Kathy Little Bird Read Online Free PDF Page A

were.
    Abram was a big influence on me. I never let him know this. And I never tried to be like him either. I knew it was no use. It simply wasn’t in me. But I respected his ways—with spiders, for instance. I never had any use for spiders. If I saw one I’d go out of my way to step on it or bash it. Abram felt differently. “They’re one of God’s creatures,” he told me, as he carefully cupped a spider in a leaf or a handkerchief andcarried it to some place he felt would be favorable to spiders. He did that with any bug or insect. I don’t think his brethren in Christ taught him this. I think they squashed as many spiders as I did. No, it was Abram, it was the way he was.
    Most of my information about the world came from him, and he got it from library books. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t supposed to read anything but holy scripture because the elders told him that all knowledge was contained in the Good Book. Abram himself said that was probably true when God shaped the world, but a lot had happened and a lot of people had reshaped it since. Also, according to Abram, man hadn’t interpreted God’s word too well. Take lightning. It wasn’t God’s wrath emanating from the heavens as his father preached, because the St. Alban’s public library stamp was on a volume that explained lightning as coming from the ground. Abram thought that was important to know. “You live in the world, and you should know how it works.”
    The rock upon which Mum founded her home schooling was partly that same library, partly her own background as a wartime nurse and the rigorous courses she’d taken at the Sisters of Charity, but even more the homespun wisdom of someone I’d heard about all my life, Mrs. Mike. She had taken my Mum in when she was a baby, and she and her sergeant husband raised her and imparted lots of good, old-fashioned ideas like—never give in to a man until you’ve got a preacher and a ring. It was things like this that got passed along to me.
    Mum said it was more than Mrs. Mike’s fundamental sense of goodness and fairness, it was the way she was—spunky and high-spirited, yet always instinctively on the side of the underdog. Why did she choose Oh Be Joyful from the mission in the first place? She was the one in trouble, an older girl sent to sit on a bench in punishment row along with the little kids. Oh Be Joyful, my Mum’s mum, was the one who didn’t fit in, the one they couldn’t control. It was typical of Mrs. Mike to stand up for her.
    “That’s the way she was, and that’s why I’m ‘Kathy’ and you’re ‘Kathy.’ It’s a proud name, and you must try to live up to it. You see, when you live in Alberta as we do, there’s a lot to contend with. But think how it was in those days—no trains penetrated this far, there were only dogsleds, and the telegraph lines were always down. As for paved highways, forget it. The Indians used to say, ‘It’s a good land for men and dogs, but hard on women and horses.’ It was hard for Mrs. Mike, but it held all the important things.”
    “And what are they?” I’d ask.
    “They’re different for different people. You’ve got to discover yours for yourself, Kathy.”
    I took that as a challenge to grow up.
    But I didn’t think I would grow up until Abram and I ran away. That’s when I’d start to live my life.
    An uneasy feeling nagged at me, however. I felt as if I were becalmed in the Sargasso Sea. Nothing moved or was likely to move. I was entangled in seaweed, mosses, and kelp beds, helpless, drifting, going nowhere.
    I attempted to fight this feeling, but it persisted, and one day when Abram and I were stretched out by the stream, leaning on our elbows and taking aim along our jawline with Jellet’s BB gun, I came out with it.
    “Abram,” I said, putting the gun down, “I’ve got to know. How much money have you saved? Please, tell me it’s a lot.”
    Abram looked uncomfortable. “I raked leaves for Mrs. Pringle, but she