Free The Man Who Fell from the Sky by Margaret Coel

hanging.
    â€œIt’s possible.”
    â€œI’m hanging around, in case Ruth needs to talk. You know what the head doctors say, process what she seen.” He took another moment, jaw muscles flinching, words working on his tongue. “I just wish I’d gone with Robert. He had a crazy idea he was goingto find Butch Cassidy’s loot. I went a couple times with him and Cutter, but it was too weird for me. Robert had a copy of this old map he said he got from our grandfather. Passed down by Butch himself. You ask me, he bought it in one of them tourist shops in Lander. Everybody’s trying to make a few bucks off the past.” He was shaking his head. “I got me a good job at the BIA and I can’t take off for a whole day. So Robert went up there alone.”
    â€œHow could you have prevented what happened?”
    â€œRuth says it was an accident. Couldn’t’ve been anything else, despite the fed going around and asking questions.” He shook his head as if the investigation were an annoying inconvenience. “I can’t get it out of my mind . . .”
    â€œYou mustn’t blame yourself.” Dallas Spotted Deer, Father John was thinking, would wait here until Ruth returned. They both needed to process what had happened.
    â€œIf I can ever be of help . . .”
    â€œYeah. Yeah.” The man waved away the offer.
    â€œTell Ruth I’ll stop by later.”
    â€œYou do that, Father. Do her good.”
    *   *   *
    HE DROVE FROM Arapahoe to Ethete, a few other vehicles coming at him out of the dust. Past little houses with white propane tanks and two-seat pickups and a smattering of plastic toys in the yards, laundry flapping on the lines. He turned up the volume on the CD player, and the music rose over the sound of the wind that rushed past the open windows. He tried not to think of Vicky. Still she lingered at the edges of his mind. Months would pass when he didn’t see her. No one who needed their help—the lawyer, the priest—and he could almost forget about her. And then Robert Walking Beardied, and there she was in Ruth’s living room. Old friends of hers, Ruth and Robert, from their days at St. Francis Mission School, ties that bind, the past that never lets go.
    The hood was up on a tan pickup as Father John pulled into the yard in front of Eldon Lone Bear’s place. Lawrence, the old man’s grandson, lifted himself out from under the hood and squinted into the sun a moment before he came around the pickup, rubbing a black-splashed rag between his hands. A smile as wide as the outdoors creased his face. “Grandfather’s been hoping you’d drop by ever since Elsa said she talked to you this morning.”
    â€œHow is he?” One of his grandkids was always with the old man, he knew. Arapahos never abandoned the elders. Carried them on their backs in the Old Time, running from the soldiers and the guns that shot fire.
    â€œFor eighty-five years old, I’d say Grandfather is doing good. Complains about that ghost leg, but other than that . . .” He was still smiling. “Come on in. You like coffee? Sandwich? I think Elsa made a cake.”
    â€œCoffee sounds good.” Father John followed the man up the steps and into the small living room. They always wanted to feed you, the Arapahos. It had taken some getting used to. He sometimes thought he would drown in all the coffee they poured for him. No one left an Arapaho village hungry in the Old Time. Visitors were sent off onto the plains with full bellies, because no one knew when they might eat again.
    Eldon Lone Bear sat in a wheelchair in front of a small TV that stood on a chest against the far wall. Father John recognized Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. He wondered if Eldon’s grandkids had heard of either actor.
    â€œHey, Father.” The old man wheeled himself around in a coupleof smooth strokes and