Free The Spirit Woman by Margaret Coel Page B

would gradually work themselves off the list as donations floated in. Then they’d gone to the senior citizens’ center, Kevin following on the Harley, the motorcycle roaring over Puccini. Father John introduced the other priest to the elders and grandmothers. When he left, Kevin was sitting with three elders, the miniature silver tape player in the middle of the table.
    Father John had driven north on Highway 132 and stopped at Theresa Redwing’s. A dark-eyed young woman had answered the door. It was Grandmother’s bingo day. He’d find Theresa at the Palace.
    Now he made his way past the parked vehicles to the entrance. Inside, a cloud of smoke hung over the large hall with tables arranged in front of the stage at the far end. People were scattered along one side of the tables, peering at the cards flattened in front of them. The caller sat on stage, his attention on a framed-glass box with small, white balls tumbling inside. Numbers lit up the bingo board behind him. “Under B, fourteen.” The voice boomed into the microphone. “B, one four.” Hands flew over the cards, quickly daubing the number.
    â€œWanna play, Father?” A middle-aged woman walked over, disbelief and confusion in the dark face. “Next game’s a blackout. Pays real good. Mission could use the money.” That was true. St. Francis could always use an infusion of funds. “I’m looking for Theresa Redwing,” he said.
    The woman nodded toward the gray-haired woman seated at the front table. “Always sits over there in her lucky place.”
    Father John waited until the blackout game had ended before making his way along the rows of tables.
    â€œGonna take a little break, folks.” The microphone screeched back on itself. “Stand up, stretch, get yourselves a cup of good, hot coffee.” People were already getting to their feet, chairs scraping the floor. Father John slid into the chair next to Theresa Redwing.
    â€œThese old eyes must be gettin’ worse.” The woman blinked at him through thick lenses that made her pupils seem blurred and outsized. “That you, Father John, or am I seein’ ghosts? Here, let me pinch you.” She reached out and pulled at his jacket sleeve.
    He laughed. “I’m here, Theresa.”
    â€œGet yourself a card, then. You got the luck of the Irish.”
    â€œAnd it’s all bad.”
    â€œSo I hear.” The woman kept her eyes on his. “Moccasin telegraph says you’re leaving these parts.”
    â€œThey want me to teach history again.”
    She nodded, as if it made perfect sense, his going. “You like history, don’t you?”
    â€œI like it here. History matters here.”
    Theresa Redwing pulled a tissue from the sleeve of her gray sweater and wiped at her nose a moment. “You hear about that history professor on the res asking a lot of questions?” For a moment he wondered if she was referring to the new priest. “She was up at the cultural center yesterday afternoon, wanting to know about my ancestor Sacajawea. The director give me a call soon’s she left.”
    He started to explain that Laura Simmons was working on a biography that another historian had begun, then stopped. The old woman already knew, by the indulgent look she was bestowing on him.
    â€œI remember that other historian comin’ ’round about twenty years ago, askin’ my mother a lot of questions,” she said.
    â€œNow Laura Simmons would like to talk to you, Grandmother,” he said.
    â€œAbout the old stories?”
    He nodded. “She believes Charlotte Allen found someone who may have Sacajawea’s memoirs written in a notebook—someone named Toussaint.”
    Theresa Redwing sat motionless, her eyes on some point across the room. “Never heard of nobody by that name.” Looking back, she said, “Why ain’t they enough, Father, the old stories? Why do