Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  “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, and that is all. His willing commentary surprises me.

  “They signed on with Abbott’s company, so you’ll be able to keep an eye on their . . . mules . . . if you’re concerned,” he adds.

  I nod, stifling my reaction. Grant Abbott is Jennie’s brother—a man who fancies himself a mountain man, though he’s never spent much time trapping. He went all the way to California in ’49 and didn’t have much luck striking it rich. He’s been back and forth three times to the Oregon Territory and has finally decided the emigrant boom pays better than furs or panning for gold. Plus, the man just can’t keep still. He’s convinced me to travel with him as far as Fort Kearny; I’ve driven mules to Fort Kearny, just below the Platte, half a dozen times. Every time I make the trek, I think about continuing west, and every time, I return to St. Joe and my father’s house.

  If I go with a train, I don’t need to hire a hand to help me with the mules, and Grant Abbott will pay me to carry a gun and assist where necessary; having a few mules at his disposal doesn’t hurt either. The numbers in the company provide safety and support, even though it’ll slow me down considerably. I’ve never had any trouble. I’m good with the animals; I keep to myself; I work hard. I’m just a mule skinner, and if I look a little different, no one has ever made a big issue of it. I was called a “filthy Injun” once by a man who never washed, but he died from cholera two days later, too lazy to walk upstream for clean water.

  “You ready?” my father asks. He knows that I am. The mules Captain Dempsey requested have been corralled separately so they aren’t sold, and they’ve been fitted and fed, their packs—including my gear—readied for the journey.

  I raise the packages in my arms. “I just have to stow these. Shirts and trousers. Good for trade.”

  “Cloth’s a whole lot more comfortable than buckskin,” my father says. He is talkative today. I hardly know what to think. “Jennie wanted me to remind you to go home for a haircut,” he adds.

  “I’ll go right now,” I say, agreeable. Jennie worries about things like that. When my hair grows long, I look more like a Pawnee than a Lowry, and I make people nervous. I keep it tamed and cut short. It hasn’t been long since I was a child. When I first came to live with my father, Jennie did her best to untangle my hair but ended up cutting it instead. The curls never came back. For a long time, I was convinced they followed my mother when I could not.

  Jennie has asked me to call her Mother, but I can’t. I know it is not Jennie’s pride that seeks the title or even her shame. It is simply easier on us all for people to think I am hers because I am his. Jennie is fair, but her hair is a deep brown and her eyes too. People in St. Joe just assume I favor her instead of my father, though I am considerably darker than she is. That, or they don’t ask. The girls—my half sisters—have my father’s blue eyes, and their hair is several shades lighter than Jennie’s. I call Jennie by her name when no one is around. When others are near, I simply call her ma’am or nothing at all. To call her Mother would be to deny the Pawnee girl with the heavy hair and the crooked smile.

  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. T
hey 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.

  “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 my gaze. He has a shock of reddish-brown hair that stands up in all directions. A boy behind him stoops to pick up the rumpled felt hat, setting it atop the smaller boy’s woolly head. The hat is too large, and his unkempt hair reminds me of my task. I turn back toward my father’s store, toward Jennie and her shears, but the boy’s mother is not far behind him, and she stops in front of me, a third son bringing up the rear.

  “Mr. Lowry.” The woman sticks her hand toward mine, her other palm resting on the swell of her impossibly large abdomen. Her bonnet shades gr
een eyes, and I shake her small, rough hand, distracted by their color. It is the second time today I have been greeted by name by a green-eyed female I do not know. But this woman’s eyes are faded. Everything about her is faded—her dress, her bonnet, her skin, her smile—and her weariness is palpable. The boys cluster around her, and they all look too much alike, too much like the woman, not to be her children. The smallest boy with the reddish mop and the too-big hat begins to chatter excitedly.

  “We’re the Mays. We’re traveling west with Mr. Abbott. Shoving off tomorrow. We bought mules from your pa, Mr. Lowry. Ma said I could name them. Mr. Lowry said I should name them something easy and sharp, like a command. So I figure I’d name ’em Trick and Tumble, ’cause the one is naughty and the other is clumsy. Pa said you’re a mule skinner. I’m gonna be a mule skinner one day too. I’m gonna have corrals full of ’em. Webb May Mules is what I’ll call my breeding farm, but don’t worry, Mr. Lowry. I won’t put you and your pa outa business, ’cause I’m not stayin’ in St. Joe. I’m going to California.”

  I nod once, but I have not hidden my surprise, and the woman smiles wearily.

  “You were in the back paddock yesterday when we purchased the mules. We saw you, but you did not see us. Your father told us you would be traveling with our wagon train. Forgive us for the poor introduction.”

  The tallest boy, probably fifteen or sixteen years old, sticks out his hand. “I’m Wyatt May, Mr. Lowry.” He seems earnest, and the timbre of his voice is that of a man, though he still looks like a boy. The voice changes first. It did for me. One day I woke to a toad in my throat that mimicked my father every time I opened my mouth.

  “I’m Will,” the middle-size boy says. I will never remember their names, but I nod in greeting.

  “I met . . . Naomi,” I offer. I remember her name well enough. As soon as I speak, I wish I hadn’t. To call her by her first name is too familiar, but her family doesn’t seem to notice or care.

  “She’s always wanderin’ off,” the littlest boy says. What was his name? Wyatt? No. Webb. Webb May Mules. “She’s probably drawin’ somethin’ somewhere. She wouldn’t make a good mule skinner. She’s as stubborn as the mules, Pa says. But a mule man’s gotta be patient, right, Mr. Lowry?”