Kathy Little Bird (38 page)

“No, they’ve thrown a bunch of new charges at him. He’s convinced he’ll be railroaded.”

“And will he be?”

“In my opinion, he’ll get a fair trial and then they’ll hang him.”

“If things change, Jas, phone me immediately. And this time do it.” I hung up and looked at Abram.

“What next?” he asked. “Will you write her?”

“Write her and see her.”

“Not without a plan. We need a plan if we’re really going to help.”

I clutched his arm. “Oh Abram, she needs me, just as you said she would. For the first time in my life Kathy needs me.”

“What will you do?” Abram asked again.

“Spend the money my records are making. I’ll write Kathy that I’m interested in the cause of indigenous people.” I laughed shakily. “I’ll say I read her letter in the
Standard,
her account of Lone Walker. I was touched by it and am offering financial support. They’ll need a good lawyer.”

“Go slow, Kathy. I don’t want you hurt.”

“It’s Kathy Mason we’ve got to be thinking of. Can I count on you, Abram?”

He smiled at the question. I squeezed his hand.

Immediately my schizoid mind veered to the forty sleeping pills in the aspirin bottle. How could I have ever contemplated such a thing? Who would have been here for Kathy?

I wheeled myself into my room to retrieve them….

They weren’t there. I looked frantically on the floor, and felt behind the table in case the bottle had fallen down. This was one of those cases where you know before you look that it’s not there, but you look anyway.

Frantically I opened the drawer in the table. My fingers searched to the very end of it. Of course there was no aspirin bottle; I had never put it there. Storm burst around me, while I at the center was untouched, able to think calmly.

Abram had found the pills. That was the only explanation. I thought back to my decision, back to the cucumber salad. He mentioned that he’d been doing too much reading, implying that he had a headache. He worked in the shop a short time, then must have gone to get an aspirin from the medicine cabinet. Finding them gone, he thought of my bedside table.

Instead of aspirin he found forty sleeping pills.

What had his reaction been? To talk to me of his return of faith. Knowing what I intended, he told me I had been a light to him. In Abramese that meant—I love you, I need you…Why
couldn’t Abram say things directly? Why was it so hard sometimes to figure him out?

I went back to the living room.

“I’m going to write her this minute,” I said, and asked him to hand my stationery down to me. When he bent to place it in my lap, my arms went around him.

I wrote Kathy Mason care of the
Standard,
going over the letter several times to keep it businesslike.

I enclosed our number, and for days wouldn’t answer the phone for fear I couldn’t handle hearing my daughter’s voice.

Finally she called.

Abram picked up, and motioned that it was Kathy.

I was at his elbow in a moment; the next the phone was in my hand and I heard her as though she were in the room. Voices are important to me. Hers was low, resonant, a good voice. She spoke decisively, asking if we could set up a meeting. “Of course,” I agreed, I hope not too eagerly.
Keep it businesslike,
I reminded myself.

While thinking this, I was making the offer Abram and I had agreed on, of sending her a round-trip ticket to Montreal to initiate a Justice for Lone Walker campaign.

I could tell she was amazed, but she managed a casual tone, and we arranged to meet at the Mirabel airport.

Friday afternoon, two o’clock, at the baggage claim, I would see my daughter.

Abram wrote it all down and handed me the slip of paper.

I lifted my face to his. “She has a wonderfully warm voice.”

Smiling, Abram completed the litany. “And beautiful red hair.”

It was one of the few things I had known about her. Now I was to see for myself. Kathy Mason and I would know each other. The named and the namer.

N
O
performance had ever put me on edge as the thought of the coming meeting. I couldn’t settle to anything and was so nervous I was almost ill.

On the drive to the airport I reminded Abram once again that Kathy wasn’t to know who I was. “I’m a wealthy eccentric, interested in—in causes. That’s all she needs to know.”

“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

I had to laugh at his dry comment. “I guess it is at that. Oh Abram, do you think she’ll like me?”

“I think you will get on very well…. Some time in the future I think you should tell her.”

“Yes. Some time. If this goes well. Imagine, Abram, we’ll be face to face. I never had the courage before. Who do you
think she takes after? Me? Jack? My mum? I hope it’s my mum. She was a wonderful woman, a strong woman.”

“Well, Kathy Mason has certainly gone all out for that young man.”

“She has, hasn’t she? Lone Walker. Accused of murder.” My laugh was a bit tremulous. “…You don’t think he did it, do you?”

T
WO
hundred yards away I recognized her, trim figure and glorious red hair that cascaded to her shoulders. She gave the impression of being beautiful, except for the von Kerll nose, which is slightly crooked. If this was a defect, it added to her charm.

She came toward us holding out a slim hand.

I took it in mine and couldn’t say a word.

“Mrs. Willems. I knew it had to be you.”

It was Abram who answered, introducing himself and inquiring about her trip. I was content just taking her in. Eyes like Mum’s, and that meant like mine too…black on black.

Abram drove us to a busy restaurant off the main thoroughfare. This quiet man, bless him, did most of the talking. We were lucky to find a table. I sat down across from my daughter.

I liked this girl. I liked everything about her.

I loved this girl! I loved everything about her!

It was Abram who drew out the story of Sam Lone Walker. His father had been an activist for self-rule by First Nation people, whose dream had been to lay the case before
the UN. But he had died as a result of the confrontation with U.S. marshals at Wounded Knee. His twelve-year-old son had witnessed it.

Kathy Mason’s glance compelled us to see what this would mean for a boy of that age. When she went on she had herself under control. “He took on his father’s crusade. He’s in hiding now because there was an oil strike on Cree property. That’s what this is all about. The oil companies on one side trying to buy up Indian land, and the Cree on the other, protesting. It’s a holy site, where they hold their vision quests. Sam Lone Walker organized a demonstration. That’s when the Mountie was killed. But I was there. I was with him—just as I said in my open letter. He didn’t do it. He didn’t even have a gun. I can testify to this.”

Abram ordered for us. Neither Kathy Mason or I had looked at the menu.

Abram waited for the waitress to leave, leaned across the table, and asked, “Why did he run?”

“He knew they’d blame him. They consider him a troublemaker. This was their chance. There’s unbelievable money at stake for the oil companies, billions of dollars, Mr. Willems.”

I barely heard “oil companies, environmental damage, vision site”—I heard my daughter saying,
I love this man.
Saying,
help me save him.

I saw my daughter’s pain, felt her anxiety. I don’t think she was as certain as she said that he would give himself up. But the conviction with which she spoke made it plain that her life was vested in him.

Abram was explaining the business end of our proposal to her. “What’s needed is first-class legal help. Mrs. Willems has authorized me to write a check in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars as a retainer.”

Kathy Mason looked stunned. “I guess I don’t quite understand. You represent a foundation that is concerned with aboriginal rights?”

She didn’t pause for an answer. She was peering at me intently. “I know you,” she exclaimed, interrupting herself and almost upsetting her water glass. “Aren’t you—? Why, you’re that famous singer. You’re Kathy Little Bird.”

“Shh,” I said nervously, and glanced around at nearby tables. But the din was such that no one heard.

“I’m sorry,” she said, realizing that the woman in the wheelchair might not want to be identified. “It came over me all at once who you are. I had the feeling from the beginning that you were someone I knew, or should know. No wonder—I have your albums. I’m a big fan. I think you’re wonderful.”

“Well,” I said, to stem the tide, “that was a long time ago.”

“Not really. Was it two or three years ago that you—?” She broke off, confused and embarrassed. How sweet, that she was embarrassed. It showed what a nice person she was, sensitive to another’s misfortune.

“Yes.” I spoke casually, trying to put her at ease. “It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I remember…it was a concert some place…a riot. You were injured. It was in all the papers. But you’re well now.”

“Praise the Lord,” Abram said, “that’s the truth.”

If she recalled the vituperative press, the hearing and deportation, she didn’t let on. “Do you sing any more?” she asked. “Professionally, I mean?”

I tried to keep it light, and at the same time dismiss the subject. But Kathy Mason was on a crusade. She had a gleam in her eye. “Kathy Little Bird!” she said. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here having lunch with you.”

I smiled. She was so young. And she bought my albums. My voice had been in her room, part of her growing up. I wish I had known that.

“With a voice like yours,” my daughter continued, “singing the way you do, I don’t see how you could give it up.”

“It gave me up,” I said with a laugh.

“I’m afraid I don’t believe you. It must be so difficult to do without music.”

“Music wasn’t always kind to me,” I said.

“But you touched so many people, made such a difference.”

“I never thought of it that way. It was just something I liked to do.”

“You didn’t realize the effect you had on people?”

“Not really.”

“But you did. And you haven’t changed. I mean, you’re as beautiful as ever. And you did that benefit of ethnic music in…was it South Dakota? That’s right, isn’t it?” She rushed on, completely caught up in enthusiasm, “How marvelous it would be if we could organize a benefit for Lone Walker and the vision site, and you’d sing that same repertoire.”

My mind jumped to the fatal benefit, as I heard my daughter say: “You would come out of retirement. If I could persuade you to do that—it would mean everything. More important even than a lawyer, your singing would bring everyone to the cause. They wouldn’t dare railroad Sam then. And the oil company would be beaten once everyone knew what they were up to. Is there a chance you could be persuaded to sing again?”

“It’s a totally impossible idea. I haven’t sung in three years, not a note.”

Kathy Mason shrank back against the leather of the booth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that it came over me how wonderful it would be. Not that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing, it’s unbelievably generous. And as you say, it will get us a first-rate lawyer. But the other side will have lawyers too, a battery of them. I’m sure it will come right in the end because we have the truth on our side. Sam Lone Walker is innocent. Still, who knows? They could fabricate evidence, bribe witnesses, all the things they do.”

I had not expected Abram to enter this conversation. He did. “I think young Kathy Mason has the idea of a lifetime. Come out of retirement, sing for Lone Walker, sing for the environment.” He was so carried away that I almost thought he would say, “Sing for your daughter—” but he caught himself and finished rather tamely, “You’d be a sensation.”

“I’ve
been
a sensation,” I said wearily, “and look what it got me.”

Then I saw the disappointment in my daughter’s eyes. It was the only thing she had ever asked of me.

I berated Abram all the way home. “You took her side. Why? Why? Why did you do that? Why did you let me agree? I’ve got myself in too deep. I can’t do it. I don’t have any voice left. I can’t possibly go through with a wild, hare-brained scheme like this. I have to get out of it. You know I haven’t sung in years. It would be a fiasco. I’d be pathetic…. They strike up the music, I come out in a wheelchair, I open my mouth, and out comes a croak. Besides…I’m too old.”

“Old? Who’s old? You’re thirty-six and you look twenty-six. Sitting across from you I couldn’t tell which was the daughter.”

“Stop it, Abram. It’s your fault. I can’t go through with it…and I can’t disappoint her. Oh Abram, isn’t she lovely! A lovely girl. And did you notice?”

“Of course. She’s left-handed, just like her mum.”

I allowed myself only a moment before answering, then started in again, marshaling the myriad reasons why a benefit featuring Kathy Little Bird was out of the question. I argued, I yelled, just as I used to. I carried on and convinced myself all over again of the impossibility of it.

I kept it up even after we arrived home and ended locking myself in the bathroom, this time not to count pills. Now I had something to live for. At the deepest level, at the Sargasso Sea level, I wanted to disprove everything I’d concluded.