Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  20

  WIND RIVER

  JOHN

  Washakie’s band was the last to arrive at the Gathering, and we are the last to go, but two days after I killed Magwich, Pocatello and his people are gone before the sun rises. Naomi is inconsolable. I hold her as close as she will let me, and when she finally sleeps, Lost Woman sits with her awhile, letting me escape to my mules and my horses. Washakie finds me there, tending to Dakotah’s wound.

  “Pocatello is gone,” he says.

  I nod once, brittle and beaten. “I know.”

  “Nay-oh-mee cannot go home.” He uses her name, and I am grateful. She is not Many Faces or Face Woman. She is Naomi, and she needs to remember that.

  “No, Naomi can’t go home . . . though I’m not sure where home is. Home is a wagon that I turned into a grave.”

  “His people are not far,” Washakie says.

  I grunt. “How far do you have to be to be gone?”

  He doesn’t answer, but he appears to be thinking on it. He looks the horses over, running his hands across their backs and down their legs.

  “I know where they winter. We will winter there too. So Naomi is close to her brother,” he says abruptly, rising to his feet, finished with his inspection.

  I freeze, my eyes meeting his over the back of the spotted gray.

  I don’t know what to say. I try to speak and end up shaking my head.

  “We cannot live in the next valley forever. But for now . . . for now we can. Until Naomi is ready to go home,” he says. Then he nods like it is decided and turns away, leaving me to weep among the horses. When I tell Naomi we will follow Pocatello, she reacts much like I did, with awed gratitude and tears. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it eases the immediate agony.

  I trade three of the horses for skins, robes, and clothes, along with tall moccasins lined in sheep’s wool for the cold. I build a wickiup with Hanabi and Lost Woman’s help, and I am pleased with the result. It’s a good sight warmer and more comfortable than a wagon, and there are no wheels to fix or axles to straighten. The thought shames me.

  The Mays are never far from my mind. All of them, but especially Wyatt, Will, and Webb. In my head, I’m calculating distances, trying to figure out where they might be, looking at my maps and my guidebook, filled with all the things one might see on the journey west and none of the toil that accompanies it. By the end of August, when I found Naomi, they should have traveled over two hundred miles. Four hundred miles to go. Now it’s September, and they will need to cross the Sierra Nevada before the snow falls. Naomi and I would have needed to cross the Sierra Nevada before the snow falls too, but we don’t. We stay, sealing our fate, at least until spring.

  We don’t talk about what comes next. She holds my hand when we sleep, and we’ve started to talk about small things—Shoshoni words and Shoshoni ways and how Hanabi and Lost Woman are teaching her how to prepare skins and dry meat and sew beads onto our clothes. She doesn’t talk about her family, and she doesn’t kiss me. I don’t press on either count. Her fire isn’t gone, and neither is her love. I can still feel it when I’m near her, the same heat that had her asking me to marry her because she needed to lie with me. But the fire is banked, and I don’t try to stoke it.

  We travel east out of the valley instead of retracing our steps south. Washakie wants to hunt the buffalo before the herds move south and the cold sets in. We are moving into Crow territory, and Washakie sends out scouts as we hug the mountains and wind down between thick forests to the west and a wide plain to the east. A party of Washakie’s men scouts a Crow village several miles away, and when we’ve broken camp and headed out, they go back to the village to steal horses under the cover of darkness. Washakie says the same band stole fifty head from his people the winter before, and they’ve been waiting for an opportunity to recoup their losses. He says the men will not return with the stolen horses if they are successful but make a wide arc around us to keep the Crow from our trail. Then they will drive the horses to the Shoshoni lands and wait for us there.

  The men who do not go on the raid are wistful and spend the next few days wondering aloud how many horses their brothers will steal and if the Crow will give chase. It inspires stories from past raids, to and from the Crow, and I am convinced the tribes steal from each other mostly for sport, though someone always seems to get wounded or killed in the process.

  We come across a huge herd of antelope, and spirits are enlivened, including those of my horse. Dakotah gets to run again, and like in the race at the Gathering, he knows exactly what to do. We cut off a section of the herd and take turns running the poor beasts in circles until they are so spent they lie down in the grass and wait to be slain. There is no gluttony in the kill, and nothing is wasted. We take only what we can eat or pack and move on.

  Three weeks after we leave the valley of the Great Gathering, we make camp at the edge of the Wind River Valley, the wide expanse of low plateaus, rolling grass, and blue sky before us, the peaks of the Wind River Range at our backs, looming but distant, unconcerned with the lives beneath their shadow. I know where we are. South Pass, the wide saddle of land that divides the continent, lies at the bottom of the range. We’ve come back to the Parting of the Ways. Little did we know where the path we took would lead.

  Washakie says this is the place he loves most, the place where he spent most of his boyhood days. “My father is buried here. I will be buried here. It is my home,” he says simply. “We will stay here until the leaves are in full color. Then we will go east. We will winter where the springs run hot, even when the snow falls. Pocatello will not be far.”

  The raiding party is already there, flush with victory and thirty of the Crow’s best horses. We tuck ourselves back against the spruce and fir, where the water winds through the valley and cuts away again, and the camp is protected from the open range. I spend one morning with Washakie and a handful of braves, scouting the herds and planning the hunts, and return at midday to find the women circled together, plucking pine nuts from their cones, their fingers fast but their conversation easy. Hanabi knows a few English words from her years with my family. She is rusty, and Naomi must speak slowly, but Hanabi tries.

  “I was once Naomi, brother,” she says. “I understand her.”

  She seems to, and I am grateful. Lost Woman is infinitely patient with her and doesn’t even try to speak. She just demonstrates, loves, and looks after. There is a stillness about them both, an unspoken communion, and Naomi is drawn to her. But Naomi is not among the women seeding pine cones, and she is not in the wickiup or among the horses. Lost Woman points to the stream, where it disappears into the forest, and tells me Naomi wanted to be alone.

  “She is alone long enough. You should go,” Lost Woman says, shooing me toward the trees. I find Naomi in a dense copse of trees near the creek. She has removed her leggings, and her doeskin dress is hiked up around her thighs. She is washing blood from her pale legs.

  “Naomi?” I’ve startled her, and she jerks upright, slipping on the rocks and landing on her bottom in the creek. She stays down, her dress bunched around her, her hands in her lap and her legs splayed.

  “Naomi?” I don’t want to laugh, and I’m not sure she’s okay.

  She looks up at me and tries to smile. A smile, eye contact. We’ve come that far at least. “I didn’t hear you. I tried to go a ways from camp so . . . so I could wash.”

  I walk toward her, halting at the water’s edge.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Yes.” She nods. Her eyes are bright, but she’s not crying. “I’m bleeding. Finally. I was afraid.”

  I don’t understand.

  And then . . . I do. The realization weakens my legs and steals my breath.

  “I was bleeding when we reached Sheep Rock. I haven’t bled since.”

  “And we haven’t been together since.” My voice is as hollow as I feel.

  “No. We haven’t,” she whispers. “I’ve been . . . waiting. I needed to know.
To be sure.”

  “ka’a,” I whisper, sickened. Angry. I sit down beside her in the water, not caring that it is cold or wet or that I am fully clothed.

  “But I’m bleeding now,” Naomi says, falsely chipper. “And that is good.”

  I’m afraid to speak, so I nod, looping my arms around my bent knees, trying to control the rage that has nowhere to go.

  We sit that way for a while, side by side, numbing ourselves in the shadowed creek. I don’t know how to fix what has been broken or ease a pain beyond my understanding.

  “I didn’t fight, John,” she blurts, releasing the words in a rushed confession.

  I wait, not breathing.

  “I didn’t fight,” she says again, stronger. Louder, like she’s making herself face them. “I was afraid Magwich would trade me to another tribe, and I would never see my brother again. So I didn’t fight.”

  I don’t touch her. Not for comfort or support. She’s not done.

  “I didn’t fight.” Her voice shakes, and her eyes have filled and flooded over, but I hear anger, and I’m glad. “It hurt. And I wanted to scream. I wanted to run and keep on running. But I didn’t. I took it.” She takes a ragged breath. “I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it, and I’m not lesser for it. I know that.” She nods, reaffirming her words. “But I didn’t . . . fight, and that’s what I can’t get over.”

  “You fought,” I say.

  “No. I didn’t.” She shakes her head, adamant, and swipes at her angry tears with the back of her hand.

  “There are many ways to fight, Naomi Lowry.”

  My use of her name lifts her chin, and she looks at me, really looks at me, and she is listening.

  “You were fighting for your brother. You were fighting for Wolfe. For your life. It would have been easier to scratch and kick and bite. Believe me, I know. I spent the first fifteen years of my life fighting everything and everyone. But . . . endurance . . . is a whole different kind of battle. It’s a hell of a lot harder. Don’t ever say you didn’t fight, because that’s never been true. Not one day of your whole life. You fought, Naomi. You’re still fighting.”

  There are tears on her cheeks and tears on her lips, but she leans forward and presses them to mine. I taste salt and sadness, but I also taste hope. It is a kiss of gratitude, brief and sweet, and then she pulls away again.

  “That is not the way I want to be kissed,” I say, hoping I’m not overplaying my hand.

  She laughs, throwing her head back, and for a moment I see her, my Naomi, the one who barters with Black Paint and does her laundry in a deluge and tells me point-blank how she likes to be kissed.

  “No?” she says, not missing a beat. “How do you want to be kissed?”

  “Like you’ve been thinking about it from the moment we met.”

  She laughs again, but there are tears in her throat, and it sounds more like a sob. She touches my lips with the tips of her fingers, her hand cold and wet from the water, but she does not kiss me again.

  “I love you, Two Feet,” she says.

  “And I love you, Naomi May Lowry.”

  NAOMI

  They spotted buffalo this morning, and the fervor in the camp was manic. The fire was stoked high, and the medicine man and the old warriors danced around it for hours, sweating and pleading with something—or someone—to bless the hunt to feed them through the winter. The women didn’t dance or pray. They kept vigil around the edges, keeping the fire burning and the men moving.

  Two worlds exist in a Shoshoni tribe. A world of women and a world of men. The two worlds overlap, creating a slice of coexistence, a place of shared toil and trouble and dependence on one another, but there are still two worlds. Maybe it’s the same among all tribes, all Indians. All people. I don’t think the Dakotah near Fort Laramie were any different. I don’t think my own world is that dissimilar. Maybe with Ma and Pa, that overlap was just greater. Ma had her duties and Pa had his, but those things were on the edges, and they lived and loved in the middle.

  The middle is narrow here.

  The men eat first. Always. The women prepare the food, present the food, and then wait for the men to be done with the food before they gather and eat what’s left, sitting among the children, just enough apart from their men that the distance between the two worlds feels like an ocean to me. John always finds a space between—he too lives in the middle—talking with the men but waiting for the women. Hanabi clucks her tongue, and Lost Woman shows me how to serve him, but he will not eat until we do.

  “Jennie,” Hanabi says to me, as if that one word is enough explanation of John’s peculiarities. I suppose it is. I know exactly what she means. John was not raised by a Shoshoni woman, and he will never be completely comfortable as a Shoshoni man.

  In other ways, this life suits John. His hair has grown, and his skin has soaked up the sun, making him almost as brown as Washakie. He speaks with an ease and fluency that amazes me. He is well liked, and he likes in return, and I can’t help but wonder what his life would have been like had his mother not died, had he not been dropped into a white world and forced to adapt. I watch him the way I’ve always watched him, fascinated by him, awed by him, trying to find my way back to him.

  He is excited for the hunt and lies beside me in the wickiup, a bundle of nervous energy, eager for the morning. He reminds me of Webb or Will, a little boy, unable to hold still or rest because something special is coming. He tries to damp down his enthusiasm for my sake, but I can feel it pouring from him, and it makes me glad.

  He feels guilt when he is happy. We both do. We don’t talk about my brothers—any of them—but they, even more than Ma and Pa, are always with us, waiting. Watching. Disturbing the peace between us. In the quiet darkness of the wickiup, we have all the privacy we once longed for, but I feel the weight of a dozen May eyes, and I cannot turn to him, even though I want to. Even though I need to. Even though he needs me.

  I don’t know where Wolfe is or if he’s well, and it haunts me. But I’m comforted by one truth: Weda can do what I cannot. She can feed Wolfe. She can keep him alive, for now. Washakie has promised John that when the hunt is over, the meat dried, and the skins readied, we will go to the valley where Pocatello winters, and we will stay until the snows melt. After that, I don’t know.

  I watch from the plateau, sitting with the women and looking down on the matted, humped backs of the buffalo below, our horses grazing behind us. They are saddled with the empty packs and the tethered poles we will use to pack the meat when the hunt is over, but for now, we just watch.

  We are only twenty feet above the meadow; the jutting cliff face provides a place to observe without getting in the way or trampled by the herd if they swing too close, and judging from the excitement among the women, I don’t think our view is typical. Hanabi keeps saying, “Naomi! See? See?” and clapping her hands. I do see, and my heart is pounding with dread and anticipation. John says Dakotah and Washakie will do the hard part, but knowing John, I am not convinced.

  The men have made a wide circle around the herd and carry long spears, and as we watch, they begin closing in, working in teams, isolating a bull or a cow and running it down. John is with Washakie and another brave named Pampi, and he races along behind them as Washakie and Pampi engage in the dance of bringing down a two-thousand-pound bull.

  It is a bloody art, and I stare transfixed as Washakie, hanging from his horse at a dead run, slashes the bull’s hind legs with his spear, severing its hamstring so it collapses midstride. The bull careens, his momentum sending him end over end as Pampi, running toward the buffalo at full speed, raises his bow and shoots, putting an arrow in the bull’s neck.

  Washakie whoops, and they are off again, but this time it is Pampi who chases the buffalo down with his spear and Washakie who comes in on the angle, John on his heels. Pampi dangles, slashing at the bull’s legs, and Washakie shouts and veers to the side, leaving John to take the shot. He raises his rifle, bearing down into the path of the animal at
full speed, and shoots without hesitation, right above the bull’s eyes. The bull slides, coming dangerously close to the dancing legs of the dun. I scream, but the horse doesn’t balk or bolt. Lost Woman pats my leg, Hanabi crows, and across the meadow, Washakie whoops in victory. John does the same, shaking his rifle in the air, his white teeth flashing, his chest heaving. Then they are off again, selecting a bull, turning him, and chasing him down.

  When the hunt is over, the harried herd pounding away to safer pastures, fifty buffalo lie dead in the yellow grass: two buffalo for every family, one for me and John, and one for the feast that will feed the whole camp for days.

  John returns to the buffalo-strewed field, shirtless and smiling, joyful even. With Lost Woman demonstrating, he helps me split the buffalo from its head to its tail, peeling back the hide to remove the meat from its back before tying two ropes to its front and hind legs and using the horses to flip it over. We repeat the action on the other side, slicing the buffalo from chin to tail to remove the meat on the front. It is heavy, messy work, and neither of us has ever quartered a buffalo before. Lost Woman and Hanabi have two cows skinned and packed in the same time it takes us to do one, but we are both breathless and proud—and covered in blood—when we return to camp.

  We slice the meat into thin strips and hang it up to dry. Hanabi says tomorrow we will pound it with rocks and let it dry some more. The hides will take days to treat, but for now, those will wait. We are hungry, and preparations for the feast begin.

  Fires dot the growing darkness as the buffalo is fried over the flames in strips and steaks. Lost Woman is turning a roast as big as my head on an iron spit, and the smell hangs in the air, even at the creek, where John and I retreat to wash, scrubbing our clothes before we pull them off and wash ourselves. We keep our backs to each other, shivering in the cold water, before stepping onto the banks and pulling on the homespun clothes John managed to acquire at the Gathering.