SevenIn the barn, Bridget sank again to the dirt floor beside Papa Henry’s body. She tried to imagine him only asleep beneath the handkerchief. Or his wizened face smiling at her and saying, “Daughter.”
She laced her fingers through his. His frozen, upturned hands, so like the picture she’d seen of Spotted Elk’s hands. The Lakota Chief murdered at Wounded Knee. And when she could speak again, she promised him, “I’ll bring Smoke home.”
She used a dozen nails more than necessary, making sure each went in straight despite how tears blurred her vision. Any nail hit at an angle and protruding irregularly, she pulled out and drove in again.
“Nothing to be done until spring,” Thayer had said.
She gathered the eggs, brought in the two milk cows, relieved them of their bulging bags, poured milk
