Kathy Little Bird by Nancy Freedman, Benedict Freedman Read Free Book Online

talked to him, smiled—she was from here.
    It was a sign from God. He had his own business free and clear.With a wife and children and a cellar full of beer, he could build a good life. The Eight Bells became a going concern, but the muse he had built his fantasies around now lived in Montreal. He tracked her through the Sisters of Charity Hospital. It was a bit of a shock, however, to find that in the meantime she’d married and had a baby, particularly that the father was German. Also, Mum was quite open about Crazy Dancer.
    Jellet decided to go slow. He wasn’t so sure this was the right woman for him after all, twice married and Indian. The war was over, and people who had gotten used to seeing Indians in uniform or mentioned in the casualty lists reverted to old habits and treated them like the invisible minority they’d always been.
    On her part, Mum was puzzled by the sudden appearance of a ghost from the war, and too wrapped up in her own problems to pay him much attention.
    “Maybe I should have packed it in then and come home,” Jellet said mournfully. Black Douglas performed a cascading shuffle; they polished off the whiskey and started to look for a bottle of vodka Jellet claimed to have hidden on top of some cupboard or other.
    When it was found, Jellet resumed. Yes, it was the war that brought them together. Both had lived through experiences no civilian wanted to hear about. They found things to shudder at, to shed tears at, and they laughed over the fact that it was she who ended up driving General Tuker to the public library in bombed-out Naples. “You missed a fantastic dinner,” and she told him of the meal the general had treated her to. Jellet’s memorywas of the shot of morphine and her touch.
    They made a deal. “The baby,” Jellet said, “needed a father. She needed a home. I needed a wife. We were married.”
    Now the vodka was gone. While they were looking under sinks and behind furniture for a replacement, I stole out. I knew the rest. Jellet’s family and friends took one look at Mum and cut them off, socially, economically, permanently. Jellet responded by withdrawing completely from society. He had no truck with anyone from the town. No church, no school, nothing. The Eight Bells and our falling-down house…and a tiny strip of birchbark from Mum’s old life. She planned one day to make it into a toy canoe. That was all. We lived as hermits.

    A S I stood graveside, a spasm went through me to see Mum lowered into the ground, joining all the yesterdays since the world began. It was awful to see dirt shoveled in, until I remembered she liked to sift through the soil with her fingers for earthworms, which she prized. She liked the smell of loam, the good, rich earth smell. Cree songs told of these things and this is what I sang standing there on that desolate, windy plain.
    Afterward I ran off to Abram. He came out of his house and walked with me, and these were his words. “You husk the body off,” he said, “so the soul can be free.”
    I thought about it. It seemed sensible. “Why can’t we know these things?”
    “I guess because we’re human beings.”
    “And sinful?” I asked.
    “No, I don’t think so. It’s just that we can’t comprehend great things yet.”
    “But it’s my Mum, Abram.”
    The tears I couldn’t shed gathered in his eyes. He would have felt better if I’d been able to storm and cry and carry on in my usual fashion. He could have comforted me then. Only, I couldn’t do it. I felt detached from myself and from the world, alienated and alone. For once Abram couldn’t help.

    I RETURNED to the house to find a bouquet of wild flowers and a rabbit left on our porch. There was a note signed by the Mennonite community offering sympathy and prayers. Away to the side was a single wild lobelia. No need to tell me. Abram. Jellet almost stepped on it, but I snatched it up.
    Jellet was watching me; he had things to say. “Now that your mother’s gone