I Once Knew an Indian Woman by Ebbitt Cutler

Author:Ebbitt Cutler [Cutler, Ebbitt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-77049-085-7
Publisher: Tundra
Published: 1967-04-25T05:00:00+00:00

“Besides,” as the king told my mother, rationalizing his impotence, “I never seed such a shack. Even the walls were covered with tin. They won’t be able to live out the winter in it.” Then he sniffed, his gray-red mustache moving with the contemptuous curve of his lips: “He’ll go the way of his father yet. I always say if the father’s no good, what can you expect of the son?”

They did, however, not only manage to pass their first winter in it but many another, and were still living there the last summer I spent at the lake. As for the reference to Leo’s father, it was true the son seemed to have inherited, or acquired, his father’s intemperance, but the king’s syllogism was scarcely valid since Madame Dey’s other sons in the village were sober enough.

The only time I ever saw tears in Madame Dey’s great black eyes was when she spoke of her late husband. He had died the winter before our first summer at the lake and she seemed to miss him very much, although, in my mother’s view, “she was well rid of him.” From the moment at the age of fifteen when she left her father’s house on the Indian reservation of Caughnawaga to “run away” with Georges Dey, until the January morning when he was found dead in the snow, she never questioned his right to her roof and bed. He had walked out on her countless times during their marriage, leaving her to feed and shelter their children without help, and returning sometimes after as long as a year’s absence without money to show for it. “But why would you take him back?” my mother would say. I remember Madame Dey once answering: “Can the hunter help it if he must sometimes return with empty hands?”

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