Free Winter's Child by Margaret Coel Page B

keep the pickup steady through the tunnel. Then he turned left onto Seventeen-Mile Road and glanced over at Shannon. “That’s about it,” he said.

8
    Wilbur Horn stood at the edge of the driveway, gloved hand waving them forward. Across the barrow ditch and along the two-track that marked the driveway. The old pickup shuddered and jumped over the ice-hardened snow. “Lizzie’s great-grandson?” High notes of excitement rang in Shannon’s voice.
    He glanced over and smiled. For an instant he was back in grad school at Boston College, researching some obscure event in American history, and with a turn of a page or an idle remark, he’d be plunged backward in time, as if the past itself had reached out and grabbed him. He could still feel the excitement.
    She gripped the door handle with one hand, bracing herself against the dashboard with the other and nodding, excitement shooting off her like fireworks. He stopped at the end of the driveway in a clear spot Wilbur had waved to. Then the man yanked the door open. He might have been a doorman at a hotel. “Niceto see you, Father.” He had a wide grin and black eyes that sparkled with light in the shade of his cowboy hat. His denim jacket was lined with fur that poked out around the collar. “This your niece?”
    â€œShannon O’Malley,” Father John said, but Wilbur was already advancing toward Shannon, who had let herself out on the passenger side.
    â€œSure a lot prettier than you.” Wilbur smiled at Father John while he pumped Shannon’s hand. “Well, let’s not waste good daylight. Come on inside.” He dipped his head in the direction of the rectangular house with yellow siding and a three-step stoop at the front door, like most of the houses on the rez. Inside two bedrooms, bath, living room, kitchen. Larger than the log cabins and tiny shacks that, for nearly a hundred years, the government had considered satisfactory houses for Indians.
    Wilbur led the way across the hardened snow and up the steps. He pushed open the door and gestured them inside. The house was warm, suffused with smells of freshly brewed coffee and sizzling oil. “I put on a pot of coffee.” Wilbur took a few steps across the living room toward the kitchen. “Belle made fry bread before she went to work this morning. She’s going to stop by on her lunch break.” He motioned them through the arched doorway, tilting his head in the direction of a round table and four wooden chairs in the corner of the kitchen. Shannon took one of the chairs, and Father John sat next to her. When he had spoken with Belle Horn at a powwow last summer, she told him she had just taken a job as the nursing supervisor at the health clinic.
    â€œBelle’s got a bug about all this history stuff.” Wilbur was bustling about the counter, pouring mugs of coffee, setting them on the table. “You’d think she was the one descended from Lizzie andBrokenhorn. She was always telling stories to the kids about their great-great-grandmother, the white captive. You like fry bread?”
    Shannon nodded, and Father John caught the flash of curiosity and amusement in her eyes. Indian reservation, fry bread, the descendant of Lizzie Fletcher Brokenhorn. Exactly what she would have imagined. This girl had a big imagination and, he was learning, a big appetite for life.
    â€œBread’s nice and warm.” Wilbur lifted a plate stacked with fry bread from the oven and set it in the center of the table. The chunks of bread were rounded and irregular, like biscuits. Then, a stack of small plates, paper napkins, a bottle of honey, and a plate of butter and a knife appeared on the table. “Belle’s proud of her fry bread. Used to watch her grandmother make it in a pot of hot oil on the campfire. Help yourselves.” Wilbur dropped onto the chair next to the window. “She’ll expect a good review.” He nodded