Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,4

convey. I know some of the white man’s language. My mother takes me with her when she works in their homes and on their farms.

“Son live here,” my mother demands, firm.

“Mary,” the white woman gasps, reaching for my mother. I’ve heard others call my mother Mary.

My mother moans her Pawnee name, shaking her head. She stands again, reaching for me. She pulls at my hair again, the way the children in the village do. My hair curls, and it does not look Pawnee. I hate it, but my mother has never hurt me this way before.

“White boy,” my mother says. “John Lowry son.” She points at my father. “Son.”

I shake the memory away and open the door to my father’s store without looking back to see if the woman is still there. My father sells tack in the front—anything you need to yoke your team to a wagon—and mules in back. We have corrals that stretch behind the shop and stables beyond that. Jennie’s two-story clapboard house sits on the street behind. He’s done well, my father, since coming to St. Joe with nothing but a jack donkey, two mares, three children, and a wife who had no wish to be there.

Jennie could have turned me away. She could have turned my mother away. But she didn’t. I was not wanted. Not by my mother’s people. Not by my father’s people. But in Jennie’s home I wasn’t hated, I wasn’t harmed, and I was never hungry for long. Jennie took good care of us. Of him. She still does. The household is well run, and supper is always on the table, and I suppose my father looks after her too, providing food and shelter and a steady hand. He takes care of the mules and the mares in the same way, though, and I daresay he likes them more. My father wasn’t ever violent, and he has never raised his hand to me or to his family, but he is cold and quiet, and I used to fear him. When he was present, I would watch him so I could maintain plenty of space around him.

My father is alone in the shop—a rare occurrence. He would rather be out back with the animals. Leroy Perkins sells the riggings, and my father and I work the mules. He will need to hire another hand while I am gone. I will miss the shop. The corrals smell like chaos—sweat and horseflesh wrapped in dust and dung—and the shop smells like order, leather and oil and iron, and I breathe in the clean sterility and hold it in my chest. My question bubbles out on my exhale.

“Did you sell a team to a man named May?” I ask.

My father looks up at me, eyes blank. I know the look. He is thinking. He is blue eyed and ruddy cheeked, and when I was a child, he seemed enormous, though now I am as big as he. My body looks like his; I am tall, broad through my shoulders and narrow through my hips, with long legs, big feet, and strong hands. I don’t have his icy stare or his straw-colored—now white—hair, but I move the way he does. I walk the way he does. I even stand the way he does. I have learned his ways, or maybe they were always my ways too. I do not fear him now. I am simply weary of his shadow.

“He may have had his daughter with him?” I add and keep my face as devoid of expression as I am able. I don’t think my father is fooled.

My father’s face relaxes with memory. “William May. He had his whole family with him. Bunch of kids, some grown, some not, and his wife looking like she is expecting another.”

I say nothing, my thoughts on Naomi May, her yellow dress, her green eyes, and the spray of color across her fine nose.

“Why?” my father asks, the word clipped as though he expects to hear bad news.

“Was it a good team?” I press.

“It wasn’t one of ours. But well matched. Steady. Accustomed to people and wagons. The man has oxen to pull his wagons. He wanted the mules as a backup. Most of the time they’ll be ridden or they’ll be packing.”

I nod once, satisfied.

“I remember the daughter now. Bright eyed. Lots of questions.” He raises his eyes to mine again. “Pretty.”

I grunt, emotionless. My father and I do not discuss women or make small talk. We talk mules,