The Man Who Fell from the Sky (5 page)

FROM THE PARKING
lot Vicky could hear the drums beating and the high-pitched voices of the singers. She wedged the Ford Escape into a narrow space between two campers and threaded her way around the haphazard rows of pickups toward the powwow grounds. License plates from all over the West: Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. The Wind River Reservation was on the powwow highway, and the top prizes large enough that the winners could spend the rest of the summer driving across the empty, sweltering plains to the next powwow. Dancers spilled across the parking lot, regalia jangling and glistening in the sun, feathered headgear waving against the blue-white sky like dried stalks of wheat. All ages: grandfathers and grandmothers, teenagers, toddlers scuffing along in beaded moccasins. The dancing would begin at ten o'clock, twenty minutes from now. Most of the dancers would be lining up, ready to
dance into the arena, shawls and blankets swirling about their shoulders. These were the latecomers, and she was one of them.

She had planned to drive to the powwow grounds early, have coffee with the elders, visit with people she used to be friends with. Reconnect. Take every opportunity to be among her people. Instead of the Arapaho lawyer in the white world, she would be an Arapaho woman in her own world. But she had worked late last night. Lander was ghostlike when she left the office, circles of light from the streetlamps flaring over the darkened houses and buildings. She had taken home a briefcase filled with papers she intended to read and had fallen asleep on the sofa, paper trailing off the cushions and onto the floor. It was after midnight when she crawled into bed. She had slept restlessly. Half-aware of the empty side of the bed where Adam had slept, wondering where he had gone when the realization had hit her like an arrow out of the darkness. Adam had left. They were no longer together.

The grounds were packed. People milling about and crowding the food booths, dancers jostling one another, the honor guard forming at the edge of the arena. Rows of lawn chairs had been set up around the arena, and the elders were settling in under umbrellas fastened to the armrests to create little patches of shade. Red and white coolers stood next to the chairs. Vicky spotted Annie walking toward her, Roger not more than a foot behind. They had found each other in her office. Annie Bosey, the secretary she had hired when she wasn't sure she needed a secretary, because she had seen herself in Annie, divorced, two kids, trying to make her way. And Roger Hurst, the lawyer she and Adam had hired when the firm was Holden and Lone Eagle. She and Adam would handle the big cases. Natural resources on Indian lands. Oil. Gas. Water. Timber. Roger would handle the little cases that, as Adam had put
it, didn't matter to anybody. Except people charged with DUIs, assault, public inebriation. People getting divorced, desperately trying to get their children back from social services, wanting to make a will to protect what little property they had managed to accumulate. Ironic how the number of little cases had kept increasing. Finally she and Adam had decided to dissolve the firm, and he had started his own natural resources firm, which he merged into a large firm in Denver last fall. Adam was good at natural resources; he was the best. The little cases now took up all of their time, hers and Roger's.

Annie handed her a Styrofoam cup. “Saw you drive in.” The aroma of hot coffee made Vicky blink. She could feel Annie's eyes on her. “You all right?”

“I can use the coffee.” Vicky sipped at the plain, black liquid, hot and strong the way she liked it. God, Annie knew her so well! Answering the phone, working on the computer, making appointments, ushering clients into her office. Studying her. Studying her. There was no one on the rez she was closer to than Annie.

“Lot of people looking forward to seeing you,” Roger said. “Grandmother Nitti.” He gestured with his head toward the grandmothers in the first row of lawn chairs. “The grandfathers over there.” Another gesture toward the old men seated together, apart from the women. Easier for all of them to gossip. “Some of your old school friends.”

Vicky smiled over the rim of the coffee cup. This white man, more at home on the rez than she was, but then, he spent more time here. With Annie's big, sprawling family and her kids and all their friends. He had changed everything for Annie. He was security, safety, certainty. Vicky had grown fond of the man for all he had given to Annie. And he was a good lawyer, smart and tenacious. He
cared about the small cases. So different from Adam, she thought. So busy caring for the big cases, he couldn't see the small.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The announcer's voice boomed over the loudspeakers strung overhead. Heads turned in unison toward the man in the cowboy hat, fringed leather vest and blue jeans with the mike in his hand. He stood next to the table where six women were still registering dancers. “Welcome to the second day of the Arapaho powwow. We want to extend a special welcome to our tribal friends from all over Indian country.” A loud whoop went up among the crowd; people clapped and shouted
Hou!
“We wish all the dancers luck and hope you have a fine day. We're going to start with the intertribal dances and move on to the contests. Morning Star drum group will accompany the dancers.”

The drums started pounding. Vicky could feel the tiny vibrations running through the ground. People lumbered out of the lawn chairs, the old women standing crookedly and uncertain, holding on to the backs of chairs, craning their necks to see the first dancers dance into the arena. She was sorry she had missed the Grand Entry March last night. It was always a thrill to see the men standing tall and straight, saluting the flags as the honor guard marched in: Long rows of men and women in uniform—army, navy, air force, marines. Warriors who had served in every war in the last seventy-five years. Europe. Japan. Vietnam. Kuwait. Iraq. Afghanistan. Dressed in old uniforms, carrying the flags of the United States, Wyoming, and the Arapaho Nation—citizens of all three, her people.

The announcer led the pledge of allegiance, his voice booming across the grounds, nearly drowning out the low voices of the crowd. The sound of the drums burst through the air.

Now she watched the dancers from different tribes, a
kaleidoscope of colors whirling about the arena, the drums as steady as the beating of her own heart. This was home, where she belonged.

The drumming and the dancers stopped at the same instant, and the dancers started to file out. It was then that Vicky saw the movie cameras pointed toward the arena. Other cameras scanned the crowd. Still another camera turned on the dancers starting to line up for the contests.

Roger must have followed her gaze because he said, “They're making a documentary film about Butch Cassidy. We talked to one of the producers over at the coffee booth. They want to get the flavor of the rez, put things in context, convey a sense of the life here.”

“Butch Cassidy was here a long time ago.”

“He said there were powwows then.”

“Ladies and gentlemen.” The announcer's voice erupted over the grounds. “Now for the first contest. The traditional dancers.”

Again the arena burst into color and motion, like fireworks on the Fourth of July, as the dancers came dancing out. Voices of singers rose over the thud of drums like the call of birds in a storm.

“Not like this,” Vicky said. For a minute, the dancers in beaded leggings and bone breastplates and feathered headdresses, dipping and stamping out dance steps, faded into the black-and-white photos in books about the early days on the reservation. Dark shadows of tipis intermixed with log cabins that sloped toward the bare dirt ground, ragged horses with sagging backs in the corrals, and the people—her people—in dusty overalls and calico dresses that hung on thin, bent frames. The men wore cowboy hats, pulled low against the sun. The women with braids wrapped around their heads, holding small children in their arms. Stopped in time, all of them. The photos of powwows had always surprised her. A break
from the everyday hardness. The old dances, passed down through time, a memory of life on the plains. In the photos the dancers wore the same overalls and calico dresses. No fancy, jangling regalia and headdresses. All of that had been traded to the white traders for food.

She gripped the coffee cup and stared at the cameramen, trying to swallow back the anger sparking in her throat. What did they know of the past, these white people looking to fill in the story of Butch Cassidy? What would they show the outside world? The bright, shiny life in Indian country? She wanted to yell:
It wasn't like this a hundred years ago!

“You sure you're all right?” A worried note drummed in Annie's voice. The traditional dance ended and the dancers were heading back to the sidelines. The grass dancers would dance next, an ancient dance that mimicked the warriors stalking game in the tall prairie grasses.

“If they want to portray the rez a hundred years ago, they have to show more than this.” The drummers beat out a new song as the grass dancers tapped into the arena, bent over, peering at the ground, hands shielding the brightness from their eyes. The regalia jangled and swayed, feet stomped in rhythm to the drumbeats.

“But this is nice, isn't it? All the people together?” A man's voice, from behind. Vicky glanced around. Behind her was an Indian, tall and slim in a white cowboy shirt that clung to muscular shoulders and chest. Handsome, like a warrior in the old photos, with shoulder-length black hair parted in the middle and black eyes that reflected the sunlight.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to butt into your conversation. Some of my best memories are the powwows. You're Vicky Holden, right?”

“I don't believe we've met.”

“Fifth grade, St. Francis School. I sat behind you and pulled your braids. Jimmy Walking Bear. Go by the name Cutter now.” He stuck out his hand. Brown with long, slim fingers. Vicky hesitated a moment before she shook hands. His palm was rougher than she had expected. He had the confident manner of someone used to giving orders rather than doing the work himself.

“Annie Bosey and Roger Hurst,” Vicky said, nodding from one to the other.

“St. Francis?” The man called Cutter was looking at Annie. “I must have been gone by the time you started kindergarten. Good to meet you both.” He turned back to Vicky. “The Indian lawyer in Lander. I hear you divorced Ben Holden and got yourself a law degree. I didn't think anybody could ever stand up to Ben. I'm impressed.”

“It was a long time ago.” She felt a shudder, as if this stranger had yanked back the veil of her life. She couldn't place him. One of the dark faces from the past that swirled around her. So many people had come and gone in her life. He was Robert Walking Bear's cousin. A distant cousin, Ruth had said, but still a relative.

The jingle dancers filled the arena now with a cacophony of sounds, like the noise of a thousand ringing bells. She watched them sway and tap their feet in rhythm with the drums, then turned back to the stranger. “Ruth mentioned you.”

“Oh yes,” Annie joined in. “Welcome home.”

He nodded. “Dad took us off to Oklahoma when I was eleven. I decided it was time to come back. Get to know the relatives. Find out where I came from.” He listed toward the arena then took in the crowd. “I can't get over Robert dying like that,” he said. “Keep thinking it wouldn't have happened if I had been there. We'd gone into the mountains a few times. He liked looking for Butch
Cassidy's treasure, not that he believed it existed. It was more like he wanted to believe. So I went along. I wanted to get to know my cousin, cook a couple steaks on the campfire, throw back a beer. I was supposed to go with him the day he died, but I had to go to Casper for a job interview.” He drew in a breath and looked around again. “Jobs are few and far between around here. I keep thinking I shouldn't have gone.”

“What do you think happened to Robert?” Something off-kilter, Vicky was thinking. Ruth said that Robert always went treasure hunting alone.

“Nobody knows. Spoke to Ruth this morning. She's waiting for the coroner to release Robert's body so she can get him buried.”

“Poor Ruth,” Annie said. “Everything on hold. She's going to need her relatives.” She hesitated, then plunged on. “She doesn't have any close family of her own, just Robert's people.”

“I been thinking, maybe that's why I got the urge to come home. Maybe my relatives need me.”

Vicky tried for a smile. It was a comforting thought somehow, that people were drawn to those who needed them. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Then she added, “Again.” She nodded at Annie and Roger, who stood holding hands, then started toward the grandmothers, feeling as if an envelope of loneliness had swallowed her. The cameras scanned the dancers, lingered on the drummers, and swept across the crowd. She could be in the film, she was thinking. Modern Arapaho woman. Woman Alone.

A TAN PICKUP
backed out of the driveway, skidded to a stop, and shot forward. Vicky waited until the cloud of dust had rolled past before she turned into the driveway and stopped in front of the small, white frame house. Red buds sprouted on the geranium plants next to the stoop. Ruth stood in the doorway. She gave a little wave that resembled a hand gesture blocking the sun. “Thanks for coming,” she called as Vicky got out of the Ford.

There was a frazzled look about her, Vicky thought. The same red blouse she'd had on two days ago, the same wrinkled jeans skirt. She had replaced the flip-flops for scuffed-looking sandals. Hair mussed, black shadows under her eyes, a tremor in her hands. As if she hadn't slept for a long time and was living on caffeine. “Folks keep calling and coming over. Dallas Spotted Deer was here. Wanted to know how he can help me. Help me with what? A new life?” Ruth threw the comments over one shoulder and motioned Vicky through the living room into the kitchen “Coffee?”

“No, thanks.” Vicky felt as if she might jump out of her skin with another cup of coffee. Someone had handed her coffee while she visited with Grandmother Nitti and the other grandmothers. Polite pleasantries, the weather, the dancers twirling about, the regalia flashing in the sun. When the polite pleasantries had worn themselves out, there had been nothing to discuss. Vicky had seen the questions in Grandmother Nitti's eyes. Where had Vicky Holden gone? Who was this lawyer from the white town? They had sat in silence a long moment and watched the dancers. Emmy Many Horses from Wind River High School had placed third in the jingle dance, a purse of about one hundred dollars. Could be a fortune to the girl.

Vicky had clasped the old woman's hand in an effort to reconnect, she supposed, and smiled at the other grandmothers before taking her leave. She walked among the grandfathers, paying her respect, and moved through the crowd, searching for familiar faces. Smiling, nodding. Making small talk against the thumping drums, the swish of moccasins on the hard-packed dirt. She was walking back through the parking lot when she heard the footsteps behind her. She slid into the Ford as Cutter took hold of the door and leaned toward her. “Leaving so soon?” He was grinning, eyes shining. “I was hoping we could talk. Catch up.”

“Maybe some other time.” She tried to pull the door shut.

“How about dinner?”

“I'm pretty busy.”

“I hear the Lakota that's been hanging around took off.”

“You can't always believe the moccasin telegraph.”

“What about it?”

“The moccasin telegraph?”

He tossed his head and gave out a bark of laughter. “Dinner.”

Vicky hesitated. Something about Cutter drew her in: Trying to
reconnect, trying to find himself in his people. Struggling with the kind of emptiness that she recognized in herself.

“I'll be in touch,” he said, pushing the door shut. She caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror, staring after her, as she drove away.

Now Ruth poured a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “Cutter called this morning.” She motioned Vicky into the chair across from her. “He offered to come over, but I told him, ‘Go to the powwow. Enjoy yourself. We don't all have to be dead.'”

“Any word from the fed?”

“It was an accidental death by drowning, but he won't say so.” Ruth tilted her chin and stared at the ceiling. “They're still waiting on autopsy results. Maybe they think Robert got drunk and fell into the lake.”

“Did the fed say that?”

“He didn't have to.” She slurped the coffee. “Wanted to know if Robert had been camping. Did he have a tent? ‘Tent?' I said. ‘Are you kidding?' He always took a cooler with sandwiches and a thermos. But he slept in the bed of the pickup under the stars. He would never wrap himself inside a tent. It would be like crawling inside a coffin.” She shrugged and set the mug down hard on the table. “At least the fed's no longer hammering about suicide. I been thinking I need to go to the lake, see where Robert died.”

“We can do that.”

*   *   *

THE ROAD CLIMBED
into the mountains. Every time the Ford took another turn, Vicky had a sense of the earth dropping away. The reservation shimmered in the far distances below, and vehicles crawled along Highway 26, sunlight flashing off chrome. The Ford punched deeper into the sky. Ruth was saying something about
how Robert loved going to the mountains. An Arapaho of the plains, where the sky dropped all around, in love with the mountains! “We are blue-sky people,” she said. “We came from the blue sky, the way I heard the story. You ask me, it wasn't the mountains Robert loved. It was the hunt for treasure.”

Vicky gripped the wheel tighter as they started down into the valley. Around and around until Bull Lake came into view, a silvery mirror reflecting the sunlight. Patches of wildflowers glowed red, blue, and yellow among the pines. “Did he come here often?”

“I never asked.”

Vicky drove around another curve and pulled the visor down against the sun. They were dropping fast, the lake coming up to meet them now. Another couple of turns and the road flattened out and ran straight ahead like a racetrack. She pressed down slightly on the accelerator and gave the Ford its head as it bounced and skidded over the ridges of tire tracks. A phalanx of investigators and coroner's officers had been here. Ahead was a strip of land that jutted into the lake, a half circle of yellow tape arched from the shore. She nudged the Ford to a stop. “Looks like this is the place.”

Ruth stared straight ahead, past the yellow tape swinging in the breeze, to some point in the lake. She was silent.

“We don't have to go over there.” Vicky had started to open the door. The sweet smells of wild brush and wildflowers and the lake invaded the Ford.

Ruth pushed her door open, swung out, and slammed the door behind her. Before Vicky caught up, Ruth was closing in on the tape. She stopped for a moment, as if she had encountered a wall, then pushed the tape down with one hand and climbed over. “I have the right,” she said.

Vicky stepped over the tape and followed Ruth around the clumps of grass and willows, the purple flares of pasqueflowers. The water made a swishing noise as it washed onto the narrow band of sandy shore. A fish was jumping out in the lake.

“So this is where Robert died.” Ruth kept walking until the water lapped around her sandals. She turned away from the lake. “I can feel him here. He didn't want to die. He was surprised.” She spoke slowly, parsing the words. “Do you think I'm crazy?”

Vicky shook her head. She could hear her grandmother's voice:
What happens in a place stays in a place, changes the place forever.

The breeze riffled Ruth's hair, plucked at her blouse. She came forward and dropped onto a boulder. “I want to sit here awhile.”

Vicky backed away to give the woman solitude and space. The yellow tape snapped and danced. All of this—a life—for a treasure hunt? It seemed ridiculous, a cruel joke. She had heard rumors of buried treasure since she was a kid. Butch Cassidy himself had buried his loot in the mountains and left behind a map, but no one she knew had ever seen it. Still the story persisted, along with a thousand other stories and rumors and what-ifs that drifted across time and kept the present a prisoner to the past.

Except for the tire tracks, the ground looked undisturbed. A little to the right of where Ruth was sitting was a deeper set of tracks. Robert could have parked there, and the fed had impounded the pickup. Mute testimony to what had happened.

She stepped back over the tape and started walking along the road, past the spot where Robert's truck had sat, taking in the stretch of rocky, gray mountains around her. Looking for what? Some sign, something unusual. What had Robert done? Driven to the lake, parked, and then what? Decided to spend the night? Sitting on the shore, maybe on the rock where Ruth sat now, eating
sandwiches, washing down each bite with a sip of warm coffee? Walking into the lake—the freezing water from the snow running off the high peaks—stumbling, falling. Giving up? Lying down and drowning? Incredible. She had known Ruth and Robert since they were kids. Strong as oxen, both of them. Like the people in Old Time, unbowed by the hardships that came their way.

She realized she had walked a good half mile. She glanced back. Her Ford looked solitary, out of place, parked at the side of the road, the mountains rising above, and on the other side, the strip of land stretching into the lake. Ruth, a small, quiet figure on the rock. She started off again, and that is when she saw it: a campsite in the brush across the road from the lake. Tire tracks ran off the road toward the site. She followed the tracks, picking her way around the brush and boulders. Activity here, but when? A week ago? A month ago? She could hear Grandmother's voice in her head:
Tracks remain forever.
Tracks of the wagon trains plowing across Indian lands were still here. Tracks of mules and wagons hauling gold out of the mountains were still here. In the most pristine places with no one else about, the past was here.

Someone had camped here around a fire pit. Ashes and blackened pieces of wood chips littered the pit. A vehicle had been parked on the far side, depressions of the wheels far enough apart to suggest a truck. Bigger than a pickup.

What happened?
She heard the demand in her own voice. As if the campsite, the fire pit, the tire tracks, the mountain itself could provide an answer.

The brush crunched behind her, and she swung around. Ruth was coming toward her. Cross-country, through the prickly pears and rocks and scrub brush. Yellow paintbrush lay trampled behind her. She gestured toward the fire pit. “Campsite?”

“Looks like it.”

“So that's why the fed wanted to know if Robert had a tent.”

“There's no telling how old this campsite is.”

“Could be recent,” Ruth said. “Could have been here days ago. Could have been here when Robert died.”

“I'm sure the fed is looking . . .”

“Looking for what? A truck or SUV with people who watched my husband die in the lake and drove out of here? Didn't try to help him?” Ruth's voice rose into the mountain quiet. Moisture glinted in her eyes. “Drove onto the road and away from here. South Dakota. Montana. Not caring what happened?”

“Ruth, we don't know . . .”

“Don't tell me I don't know! The truth is everywhere. In the lake, the shore, the rocks. He didn't want to die, Vicky. Robert did not want to die.”