Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,7
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.
“Are you sick?” I ask. My mother began acting strange when she knew she was going to die.
“I’m not sick.”
We are silent, standing among the harnesses and yokes, the reins and the riggings, my hands on my hips, his curled into big white-knuckled fists on the counter of the establishment he raised from the ground. I watched him do it. I admired that. I admire him, much of the time. But the rest of my feelings are knotted and frayed like an old rope, and I won’t be unraveling them here and now, with him looking on. Not even with this new revelation. Especially not with this new revelation.
With a ragged inhale and a curt nod, I open the door and walk out, shutting it quietly behind me.
I don’t go home to Jennie right away. My innards are twisted and my chest is hot. My father has a way of slicing me open and making me study my own inner workings, as if repeated examination will help me better understand him. I do not believe he loved my mother—I am not sure he is capable of the emotion—but that he even spoke the words is beyond comprehension. I am convinced once more that he is ill, terminally so, and stands at the edge of a gangplank, a sword at his back, like Shakespeare’s Pericles, which Jennie read aloud. The heat in my chest scurries down my arms and tickles my palms. I stop abruptly, hating that he has made me care.
I have halted directly in the path of a small child, and he stops, befuddled.
“Pardon me, mister.”
The boy steps back, peering up at me, eyes narrowed against the afternoon sun. His hat falls off his head as he cranes his neck to meet