Read Online The Man Who Fell from the Sky by Margaret Coel - Free Book Online Page B

across the prairie.
Pagliacci
filled the cab. Father John pressed on the brake, turned right, and bounced across the borrow ditch into the bare-dirt yard. A blue sedan stood in the shade between the house and the cottonwood. Parked close to the sedan was a black truck.
    He pulled up near the front stoop and turned off the engine. It wasn’t polite to stomp up to the house and bang on the front door. If Ruth was up to having a visitor, she would open the door and wave. She would have heard the Toyota pickup coming down the road, rattling across the yard. The engine cutting off. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in rhythm to “Un tal gioco,” giving her time to decide. The CD player on the seat beside himhad a tinny sound, and for a moment he let himself imagine attending an opera again, the orchestra and the voices swelling around him, the sweep of the costumes and settings, the drama and heartbreak, the elegant opera house in Central City, a survivor of the past. The tickets were on his desk. He had looked at them this morning, then laid them back down.
    The front door remained closed, the window shades pulled down halfway. A sense of abandonment lay about the place. And yet, Ruth’s car was here. A truck was here. He wondered if the sheriff had released Robert’s truck. A sense of alarm surged through him. You never knew what someone might do in the midst of grief. He got out and slammed the door hard so that, if by chance Ruth hadn’t heard him drive up, she would know a visitor had arrived. He was on the stoop, rapping at the door, when a man emerged around the corner of the house. Slightly stooped into medium height, slim, a warrior look about him in cowboy hat, yellow Western shirt, blue jeans, and the kind of boots with toes turned up that had been worn a long time.
    â€œIs Ruth here?” Father John stepped off the stoop. Arapaho, high cheekbones and hooked nose, dark eyes that took him in. A pockmarked face. He had been here the day Robert’s body had been found. One of the relatives bringing casseroles, cakes and lemonade, and hope. The man had led them to the backyard and set up the lawn chairs.
    â€œDallas Spotted Deer.” The man lunged forward and extended his hand. A single shake, that was the Arapaho Way. “
Hou!
” he said.
    Father John had seen the man at get-togethers and powwows. Never at the mission, but some of the Walking Bears were traditionals, he knew. They worshipped at the Native American church. Afew of his parishioners also worshipped there, he knew. Prayer was good, wherever you prayed.
    â€œI been waiting for Ruth out back,” Dallas said. “Figured she and Vicky . . .”
    â€œVicky?” Of course Vicky would be here to make sure Ruth was okay.
    â€œSaw them out on the road in Vicky’s car. Figured they were going to stop at the convenience store in Ethete. I been here most of an hour, and no sign of them.”
    Father John knew instantly where they had gone, as if Vicky and Ruth had left a note tacked on the door. Gone to the lake. Gone to see the place where Robert died.
    â€œI guess she’s all right, if she’s with Vicky.”
    â€œShe’s all right.”
    â€œAll the same, I worry. Robert was one of the relatives, you know, so I got an obligation to see that his wife is okay.”
    â€œIt’s good of you.”
    Dallas said something about Robert being the son of his stepfather’s cousin, and Father John realized he was explaining the relationship. “Not what you’d call close in the white world, but in the Arapaho . . .” He paused and looked away a moment. “Relatives matter.” He looked back. “I hope they didn’t go to the lake. She wanted to go, and I said, no way would that be good for her. She’d have the place burned into her mind the rest of her life. You think Vicky . . . ?” He left the question