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My mother’s people called me Two Feet. One white foot, one Pawnee foot, but I am not split down the middle, straddling two worlds. I am simply a stranger in both.
“It’s worth it, you know.” “What is, Jennie?” “The pain. It’s worth it. The more you love, the more it hurts. But it’s worth it. It’s the only thing that is.”
“That is not the way I want to be kissed,” she says. “No?”
“I am not yours to trade, John. But I am yours,” she says,
“The hardest thing about life is knowing what matters and what doesn’t,” Winifred muses. “If nothing matters, then there’s no point. If everything matters, there’s no purpose. The trick is to find firm ground between the two ways of being.”
“I thought you weren’t going to kiss me again,” she whispers. “I wasn’t,” I say. And then I do.
“Âka’a,”
“I love you, John Two Feet Lowry.”
“Does he know what he’s gettin’ into with you?” “No. And I’d appreciate it if we just keep it between the two of us.”
John is driven . . . and I’m going to let him drive, wherever he needs to go and whatever he needs to do, just as long as he lets me ride beside him. Just as long as he’ll let Ma and Pa and my brothers tag along.
Grief and joy are complicated. Love and loss too, and I know tears aren’t always what they seem.
I suddenly understand why he is so private, why he keeps things locked down tight. It’s because the moment you let go, those feelings aren’t just yours anymore.
“I worry sometimes that you will get tired of carrying all of us, John.” “I would carry you to the ends of the earth.”
“Ma?” I whisper. “I don’t know what to do. Help me find my way home, wherever home is.”
The tracks of a woman . . . and a little Wolfe. “The mother came for her son,” I whisper, stunned. Overcome.
The people suffered, they had very little, and most of them just wanted a better life and went west to find it.
There was good and bad, ugly and beautiful, shameful and hopeful, and it’s all wrapped into one very rich heritage.
recognizing that who we are is not who they were, and judging historical people by today’s standards prevents us from learning from them, from their mistakes and their triumphs.
