by J. A. Crook
***
Harriet was roused by the sound of banjo playing outside of the cabin room Floyd and herself were afforded at Fort Bleck. Floyd was already up, sitting at a crude wooden desk near the door, where he watched Harriet from his vantage. Harriet cocked her head, allowing for a few of her messy curls to shift down the side of her face, and she asked with a smile. “Can I help you, sir?” She said almost playfully. It felt like a normal morning before the stoic look on Floyd’s face remained despite Harriet’s efforts and she noticed that he was unsettled. “Floyd, what is it?”
“They should be here by now, Hattie. It wasn’t a great distance for them to travel and it’s been all night and nothing.” When Floyd fell silent and said nothing more of his concerns, the plucking banjo was all that was left to play its quick, successive notes behind their burdened thoughts of Jim, Grant and the guides. It was ill-suiting of the mood, but it was better than the deafening ring of silence that would have been in company otherwise.
“I bet they’re alright, Floyd. I’m sure they are! God will protect them all, you know that! And he’ll deliver them here, with everything that they could bring.” Harriet rose from the bed and made her way clumsily toward her husband. She sat on his lap after turning him and his chair, with his assistance, her way. She wrapped her thin arms around his neck and brought herself close to him, to settle with her nose nuzzled into his neck. There, she whispered softly. “And we’ll get ourselves together and be on our way to Oregon in no time, to live out West, just like we planned, hmm?”
“God didn’t protect Hank.” Floyd muttered, sending a chill through Harriet, as she felt the rumble of his throat as he said words bordering blasphemy.
“Mind yourself, Floyd! That’s no way to speak of the Lord, now! You repent for that! Things haven’t gone well, but I’ll be damned if things couldn’t be a whole lot worse now! Couldn’t they? Couldn’t they?” She burst from his lap with his remark and stared down to him angrily. She felt that now, of any time, was not the time to be making a mockery of God.
Floyd watched his angry wife for a moment. He nodded, dejectedly, and apologized. “I just don’t understand. We should have been more prepared.”
“Chances are, Floyd, there’s a plan for each and every one of us. And if God wanted Hank, then God wanted Hank, and there isn’t a thing you, or I, or Mr. Vickers or Jim or anyone could do about it, you hear? We just have to send up prayers and hope that things turn out how they should for us here on this Earth.” Harriet continued her spiritual lecture. It wasn’t unusual for Harriet to move into these sorts of tirades with Floyd, who with his profession, often confused the positions of gods and men. Then, he wasn’t the sort of man to push his luck with his wife, who was a strong woman, and probably a greater source of fear than God was to him.
“I understand, Hattie. I’m sorry. I’m sure they’ll be fine. How about you and I manage ourselves some breakfast here in the ‘fort,’ yes?” Floyd made a mockery of the term Jasper and Chance used for the small post, but these days, it was common for even the smallest keep on the frontier to be labeled a “fort.” Fort Deposit, their final destination, wasn’t one of those large, defensible structures like the Alamo mission out in Texas. Still, Fort Bleck offered shelter, likely food, some protection and, now, music.