The Eagle Catcher by Margaret Coel

Author:Margaret Coel [Coel, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Holden; Vicky (Fictitious Character), Wyoming, Wind River Indian Reservation (Wyo.), Indians of North America, Mystery & Detective, Mystery Stories, Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Powwows, O'Malley; John (Fictitious Character), General, Cultural Heritage, Arapaho Indians
ISBN: 9780425154632
Google: QmiOreSPqTYC
Amazon: 0425154637
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1995-01-01T18:30:00+00:00

* * *

15

« ^ »

DENISE AND HOMER Lone Wolf’s baby was dying. The phone had jangled in the hallway at about six just as the sun had started to cast a red glow over the kitchen. Father John had already been up for more than an hour. He didn’t remember sleeping, only mentally pacing off the night until light rimmed the curtains at the bedroom window. He’d already showered, shaved, and brewed a pot of coffee when the call came. It took him about twenty minutes to get to Riverton Memorial Hospital.

Three nurses and what looked like the entire Lone Wolf family were crowded in the tiny room off the nursery: grandparents, Denise’s two sisters and their husbands, Homer’s cousin and his wife. Denise sat in a wheelchair at the foot of a crib, looking like a child herself, bewildered by an incomprehensible adult world. Homer stood behind her. gripping the bar along the top of the wheelchair. The infant lay with eyes half closed in a wavy, dreamlike manner, tubes running from the tiny body to machines on a nearby roller.

“His heart don’t know how to work,” Homer said, slicing his index finger under one eye, then the other, to wipe away the moisture. “They’re gonna fly him down to Children’s Hospital in Denver. I’m goin’ with him.” Father John caught the sharp odor of the Indian’s breath, a distillation of morning and coffee and whiskey.

Slipping a folded white stole and the silver compact containing bottles of holy water and oil from the pocket of his windbreaker, Father John asked the baby’s name. Denise answered so quietly he had to lean over and ask again. “George,” she said.

Denise’s grandfather, in his sixties with gray hair combed straight back from a pockmarked face, spoke up. “I was sickly, too, when I was born, and my grandfather gave me the name Little Wing. The name made me strong, so I give it now to my great-grandson.”

Father John draped the stole around his neck and opened the compact. He handed the bottle of holy water to Homer. Then he placed a drop of oil on one finger and made the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead. The skin felt as soft as the silk stole that folded over the top of his hand. He took the bottle of holy water and, letting one or two drops fall on the forehead, said, “I baptize you, George Little Wing, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Afterward he and Homer walked down the hall of the hospital and out to the parking lot. Suddenly the Indian doubled over coughing. Father John winced at the thought of this alcoholic Arapaho, used to the open spaces of the reservation, surrounded by his own people, alone in a big city like Denver. How long before he wandered into the nearest bar and got himself rolled and beaten up?

Father John opened the door of the Toyota and fumbled among the opera tapes in the glove compartment for a tablet and ballpoint pen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.