Ghost Dance (27 page)

Harold arranged for Danby to attend all of the prestigious Army training programs: Jump School at Fort Bragg, Ranger School at Fort Merrill, sniper training in San Antonio, the language program in Carmel. Danby excelled in every instance, especially sniper school, hand-to-hand combat courses and the language school, where he studied Arabic, Spanish and Russian.

But there were blemishes on Danby’s record—persistent reports of unwarranted savagery. These allegations came to a head during the Panama invasion when Master Sergeant Danby found his unit pinned down in the streets of Colon. Two of his troops were badly wounded. One was dead.

Danby single-handedly killed four Noriega loyalists and saved his unit. But what should have been grounds for the Congressional Medal of Honor turned gruesome. One of his men reported that near the end of the firefight, Danby chased a fifth loyalist into an abandoned restaurant. The loyalist turned, dropped his gun, then raised his hands in surrender. Danby kicked the man in the groin, then slashed his throat with a combat knife, nearly severing the soldier’s head from his body.

The court-martial board gave Danby the benefit of the doubt and accepted his claim that he had acted in self-defense, that the loyalist was going for a pistol in his waistband and he had reacted with the knife. But part of the plea agreement was that Danby would accept a straight discharge.

Harold could not have planned it any better. He had stayed in close touch with Danby over the years, offering him advice, acting as the man’s mentor. Then he became his agent.

‘I offered him a job with a consulting firm I ran for nearly twenty years,’ he said, smiling condescendingly at Jerry. ‘You had it all wrong back then, you know. We were private contractors. The government bought our services piecemeal, as did many other countries, though I must add that we were highly selective in our client base and always pro-NATO—’

‘I’m only interested in Danby,’ Gallagher cut in. ‘Where is he?’

‘Isn’t it obvious that’s why I’m here, too?’

‘You don’t know?’ Jerry cried.

‘You don’t know how much I wish I did,’ Harold said with a tinge of desperation in his voice.

Within three years of joining Pluto, Danby had become one of the top professionals in the world. He specialized in combat-oriented missions, often parachuting in under cover of darkness, men using his Ranger skills to navigate toward his target. He made millions for himself and for Pluto. What set Danby apart in Harold’s mind, however, was the fact that death became a fascination for the assassin.

‘He wasn’t the ordinary killer who tries to divorce himself, compartmentalize and justify what he did,’ Harold explained. ‘He became a student of his craft, studying the history of assassins and the lore of death across cultures. Over dinner one night in San Salvador, he even claimed that some long-lost relatives of his could actually talk with the dead.’

Harold chuckled at the idea. He rolled the index finger of his left hand toward Gallagher. ‘You, especially, would find Danby fascinating to talk to.’ His expression turned puzzled and he moved his head closer, studying Gallagher in the gloom. You look like him, you know?’

Gallagher’s gut soured at the thought. ‘Lucky me.’

‘Get on with it, Harold,’ Jerry groused. ‘Tell us what they might be dealing with up there in Vermont.’

Harold said that six years ago he began receiving reports that Danby was spending his downtime with primitive tribes in the far reaches of the Amazon. He hunted with them in the jungles. He participated in ceremonies where hallucinogens were blown up his nostrils. On assignments he was seen snorting a raw cocaine paste and drinking heavily.

Twice during missions, Danby inflicted ancillary casualties on civilians, which were inexcusable and marred Pluto’s surgical reputation. Harold warned Danby several times that the abuses could lead to termination of his contract. Four years ago Danby abruptly notified Harold that he was going into business for himself.

‘He used the skills we taught him well and disappeared before we could freeze his accounts and prevent him from stealing clients.’ Harold sighed. ‘The rumors were that he had decided to focus his business in Central and South America, and there were several operations over the following eighteen months that tasted to me like Terrance; then nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Gallagher repeated. Moths darted around a streetlight down the path from them, touching the bulb and falling to the ground.

‘Not a single word for three years until your inquiries reached me last night.’

Gallagher absorbed it all and played with it, then asked the old man, ‘Did he ever mention a fascination with the mythological character named Charun?’

‘Charun?’ Harold was bewildered. ‘No.’

‘How about a woman named Angel? He mentions her in several of the notes.’

‘Terrance was a whoremonger,’ Harold sniffed. ‘If he had a steady relationship, I was never ever aware of it.’

‘Was he an artist? Could he draw?’ Gallagher asked, thinking of the intricacies of the sketches.

Harold shrugged. ‘It would not surprise me. Terrance may be mad, but he’s capable of anything he puts his mind to.’

‘Was he interested in the Sioux?’

‘As in Indians?’ Harold frowned. ‘I’m sure he read about them at one time or another. He had vast interests.’

Jerry scratched at his beard and then his belly. ‘Where was Danby last seen?’

‘Southern Mexico near the border of Guatemala, April, two years ago.’

Monsignor McColl had been a missionary in Guatemala ten years ago. Gallagher asked Harold if Danby had ever mentioned the priest.

The old man hesitated, thinking. It was nearly full dark now. The lights around the Lincoln Memorial cast a soft sodium glow through the humidity.

‘Not by name,’ he said slowly. ‘But prior to his being offered a contract at Pluto, we required a further series of psychological examinations. Terrance told one of the analysts that he was abused by a priest in his teenage years, but he laughed it off, told us he’d fixed the priest but good.’

Gallagher gave Harold a brief overview of the killings, including the savagery of the murders, the Charun illustrations and the notes. He asked Harold if he thought Danby could be the killer.

‘If he is, he’s more far gone than I thought,’ the old man said, shaking his head. ‘He was once so controlled. So beautiful in thought and deed.’

For the first time that evening, Jerry smiled. ‘This isn’t damage control, is it, Harold? You’re not out here trying to keep Pluto buried. This is personal. You care about this fucking nutcase.’

There was a long silence.

‘I’m growing old, Matthews,’ Harold said at last. ‘I always thought of Terrance as a son. I would like to talk to him before the end.’

T
HE PHONE IN THE
interrogation room rang and Andie’s attention snapped away from Many Horses’ journal. She picked up the receiver. ‘Nightingale.’

‘This is Sand,’ a male voice replied. ‘We can’t find the priest.’

‘What?’ Andie cried. ‘What are you guys, incompetent? You lose Kerris and now McColl?’

‘Hey, we missed him, what can I say?’ Sand retorted angrily. ‘There’s a sign out front of St Edward’s that says, ‘Masses are canceled due to the recent tragedy.’ The rectory’s dark, no answer. You want us to jump the back wall, take a look around?’

‘Are you nuts?’ Andie barked. ‘Without a warrant? Without probable cause? We’d be defiling the sanctity of a church. Do not go in. I repeat: do not go in. Get a make and license on his vehicle from DMV and send it over the wires with orders to stop and detain.’

She slammed the phone down and stared at the legal notepad. She circled Kerris’ and McColl’s names and put a line between them with a big, bold question mark on top. Then she sighed and went back to Many Horses’ journal.

Summertimes we seance outdoors at a cave up on the mountain behind the Danbyfarm. When all the folks who believe in Joshua and Caleb sit around the cave under the moonlight, I climb up the back way and come out on a ledge above the mouth of the cave and give a speech Joshua wrote. They look up at me the way the young men used to look at Ten Trees when I was a girl, like I can give them something they have a terrible hankering for.

Last week right there at the end, the priest in Lawton, the one they call Father D’Angelo, came charging through the forest with a passel of men and women who go to his church. In the lantern light D’Angelo looks like a tree that’s lived in cold wind its whole life. He’s got a head looks like a goose nest with one egg in it. He pointed his finger up at me, called me a heathen and sent some of his men to climb the rocks after me. I went off the back side and out into the woods, with Caleb behind me lickety-split.

Caleb and me ran so hard our sides were set to bust. We lost Father D’Angelo’s men and Caleb wanted to circle on back to help his brother, but I asked him if he had forgotten the way Joshua let him be tarred and feathered and ridden on a fence rail the last time a preacher broke up one of the seances.

I took Caleb to my secret place—the rock cliff on top of Lawton Mountain that looks west. Below the cliff, all the trees are cleared for miles. In the sunshine far as you can see, there’s nothing but rock and green. It’s near to the Dakotas in springtime, only rolling. It was full moon when we got up there. Owls hooted and the crickets played fiddle and what Caleb said were cicada bugs, coming out of the ground after seventeen years in the earth, whined like babies missing their mothers.

Caleb said he missed his ma something awful and wished all the time he could talk to her because he did not get the chance before she died. I felt right sorry for him and told him it was a sad thing, because I could talk to my dead mother.

Caleb looked at me with them pink eyes in the moonlight. You know that ain’t true, he said. Ain’t no one can talk to the dead for real.

I can, I said. And I told him a little about the ceremonies Ten Trees, Painted Horses and Sitting Bull had taught me as a girl. I told him about our pipe and our stones. I told him how young men and some girls get taken to mountains where they cry for visions. I told him I had seen the spotted eagle in my vision. Eagle takes our prayers to Wakan Tanka, Great Spirit, Great Mystery. Then I told him about Wovoka and the Ghost Dance and how during the dance I walked and spoke with my dead a whole lot of times.

Caleb blinked and told me to show him.

In the moonlight on the cliff I showed Caleb my stones and Ten Trees pipe, and I had him smoke from it. Then I danced the Ghost Dance and sang the Ghost Songs. I danced and sang for hours until the August sun come up over the moon and Caleb became a lump of white on the cliff. It was like the cicada bugs cried inside me. Then the sunlight turned to a green rain and out of it walked Painted Horses in her favorite buffalo robe. She opened the robe and I pressed myself to her and felt strong arms come around me. Then I smelled Ten Trees behind me and felt him put his arms around me, too. Fear not, he whispered to me.

When I woke up, Caleb crouched over me, sniveling and blubbering. The sun was near straight up in the sky. My tongue ran dry over my lips and tasted salt. I raised my hand and put it on Caleb’s arm. He jumped back, scared at first, then he laughed and laughed and said he thought I was dying on him. One minute he said I was dancing and singing so pretty he thought he saw another world in me. And then I started to terrible choking. My eyes climbed in my head. Caleb said I pitched forward in the dirt and wasn’t breathing no more. My tongue went backward down my throat and he couldn’t hear my heart at all.

I don’t remember. Same as when we danced at Standing Rock. Folks always had something to tell us about what our bodies had done once our spirits crossed to the other side.

Caleb tried to say something, but couldn’t. Then his eyes got right wide and his skin turned pinker than trout meat. He held his hands out and looked at them like they was new hands. And he said while I laid in the dust the air around me was not hot and sticky, but cold and smelled peppery like it was October and the leaves were changing. He asked me if that is what it is like—cold and peppery but good—when you die.

I shook my head and told Caleb dying ain’t like in the poetry we read with Miss Mary Parker. Dying is a right awful thing about skin and bones and blood. Dying is cruel and hard, like a blizzard you get swallowed in. But then it is over and your spirit has passed through to a place from where it can still see and watch the living. Like an island in a river. The spirit goes beyond there, too. But that island is where both the living and the dead can see and hold each other. I told Caleb that maybe that was what he had smelled and touched—that island in the river between two worlds.

Caleb gape-jawed at me for the longest time. His skin was commencing to burn in the sun. He put his hand on my shoulder and I did not like it. Ever since the soldier with the black teeth, I don’t take kindly to men putting their hands on me. He asked if I would teach him to talk with the dead and I said no. Caleb’s fingers dug into my skin. He asked why not. He said we was friends and he asked why a friend would keep a friend from talking to his ma.

I did not rightly know what to say to that. But Ten Trees, Painted Horses and Sitting Bull always told me that the pipe and the stones and the ceremonies were ours alone, and that they must be passed on with care to those with a pure heart. And every pure heart that uses the pipe and the stones and the ceremonies finds its way to talk to the Great Spirit. That’s why everyone I knew who’d crossed had a different way of telling it. I might tell Caleb everything to do and say to go to that island, but he might not find his way there.

Ten Trees said some folk have the sense of it from the day they are born. Some lose the sense. And some never find the way. It can’t be passed on from one to another like a pipe or a stone. It’s something the Great Mystery gives to you, a gift like the animals that come and speak to us in visions.

But I saw that Caleb, the whitest white man I have ever known, would not understand. I told him if he was my friend, he would not tell anyone what I’d shown him.

Caleb was not happy, but he promised.

This morning, that pinch-faced Alice came to the kitchen after breakfast and told me Joshua wanted to talk. I went to his office. Joshua wore the red robe he uses during seances. Caleb sat on the sofa. He would not look at me.

Joshua started talking in the voice I call his wanting voice, the one he uses when he’s fixing to get something for himself. He stroked that pointy beard of his and slicked back the long black hair he’d grown. His nose was all runny and his eyes were big and black and shiny like a marble. That’s the way they get when he’s been sampling the spider medicine too much. Joshua said Caleb had told him an interesting story and that I had something to show him.

I shook my head and said there’s some folk supposed to understand and some folk that aren’t. Joshua got right angry then and said he wanted the ceremonies and dances and songs that give you the power to talk with the dead. I told him it was not like that. And anyway, he’d only use it wrong to get money out of people.

Caleb curled up like a wet cat on the sofa, sad and scared. Joshua’s face got bunched up and redder than the faces of McGloughlin’s men just before they killed my uncle. I figured to run.

But Joshua come around the desk faster than I could move and grabbed me by the hair and shook me like I was no better than a dog. He said he took me in when I was a starving squaw sleeping in haystacks, a fugitive from the U.S. Army. I owed him.

Caleb jumped up from the couch and made to grab Joshua. Joshua’s black eyes with them whites like the last week of the moon never left me. He just crooked out with his left hand and cracked his brother across the mouth. Caleb pitched on the floor, bleeding from his lips and blubbering again.

Joshua got his face close. He said, you really think you’re more powerful than me?

I heard the pounding of hundreds of moccasins and I heard us singing to our grandfather. I heard the guns on wheels drown out the pounding of our moccasins and I saw my mother rise up and pass blood from her mouth. I felt the bite of the snowstorm when I walked away into this life, such as it is. Then the snow became Joshua’s hand twisting my hair up so tight I felt my scalp was likely to tear. I saw in Joshua the face of the soldier with the black teeth riding down on me, hungry and hateful at the same time.

Caleb told me to tell Joshua or I’d end up like his daddy, dead in his sleep with a bullet in his head.

Joshua smiled in a way as to make me sick. And for the first time I saw that he was not right in the head. He’d been using the spider medicine almost every day, sunup to midnight. That and all the worship during the seances had pushed him outside his normal course, like a river that’s done jumped its bank.

I was powerful scared and wanted to run all the way back to Standing Rock. But Ten Trees and Painted Horses taught me to be clear-eyed. I was months walking from Standing Rock. If I were to go home, I needed time and a plan to gather what I’d need.

I told Joshua I was obliged to think on how best to teach him our ways because it can’t be done in one pull. Joshua trained them last-week-of-the-moon eyes on me and I looked into them until I felt I was commencing to tumble. He leaned forward and kissed me hard on the lips before I could step back. He tasted like water when an animal has fallen in the well.

It is night now, more than a week since he kissed me, and Joshua’s breath still hangs around me like the smell of black teeth. I have thought on it and thought on it and I cannot do this alone. I need help, but I cannot count on Caleb or the rest of them. They are all trapped by Joshua’s spider medicine.

Tomorrow I’m gonna go see Father D’Angelo.