Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  “You’re scowling, Naomi.”

  “It’s what I’m best at. Scowling and drawing. My two greatest gifts.”

  Ma laughs, just like I knew she would, but my anger billows like the dust that moves with the cluster of wagons, mingling with the muggy skies that continually threaten rain.

  “You’re not very good at hiding your feelings,” Ma says.

  “No. Scowling and drawing. That’s all I’m good for. Remember?”

  Ma doesn’t laugh this time. “Tell me why you’re upset.”

  “I hate being a woman.”

  “You do?” Her voice squeaks in astonishment.

  “I hate how hard it is.”

  “Would you rather be a man?” she challenges, as if I have lost my wits completely.

  I think about that for a moment. I am not so blind as to think being a man would be much better. Easier, maybe. Or not. I’m not sure. Every path is likely just a different version of hard. But I’m still angry.

  “I’m mad at Pa. At Daniel. At Mr. Caldwell. At Warren. I’m mad at Mr. John Lowry too, if you want to know the truth. I’m just angry today.”

  “Anger feels a whole lot better than fear,” Ma concedes.

  I nod, and she squeezes my arm again.

  “But anger is useless,” she insists. “Useless and futile.”

  “I don’t know about that.” It isn’t useless if it keeps the fear away.

  “Are you angry with the bird because he can fly, or angry with the horse for her beauty, or angry with the bear because he has fearsome teeth and claws? Because he’s bigger than you are? Stronger too? Destroying all the things you hate won’t change any of that. You still won’t be a bear or a bird or a horse. Hating men won’t make you a man. Hating your womb or your breasts or your own weakness won’t make those things go away. You’ll still be a woman. Hating never fixed anything. It seems simple, but most things are. We just complicate them. We spend our lives complicating what we would do better to accept. Because in acceptance, we put our energies into transcendence.”

  “Transcendence?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ll have to explain that one to me, Ma. I don’t know what transcendence means.”

  “That’s where your mind goes when your hands are drawing,” Ma explains. “It’s a world, a place, beyond this one. It’s what could be.”

  I nod. That much I understand. When I draw, it does feel like I go somewhere else. I escape. It’s the reason I’ll never stop, even when it seems like a waste of precious time.

  “Put your energy into rising above the things you can’t change, Naomi. Keep your mind right. And everything will work out for the best.”

  “Even if there’s a lot of pain along the way?”

  “Especially if there’s pain along the way,” Mama says firmly.

  We walk for a moment, side by side, lost in thoughts of a better place.

  “Why are you mad at John Lowry? I like him,” Ma asks suddenly. She doesn’t ask why I’m mad at Pa or Warren or Mr. Caldwell, as if my anger toward them is justified. I throw back my head and laugh before I confess.

  “I like him too, Ma. That’s why I’m mad.”

  3

  THE BIG BLUE

  JOHN

  I am worried about Winifred May. I don’t understand her husband. I would not have taken a woman on the brink of childbirth onto the plains. She does not ride in the wagon but trundles along beside it, her daughter’s arm linked through hers. I cannot blame her. The jostling wagon will break her waters. She is better off walking.

  They are a handsome pair, Winifred and Naomi, though the mother is worn and softly wrinkled, her chestnut hair threaded with gray. Naomi is vibrant and slim beside her mother, but they share the same stubborn chins and smiling mouths, the same green eyes and freckled noses.

  The May boys, especially Webb, have attached themselves to me like cockleburs, and though I keep gently picking them off, they latch on again before too long. Webb has memorized the names of my animals and rattles them off in a long greeting each time he sees them, like the apostles from the Bible that Jennie made me read.

  “Hey, Boomer, Budro, Samson, Delilah, Tug, Gus, Jasper, Judy, Lasso, Lucky, Coal, and Pepper,” Webb cries, but he always lowers his voice reverently when he greets the two jacks, Pott and Kettle, who seem to like the boy. My horse, Dame, likes him too, and Webb doesn’t forget to greet the mare with the same enthusiasm.

  “Hey there, pretty Dame,” he says, and he doesn’t shut up until I send him off or someone comes to fetch him.

  I want to ask the boy questions I have no right asking. I’m curious about his sister, about her missing husband and the leather satchel she always carries, but I don’t. She introduced herself as Naomi May, and that is how I think of her, but Webb said she is Mrs. Caldwell, and the Caldwells in the train are clearly connected. I do ask Webb how his mother fares, and the little boy wrinkles his nose as if it never occurred to him that his mother might not be well.

  “She’s just fine, Mr. Lowry. She says you’re welcome to come to supper round our campfire if you want to, since you don’t have anyone to look after you,” he says.

  “I look after myself, Webb. Grown men do.”

  “My pa doesn’t. Warren doesn’t. They let Ma and Abigail and Naomi take care of them.”

  “Your pa works hard. Warren too.”

  “Not as hard as Ma.”

  “No. I reckon nobody is working as hard as your ma right now,” I murmur.

  “Come to supper, Mr. Lowry. Naomi’s cooking, and she’s not as good as Ma, but it fills the empty places, and Pa says that’s all that matters.”

  Webb invites me every day, but I don’t ever accept. After several refusals, he delivers a loaf of bread with his visit. “From Naomi,” he says, and I am awash in pleasure. I don’t know if it is a thank-you for putting up with her brothers or an invitation for something more, but I savor the bread because she made it. I am too aware of her, and I keep my distance even as I keep an eye out, falling back in the train and bringing up the rear, telling myself it is to keep Webb from straying too far from his own. Abbott approves of my playing caboose. It allows him to remain at the front without worrying about the stragglers.

  Each night, the wagons are circled, the oxen are unyoked and taken to graze, and the men watch in shifts to keep the animals together and see that they don’t wander too far after better grass. When the animals begin to settle and doze, they are hobbled or picketed or driven back to the circle of the wagons, which are chained together to form a corral, and put up for the night. Those with bigger herds have a more difficult time of it and often bed down among their animals outside the circle. Most nights it is what I do, pitching my tent where my mules are grazing or simply throwing down my saddle for a pillow and sleeping underneath the sky.

  On the fifth day, I awake to rolling thunder and black clouds so thick the sunrise barely lights the sky. We’ve been plagued by drizzle and light showers since leaving St. Joe, but the storm gathering is something new. Instead of preparing to move out at dawn, we keep the wagons circled, and Abbott sounds a warning to drive the picket pins and the tent stakes deep, to chain the wagon wheels and tie everything down. All the animals are moved into the center, the oxen, cattle, horses, and mules all crowded together beneath the writhing skies. I hobble my mules along with Dame and the jacks near Abbott’s wagon and roll beneath it for cover as the heavens break and begin to pummel the prairie.

  The rain doesn’t fall in drops but in sheets, slicing the air and splashing against the sod with enough force to churn the soil. We hunker down beneath it, cowering in tents and wagons that blunt the impact but are useless against the wet that finds the cracks and seeps through the corners. Beneath Abbott’s wagon, the puddles grow and spread until even the high ground is turned to mud beneath us. Abbott doesn’t complain overmuch. I like that about him. He’s like Jennie in that way, though he has plenty to say and always has a story to tell. I let him yammer,
lulled by the torrent and the forced inaction. It is wet but not windy, and there is nothing to do but wait it out. I am half-asleep when Abbott pauses in his tale of a brush with the Blackfeet in the Oregon Territory, a tale I have heard before.

  “What is she doing?” Abbott asks, but I’m tired, and I don’t care to know. I don’t even open my eyes. It’s wet, but I’m short on sleep, and with my animals discouraged by the rain, I’m not worried about them getting spooked or stolen. They are clustered together, their hinds turned out, heads in, and I don’t even lift my hat to see what Abbott is muttering about.

  “Well, I’ll be. I thought I’d seen it all,” Abbott mumbles.

  I wish he’d keep his musings to himself. I know he’s trying to draw me in.

  “That infernal woman is doing her wash in the rain.”

  My eyes snap open. I don’t know how I know it’s Naomi, but I do. I push back my brim and peer out into the onslaught. The May wagons are lashed beside Abbott’s; they were the last to bring their wagons into the fold the night before, closing the gap between the head and tail of the train.

  Naomi May has two buckets and a washboard and is scrubbing away in the downpour, a brick of soap in her right hand. She’s soaked to the skin beneath a thin wrap, and she’s wearing Webb’s hat instead of her bonnet, but she’s making short work of the family’s laundry. She doesn’t bother to rinse the soap or grime away but tosses each garment over the ox chain stretched between the wagons and lets the heavy rain do it for her.

  “Âka’a,” I huff beneath my breath and crawl out into the deluge. I am immediately drenched, and I stomp toward her, holding the streaming brim of my hat. I tell myself it could be worse. There is no wind in the rain, only the weight of heavy water, but it isn’t pleasant.

  “You’re going to catch your death,” I bark, ducking close to Naomi, spreading the sides of my sodden coat to provide some cover over her head.

  “I never get sick,” she shouts and continues scrubbing away.

  “Don’t say that. The man who says never is quickly made a liar.” It is something Jennie always says, but Naomi May just shakes her head.

  “I never get sick,” she insists.

  I watch her for a moment, wanting to make her stop, wanting to demand she take cover, and wondering why I never thought to wash my clothes in the rain. They’re getting a good scouring now. All I need is a little soap.

  “Where are your brothers?” I will be giving Webb and Will and Wyatt a talking-to.

  “I took their clothes. They’re all in their underthings, shivering beneath their blankets in the wagons.” She snickers.

  “That’s where you should be,” I say.

  “I can sit in the wagon and be miserable, or I can do the wash and be miserable. At least this way, the clothes are getting clean.”

  “If the wind picks up, those lines won’t hold, and your laundry will be in the mud.”

  “Then I’d best hurry,” she says without rancor.

  “ka’a,” I grunt again. I cannot leave her, so I might as well help.

  The rain is beating down so hard that wringing the clothes is futile, but I do it anyway, twisting and shaking the suds and soil from the wash as she scrubs away beneath the deluge. When the last shirt is lathered and wrung, I upend the barrel of dirty water, and she piles the clothing inside of it, the garments sopping but remarkably clean.

  “I’ll hang them to dry when the skies clear,” she says as I push her back toward her father’s wagon. She thanks me with a wide smile, makes me promise I will come to supper the next time she invites me, and finally takes cover.

  “You sweet on the pretty widow, Junior?” Abbott asks as I roll back beneath the wagon and begin to strip off my sodden clothes. For a moment I still, the word widow clanging in my head. I am no longer cold.

  “I got some dirty clothes if you got a hankerin’ to do the wash,” Abbott chortles. I ignore him, pulling dry trousers and a shirt from my saddlebags. Both are immediately damp, but I wriggle into them, tugging my woolen poncho over my head and toeing off my waterlogged boots.

  “You shoulda stayed here. She didn’t ask for your help, and you can bet everyone was watchin’ you two carrying on out there. You just called all sorts of attention to yourself. Mr. Caldwell isn’t a man you want to make an enemy of. She was married to his son, and he still considers her his property.”

  “Then why wasn’t he out helping her?” I grumble.

  Abbott snorts, but he shakes his finger at me. “Stay away, son. She ain’t for you.”

  I bristle, but I don’t respond. After wringing out my hat, I shove it on my head, pulling the brim over my eyes the way it was before I was so rudely interrupted. I sink back against my saddle and prepare to wait out the storm with my eyes closed.

  “Doin’ laundry in the rain. Damn fool thing to do,” Abbott mutters. “If you get sick, don’t expect me to be your nursemaid.”

  “I never get sick,” I say, parroting Naomi May, and stiffen when Abbott laughs.

  “You already are. Lovesick. I can see it all over your face.”

  The storms have turned the Big Blue, usually only a few feet deep, into a raging torrent. Wagons are gathered on the banks in both directions, and from the clouds churning overhead and threatening rain, I know the river is only going to get worse if we wait to cross. Abbott agrees, and he’s quick to instruct the company to start unloading their wagons so the supplies can be ferried across. The men waste an hour haggling over the best place to cross and the wisest way to attempt it. Even with the elevated water levels, the wagons have to be lowered down the banks with ropes, one by one, to avoid them crashing into the river below.

  A half dozen Kanzas Indians, stripped down to a bit of fabric looped between their legs and moccasins to protect their feet from the rocks, have constructed crude rafts to ferry people and supplies across and are charging four dollars per wagon and a dollar per person. The animals can swim across for no charge, but they want a cloth shirt for every load of supplies. The people hesitate at the prices and try to bargain with the Kanzas, but the moment a wagon tips over, spilling a family and all their worldly goods into the river, the emigrants decide it’s money well spent.

  My mules halt at the edge of the water, but I give them plenty of slack, wading out until the water laps at my chest, my arms extended, showing them it’s safe. When I give a little tug, Dame follows me without protest. She begins to swim, her long lead rope stretching to the suspicious mules watching her from the banks. Pott and Kettle, my jacks, take a few steps and enter the river, kicking their way toward me, their heads high, their ears perked. The mules, strung in a long line, take to the water immediately after, as if shamed by the donkeys and my mare.

  I leave the wagons and supplies to the Kanzas and the company and instead spend two hours swimming animals across—oxen and horses, sheep and cattle—and the men of the company leave me to it. Everyone except Mr. Caldwell, who, just as Abbott predicted, has not stopped glowering at me since I helped Naomi do the wash. Mr. Caldwell is convinced he knows best and bellows and beats at his animals, which he has kept harnessed to his wagon. His mules balk despite his whip, and I reach for the first one, murmuring softly.

  Mr. Caldwell’s whip slashes down and catches the brim of my hat and snaps across my face. I can feel a welt rising on my cheeks, but I don’t release the reins. Instead, I snag the end of the whip and yank it from Mr. Caldwell’s hands.

  “They won’t be goaded, Mr. Caldwell. They’re bigger than you and stronger than you, and if you whip them, you’ll have trouble at every stream and creek you cross for the next two thousand miles. You want to convince them there’s nothing to fear from you or the water. I’ll swim them across. You don’t even have to unhitch them.”

  “Damn grifters. I can get my own team across,” Mr. Caldwell yells.

  “Mr. Caldwell, let the man help. He’s good with the mules,” Naomi insists as she picks her way down the bank toward us. I thought she had crossed hours ago.
I’d walked Webb across on my back, and Will and Wyatt had waded over on Trick and Tumble around the same time.

  “I am not paying this half breed or any of the others to do what I can damn well do myself,” Mr. Caldwell argues. Mrs. Elmeda Caldwell is sitting beside him on the seat, and her face is as white as the canvas cover that frames them both.

  “Come, Elmeda,” Naomi says primly, moving to Caldwell’s wagon. “Come down from there. Ma and I are walking across. If Mr. Caldwell wants to upend your wagon in the river, I’d just as soon not have you in it.”

  Mr. Caldwell sputters and glares at her. “Elmeda will be just fine, Widow Caldwell,” he barks, and his eyes shift back to me. He yanks at his reins once more.

  “I don’t want your money, Mr. Caldwell,” I say. I don’t either. I just don’t like him waling on his mules. “I’ll swim your team across. Let go of the reins and hold on to the box. Mrs. Caldwell will be just fine there beside you.”

  Naomi shoots me a look I cannot decipher, a look both curious and cautious, as if she isn’t sure where and how I fit. It is a look she’s worn before. I reach for the harnesses on Caldwell’s mules once more, and this time he doesn’t argue but watches me with his lips tight and his hands a bit looser on the reins.

  I coax Mr. Caldwell’s mules into the river without a quirt or a quibble, showing them exactly what I want and what I expect, and before long I have the wagon, the mules, and the Caldwells on the opposite bank. Mr. Caldwell does not thank me, but Elmeda allows me to help her from the seat and clings to my arm for a moment as she steadies her legs.

  Fifty wagons and two hundred–odd folks cross the Big Blue without mishap, though we are all wet and weary when we set up camp on the other side. We are not the only ones camped along the river, and we won’t be the last. By nightfall, campfires dot the darkness, hot pokers in an inky dusk, each company making its own circle and establishing a watch over its animals, though there have already been squabbles over meandering cattle and claims of ownership when the herds mix. The Kanzas Indians who were running their ferry stroll into our camp and demand to be fed, and the emigrants are quick to oblige them. They’ve been told stories of Indian attacks and degradations. It makes them amenable to sharing their supplies. The Kanzas eye me with suspicion. They don’t know what to make of me.