by Harmon, Amy
JOHN
Washakie does not take his painting when he leaves. Naomi isn’t finished. She’s been at it for hours, hardly conscious of me at all. I keep the wick of my lantern burning, the coals hot, and she works, paint up to her wrists and dotting her doeskin dress. She doesn’t have any clothes that don’t have some paint somewhere. Her hair was tidy when the process began, but her braid has come undone, and she swipes at the loose strands absently, making a black streak across her face. I gather her hair in my hands and knot it up again with a bit of rope, gazing down over her bowed head at the dreamscape she’s created. She looks up at me, almost startled, and touches her hair.
“I have paint in it, don’t I?”
I crouch down beside her. “Yeah. You do. And everywhere else. But it was worth it.”
She sits back on her knees and studies the painting. “I’ve never done anything like this before. But . . . I’m finished.” The details of the vision are in clusters of action that focus, then fade, following the path of Washakie’s narrative. It’s blurred but not dreamy. It’s harsh but not hopeless, and she has captured Washakie’s despair and desire in the swirling lines and discordant scenes. Color, confrontation, and connection merge in Washakie’s image.
“I can see his face,” I exclaim, stunned. “It’s not obvious the first time you look at it, but now I can’t see anything else.”
“It emerged as I went. His face—more than anything else—tells the story. It’s his vision.”
“Naomi and her many faces,” I say. “It’s—” I pause, trying to find the right word. “It’s . . . transcendent.”
She smiles at me, her eyes wet, her lips soft. “Do you think he’ll . . . like it?” she whispers.
“It’s not that kind of a picture, honey.”
She smiles at my endearment and pats my cheek. “No. I guess it isn’t.”
“But maybe it’ll give him comfort . . . or courage . . . or a place to lift his eyes when he starts feeling lost.”
“You’re a good man, John Lowry.” She leans into me, her hands on my jaw, holding me to her as she kisses my mouth. “You’re a good man . . . and now you have paint all over your face,” she says, giggling. “I’m sorry.”
“So do you.” I laugh. “But I know where we can fix that.” It’s late, no one is wandering about, and I’ve been dreaming about that hot spring since we walked into the valley.
We strip off our clothes and wrap ourselves in buffalo robes and tiptoe out of the sleeping camp up to the pool secluded in the trees. We scare an owl and something bigger away but slip into the heat with a gasp and a moan. I brought a lump of soap, and we remove all the paint from our faces and Naomi’s hair, but her hands are too stained to fix with soap and water.
“My hands are hopeless,” she says, holding her palms up to the lantern light.
“I love the stains. I noticed the stains on your fingers that very first day. Remember?”
“I do. I saw you staring. You didn’t know what to think.”
“I still don’t,” I whisper, teasing. “But you wouldn’t be Naomi without the stains.”
“I have so many,” she says, quiet. And I know she isn’t talking about paint. She plops her hands back down in the water and sinks beneath the surface, a baptism of sorts. When she comes back up, she’s focused on me.
She wouldn’t be Naomi without the stains, and she wouldn’t be Naomi if she didn’t make good use of the hot springs. We descend the slope an hour later, overheated and freezing, the ends of Naomi’s wet hair already stuck to her robe. We hurry along, our feet crunching on the snow. We have extinguished the lantern to save the oil. We don’t need it. The moon is high and huge, and it reflects off the snow, making the night soft and gray.
When dark shapes loom to the south, rising up over the pristine expanse, I freeze, pulling Naomi behind me. Two figures, bundled against the cold, ride toward the wickiups. They aren’t Crow come to steal the horses; there is no stealth in their approach, only haste, and two men would not carry out any kind of attack. It’s late, nigh on midnight, and I can’t conjure a reason for their presence, but they ride straight into the village.
“Washakie!” a voice calls out before the horses even stop. “Washakie!” the man shouts again, urgency ringing through the camp. “Washakie! I need Face Woman. It is Biagwi. I have Wolf Boy. He is sick.”
Naomi and I change into our clothes in rushed silence. Washakie has ushered Weda and Biagwi into his wickiup, but we do not wait to be summoned.
When we arrive, Weda and Biagwi are standing just inside, still wrapped in the buffalo robes of their journey. Hanabi has stoked the fire, Lost Woman is making a poultice, and Washakie has gone to rouse the medicine man. Biagwi looks wary. And scared. Weda’s arms are wrapped around her chest, sheltering the boy within her robes.
“Please?” Naomi asks, extending her arms toward the woman. “Can I see him?”
The woman looks at Biagwi, who jerks his head, giving his approval. With great hesitance, she unwraps the baby from her robes and hands him to Naomi.
He has grown a great deal; his little legs are dimpled, and his wrists and thighs are ringed with fat. Blond hair curls wildly about his round face, but his cheeks are flushed, and he is very still.
Weda moans in distress and asks Naomi if she can make the wolf boy well. She touches her chest and breathes with a rasp, demonstrating what ails the child. But Wolfe is not coughing or wheezing now. He lies feverish, hardly breathing, and Naomi gathers him close, her lips trembling.
“He’s been sick for three days, but he would still feed, and he would smile. He did not cry. But now he will not wake,” Biagwi says, his face tight.
Hanabi urges Biagwi and Weda to sit by the fire and take off their robes, but they are anxious and weary, and though they shrug off their robes, they remain standing, Biagwi with his arms folded in defiance, Weda rocking back and forth as though she still holds the babe. It reminds me of Winifred. Winifred used to sway like that.
Washakie returns, the medicine man in tow. He takes his time, clearing the air with sage and repeating a string of sounds that I don’t understand. He puts something on Wolfe’s temples and on his chest and shakes his rattles over him to drive out the sickness in his body, then moans and meanders around the wickiup before circling back again to shake the rattle above Wolfe some more. Naomi’s eyes never leave Wolfe’s face, but Biagwi is angry with the old ways and tells Washakie that the medicine man in Pocatello’s camp did much the same for three days, and the boy has only grown worse.
“He wants all the daipo to die. He wants the tua to die. He does not use his real medicine,” Biagwi growls.
Naomi looks up at me for translation. “Biagwi says the medicine men do not like the whites. He doesn’t think they are trying to heal him,” I murmur.
Washakie tells the medicine man to leave, waving him away with a weary shake of his head. The medicine man is insulted, but in the face of disbelief and Biagwi’s rage, he gathers his things and goes. Hanabi leaves too, her daughter in her arms, afraid of the illness that plagues Wolfe. She urges us to stay, saying she will be near in her father’s wickiup.
Lost Woman leads Naomi to the fire and urges her to sit. She doesn’t make her release the boy or lay him down, and I am grateful. Naomi needs to hold Wolfe. Lost Woman presses a thick, pungent poultice onto the boy’s chest, promising it will help him breathe and make his body release the fever. The vapors are strong, and Naomi’s face begins to bead with sweat. Weda sinks down beside her, her back bent and her head bowed. I doubt she’s slept in days. Biagwi paces like a caged mountain lion, and Washakie stands at my side.
At one point, Wolfe emits a little cry, and Naomi lifts him to her shoulder, rubbing his back, trying to clear his throat. No one breathes, hopeful, but he doesn’t cry again, and we all sink back into our vigil.
Weda tries to make him nurse, clutching him to her breast, her chest wet with perspiration, her damp hair clinging to her face, but Wolfe does not la
tch, and he does not wake. Weda does not give the boy back, and Naomi doesn’t insist. They sit side by side, their eyes heavy, and watch him hour after hour. Lost Woman changes the poultice and makes us all drink. The heat is stifling, and Biagwi stumbles for the door, unable to bear a moment more.
Wolfe opens his eyes near dawn, and Weda exclaims, jumping to her feet and calling for Biagwi, who comes running. We all gather around, staring down at the small boy, hopeful that the dawn will bring new life. Lost Woman holds back, watching.
“Let her say goodbye,” she says to Weda. “Let Face Woman hold her brother so she can say goodbye.”
Naomi does not understand what’s been said, and she does not lift her gaze from Wolfe’s staring eyes. Weda argues, tightening her arms and scolding Lost Woman in weary protest. She has new hope, the babe is revived, and she doesn’t want to relinquish him, but Biagwi takes the boy from her arms and hands him to Naomi. She takes him, her eyes shining with gratitude, and looks down into her brother’s face.
“Hello, Wolfe,” she whispers. “Hello, sweet boy. I have missed you.”
Wolfe’s eyes fix on her face, and his rosebud lips turn up in a hint of a smile. Then his lids close, his breath rattles, and he softly slips away.
NAOMI
The scarlet fades from his cheeks, and the warmth leaves his limbs, and I know that he is gone. Weda screams, and Biagwi moans in shock, and Wolfe is snatched from my arms. Weda falls to the ground, wailing in denial and despair, Wolfe clutched to her chest. I feel her anguish echo in my belly and kneel beside her, but she scrambles away, screaming at me, at Lost Woman, at Biagwi and John. At Washakie, who watches her with silent compassion.
She stands near the door, her eyes wild and streaming, staring as though we’ve all betrayed her. Then, with one last look at Wolfe, she sets him gently on the ground the way she did when Biagwi first laid him in her arms, a son to replace the one she’d lost. And she walks out into the snow.
JOHN
The air is cold and clean, and when I pull it into my nose, it eases the ache in my chest and the grief in my throat. I stand silently, my eyes raised upward, and I ask my mother and Winifred May to look down on me. I talk to them in Pawnee, though I know Winifred won’t understand. It is the language of my mother, and I need my mother.
The dusting of snow has left the morning new and untouched. Tracks lead from Washakie’s door to the cluster of hoofprints where Biagwi and Weda hobbled their horses. Weda ran away without her robes, riding in dazed exhaustion back toward her village. Biagwi followed, her robes slung across his horse, his back bent beneath his burdens.
Their grief is a comfort. It’s like Jennie said. It isn’t love unless it hurts, and their pain tells me Wolfe was cherished, he was loved, and he is mourned, and at the end of life, no matter how short, that is all there is.
They left Wolfe’s body behind. It is a gift, a mercy to Naomi, and she is with him now. She washed him and wrapped him in a small wool blanket with a stripe of every color. Washakie gave it to her, and Naomi said it reminded her of her mother’s coat, the coat of many colors, like Joseph sold into Egypt. I gave her a moment—gave myself a moment—to mourn alone. She is composed. Serene even. But the grief will come. We will bury him here, and the grief will come.
“There are tracks in the snow,” Lost Woman says behind me.
I nod, but Lost Woman isn’t looking at the trail left by Biagwi and Weda. She pulls at my arm, bidding me follow. The snow is deep, almost up to our knees, and we sink as we go, stepping and falling, stepping and falling, kicking up the new powder.
“See?” Lost Woman points down at the tracks leading from the rear of Washakie’s wickiup in a long straight line into nowhere. No other tracks mar the new snow.
I hunch down to see them better, and Lost Woman crouches beside me.
Footprints, too small to be a man’s, too large to be a child’s, sit on the surface of the snow. Beside the footprints, the toes clearly delineated, is a small set of paw prints, scampering away toward the trees. A woman and a wolf. I follow them, bemused, until they suddenly disappear.
“The mother came for her son,” Lost Woman says.
I stare, not understanding, and Lost Woman explains.
“Sometimes the spirits leave tracks in the snow. The tracks can guide us. Sometimes they comfort us. Other times, they lead us home. I saw tracks after my sons died and again the morning after my granddaughter was born. Different tracks . . . but always . . . the same.”
The tracks of a woman . . . and a little Wolfe.
“The mother came for her son,” I whisper, stunned. Overcome.
“Yes. And now Naomi can go home.”
1858
EPILOGUE
NAOMI
John says Wolfe freed me. I couldn’t save him, and I couldn’t keep him. I couldn’t take him, and I couldn’t leave him. So he had to leave me. John says Ma came and got him, but when he took me to see the footprints Lost Woman showed him in the snow, there was nothing left but drifts and depressions. I believed him, though, and to this day I think about Ma’s prints in the snow and what it all means. Maybe there is a place called transcendence where all the blood runs together and we’re one people, just like in Washakie’s dream.
We left the valley in early May, when the snow was gone and the grass had begun to cover the ground. Washakie’s people went one way, and John and I went another, riding Dakotah and Bungu and stringing the three mules and Magwich’s two horses behind us. We didn’t have enough possessions to fill John’s packs, but Washakie made sure we had enough dried meat to see us through to our journey’s end.
I realize now that life is just a continual parting of the ways, some more painful than others. We refused to say goodbye to the Shoshoni; we just kissed Lost Woman and embraced Hanabi, and John promised Washakie he would see him again. When I looked back through tear-filled eyes, the tribe remained where we left them, their belongings on their backs and piled on their horses, a watercolor painting I’ve since tried and failed to recreate.
John wouldn’t look back. It hurt too much, and I was reminded of Ma keeping her eyes from the graves of the little ones because she couldn’t carry that pain. John carried it anyway. He carried that pain all the way to the gold fields at the base of the Sierra Nevada and for a long time after that. He will always be Two Feet, straddling two worlds, and there is nothing I can do but give him something—someone—to hold on to. To belong to. Worlds pass away. People do too, but he left a part of himself among the Shoshoni, wandering in the hills and along the streams beside Washakie. I’m sure one day, when ages have passed, his spirit will return there, and mine will have to follow.
A week after we left the winter range, we reached the spot where John and my brothers had buried the wagon. The cross was still standing, though it had teetered some. We straightened it and piled more stones on top of the wagon box, but this time when we left, I didn’t look back. I couldn’t feel my loved ones there, and I was glad to leave that desert behind.
It was July 1854 when we reached Coloma, a mining town that had sprouted up in 1848 when a man at Sutter’s Mill had found gold. John and I shed our skins and wore the only homespun clothing we had left, which wasn’t in the best of conditions. John’s hair was so long he was afraid someone would shoot and ask questions later, so I rode in front, shielding my eyes from the setting sun, stunned by the shelters and the ramshackle cabins dotting the landscape in every direction. I didn’t know how we would ever find my brothers.
But they saw us coming.
Abbott had a claim from ’49 with a one-room cabin that wasn’t much more than a shack, but he kept the boys together. They hunkered down, waited out the winter, and eked out the spring working at the sawmill and panning for gold. Webb still had no shoes, Will had grown a foot, and Wyatt had no boy left in him, though he cried in my arms like a baby.
There are no words for joy like that. Our legs wouldn’t hold us, and we fell on each other in a quivering pile, laughing
and crying and embracing. We tried to speak and finally gave up, weeping until we were all dried out.
“John promised us. He promised, and he kept his word,” Webb said, and what was dry became wet all over again.
John has a way of making things work. He managed to trade a little of this and exchange some of that, and before we knew it, we had a place to call home, a storefront, and a round corral, big enough to start a mule business with Kettle and a few mares. Wyatt got work, and Abbott got married, much to all our surprise, considering his purported lack of feeling from the waist down. We sent letters to Missouri, and Jennie and John Sr. always wrote back. They even sent a little money and presents for the boys. It wasn’t a bad life, not at all, but John still carried that pain.
In 1856 we took the boys and the budding mule business to the Great Salt Lake Valley so John could keep another promise. Through the long summer, John watched the travelers and the tribes coming in and out of the market, knowing that one day, Washakie would come to trade.
You can imagine the joy on the day he did; John brought him home, and he and his men spent two days camped in our paddock, telling stories and reminiscing. Washakie is well thought of here, and no one gave them any trouble. Webb, Will, and Wyatt sat among them, listening and laughing, though they couldn’t understand a word anyone said.
Washakie didn’t ask about our babies and why there weren’t any, but before he left, he told John he would have a son. John said he already had three May boys to father, but Washakie said there would be a whole line of John Lowrys, and John’s descendants would tell his story and honor his name.
He’s like Ma that way, Washakie, with his dreams and premonitions. When we saw him again the following year, I was rounded with child, and the night I delivered, there were tracks in the snow.