The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Read online

  “Any Arapahos join them?” He was pushing, he knew. If she’d wanted to give him names, she would have done so by now. And yet, in the softening of her expression, he knew that she’d do what she could to get justice for the murdered girl.

  “AIM people came from all over the place,” she said. “Lots of ’em was city Indians, never set foot on a reservation before. Some Arapahos might’ve joined in their protests, but that didn’t mean they joined AIM. Just meant they were interested. Nobody knew for sure who belonged, and people didn’t ask questions, know what I mean? Lots of folks were scared. There was a big demonstration over at Fort Washakie, and somebody blew up a bridge, I remember that. And some sheep got shot out on a ranch. Feds said that was AIM’s doings, but moccasin telegraph said it was just some Indians feuding and they put the blame on AIM. Problem was, nobody knew for sure. FBI was swarming all over the rez; I never seen so many Feds. We didn’t know what was gonna happen next, but we knew something was gonna happen. AIM might take over Fort Washakie or Ethete, like they took over Wounded Knee. We were real scared they might take over the mission.”

  “Take over the mission?”

  “AIM hated the mission,” Elena said. “Said it made us like white people.”

  Father John turned past the sign and drove into the tunnel of cottonwoods. Hated the mission? St. Francis was a safe place, a place of refuge for more than a century. His own refuge. Through the trees, he could see the windows of his office in the corner of the administration building—the office would be Ian’s when he left—and on the other side of the drive, the old house that was more like home than any other place he’d ever lived. He felt an immense sadness at the thought of leaving. A few pickups and cars stood in front of the church. Father Ian had taken the early Mass. It would be over soon.

  “Said Indian people needed to keep to our own ways,” Elena was saying. “Our own religion. Oh, we made plans for when they came.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “To take us over, occupy the mission like they did Wounded Knee. Father Mike said we’d have to leave as fast as possible. We were gonna run to the creek, wade across and keep going.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Except for Father Mike. He was gonna stay.”

  Father John smiled. In the corridor of the administration building, there was a photo of Father Michael Leary among the other photos. A bantam weight, narrow shoulders, thinning hair, and intense eyes peering out of glasses perched a little way down his prominent nose. Father John knew the type: short, wiry Irishman, tough as nails. He’d heard the man had died in a retirement home last year.

  “One night we thought AIM had come,” Elena said.

  Father John slowed around Circle Drive, past the vehicles of people attending the early Mass, and parked in front of the residence. He turned off the engine and turned toward the old woman, who was staring straight ahead. She might have been watching images flash across the windshield—the mission as it was then, the people who had been here.

  “What happened?”

  “It was about a week after July Fourth, I remember,” she said. “We had a picnic here for the summer school kids, and some of the women stayed late to clean up. We was in the kitchen when we heard the gunshots. Father Mike came running down the hall, shouting, ‘Go, go!’ The guns kept firing. Father Mike grabbed the phone off the hall table and called the police. ‘They’re here,’ I remember him yelling. Didn’t even say who was here, ’cause everybody knew. He shouted again for us to run out back, but he was running for the front door. I couldn’t believe he was going right to the gunshots. We went after him. I think there was three of us women. None of us was gonna leave the mission to AIM, not if Father Mike was staying. He crossed Circle Drive and ran through the field, and oh, did he run fast. I remember thinking I didn’t know he could run like that. He went past the church and down the alley, straight for Eagle Hall, ’cause that’s where the gunshots were comin’ from.

  “We followed him. We were furious. We wasn’t thinking, just running, mad as hell. What right they got to come here? I guess we thought we was gonna tell ’em off or something. We was gonna back up Father Mike, that’s for sure. By the time we got over to Eagle Hall, the sirens were blaring. Father Mike crashed right through the front door. I don’t think he stopped to open it first. And then we saw that they were shooting out the windows.”

  Elena laid her head back and started laughing. “Firecrackers, Father. They was nothing but firecrackers. Next thing we knew police cars was everywhere. The police and the Feds surrounded Eagle Hall, and one of them shouted for everybody to come out with hands up. Then Father Mike walks out with two men looked about twenty years old.” She was still laughing, swiping the back of her hand against her cheeks. “You know what was really funny? They was white! Couple of white hippies hanging around the rez, thinking if they got close enough to Indians some Indian might rub off on them. They was bored, so they stirred up a little trouble. Well, they got trouble, all right. Feds threw them on the ground, handcuffed ’em and took ’em away. I heard they got a suspended sentence, long as they left the rez and never came back.”

  An engine coughed into life across Circle Drive. In the rearview mirror, Father John saw people coming out of the church and working their way down the stone steps toward the parked cars and pickups.

  Elena wiped at her eyes a moment, then opened her door. “I gotta get the oatmeal cooked,” she said.

  “Elena, wait.” Father John set his hand on her arm. “Somebody left a note on Vicky’s car warning her not to get involved in the investigation.”

  She blinked at him several times, as if she were trying to comprehend.

  He pushed on: “The girl’s killer could still be here.”

  “They was dangerous,” she said. “All them AIM people. They talked good, but you crossed ’em, you’d be in trouble. Everybody was scared of ’em, and they liked it that way. Kept people scared. They was violent, Father. Lots of things they did got swept away, ’cause people got sick and tired of trouble and just wanted to forget about it. Any AIM people still on the rez, you bet they’re not gonna want old stuff dragged up again. You ask me, they’re still violent.” She paused for a moment, her brown eyes narrowing into slits of worry. “Better tell Vicky to stay away from ’em. If they killed that poor girl back in the seventies, they’d kill again to keep it quiet.”

  Elena was already out of the pickup before Father John could get around the front to help her. She brushed past him and hurried up the sidewalk, shoulders squared with determination. She’d done what she could, said her piece—he could almost hear her telling him so—and now it was up to him to warn Vicky to stay away from AIM.

  “Hey, John. Wait up!”

  Father John swung around. Ian was hurrying across the field enclosed by Circle Drive, taking long strides, arms bent and head thrust forward as if he were about to break into a run. Father John started across the drive toward him. The wild grasses in the field shimmered gold in the sunshine. “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Some guy…” Ian said. He was out of breath, gulping in air. “Wants to see you right away. Says it’s important.”

  “Who is he?” There was a black pickup parked near the church.

  “Didn’t say. Indian, maybe Arapaho. I’m not sure.” He shrugged. Ian had been at St. Francis six months. It was at least that long, Father John was thinking, before he’d been able to distinguish Arapahos from other Indians. “Said something about the elders looking for…”

  Father John cut in. “Where is he?”

  “Waiting in the last pew.”

  Father John started across the field. This was what he’d been hoping for. The elders had gotten the word out on the moccasin telegraph that he wanted to talk to AIM people and the man waiting in the church had come to find him. One of the grandmothers came out of the church and headed for the pickup.

  “John!” Ian’s boots pounded behind him.

  Father John swung arou
nd. The other priest was closing the gap between them.

  “You might like some company,” Ian said. “The guy’s drunk. You never know…”

  Father John put up one hand. He could finish the thought himself—you never know what a drunk might do. “It’ll be okay,” he said, starting back across the field. He’d faced drunks before. He knew drunks. He’d been one.

  He bounded up the concrete steps in front of the church and let himself through the double doors. He could hear the pickup crunching the gravel on Circle Drive. A column of bright light ran down the aisle, then disappeared as he pulled the door shut behind him. The faint odor of alcohol wafted through the small vestibule. He stepped into the back of the church. There was no one in the pews. “Hello!” he called. The sound of his own voice vibrated through the emptiness.

  He started down the aisle, glancing at the pews. Somebody had dropped a black coin purse and someone else had left behind a pink scarf. He slid along the kneelers, picked up the items and continued down the aisle. No sign of anyone, yet the black pickup was still out in front when he came in. A sense of uneasiness came over him. He could feel his muscles begin to tense. The man had sent Ian for him, hoping that he’d come alone. He’d wanted to meet him alone, but where was he?

  A shushing noise, like that of a boot slipping on tile—the unsteady footstep of a drunk—came from the sacristy. Father John crossed between the tabernacle that resembled a miniature tipi and the drum that served as an altar. The door leading to the back hall and the sacristy stood open, even though Ian would have closed it, he was certain.

  Father John stepped into the hallway. The outside door at the end also stood open, like the door to the sacristy itself, and the smell of alcohol was so strong that he held his breath, trying not to breathe it in, yet wanting to at the same time. He stepped into the sacristy, the odor filling the air like incense. Everything neat and tidy, just as Ian had left it, except that one of the cabinet doors was slightly open, as if someone had attempted to shut it in a hurry. He looked inside the cabinet. A single stack of white altar linens, the pottery bowl and chalice that he used for the Communion bread and wine. There was nothing valuable in the sacristy, but the man—whoever he was—hadn’t known that.

  He put the items he’d found in the church into the cabinet and stepped into the hall. He closed and locked the outside door, then walked back into the church, moving slowly now, deliberately. The pickup was still outside, which meant the man was somewhere, waiting for him.

  11

  FATHER JOHN MADE his way slowly down the aisle, watching the side aisles, the vestibule for any sign of movement, of shadows shifting. Quiet permeated the church, like the quiet of a vault punctuated by the fall of his own footsteps on the thin carpet. He had the sense of someone watching him.

  “I know you’re here,” he said. The sound of his voice reverberated around him. “Come out.”

  He was almost at the last pew when the figure of a man slid from behind the pillar that braced the right side of the vestibule. He planted himself in front of the door, swaying forward and backward in an obvious effort to get his balance. The smell of whiskey rolled off him in waves. He was slightly built with stooped shoulders, a baseball cap pushed back on his head, strands of black hair hanging about his face. He wore blue jeans, a dark shirt and a black leather vest that even in the shadows looked worn and scuffed. Father John tried to place him. In the congregation at Sunday Mass? At a powwow or celebration or meeting? It was no good. He’d never seen the Indian before.

  “Who are you?” He stopped at the entrance to the vestibule, a few feet from the man, struggling to ignore the invisible presence of alcohol in the space between them.

  The Indian shrugged. “Hear you’re lookin’ for information.”

  “You were on the rez in the seventies?”

  Another shrug. “I ain’t had nothing to eat in a while.”

  “Let’s go to the residence.” Father John took a step into the vestibule. “You can have some breakfast.”

  The Indian shook his head. He shifted his weight against the door, then stood still, as if he were grateful for the support. “You got some cash?”

  Father John didn’t take his eyes from the man. It wasn’t food he wanted. He’d gone into the sacristy, trailing an odor of whiskey, looking for something he could pawn, something that might be worth enough cash for a bottle. Today’s bottle, and tomorrow he’d figure out how to get another bottle. He knew who the Indian was then. One of the park rangers—the drunken Indians that hung around the park in Riverton, living from bottle to bottle, like the fort Indians who had hung around the forts in the Old Time, addicted to the soldiers’ whiskey, willing to sell anything—blankets and horses and women—for a bottle of whiskey. Somehow the moccasin telegraph had reached the Riverton park, and the Indian had seen the way to get some cash.

  Father John’s instincts were to tell him to leave, that he could come back when he wanted to go into rehab, when he’d had enough, when he wanted help. And yet, the Indian could have been involved with AIM thirty years ago.

  “It depends,” he said. “What do you know?”

  The Indian’s dark eyes darted about the vestibule. He pressed himself against the door. “Her name,” he said.

  “Are we talking about the skeleton found in the Gas Hills?”

  The Indian gave a half nod.

  “How do you know her?”

  “Back then—” He hesitated, then plunged on. “I get home from Vietnam, everything’s going to hell on the rez, just like before. No jobs, nothin’ to do, no place to go. Signs everywhere: No Indians Wanted. Indian gets killed, nobody cares, and there was guys getting beat up and run over, and the cops sayin’, ah, go ahead, kill yourselves off. Then AIM Indians show up and say, why we livin’ like animals? We’re not animals. They say, show respect, get some respect. They say, we got rights, and we gotta make the whites give us what’s ours.” The Indian started rubbing his forehead with the knobs of his fingers, as if he’d hit a blank wall in his mind and wanted to jog his thoughts back into place.

  “Did you join them?” Father John said.

  “You got somethin’ to drink?”

  Father John shook his head. So that was what the Indian had been looking for in the sacristy—the wine that he and Ian consecrated at Mass. He wondered if the Indian had seen the bottle of grape juice that the pair of recovering alcoholic priests at St. Francis Mission sipped at the consecration. “Maybe you oughtta try to eat something…”

  The Indian was shaking his head so hard that his shoulders also shook, as if he were in a spasm. “I gotta get some cash,” he said. “You got money around here? You take up collections, right? You gotta have some money.”

  “Tell me about the girl,” Father John said. “Was she part of AIM? Is that how you knew her?”

  “They was mad at her.”

  “What do you mean? Who was mad at her?”

  “Everybody. Jesus, Father, you gonna let me have some money or not? I gotta get a drink. I’m sick, see.” He thrust out his hands. They were quivering. “I’m real sick.”

  “I can help you get help,” Father John said.

  “I need a drink, okay? I’ll tell you about the girl, and you give me some money, okay?”

  “What about her? What had she done?”

  “Shot off her mouth to the police, told ’em where one of the big shots was hiding out, got him killed, that’s what she did.”

  “Do you mean the AIM member killed at Ethete?”

  “Look.” The Indian put his hands out again. They were shaking harder. “I’m telling you what I know, okay? It wasn’t like I was one of ’em, the big shots. They come from other places, and they was givin’ the orders around here. I marched in some demonstrations, carried signs around, and I got a few bucks. It was like a job or something. Then they had all that trouble up on Pine Ridge—them AIM Indians took over the town, and that was something. I mean, who would’ve thought a bunch of Indians could take over
a town, and this being in the 1970s, I mean, not a hundred years ago! Afterward some of the big shots came here, that’s what I heard. Hiding right here under the Feds’ noses, and they never found ’em until the girl opened her mouth.”

  “Who was she?”

  The Indian didn’t say anything. He was staring down one leg of his blue jeans at the floor.

  “Come on,” Father John said. “You know who she was.”

  “You gonna give me the cash?”

  “We’ll talk about it later. Who was she?”

  “Arapaho, that’s what I know. I heard she was livin’ up at Pine Ridge, and that’s how she got mixed up with AIM. I heard she was a singer, always singing, like she had plans to be a big star, make recordings and all that, like she wanted to be somebody.”

  “You said you knew her name,” Father John said.

  “I only seen her one time after the big shot got killed. There was a meeting, and a lot of people come out for it, and everybody was mad as hell, I remember that. Well, she comes to the meeting. We was all shocked. I mean, she’d been in jail! She’d talked to the police! It was like she wanted to die or something. Why didn’t she get outta here, go hide someplace else? Instead, she comes walking in like she didn’t know what was goin’ on. She was holding a baby, I remember that. I started feeling sorta sorry for her, ’cause she had a baby and wasn’t nobody there gonna help her. She was small, you know, and real pretty, and she had her hair all braided up, like she’d braided up all her troubles and they wasn’t gonna bother her no more. That braid hung all the way down her back. I remember her walkin’ in the room, climbing around people, stepping over everybody’s feet, and the guy sittin’ next to me says, ‘What the hell’s Liz doin’ here?’”

  “Liz.” Father John repeated the name slowly, letting the sound of it burrow into his mind. The skeleton in the Gas Hills was a girl named Liz. “What was her last name?”

  “I only seen her that one time. How would I know? She’s Arapaho. I remember ’em saying, how come a Rap talked to the cops? Jesus, Father, I’m in bad shape.”