Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  A dozen Indian children play about a hundred yards upstream in a little cove, stabbing at the water with pointy sticks like they’re hunting fish. They’ll never catch anything; they’re too loud. They don’t notice me or Bungu, and I let the horse drink, keeping my eyes peeled for trouble. A group of women descends from the ridge to the water on a path more sloped than the one Bungu took, and I realize that if he’d gone any farther, we would have run right into their camp. Two of the women carry papooses, and I will Bungu to finish so I can ease away without being seen. My throat is dry and my hands are cramped, but I don’t dare leave his back, especially now. They are far enough away that I can’t see small details, but when one woman turns to assist an old woman behind her, I see the papoose on her back. Pale hair curls around the baby’s pink face; the child’s identity is unmistakable.

  Washakie was right. Pocatello’s people are in the very next valley.

  NAOMI

  He is gone so long, and I am angry and scared. Washakie laughed for a long time when John jumped on the back of the gray horse, but he isn’t laughing anymore. Lost Woman is wringing her hands, and from the tone of her voice, Hanabi is scolding Washakie. He acts as though he isn’t concerned, his arms folded and his face serene, but he hasn’t stopped watching the distance where John disappeared. He returns, finally, a dark speck that becomes a plodding horse and a single rider, and I swallow the relief and swipe at the angry tears that are brimming in my eyes. When he’s close enough that I can see he’s uninjured—no blood, no broken limbs, and a straight back—I turn and stomp into our wickiup. He can come find me.

  He doesn’t do so immediately, and by the time he enters, my tears have dried, but my temper is hot, and I’m waiting cross-legged on our bed of buffalo robes.

  “That was a fool thing to do, John Lowry,” I snap, not even waiting for the skin over the door to fall back into place.

  He walks to our bed and sinks down on his haunches so his eyes are almost level with mine.

  “Lost Woman was terrified,” I add.

  “Her daughter was dragged from a horse. That’s how she died. I already got an earful.” He sounds sad for Lost Woman but not especially penitent.

  “What took you so long?” I rage. I want to wrap my hands in his hair and shake him.

  “Bungu ran until he was done. That took a while.”

  “Bungu? You named your horse Horse?” I am so angry that I’m being mean.

  He smiles at me like he’s proud. “You know that word.”

  “I do. I know that word and a few others, like kutise. Crazy. That was crazy what you did, John.”

  “Oh, Naomi.” He places his big hands on my hips and pulls me toward him. I flop back against the robes to get away and realize my miscalculation when he climbs on top of me, his elbows braced on either side of my head. I’m well and truly pinned, and I’m not done being mad. He smells like horse, leather, and pine sap. He smells like John, and I love that smell. I love him, and I don’t want to lose him. I try a different argument.

  “What would happen to me if something happened to you, John?” I ask.

  “I’ve been breaking mules since I was twelve years old, Naomi. That’s kinda what I do. And now I got us one more horse. Washakie said he’d give him to me if I rode him.”

  I close my eyes, despairing. He isn’t sorry at all.

  He kisses my closed lids and runs his mouth along my jaw. When he tugs my lower lip into his mouth, I relent and kiss him back, biting his tongue to show he’s not forgiven. He bites me back on the side of my neck, but when I think he’s bent on making me forgive him without even saying he’s sorry, he raises his head and takes a deep breath.

  “I saw him, Naomi. I saw Wolfe.”

  Pain knifes through my belly, and I hiss at the sharp yet familiar agony.

  “They’re here. Just like Washakie said they would be. They’re close too. Bungu almost ran right through their village.”

  “You saw W-Wolfe?” I stammer.

  “He looks just fine. Just fine,” he whispers, reassuring me. He recounts going to the river to water the horse and seeing the children and the women upstream.

  “I don’t think they saw me. No one ran or got scared, and no one followed me back here.”

  “I want to see him,” I demand. “I want to go, right now.”

  He nods slowly, as if he expected that, but he keeps me pinned beneath him. “I told Washakie. He’s going to go and bring Hanabi and Lost Woman and some of the chiefs with him for a visit. He doesn’t think you or I should go. He wants to let them know we’re here so they don’t get scared and run . . . or attack. It will be a visit of peace and goodwill.”

  “Goodwill?” My chest is tight, and I push up against John, needing to breathe. He rolls to the side but stays propped up, looking down at me. “Goodwill, John? I don’t especially feel goodwill toward Pocatello and his people.”

  John sits up, wrapping his arms around his legs, his head bowed, but he doesn’t respond. I don’t understand his silence.

  “My family was massacred. I heard my mother’s screams. I saw my father and my brother lying in a pool of blood,” I whisper.

  “I know you did,” he says softly. “I saw most of it too.”

  “He’s not like Washakie, John. Pocatello is a bad man. Bad men hurt people. All kinds of people. He’ll keep hurting people. There is no place in this world for men like him, but no one seems to want to stop him.” My voice rings with accusation, and I wince. I don’t blame John. How could I? I don’t blame Washakie either. He has been a true friend. But I do blame Pocatello, and he and his men haven’t been held to account.

  “There is no place in this world for any of these people,” John says, looking back at me, his eyes troubled. “Washakie’s war chiefs sit around the fire and talk of defending their lands and their way of life, but Washakie knows it’s just a matter of time.”

  “What way of life is that? Scalps? Burned wagons? Selling and raping women?” I don’t understand him, and my chest is hot with indignation and suppressed emotion. John is silent beside me, and when he finally turns his head again, I see . . . disappointment. He looks hurt and disappointed. In me.

  “Washakie told me a cow wandered away from an emigrant train into a Blackfoot village near Fort Hall. The Blackfeet killed it and ate it. They didn’t steal it, and they didn’t know who it belonged to. It was in their camp, so it belonged to them. Someone complained, the cavalry was sent out to ask questions, and half the village was wiped out in the confusion. There’s plenty of ugly on every side, Naomi. It isn’t fair to make a statement like that.”

  I press my hands to my chest, trying to hold back my outrage, the injustice of his disapproval, but find that I can’t. I rise to my feet and stumble out of the wickiup, out into the pink-and-purple remains of the day. The sun is almost gone, and the mountains beyond us are black. I take a few deep breaths to ease the fire in my heart and stagger on. John doesn’t follow, and I am glad.

  I climb up through the trees to the pool of hot water that reminds me of the springs where Adam Hines was bucked clean off his feet by the force of the water. That was just a few days before my whole family was taken from me. John’s worrying about preserving a way of life when my whole life is already gone. Oh, dear God, I need my mother. I need her to tell me what to do and how to feel. I gotta get my mind right.

  “Ma?” I say, and her name is an audible cry. “Ma, if you can hear me, I need to talk. I need to say a few things, and no one here understands a word I say. Not even John. I need you so bad, Ma. I will never see you again. And I’m angry about that. I’m angry that you’re gone, and I’m angry about the way you were taken. It’s not right! It’s not right, Ma. And it’s never going to be right.”

  “Naomi?”

  I jerk, embarrassed, but I don’t look over my shoulder. I know who it is, but I’m embarrassed. I am babbling at the water like I’ve lost my mind. I keep my back turned and try to slow the tears that never seem to let up.
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  Lost Woman comes closer and stops at my side. She says something to me that I don’t understand, and the longing for my mother wells even deeper.

  “I need my mother,” I tell her, and my voice breaks on a sob. “I don’t know what to do, and I need Ma. Sua beeya,” I beg. I don’t know if I’m using the right word for need. John has tried to teach me.

  I can’t see her face; my eyes are too blurred with tears. I am foolish, and I groan in frustration.

  “Naomi?” Lost Woman says.

  I rub at my eyes, trying to control myself, trying to meet her gaze.

  “Talk . . . Lost Woman,” she says softly.

  She takes my hand and pulls me along beside her, but when we are down from the hill, she releases me, and we stroll through the darkness together, not touching, the wickiups at our backs, the fires leaching the orange from the night sky.

  “Daigwa,” she says. Speak.

  So I do. I talk to her like I would talk to Ma, and she listens, her hands clutched behind her back, her eyes on the steps we take. We pace in front of the wickiups, close enough to not get lost, far enough to be alone. I tell her how angry I am. I tell her how hurt and scared and angry I am. I give her all my words. Every ugly, terrifying one. I tell her I am trapped where the lost wander, and I don’t see any way out. I will never be able to leave. Not without Wolfe. And he is not mine anymore. He is not ours—mine and Ma’s. He is theirs. And I am so angry. I tell her I wish I were dead . . . and yet . . . I’m so happy I’m alive. I tell her I love her and I hate her. And that makes me cry, because I love her far more than I hate her. I say I hate John too because I need him so much.

  I hate and I love. I hate that I hate, and I tell her everything. When I am done and there are no more words in my chest, I stop. Then I breathe. Lost Woman stops too and looks up at me as if she understood every word.

  “Att,” she says, nodding. Good. And I laugh. She smiles too, her white hair billowing around her, and the sky doesn’t feel nearly as big, and I don’t feel nearly so small. She points toward the edge of the darkness where John stands, waiting for me, and we walk together toward him.

  He speaks to her, words I don’t understand, and she answers softly, touching my cheek. Then she leaves us alone.

  We lie in the dark, not touching. I don’t have any words left right now, but when I turn my back to go to sleep, he pulls me into his body and buries his face in my hair.

  “What did you say to her?” I ask. He doesn’t ask who.

  “I thanked her for bringing you home.”

  “And what did she say?” I whisper.

  “She reminded me . . . gently . . . that this is not your home. And she told me you miss your mother.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat and close my eyes, spent. I am drifting off when he begins speaking again, so softly that I’m not sure he’s talking to me at all.

  “I miss my mother too,” he murmurs. “I am all that remains of her. My skin. My hair. My eyes. My language. This is not my home either, Naomi. But I remember her here. I feel close to her here. When these people are gone . . . when their world is gone . . . she will be gone too.”

  I lie in silence for a long time, my heart aching but my eyes open.

  “Forgive me, John,” I whisper, but he is already asleep.

  I feel close to her here.

  For a little while, walking and talking with Lost Woman, I felt close to Ma too, like she walked beside us, listening.

  “Ma?” I whisper. “I don’t know what to do. Help me find my way home, wherever home is.”

  22

  WINTER

  NAOMI

  It snows while Washakie is away, and a two-day goodwill visit to Pocatello’s village becomes five days. When the small party returns, John and I go to Chief Washakie’s wickiup to eat and hear the news. Hanabi tells me that Wolfe is fat, and she puffs out her cheeks and hugs me tight. She is happy for me. Relieved. Her own daughter has grown since we first met at the Green, and she toddles around the wickiup, entertaining us while the men talk. Chief Washakie seems relieved too, even lighthearted, and he keeps us there for a long time.

  When John and I are back in our wickiup, John tells me Washakie is confident there will be no trouble between the two bands during the winter.

  “He says Biagwi and Weda might even bring Wolf Boy—isa tuineppe—for a visit so you can see him,” John says, hesitant, searching my face for my reaction. His eyes are dark with strain.

  “They call him Wolf Boy?” I ask, stunned.

  “That is what Washakie said.”

  “Isa tuineppe,” I say. The sounds comfort me. “He is still Wolfe.”

  “Yes. He is still Wolfe.”

  It is good news, and I am grateful in spite of everything. I try to thank Washakie, stumbling over the Shoshoni words John has helped me practice.

  He listens and grunts, nodding his head. “Naomi gahni,” he says. “John gahni.”

  John says he is telling me that we have a home with him, for as long as we need. I wonder if that’s my answer. I begged Ma to help me find my way. Maybe home is with Washakie . . . forever.

  The winter days are dark and long. John sets snares and takes long walks in the snow, unable to stay cooped up inside for any length of time. Sometimes at night he studies his emigrant map, tracing our journey from St. Joe.

  “I hope Abbott will write to Jennie and my father,” he says. “Jennie says my father suffers when I go. I didn’t believe her. But I understand better now, and I don’t want him to suffer, wondering where I am. I don’t want your brothers to suffer either. When the spring comes . . . we . . . have to go find them. You know that, don’t you?”

  I know that. And I don’t know how I will ever be able to ride away.

  “We can come back. We can make a home with the tribe and watch over Wolfe . . .” His voice fades away, helpless. “Or maybe we should wait until Wolfe is old enough to make the journey . . . and take him.”

  “By force?” I whisper. I can’t imagine the two of us riding into Pocatello’s camp, guns blazing. I picture John covered in blood the way he was after he killed Magwich. He has killed for me before. I am sickened at the thought, shaken, and we stop talking about it.

  I’ve begun drawing again, painting faces on skins. I’ve drawn whole families on the walls of their wickiups. I don’t have any paper. My book never made it back into my satchel, and the pages inside it are full. Hanabi doesn’t want faces. She wants trees and animals, and I paint a pattern around the door and the floor, wolves and deer and horses and birds. Her daughter gets her hand in the paint, and I use her print to decorate too, including it in the pattern. Washakie watches me, and one day he asks John to translate for him so I can paint his dream. He brings me a huge elk skin and sits in our wickiup, his legs crossed, his eyes sober.

  “He doesn’t want to upset his mother or Hanabi. Or his people. So you will paint”—John waits for Washakie to finish—“but it is only for him.”

  I nod, and John reassures him, but Washakie seems torn, and after a short pause he speaks again.

  “He doesn’t understand the vision. Not all of it. It is strange to him. He can’t describe some things that he saw,” John says.

  “My mother had dreams,” I say, and John tells Washakie. “I don’t think she understood them all. She dreamed about John before she ever met him. And she dreamed about another woman—an Indian woman—feeding Wolfe. My mother knew about this.” I raise my hands, indicating my surroundings. My journey. “She knew something was coming . . . something . . . hard.”

  Washakie is listening to John, but he is watching me speak.

  “She did not run from it,” Washakie says.

  I shake my head slowly. “No. She always . . . kept her mind right. Always found . . . transcendence.”

  John is struggling to translate. Transcendence is hard to explain. He and Washakie talk for several minutes, a flurry of discussion that I don’t understand.

  “Washakie wants to know how
she did that,” John says, turning to me.

  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. Hating never fixed anything.

  It’s like Ma is right here, reciting all her simple wisdom in my head, and I tell Washakie what she told me.

  “Ma said transcendence is when we rise above the things we can’t change,” I add.

  “How do we know what we can’t change?” Washakie asks John, and John asks me.

  I shake my head. I don’t know the answer to that.

  “We can’t change what is. Or what was,” John says slowly. “Only what could be.”

  Transcendence is a world, a place, beyond this one. It’s what could be.

  Washakie mulls that over, and then he touches the elk skin and looks at me. He’s ready for me to paint.

  “He had this dream—this vision—a few years ago. He was worried about the lands of the Shoshoni being overrun by other tribes who were pushed out by the white tide. He went away by himself and fasted and . . . prayed . . . for three days. These are the things he saw,” John says.

  Washakie is quiet for a moment, his eyes closed and body still, like he’s trying to remember. When he begins to speak again, I don’t think. I just paint, using my fingers and a few horsehair brushes that John made me for finer details.

  He talks of carriages that pull themselves and horses made of iron. He describes people flying on giant birds that aren’t birds, going to places he never knew existed. He says the world will be small and the land will be different, and the Indians will be gone. Red blood and blue blood will flow together, becoming one blood. One people. John’s voice cracks with emotion as he interprets, and tears drip down my nose, but I keep painting, listening, and Washakie keeps talking.

  “I saw my life. My birth, my death, and the days between. The feathers on my head and a weapon in one hand, a pipe in the other. In the dream . . . I was told not to fight,” he says. “To choose the pipe. To choose peace with the white man whenever I can. So that is what I will do.”