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His words stopped short of revealing his hidden affair to someone after having held it inside his heart, a secret, all of these years. Gray Feather had never forgotten the woman.
At night he still dreamed about holding her, about loving her, about begging her to leave her betrothed and return with him to his Chippewa village!
He had so badly wanted her as his own woman, a woman he would have cherished forever.
He had ached for years over her rejection of him.
“That she rejected you after you had trysts with her behind her husband’s back?” White Fire blurted out. “You wanted her, but she only used you. She made love with you because she was that sort of woman—one who would be unfaithful to her husband for the excitement of doing it.”
When White Fire saw how what he had just said made his father go so pale, he regretted revealing to his father that his mother was a loose, uncaring woman.
“Husband?” Gray Feather gulped out. “She was married? She was not betrothed, but instead married?”
“I should not have told you,” White Fire said, reaching over to place a gentle hand on his father’s shoulder. “But, you see, I know all about my mother’s affair with you, and that she is capable of deceits that I hate to even think about.”
“Your . . . gee-mah-mah, mother?” Gray Feather gasped out, his chin trembling as his emotion rose within him.
“Ay-uh, yes, my gee-mah-mah, mother,” White Fire said, slowly easing his hand away from his father, “Pretty Cloud. Did not my mother tell you that she could not go with you to this land of sky-blue waters because she was betrothed to a powerful Miami chief and feared a war might erupt between the Chippewa and Miami if she turned her back and heart on her betrothed?”
“Ay-uh, that is what she told me,” Gray Feather said softly. “And she lied? She was married? I joined the woman in her sin against her husband?” Gray Feather held his head in his hands. “The shame of it,” he said, his voice breaking. “I am a man of honor. Never would I have laid down with a married woman.”
“Do not despair so over having done it,” White Fire said. He stood up, then knelt down directly at his father’s left side. “For had you not, I would not have been born.”
Gray Feather raised his face up in jerks. He stared in disbelief at White Fire. “What did you say?” he gasped. out.
“While you were with Pretty Cloud, she slept with no one but you, for she no longer loved her husband and would not share his blankets with him,” White Fire slowly explained. “When you slept with her, you made a child with her. That child is this man who has grown to love you as a father. You are my father, not the white man my mother married just after she left her Miami husband.”
For a moment all that Gray Feather could do was stare at White Fire, his lips parted, his eyes brimming with sudden tears.
Then he reached out and placed a gentle hand on his face. “My son?” he said, his voice breaking. “My dreams were real? They tried to tell me what was truly real, that you are my son?”
“Ay-uh, your son,” White Fire said. Then he felt warm and wonderful inside as Gray Feather enwrapped him with his powerful arms and held him close.
“My son,” Gray Feather said, over and over again.
They embraced for a long while. Then Gray Feather eased away from White Fire. “This is a day I shall cherish forever,” he said thickly. “I have for so long wanted a son. When you suddenly appeared in my life, I felt drawn to you. I puzzled over it for so long, then accepted it. I knew that you were meant to be a part of my life. I knew it. But I just did not know why.” He smiled. “Ah, what a wonder it is to have you here with me like this, to know that through my years of pining for your mother that something good came out of our short time together.”
White Fire sat down beside his father. Gray Feather turned and sat directly before him so that their eyes could meet.
“Tell me about your mother,” Gray Feather said thickly. “Who her husband is now? And what sort of life does she lead. For you see, after I left Kentucky and knew that I could not have her, I found another woman, yet none as fine and beautiful as my Pretty Cloud. Pretty Cloud has stayed in my heart forever. She has been a part of my dreams, oh, so often in my arms in my dreams, telling me how much she loved me.”
“It is good that you have held such good memories about her, as though she is a woman worthy of such memories, for in truth, she is an unlikable, deceitful woman,” White Fire said sullenly. “She has turned her back entirely on her Miami
people. She lives the life of a white woman. She is married again. She scarcely waited for my father’s body, or should I say the man I thought was my father, to get cold in the grave before she married another wealthy, affluent St. Louis man.”
“In your voice I hear much disrespect when you speak of your mother,” Gray Feather said, searching his eyes. “Tell me why.”
“My disrespect for her began even before I was born, it seems,” White Fire said, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. He could not get over how his mother had lied so often to him about how she had happened to be alone when she was found wandering in the forest by Samuel Dowling. She told White Fire that she was there because there had been an attack on her village. The lies! She knew so well the art of lying.
“After you left,” White Fire continued, “and it was discovered that my mother was with child, and that it could not have possibly been her husband’s since she no longer shared her blankets with him at night, her husband banished her from the tribe. It was then, only then, that everyone knew that she had wronged her husband, and how.”
“How did she meet the man she married after she left her village?” Gray Feather asked softly. “The white man who raised you as his son.”
“The man, who until today I thought was my father, was a trapper,” White Fire said. “He found Mother wandering alone in the forest. And as you know, she was beautiful and intriguing. She came up with some sort of lie that convinced him about why she was alone in the forest, without telling him the truth of her shameful banishment. He took her in and married her. When he discovered that she was pregnant, he thought the child was his.”
“And from that time on she turned her back totally on her heritage?” Gray Feather asked solemnly. “She lived the life of a white woman?”
“Ay-uh, as a white woman.” White Fire nodded. “From that time on she went by the white name Jania May and cast aside her Indian name as her Indian people had cast her aside. When I was born, with all my features Indian, she convinced her white husband that that happens, and he never doubted that he was the father to her son.”
