Johnny Hunter Page 12

  Johnny pulled on his sheepskin jacket. “I’m going, too. It’s my fault that he’s out there in the snow.

  Mrs. Hunter hesitated, pulling on her lower lip with her fingers. “Okay,” she said, “but be careful, Johnny, and do what Father says.”

  “Sure.” He bent over and kissed his mom. “Fix some hot tea for us so it’s ready when we get back, okay? Dad always likes your tea.”

  She hugged him, stood up, and hugged Father McGlothlin, too. “God be with you.”

  THEY RAN ACROSS the yard and climbed into the priest’s Ford station wagon. It was snowing again—a dry, blowing snow that formed large drifts on the roadside. The car’s headlights glared off the packed snow on the highway as they headed toward Rosie’s.

  “Don’t worry,” Father McGlothlin said softly. “We’ll probably find him drinking beer and feeling bad about hitting you and your mother. He’ll be glad to come back with us.

  “I can remember winters back in Memphis,” Father said as they drove slowly off the reservation, “when we would go crazy for a snow like this. Us kids would pull our sleds out of the garage and head for the hills of the local golf course at the first sign of snow. Heck, it might be the last one for three years.”

  “Sled riding’s fun,” Johnny said.

  “Yeah, I hear you had a quite an experience sledding. Or was it tubing?”

  “A little bit of both,” Johnny said. “Finding a dead body was exciting and scary.”

  “I guess it was. Too bad about Moody Johnson. He was not a bad guy, but he couldn’t stay off the booze. American Indians have paid a huge price when they were introduced to whiskey. A real scourge for your people.”

  They rode quietly for several minutes.

  “What are you smiling about Johnny?” the priest asked.

  “Oh, just thinking about you as a kid. I never really pictured you as anything but a priest. And, you sure don’t get lonesome for snow out here in Montana, do you, Father?”

  “That’s for sure. It’s not too bad when the first snow comes, but as the winter drags on, it can get pretty depressing. They say it used to actually drive the pioneer women crazy sometimes. Did it use to bother the Cheyenne women?”

  “I don’t think so. We just think of winter as another part of nature and accept it as that. As long as there’s enough food, we’re okay.”

  They were quiet again. The car crept along the narrow highway, the snow tires crunching and throwing the snow behind them. The wipers flicked the melted snow off the windshield. Back and forth the blades swept, back and forth, and while Johnny watched, his mind drifted back to the massaum. It seemed like years had passed since the dance, but it had been less than a few hours since his father had dragged him from the lodge and into the cold night air. It’s such a shame, he thought. I felt so close to my Cheyenne brothers at the massaum, and now I’ll never go again. He would not disobey his father again.

  The road ahead dropped down a valley and then ran straight toward Miles City. Johnny was still watching the blades when blue and red flashing lights appeared on the horizon. He stared silently as they drove nearer to the lights. Two highway patrol cruisers sat alongside the other side of the road, emergency lights flashing brightly.

  “It’s a wreck!” Johnny shouted. He sat up on the edge of the seat, gripping the dashboard with all his might. “Hurry! My dad’s in that wreck and he’s badly hurt.”

  “Relax, Johnny, it’s probably not your father at all. It could be anyone of a thousand people. Sit back.” The priest gently pulled him back in his seat.

  “It is my father,” Johnny said, his voice firm and sure.

  “How can you be so positive?”

  “Because I just know. My grandfather says I have special powers, and maybe that’s how I know. I can see Dad lying alongside the truck and he’s not breathing. He must have been coming back from Rosie’s.”

  They were almost to the scene of the accident. “Is this special gift a Cheyenne spirit thing?” Father McGlothlin asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  The priest steered the station wagon behind one of the Montana state police cars and slowly brought it to a stop. The police radio crackled loudly as a patrolman set a red flair glowing on the snow-covered road. The crash had taken place in a drainage ditch beside the highway; a pickup truck lay smashed into a cottonwood tree across the bottom of the ditch.

  “I think it would be better for you to stay here while I check it out,” Father McGlothlin said softly as they sat waiting for an approaching patrolman.

  “No, I want to go,” Johnny said.

  He flipped the door handle and stepped out into the cold. Walking around to the front of the car, he waited for Father McGlothlin. He was sure of what he would see, but still, he wanted the young priest next to him.

  A BIA patrolman, short and overweight, ran up to them, his breath swirling away in little puffs of steam. Beads of sweat ran down his red face. “Are you a priest?”

  Father McGlothlin shook his head yes.

  “Good,” the patrolman said, “because we need you right now. The guy that drove that pickup is about gone, and you’re just what he needs most right now. Better leave the boy in the car though; it’s not a pretty sight down there.”

  “Is the injured man a Cheyenne?” Father McGlothlin asked.

  “Yeah, it’s Billy Hunter. You know him?”

  “Yes. This boy is his son.”

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” the patrolman said. He took his hand and with the palm open, he smacked himself on the forehead. “I am sorry, son. I didn’t know it was your dad.”

  The priest took Johnny’s hand. “Come on, let’s go down to see your father. Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  “Have you called the ambulance?” he asked the patrolman.

  Johnny took off running ahead of the priest and patrolman without waiting for the answer. His heart was pounding in his chest when he reached the broken guardrail. The familiar Ford truck lay crumpled in the snow, the hood pushed back into the passenger compartment. Steam rose from the ground where the radiator had leaked when the truck smashed into the tree. Next to the open door on the snow lay the twisted body of Billy Hunter. Joe Eagleclaw knelt over him, pulling a blanket over the big man’s body.

  “Dad!” Johnny shouted. “Oh, Dad. I’m sorry.” He slid down the shallow ditch, tears streaming down his face. His vision blurred from crying, he ran to the wrecked pickup.

  Officer Eagleclaw stepped up to him. “It’s too late, Johnny. He’s gone. I think he died the minute the truck hit the tree. I’m so sorry.” He put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder.

  Johnny knelt by his father’s body without touching it. “Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered. “Please help my dad.”

  Father McGlothlin ran up behind him and knelt next to Johnny. He slid his hand under Billy’s head and made the sign of the cross with his thumb on Billy’s forehead. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” the priest said, looking up at the sky.

  Johnny watched. He could see the priest’s lips moving as he administered the Last Sacrament to his father, but the words were lost in the night air. He felt numb. His father was really dead, and he couldn’t make this go away like a bad dream. He cried silently as the priest asked God to help the soul of Billy Hunter on his journey to heaven. Johnny’s mind wandered. The priest’s prayers sounded like Gray Man chanting. It felt like being in Spirit Canyon.

  “How’re you feeling?” Father McGlothlin asked when he finished praying for Billy Hunter.

  “Umm, okay,” he answered. He took a deep breath to stop the tears. “It all seems so unreal.”

  “Death always does,” the priest said, his voice soft and low. “It’s not like in a movie when you know it’s pretend and you can make it end.” He put his arm around Johnny as Joe Eagleclaw pulled the blanket over Billy Hunter’s face.

  “Will he go to heaven?”

  “I’m sure that God in His mercy will find a place for your f
ather at His side. He was a good man—troubled by a hostile world but still a good man. He loved you and your mother very much.”

  “I know,” Johnny said slowly. “He wanted the best for me.”

  “C’mon,” the priest said, pulling Johnny up. “We can’t do anymore here; now it’s your mother who needs our help.”

  Johnny felt a sharp pain shoot through his stomach. “Oh, Father, how can we tell her?” The tears started forming in his eyes again.

  “Your mother’s a strong woman. Stronger than you know. She’ll be okay. Cheyenne women have always been the strength of your people.”

  Johnny managed a weak smile and leaned against the priest. “I feel kind of weak in my legs. It’s like I’m in a bad dream but I can’t make myself wake up.”

  The priest wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “I know how bad you must feel. Go ahead. Lean on me. I became a priest so I could help in times like this.”

  Johnny put his face into the priest’s corduroy jacket. He sobbed deeply and the tears flowed down his face.

  “It’s okay, Johnny. It’s okay. Let it go and you’ll feel better. Go on and cry. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” They slowly walked up the hillside, making footprints in the snow as they struggled to reach the highway.

  THE SNOW STOPPED falling on the morning of Billy Hunter’s funeral, and by ten o’clock, the clouds started to break up. The winter sun poured its weak warmth on the earth, making the roads soft and slushy for the cars in the funeral procession. There were about half a dozen cars and trucks following the hearse, most of them dented and rusting with age. Johnny sat in the back seat of the funeral director’s black limousine, holding his mother’s hand. He wore his only suit, navy blue, with a dark tie. Mrs. Hunter had bought a black dress, and she wore a black lace veil over her head. She had not cried once since Billy’s death. It was as if she had expected it when Johnny and Father McGlothlin returned to the house the night of the wreck.

  “I thought the funeral Mass was nice. Father Shannon gave a nice speech about your father.”

  “It was nice,” Johnny agreed.

  It was quiet in the hearse as it slowly made its way to the cemetery.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” Minatare said, looking out the window at the mountains. “It will be nice to say goodbye to your father on a beautiful day.”

  “Dad always was happier on pretty days,” Johnny said, squeezing her hand. “He really needed a job that would’ve kept him outside all the time. I think working in the school’s basement made him crabby sometimes.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “When we were younger, he’d take me for long walks in the forests on nice days. He’d point out the different types of trees and plants and hold my hand. He was happy just to be there.”

  “I wish I could’ve seen him like that.”

  “He changed as he got older. He wanted more for you and me than he could provide, and it made him feel less than a real man. He couldn’t get good work in town, and he thought of himself as a failure. That’s what makes me saddest about his death.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  They were silent, staring out the windows at the white hillsides as the funeral procession drove into the hills toward the Northern Cheyenne cemetery. The dark green of the pine trees was the only color breaking up the endless white. Smoke drifted from the chimney of an occasional house as they rode past. The small, purple funeral flags flapped in the wind, seeming to wave at the empty countryside.

  The black hearse slowed down and its turn signal flashed on, signaling the approach to the cemetery. It slowly turned onto the narrow road that led to Billy Hunter’s gravesite.

  “Why didn’t Grandfather ride with us?” Johnny suddenly asked. The question had been in the back of his mind since they left the funeral mass at St. Andrew.

  “He wanted to go to his special place to pray to Maheo for Billy. He felt it would be better, especially because Father Shannon’s going to say the prayers at the grave. Those two old men don’t get along. Never have.”

  Johnny tugged at the knot in his tie. He hated dress ties. The only time, it seemed to him, that he wore one was when someone died. “I still think he should have come, anyway,” Johnny said after a moment.

  Mrs. Hunter patted his hand. “Don’t be mad at Gray Man. He’s old and set in his ways. He’ll pray for Billy in his own way, and I think God hears our prayers, no matter who we pray to.”

  Johnny looked in her deep black eyes. They were sad, but he could see the spark that had kept her going through all the hard years with his father. “That’s how I feel, too, Mom. It’s why I can believe in Jesus and Maheo. Richard told me it’s easy to believe in both, but I never knew it ’til just now.”

  The limousine slowed as it drove under the entrance arch, a black wrought iron gateway with the words NORTHERN CHEYENNE painted in red on a warped wooden sign. The headstones in the cemetery showed through the melting snow. At the back of the circular roadway was a mound of dirt, freshly dug with steam rising from the dark pile of earth to the gravesite. The hearse stopped next to it.

  Johnny climbed out of the big car and ran around to beat the funeral director to his mother’s door. He yanked the door open just as the funeral director reached the chrome handle. The director was a tall white man, thin with gray hair and a pencil thin mustache. He never smiled. Johnny’s mother took his hand and pulled herself out onto the snow-covered ground.

  “Thank you, Johnny,” she said, smiling at him.

  He felt good when she wrapped her arm through his. They stood and watched as the wooden casket was pulled out from between the black doors. Then, slowly, they walked in the snow toward the gravesite. The pallbearers, many of them Billy’s friends from Rosie’s, carried the coffin. Logan and Estelle Badger walked with them. Johnny was pleased to see Sarah Pretty Feather and her parents. She smiled at him as they walked past on their way to the gravesite. Officer Eagleclaw was also present and smiled at him, too.

  Among the small crowd were Richard, Bobbie, and most of the basketball team, including Coach Goodheart. The boys looked uncomfortable in their suits and ties.

  The breeze felt warm on his face, and for a moment, he thought about springtime and tossing an old softball with his father. They would play behind the house, using the corral fence as the outfield wall for home runs.

  “Good catch,” Billy would call when Johnny managed to squeeze the softball in his fielder’s mitt. The glove’s leather was cracked from many summers in the sun, but Billy had worked linseed oil into it every spring to make it last for another season.

  “You’ll make a real outfielder in the big leagues if you keep it up!” Billy shouted.

  Johnny would grin, his heart full with pride at his father’s words. His father was happy when they were playing sports.

  The funeral procession stopped at the gravesite, and the pallbearers placed the casket on a wooden table underneath a grove of hickory trees. Trees grew everywhere within the cemetery, pushing over the grave markers, yet providing shade for visitors during the hot Montana summers. Father Shannon walked around the casket and stood facing the mourners. He was wearing a cassock and black coat, which he filled out like an overstuffed chair. A biretta sat on his head, and a purple stole hung around his neck. He spread his arms.

  “Let us pray for the soul of our departed brother, Billy Hunter,” he called out to the sky above as he sprinkled holy water on the casket.

  Johnny watched the priest reading from his worn black Bible without hearing the words. His eyes soon wandered up the hills behind Father Shannon. He blinked. The dark form of his grandmother appeared in the shadows of the trees. She waved to him. Johnny shook his head. This Cheyenne stuff is making me nuts, he thought. His mind drifted back to the snowstorm when he heard the strong voice of Father Shannon nearing the end of his funeral prayers.

  “Let us say the Our Father,” he said.

  The small group recited the ancient prayer, with Father Shannon
’s voice heard over all the others.

  “Amen,” the priest said.

  “Amen,” the Cheyenne answered.

  Father Shannon walked around the casket to Johnny and his mother. He took her hand. “You have my deepest sympathy, Mrs. Hunter. He was a good man. If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Johnny was surprised to see that there were tears in the priest’s eyes when Father Shannon shook his hand.

  Before leaving, Logan Badger walked to the gravesite. He raised his hands to the sky and sang an old Cheyenne chant that lasted about a minute. When he finished, he rejoined his wife and the other mourners. Logan and Estelle Badger walked up to them and hugged them both. They were crying or misty-eyed, and Johnny felt a deep sense of loss fill his soul. The reality of his father’s death struck him like a bat striking a baseball.

  James and Mary Pretty Feather stopped in front of Johnny and his mom. “So sorry for your loss,” James said, shaking Johnny’s hand. Mrs. Pretty Feather hugged his mom for a long moment. Soon both women were crying. She next hugged Johnny. “You are now the man of the family; you need to take care of your mother more than ever.”

  Sarah hugged Minatare. “You must be Sarah,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

  Sarah then hugged Johnny and she started to cry. Johnny tried to hold back the tears but they started flowing.

  “Thanks, Sarah. I know you didn’t know my dad, but it’s great that you came.”

  “I came for you, Johnny. I’m so sad about your dad, but I know you will get through this and be strong.” She kissed him on the cheek and walked over to join her parents.

  “Thanks again,” he said to all three of them.

  Officer Joe Eagleclaw extended his hand, shook Johnny’s, and then hugged him. The policeman gave Minatare a brief hug. “Let me know if there is anything I can do for you,” he said. He tipped his hat and briskly walked toward his cruiser, which was parked in front of the hearse.

  Coach Goodheart wrapped Johnny and his mother in his arms. His teammates awkwardly hugged him and patted him on his back.