The Lost Bird by Margaret Coel Page A

could hear the quiet intake of breath on the other end, the unspoken thoughts: Who? Where?
    “In Wyoming.”
    “Oh, yes, Father O’Malley. The Provincial is in the office between eight and five. You can reach him tomorrow.”
    “I have to talk to him now.” Father John heard the stubbornness in his tone. “Put him on.”
    There was a short silence, a muffled cough. The voice said, “Is this some type of emergency?”
    “Father Joseph Keenan is dead.”
    Another silence. “I see. Well, that’s very unfortunate.”
    “He was murdered.”
    A gasp, like that of a small bellows, sounded through the line. “Please hold.”
    The canned music returned. The imitation of a waltz, light and merry, the strains of an imaginary ballroom: ladies in gowns swishing across the floor, gentlemen in tuxedos. Hardly appropriate for the news he had just delivered. He drained the remainder of the coffee. It was cold and thick as syrup. Then hepicked up a pen and began tapping the edge of the desk, a crescendo of impatience.
    “John, what’s this all about?” Father William Rutherford’s tone was peremptory, annoyed, the tone Father John remembered from their days in the seminary together. Television noise sounded in the background.
    Father John explained. Father Joseph had taken a call to an isolated part of the reservation. Someone had shot him.
    “Good Lord.” Shock and disbelief sounded in the Provincial’s tone. “What’s going on out there?”
    Father John was quiet. He didn’t know the answer.
    “Some kind of drive-by shooting? Are there gangs on the reservation?”
    Father John said he didn’t believe so.
    “A random shooting? A lunatic?”
    “The FBI is investigating.”
    “The FBI! My God.”
    “They handle homicide cases on reservations.”
    “Oh, yes,” the Provincial said, as if he’d momentarily forgotten some important piece of information that it was his job to remember. “Well, Joseph Keenan dead,” he mused. “I believe he was prepared. Yes, I believe he went there to die.”
    “What?” Father John tossed the pencil across the desk. The Provincial had a doctorate in psychology, he knew, but he was in no mood for psychological babble. Nobody went someplace to be shot.
    “Joseph’s prognosis was not good,” the Provincial was saying. “His heart disease was quite advanced. You knew that, of course.”
    “No, I didn’t know that,” Father John said. He was thinking that had the Provincial mentioned the fact, he would have suggested that, perhaps, a mission onan Indian reservation might not be the best place for a man with advanced heart disease.
    “He was fully aware his time was limited,” Father Rutherford said, a steady, matter-of-fact tone. “Joseph Keenan was not a man content to await his death in a retirement home. When he heard I was looking for an assistant priest at St. Francis, he came to the office and insisted on taking the job. I turned him down, of course. Frankly, I didn’t think a man in such poor health should be sent back into the field.”
    Father John could feel the guilt curling inside him like a snake gathering its deadly strength. An old man with advanced heart disease, who’d spent the day driving across the reservation—that was the man he’d allowed to take an emergency call miles away.
    Father John picked up the coffee mug. Empty. It didn’t matter. Coffee was a poor substitute. Slamming down the mug, he struggled to follow what the Provincial was saying: Father Joseph had kept coming back, determined to return to St. Francis Mission.
    The Provincial hesitated, as if searching for the argument he’d used to convince himself when he’d given in to the old priest’s entreaties. “Frankly, John,” he said finally, “I wasn’t having much luck finding anyone else, so I agreed to send him there on temporary assignment. Just until I found a permanent man. Joseph had very fond memories of St. Francis Mission.” A pause, then: “Yes, I believe he went there