by Harmon, Amy
When I am finished, there is a moment of silence, but then a young brave stands, his face twisted in anger and grief, and he shakes his fist at me and the leaders sitting around the fire.
“My brother is dead. I claim the child in his place. A brother for a brother.” This is clearly Biagwi, whose wife has adopted Wolfe. The people murmur and nod, and another man comes to his feet beside him. He is burly and bare chested, and black feathers hang down his back, fluttering when he turns his head to address the people around him.
“The woman is mine. I will not give her to this Pani daipo,” he shouts. The people snicker at the name—Pawnee white man—and the snakes in my stomach coil and hiss, their venom rising in my throat. And this is Magwich.
“You have taken something that is not yours,” Washakie says, addressing Magwich. “You stole a man’s wife, and you have no claim.” He turns to Pocatello, and his voice is cold and hard. “You will call death and vengeance down upon your people, upon all the Shoshoni people, with your white scalps.”
Pocatello is angry at the admonishment, and he stands from the council. “You are afraid of the white man. You bow to his demands. We did not attack first. They did.”
The crowd rumbles. It is not going well.
“Bring the woman and the child here,” an old chief says, and the leaders around the fire nod in agreement. “And we will decide what is to be done.”
Biagwi protests and Magwich sputters, but Pocatello barks a sharp order, and the men leave to do his bidding. Washakie does not sit again but remains standing at my side. Pocatello remains standing as well, his arms folded, his expression black. And we wait for the men to return.
Biagwi’s woman carries Wolfe in her arms, his blond head clutched to her breast. She is afraid. Biagwi is afraid. He has one hand at the woman’s back and one hand on his spear. He is tense, grim, and I see in him the same violent strain that hums beneath my skin.
Then I see Naomi. She is dressed like the Shoshoni women, beads at her throat and her ears, her ruddy-brown hair pulled back in a braid and swinging at her waist. Her green eyes are huge in her thin face, and her hands are stained with paint. When she sees me, she stumbles, and Magwich drags her to her feet. An old woman follows behind them, moaning and wailing like someone has died.
“John?” Naomi cries. “John?” And her legs give out again.
I want to go to her, but Washakie extends his arm across my chest. “No, brother.”
The old chief raises his hands for silence. He has taken on the role of mediator, and the people quiet. He looks at me. “You will tell the woman we have questions for her. You will tell us what she says.”
I nod and look at Naomi. She is only ten feet away, but Magwich has not released her arm. I tell him to step away, and he tightens his grip.
“Let go,” I shout, and the old chief shoos him off. Magwich releases her and takes a single step to the side, bracing his feet and gripping his blade.
“Naomi, they want you to answer their questions,” I say in Shoshoni and then in English, doing my best to ignore him.
She nods, her eyes clinging to my face.
“Who is this man?” the old chief says to Naomi, pointing at me. I translate.
“John Lowry. He is my husband.” Her voice breaks, and she says it again, louder.
“Who is the child?” the chief asks, pointing at Wolfe.
“He is my brother,” Naomi responds.
“She cannot feed him,” Biagwi shouts. “She is not his mother and has no milk in her breasts.”
The chief begs silence again, and we continue on, the old chief asking questions while I interpret, and Naomi responding. Washakie steps in when the old chief asks where the wagons were. He knows the area and the Shoshoni names; he knows the path the emigrants take. There is sympathy in the audience. I can feel it, and I feel the moment it slips again.
“Who killed first?” the old chief asks Naomi, and she hesitates, her chest rising and falling in distress.
“We didn’t see them. We didn’t know they were there. It was an accident,” Naomi pleads, and when I translate, Pocatello begins to yell.
“They attacked us! They chose to fight.”
The old chief raises his hands again, pleading for order.
“Let him take his woman. That is just. But the child stays,” Biagwi cries out, his voice ringing above the din, the firelight dancing on his skin. Magwich spits, but everyone else falls silent.
Naomi is frantic, her eyes shifting wildly from one face to the next, trying to understand what has happened.
“Release them both. Biagwi’s brother was avenged,” Washakie says, his voice booming, but the leaders around the fire shake their heads.
“We will vote,” the old chief says. And the pipe is passed once more. One by one, the leaders state their opinions. Washakie says release them both. Pocatello says keep them both. The rest agree with Biagwi. A brother for a brother. The woman holding Wolfe is weeping, and Biagwi shakes his spear at the sky. Naomi stands amid the crush, her face bright with terrible hope, Magwich beside her, the old woman wailing and holding on to her arm. The old chief stands and points from Naomi to me.
“Go,” he says to her in English and again in Shoshoni. The old woman releases Naomi like she’s taken an arrow in the chest, screaming and falling to the ground, and Magwich turns away, giving his back to the council. Naomi runs toward me, her mouth trembling and tears streaming, her stained hands fisted in her skirts. And then she is in my arms, her face buried in my chest.
“Take the woman and go in peace,” the old chief says to me.
“What about the boy?” I shout, desperate, my arms braced around Naomi. But the leaders are standing; the council is finished. The decision is made.
“He will be raised as a son, like you were. A two-feet,” Washakie says. “Biagwi is a man of honor. The boy will not be harmed.” He has not moved from my side, but his eyes are on the woman in my arms, who does not yet understand.
“John . . . what about Wolfe?” Naomi starts to pull back, searching my face, searching for Wolfe. And Washakie turns away.
I can’t tell her. I can’t say the words. And she sees the terrible truth. She begins to fight against me, thrashing and crying, but I do not let her go.
“I can’t leave him, John. I can’t leave him!” she begs, crazed.
“And I cannot leave you,” I shout into her hair, shaking her, the weight of the last two weeks crashing down on me. “I will not leave you!” I pull back enough for her to see my face, my own wild desperation, and something dawns in her eyes, like she is coming awake. I see my own horror and fear and suffering mirrored back at me, and she folds into herself, her sobs raw and heartrending. I swing her up in my arms and carry her into the darkness, leaving the clearing as the scalp dance begins.
NAOMI
He walks and walks, his arms tight around me, his tears dripping down his chin and onto my cheeks. Or maybe they are my tears. I don’t know anymore. When he finally stops, there are no fires and no camps. No voices raised in strange celebration. There is only the sky riddled with stars above us and the grass beneath us. He is panting. He has carried me a long way, but he doesn’t put me down. He just sits, folding his legs beneath us, keeping me in his lap with his arms wrapped around me. His tears come harder, streaming silently down his face. He cries like it’s the first time he’s ever cried, like all the pain of all his twenty-odd years is rising up at once, and I can only lie in his arms, spent and useless, unable to comfort him.
I have nothing to give him. Nothing left. I try to quiet my own sobs to ease his pain, but the thing that was loose inside my chest is now broken completely, and the pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
“ka’a, Naomi. ka’a,” he whispers again and again, stroking my hair, and after a while my sobs slowly abate, leaving a gaping hole behind, one I’m afraid will never heal. As if he knows—or maybe he has the same pain in his chest—John presses his palm against my heart, his hand he
avy and warm, and the tears seep from beneath my lids again. I press my hands over his, and he curls into me, pressing his cheek to my hair.
I can’t speak. I can’t tell him everything. I don’t know if I can tell him anything. There is too much to say, and some things . . . some pain . . . can’t be spoken.
I’ve been alone with my words since Pa said “Praise the Lord” and the Lord struck him down. Those words are crowding my throat and swarming in my head, and they shudder in my chest beneath John’s hand, but I don’t know how to let them out.
I don’t know how he found me. I want to ask. I want to hear it all. I want him to tell me why they let me go and what will happen to Wolfe. I need him to explain how I’m supposed to go on. But I cannot speak.
Beeya brought me to the clearing to sit among the women who gathered along the edges, too far from the center to hear what was being said or done. I didn’t know what was happening, didn’t understand the chatter or the excitement. Beeya wanted me to paint, and she set up torches all around me so I could see and be seen, and I did what was expected of me. Then Magwich came, striding through the crowd to retrieve me, his face hard and his grip harder, and I thought the bartering had begun again. Instead, he brought me to the center of the clearing, where twenty chiefs sat around the fire and another fifty sat behind them. A sea of faces gazing up at me. Then I saw John, so close and so impossible, standing beside a tall, imposing Indian chief in full headdress that hung to his knees, like something from a dream. None of it felt real. Not John, not the questions, not the words that were spoken, not Biagwi and Weda and Wolfe. And then it was over, and I was in John’s arms.
But Wolfe is not in mine.
And it is all real.
A sound rises behind us, the chuff of a horse and a soft tread. John pulls a gun from his boot, his arm tightening around me, but a reedy voice calls out from the darkness, saying his name, and he wilts. For a minute I think it is Beeya, come to drag me back, but the woman is older than Beeya, her hair so white it glows in the moonlight. She slides from her dappled pony and walks to us with hesitant steps. Her arms are filled with blankets, a waterskin, and a sack of dried berries, meat, and seeds. She sets her offering down and crouches beside us, her short legs tight against her chest, her white hair billowing. Her eyes are filled with compassion, and she brushes my cheek with a trembling hand. Then she rises and touches John’s head, speaking to him softly before she turns back to her pony and rides away, melding with the night.
“They call her Lost Woman,” John says. “She is Washakie’s mother. She followed us to make sure . . .” His voice breaks, and he doesn’t finish, but I think I know what he was going to say. She followed us to make sure we weren’t lost.
“But we are,” I say, my voice raw. Three words. I said three words. Maybe there will be more.
We are quiet after that. He pulls a blanket over me and makes me drink a little, but my stomach revolts after a few sips, and I push it away.
“I promised Wyatt and Webb and Will that I would find you,” he says.
Webb and Will. Their names make the hole swell and contract. Webb and Will. I had feared they were dead . . . and I had feared that they weren’t. Oh God. Oh, dear God, my poor brothers.
John lifts his head to look down at me, but I cannot meet his gaze and I close my eyes and turn my face into his shoulder.
“I found them, Naomi. And I put them in my goddamn wagon, with Wyatt leading the way, and I sent them ahead to find the train.” John thinks it is his fault. I can hear it in his voice. The agony, the guilt. But if he had been with us, he and Wyatt would most likely be dead too. John’s absence saved him. Saved Wyatt. And probably saved Will and Webb too. That much I know.
“We buried your ma and your pa and Warren. We buried Homer and Elsie. And Will sang a song. We looked after them, the best we could.” He says nothing about Elsie’s baby, and I cannot ask. I cannot speak of the cries and the screams and the burning wagon. I cannot.
“I promised those boys I would bring you back. And I promised them I would find them again, no matter what. They need you, Naomi. I need you. But I will do whatever you want me to do. For as long as it takes. I will stay with you until you’re ready to go. Until we find a way to get Wolfe back.”
JOHN
I want to pack my mules and go. I want to put Naomi on Samson’s back and leave, to get as far away from Pocatello and his band as I can, but when the morning comes, the eastern sky changing from black to smudges of gray and gold, I gather the blankets, the waterskin, and the food that Naomi wouldn’t eat, and we walk back to the city of strangers, to the boy she won’t leave. I have no plan. No course of action. But we return.
She is so quiet. She walks by herself, her arms wrapped around her stomach, her eyes forward, but when we reach the creek, she scans the clustered camps until she finds what she is seeking. Her shoulders relax a little, like she feared Pocatello and his people had fled in the night. When we reach Washakie’s camp, the women are already stirring. Hanabi and Lost Woman sit in front of Washakie’s lodge. Hanabi is braiding her hair. Lost Woman is stoking the fire. They see us coming and do not pause, but their eyes search our faces. My tent still squats like a small white flag among the skin-covered wickiups. My mules—two, four, six of them—still mill close by, grazing among the sea of ponies.
“Brother, Naomi . . . come. Sit,” Hanabi urges, pushing her braid over her shoulder as she rises, hands beckoning. “We will cook for you.”
Lost Woman takes the blankets from my arms, and I reach for Naomi. She flinches when my hand circles her arm, and I release her immediately.
“They want us to sit with them,” I say.
“Not now,” Naomi whispers. “Is that yours?” She points toward my tent. When I nod, she hurries toward it and crawls inside.
“Come, brother,” Hanabi says softly, her hand light on my shoulder, and I comply, sinking down beside the fire. My limbs ache with fatigue. I did not sleep. I held Naomi all night, yet she flinches when I take her arm.
“I thought you would be gone before I woke,” Hanabi says. “I am glad you are not.”
“She can’t leave him,” I confess, hoarse. Raw. Hopeless. “And I can’t make her go. If I do . . .”
“She will be lost forever,” Lost Woman says.
“She will be lost forever,” I whisper.
“Then you will stay,” Hanabi says. “You will stay with us.”
“But . . . I have nothing,” I say. It is a million times more complex than that, but she has taken me by surprise.
Hanabi frowns. “What is nothing? You have mules. You have your woman. We will build a wickiup. You will hunt. You have all things.”
“You will stay,” Lost Woman agrees, nodding.
19
THE RACE
JOHN
I sleep beside Naomi for a few hours in my tent, but I am restless and troubled, and I rise without waking her. She is huddled on her side, her arms tucked and her head bowed like a bird in a storm. I wash myself in the creek and tend to my animals, who have little need of me now. They greet me and let me rub their necks and scratch their noses but resume their grazing as soon as I stop. I slide a rope over the dun’s neck, a pang in my chest, but he comes along without resistance, clopping along behind me. He thinks we are going to run. But I can’t run, not away, not now, and despite what Hanabi said, there are things we need.
Naomi has nothing but the garb she is dressed in. She doesn’t have her book or her satchel. When I asked her where it was, she said Magwich gave it away.
“The scarred warrior liked my pictures,” she said, as though every word took effort. When I pressed her, she just shook her head and whispered, “They’re gone, John.”
I don’t know how I will be received; I am a stranger, a Pani daipo, but when I enter the clearing, I am regarded with suspicion but no fear. I have the last of my tobacco, a bit of ribbon, and a pouch of beads and buttons I can trade. And I have three mules and the dun. The money in my b
ags won’t get me anywhere. Not here.
I search the men on horses and those making bets for the warrior with an obvious scar. It doesn’t take me long. The man is seasoned but not old, an obvious leader, but not a chief. A thick, ridged scar cuts across the left side of his forehead, over the bridge of his nose, and down his right cheek, ending just below his ear, dividing his face in two. He is a collection of hard lines—his hair, his limbs, his back, his scar—and he sits astride a gray roan who shimmies and dances, wanting to run. While I watch, the race begins, a gun blast that makes the ponies bolt, fifty riders running at full speed down the length of the clearing. A woman and her papoose narrowly miss getting trampled, and one pony bucks and writhes down the course, sending his rider soaring. When he slowly rises, his arm is bent the wrong way, but the race—and his horse—continues past a break in the encampments, over the creek, and back again. It ends in the clearing where it all began, the yipping and yelping like coyotes in a frenzy.
The scarred warrior wins easily, a victory that seems to have been expected, though the anger and upset among the racers and the watchers is evident. Magwich is among those who have lost a horse in the contest. He demands a new race, but he is roundly ignored as his horse is led away by one of the scarred one’s tribesmen. A new round of betting has begun, and I make my way toward the triumphant winner. He sees me coming and cocks his head, the conversation around him waning. They are surprised at my presence; I should be long gone. Everyone stares.
I did not want this; I thought I might be able to negotiate quietly, but I continue forward, leading the dun and keeping my eyes straight ahead on the warrior.
“You want to race, Pani daipo?” the man asks as I near. He knows who I am. I’m guessing they all do. If these men didn’t see for themselves what happened in the council, they heard about it.
“No,” I say, stopping in front of him.
He frowns. “No?”
“I want the—” I realize I don’t know the word for picture in Shoshoni. “I want the paper faces Magwich gave you.” There is a murmur at his name, like my words are being repeated, and I know I am courting trouble.