Wife of Moon (3 page)

“What are you saying?” Father John asked.

The girl kept her gaze on the photograph. “Grandmother said the warriors were killed.” The girl tapped the glass over the image of the warrior on the right, a forelock of black hair bunched over his forehead, black eyes narrowed in determination, the faintest mark of dimples in his cheeks. “He was her grandfather. He was called Thunder.”

“Your grandmother identified one of the warriors?” This was good news. Father John felt a familiar surge of excitement, the same feeling that used to come over him when he was doing research in some archives and stumbled upon an obscure fact—the key to the puzzle that made everything else fall into place.

“Does your grandmother have a photograph of Thunder?” he asked the girl.

She shrugged. “That's what the curator asked her. All grandmother said was, ‘I guess I know my own grandfather.”

The other students had started talking all at once, and Cannon put up a fleshy hand to quiet them. “I'm not following,” he said. “Why would anyone have died if the scene was staged?”

The girl remained silent for a long moment, her gaze still fastened to the photograph. Finally she said, “Grandmother told me that after Curtis came, the warriors in the photo all died, and it was real hard on the families. That's what her father told her.”

It was several minutes before the group began drifting down the gallery, reluctance in the way they moved toward the entry, as if the photographs still exerted an invisible pull, drawing them back to the past. Father John followed them out and told them to come back any time. “You can count on that,” Cannon said as Father John closed the door.

He walked back into the gallery and snapped off the overhead lights. The photographs shone in the glow of moonlight filtering through the windows. He could almost sense the fear pulsing through the village, the shock and panic as the warriors galloped toward the tipis, shouting, firing rifles overhead.

“Thunder,” he said out loud, the sound of his voice coming back in the stillness of the empty room. “What happened that day, Thunder?”

A COLUMN OF
light filtered from the kitchen down the hallway and into the entry of the residence. Walks-On, the golden retriever that Father John had found in a ditch a few years ago, came clicking along the wood floor. Father John hung his jacket over the coat tree and patted the dog's soft, furry head. In a second, the dog had bounded back to the kitchen and stationed himself in front of the door, wagging his tail. Father John went after him and let him outside. Even the gust of cold air didn't erase the aroma of stale coffee hanging over the room. He watched the dog make his way across the snow-slicked back porch and down the wooden steps. It still amazed him that Walks-On didn't seem to know he was missing a hind leg. He had three good legs, and that was good enough. There was a lesson in that, Father John thought.

He poured himself a mug of coffee, then rummaged through the refrigerator for the half-full carton of milk, which he stirred into the thick, black liquid until it turned the color of caramel. From the front
of the house came the thud of footsteps on the stairs, the scrape of boots coming down the hall. He glanced around as Father Damien Henley walked into the kitchen.

“Coffee?” Father John gestured with his mug toward the glass container. This new assistant might work out, he'd allowed himself to think. Might even stay at St. Francis longer than a few months. He'd been here six weeks, arriving with a computer and several cartons of books after the last assistant had left to take a position in the economics department at Marquette University. The Wind River Reservation and the Arapahos—the history and the culture—all seemed fascinating to Father Damien, who possessed an unlimited store of ideas on how to make St. Francis Mission work better. He also possessed an unlimited store of energy, not unlike Christine Nelson, Father John thought. New ideas. An infusion of new energy. He supposed that was good.

“Leftover from dinner? I'll pass, thank you.” The other priest wrinkled his nose. He was a thin, wiry man, half a foot shorter and at least seven or eight years younger, which made him about forty, Father John guessed. The other priest had blond hair that was starting to thin, exposing little strips of pink scalp; a narrow face marked with light-colored, energetic eyes that seemed to take in everything at a glance; and a jaw set in determination.

Father John took his mug over to the table and dropped down onto a straight-backed chair. “Have a seat,” he said, sensing that the other priest had something on his mind. He was struck with the irony in the way life unfolded. He, a third-generation Irishman from Boston, raised in a walk-up flat over his uncle's saloon a couple of blocks off of Commonwealth Avenue, who'd pitched his way through Boston College and somehow—by the grace of God—had been called to be a priest. A Jesuit.

Across the table was Damien Henley, III, son of the CEO of a communications conglomerate, whose ancestors had probably arrived on the Mayflower, raised on an estate somewhere on Long Island. A
Princeton graduate also called to be a priest. A Jesuit. Not long ago he'd asked the man what his father had thought of his decision. Damien had shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes, mimicking his father, as though the decision was just another phase that Damien would outgrow, like a bad case of acne. But you can't outgrow the calling, Damien had said. It gets louder and louder until it drowns out everything else, and after all, Dad was a businessman, a realist, and Damien had been accepted into the Society of Jesus. That had made the decision almost acceptable. My son, the Jesuit, he could tell his golf buddies at the club.

“Just got off the phone with Dad,” Damien was saying. “He had zero trouble getting past Senator Evans's staff. Chatted with the senator himself this afternoon.” He paused, allowing the unspoken importance of his father to settle between them.

Father John took another draw of coffee. The milk made it barely drinkable. Lately the news had been filled with speculation about whether Wyoming's senator, Jaime Evans, intended to run for president. Local newspapers could hardly contain the glee at the prospect of a local man in the Oval Office. There had been a series of articles on the Evans family and the ranch north of the reservation that they'd run for a hundred years. Not long after the senator's grandfather, Carston Evans, had started the ranch, he'd gotten wealthy on the oil seeping into the pasture. One article had quoted the senator telling about how his grandfather had ordered the ranch hands to shovel out the black, gooey mess and clean up the fields, and how somebody had finally figured out what the black, gooey mess was.

“It's all set,” Damien said. “The senator will be at the mission next Tuesday. The day before, he'll be in Cheyenne, where he plans to announce that he's running for president from the capitol steps. Tuesday morning, he'll go to Fort Washakie and give a speech on the importance of extracting methane gas from the coal beds on the reservation. Plans to appeal to everyone's sense of patriotism. You know, the importance of developing our own natural resources.
There's sure to be a big crowd. Drilling for methane gas would mean jobs on the rez. Of course he'll be taking on T.J. Painted Horse and the rest of the Arapaho Business Council and their demands for additional environmental impact studies. It'll be controversial, but that's what attracts the media.”

The other priest sat back and stared at the ceiling, his face breaking into a slow grin, as if he were picturing the controversy. He pushed himself to his feet. “Maybe I'll have some coffee after all,” he said.

There was the sound of coffee sloshing into a mug, glass clanking against the counter, then Damien was back in his chair. “T.J. and Savi Crowthorpe are working with the senator's campaign staff on his visit to the rez,” he said. “I went to the tribal offices and asked them to request that the senator put in an appearance at the mission. They passed on the request, but the senator's people nixed the idea. Well, that's changed now.”

“How'd your father manage it?”

“You kidding?” Damien took a sip of coffee and grimaced. “Campaign contributions, John. It's all about money and . . .” The man broke into a wide grin. “Dad controls a lot of air time, a fact that wasn't lost on the senator's campaign staff. Think about it, John. There'll be reporters and TV cameras following the senator around. We'll give them a tour of the mission. Show them our programs—AA, parenting classes, literacy and adult education, the teenage club. We'll fill up the classrooms at Eagle Hall so it'll look like the actual classes and meetings. We'll give the senator a tour of the Curtis exhibit. Monday evening we'll be on the TV in about twenty million homes. And who knows how many newspapers will run the story?”

The man leaned into the table until the edge creased the front of his blue shirt. He looked up again, as if the scene were playing out on the ceiling. “You can bet that the senator's campaign will use the television clips to bolster his image as a candidate concerned about minorities. Helps to emphasize the importance of the new jobs that
drilling for methane gas will bring. There'll be a steady stream of donations flowing into the mission. We can build a new community center, remodel the church, finance more programs. Hire professionals, John. Social workers, psychologists to help people . . .”

“That's our job,” Father John said.

“Absolutely.” Damien took another sip of coffee. Another grimace. “We'll have time to concentrate on the spiritual aspects. Let the professionals handle the rest. We can have a first-class museum on the Plains Indians with more exhibits from outside. Offer good exhibits, and the crowds will come. We can pay Christine the kind of salary she deserves.”

“Whoa!” Father John put up one hand. “The donations haven't arrived yet.”

“Oh, but they will, John.” The other priest pushed his mug into the middle of the table, got up, and started for the door. He turned back. “You have to have a little faith,” he said.

Father John drained the last of his coffee, his eyes on the man making his way down the hallway, confidence in the set of his shoulders, the way he gripped the knob on the banister and pulled himself around. Confidence in the rhythmic tap of his boots on the stairs.

After a moment, Father John got to his feet, rinsed out both mugs, and let in Walks-On, who darted past, shaking cold air out of his coat. The dog folded himself onto the rug in the corner, and Father John patted the animal's head. Then he flipped off the light and started down the hall. Moonlight washed over the walls and floor, creating patterns of shadow and light that spilled into the study at the front of the old house. He sat down at his desk, turned on the lamp, and pulled a stack of envelopes toward him. Bills to pay, thank-you notes to write to people who had sent checks—unfamiliar names from towns he'd never heard of. The little miracles. He laughed. He had faith all right. Faith in the little miracles that arrived when he least expected them, when he most needed them.

He opened the bill from the telephone company, surprised at the
uneasiness tugging at him. Even the changes Father Damien had suggested to the planning committee this evening had made him uneasy. New community center. Remodel the church. He tried to shrug off the feeling, but it clung to him, like a leach fastened onto his skin. Maybe he'd been at St. Francis too long. Eight years altogether—six as pastor, longer than he'd ever been in one place as a priest. Maybe the Arapahos needed a new pastor, someone with new ideas and exuberance. Someone like Damien.

Ah, there it was, the real cause of the uneasy feeling. Not that he might have to leave St. Francis, but that it might be best for the mission if he did.

He tossed the telephone bill onto a stack of bills-to-pay-immediately, next to the stack of bills-to-pay-as-soon-as-possible, and tried to swallow back the old longing. A thumbnail of whiskey, no more than a tablespoon, and the unease, the uncertainty, would be banished. There was courage in whiskey. “God help me,” he said out loud.

He jabbed the letter opener into another envelope, tossed another bill onto the second stack. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the yellow headlight flash through the window. An engine hummed outside. He got up and went to the front door. A Wind River Police officer was coming up the sidewalk, moonlight laying like snow on the shoulders of his dark jacket.

“Sorry to bother you, Father,” the officer said as he came up the steps to the concrete stoop. “Chief Banner sent me to notify you.”

Father John moved back into the hallway and motioned the man inside.

Stopping in the doorway, the officer removed his hat. His face was round and red with cold, his eyes squinted into slits above the fleshy cheeks. He might have been Cheyenne or Crow, Father John thought, assigned to the Wind River Reservation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“What's happened?” he asked.

“We got a body at T.J. Painted Horse's place. Looks like suicide.
Chief's already there, along with the FBI agent. Chief said you'd want to come over, most likely.”

“I'm on my way.” Father John reached around the door and pulled his jacket off the coat tree. Then he followed the officer out into the moonlight.

A BODY AT
the home of T.J. Painted Horse. Father John pressed down on the accelerator and stared at the silvery asphalt rolling into the headlights of the Toyota pickup. The rear tires yawed and squealed around a curve.

Suicide.

It was hard to imagine. T.J. was one of the leading men on the reservation. He had been on the tribal council—the business council, the Arapahos called it—for four or five years, and before that, he'd represented Fremont County in the state legislature. Everyone knew T.J. and his wife, Denise. She taught third grade at Fort Washakie school, and she came to Mass almost every Sunday. Sometimes T.J. came with her.

Ahead, a single yellow light gradually separated into two headlights, coming closer. He let up on the gas pedal, blinded for a half-second as the headlights swept past. Then the moon came into view again, hanging in the sky outside the passenger window, bathing
the open spaces that stretched around him in a pale, gray light.

Leading man. Father John couldn't get the words out of his mind. He gripped the steering wheel hard. Leading men made enemies, and T.J. had spoken out against drilling for methane gas in the coal beds on the eastern edge of the reservation. He'd gone to Cheyenne to try to convince the state legislature to oppose the drilling. He'd made a trip to Washington, D.C., to convince the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When the plans continued to move forward, with the support of Senator Jaime Evans, T.J. had gone to the newspapers. There had been a rash of articles about the necessity of more environmental studies, and the BIA had finally agreed to consider another environmental impact study. But people on the rez were waiting for the jobs and for the per capita payments they'd get from the royalties, people who could have gotten tired of T.J. Painted Horse holding everything up.

Dear Lord, Father John thought. Suppose it wasn't suicide. Suppose someone had decided to stop T.J. permanently.

Father John made a right onto Ethete Road. Another mile and he could make out the dense block of a house against the gray sky, light shimmering in the windows. Getting closer now. It might have been a party. Vehicles parked in front, dark figures milling about. A party interrupted by the police, red, blue, and yellow lights whirling on top of the cruisers.

He turned into the yard and corrected for another skid on the wood planks laid over the barrow ditch. He slid to a stop behind one of the cruisers and got out into the cold. The coroner's SUV stood a few feet away. A couple of police officers stepped over the yellow police tape forming a barrier across the front of the house and came toward him, gloved fists clenched. Circles and stripes of colored lights whirled over their faces and dark uniforms.

“Chief Banner and the fed are inside, Father,” one of the officers said.

Father John nodded. “Okay if I go in?”

“They're talking to T.J. in the kitchen, but I can take you to the bedroom . . .”

“T.J.?” Father John heard the relief in his voice sliding toward a new kind of horror. That meant . . .

“Coroner's in the bedroom with Denise's body,” the officer said.

Father John jammed both hands into his jacket pockets, vaguely aware of the cold prickling his face. “What happened here?” His voice sounded low and hollow.

“We'll have to wait on the coroner's report.” The other officer moved in closer. “You want the unofficial version? Looks like the woman put a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol to her head two or three hours ago and pulled the trigger. She's on the floor where T.J. says he found her when he got home from the office. You wanna say some prayers?”

Father John followed the officers into the small, tidy living room with sofa and chairs arranged around a TV, books lined up in the bookcase against the far wall, and on the table in front of the sofa, a briefcase that looked as if it had been dropped by accident, knocking the porcelain knickknacks askew. A murmur of conversation flowed through the archway from the kitchen in back.

As he headed into the hallway, he caught sight of the three men at the kitchen table—Chief Banner at one end, Ted Gianelli, the local FBI agent, at the other. T.J. sat between them, shoulders hunched, eyes locked on his hands clasped on the table. The man was in his forties, Father John guessed, with black hair combed back, curling over the collar of his tan shirt, and the profile of one of the leading men in the old photographs: hooked nose and prominent cheekbones, the handsome face frozen in sadness, as if he'd failed his people somehow and the enemy had invaded the village.

The officers were waiting halfway down the hall. Father John walked past them into the bedroom jammed with uniformed officers and several men in blue jeans and heavy jackets that hung open. Lying
on her side next to the bed was Denise Painted Horse, dressed in black slacks and a light blue sweater, the color of the morning sky. She still had on her shoes, black and a little scuffed. For a crazy instant, he felt as if he'd blundered into the bedroom of a woman who'd decided to lie down on the floor and take a nap. She might awaken at any moment and find him staring at her shoes. Or the small, black pistol a few feet from her curled fingers.

A man in a dark leather jacket was darting about, snapping photographs. Two other men hovered in the corner, heads bent toward the notepad that one was holding. Down on one knee, close to the body, was Tom Enslow, the county coroner, gray-haired, with muscular shoulders beneath his flannel shirt, balancing a notepad on a bluejean-clad thigh.

Enslow leaned over Denise's head a moment, then peeled backward and jotted something in the notepad. It was then that Father John saw the dark, sticky mass in the black hair behind Denise's right ear. Little red tentacles reached from beneath her head into the gray carpet, like grasping, bloody fingers. He looked away, aware for the first time of the faint smell of blood. Folded over the back of a chair in the corner was a white quilt with a blue-and-yellow star in the center, like the star quilts he'd seen in Arapaho homes across the rez. Draped over the armrest was a flimsy, pink robe that Denise might have tossed there at some point in an ordinary day.

“There you are, Father.” Enslow pushed to his feet. “We're about finished here. You want to bless her before we put her in the body bag?” There was a weary, off-key note in the man's tone, as though the job would never be normal, never routine.

Father John walked over to Denise. He felt the muscles tighten in his stomach, his mouth go dry. The woman's eyes were open, locked in shock and fear. She looked sunken in death, smaller than he'd remembered, and more vulnerable, her skin almost pale, like plastic. She'd been beautiful. Lively and intelligent, quick to express an
opinion. Every fall—usually on a day flooded with sunshine with leaves shimmering red in the cottonwoods—Denise brought her students on an outing to the mission. A yellow school bus full of kids shouting and laughing, snapping the jackets they'd untied from their waists at one another. They'd head down the dirt road between the church and the administration building, he and Denise walking in front, the kids shouting behind. Past the guest house and into the stand of cottonwoods along the banks of the Little Wind River. It was here, Denise would tell the students, waving both hands toward the cool expanse of shade, that the people had camped when they first came to the reservation. Chief Black Coal and Chief Sharp Nose themselves had chosen this sacred place. The kids would become quiet, wide black eyes taking in the trees and underbrush dappled with sunlight, the river rippling over the rocks. In those moments, he could almost sense Denise's love for Arapaho history taking root in the kids.

“Tell us about the church,” she'd say, turning to him as they walked back, and the kids would circle around as he told about how the Arapahos had built the church themselves and painted the walls in Arapaho symbols. At that point, the kids usually started telling him about the symbols: red and blue geometric lines for the roads in life, blue circles for the sacred center, white tipis for the people, brown V-shapes for the buffalo.

Ah, Denise. He made the sign of the cross over the still body. What kind of darkness had engulfed you? “Loving and merciful God,” he said, “please accept this beautiful woman that you created into your presence, forgive her sins whatever they may be, and let her share in the everlasting joy and peace that is yours alone. Amen.”

The chorus of amen's startled him, breaking as they did into the silence. Father John nodded to the coroner, who was already unfolding a large, gray plastic bag, then stepped past the other men and went back down the hall. Chief Banner stood in the middle of
the living room, talking to two officers, a serious, subdued tone. Then, dismissing the officers with an impatient wave, he turned toward Father John. He might have been a chief in the Old Time, Father John thought, or one of the warriors in the Curtis photographs, with black hair; high, thick cheekbones; and the humped nose of the Arapaho. A stocky man, medium height with broad chest, wide shoulders, and big hands that hung beneath the cuffs of his navy-blue uniform shirt. A thin silver wedding ring was embedded in a fleshy finger. The man had headed up the Wind River law enforcement as long as Father John had been on the reservation. “God help me, I love the job,” he'd once told him. “I want to get the bad asses out of here.”

“You saw her?” Banner asked.

Father John nodded. “How's T.J.?”

“Pretty broken up.” The chief gestured with his head toward the kitchen. Through the archway, Father John could see T.J. still at the table, face dropped into his hands.

“Gianelli's been talking to him.” There was resignation in Banner's voice. Unexplained deaths on the reservation fell within the FBI's jurisdiction, even probable suicides, which put Gianelli in charge, a fact that, Father John knew, rankled the chief.

“T.J. claims he was working late tonight on council business,” Banner went on, nodding toward the kitchen. “Came home about nine, found the front door unlocked. Not unusual. You know how Arapahos are.” He shrugged. “People wanna come in and help themselves to your stuff, well, they must need it real bad. T.J. says he was surprised to see Denise's car out front because she was supposed to be at the college in Casper for a teacher's workshop today and tomorrow. He walked back to the bedroom, and that's when he found her.”

Gesturing again toward the kitchen, he said, “Go on in. Man's gonna need all the consolation he can get.”

The minute Father John stepped through the archway, he could see that T.J. was sobbing silently, chest heaving, shoulders shaking. He walked over and put one hand on the man's back. “I'm sorry, T.J.,” he said.

At the far end of the narrow kitchen, Gianelli was leaning over the counter, writing something in a notepad. He had on blue jeans and a leather vest that hung open over a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up over thick forearms. He glanced around and gave Father John a half-nod. There was a flicker of weariness in the man's eyes.

T.J. shuddered beneath his hand, then flattened his own hands on the table and looked up, eyes blinking in the light. Moisture glistened on his narrow, brown face. He seemed older than a man in his forties, with lines at the corners of his eyes and the collar of his tan shirt standing out around his thin neck. “There's no call for Denise to shoot herself,” he said. “Why'd she do it, Father?”

Father John pushed a chair over with his boot and sat down next to the man. “Try to believe that God hasn't forgotten you, T.J. He'll help you through this.”

“God!” A low, guttural sound, like a death rattle. “Why'd God let her do it? I never gave her any cause to turn on me like that.”

Father John stopped himself from asking what he meant. T.J. was in shock. He recognized the symptoms—the vacant stare, the twitching hands.

“You'll bury her?” T.J. said, as if this was something he couldn't handle, the mundane tasks that lay ahead.

“Of course.”

“She'd want a traditional ceremony, too. She'd want to be painted.”

“I'll talk to the elders. We'll work it out.” The elders would place the sacred red paint on Denise's face, so the ancestors would recognize her and take her into the spirit world. Without the paint, her spirit would wander the earth, lost and alone, frantic for eternity.

“The drums. She'd want the drums, and singers. She loved the old ways.” T.J. gave a little smile. “She was a traditional. We gotta bury her within three days.” A look of urgency crossed the man's face. “That's the Arapaho Way.”

Father John patted the man's arm, trying to reassure him, despite the warning look that Gianelli shot across the kitchen. There would be no burial until the coroner issued his report and released the body.

“Oh, T.J.!” A woman's voice wailed from the living room.

Father John glanced around. Vera Wilson, T.J.'s sister—small and determined-looking in a puffy green jacket, black hair tightly curled around her face—rushed into the kitchen and dove around the table. She threw both arms around T.J.'s shoulders and cradled his head against her chest.

“Oh, my God.” She was shouting. “It can't be true. Tell me it isn't true,” she went on, hardly drawing a breath. “What the hell was Denise thinking? Are you okay?”

“Look,” Gianelli said, moving a couple of feet along the counter. “We don't know the cause of death yet. Denise may have taken her own life, but the coroner could find another cause.”