The Thunder Keeper (3 page)

He planned to visit the arts-and-crafts fair tomorrow anyway. Now he thought the fair would be a good opportunity to catch up with the latest news on the moccasin telegraph.

G
reat Plains Hall rose out of the prairie ahead. Father John had heard the drums as soon as he'd come around the bend on Seventeen Mile Road. The rhythmic thuds reverberated through the sounds of “Quando me'n vo” coming from the tape player wedged in the front seat of the Toyota pickup. The thuds grew stronger. He reached down and pressed the off button, allowing the beat of the drums to fill up the cab.

On the horizon, the Wind River mountains, azure blue and green with the recent rains, poked into the clouds, but patches of sunshine lay over the flat, open plains that ran into the distances on either side of the road. The air was cool, tinged with both the coming warmth of summer and the promise of more rain.

Father John made a right turn onto the dirt road that ran past the senior citizens' center to Great Plains Hall. The field in front was filled with vehicles parked at odd angles. Old trucks and pickups next to shiny SUVs and sedans. The Arapaho arts-and-crafts fair always drew a mixture of Indians from the res and white people from the adjacent towns of Riverton and Lander.

He parked next to a brown pickup as rusted and dented as the Toyota and made his way around the vehicles
toward the hall, his boots sinking into the soggy ground. The faintest roll of thunder in the distance mingled with the sound of the drums.

The hall was packed, and a crowd of brown and white faces moved along the tables that had been arranged against the side walls. He could see the jewelry on the table just inside the door—beaded necklaces, bracelets, earrings: a white woman holding up a hand mirror and staring at the beaded earrings that dangled from her ears, nodding to the grandmother behind the table, handing the old woman a few bills.

Across the hall, the drummers and singers sat huddled around a large drum. The steady thuds bounced off the cement walls, punctuating the hum of voices. A group of kids dressed in dance regalia was lining up alongside the musicians, their shiny shirts and dresses, feathered headdresses, and bustles flashing through the crowd.

The smells of fresh coffee and fried bread permeated the air. In the far corner was the food table, and Father John caught sight of his assistant, Father Don, chatting with several Arapahos, tilting his head sideways—that way of his when he was listening—sipping from a Styrofoam cup, then throwing his head back and laughing. Other Indians started crowding around. The man seemed completely at ease, as if this was home. Elena could be wrong. Father John hoped so. People here liked the new assistant, and he liked them. The man was good with people.

Father John started along the tables, stopping to chat with the Arapahos seated on folding chairs on the other side. Old people, kids, men and women in their twenties and thirties—the artists and craftspeople who had beaded the jewelry and vests, painted the shirts and dresses and small drums, sewn the Arapaho star quilts, and fashioned
the bows and arrows and coup sticks, just as their grandparents had done in the Old Time.

On one table were several oil paintings that captured the beauty and loneliness of the plains and the hidden valleys of the Wind River mountains. As beautiful as any paintings of the area he'd seen. He gave a thumbs-up to Stone Yellowman, the young man watching him from the other side of the table, and the brown face broke into a wide, reassured grin.

He turned toward the next table, then stopped. For an instant he'd thought Vicky Holden was across the hall: the slim figure and shoulder-length black hair, the finely sculptured brown face, the shining, intelligent black eyes. A woman who resembled her, that was all, and he realized he'd been half expecting to see Vicky here. She wouldn't have missed the arts-and-crafts fair if she still lived in the area.

He shook away the sense of loss that came over him at the most unexpected moments. Vicky Holden had gone back to work at her old law firm in Denver five months ago. It was the way it should be. Still, he missed their friendship, missed working with her—lawyer and priest: they'd been a good team—missed being able to pick up the phone and run something by her, test some far-fetched theory against the toughness of her mind. He could have talked to her about a missing Indian.

“Father John, over here.”

He swung around. Louise Little Horse was getting to her feet, beckoning him toward her table.

“How are you, Grandmother?” he said, walking over.

The old woman picked up a bolo tie and held it out in her small pink palm. The round disk was covered with tightly woven white beads. In the center—it might have been soaring through the clouds—was the blue-beaded
figure of a thunderbird, the symbol of thunder, the guardian of the atmosphere. Radiating out from the bird figure were red lines, symbolizing the sun and life.

“It's beautiful,” he said.

“I made it for you.” She looked up at him, the narrow, dark eyes shining in the furrowed face.

“Please let me pay you for it,” he said, fishing in his jeans pocket for some bills.

“Oh, no.” An aggrieved look came into the dark face. She reached out, took his hand, and folded his fingers around the tie, and he thought of what the elders always said: accept the gifts offered you and be grateful.

“Thank you, Grandmother.” He slipped the beaded rope around his neck and pulled the disk up under the collar of his shirt. “I'll wear it with pride,” he told her.

“It'll protect you,” she said. Then: “You look real Arapaho now. Only you gotta grow black hair.”

“I hear there's other ways.”

“I hear shoe polish works.”

He laughed.

“What's worrying you, Father?” The old woman leaned across the table.

“It shows?”

She nodded.

“Tell me, Grandmother,” he began. “Any news on the moccasin telegraph that the pastor at St. Francis hasn't heard yet?”

Now it was her turn to laugh. The brown face crinkled into the lines that fanned from her eyes and mouth. “Oh, I'd say there's always something that folks'd just as soon the pastor didn't know about.”

“Have you heard that anybody's missing?”

She nodded.

He remained still. The pounding drums, the hum of
voices receded around them. Finally she said, “Warriors went out today looking for somebody. Ben Holden . . .”

“Ben Holden.” He repeated the name, almost to himself. First the face in the crowd, now the mention of Vicky's ex-husband. The reminders brought little stabs of pain that he tried to push away.

“. . . called my grandson real early. Five
A
.
M
. Woke up the whole house. Said somebody got lost up at Bear Lake. My grandson took off. They was gonna start lookin' soon's it got light.”

“Who, Grandmother? Who were they looking for?” Father John kept his eyes on the old woman's. A name. He needed a name. Then he could go to the family. He could find out who else might be in danger and he'd find some way—there had to be a way—to warn them.

The old woman was shaking her head. “Soon's I find out—” The drums stopped, and silence poured over the crowd. There was a screech of a microphone.

“Welcome to the Arapaho spring arts-and-crafts fair.” An Indian in blue jeans and a red western shirt, a cowboy hat pushed back on his head, strode into the center of the hall, trailing the mike cord across the tiled floor. He rattled off a string of names, thanking the elders and grandmothers for their hard work so that folks could buy traditional Arapaho art for their homes. “Let's give a big hand”—he raised one hand in the air—“for the kids from Arapaho school that are gonna demonstrate the traditional dances.”

The crowd began to cheer as the drums started up. The high-pitched voices of the singers floated above the thud. Slowly the line of kids moved into the center of the hall, moccasined feet tapping in precise steps. They wore tanned hide dresses and shirts decorated with tiny tin bells that jangled as they danced. The boys held staffs, the girls, elaborate fans made of feathers.

As Father John stepped back to let the kids pass, he saw the bulky, dark figure of Chief Banner framed in the entrance. The chief gestured with his head toward the outdoors, then backed away. Father John waited for the last kid to dance past before he went outside.

Banner was standing next to a white police car parked in front of the hall, hands jammed into the pockets of his navy-blue uniform jacket. The silver insignias on his collar and cap glinted in the sunshine.

“I figured you'd be here,” he said as Father John approached. “You gotta tell me everything you know about the missing Indian.”

“You found him?”

The chief gave a quick nod. “Ben Holden took a half-dozen warriors up to Bear Lake this morning after the guy didn't get back from a vision quest. Found his body in a boulder field below the spirit cliff. Looks like he's been dead a couple days.”

“Who is he?”

“Nobody from around here. Arapaho from Oklahoma. Name's Duncan Grover. Age about twenty-five.” The chief glanced away a moment. “Fremont County Sheriff's Department brought the body out. This is their investigation, with Bear Lake being county land. Got a detective on it named Matt Slinger.”

Father John understood. There was a jurisdictional maze that the law enforcement agencies in the area had to navigate. Who was in charge depended upon where a crime took place.

“What do you know about Duncan Grover, John?” The chief's eyes bore into his.

“Look, Banner,” Father John began, “this isn't something I can talk about.”

Banner moved closer. The odor of stale coffee hung
between them. “You do know what really happened up there, don't you?”

“What does the detective say happened?”

“The detective? You wanna know what the white detective and the white coroner say? They say Duncan Grover jumped off the cliff. Committed suicide.”

“Suicide!” Father John could feel his heart speed up. He turned away a moment. They had it all wrong. The killer was going to walk away, and other people were going to die.
There's gonna be more murders.

He looked back at the Indian watching him with narrowed eyes. “What makes them think it was suicide?”

“Body was two hundred feet below the ledge,” the chief said. “If he'd accidentally stepped off, he probably wouldn't have fallen more than ten, fifteen feet before he would've been stopped by a big outcropping. But he flew over the outcropping, which took some force. They say he jumped.”

“And you don't think so,” Father John said after a moment.

“I don't think any warrior's gonna go on a vision quest at a sacred site like Bear Lake, where the spirits are all around, then throw himself off the cliffs.” Banner's voice was tight with fury.

Father John was quiet a moment. “You explain that to the detective?”

“Yeah.” The chief threw his head back in a nod. “So did Gus Iron Bear, the medicine man that gave Grover instructions. So did Holden. Three Indians explaining how things are to white men. You think they listened? Case closed, as far as they're concerned. Just another dead Indian who killed himself.”

“There has to be some evidence at Bear Lake.” Father John pushed on, struggling to find another way to the
truth, groping toward the logic. “Footprints or tire tracks. Something that would make the detective and coroner change their minds.”

“You forget it's been raining all week.” A look of exasperation came into the Indian's dark eyes. “The searchers and sheriff's boys were up there trampling around all morning. If there was any evidence, it's gone.” He nodded toward the sound of the drums, the jangling of the dancers who spilled out of the hall. “Those kids in there, they're gonna hear suicide and they're gonna think, warrior offs himself, so it must be okay. Goin' gets tough, and it's the way out.”

The chief came closer still and took hold of his arm. Father John could feel the anger pulsing through the man's fingers. “You know the truth, John. What're you gonna do about it?”

Father John didn't say anything. The penitent's words—
more murders, more murders
—boomed silently in his head.

The chief whirled about and started around the car, and Father John felt as if a door had slammed between them, and something was drawing to a close, a friendship ending, the trust people here had in him fading away. He said, “I'll have a talk with the detective.”

Banner stopped and stared at him over the roof of the car. “What're you gonna say that'll make any difference?”

He didn't know. But he knew how white men thought. It didn't surprise him that they'd ignored what the Indians had tried to tell them about spirits and vision quests. The detective and coroner would want concrete facts and logic, a straight, uncluttered path to the truth. He was like them. Somehow he was going to have to get the kind of facts that would convince them that Duncan Grover had not committed suicide.

“I'll think of something,” he said. He started toward the parking lot, then walked back. The chief was behind the steering wheel, turning the ignition. The engine rumbled into life.

“What's Ben Holden got to do with this?” Father John leaned toward the driver's window rolled halfway down.

“Holden and Grover's dad were army buddies,” Banner said over the top of the glass. “Soon's the kid got to the res, he went out to the Arapaho Ranch to see Holden about a job.”

Father John thumped the rear door with his fist as the car started sliding by. He watched as the chief made a turn around the last row of parked vehicles and gunned the engine past the senior center and out onto Seventeen Mile Road.

Before he went to see a white man by the name of Detective Matt Slinger, he'd find out what Ben Holden knew about Duncan Grover.