Read Kathy Little Bird for Free Online

to set his soul right.”
    “I can’t do it.”
    “There’s no one else,” Elk Woman said practically. “Now go in and see does your mother need you.”
    I looked at Mum with Elk Woman’s eyes and saw an emaciated woman, her usually glowing copper skin a faded yellow, her face dominated by eyes. The circles under them were like the frame of a picture setting them apart, making them alive.
    Mum must have heard me come in, because she asked, “Has Elk Woman been talking to you?”
    I nodded.
    “Jas is almost grown. A big boy. Jas will fall on his feet, like a cat. Jas will be all right. And Morrie won’t remember—” The word
me
trembled her lips, but she didn’t utter it. Her voice faltered like a toy that’s overwound and starts up again. “And you, Kathy, music. Music is what you’re about.” She had tired herself, and signed that she couldn’t talk any more.
    I sat and rocked and waited. After a while her voice came again. “I’ve been saving up, Kathy. A present. Jas has the money for it. It was to be a surprise for your birthday. But I want to see you with it. It’s at the pawnshop, a guitar. Go with Jason into town and get it.”
    A guitar. How thrilled I would have been even yesterday. Now it was an inheritance, like the reading of a will. But Mum was smiling, anticipating my pleasure. I managed a smile too and went to find Jas.
    He was out back checking his polliwogs, waiting for them to become frogs. One thing I liked about Jas, eventually he returned the creatures to where he found them. I think he picked that up from Abram. Not that Abram ever preached to anyone. But Jas noticed the way he did things, and did them that way too.
    “Mum wants us to get the guitar.”
    “Okay.” He disappeared to retrieve the money from some secret place. The bills were pretty dirty, but still legal tender, as they say. “How come you get to have it now?” he asked. “It’s not your birthday yet.”
    “She wants me to have it now.”
    “Because she’s dying, right?”
    “Jas, if you cry I’ll never forgive you.”
    “Who’s crying?”
    I reached out and took his hand. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but he was my favorite brother. Morrie played tearing-around games and practiced for the minor leagues in the backyard. He’d miss Mum, but she was right, he’d forget.
    Jas made a big effort. “I bet you’re happy about the guitar.”
    “I hate it.”
    “Yeah,” he said. He understood.
    When we finally stood before the pawnshop, there it was in the window. In spite of myself, I was excited. A name was scrolled on it in gold print—Martin. I let Jas negotiate the business, and reaching through the back of the window, picked it up and plucked the strings. It wasn’t tuned, but the sound was mellow and sweet. I sat down in a dusty corner and cradled it, working the frets, tightening, plucking again, bending my ear close.
    That was it.
    My guitar and I spoke with one voice, my voice, but enhanced, reverberating, it was like singing in chords.
    I hurried back to sing to Mum, but softly, so as not to wake Jellet. Austrian folk songs, that’s what I sang. The ones my father taught her, and she taught me.
    “You have a knack of carrying a person right into the music,” she said.
    Elk Woman stole in soundlessly to listen. Jason stood in the doorway.
    Mum murmured, “You have a wonderful gift, Kathy.”
    Elk Woman grunted. “See that it doesn’t ruin your life.”
    Mum looked at her reprovingly. “How could anything so lovely do that?”
    “Loki the Trickster sees to it.” She added matter of factly, “It’s his job.”

    M UM lived more and more in the past. She would tell me things about my Austrian father as though they happened yesterday. But more and more it was someone else she talked about. Someone called Crazy Dancer.
    She married Crazy Dancer first, before she fell in love with my father. But it was a Mohawk ceremony, and before they could do it again in church he was shipped off to