The Shadow Dancer (A Wind River Reservation Myste) Read online

  “Sherwood family used to run a ranch in the mountains west of Fort Washakie.” Vicky walked around the Bronco, inserted the key, and opened the door. A blast of heat hit her.

  “That’s the family.” Weedly remained on the sidewalk, hands jammed into the pockets of his blue jeans. “Old people died, rest of the family moved off the rez. All that’s left is James. Calls himself Orlando. Lives up at the ranch with his so-called followers, the shadow dancers. Every six weeks they put up what they call a shadow dance that lasts four days. Dancers claim they go into the shadow world and commune with the ancestors, who, they say, are on their way back to earth. Gonna be Indian heaven here soon. Maybe all our water problems’ll solve themselves.”

  He gave a shout of laughter and shook his head.

  “I didn’t see Sherwood here,” Vicky said.

  “Never leaves the ranch. Too busy communing with the ancestors. Real sad, I’d say. James Sherwood was a bright kid at Indian High. One of the best and the brightest.” Weedly stared across the empty lot. “God help us if that’s what becomes of the best and brightest.”

  “What happened?” Vicky said.

  “Heard he moved to Denver, went to college, got to be a computer whiz kid. Landed a good job, then bam! Went on a hike in the mountains one day and got hit by lightning. Spent time in a coma. Says he died and went into the shadow world. Met up with Wovoka himself.”

  “The Ghost Dance prophet,” Vicky said, reaching into her memory for what she’d heard about Wovoka. Bits and pieces started to come: Paiute Indian, started the Ghost Dance religion sometime in the 1880s, gathered followers from tribes across the West, her own people among them. Now she had it: Grandmother had told stories about how the Ghost Dance had given the people hope in the bad time when they were sent to the reservation and the buffalo was gone and the children were crying with hunger. Father, was what Wovoka called himself. Hesuna’nin.

  “Followers come from all over,” Weedly was saying. “Probably some Arapahos at the ranch.” He let out a guffaw. “Orlando says the new world’s coming on the last day of one of the dance sessions, just like Wovoka prophesied. All the followers got to do is keep dancing. If the new world doesn’t get here after one dance session, they wait six weeks, then hold another. One of the Indians out here told me the dancing’s gonna start up again tonight.”

  Vicky was quiet a moment. “What do the Four Old Men say about it?” The spiritual leaders had the final word on Arapaho beliefs, an authority that Sherwood, or Orlando, seemed to have taken to himself.

  “I suspect the Four Old Men are thinking that sooner or later Orlando’s followers are gonna give up, just like Wovoka’s followers did when they kept dancing and dancing and the new world never came. Pretty soon Orlando’s gonna be sitting up at his ranch all by himself, one lonely prophet.”

  Weedly shrugged. “Orlando’s harmless. Big nuisance, sending the followers out to block traffic and make converts, but harmless.”

  The man gave her a little wave and started across the lot toward the green pickup. “I’ll get back to you about the JBC,” he called.

  Vicky was already behind the steering wheel, pulling the door shut. She backed out, lowering the windows as she went, then shot forward onto the highway, the wind hot and scratchy on her face and hands. She checked her watch, conscious of her muscles tensing. She’d agreed to meet her ex-husband, Ben, for dinner at the Peppermill in Lander at six-thirty. She was going to be late. Ben hated it when she was late.

  3

  The sun seemed stuck in place over the mountains when Father John turned into the mission grounds and drove through the tunnel of cottonwoods, branches drooping in the heat. “Gloire immortelle” swelled around him. He swung onto Circle Drive beyond the trees, and the vistas opened up. White clouds shot through with reds and oranges hung motionless, like clouds painted on a blue canvas.

  He checked his watch. Almost seven. The quiet interlude between the end of the day’s activities and the beginning of the evening’s. The buildings around Circle Drive had a vacant, abandoned look: the yellow stucco administration building with his office in the front corner; the church with the white steeple towering over the mission grounds; the old gray stone school, now the Arapaho museum; the two-story red-brick residence. Between the buildings he could see the faint shadows beginning to spiral onto the plains.

  He parked in front of the residence, turned off the opera, and hurried up the sidewalk. From out on Seventeen-Mile Road came the scream of a truck taking the curve too fast.

  The minute he let himself in the front door, the three-legged golden retriever, Walks-On-Three-Legs, bounded into the entry and stuck a wet nozzle into his hand. He patted the dog’s head and promised they’d have a game of Frisbee soon. Then he set his cowboy hat on the bench next to the door. From the kitchen down the hall—past the stairs, the door to his study, the archway to the living room—came the odor of meat and vegetables simmering in tomato sauce.

  “ ’Bout time you got home.” Elena stood at the end of the hall, a short, squared figure silhouetted in the white fluorescent light that shone through her cap of gray hair, electrifying the strands. She wore a shapeless dress cinched at the waist by a blue apron, which she smoothed across the middle, as if she were laying a tablecloth. Her face was in shadow, eyes black slits of irritation.

  The old woman had been keeping house for the priests at St. Francis now for . . . nobody knew how long. Every time he’d asked, he’d gotten such answers as: since the snows piled up to the eaves, the pastor got a used blue Chevy, the grass dancers won the biggest prize in the powwow. He’d finally understood. The number of years wasn’t important. The mission had been passed down to her from the ancestors, along with dark brown eyes, a caramel complexion, and a world infused with spirits and wonders, not always meant to be analyzed and counted. She lived in a tiny house two miles away with her husband and an assortment of grown kids and grandkids, but St. Francis Mission was also home.

  Father John followed the squat figure into the kitchen, the golden retriever bounding beside him. Father George was at the table, elbows scrunching the red-checkered tablecloth, an empty bowl with traces of stew pushed to one side. The new priest had short, sandy hair above a prominent brow that made his gray eyes seem deep-set and shadowy. He wore a yellow polo shirt, and the opened collar spread around his thick neck. There was a solidity about the man, a certitude, Father John thought, that seemed to draw people to him, the way a shelter on the plains might draw people in a windstorm. Father John could imagine someone in trouble coming to Father George and going away comforted and assured, reined in against a wall of stone.

  His assistant lifted a mug of coffee in greeting. “Missed a great feast,” he said.

  “Drove like Mario Andretti to get here.” Father John walked over to the cabinet, took out a bag of dog food, and shook the kernels into the dish on the floor. It was a pattern they’d developed, he and Walks-On. When he came home, he fed the dog, even though, he knew, Elena had already fed him. He set the bag back on the shelf. “Turned down chicken dinner at Minnie and Louise Little Horse’s.”

  “Good thing.” Elena was ladling chunks of potatoes, carrots, and meat into a bowl. “Those old ladies don’t know the first thing about cookin’. Could’ve poisoned you by mistake.” She set the bowl down hard on the table. Thick brown liquid washed over the rim and dripped onto the tablecloth.

  Father John sat at his place across from the other priest, said a silent prayer, then took a bite of stew. It was delicious, and Elena had kept it hot, the way his mother had kept dinner for him all those years ago when he was late coming home from baseball practice.

  “Much better than chicken,” he said, glancing up at the housekeeper standing next to the table, hands on hips, gray head tilted in an attitude of expectation.

  “You got that right.”

  She gave him a dismissing wave, but he could see in her expression that he’d worked his way back into her good graces. He smiled up at her
, then took another spoonful of stew.

  “As I was saying to Father George before you come in the door . . .” She was untying her apron, folding it in half, hanging it over the metal bar on the stove. “I got a baby shower for my granddaughter tonight.” She started down the hallway. “Leave the dishes,” she called. “I’ll get to them tomorrow.” The usual parting instruction, and usually he rinsed out the dishes and stacked them in the rack.

  “Parish council meeting’s been canceled,” Father George said.

  Father John held his spoon suspended over the bowl. The front door slammed shut, sending a tremor through the floorboards. He’d been counting on tonight’s meeting, the last meeting with the Arapahos on the council before the board of directors arrived.

  “Two guys with the flu. Three people out of town. One woman had a family emergency in Casper.” The other priest shrugged. “Had no choice but to call the other members and cancel the meeting.”

  “Maybe we can reschedule before the weekend,” Father John heard himself saying. He’d call the Arapahos on the parish council tomorrow. He wanted to go over the annual report with them before the board meeting this weekend.

  What was it about the annual board meeting that had him so on edge? “Important matters on the agenda, John,” the Provincial had said last week when he’d called. But there were always important matters on the agenda. It was what wasn’t on the agenda that bothered him, followed him like a shadow—that this was the year the board would recommend that the Jesuits close St. Francis.

  He ate some more stew and tried to ignore the uneasy feeling. It defied logic. The Jesuits had run St. Francis for more than a century. Why would the Society close the mission now?

  “Don’t count on the parish council having much influence on the board,” Father George said, as if the man had seen into his head. “The board will look at data, John. Clear, quantified data. Types of liturgies and programs, numbers of participants, and most important, results.”

  “What’s going on?” Father John pushed the bowl of stew aside. He was no longer hungry. This new man, his assistant, here only two weeks, seemed to know more about the agenda than he did.

  The other priest gave a snort of laughter and set his mug down. Threads of coffee ran down the sides. “What makes you think I’m privy to the board’s thinking?”

  “You know the new members.” There were seven directors, including the bishop. Three—still a minority, he reminded himself—were new: a philosopher, a college president, a former Provincial—all Father George’s colleagues. His assistant had been a Provincial himself once—that was the year Father John had spent at Grace House. He winced at the memory, the juxtaposition of their careers.

  Father George flattened both hands on the table. “Isn’t it obvious that the board has to consider whether we’re making the best use of our limited resources and manpower?”

  Father John didn’t say anything. This wasn’t going to be the usual meeting, with black-suited, white-collared men nodding over the annual report, eager to get back to college classrooms and administration jobs and leave the management of an Indian mission to John O’Malley. The uneasy feeling churned inside him like an old engine trying to kick over.

  “And another matter.” Father George was just warming up. “You have to wonder—do you not?—about the depth of the people’s Catholic faith, with a cult operating on the reservation. What does that cult leader call himself? Orlando!” The priest snorted. “Says he’s a prophet. People can be taken in by such rubbish, you know. All it takes is some charismatic man and a lot of people—people who don’t have anything else to believe in—will follow the leader into fire or flood. Don’t forget what happened to the poor people who followed Jim Jones to Guyana. Cults can be very dangerous, John. We have to speak out against Orlando and the shadow dance from the pulpit.”

  Father John stared at the man across from him a moment. Somehow they’d veered off the subject. “You see the irony here, don’t you?” he said finally.

  “Irony?” Father George sat back in his chair, a relaxed air of expectation about him.

  Father John hurried on. “The early Christians were also considered a cult. The Jesus followers were crucified and beheaded. Everybody thought they were mad. Some people still think we’re mad, George. And priests like us are the maddest of all. We walk away from what everybody else considers normal.” He threw his head back toward the hallway, the front door, and the world beyond. “We live far away from our families and everything else that other people hold dear, and we follow a charismatic leader.”

  “So now you’re comparing Orlando to Jesus Christ?”

  Father George raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. Father John was quiet a moment. “I’m saying that the Indians at the shadow ranch are believers, George, just as we are, but we believe in a different messiah.” His own belief, he was thinking, stabbed at him at times like a sharp knife and fixed him in place. He was always free to walk away, he knew, but then he would be left with the wound, open and gaping like a void.

  “You’re playing the role of devil’s advocate,” Father George said. “Frankly, John, we don’t have the time to play intellectual games.”

  The other priest pushed himself to his feet, and Father John wondered if his assistant was referring to the shadow dancers or to St. Francis Mission. Which one was running out of time?

  “The shadow dance is a cult,” Father George went on, “and we must speak out against it.”

  Father John said, “I want to talk to the elders before we say anything about the dance.”

  “The elders? I can’t imagine they’d have anything to do with a self-proclaimed prophet.”

  “The shadow dance is a revival of the old Ghost Dance religion . . .” Father John began to explain, but the other man had raised his hand, like a traffic cop.

  “From the 1880s! Times were different then, John. Indians were drawn to the prophet, Wovoka, because he promised them a better life, which, incidentally, never came about. The opposite occurred. The Seventh Calvary—Custer’s regiment, I believe—killed the last of the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee in 1890. Custer’s revenge, some historians call the massacre. Correct?”

  Father John nodded. It didn’t surprise him that Father George had already looked into the history. His new assistant was thorough, a stickler for detail. He took in a long breath and started again to explain: The Ghost Dance religion was part of Arapaho tradition, and the elders guarded the tradition. Since Orlando seemed to have patterned the shadow dance after the old religion, he didn’t want to say anything about it until he’d spoken to the elders.

  “The board’s going to decide whether to continue the mission, isn’t that right?” he said, steering the conversation back on track.

  Father George looked away for a moment. Walks-On, snuggled on his rug in the corner, snored into the quiet. Finally the other priest brought his gaze back. “I wouldn’t expect a peremptory decision, John. They’re reasonable men. They’ll discern the best option.”

  Father John got to his feet and started stacking the dishes in the sink. He turned on the hot water, squeezed the bottle of yellow detergent, and watched the liquid churn into suds. Behind him, the other priest’s footsteps moved across the vinyl floor and into the hallway.

  “Where do you stand, George?” Father John glanced over his shoulder at the other man’s back.

  “What?” Father George swung around. In the backward tilt of the sandy head, the thrust of the jaw, Father John saw the truth. The Provincial had sent George Reinhold here to gather information—quantified data—for the board of directors. George Reinhold was the Provincial’s man on the scene, the objective observer.

  “I doubt my opinion will matter.”

  “What is your opinion?” Father John picked up the towel flung over the drainboard and faced the man.

  “My opinion? I think we should close this place, sell the land, and use the money to better advantage. Offer more college scholar
ships to Arapaho kids. My opinion? That would produce a greater benefit over time than fielding a baseball team and trying to sober up a bunch of alcoholics. There are other places Arapahos can go for those programs.”

  He started backing into the hall. “I’m sorry, John,” his voice softer. “The directors are aware of your fondness for the mission, but we have to be practical.” He turned and continued down the dimly lit hall, grabbed the knob on the bannister, and swung himself onto the stairs. Each step sent a muffled thud reverberating into the kitchen.

  Father John tossed the towel onto the drainboard. So, he was unexpectedly free tonight after all. He walked down the hall and, scooping his cowboy hat off the bench, let himself out the door.

  4

  No sign of Ben. Most of the tables in the Peppermill were occupied. The subdued sounds of music and laughter floated from the bar that adjoined the dining room. Vicky waited inside the door while the hostess threaded her way past the tables toward the front: tall, attractive woman in her thirties, with brown hair pinned back into a bun, the ends sticking out like feathers around her head, and thick, black eyelashes that deposited little flakes of mascara on her cheeks. Below the collar of her black dress was a tiny white name tag: MARY SEELS. She reached for the menus stacked on a small table.

  Vicky said she was meeting Ben Holden.

  The woman’s hand stopped over the menus. A barely concealed look of surprise came into her expression. She seemed to look at Vicky for the first time: the black hair parted on the side and smoothed slightly back; the blue linen dress and silver necklace; the high-heeled sandals. Finally she said, “Mr. Holden hasn’t arrived yet, but your table is ready. Follow me.” She turned abruptly and led the way through the dining room to a table with a stiff white cloth and places set for two.

  Vicky wondered if the woman was another one of Ben’s conquests. There had been many over the years. Indian, white, Hispanic. Ben’s appeal was universal.