Eye of the Wolf Read Free

the right and gave him a welcoming wave with a dishcloth as he started around the vacant tables.
    â€œHelp yourself to coffee, Father,” Ethan called out. Both men had shifted in his direction, dark eyes watching him approach. They tossed their heads in unison toward the metal coffeepot and stack of Styrofoam cups on a cart pushed against the side wall, and Father John walked over, poured himself a cup of coffee, and—cup in one hand, tape player in the other—headed back to the elders.
    Max Whiteman nudged a vacant chair away from the table with his boot. “Take a load off your feet,” he said.
    Father John set the coffee mug and player on the table, shrugged out of his jacket, and tossed it onto an adjacent table along with his cowboy hat. Then he took the chair between the two old men. It was hard to tell who was older, Max or Ethan. Both in their eighties, ranchers with cowboy hats perched on white heads and the outdoors etched in brown faces, brought up on stories told by their grandfathers of the days when Arapahos had lived free on the plains, warriors in feathered headdresses thundering across the empty spaces after the buffalo, protecting the villages from enemies.
    â€œHow are you, grandfathers?” Father John said, using the term of respect for men who had reached the fourth hill of life. From the top of the fourth hill, they could see great distances, which in the Arapaho Way, accounted for the wisdom of the elders.
    â€œ Hi’zeti’ .” Max shrugged. He was a stocky, compact man with eyes like narrow, black slits in a round, pudgy face, and a large head that sat directly between his shoulders. He had on a dark plaid shirt with the small bronze buffalo of his bolo tie riding halfway down the hump of his chest. “We’re a couple of tough old buzzards,” he went on, nodding at the man across the table. “Ain’t that right?”
    â€œGotta be tough to outlast winter.” Ethan Red Bull glanced at the window and the snow clinging to the edges of the pane, then lifted a fist and nudged at the brim of his cowboy hat, freeing tufts of white hair that spilled onto his forehead. He was a slight man, with dark, rheumy eyes, a prominent nose, and ropelike veins that pulsed in his thin neck. “How are things holding up at the mission?”
    Things were holding up fine, Father John said. Then, sipping at his coffee, he launched into the pleasantries, the polite small talk that always preceded the real point of a visit. He talked on about the AA meetings, the religious education classes, the hospitality volunteers who checked on the shut-ins and made sure the elders had food stocked in their cabinets, and the after-school programs for kids, all the while his thoughts circling around the tape in the player that sat in the center of the table.
    After a few minutes, Max rolled his massive head toward the player. “You ain’t fixin’ to play us some opera, are you?” he asked.
    â€œNo opera.” Father John heard the serious note in his voice. He was aware of the elders working on their coffee, the dark eyes following him over the rims of Styrofoam cups. “I met with Father Nathan over at St. Aiden’s this morning,” he said. Then he told the elders about the phone call, the distorted voice, and the cryptic message, and as he talked, he pulled from his shirt pocket the folded piece of paper on which Nathan had written the message. He smoothed it in the middle of the table. Max pushed the paper toward Ethan, a gesture of respect, Father John realized, toward the elder man.
    Ethan stared down at the sheet for several seconds, then slid it back. He waited until Max had read through the message and lifted his eyes before he said, “You got a tape of this?”
    Father John nodded, then pushed the play button and listened to the sounds again: whirring, clicking, and finally the high-pitched, nonhuman voice speaking of bodies, enemy