My mother turns and begins to walk away, telling me to stay.
I hurry after her. She pushes me back, her thin arms firm and her face set, jaw jutting out in warning. Her eyes are fierce. I’ve seen that look before, many times, and I know she will not yield, but I don’t care. I remain beside her. My mother walks back to the man who has followed us from the house, her hand tangled in the mess of my hair. She points at him. She points at me. She tries to walk away again, and when I trail after her, she sits, folding her legs, her hands on her knees, eyes forward. I sit beside her. We sit this way all night, my mother pretending I am not beside her. She is ill. Her breathing rattles like the medicine man’s shaker, and her skin burns when I touch it, but she doesn’t complain, and the white man brings us blankets when she refuses to move or follow him back inside, though he beckons us both. In the morning we are both stretched out beneath the sky, but my mother’s eyes are fixed and her body is cold.
The white man takes my mother away, and his woman takes me inside the little house. I am empty. My belly, my mind, my eyes. I do not cry because I am empty. I am convinced I am dreaming. Two little girls, their hair woven into skinny braids that touch their shoulders, stare at me. They are small, smaller than me, and their eyes are blue like those of the white man who took my mother. The white woman is dark eyed and dark haired, like me, though her skin is like the moon, and her cheeks are pink. I look at her instead of the blue-eyed children and hope she will feed me before I wake. I am empty.
“Is he an Indian, Mama?” one girl asks the white woman.
“He is a boy without a family, Sarah.”
“Are we going to be his family?” The littlest girl is missing two teeth, and she makes a hissing sound when she speaks, but I understand her well enough. I’ve spent plenty of time around white children.
“What is his name?” the toothless one asks.
“His name is John Lowry, Hattie,” the white woman says.
“That’s not an Indian name.” Sarah wrinkles her nose. “That’s Papa’s name.”
“Yes. Well. He’s Papa’s son,” the white woman answers, her voice soft. I begin to cry, a keening that makes the woman’s daughters cover their ears. The little one begins to cry with me, and I am not empty anymore. I am full of terror and water. It streams from my eyes and my mouth.
“Will you come back this time, John?” my father asks. His eyes are on the ledger in front of him, but his hand is still, the pencil cocked, and I don’t understand.
“I’ll only be gone an hour. Where’s Leroy? Do you need me out back?”
“No. Not now. Not that. Will you come back . . . to St. Joe?”
I stiffen at the words, as if he is telling me he doesn’t want me to return, but when he raises his pale eyes to mine, I see his strain, glittering like sun on the water. His face is expressionless, his words flat, but his eyes are so bright with emotion I am taken aback.
“Why wouldn’t I come back?” I say.
He nods once as if that is answer enough, and I am convinced the odd conversation is over. I turn again to go, but he speaks again.
“I would understand . . . if you didn’t. There’s a whole big world out there.” He raises his hand slightly, indicating everything west of the wide Missouri River that runs past St. Joseph. “I hear there’s a Pawnee village near Fort Kearny.”
“You want me to go live with the Pawnee?” My voice is so dry it doesn’t indicate the layer of wet that runs beneath. “Is that where you think I belong?”
His shoulders fall slightly. “No. I don’t want that.”
I laugh. Incredulous. I don’t think I am bitter. I have not suffered greatly. I have no reason to lash out or try to wound him. But I am surprised, and in my surprise I discover there is also pain.
After my mother died, I would sometimes steal away to the Pawnee village and visit my grandmother, but the Pawnee did not like me, and they wanted me to bring them things. They were hungry, and I was not. I took all of Jennie’s flour and sugar once so they would welcome me. I knew my father would get more, and the Pawnee had so little. Jennie beat my backside with a switch, tears streaming down her cheeks, Hattie and Sarah watching from the window. Jennie said if she didn’t punish me, I would do it again.
I did do it again, despite the licking. My father always got more, though it took him a while and there was no bread on the table for weeks.
Not long after that, we moved to St. Joseph, and my father sold everything to buy a good-quality jack donkey for breeding. Independence, Missouri, farther south, already had plenty of breeders and muleteers. St. Joseph was smaller but still perfectly situated to become a jumping-off point for the Oregon Territory, and he told Jennie that with the new hunger to go west, mules were a sure thing, and he wasn’t ever going to be a good farmer. Jennie was convinced we would all starve, though feeding the Pawnee village couldn’t have been much easier on our situation. But my father was right. He was a mule man. Not only did he manage to breed good stock; he understood the mules and they him. Within five years he was supplying the army at Fort Leavenworth and Camp Kearny along the Missouri with all the pack mules they needed. When Camp Kearny moved from Table Creek to the wilds of Nebraska, just below the Platte, I accompanied an army supply train, driving a dozen Lowry mules across two hundred miles of prairie. I’ve done that every spring for the last five years, and tomorrow I will start again.
“I loved her,” my father says, in a voice that does not sound like his own, and I am pulled back from thoughts of seeking acceptance with bags of flour and our exodus to St. Joe.
“What?”
“I loved her,” my father repeats. He’s set the pencil down, and his hands are splayed on the ledger, like a startled cat trying to find his balance. I think he might be ill . . . or drunk, though he doesn’t really appear to be either.
“Who?” I ask, though I suddenly know exactly who. I reach for the door.
His eyes spark, and his mouth hardens. He thinks I am mocking him, but I am too discomfited for scorn.
“Mary,” he answers.
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I blurt, and again my feelings shock me. I sound angry. Uncertain. My father has never talked about my Indian mother. Not even once. I don’t know what has inspired him to do so now.
“It is what I know,” he responds. “I know you think I’m a son of a bitch. And I am. But I’m not . . . guilty of everything you imagine I am guilty of.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I hiss. I don’t believe him, and I don’t want to leave St. Joe with this conversation between us.
“Mary did not like her life with me. When she wanted to leave, I let her go. And I will let you go too. But you need to know I did not force her. Ever. Not at any time. And I would have cared for her all the days of her life had she let me. I did not know about you until she brought you to me—and Jennie—eight years later.”
I don’t know what to say. My mind is empty, but my heart weighs a thousand pounds.
“Every time you leave, I wish I’d told you. I promised myself I wouldn’t let you go again without making it clear,” he says.