Mrs. Mike by Benedict Freedman & Nancy Freedman

Author:Benedict Freedman & Nancy Freedman [Freedman, Benedict & Freedman, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Love Stories, Canada, Wilderness, Historical, Classics
ISBN: 9780425183236
Google: XEb1nQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0425103285
Publisher: Berkley Books
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"I don't know," she said, and fluffed up the other one.

"What's happened?" I asked.

She sat wearily on the bed. "In summer the deer stand in river many hours. The bear roll in mud until it coat its body. Why?"

"Why?" I asked, a little impatient at this Indian indirectness.

"So deer fly, bull fly, and mosquito do not make them mad. Why then you think Jonathan sit in cage through the hot days, his body bitten, his feet taking two steps, then back, then two step? He whose feet go in all the paths of the forest?"

This was not a new question. I had asked it of myself many times.

"Well, it's hard to know Jonathan," I said. "Hard to understand his reasons. He lives by some inner law of his own. Of course he didn't tell Mike he had given Mrs. Marlin the knife because he didn't want her punished. He didn't understand that she wouldn't be killed or imprisoned. And you couldn't make him understand because he's never seen a hospital. He didn't know that she'd just be taken care of."

Oh-Be-Joyful shook her head impatiently. "Yes, about the knife. You understand about the knife. But Sergeant Mike he say to Jonathan, 'Tell me you do not do it, and you go free.' "

"He's stubborn, that's all. Mike wanted an accounting of his actions, and rather than give it to him, he went to jail. It doesn't sound reasonable," I admitted, "but it sounds like Jonathan."

Oh-Be-Joyful seemed to speak to herself: "I thought he kill Cardinal. Jonathan, he know what I think. And that is why he say nothing, why he went to sit in jail."

"I don't understand it yet."

"He would not say, 'I don't sneak up on man in cage, I don't bring him to the bars with my talk, I don't kill man with knife, who has no knife'—these things he would not say. He wanted that I should know him. But I did not know. I know only Cardinal is his enemy. I know the knife in Cardinal's throat is his, and most I know the never-forgotten anger in Jonathan."

I began to see into Jonathan's mind, to follow the circuitous courses of his thought. His conception of love seemed strange and mystic. He wanted his woman to understand him, not with her intellect, not with her emotions, but directly, soul to soul. The things he had done, the things he would do, she must know as well as she knew his face. She must know he would kill Cardinal, but not murder him. Jonathan would not help her to this knowledge. Instead he let Mike put him in the cage, where he sat, proud and haughty, under the stinging swarms of insects. He remained motionless for hours at a time, staring into the cool distant green of the forest, but when Oh-Be-Joyful came, bringing fruit and milk, he said nothing to her. He waited for the day when she could speak, when she would say to him of her own accord, "You did not kill Cardinal.

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