1:10 P.M.
“Come in, please,” Elwood Farmer said.
Nothing had changed here in his small living room since I’d last visited: a fire blazed in the woodstove; his students’ pictures adorned the walls; he wore the same plaid wool shirt; it could even have been the same cigarette clamped between his lips.
But, on the other hand, everything had changed.
He motioned for me to sit in one of the padded chairs facing the fire. “I’ve been expecting you.”
“Moccasin telegraph?”
He nodded.
“Then you know I found my mother.”
He squinted at me through the smoke from his cigarette, waiting.
“You said something to me when I was here before about familial relationships not being as clearcut in the Indian world as they are in the white. I’ve certainly found that to be true. My mother is the great-niece of the woman I thought was my great-grandmother. Which made my adoptive father a cousin at some remove or other. I don’t even want to speculate on what my adoptive brothers and sisters are to me.”
“Does it matter?”
“A few weeks ago I would have said yes, but now it doesn’t. Your nephew Will predicted I’d feel this way. He also said I’d eventually figure out what was more important than my own identity.”
“And have you?”
“I’m working on it.” I reached into my bag, took out a small gift-wrapped package. “I want to give this to you.”
Pleasure spread over his wrinkled face as he took it. I watched him tear the paper and free the silver-framed photograph from it. He studied the picture for a moment, looked questioningly at me.
“I ordered a copy of the original from Newsweek’s archives,” I told him. “It cost you a great deal to give up the one you had—which I’ll always treasure.”
He stared down at it, his fingers caressing the silver of the frame, as mine had caressed the buffalo bone.
“I know why it meant so much to you,” I added. “Agnes Running Horse thought it was because of Barbara Teton, and I suppose that’s partly true. But you also treasured it because of my mother.”
He continued to stare at the photograph.
“You could have told me who she was and what she was to you, saved me a lot of running around. And you could have prevented me from involving the DeCarlos.”
He looked up, oddly calm and unsurprised. “So you figured it out.”
“Yes. Austin was at his father’s ranch in California when I was conceived. You were in Fort Hall for the holidays. Kia was upset with Austin for going home. You’d just broken up with Barbara Teton. So you comforted each other.”
He set the photograph on the table between us, got up to tend the woodstove. When he sat down again he said, “Well, you have the essence of what happened. I’d gone home to ask Barbara to marry me and come to New York. She refused; instead, she wanted me to come back to the reserve. But I’d moved into a larger world, and there was no returning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
He fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket, contemplated it, then replaced it. “Because until you came here this afternoon I wasn’t sure I had a child.”
“You must’ve suspected, though.”
“Yes. A number of years ago my cousin Agnes told me Kia was a couple of months pregnant when she ran away with Austin. I sent you to her thinking that Kia might’ve told her I was the father.”
“She didn’t.”
“Then I suppose Kia either thought you were Austin’s child or wanted to believe it.”
“She knows exactly whose child I am. She told me I was born nine months to the day of my conception. It’s not likely she forgot who she was with on that occasion.”
The dark, sorrowful current rippled in Elwood’s eyes. “But she still didn’t tell you about me.”
“I think she plans to, but it’s hard letting go of a lie you’ve lived with so long. Austin believed I was his daughter, and on some level the idea of punishing him by putting me up for adoption pleased her. I’m surprised she didn’t turn to you, though, after Joseph DeCarlo killed her uncle.”
He compressed his lips, stared at the flames flickering behind the glass door of the stove. In a moment he said, “Bad timing.”
“What d’you mean?”
“She left a message for me at my rooming house in New York, saying it was an emergency and asking that I call her. But a month earlier, I’d met the woman who later became my wife, and I was spending time at her place. When I finally picked up the message and called, the number turned out to be a phone booth at a truck stop. Kia, of course, was long gone.”
“Did you try to locate her?”
“No.”
“For God’s sake, why not?”
“I was young, in love, and studying hard.”
“And there was no room in your life for her.”
“That about sums it up.”
“What about me? Is there room in your life for me, or do I just go on pretending Austin’s my birth father?”
“I’ve never cared much for pretense.”
“Neither have I.”
“I’ve always wanted a child, someone I could pass on the old ways and traditions to.”
“I need a father who can help me understand them.”
Elwood Farmer stood, lighting a cigarette. “Come back tomorrow,” he said.
“What?”
“Tomorrow we’ll spend the day together—after we’ve both had time to assemble our thoughts.”
And through the rising smoke, my father winked at me.