Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,23

sigh.”

“It’s that kind of word.” Most of the time I don’t even realize I’m saying it. It is a word from my earliest memories, something my mother would whisper when she was weary or wondering, an exclamation of nothing and everything.

“I like it.”

“You’re going to get me in trouble, ma’am,” I say under my breath.

“I am?”

“Go back to your wagon. I’m on watch. And I don’t want someone finding you with me.”

“We’re within shouting distance of a dozen campfires, Mr. Lowry. There is nothing indecent about conversation.”

I take several steps back, widening the space between us, remembering what Abbott said. She is not for you, son.

“Everything has its place,” I say, and my tone is firm.

“I’ve offended you.”

“You haven’t.”

“I did not mean to insult you when I said you were not like other Indians. I only wanted to understand you.”

“Why?”

“You act like a white man. You speak like a white man—most of the time—and yet you are not.”

“I am.” I am as white as I am Pawnee.

“You are?” Naomi sounds surprised. “You said you were raised by a white woman. Was she your mother?”

“Yes,” I say. Jennie was a mother in every sense of the word, and I don’t want to explain myself. Yet when Naomi raises luminous eyes to mine, tilting her head to the side in patient observation, I find myself doing just that.

“I was raised by my father and his wife, Jennie. Jennie is Mr. Abbott’s sister. She did not give birth to me, but she still . . . raised me.”

“Who gave birth to you?” she asks, and my temper flashes. Naomi May is the nosiest woman I’ve ever met.

“A Pawnee woman. And you are not like the rest of them either,” I snap.

“The rest of who?” she asks, mystified.

I point at the companies, the camps, indicating the people huddled over fires and tin bowls, scooping beans and bacon into their mouths. “The other women. You are not like them.”

“How many women do you know?” Her voice is wry, and I recognize my own words turned back on me. She is not cowed by me. She is nosy . . . but I like her. And I do not want to like her.

“And how am I different?” she demands.

“You are here, talking to me.” She cannot argue with that, as everyone else—except her brothers—gives me plenty of space. I know it is more my fault than theirs. I am not friendly, and I cannot be Naomi’s friend. Time to run her off.

“You don’t seem to care what anyone thinks. Either you are stupid or you are arrogant, but I can’t afford to be either one,” I say.

She flinches like I have slapped her. It is exactly what I intended. Harsh words are not easily forgotten, and I need her to hear me.

Women are trouble. They have always been trouble; they always will be trouble, a truth I learned early. When I was still a boy, dangling my feet over the lake of manhood, a woman in St. Joseph, a friend of Jennie’s—Mrs. Conway—cornered me once in Jennie’s parlor and stuck her hand down my pants and her tongue down my throat. When I froze in stunned terror, she grew impatient and slapped me. A few weeks later she tried again, and I kissed her back, curious and conflicted, not knowing where to put my hands or my mouth. She showed me, and I enjoyed myself, though when Jennie caught us, the woman screamed and bolted, claiming I’d forced myself on her. I learned then that women couldn’t be trusted and I would not be believed; the woman’s husband came looking for me, and my father gave him his best mule colt from the spring stock to soften his ire.

I didn’t go to school with my sisters because the girls at school were afraid of me—the teacher too—and the boys always wanted to fight, though I usually started it. Fighting made me feel better, and I was good at it. The teacher asked my father to keep me away until I could behave. My father turned me over to Otaktay, a half-breed Sioux who worked for him for a while. Otaktay was good with knives, he knew how to grapple, and his rage was almost as big as mine. He wore me out and worked me over while Jennie taught me to read and write and do my figures. Language and numbers were never hard for me, and I had a good mind beneath my fine head