Kathy Little Bird Read online

  When Abram reached me, his face distorted, he gasped, “You haven’t—?”

  “I have. I got married.” And I waved my finger in his face. “It’s just a cheap ring that I can bend, but later Jack will get me a proper one.”

  Jack stepped up beside me. “I’m Sullivan,” and he extended his hand.

  Abram didn’t take it. I don’t think he saw it. He was as upset as I’d ever seen him. “You’ve done it then.” This was said half under his breath. Then to me, “It’s all right, Kathy, you can have it annulled.”

  “Annulled?” Jack spoke up. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  Abram placed a hand against Jack’s chest and sent him reeling backward, but didn’t bother to look at him. I was the one he saw. “You thought I’d never get the money. But I’ve got two hundred dollars, and I can manage the rest. I can and I will.”

  “Abram, Jack’s my husband, and I’m going away with him.”

  “But you don’t know him. Kathy, for your sake, for both our sakes, listen to me—”

  Sullivan came up with a strutting swagger. “Hey, what do you mean, trying to bust us up?” Then to me, “Who is this dude anyway, Kathy?”

  “A friend,” I said, looking at Abram.

  “That’s what I am to you?” Abram said. “A friend?”

  I turned away from the look in his eyes, then whirled around and lashed out. “You were my ticket out of here. But you were a pretty slow boat, and an express came along.”

  I linked my arm in Jack’s.

  Abram continued to look with a hard, scrutinizing gaze into my face. “I don’t believe you, Kathy.”

  “Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it? You’d better go pray about it.”

  “I will,” he said, simply.

  “Come on, Jack,” I said, smiling at him, “we’ve got a lot of traveling to do.”

  Jack smiled back, but there was a wild gleam in his green-gray-blue eyes. “How about I take just a second to teach this neighbor lad a lesson?”

  “I’m not your enemy,” Abram said.

  “Ha!” Jack said gleefully. “Afraid of getting your pretty face messed up?”

  For the first time Abram assessed Jack and made a sincere effort to explain things to him. “This is as wrong for you as it is for Kathy. I’ve known her since we were children. She’s headstrong. She won’t admit it now because it doesn’t fall in with her plans, but she’s in love with me.”

  Jack snorted at this calm assertion. “So much in love with you that she marries me!”

  “Praise the Lord, you understand.”

  “I understand you are a raving lunatic.”

  Sweat broke on Abram’s forehead; a desperate note crept into his voice. He said to me, “Before God it’s true that we love each other, and you know it’s true. Now, while the marriage has not yet been consummated and there’s still hope of annulling it—tell him, Kathy.”

  “Save your breath for your prayers, Abram.”

  “Consummated?” Jack Sullivan roared. “For your information, my man, it will be consummated before the hour’s out.” And giving me a tug, he pulled me toward the car.

  “Kathy,” Abram called.

  That final plea was too much for Jack. He spun around and socked Abram square in the face. Abram saw the blow coming but made no effort to avoid it or raise his hands to fend it off.

  He stood there and took it. A thin red stream curled from a nostril. He didn’t seem to notice because he didn’t bother to wipe it away. This indifference infuriated Jack. He danced around him, looking like an angry hornet. As he struck attitudes, pantomiming feints with his fists in front of him, I saw that he was a small man.

  And I saw something else. I saw that he looked foolish with his fancy footwork, jabbing at Abram. Abram stood like a rock, taking the punishment. It was as though he didn’t feel it, as though he was unconscious of it. His eyes never left me.

  His eyes said, “You know I’m right. Come back, you can still come back.”

  His eyes said, “I love you.”

  He was probably right. He generally was. One fourth of July a firecracker didn’t go off. I wanted to investigate, but he held me back. I was so mad I screamed and hollered. Then the thing went off in a stream of flame. Yes, Abram had been consistently right all down the years I’d known him. He was probably right now.

  I probably did love him. But that had nothing to do with anything. I was a married lady. I was Mrs. Jack Sullivan. And Abram would have to get used to the idea.

  I kissed Jas good-bye, but he was mad at me for not marrying Abram, and he wiped my kiss off. I got in beside Jack, and we started up. We went slowly, as we were pulling the trailer and two horses. I stuck my head out the window to wave good-bye to Abram. He was standing in exactly the same position. I waved, but he didn’t wave back. I leaned out farther and blew kisses to show them how happy I was.

  I turned on the radio and, with my head against Jack’s chest, began to hum along. I felt close to tears, but just then I found a really neat station. They were playing a Patsy Cline single. It was just last March she died in that terrible plane crash, and they dedicated a lot of programs to her and played her most famous songs: “I Fall to Pieces,” “Crazy,” and “Walkin’ after Midnight.” The music put me back on high as it always did.

  Patsy Cline! There was a lady who could sing!

  But I had some thoughts as to how she could maybe come on differently, and sing with more contrast. I always saw exactly how a piece should go.

  Jack didn’t want to spend sixteen or twenty bucks for a motel, and he didn’t want to wait either. So it happened in the car. He just pulled off to the side of the road and parked.

  It went too fast for me. Before I was really into it, it was over. It was one of those experiences, I decided, that was overrated. In my opinion, too much was made of sex. Besides, I hadn’t realized it was going to hurt.

  However, more important things were happening. We had by now gone farther from St. Alban’s than I had ever been. There were streams I had never seen, and metal bridges that clattered as we passed over them. The car chewed up the miles. Sometimes we were in patches of forest, then it was farmland, with rape and wheat, and machinery moving in the rows. It was exciting not to recognize anything.

  Late in the afternoon the narrow road joined the Trans-Alaskan Highway, four lanes running straight as far as the eye could see. “This is more like it,” Jack said. “From now on we’ll really make time.” He told me the Americans built this highway during the war.

  The ascot had gotten mussed up during our brief acrobatics in the backseat, so I took it off and kissed the place in his throat where his shirt opened. He was pleased at this and asked me how I liked being Mrs. Jack Sullivan.

  “I like it fine. There’s a different sky over us, Jack. It’s as though I’d been kept in a box, you came along and took off the lid.”

  He laughed at my analogy. Jack liked to laugh. He liked to be happy. He was a fun-loving guy, boisterous and carefree. Not as tall as some. Not as good-looking. But his resilient nature exuded through his pores. I had picked right, after all. He was just the kind of person to go through life with.

  I wondered briefly what Mum would have thought of him. But I knew she’d prefer Abram. She’d had a soft spot for Abram. “He’s dependable,” she told me more than once, “and there’s a kernel in him that’s going to sprout into something fine.” But he hadn’t the keen, flashing wit, the ability to see the fun in everything. Jack looked on the bright side, and I liked the picture of our lives he spun for me.

  He was enthusiastic about my becoming a big singing star. He’d help me, open doors for me, swing some of his contacts my way. First, he’d showcase me in the clubs, then he’d wangle a recording contract.

  “With a voice like that, you need a manager. Me.”

  I was only too happy to turn my future over to him.

  And it looked very rosy as we tooled along, dragging our horse trailer.

&nb
sp; We stopped for sandwiches and coffee, and drove on until we hit a town large enough to boast a motel. It was lovely to stretch out on a bed. Jack had to make love again, after watering the ponies, of course. This time it went better. I could see I was getting to like it. I closed my eyes and pretended it was Abram. Except he wouldn’t go about it like this. He’d be slower and more intense, because that’s the way he did everything.

  WHILE Jack went to find the Coke machine, I took a shower. There was plenty of hot water. What a luxury! At home, by the time the boys got through, mine was downright cold. I slipped between the sheets in a shirt I took out of Jack’s suitcase. The only thing I had brought with me was my guitar; that and the papers from the bottom of Mum’s old dresser—her marriage certificate and annulment along with my birth registration were the only proof that I was me. As for let-down skirts and patched sweaters, I would wear new ones or none at all.

  Jack came back with the Cokes, and we were sitting up in bed drinking them when there came a sudden hammering at the door. We were both stark naked again—Jack had seen to that—but he threw a towel around himself and let in our company.

  It was my stepfather. He had his drinking buddies with him. Hubert politely removed his hat, but Jellet made straight for me, and Black Douglas was right behind him. Then, suspecting I was naked as a jaybird under the covers, Jellet stopped in confusion. I pulled the blanket around my ears. The room seemed full of men.

  Jack, who had never set eyes on my stepfather, was asking who the devil he was and what they wanted. Jellet found his voice and denounced me as a whore and a harlot.

  “Are you through?” Jack jumped to my defense. “Because if you are I call on God himself to witness that you broke in here full of threats and verbal abuse and…”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Jellet spluttered.

  “No, you hold on.” Jack’s voice rose to a tenor. “Your stepdaughter and I were married this morning by Preacher Bartlett.”

  “Married?” Jellet fell back a step.

  “That never occurred to you?” I asked sweetly. “Jason didn’t tell you? I suppose you were whaling him too hard and he omitted that little piece of information.”

  Jack slapped his thigh and almost lost his towel. “Talk about a wild goose chase!”

  “But she just ran off,” Jellet was telling his pals. “Didn’t have my parental consent or anything like it.”

  “You’re not my parent and never were.”

  “How old is she?” Black Douglas put in, with the air of a judge on the bench.

  “Seventeen,” replied Jellet. This came as a shock to Jack, as I could see out of the corner of my eye.

  “You’re within your rights, Jellet,” Douglas intoned gravely. “But give it a thought, my friend, give it a thought. This here Irishman married her fair and square. He’s got a couple of pretty classy suits hanging in the wardrobe, not to speak of a car and a horse trailer.”

  “Sure,” Hubert chimed in. “Here’s someone’s who’s pretty well fixed come along and took her off your hands.”

  Jellet turned on them angrily, demanding to know whose side they were on. But I could see he was thinking things over, weighing them in the balance, so to speak, and I signed Jack to repress the urge for a wisecrack and let things work themselves out.

  Black Douglas left to return with more Cokes, and a treaty of peace was concluded. Jellet even went so far as to shake hands with Jack.

  When they finally departed with handshakes all around, Jack let loose with a war whoop. No way would Jack Sullivan have given up his bride. He had spent the entire time that our marriage was being toasted figuring how to take all three of them on. “The big guy is out of condition. A couple of jabs in the gut would put him away. Your stepfather is the kind that needs a weapon; he’s no good bare hands. Only the dude in the black hat worried me. But the one thing on his mind was how to fortify his Coke from the flask in his pocket without sharing.”

  I WOKE up thinking I was sick to my stomach. But that wasn’t it. My head didn’t ache, my throat wasn’t sore, but I felt terrible. It took me a while to realize it was Abram. The hole I felt was not where a tooth was missing or tonsils taken out. It was because I had left Abram.

  I looked at the man still asleep in the rumpled bed. A redheaded man with red fuzz on his arms and on his chest. I had traded Abram for him, and I didn’t even know him. I didn’t know who he was. It was as though the roof fell in on me, burying me under the rubble of what I had done.

  I had made a choice that was responsible for the fact that I was sitting in an unheated room in the middle of the night. It had gotten me out of bed and made me look at myself.

  I had made a choice, and it got me up in the night and made me think I was dying. It was cold sitting in a chair, but I didn’t put my sweater on. I didn’t get back under the covers, and I didn’t get dressed. I wanted to be cold. A stillness came over me, the stillness I had known on the res when I stood with my grandfather and felt the world breathe. I began to hum the world in a chant I’d learned from Elk Woman. The Cree music made me strong. I had to be strong enough to forget the past, which was Abram, and focus on the future, which was Jack.

  When Jack woke up, I asked him, “What do you think? Is it possible to feel bad about the right choice, and pretty good about the wrong one?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s just a philosophical question. I thought you might know.”

  Of course he didn’t.

  JACK and I stepped from one quagmire into another, from explosive scene to chaotic happening. Many times we sneaked out of a place because we couldn’t pay the bill. Out back doors, down fire escapes. In a coffee shop I’d pick the bread basket clean and squirrel away the little butter, jam, and honey pats. Even a salt cellar was swept into my purse, which already had broken crackers in the bottom. Jack made a lark of it. It was called “getting your money’s worth.”

  Many times we couldn’t afford dinner. We’d go into a store for bread, cheese, and cookies, and eat in the car. We’d pick up those little packets of dried soup, where you just add hot water. The tap water in motels usually wasn’t very hot, but we managed.

  We had to sell the ponies for less than Jack had hoped. I discovered that in all deals he was vastly optimistic and projected profits that were rarely realized. Without horses there was no reason to keep the trailer, so that went as well. After a transaction Jack always celebrated with a couple or three drinks. The worse he came off, the more he drank.

  When a deal collapsed completely, we still had to have a party. He called this “celebrating bad news.” “That’s when you need it,” he said. “When things go right you’re happy anyway.”

  I noticed, however, that he celebrated then too.

  Unfortunately, the celebrations themselves were what got him down. The morning after, his high good spirits deserted him. He became morose and ugly, a side of him I’d not seen before.

  I had to get used to bar talk too. I saw why Mum never let me near the Eight Bells; the men sprinkled their conversation with words I had been taught to avoid. However, I soon learned that nobody heard them. Like Abram’s “Praise the Lord,” it was simply a way of underlining what was said.

  I learned that ponies were far from Jack’s only source of livelihood. He had peddled everything from Fuller brushes to insurance to a product that ostensibly removed stains on anything from blouses to saddles. It took the stain off—and the material as well. I’ve known it to bite through the trim of a car.

  But Jack had a natural flair. The gift of gab, he called it. And we didn’t starve.

  In the beginning it was fun, kind of a game, the two of us outwitting everybody else. Stealing out of bed before sunup, rolling the car fifty yards down the road before starting it. It was generally a house, as motels had a nasty habit of demanding payment in advance.

  I wasn’t listening to the radio as much. I was listening inside myself, remembering the songs Elk Woman sang as she kneaded bread
, as we searched for berries, as she lit her pipe. Some of the notes didn’t land squarely on the frets of my guitar, and when I tried them on a bar piano, they seemed to hide in the cracks between the white and black keys. But they fit perfectly into their own melodies and produced strange tonalities that echoed the sounds and cries of nature. They flowed like the streams I’d played in, shone silver like the mudbanks I’d slid down. The notes were elusive, dew caught on leaves, tiny transparent prisms of sound, chords that spoke of rain and earth. And pounding moccasin feet dancing my mother on the long journey. Celebrating. Cree songs were full of celebration, of life and death in an eternal round.

  Elk Woman used to explain it to me as we sat and smoked. Now, driving these long stretches with Jack, I tried to put it into words. I couldn’t, but I put it into sound. I got excited and sang out loud.

  Jack didn’t like it. “What’s that outlandish screeching? Are you singing or yelling?”

  “I’m feeling the earth breathe.”

  THEY say you remember first times, a first kiss, a first love. I remember the first time I was paid for singing. It was an elegant place with a piano, a big midwestern square piano in a corner by the bar. I rushed over to it and saw that it had been degutted, the strings torn out. Nevertheless I ran my hands over it. It was dusty and the finish marred by beer bottle rings. Still, the place was an improvement on most of the dives Jack had taken me to. It had fancy toothpicks in little cellophane packets. That seemed to me quite a cut above having them lie around in a cup.

  We were pretty much on our uppers because Jack had taken to making bar bets, and the last couple of times he lost. This particular time he left me eating a Salisbury steak with a side order of fried onions. After a week of chicken salad sandwiches with the chicken mostly absent, this tasted like heaven.

  I was wolfing my food, barely conscious of what Jack was up to. He’d gone to the bar to cadge a free drink, and I saw that he was pulling one of his favorite cons. It was a number game he called Double or Nothing.