Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  John has not come down from the hunt. His smile is easy and his countenance is light, and when he twines his hand in my wet hair to keep it off my dry blouse, his eyes are soft on my face. I breathe in his joy, letting it sit in my lungs and warm my limbs, my lips parted, my hands curled at my sides. His eyes are full of asking, and I step closer, chasing his mouth. He groans and sinks in, wrapping an arm around my waist, leaving the other buried in my hair. He is careful and the kiss is quiet, though my heart is loud and my soul is needy.

  I taste him, just a touch of my tongue to his top lip, and he stills, letting me find my way, letting me tell the story of a woman coming home again. He welcomes me there, opening his mouth and letting me linger by the door.

  I slide my hands along the rough of his jaw, holding him to me while I tiptoe through the room we shared, back when I was unafraid. I want to lie on the bed and watch him sleep; I want to touch him like I did before. But I hesitate too long, my mouth on his, lost in the memory of then, and he thinks I’ve fled.

  His body is thrumming, his breath hot, but he steps back, softly closing the door behind me, letting me go. He takes my hand, and without a word, we walk back toward the wickiups.

  JOHN

  The fat drips from the meat in our hands and slides down our arms, but we cock our elbows, trying to keep our clothes clean, and keep on eating. We eat too much and then eat some more. I don’t know if Naomi’s been full in a long while, and she eats like she’s starving. She probably is.

  The swaying and pleading of the buffalo dance last night have faded into lazy feasting and contented conversation. It’s been a long day, but I’ve never had a better one. I’ve had better moments. Better hours. A better night in a borrowed room at Fort Bridger. But never a better day, and I bask in it, setting aside the worry and the wear, the grief and the guilt, for a few more hours.

  Drowsy children, nodding off in their mothers’ laps, are herded to bed. Then a bottle is passed, and the stories begin. I sit not in the circle of men but just outside it, against my saddle, my legs stretched out, with Naomi at my side. Lost Woman folds herself beside us, and when the bottle comes, she takes a deep pull and passes it to Naomi with a look that says, Drink.

  Naomi obeys, chokes, but then tips her head back and gulps it down.

  “Easy, woman,” I say, and she hands the bottle to me, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. I take a sip and pass it on, the burn reminding me of the last time Washakie gave me whiskey, when I told him Naomi had been taken. I push the thought away. Not tonight. I found Naomi, and tonight, that’s all there is.

  An old warrior tells a story of a white buffalo who never dies, and I whisper every word to Naomi as she gets sleepy at my side. When I urge her to go to bed, she resists, and I pull her head down in my lap and let her doze. Her hair has dried in waves around her. She’s left it loose, and I love it that way.

  Lost Woman leans over her, patting her cheek. “She is coming back,” she murmurs.

  “Yes,” I whisper, moved. “I think she is.”

  “Spirits help,” she says. She smiles, but her eyes are knowing, and I’m not sure which spirits she’s talking about.

  “They make you brave and keep you warm,” she adds, clarifying.

  I nod.

  “They watch over us. I see their prints in the snow sometimes.”

  I look at her, brow furrowed, but she is rising, moving toward her wickiup with a hunched back and small steps. She has worked hard today, and her body is sore.

  Around the fire, the stories have changed to the hunts of the past and the never-ending battles with the Crow. As I listen, I wonder how old the tales are and how much longer they’ll be told. The world has remained unchanged in the Wind River Valley for a thousand years. Maybe more. But the millennium is coming to an end, and Washakie knows it. He knows, and he is silent by the fire, listening to the old men talk and the young men laugh. His eyes meet mine across the way, and I am suddenly weary.

  I rouse Naomi, who sits up with bleary eyes and stumbles to the wickiup in search of water and a softer place to lay her rumpled head. Washakie calls out to me, his voice low and warm.

  “You are a buffalo hunter now, brother. You will see them in your sleep. Don’t shoot.”

  His men laugh and Washakie smiles, and I bid them all good night.

  I don’t dream of buffalo. I dream of oxen pulling wagons. I dream of Oddie the ox being left behind and Naomi sitting beside him, drawing pictures of people we’ll never see again. I come awake with a start, breathing hard, not certain where I am. Then Naomi reaches for my hand, reminding me.

  “You had a bad dream,” she whispers.

  “Not bad,” I whisper back. “Just strange and . . . lonely.”

  She sits up, crawls to the canteen, and brings it back to me, as if water cures loneliness. I drink even though I’m not thirsty, and she does too.

  She lies back down, but we are both wide awake, and she whispers after a long silence, “Do you want to tell me about the dream?”

  “Sometimes I dream about Oddie.” I don’t tell her the rest, and she doesn’t ask me to, but after a moment, she shoves the buffalo robes aside and crawls up on my chest, spreading herself over me, her cheek against my heart. I shed my shirt before I slept, and her breath is warm on my skin.

  “Poor Oddie. He was tired of carrying all of us,” she says softly. I close my eyes, savoring the feel of her against me, solid and close. I reach up to stroke her hair, following its length to the base of her spine.

  “I worry sometimes that you will get tired of carrying all of us, John.”

  “I would carry you to the ends of the earth.”

  She raises her head and looks down at me; her walls are down, and her gaze is tender. She braces her hands on either side of my head and kisses me—lips, chin, cheeks, brow—softly, sweetly, and then does it all over again. When she returns to my mouth for the third time, her breath is shallow, her heart thrumming, and the kiss is not nearly so soft or sweet. Her lips cling to mine, hungry and hopeful, and I respond in kind, my hands still but my mouth eager, molding her lips and chasing her tongue.

  She wears a ragged homespun shift when she sleeps, something Hanabi gave her. It’s thin beneath my hands as I draw it up over her hips and pull it over her head. Her eyes don’t leave mine, and her mouth returns, wet and welcoming, and I can’t be still any longer. Her arms curl around me, and her legs twine with mine when I roll, changing our positions. When she stiffens, I immediately stop, lifting myself up onto my arms and taking my weight from her body. But she grips my hips and guides me home, insistent. We moan as one and move together, slow, slow, slow. Our eyes are locked and our bodies are joined, but tears begin to seep from the corners of her eyes and trickle into the pool of her hair.

  “Naomi?” I whisper, kissing them away. I hesitate, but she tightens her arms and legs around me, holding me close.

  “No, don’t stop. Don’t go. It’s not . . . I’m just . . . happy. And it hurts to feel good.”

  “Why?” I whisper. Naomi let me know, right from the beginning, that she wanted me, and I never doubted her. I doubted fate and my good fortune, I feared and fled her advances, but Naomi never played games, and she isn’t playing now. My own pleasure is the swollen Platte, surging from a far-off place, but I hold it back, waiting for her, feeling the answering quake in her limbs. She is on the brink, but her heart is breaking.

  “It hurts to be happy,” she says.

  “Why?” I ask, gentle. Careful.

  “Because they can’t feel anything.”

  “Who, Naomi?” I know the answer, but it doesn’t matter. She needs to tell me.

  “Ma and Pa and Warren. Elsie Bingham and her baby. Her husband. They’re dead. And I’m not, and it doesn’t feel right.”

  Everything about us feels right. The cradle of her hips, the silk of her skin, her breasts against my chest, her lips against my face. I don’t move, though my body screams to do just that, but I don’t pull away e
ither.

  “I am here, with you, loving you and being loved, and they are in the ground,” she says, almost pleading for me to understand.

  “I know.”

  “So it hurts . . . to feel good.”

  “Yeah. It does.” There is no denying it, and admitting it eases the ache in my chest and the strain in her face.

  She wipes her tears, and I kiss her forehead, resting my lips there. We breathe together, feeling the pain and holding each other close.

  Then we begin to move again.

  21

  FALL

  JOHN

  The nights are colder, and the light has changed. It doesn’t beat down from overhead but slants across the land and curls around the peaks, leaving the shadows alone. It’s more golden and faded, and soon it will be gone. We leave the Wind River Valley in mid-October—I’m not sure of the exact date anymore. I lost track after Fort Bridger. I think it’s the tenth, but I could be wrong. The boys should have crossed the mountains by now. The trail was going to end at Sutter’s Mill, and I pray that Abbott will find them shelter somewhere to wait out the winter ahead. I trust the Caldwells and the Clarkes will look out for them too; Elmeda loved Winifred, and I think she loves Naomi. I hope she’ll love the boys until we find our way to them.

  Naomi’s cheeks have some color beneath her freckles, and her face is not as thin. She rides on Samson’s back, her hair braided to keep it from whipping in the wind. She is eating serviceberries from a small sack, and her lips are stained red from their juice. We found the bushes where we camped last night. The season is late, and many had ripened and fallen to the ground, but we filled our bellies and saved what was left. Naomi said she’s never tasted anything better. We’ve lived on meat and the occasional roots and seeds, so the fruit is a treat, but there’s something to the Shoshoni diet. The people age slowly, and everyone has their teeth.

  Naomi catches me looking at her and smiles a little, sending a bolt of heat from my chest to my toes. The space between us is gone, the tentative touches, the careful words. We’ve built a raft in my wickiup, an ark like Noah’s, where only the two of us live. And when it’s dark, we float together, shutting out the flood, the fear, and the uncertainty of a world that won’t be the same when the waters recede. Some nights Naomi is fierce, all speed and heat and frantic coupling, like she’s afraid the storm’s about to sink us. Other times she lies in my arms for hours, loving me slowly, like I am dry land.

  We round the north end of the Wind River Range and go west toward the peaks Washakie calls Teewinot, which loom like a row of pendulous teats jutting out from Mother Earth. We cut through ridges and valleys heavy with trees for almost a week until we drop down into a bowl between the mountains, where the grass is long and green and the animals gorge while we rest for a day. Washakie doesn’t let us tarry longer, and we exit the valley at its south end, following the Piupa through a chasm where rivers converge and warm springs bubble in pale-blue pools, attracting the children and Naomi, who begs for a bath. Washakie promises there will be more in the valley on the other side of the mountain.

  When we come out of the canyon two days later, the valley stretches in front of us, green and flat, with mountains behind us and rivers beside us, one running west, another south. As promised, a hot spring bubbles up among the rocks near the base of the hills, and Washakie says the animals will gather around it in the cold, making hunting and trapping easy when the cold makes it difficult. We make camp just below the tree line, east of the junction where the two rivers meet. Timber will be plentiful for fires, and the animals can forage beneath the trees when the snow covers the grass. Wild chickens and grouse abound, and the rivers are filled with fish. A huge elk herd is sighted just to the north, and a prettier spot I’ve never seen. The soil is rich with the minerals that bubble in the hot springs, the water plentiful, and I can’t imagine the farmland isn’t prime.

  I ask Washakie why his people don’t grow corn and harvest the land, why they don’t claim this spot and stay year-round. He doesn’t like my suggestion.

  “The problem with the white man is they want to tell the Indian how to live. They say, build your fence. Grow your food. Build a house that has no legs. A house like that is like a grave. Do you want me to tell you how to live?”

  “I wish someone would.”

  He frowns at me for a moment, surprised, maybe even a little offended, but then a smile breaks across his face, and he laughs, a sound rough and choked, like he has a fly caught in his throat.

  “You are like a man whose feet are stretched across the banks, trying to live in two lands at once, Indian and white,” he says, and his ire is gone.

  “That’s why they call me Two Feet.” I shrug. It has always been this way for me, but I’m more at peace with it than I’ve ever been.

  “Maybe we are all stretched across the banks,” he says, thoughtful. “Living in the land of yesterday and the land of tomorrow.”

  Like many of my conversations with Washakie, this one leaves me pensive and sad. The banks seem to be crumbling, and soon the land of yesterday will disappear.

  He comes back to me a few days later and asks me about planting. He’s been thinking about it.

  “I don’t know much,” I say. “I am not a farmer. My father’s not a farmer. My mother’s people raised corn, but their crop was constantly getting burned by the Sioux. Her whole village was burned out and gone the last time I returned.”

  “Your father was a mule man,” Washakie says, remembering. We’ve talked about it before.

  I nod. “He bred and sold and broke mules. He didn’t want to farm. He wasn’t any good at it.”

  “I don’t want to farm either,” Washakie says, his mouth hard. “But when the herds are gone, my people will be hungry.”

  In a place like this, it’s hard to imagine the herds being gone or the food being scarce. The trees are radiant with color and the valley thick with abundance, but I know why he worries. Washakie has his own pit of snakes. I promised to look after the Mays—not that I’ve done an especially good job of it—but Washakie feels the responsibility of a people.

  “You are a mule man too,” Washakie says, abandoning talk of farming and pointing at my little herd of three—Samson, Budro, and Delilah—grazing among the horses. I started my journey with twelve.

  “Can a mule man tame horses?” Washakie asks. Several of the horses stolen from the Crow haven’t ever been ridden, and the men have been taking turns getting thrown. I’ve had other things to do. I’ve made it my job to make a woodpile, saving the women from traipsing into the timber for hours on end when the snows come. I overheard a few of the men grumbling to Washakie that I am making them look bad, doing women’s work the way I do. The next thing I knew, Washakie was beside me with an ax, chopping away. We have enough firewood now to keep the village warm for six months. Lost Woman just watched us, dumbfounded.

  I am at it again, chopping, chopping. It clears my head. Washakie does not help me this time; he made his point to his men. But he has an air of mischief about him.

  “I’ve broke more green mules than I can count,” I say, my thoughts returning to the question at hand. “It isn’t much different.”

  “Horses kick higher and run faster than mules,” he says, a gleam in his eyes. He gestures to a gray stallion with a black mane and a blacker temper. “If you can ride that one, you can have him. Then the men will see you can do women’s work and their work too.”

  I put down my ax and swipe at my brow, turning toward the horses. Washakie laughs and follows me, calling out to his men and drawing their skeptical attention. Naomi is helping Hanabi somewhere; I hope she doesn’t make an appearance. She won’t like this at all. I won’t like it, but I’m going to do it.

  This isn’t going to be leading the mules across the Big Blue or convincing Kettle he likes the mare. The stallion won’t want me on his back, so I’m going to get there as quick as I can. Once I’m there, I just have to outlast him.

  A few o
f the braves goad me, telling me not to get too close, but the stallion isn’t all that skittish; he just doesn’t want a man on his back. He doesn’t react as I draw close, especially when I offer him a handful of dried berries from my pocket. His big lips curl around my flat palm, letting me stand at his side, one arm outstretched, the other resting lightly on his rump, willing it to stay down. When he lifts his nose from my hand, I move, using his mane to swing myself up onto his back in one smooth motion. And that’s where smooth and motion part ways.

  The stallion bolts like I took a hot poker to his rump, and I hear Naomi cry out my name. I don’t look back or sideways or down. I hardly look at all. I just hold on and let the stallion go.

  And he goes and goes.

  He doesn’t buck and doesn’t rear up, and I count myself lucky, keeping my belly to his back, my hands in his mane, and my knees pressed tight to his sides. When he finally slows, several miles from where we started, he is spent and subdued. I can’t feel my fingers or my thighs.

  “Damn bungu,” I moan. Bungu is the Shoshoni word for horse, and it fits him. When this is over, I’ll have a new black-maned bungu and some new black bruises.

  I don’t dare unclamp my hands or my legs, afraid he’ll bolt when I’m not holding on and shake me off at last. We’re both sweat slicked and panting. The river isn’t far, and he can smell it. We’ve run along the flat, the land rising away from the river, which now sits below us down a steep bank. I can see the tops of the trees that crowd the shores, but I don’t slide off Bungu’s back. I’m not walking. He picks his way down to the water; I’m sure it’s the same river that runs south from our camp. When we make it to the bottom and step out from the trees, I discover we’re not alone.