The Story Teller (2 page)

Professor Pearson gripped her briefcase under one arm as she plunged down the walkway to the parking lot on the other side of Speer Boulevard. Several students—even one of her own colleagues—hurried by. How silly, her fearfulness, she told herself. Other people were still about. She was perfectly safe. She was becoming an addled old woman.

She crossed Speer Boulevard on the green light, passing through the yellow columns of headlights from waiting vehicles, and started up the gentle rise of earth that surrounded the parking lot. Traffic belched into the darkness behind her, but ahead the parking lot sat in a well of light shining down from the metal poles around the periphery.

A few cars were scattered around the lot; she could see her Impala at the far end. Relaxed now, she started down the rise, her feet groping for solid underpinnings in the soft dirt, when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure darting along the rise across the lot.

She stopped, eyes glued to the figure—it looked like a man—lurching in and out of the shadows, hesitating,
watching. Suddenly he ran down the little slope and across the asphalt. Ran toward her! She stumbled backward, pivoting, trying to get a purchase on the uphill slope. The squeal of tires, the screech of brakes burst through the night as she caught herself against the hard coldness of a metal light pole. Sheltering behind it, she stared down at the white 4×4 rocking to a stop.

In an instant, two men were running toward the shadowy figure zigzagging between the parked cars, dodging the grasping arms. Then she saw the raised arm, the glint of metal, the thrust toward the crouching figure, and heard the whack of metal on bone. The figure staggered, dissolved before her, and the others scooped him up, lifting arms and shoulders and legs, pushing him into the back of the 4×4, a bag of rocks now, something not human, crowded and folded onto the floor as the tailgate slammed shut. The others jumped into the front seat; there was the sharp, hollow sound of doors slamming.

The scream welled inside her, an enormous flood rising in her throat, stoppered by her own fear.
They’ve killed him!
—her mind shouted the words—and she had done nothing, had allowed her legs to turn into numb and formless objects over which she had no control. The shame of her inaction fixed her in space, the metal pole a shaft of ice in her hands, the briefcase at her feet.

The 4×4 was gathering speed, racing across the lot, banking into a sharp right onto the street and heading north into the maze of skyscrapers. The sound of squealing tires faded into the darkness, overridden now by the piercing sounds that rose around her, surprising her as she anchored herself to the pole and screamed and screamed.

1

A
white-yellow haze hung over Highway 287 as Vicky Holden drove north along the foothills of the Wind River Mountains. To the east, the plains ran into the distance, parched and cracked under a sky bleached pale blue by the sun. A dry breeze scuttled across the clumps of wild grasses and bent the sunflower stalks. It was the first Tuesday in June, the Moon When the Hot Weather Begins, but it was already the kind of heat the elders told about in stories of the Old Time, when her people had lived free on the plains—the kind of heat that melted the hooves of the buffalo into the ground and pulled the shaggy hides over their bones, like gunnysacks. The kind of heat, she knew, that could take her breath away.

She had the highway to herself. Since crossing the southern boundary of the Wind River Reservation a good thirty minutes ago, she’d passed only a couple of pickups. She held the Bronco steady at sixty-five, trying to ignore the irritation that nipped at her like a yapping dog she couldn’t shake off. If the cultural director of the Arapaho tribe had wanted an appointment, he could have driven to her law office on Main Street in Lander. Instead she was driving to his office in Ethete, at least thirty minutes each way, when her desk was piled with other matters demanding her attention.

“We want to avail ourselves of your services,” Dennis Eagle Cloud had said on the phone this morning.
“Best you come to the reservation.” There had been something hard to define in his tone—a hint that whatever he wished to discuss should be taken out and examined only on the reservation, not in a white town. Or had she imagined it? She wished now she had asked for some explanation, pleaded her own busy schedule.

But she hadn’t. Hadn’t suggested a meeting at her office because she didn’t want him to call another attorney. It had been almost four years since she’d come home and opened a one-woman law practice in the naive and idealistic hope she might help her people. But so far her list of clients included as many whites as Arapahos. She was the lawyer for divorces, adoptions, wills, and real-estate leases, while matters such as tribal lands, and oil and gas and water—important tribal matters—went to a law firm in Casper. The tribal officials had never sought her services.

Until this morning. Which, she knew, was the reason she’d agreed to the two o’clock meeting in Ethete. She’d put down the phone feeling elated and discouraged at the same time. The call had finally come, yet Dennis Eagle Cloud was not a member of the tribal council—the business council, as the Arapahos called the six elected members who handled Arapaho affairs on the reservation. He was a tribal employee, a low-level official. How important could the matter be?

Then it hit her. As the cultural director, Dennis had been working with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the federal law that allowed tribes to reclaim some of their artifacts from museums. The Arapahos had already taken back numerous sacred objects. Maybe he had run into some kind of snag and needed legal advice. Her irritation began to subside. This could be a very important matter indeed, and Dennis had called her, not the Casper firm.

For a moment she allowed herself to wonder if the cultural director was also involved in efforts to claim
some of the old lands in Colorado—lands promised to the people who’d been attacked in the Sand Creek Massacre more than a hundred years ago, but never given to them. She shrugged off the idea. That was a matter for the business council, which meant the Casper firm was undoubtedly doing the legal work. But if Dennis was about to hand her the chance to work on something involving NAGPRA—well, it could be an opportunity to prove herself worthy of other important matters.

She slowed for an easy right into Ethete and parked in the shade washing down the front of the red-brick building that housed the tribal offices. Grabbing her briefcase and black shoulder bag, she slid out into the heat, trying not to bang her door against an old pickup, although the pickup sported so many dents and scrapes and rust patches that another one of the world’s hard knocks hardly seemed to matter.

It was cool inside the tribal building, a startling, man-made coolness. She nodded at the receptionist behind the desk across the lobby and hurried down the corridor on the right. Dennis Eagle Cloud stood outside a door at the far end, as if he’d seen her drive up and had been waiting while she negotiated the parking lot and lobby. He was about her age—early forties—with dark skin and dark eyes and black hair that curled over the opened collar of a white cowboy shirt. “We been waiting for you,” he said, waving her forward, an impatient gesture.

“We?” she said, stopping in front of him.

He took her hand and shook it loosely, as though he might be afraid of crushing it. Then he ushered her through the doorway into a small office almost completely taken up by a wide-topped desk. Beyond the desk, occupying a straight-backed chair against the wall, was one of the tribal elders, Charlie Redman, the storyteller.

Vicky felt a stab of shame. This was the reason for her drive to Ethete. Dennis had wanted to spare the elder the long drive to Lander. She stepped around the desk toward the old man, who was starting to get to his feet—blue jeans, electric-blue cowboy shirt, tan Stetson moving toward her.

“Please don’t get up, Grandfather,” she said, using the term of respect for Arapaho elders. The old man reached out and took her hand, holding it a long moment. His eyes had a dreamy look—he might have been looking beyond her, she thought, to some other place more real than the small office tucked at the end of a corridor. The silver bracelets on his wrists made a small clanking noise as he returned her hand. “You are good, Granddaughter,” he said, as if he’d inquired about her health and had reached his own conclusion.

“Grandfather wants you in on this.” Dennis Eagle Cloud motioned her to the vacant chair next to the elder. As soon as she’d sat down, the cultural director bent over the desk, picked up a thin blue folder, and handed it to her. Large black letters marched across the top:
DENVER MUSEUM OF THE WEST.
In the center was the logo of a cowboy on a bucking bronco, lasso swirling overhead. Below the logo, in small type:
Inventory of Arapaho Funeral Objects and Other Sacred Objects in Compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

So, it was about NAGPRA. Vicky tried to keep her face unreadable, tried to conceal her excitement. Almost four years, waiting for her people to trust her with something important. “What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

Dennis sat back against the edge of the desk, arms crossed over his middle. “NAGPRA requires museums to provide each tribe with a complete inventory of objects belonging to that tribe. Soon as we sign off on the inventory”—a nod toward the folder in her hand—“we
can claim our things from the Denver Museum of the West.”

Vicky flipped through the pages. A running list of artifacts and descriptions:
Spear—leather thongs, eagle feathers. Rattle—fur pieces, lightning design. Warrior shirt—tanned hide, decorative designs.
Dozens of other objects.

She looked up, aware that both the director and the elder were watching her. The matter seemed clear. The museum had supplied the inventory; the Arapahos could acknowledge it and take the next step to claim the items. Not every item could be claimed under NAGPRA, she knew. Only sacred and burial objects, and cultural objects belonging to specific families. There was room for negotiation, however. A task for the cultural director.

“Why do you need my services?” she asked, handing back the folder.

“It ain’t there.” This from the elder, who shifted sideways in his chair. The legs made a little scratching noise against the floor.

The cultural director spoke up. “We assumed all the Arapaho artifacts in the museum were on the list.” He was tapping the edge of the desk with one hand, a steady rhythm of impatience. “But when I asked Grandfather Redman to look over the list, he said the museum left something off.”

Vicky turned toward the old man. “You’re saying the inventory isn’t complete, Grandfather?” She struggled for a tone of respect, although the old man’s concern was hard to imagine. Surely the museum would comply with federal law. The consequences of not complying were serious: loss of federal funds, even felony indictments.

The elder said, “My ancestor’s book ain’t on the list. I seen it in the museum.”

Vicky drew in a long breath. Her own assumptions collided against the truth in the old man’s voice. “Please
tell me what you saw,” she said, leaning toward him, feeling the familiar anticipation she had felt as a child when the elders began to tell a story of the Old Time—a grandfather story—and she was about to learn something she hadn’t known before.

Charlie Redman cleared his throat, a low, gravelly sound. Eyes ahead, on that other place where he dwelled, he began: “My ancestor was No-Ta-Nee. He rode with Chief Niwot in the Old Time down in Colorado. No-Ta-Nee had the job to keep the stories, you know.” A quick glance sideways, as if to confirm that she did know. Then, at a leisurely pace, he said, “No-Ta-Nee kept the stories about the people, everything we believe and everything that happened, and he told the younger generation so they would know. One day he found one of them ledger books the government agents used, so he wrote down the story about the last days the people lived in Colorado. Wrote it all down in pictures, exactly right.

“Many years later”—he made a movement with his hand, as if to wave away the passage of time—“No-Ta-Nee’s ledger book come to the museum. He was in a lot of battles with the soldiers, so maybe the book got lost on the battlefield and somebody picked it up and give it to the museum. I don’t know how it come there. But when I was this high,” he explained as he raised his hand to his shoulder, “one of the Jesuit priests that was here at St. Francis Mission seen the book in the museum. So he took my grandfather and me down to Denver. It was in the summer of 1920. We went on the train. And we rode one of them trolley cars down a street with tall buildings on both sides and got off at a building with white columns in front. Inside was a small glass case, and the only thing in the case was No-Ta-Nee’s book. It was beautiful.”