Sky Blue Water: Great Stories for Young Readers by Jay D. Peterson & Collette A. Morgan

Author:Jay D. Peterson & Collette A. Morgan
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: LIT009000 Literary Criticism / Children's Literature
ISBN: 9781452951942
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2016-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

After that first meeting, the courts set up regular visits between Amy and her dad. They went to powwows that summer. Close ones that were within a day’s drive because she wasn’t allowed overnights with him yet. He took her to the White Earth Urban Picnic at Wabun Park to meet her relatives on his side of the family. He took her to Valleyfair and the state fair. Sometimes, in the evenings before sunset, he would come by the foster home and ask her if she wanted to go for a ride. By that time, her foster mom would say, “Yes, just have her home before dark.”

She would sit in the front seat of his pickup truck, and he would drive her downtown and say, “See that girder way up there? The third one to the left of that orange crane? That’s the one I worked on today.” Other times they would drive up and down West River Road along the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River while he told stories of buildings he helped build in Chicago or St. Louis or how the oil fields in North Dakota were destroying that state for human habitation. He would laugh and say, “Used to be only Indians lived in that state. That’s how it’s going to be once the white folks are done over there. Only the Indians will be left. Heck, we can live anywhere.”

On one drive, after one of the hottest days that summer, they stopped and went for a dip in Lake Calhoun. As they sat in the pickup, Amy, wrapped in a beach towel, asked the question she had wanted to ask since that first day in Perkins. “How come you guys weren’t together? You and mom.”

Her dad turned the key in the ignition, pulled out of the parking spot, and drove slowly around the lake, all the way around the lake, the setting sun turning the sky purple and gold before he answered, saying only, “Your mom isn’t a bad person. She just isn’t exactly what one would call settling-down material. You know what I mean?”

Amy nodded yes.

“She loves you the best she can.”

Amy nodded yes.

“Soon as this court stuff is over, things are going to be okay, girl, you got that?”

Amy nodded yes.

“We were two different people; our idea of how to be in life was too different to live together. She was a good mom to you while she was here, right?”

Amy nodded yes.

“And now I’m here. It’s gonna be okay. Got that?”

Amy nodded yes.

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