Free Keeper'n Me by Richard Wagamese Page A

shoulder. “All kinds.”
    â€œSo what do I do?”
    â€œWell,” Stanley said, sitting down on a rock, “one of two things, I guess. One, you can split and figger it was never gonna work out anyhow. Or two, you can start all over again at the beginning puttin’ it all back together and hope that maybe them pieces’ll appear when you get to them. One’s easy, other’s hard’n takes more time.”
    â€œYou split, we’ll understand,” Jane said, sitting beside Stanley. “Only, at least write us and let us know where you are and what you’re doin’. But we’d rather that you stayed and let us help you put that puzzle back together.”
    â€œYou’d do that?”
    â€œHey, we’re always willin’ to keep hurlin’ them rocks as long as you’re willin’ to sit there,” Stanley said, looking at me with a hard edge to his face.
    â€œMaybe I will … Can I have some time to think about it?”
    â€œAll the time you need man, all the time you need.” Stanley’s voice broke a little. “After twenty years we’re just happy with any time at all with you.”
    â€œYeah, bro’. And besides, you haven’t really lived till you get some a Ma’s hamburger soup and bannock into your belly. Me, I like it a little too much!” Jane slapped her belly and laughed.
    â€œWhere is my mother, anyway? I thought she’d be right here when I got here. Did she split?”
    â€œNope,” Stanley said. “That’s her house up on that hill over there, but she ain’t home right now. Her’n Jackie are in Winnipeg till tomorrow mornin’.”
    I looked up at the house. “She didn’t wanna see me?”
    Jane sighed and pulled me down beside her on the rock. She held my hands between hers and looked right into my eyes. She didn’t say anything for a while and finally looked out over the lake. “Ma’s just like you, Garnet. Scared and not knowin’ really what to do. She’s scared of you. Scared that you hate her for losin’ you all those years ago. Scared that you won’t like her when you meet her and that you’ll turn around and disappear again. Scared that when she lost you she lost the right to be your mother.”
    â€œS’right,” Stanley said. “But you oughta know that she never gave up believin’ that you’d make it back to us. Never quit missin’ you either. Talked about you all the time all through the years askin’ us what we thought you looked like, what you were doin’, what kinda stuff you liked when you were a boy. That kinda thing.”
    â€œYeah, bro’,” said Jane. “Us we never knew for sure that you were even alive anymore, but Ma, she just kept right on believin’ and when Stanley told her he’d got holda you she cried all night long.”
    â€œWow,” I said.
    â€œThat ain’t the biggest part either,” Jane said a little firmer than before. “Ma was with a guy named Joe after our dad died. Went with him a long time, maybe ten years. Anyways, Joe didn’t have no Indian status, lost his treaty rights and all and he wanted Ma to marry him. Wanted it real bad. Us we liked him. Wasn’t nothin’ like our father but we liked him okay. But Ma kept puttin’ him off and puttin’ him off year after year and Joe finally got pissed off and left her.
    â€œBut he showed up here ’bout a year later wantin’ to know why. You’da been ’bout sixteen then. Ma told him she couldn’t marry him for five more years until she knew that you were twenty-one.”
    â€œWhat!” I said.
    â€œTwenty-one was legal age back then,” Stanley said. “You’da got your own treaty status. Your own rights. Ma knew that and she also knew that if she married a nonstatus Indian back then before you were legal, you’da lost your