped to start: a social club for teenagers, a day-care center, cultural classes. And who would coach the Eagles baseball team next spring? The days had always stretched ahead into some indeterminate time when, he'd known, he would have to leave. But not yet. He needed more time.
Most priests would be glad to get out of there.
The provincial's voice again.

Well, he wasn't most priests. His replacement was already here, settled in, making the rounds, getting to know the people. But
he
was also here. He hadn't even started to pack. He resolved to have another talk with the provincial.

Father John saw the Harley leaning on the kickstand, chrome glinting under the streetlamp in front of the residence. He parked in front of the administration building, took the steps two at a time, and pulled open the heavy door. Light from outdoors slanted off the portraits lining the corridor: past pastors at St. Francis Mission, staring out of wire-rimmed glasses, obedient and nonquestioning, solemn in their rectitude. Had it been easier in the past, he wondered, to keep the vows?

His desk looked as if he'd just walked away. Folders and papers, stacks of messages, unopened envelopes spilling over the surface. So many things unfinished. He tossed his jacket and hat onto a side chair, sank into the cracked leather of his own chair, and drew the phone past a pile of papers. He called Vicky's office. The secretary's taped voice: “Vicky Holden's office. Please leave a message.” He hit the disconnect button and tapped out her home number, surprised that he remembered it. He seldom used it.

Another answering machine, Vicky's voice this time. “Leave your name and number . . .”

“John,” he said. “I've seen Theresa. Call me.” As he replaced the receiver, he heard a shuffling noise on the stoop, the sound of the door opening, then the clack of footsteps in the corridor. He looked up.

Elena stood in the doorway, crushing a black purse against the front of her blue coat, anger flashing in the round face. “I quit,” she said. Then she turned back into the shadowy corridor.

Father John was on his feet. He caught the housekeeper at the front door. “Wait a minute, Elena.” He had a sense of what was going on. “Come in and sit down.” He took her arm and led her back into the office to a side chair. Tossing his jacket and hat onto the floor, he sat down beside her. “Talk to me,” he said.

The woman threw both hands into the air. The black purse slipped off her lap and sank onto his jacket. “How's he expect me to get my work done? Grocery shopping, cleaning, the laundry. And all the cooking, and you know I gotta fry some good-tasting Indian bread once in a while. How am I s'pose to get it done with his asking questions all the time? ‘Sit down, Elena,' he says. ‘Tell me about today's Arapaho courtship practices.' Courtship practices! What's the man goin' on about?”

“I'll talk to Father Kevin,” Father John said.

“Well, you're leavin', so I'm leavin'.” She gave him a look weighted with determination.

“You can't leave. The mission will fall apart without you.”

“You got that right, Father.” The old woman swallowed back a smile.

“Look, Elena, go home and think about it.” He reached out and took one of her hands in his. “And please come back.”

She started out of the chair, and he picked up her purse and handed it to her. “There isn't any dinner. I didn't get time.”

“We won't starve to death.”

“There's some hamburger in the fridge,” she said.

He walked her to the door and returned to his desk. This wasn't right. Nothing was going the way he'd assumed it would. Everything was changing, rearranging itself in ways he hadn't imagined. Only the thirst was the same, coming on him when he least expected it, when it was the last thing he needed. He wanted a drink, that was the whole of the matter. He could taste the whiskey sliding down his throat, sense the initial control and clarity it would bring, and the joy. One drink was all he needed—

He laughed out loud at the notion, and the sound of his own voice came back to him in the quiet of the old building. He needed the entire bottle. There had never been enough whiskey to quench the thirst and ease the loneliness.
Lord, give me courage. Let me not start drinking today. Let this not be the day.

He got up and poured a mug of the thick, black coffee stagnating at the bottom of the glass pot—coffee he'd made this morning. It was still warm, but it had passed beyond bitter to something bland and tasteless.

He sat back down and punched in the provincial's number. A man's voice, sharp and annoyed, picked up. He could picture the priest at the other end: a young Jesuit roused from a good book, a favorite television sitcom. He gave his name and asked to speak to the provincial. And then he was on hold, canned music playing in his ear.

“We have office hours, John.” Bill Rutherford's voice interrupted the music. They went back a long way, he and the provincial, to their days in the seminary together. “This better be an emergency.”

“Look, Bill,” he began. “Things aren't working out here. I'm not ready to leave.”

“What do you mean, not working out? Kevin's there, isn't he?”

“He's here.”

“Good. I've made all the arrangements for you at Marquette. Everything's set. The history department's looking forward to welcoming you. Your airline ticket's in the mail.”

“I want to finish my work here,” Father John began. And then, the same litany of reasons: new programs to start, the church to refurbish, finances to tend to—

The provincial cut in. “We've already had this discussion. There's no sense in going over it. I believe it's time for you to leave for your own spiritual welfare. You're in the way of temptation there.”

The way of temptation.
Father John stared at the shadows out in the corridor, trying to formulate the logical argument. There was no logic in his desire to stay. Logic was on the provincial's side. It was time for him to return to his former life. He pushed the logic away. “I need more time here,” he said.

A sigh of exasperation floated through the line. “You're making this difficult, John. Change is in your own best interests. You'll see it's true when you're back.”

Father John slammed down the receiver.
If I go back.

The phone started ringing. He was about to answer, then decided against it. It was probably the provincial again. Still ringing as he walked around the desk and retrieved his jacket and hat from the floor. Still ringing. He reached over and picked up the receiver. “Father O'Malley,” he said. Still here at St. Francis. Still a priest.

“John, I was afraid I'd missed you.” It was Vicky's voice. He stepped around the desk and sat down, combing his fingers through his hair, forcing his mind onto what he'd called her about. Then he related what Theresa Redwing had said. She'd agreed to see Laura. He wasn't sure it would do any good. He told her about Hope Stockwell.

Vicky didn't say anything for a moment. He could hear the disappointment in the sound of her breathing. Finally she said, “Laura wasn't counting on anyone else looking for the same evidence, especially not a Shoshone doctoral student.” She took a long breath and thanked him. He waited for her to say good-bye. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” He tightened his grip on the receiver. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, I don't know. Just something in your voice.”

“I'm fine.”

In the background was the muffled whack of a door closing, the sound of a man's voice. “I'd better go,” she said quickly, and hung up.

 

He found the new pastor in his room upstairs at the residence, hunched over his computer. “Elena just quit,” he said.

Father Kevin tapped at the keys, his eyes locked on the black lines forming and re-forming across the white screen. “What're you talking about?”

“She doesn't like being interviewed.”

“Oh?” Kevin swung around. “That's the reason she quit? Good heavens. This is serious, John.”

“You're right about that. She takes care of everything around here.”

“I mean, the woman's a walking file of incredible information. She remembers everything she's ever heard. All the old stories. Imagine! Her great-grandparents lived on the plains, roaming about, pitching villages along the streams. They passed down a lot of valuable stuff that Elena's carrying around in her head. She knows how her people adapted the old ways. It has to be recorded, John, or it'll be lost.”

“It won't be lost. Elena's told her own children. She's probably told her grandchildren.”

The other priest was shaking his head. “It's not the same, John. You're a historian. You know it's not the same as written records.” He hesitated and glanced back at the computer screen. “I've been pushing too hard, haven't I?”

Father John didn't say anything.

“I'll call her right away. What's her number?” Father John gave him the number. Kevin jumped up and brushed past him, heading out into the hallway. Father John followed him downstairs, where the other priest picked up the phone on the table in the entry and started dialing.

In the kitchen, Father John stared into the refrigerator, looking for a package of hamburger. It had been a while since he'd done any cooking. How hard could it be? The cajoling sound of Kevin's voice drifted from the entry. Elena would be back tomorrow, he knew. He set the hamburger on the counter and began rummaging through one of the cabinets for a frying pan. He was a good man, this new pastor. St. Francis would be in good hands. The mission would go on without John O'Malley. That was what mattered, didn't it? That was all that really mattered.

—James McAdams, great-grandson of Sacajawea

 

 

 

L
aura stared at the statement a moment, then set the page on the table next to the gray carton with SACAJAWEA in bold black letters on one side. Somewhere in the depths of the old house that served as the Shoshone cultural center, a furnace cranked and rattled, sending a stream of hot air through the second-floor library. A pale afternoon sky shone through the oblong windows; the fluorescent light danced on the plank floors. Two doors led to other rooms, where the records themselves were shelved.

With the exception of the director, a plump, middle-aged Shoshone woman who had introduced herself as Phyllis Manley (“And how may I help you?”), Laura was alone. The director sat at the small desk inside the door, stapling stacks of papers.
Whoosh. Kerplunk. Whoosh. Kerplunk.

Laura shuffled through the other pages spread in front of her, like cards in a game of solitaire. Oral histories given eighty, ninety years ago by Shoshones and pioneers who had sat with Sacajawea years before and listened to her stories. She picked up one of the pages: