Every Fixed Star by Jane Kirkpatrick

Author:Jane Kirkpatrick [Kirkpatrick, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56878-6
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

“You look for Paul.” Baptiste’s mother said as she scraped at a hide. “You know the languages. I’ve heard Sally say her husband thinks you’ll soon speak Cayuse as well as Narcisse Raymond does.”

Baptiste grunted, but it pleased him to know that Ross noticed his skills. Sometimes, Baptiste thought he knew the Cayuse words better than Narcisse, but that was no matter. Ross wouldn’t rate a boy higher than a man.

But he was a man now. Though he’d never made the journey as his father’s people had, seeking time away, to move from boyhood to beyond. He’d made the passage, sweated, and purified himself with steaming water and the plunge into the Walla Walla River. He’d done it at Waiilatpu, the grassy place, where Older Sister had lived, farther away from the fort’s bustle. He’d seen the world differently after that, as a man saw things. His discovery of Older Sister followed.

These River Indians had different ways to do things, but he was sure if his father had lived, he’d have approved of this path taken.

“Is that your worry?” His mother again.

His mind had wandered, taken off on a path of its own. If he waited, she would fill in what he had missed. “Her time isn’t due for maybe two, three months. You could find Paul by then and be back. Bring him back.”

Baptiste shrugged. He wouldn’t say yes or no to her now. Once spoken, she never eased up, wanted whatever he’d agreed to do to happen before the sun set on the words.

“I promised to be with her when the child comes,” Baptiste said. “As you say, she’s young, Mother. She needs her husband at her side.”

“You’re a good husband and a good son. You go now. Try to find Paul, make him understand that the bride’s price has been changed. You owe him this. It was your bride’s price. Tell him he can keep the horse. If you don’t find him, you come back to be here, for your wife. You have time. She stays here and we come to know each other, a mother and daughter, oui?”

He said nothing.

At the sleeping hut, he told Older Sister what his mother wanted. Older Sister never pushed him. He stood with his arms crossed, bracing for her protest. “When you cross your arms,” Older Sister told him, “I know you have closed your thinking to me. I won’t open a flap you want closed.”

He hadn’t known his body told tales. He lowered his arms then, and she smiled. “When I asked if you wished to live in your own hut, it was a question, not a way of telling you what I wanted. Not a way to make you do something.” She sat in the sleeping lodge, stroking one of the pups that were now full-size. He still thought of them as pups. “When you say your mother wants you to find Paul, what you do is your choice, not mine. Not hers. Do what you do because you choose it,” she said.

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