The Man Who Fell from the Sky (6 page)

THE STAINED GLASS
windows glowed red, yellow, and blue in the morning sun. Technicolor patches of light lay over the pews and the brown faces of the parishioners. A low undercurrent of prayer, like the hum of electricity, ran through the small church. “Our Father who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name.”

Father John looked around at the parishioners scattered about the pews. He knew everyone by name. His own family seemed remote, far away, another time and place. The people here were his family now. The elders and grandmothers, the mothers poking kids to their feet, the squealing babies, the bored, stone-faced teenagers. A big, unwieldy, imperfect, and beautiful family. Odd how it always came as a surprise to find himself at a mission in the middle of Wyoming. He had never imagined himself a priest. Then something had started happening to him. A nudging, a calling. Unspoken questions that left him twisting and turning in the night,
demanding an answer.
Whom shall I send?
Finally he had answered:
Send me, Lord. Send me.

After Mass he stood outside with the sun bouncing off the white stucco church and shook hands, wishing his parishioners a good day, a happy day, telling the elders he would stop at the senior center for a cup of coffee this week, promising Mary Louise White Bonnet he would visit her mother in the hospital. At some point he noticed the white man hanging back, shifting from one foot to the other on the patch of grass that lay between the church and Circle Drive. His parishioners ignored the man. After they had filed past on their way to coffee in Eagle Hall, the white man walked over and extended a fleshy, bearlike hand. “Father O'Malley?” He hurried on, not waiting for an answer. “Todd Paxton. We're making a documentary about Butch Cassidy. I'm the director. Would you have a few minutes?”

He had it then, the reason his parishioners had given the man a wide berth. Probably wasn't anyone on the rez who hadn't been inconvenienced by the filming, stuck in long lines while the actors rode across the prairie.

The man had the smooth hand of someone who worked with cameras or computers, not horses or cattle. Like the hands of his parishioners, hardworking, outdoor hands. “Give me a few minutes,” Father John said. He wanted to walk back through the church, check the pews for keys and glasses and baby bottles, hang up his chasuble and alb in the sacristy closet, fold away his cincture, put the Mass books in the cabinet. “Go on over to Eagle Hall and get yourself a cup of coffee. I'll meet you there.”

Father John made his way past the tables and groups of people. Shaking hands again, smiling, patting the old people's shoulders. The air in the hall was a fug of fresh coffee smells. Outbursts of
laughter punctuated the low roar of conversations. Elena, the mission housekeeper, blocked his way and handed him a mug of coffee. “A little cream, the way you like it,” she said. She knew everything about him, this elderly woman with gnarled, arthritic hands and hair the color of steel cropped around her head. She was probably in her seventies, although she might have crossed into her eighties. The subject never came up, since it made no difference. She ran the residence, ordered the bishop and him around the way she had been ordering the priests around at St. Francis for decades. She was a living archive of memories. He thanked her and took the coffee. So like his mother sometimes, he thought, it was uncanny. Running the kitchen and the house and everything beyond. Praying for one of her sons to become a priest, like all Irish mothers of her generation. Give a son to God and he will be yours the rest of your life. No other woman to take him away.

Todd Paxton sat alone at a table in the far corner. Dark hair falling over his forehead, narrowed, observant eyes glancing about the room. Arapahos flowed around him, coffee cups and doughnuts in hand, eyeing the white man in their midst—the stranger—and moving on. Father John pulled out a chair across from the director, sat down, and took a sip of coffee.

“Hope this isn't an imposition.” Paxton occupied himself pushing a half-filled cup in a little circle about the table. “Lot of people here to see you.”

“It's not an imposition. What can I do for you?”

The man stopped pushing the cup and leaned forward. “We've been filming on the rez for a week now. Next week we intend to film at the Hole in the Wall up in the Bighorns where Butch and his gang hung out, then move on to Brown's Canyon on the Wyoming-Utah border. My research suggests Butch spent a lot of time there. The place was desolate; deputies and posses avoided it. Would've
been like riding into an ambush.” He laughed softly. “I am definitely getting the vibe that Butch was a smart man. The reason he and Sundance didn't get caught was because Butch outsmarted the law. Except for that one time, of course, when he went to the Wyoming prison for stealing a horse. We've been filming all the places he knew around here. Lander. Dubois. The Wind River. The Little Wind River. Ethete. Arapahoe. The powwow. You name it, we have footage.”

“Powwow?”

“And farmers' markets. Provides context, gives a sense of life on the rez today. I understand it was different a hundred and thirty years ago, but it's the same people. Arapahos and Shoshone. People don't change that much. I found a book with photographs of life on the rez in the early days. They had powwows and get-togethers.” He took a quick drink of coffee, set the cup down, and pushed it away. “But we need more. We need to talk to people with stories about Butch handed down in their families. People whose ancestors knew him, hid him on their ranches. I'm hoping you can put me in touch with folks like that.”

Father John sipped at his own coffee for a moment. His parishioners were still flowing around the table, leaving a space between the director and themselves. “Have you talked to Arapahos?”

“We got nowhere. Oh, they're very polite. Didn't tell us to back off or go away. Smiled, said they'd check with a few people who might know someone and get back to us. I know the old skiddoo when I see it. No sense in riling us up by saying you don't know anybody and if you did, you wouldn't be telling us. Just smile and smile. Works every time. Left us hoping every day that the next day we'd get an interview with somebody who had stories about Butch.”

“I can make some inquiries.”

“Ah!” Paxton threw up both hands. “I wish I had a dollar for all the times I've heard that.”

“There's a white woman from an old family in the area. I can see if she'd be willing to talk to you. Do you have a card?”

“White?” Todd Paxton fumbled in his jeans' side pocket, withdrew a small metal envelope, and extracted a card that he pushed across the table. “I was hoping you'd suggest some Arapahos.”

There were probably a lot of Arapahos with stories, Father John was thinking. Families that had straggled onto the rez with Chief Black Coal and Chief Sharpnose after the Arapahos had been hunted across the plains with nowhere to go, no more lands to call their own. The government had sent them to the Shoshones. They had asked Chief Washakie if they could come under his tent, and the Shoshone chief had taken pity. That was in 1878. Fifteen years later, Butch Cassidy had ridden into the area.

“I'll check around.” He slipped Paxton's card into his shirt pocket and got to his feet.

The director had already stood up and was pushing the chair into the table. He glanced toward the door, as if he were plotting a path across the plains. “I'd appreciate it.”

Father John watched the man weave through his parishioners and step outside, a dark figure against the sunlight. Then he started through the crowd, visiting, exchanging polite pleasantries. He stopped at the table where Elsa Lone Bear was sitting, pulled a vacant chair over with his boot, and sat down a little behind her left shoulder. She turned toward him. “That white man the film director?”

“His name is Todd Paxton.”

“What's he doing here?” Elsa was in her twenties, part of the younger generation, teaching fifth grade and trying to find a way between the past and the present.

“At the mission?”

“No. What are they trying to prove? Butch Cassidy was a long time ago. Times have changed.”

“The landscape doesn't change much.” He was thinking that Butch Cassidy had seen the same mountains, the same rivers, the same prairie stretching into an almost always blue and cloudless sky.

“The people don't like a lot of attention, you know.”

He nodded. He had come to realize that Arapahos liked to be the observers.

“Would it be all right to stop by later to see Eldon?”

“Oh, Grandfather would like that. Hasn't gotten out much lately. He's been having trouble with his ghost leg. The one that burns like fire even though he lost it in that automobile accident twenty years ago. The doctor says the nerves still think the leg is there, so they keep sending out pain signals.”

“The past has a way of hanging around.”

“Do we ever get free?”

“Is that what you would like?”

She turned her head and stared out over the hall. The crowd was smaller now. The plates of doughnuts gone. Coffee smells turning musky and stale.

“Sometimes I think . . .” She hesitated. “Not really.”

A small crowd had bunched up at the door, straining forward, pushing past one another. From outside came a swipe of loud, angry voices. Father John stood up, crossed the hall, and shouldered his way outdoors. Warriors stood in a circle around the white man, advancing toward him, closing in. Todd Paxton looked calm, the effort stamped on his face. Shoulders back, eyes fixed on Lionel Red Bull, and the Arapaho shouting: “Get off the rez! Take your cameras and let us be!”

Father John lunged through the circle of warriors and stood next to Paxton. He could smell the fear rolling off the man. “What's going on?” He faced Red Bull, a troublemaker in the past, but lately he'd been coming to church with his wife, Lu, and the kids. Lu said he had stopped drinking. He was working again, a good job at the casino.

“This guy comes here.” Red Bull hissed the words. “He's gonna make a film, show it all over TV. DVD forever. So folks out there”—he lifted both arms as if he could encircle the world beyond the rez—“they think Butch Cassidy's loot is buried on the rez. Gold and silver. Banknotes. Whatever he got from the railroads and banks. Could be a lot of money. We'll have a thousand treasure hunters, two thousand, roaming round, making nuisances of themselves, digging up the rez, crawling around the mountains, all thinking they're gonna get rich. Any loot Butch left here, he left for us. You get it, Paxton? It belongs to us. Maybe nobody has found it yet, but someday. Someday! We don't need outsiders roaming around.”

“Look, what's your name?” A note of logic sounded in Paxton's voice. Searching for neutral ground.
Come, let us reason together.
He lifted his hands palms up, and Father John wondered if Paxton knew this was the Plains Indian sign of peace. There was the slightest trembling in his hands.

“I'm Red Bull.” The man pulled himself to his full height and looked down on the director.

“Look, Red Bull. If some outsider, as you call the rest of us, got lucky enough to find Cassidy's loot, it would still belong to the tribes here. Nobody could take it away.”

“Yeah.” The Arapaho turned and spit onto the ground next to his boot. “What world do you live in?”

“Okay, enough.” Father John took a step forward and the circle fell back. Red Bull shrugged and looked as if he were about to walk away. “Paxton and his crew are making a film about Butch Cassidy. Who he was. How he lived.” He glanced back at the white man, clasping his hands now, rubbing his palms together.

“Right.” Paxton nodded. “If nobody's found any loot in a hundred and thirty years, why would they find it now?”

“They'll come looking,” Red Bull said. “Fools, all of them. Think they'll win the Butch Cassidy lottery. Take your cameras somewhere else.”

The circle had broken. The warriors wandering off, Red Bull himself stepping backward, swinging around and hurtling back inside Eagle Hall. Little groups of people were making their way down the alley to the pickups and cars parked in Circle Drive. Engines coughed and sputtered. After a moment, Red Bull ushered his wife and two kids outside and into the silver pickup parked in the alley.

Father John turned to Paxton. “I'm sorry about this.”

“It's what we've been running into. Most folks we've met are polite, but I guess they feel the same as Red Bull. Funny.” He was smiling now, relaxed, hands hooked into the pockets of his blue jeans. “I never took that buried treasure yarn seriously. I'm starting to think I was wrong.”

THE FRAME HOUSE
sheltered under a lone cottonwood, branches swaying against the sky. White cottonwood fluff blew through the air. There was no other traffic on the narrow strip of asphalt that cut across the prairie.
Pagliacci
filled the cab. Father John pressed on the brake, turned right, and bounced across the borrow ditch into the bare-dirt yard. A blue sedan stood in the shade between the house and the cottonwood. Parked close to the sedan was a black truck.

He pulled up near the front stoop and turned off the engine. It wasn't polite to stomp up to the house and bang on the front door. If Ruth was up to having a visitor, she would open the door and wave. She would have heard the Toyota pickup coming down the road, rattling across the yard. The engine cutting off. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in rhythm to “Un tal gioco,” giving her time to decide. The CD player on the seat beside him
had a tinny sound, and for a moment he let himself imagine attending an opera again, the orchestra and the voices swelling around him, the sweep of the costumes and settings, the drama and heartbreak, the elegant opera house in Central City, a survivor of the past. The tickets were on his desk. He had looked at them this morning, then laid them back down.

The front door remained closed, the window shades pulled down halfway. A sense of abandonment lay about the place. And yet, Ruth's car was here. A truck was here. He wondered if the sheriff had released Robert's truck. A sense of alarm surged through him. You never knew what someone might do in the midst of grief. He got out and slammed the door hard so that, if by chance Ruth hadn't heard him drive up, she would know a visitor had arrived. He was on the stoop, rapping at the door, when a man emerged around the corner of the house. Slightly stooped into medium height, slim, a warrior look about him in cowboy hat, yellow Western shirt, blue jeans, and the kind of boots with toes turned up that had been worn a long time.

“Is Ruth here?” Father John stepped off the stoop. Arapaho, high cheekbones and hooked nose, dark eyes that took him in. A pockmarked face. He had been here the day Robert's body had been found. One of the relatives bringing casseroles, cakes and lemonade, and hope. The man had led them to the backyard and set up the lawn chairs.

“Dallas Spotted Deer.” The man lunged forward and extended his hand. A single shake, that was the Arapaho Way. “
Hou!
” he said.

Father John had seen the man at get-togethers and powwows. Never at the mission, but some of the Walking Bears were traditionals, he knew. They worshipped at the Native American church. A
few of his parishioners also worshipped there, he knew. Prayer was good, wherever you prayed.

“I been waiting for Ruth out back,” Dallas said. “Figured she and Vicky . . .”

“Vicky?” Of course Vicky would be here to make sure Ruth was okay.

“Saw them out on the road in Vicky's car. Figured they were going to stop at the convenience store in Ethete. I been here most of an hour, and no sign of them.”

Father John knew instantly where they had gone, as if Vicky and Ruth had left a note tacked on the door. Gone to the lake. Gone to see the place where Robert died.

“I guess she's all right, if she's with Vicky.”

“She's all right.”

“All the same, I worry. Robert was one of the relatives, you know, so I got an obligation to see that his wife is okay.”

“It's good of you.”

Dallas said something about Robert being the son of his stepfather's cousin, and Father John realized he was explaining the relationship. “Not what you'd call close in the white world, but in the Arapaho . . .” He paused and looked away a moment. “Relatives matter.” He looked back. “I hope they didn't go to the lake. She wanted to go, and I said, no way would that be good for her. She'd have the place burned into her mind the rest of her life. You think Vicky . . . ?” He left the question hanging.

“It's possible.”

“I'm hanging around, in case Ruth needs to talk. You know what the head doctors say, process what she seen.” He took another moment, jaw muscles flinching, words working on his tongue. “I just wish I'd gone with Robert. He had a crazy idea he was going
to find Butch Cassidy's loot. I went a couple times with him and Cutter, but it was too weird for me. Robert had a copy of this old map he said he got from our grandfather. Passed down by Butch himself. You ask me, he bought it in one of them tourist shops in Lander. Everybody's trying to make a few bucks off the past.” He was shaking his head. “I got me a good job at the BIA and I can't take off for a whole day. So Robert went up there alone.”

“How could you have prevented what happened?”

“Ruth says it was an accident. Couldn't've been anything else, despite the fed going around and asking questions.” He shook his head as if the investigation were an annoying inconvenience. “I can't get it out of my mind . . .”

“You mustn't blame yourself.” Dallas Spotted Deer, Father John was thinking, would wait here until Ruth returned. They both needed to process what had happened.

“If I can ever be of help . . .”

“Yeah. Yeah.” The man waved away the offer.

“Tell Ruth I'll stop by later.”

“You do that, Father. Do her good.”

*   *   *

HE DROVE FROM
Arapahoe to Ethete, a few other vehicles coming at him out of the dust. Past little houses with white propane tanks and two-seat pickups and a smattering of plastic toys in the yards, laundry flapping on the lines. He turned up the volume on the CD player, and the music rose over the sound of the wind that rushed past the open windows. He tried not to think of Vicky. Still she lingered at the edges of his mind. Months would pass when he didn't see her. No one who needed their help—the lawyer, the priest—and he could almost forget about her. And then Robert Walking Bear
died, and there she was in Ruth's living room. Old friends of hers, Ruth and Robert, from their days at St. Francis Mission School, ties that bind, the past that never lets go.

The hood was up on a tan pickup as Father John pulled into the yard in front of Eldon Lone Bear's place. Lawrence, the old man's grandson, lifted himself out from under the hood and squinted into the sun a moment before he came around the pickup, rubbing a black-splashed rag between his hands. A smile as wide as the outdoors creased his face. “Grandfather's been hoping you'd drop by ever since Elsa said she talked to you this morning.”

“How is he?” One of his grandkids was always with the old man, he knew. Arapahos never abandoned the elders. Carried them on their backs in the Old Time, running from the soldiers and the guns that shot fire.

“For eighty-five years old, I'd say Grandfather is doing good. Complains about that ghost leg, but other than that . . .” He was still smiling. “Come on in. You like coffee? Sandwich? I think Elsa made a cake.”

“Coffee sounds good.” Father John followed the man up the steps and into the small living room. They always wanted to feed you, the Arapahos. It had taken some getting used to. He sometimes thought he would drown in all the coffee they poured for him. No one left an Arapaho village hungry in the Old Time. Visitors were sent off onto the plains with full bellies, because no one knew when they might eat again.

Eldon Lone Bear sat in a wheelchair in front of a small TV that stood on a chest against the far wall. Father John recognized Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. He wondered if Eldon's grandkids had heard of either actor.

“Hey, Father.” The old man wheeled himself around in a couple
of smooth strokes and tossed a glance over his shoulder at the TV. “I like the oldies,” he said. “This is called
A Stolen Life
. Sit down. Take a load off.”

“How are you, Grandfather?” He grasped Eldon's hand. The palm was weathered and roughened, like the old man's face, the residue of years in the outdoors, working horses, herding cattle, fixing fences. Then he pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat down. The sound of Bette Davis's voice purred between them.

Lawrence came back into the living room with two mugs of coffee, which he sat on a side table close to Eldon. He picked up a remote and turned off the TV. The sound of Bette Davis's voice faded like a wind blowing through. “Poured in a little milk like you like,” he said. More than ten years on the rez now, Father John was thinking. People knew his habits. Peculiarities. Like family.

Then came five, ten minutes of pleasantries. The weather. Powwow season. Rodeos. Tourists on the rez, taking pictures, as if they had found themselves in a foreign country. Finally, a gradual move into more serious matters: The ghost leg giving him fits. Hurting all the time, and not even there anymore. From the past. He'd like to shoot it. Then he said, “Elsa tells me there was trouble at the mission over that Butch Cassidy film. Red Bull!” He made a hrrumph sound. “Hot head. From a long line of hot heads. I heard stories all my life of how the chiefs had to keep an eye on the Red Bulls or they would ride off, kill a rancher, steal the cattle, fire on troops, and lead them to the village. Get everybody killed.”

“He believes the film will bring people here looking for Butch Cassidy's buried loot.”

“Nobody's gonna find it.” Eldon smiled and shook his head. “Folks have been digging holes in the mountains for a hundred years, and nobody's found it yet. My own relatives take it into
their heads to go on treasure hunts every once in a while. We got a whole slew of maps. Maybe one of 'em came from my grandfather, Lone Bear, but Grandfather never said anything to me about a map.” He gave a slow, thoughtful shrug. “Lone Bear and George was good friends. Went by the name of George Cassidy then, so he wouldn't bring shame to his family in Utah. Good Mormon people, last name Parker. His real name was Robert LeRoy Parker. I heard stories of how his mother grieved herself to death over her son taking to the outlaw trail. Always talked about going straight, my grandfather said. George took a stab at ranching for a couple of years, got to know everybody in these parts. Folks needed help building a barn, rounding up cattle, George would show up. Real neighborly like. White ranchers and Arapahos, didn't matter none to George. All people, trying to get on, he told Lone Bear. Later, after his partner framed him for stealing a horse and he served time down in Laramie, George hit the outlaw trail again. Robbed banks. Took to robbing trains. Now that took a lot of guts.”

Eldon was nodding, an expectant look on his face. Father John agreed. A lot of guts.

“Always got away. They never caught Cassidy. You know why? Story I heard, he was a planner. The gang would switch to the fresh horses, grab fresh supplies, and keep riding, and the posses had to give up. Cassidy had friends on the rez, so he'd ride here. Nobody called the sheriff or the tribal cops. The people protected him, because he was a local. Gave folks money to keep the banks off their land. I think he had a fine old time giving folks bank money to pay off the banks. He showed up at Lone Bear's camp on the Wind River after a couple jobs. Spent a week or so helping with the horses and cattle. Made himself useful, like he was ranching again, going straight. Sometimes brought along one or two gang
members. Suspicious characters, always watching the prairie. Never far from their guns. George told them to relax. Nobody was coming to an Indian camp on the rez looking for white men. Pretty soon the day came when they packed their saddlebags and rode off.”

“What about leaving behind buried treasure?”

Eldon leaned forward, rubbing at the air above his missing leg, as if he could rub away the pain. “Robbing trains is where they made the big hauls. If he left behind any treasure, it was after robbing a train.”

Father John took a moment before he said, “Robert Walking Bear was hunting for treasure when he died. Ruth says he had a map he'd gotten from his grandfather.”

“Luther Walking Bear.”

“Is it possible Cassidy hid out with one of his ancestors and left behind a map?”

Eldon gave a shout of laughter. “Walking Bears never owned any land, never wanted a place of their own. Liked roaming around, working on different ranches. Always wanted to be free to come and go, like in the Old Time.” He paused, his gaze on some faraway point. “I heard George hid out one time at Jesse Lyons's place after robbing a train. I figure he was checking on Mary Boyd, Jesse's wife. Half-breed from the rez, a real beauty and lots of gumption, and George was sweet on her. Courted her when he was ranching up around Dubois. After he went to prison, she married Jesse. Settled down on a piece of land south of Lander.”

“Did they have children?”

The old man shook his head. “Before she married Jesse, Mary had a daughter. Gave the girl to Gray Hair to bring up on the rez like an Arapaho. I hear descendants live around here somewhere.” He went quiet for a moment. One hand moved over the empty
space below his right knee. “There's stories about how the baby was George's, but Mary kept it secret. Didn't even tell him when he came back thirty years later.”

“I've heard that he came back, but it's possible that he and the Sundance Kid were killed in Bolivia by the militia.”

Eldon laughed. “Can't believe everything you read in history books. He came back, all right. Several times in the '20s and '30s. About 1934, he was here visiting old friends. Went on a camping trip looking for the loot he'd buried in the mountains. Looked up Mary and she went along. Oh, he never forgot her.” He took a long moment, staring into the center of the living room, rearranging memories, Father John thought. “You know,” he said finally, “there's a hundred maps on the rez. Everybody says his ancestor got a map from Butch Cassidy himself, when what they do is go buy a map in town. You ask me, if Butch gave a map to anybody, it would've been Mary. So she'd have something if she needed it.”