'The orphanages were filling up with many thousands of such children, and Our Lady and other such homes opened their doors wide. They were constructing more housing! We took advantage. Here was hope, a chance to find decent homes for them.'
'Or a lifetime in orphan care.'
'I always believed it the lesser of two evils as did the lady I worked for, as did the system.'
'Your ever think of adopting one of them yourself?'
'There was one, yes. She had no name, Lucas. Her mother hadn't given her a name. I thought that so sad.'
'That is sad.'
'I assume because the mother didn't want to get attached, knowing she was giving the little girl up. She'd made that decision before I even got involved. But I was a kid in college myself, my plans laid out, my days and nights filled. Her mother pleaded with me to find her a good home. I did what I could and went on to fulfill my dream to become a forensic psychiatrist. I just wanted to earn my degree, go on to help people.'
'Like these destitute, addicted women who had no chance of ever getting their children back, right?'
'There were programs in place, rehab programs, but for most'-she grimaced and shook her head-'the program was an impossibility until they broke the cycle of loss of identity, loss of self-esteem, loss of direction, values, faith.'
He remained stone-faced, his Indian features impossible to read.
'Whatever you're thinking, Lucas, don't condemn me for what we did for those children back then. We did what we had to do. Nobody wanted to deal with the problem.'
'Anyone think to keep records on these children? To see how they did one, two, three years later?'
She shook her head. 'We're talking about sick children. The fact we found orphan homes willing to take them was reason for celebration.'
'And no one kept trace of the crack mothers, right?'
'Correct.' Her long face dropped. The noise level at the other booth had continued to rise. Lucas glared at the couple, realizing now that the woman had an infant in a little plastic carry on the seat beside her. Take it to the Maury Povich Show, he wanted to shout, but kept his calm.
Lucas thought of the thousands of Native American children who, in the early part of the 20th century, had been ripped from their parents by state welfare systems across the West-placed in 'good' white homes by well- meaning white officials anxious to Christianize and Anglicize these heathen children. It was nowadays considered one of many disgraceful episodes in U.S.-Indian relations sanctioned by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs; it had been a part of the 'war' to end once and for all the aboriginal problem of the Native American races, to homogenize, tame, incorporate and blend them into the white race and make farmers of them all. The policy of assimilation of the races had begun as early as the 1820s, with successful results in the peace-loving Five 'Civilized' Tribes led by the Cherokee Nation and including the Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole.
In 1861, when war broke out between the states, the Cherokee Nation had more English-speaking schools and post offices flying the American flag than did neighboring whites in the state of Arkansas, and American Indians formed regiments in both the Federal and the Confederate armies. The Five Tribes fought at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, up and down the Oklahoma Indian Territory, along the Texas corridor, and struggled for control over the Indian Capitol of Tallaqua. Federalist Indian regiment soldiers lost-alongside their Confederate brothers-more casualties per capita in the Indian State than did any other state in the Union or the Confederacy, yet it never appeared in a U.S. history book. No Hollywood film or Ken Burns documentary had ever been made of their heroism, either in the war or as leaders in following the White Path of peace over the Red Path of war against the people who had forced them on to the Long Walk of the Trail of Tears. Only a handful of dust-laden studies and historical treatises on these lost facts dealt with the Indian regiments of the Confederacy and the Union.
After the Civil War, and after the loss of Lincoln as their president, all the civilized Indians of the Territory were punished for the actions of those who sided with the Con-federacy. Five Tribes simultaneously stripped of all the dignity and freedom they had earned as U.S. citizens in their once-proud U.S. Protectorate, not to mention their land and businesses. The president of the Cherokee Nation, John Ross, lost his dream along with his steamboat company, but the tribes had lost the entirety of their treaty lands, seeing them given away to white settlers flooding into the Cherokee Strip to create the state of Oklahoma. Strip was the right word for it. Government-sanctioned, the rape of the Indian Territory was overseen by armed military forces. Then came the sweeping missionary influx and the welfare brigades. And in far too many instances, Native American children were forced to renounce their heritage and very DNA and take on the manner and characteristics, the language and religion of the majority race without any protest allowed beyond the tears shed when they were taken from their loving parents. The biography of such men as Jim Thorpe told the story. In too many cases, these children were taken out of perfectly fine family environments and placed with foster homes, causing the children as adults to be alienated in a white world. Jim Thorpe had beaten the white world at its own game, only to be stripped of his Olympic medals, left in the end depressed and beaten, left to drink himself to death.
'Where did you go, Lucas Stonecoat?' Meredyth asked. She'd quietly studied his strong features and iron eyes, a beautiful brown with specks of green and incredible depths she could easily lose herself in. 'Where were you just now?' she repeated when he did not answer.
'Bad times.'
'Tell me about these bad times.'
He shared his thoughts on the history of lost Native American children who had grown up a generation of lost adults. 'My father had been one of them,' he confessed, 'and he died the ignoble death of a drunken Indian, drowning in a mud puddle on the Coushatta Reservation, thousands of miles from the lost ancestral home where his fathers were born, lived, died, and joined the netherworld.'
'I'm sorry, Lucas, very sorry for your pain, but…but you can't compare what the Bureau of Indian Affairs did from the nineteenth century through nineteen-thirties and nineteen-forties to what we tried to do in the nineteen- eighties. Our intentions were good and honorable.'
'So were those of the missionaries. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Isn't that what Anglos say?'
'I'll see you at the car,' she said to this, standing and starting away.
He grabbed her wrist, saying, 'I'm not saying it's the same thing, but it brings back bad memories, that's all.'
She pulled away. 'I need a moment alone.'
Lucas sighed heavily, finished his coffee, and tossed down a tip for the hardworking busboy. He glanced out the window to where Meredyth sat in the car, pensively waiting for him.
He noticed the quiet that had come over the cafe, the music gone, replaced by an ad man touting a debt-free existence, the arguing couple with the infant now cuddling one another, the young man having come around to her side of the booth, the infant between them. They now presented a picture of peace and tranquility.
Lucas wanted an excuse to punch something, but nothing presented itself as the target he needed. Instead, he found his cell phone and called Mother Elizabeth Portsmith, the lady in charge at Our Lady of Miracles, to inform her of his and Meredyth's delay, but promising to be there within ten minutes. A cheery feminine response told him they anxiously awaited his arrival.
As he went for the exit, Lucas's boots made a slapping noise against the tiles that made the couple look up from a kiss to stare after him.
Lucas hoped the clue of the convent school, the connection to Lourdes, and the connection to Meredyth would lead them quickly to the maniac behind the abduction- murder case they worked.
He stopped short, looked up into the falling rain, allowing it to cool his face, and wondering if his getting intimately involved again with Meredyth Sanger was not a fool's errand. How much had her change of heart toward him had to do with this case, her running scared, her confused vortex of swirling emotions… her temporary desperation? Once the case was solved, he wondered if she'd throw up real roadblocks to their being together, go running back to her previous lifestyle that included such as Byron Priestly, men who asked little of her, the way she liked it.
He climbed into the car beside her, forced a smile, and asked if she was okay.
'Fine… drive. Let's get this over with.'
