Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  It is mid-July, yet halfway between Split Rock—a giant stone wall with a vee hacked out at the top—and the Pacific Springs, we walk through canyons where the snow has blown down from the peaks above and collected in shadowed drifts along the roadside. We pick up handfuls and ice the water in our canteens and barrels. A huge snowball hits me right between my shoulders, and Webb hollers like a Sioux brave on the warpath, having hit his target. Naomi pelts him right between the eyes, and a battle is waged for a few frenzied minutes. I’m riding the dun, and he is not amused by the raining clumps of ice. Naomi has no problem lobbing a flurry of snowballs my way, but when the game is over, she reverts to the polite stranger.

  We leave the river to skirt an impassable canyon, travel two days without seeing the Sweetwater at all, and swing back down to cross it again. Seven times. Eight? I’ve lost count, but I don’t complain; the river is easier to cross than the hills.

  We climb a ridge so steep and rocky we cannot ride our animals for fear of tumbling over and rolling down the graveled slope. We unhitch the teams, walk them to the top, and then one by one, using the teams to help us pull, we push forty wagons—ten fewer than we started with—up the ridge. When the ropes start to unravel on the final haul, the men pushing the Hineses’ wagon barely make it out of the way before it crashes to the bottom of the hill, broken, bent, and completely unsalvageable.

  Adam Hines and his new bride will be without a wagon at least until we reach Fort Bridger. William offers them the use of Warren’s, with the condition that his supplies remain. A few others make room in their wagons for the possessions that won’t fit. Lydia walks alongside Naomi and Winifred, and Adam gladly yokes his oxen to Warren’s wagon. My mules and I are freed from duty for the first time since the alkali flats, and I herd them ahead, stripped of an excuse to travel with the Mays, though I hardly needed one before. Samson and Delilah are almost giddy as we ford the river for the ninth and last time, leaving the Sweetwater and the longest week of my life behind.

  South Pass is a wide, grassy saddle of land sitting between a range of mountains to the north and another to the south.

  “They call this the Continental Divide. The Sweetwater River flows east, and everything to the west flows toward the Pacific,” Abbott hollers, pulling his wagon to a halt. “Everything thataway is the Oregon Territory.”

  “Oregon? Already?” Webb yells, as if the journey has been a buggy ride in the countryside. “Ya hear that, Will? We’re almost there!”

  Almost there, and still eight hundred miles to go. Webb is riding Trick alongside me, Will behind him. My mules and the horses have picked up the pace, sensing quitting time.

  A few trees climb the low bluffs that rise up here and there, but from where I sit, there is nothing but vastness. Vast skies above, vast land below, and nothing to obscure the view in between.

  I pitch my tent and see to my animals, keeping myself apart from the rest, still swinging between resolution and regret. I’m carrying buckets from the stream we’re camped beside, my hair still dripping from a good wash, when Winifred May finds me and asks for a moment of my time. Wolfe is in her arms, his little legs kicking wildly, freed from the papoose I bought him in Laramie.

  “Naomi’s gone up the bluff on Red,” she says. “She wanted to see the view.” Winifred points to the bluff about a half mile off and the lone rider just cresting the rise.

  “She shouldn’t have gone alone.” I sound as irritated as I feel.

  “I told her to let Warren or Wyatt go with her, but she’s headstrong.” Winifred looks at me. “And she’s not a child anymore. So I don’t treat her like one.” Winifred’s voice is perfectly mild, her gaze steady, but I don’t miss her point. I don’t acknowledge it either. “I don’t think one needs to climb the bluff to appreciate the view. A body can see so clearly from here. It’s all so wide open. Yet it looks nothing like the prairie. We’ve seen some country, haven’t we, John?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you going to follow her?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Naomi. Are you going to follow her? I think that’s what she wants.”

  “I’m not sure Naomi knows what she wants, Mrs. May.”

  Winifred’s eyebrows shoot up, but she lets my response drift away on the breeze. She raises her hand to shade her eyes, finding the lone rider ascending the bluff.

  “In all her twenty years, I don’t think that’s ever been true, Mr. Lowry,” she says.

  We are silent for a moment, standing side by side. Winifred sways back and forth to keep Wolfe content. I’ve noticed it’s something she always does, even when she’s not carrying him. It reminds me of the metronome Jennie kept on her piano, ticktock, ticktock, and I am suddenly engulfed in a longing for home. It stuns me. Maybe I’ve just never been away long enough to appreciate it. Maybe that’s the way it is with everything. Even Naomi. She withdraws, and I miss her so bad I can’t breathe.

  “Do you love her, John?” Winifred asks softly, her hand still pressed to her brow.

  I am taken aback, but Winifred doesn’t pause long enough for me to answer anyway.

  “Because if you don’t, you have my respect. You’ve told her how it’s going to be, and you’ve stood your ground. But . . . if you do love her . . . the ground beneath you isn’t very firm.”

  “She wants us to marry,” I blurt out. “Did she tell you?”

  “And you don’t want that?”

  “I want that.” It is a relief to say the words out loud and know them to be true. I want that.

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  My flood of reasons rises like a torrent, a million drops of water inseparable from each other, and I don’t know where to start.

  “Is it because she’s not Pawnee?” Winifred asks.

  I shake my head no, though I know that’s part of it. There is guilt in choosing one of my feet over the other.

  “Then . . . is it because you are?”

  I sigh. That too is part of it. “I don’t want life to be harder for Naomi because she is my wife,” I explain.

  “Well, that’s something to think about.” Winifred sighs, and she studies the girl on the bluff that I’m keeping in my sights; I might lose her altogether if I look away. “But don’t think about it too long.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it since I met her.”

  “Then I reckon that’s long enough.”

  “ka’a,” I grumble.

  “The hardest thing about life is knowing what matters and what doesn’t,” Winifred muses. “If nothing matters, then there’s no point. If everything matters, there’s no purpose. The trick is to find firm ground between the two ways of being.”

  “I haven’t figured out the point or the purpose.”

  “Just trying to survive makes things pretty clear most days. We have to eat; we need shelter; we have to keep warm. Those things matter.”

  I nod. Simple enough.

  “But none of those things matter at all if you have no one to feed, to shelter, or to keep warm. If you have no one to survive for, why eat? Why sleep? Why care at all? So I guess it’s not what matters . . . but who matters.”

  From the back of my mind echo Jennie’s final words to me before I left St. Joseph.

  It’s worth it, you know.

  What is, Jennie?

  The pain. It’s worth it. The more you love, the more it hurts. But it’s worth it. It’s the only thing that is.

  “Many people matter,” I argue, though it is not a protest as much as a plea. I have very few people who matter to me, and I’m not convinced I matter very much to them.

  “Yes. But you have to decide if Naomi matters to you . . . and how much. What would you do to keep her fed, to keep her breathing, to keep her warm?”

  “I would do just about anything,” I admit.

  “And that right there is purpose.”

  “I cannot give her shelter. Not out here.”

  “That’s what marriage is. It’s shelter. It�
�s sustenance. It’s warmth. It’s finding rest in each other. It’s telling someone, You matter most. That’s what Naomi wants from you. And that’s what she wants to give you.”

  She reaches up and pats my cheek and turns away. She has mouths to feed, and she has said her piece. But she calls over her shoulder after only a few steps. “You’d best be going after her now.”

  I am in the saddle before Winifred May reaches her wagon.

  Naomi descends the bluff before I can reach her, but she sees me coming. She turns the sorrel at the bottom of the hill and veers west around it, making me race to catch up with her. She is a sight, racing across the expanse with her hair streaming out behind her. It’s the same color as the horse beneath her, and I can’t help but think that damn Dakotah chief knew exactly what he was doing. The sorrel’s gait is smooth and long, and Naomi’s skirt hangs over on each side, giving the appearance of royal draping. She’s a decent rider, as comfortable in the saddle as she is in every other area of her life. And maybe that is the root of my problem. Naomi seems to know exactly who she is, and she gives no indication that she is anything but content with herself. I told her she doesn’t think, she just feels, she just does, but maybe it’s because she is confident enough to trust her instinct and move ahead.

  She slows when she’s put the bluff behind her, a barrier between us and the train, and then she comes to a stop, her back to me, waiting for me to draw up beside her.

  “I want to be alone, John Lowry.” I know she is calling me John Lowry because I’ve told her not to.

  “No. You don’t,” I counter. “You wanted me to follow you.”

  She glares at me, her color high and her hair tumbling around her, and for a moment I just drink her in, looking my fill.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she snaps after I’ve stared a good minute. “I’m angry with you, and I do want to be alone.”

  I slide off the dun and, trusting that Naomi won’t bolt just to spite me, walk to her horse. Without her permission, I put my hands around her waist and lift her down so she is standing in front of me, so close I could bend my head and kiss her tangled hair. Her pulse is drumming in her throat; a cluster of golden freckles dances around it. I brush my fingers across them as she raises her face to me, challenge in her grass-green eyes.

  “I thought you weren’t going to kiss me again,” she whispers.

  “I wasn’t,” I say.

  And then I do.

  I can tell she wants to punish me; she doesn’t respond like she did before. Her hands don’t rise to curl against me; her lips don’t open in welcome. But I can feel her heart, and it thunders against my ribs, countering the rhythm of my own.

  Then she sighs, an almost imperceptible flutter of air, and her hands rise to my face, holding me to her, and I am forgiven.

  I kiss her deeply. I kiss her well, taking my time and testing my restraint. The breeze ruffles her skirt and tickles my nape, and I am conscious of the horses grazing a few feet away, unimpressed by my need or the soft sounds of my mouth against hers. We are wrapped in a warm silence—no wagon wheels or bouncing box springs, no toil or climb, no sadness or fear. And I am at peace.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” Naomi whispers after a time, and I brush my lips across hers once more before I make myself stop.

  “I missed you.”

  Her eyes search mine. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

  “You haven’t even looked at me for the last ninety miles.”

  “When Ma walked by the graves of the little ones . . . especially in the beginning . . . she wouldn’t look at them. She said it hurt, and she didn’t want to carry that pain.” She swallows and looks at my mouth. “These last days, it’s hurt me to look at you too. So I tried not to.”

  “She’s a smart woman, your mother.”

  “The smartest.”

  “She and I had a visit. She told me you were out here, and she told me I needed to go after you.”

  Naomi steps back from me, far enough that I can’t extend my arm and pull her back. Her jaw is hard and her eyes are cool, and I realize I’ve said something wrong.

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Yeah. I know you can. But she sent me after you anyway.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To make sure I don’t do something rash? To make sure I use my head?”

  I knew we would circle back to that.

  “No. That’s not why I’m here.”

  She takes a deep breath, and it shudders a little as she lets it go.

  “You embarrassed me, John.”

  “I know. That wasn’t my intention.”

  She nods, as if accepting my apology. And I can see her struggling with an apology of her own.

  “I guess I got ahead of myself. I know it’s not been that long since we met. But every day is a lifetime out here. These days we’re living, they’re hard. And they’re heavy. And it doesn’t take long to just start throwing everything that doesn’t matter by the roadside . . . and knowing what you can’t live without.”

  “Your ma said something real similar to that.”

  “She told me to be patient,” Naomi whispers. “And I’m going to try.”

  I nod, stroking the side of my face. I’m nervous, but I know what to do.

  “It’s another nine, ten days to Fort Bridger,” I say.

  “It’s another eight hundred miles to California.” She sounds glum.

  “Yeah, well . . . I can’t wait that long.”

  Her eyes search mine, confused. “What?” The word is breathy, like she doesn’t dare hope.

  “At Fort Bridger we can get you a new dress.”

  “You already bought me a new dress.”

  “Lydia Clarke wore it, and I don’t want you to have to share your wedding dress.”

  She starts to smile but bites her lip to hold it back. “I’m done making assumptions. So if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I need you to ask me, John. And I need you to be real clear. Otherwise, I won’t be able to look at you again for a while, because my heart can’t take it.”

  “Will you be my wife, Naomi?” I say the words slowly, and I hold her gaze.

  “When we get to Fort Bridger?” she asks, her eyes gleaming.

  “When we get to Fort Bridger,” I repeat. “I won’t spend my first night with you with everyone listening. And we’ll have our own wagon and our own supplies for the rest of the journey. I have some money, and if I have to sell every one of my mules, I will. But we will have our own home. Even if it’s on wheels.”

  “And you can get all of that at Fort Bridger?”

  “That . . . and maybe even a room for a night, away from the train.”

  She swallows, her eyes wide, her mouth unsmiling, and for a long moment, she smooths her skirts like she’s soothing herself. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t hesitation.

  “I don’t know if I can wait that long,” she says under her breath.

  “ka’a,” I moan, falling for it.

  Then she is throwing herself at me, entwining her arms around my neck and laughing.

  I pretend to stagger beneath her weight and fall into the scrubby grass, taking her with me. A rock digs into my back, and our heads knock together as we tumble. But her lips are on my face, her hips are in my hands, and her happiness is in my chest.

  “I love you, John Two Feet Lowry.”

  “I love you too, Naomi Many Faces May,” I say, and there is suddenly emotion in my throat, swelling up from her happiness. I have not cried since my mother left me. I didn’t think I still knew how. And I have never told anyone I love them.

  “Do you believe me?” Naomi asks, her lips at my ear, her body on top of mine.

  “I believe you,” I whisper, and I close my eyes to gain my control.

  She kisses me gently, top lip, bottom lip, lips together, lips apart, and I open my eyes to watch her love me. And love me she does.

  We don’t emerge from the grass
until a good while later, mouths bruised and bodies aching for more. But she’ll be my wife before I take anything else.

  NAOMI

  John insists on talking to Pa. I tell him I can make my own choices, and I’ll tell Pa myself, but he just shakes his head.

  “I make my own choices too, Naomi. And I’ll be speaking to your father.”

  The conversation isn’t long, and knowing Pa, it isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t John who comes and finds me when it’s over.

  “They won’t look like you,” Pa says. “Your children. That’s what happens when dark marries light. They won’t have your green eyes or your color hair. You need to think about that and what kinda lives they’ll have. They’ll look like him.”

  “Well, I guess that’s a good thing. The May line is a little homely.”

  Pa snorts, rubbing at the furrow between his eyes and laughing a little.

  “You sure?” he asks, shaking his head.

  “I’m sure.” Why would I want to stare at my own reflection in my children if I could look at John instead?

  “I’m not saying he’s a bad choice. He’s not. He’s strong. Capable. And he seems to want you,” Pa says begrudgingly.

  “Well, that’s good,” I say, the sarcasm dripping. My poor pa never was very good with his words. I suppose that is what Ma is for.

  “But don’t say I didn’t warn ya when there’s struggles.”

  “I won’t, Pa.”

  He sighs, a gusty sound that rumbles from his belly. “Does he know what he’s gettin’ into with you?”

  “No. And I’d appreciate it if we just keep it between the two of us.”

  Pa hoots, shaking his head as the laughter rocks him. “I’m guessin’ he knows, girl. The whole company is on to you. And if he’s smart, he’ll hold on tight. It’ll take a good mule man to tame my girl.” He’s still laughing when he walks away, and I know it’s fondness speaking, so I don’t get too ruffled.