I looked at Ah-Kee, who was looking up at me. I made my best imitation of the man, screwing my face up into an exaggerated, evil-looking scowl. Ah-Kee looked confused for a second, then his face cracked into a smile and he laughed. I reckoned that was a little bit of sunshine.
There weren’t no point in giving up. Ah-Kee and I walked up that street, with me asking anyone I could about Mr. Campbell. Some folks were rude, but most folks just said they didn’t know the man or where to find him. A cold rain started dripping down, and the street mostly emptied out. I felt my horse slipping away from me.
Finally we found our luck.
A fine-looking man in a suit, hurrying into a building, answered, “Campbell? No, son, I’m afraid I don’t.” I was prepared to thank him and move on when he added, “But if you keep going down that way you’ll get to Smithson’s. He’s a farrier and horse trader himself, probably the biggest in Yakima. If this Campbell fellow came through here looking for horses, I’d wager that Smithson would know about it.”
“Thank you, sir! Thank you!” I grabbed Ah-Kee by the hand, and we took off running down the street through the rain that was picking and pecking at us.
Smithson’s had a big sign out front: SMITHSON’S SADDLE & TACK: FARRIER, DEALER, HORSES BOUGHT & SOLD. It was a wooden building with a display window full of saddles and bridles, with a big stable and corral out back.
I rushed inside and right past the saddles and displays and goods, to the burly man at the back. He was wearing a heavy blacksmith’s apron and going through some crates under the counter.
“Mr. Smithson, sir?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m looking for a man named Campbell. A horse trader, who I believe may be in town. Do you know him, sir?”
“ ’Course I do,” the man answered in a deep, rumbling voice. He scratched at his massive barrel chest. “Just sold him some horses yesterday, as a matter of fact.”
My heart beat a sure enough joyful song in my chest.
“Can you tell me where he’s staying, sir? Where I could find him?”
“Well, he done left town.”
Mr. Smithson must’ve seen my face fall ’cause he went on encouragingly, “But only just this morning, son. I had breakfast with him. He’s heading over Walla Walla way. Probably didn’t leave more than, say, an hour ago.”
An hour! In all my travels and troubles, an hour was the closest I’d gotten to my Sarah. My breaths came fast and eager, like I was already running after her.
“Does he have his horses with him?”
“ ’Course he does. Nice big string, too, probably fifty head. He can’t be moving too fast, neither. If you hurry on down the road toward Walla Walla, I reckon you could catch him soon enough. Can’t miss him. He’s got all those horses, and three or four men with him, and a covered wagon, too.”
“Thank you, sir!” I said, already turning and running for the door.
Outside I turned to Ah-Kee and grabbed him by the shoulders. My voice was all shaky and high.
“We can catch her, Ah-Kee! Today! I hope you got some go left in your legs, ’cause we’re gonna sure enough be running. You ready, Ah-Kee?”
Ah-Kee had been looking intently into my eyes, no doubt trying to figure out what I was hollering in his face, when suddenly his gaze went over my shoulder to something behind me. He gasped right out loud and stepped past me.
He shouted a word in Chinese. Then again. His voice, if it was possible, sounded even more excited than my own.
I turned, and I saw them.
A group of Chinese, probably ten or fifteen. They were walking up the road, holding bundles and bags. They had a couple mules with them, too, loaded down heavy.
They looked up when Ah-Kee called, and one of them stopped in his tracks. He took a step away from the group, toward me and Ah-Kee. He dropped the load he’d been carrying, right there in the mud of the street. His mouth hung wide open in clear surprise.
“Ah-Kee?” he said in a gaspy whisper. Then he shouted, like a man finally finding gold in his pan, “Ah-Kee! Ah-Kee!”
Ah-Kee left my side and ran across the muddy road and jumped right into that man’s arms.
There was an awful lot of hugging and crying and fast Chinese talking there in that muddy Yakima street. I stood in the rain by myself and watched.
The Chinese folks put down their bundles and bags, and they crowded around Ah-Kee and the man he’d run to. There were questions and answers and a whole bunch of fuss. After a few minutes, Ah-Kee turned and called me over with a shout and a wave. “Joseph! Joseph!” There was a kind of happy that I hadn’t heard before in his voice.
I walked over through the mud, kinda shy, all those Chinese faces looking at me.
Another Chinese man, the tallest of them, stepped forward and exchanged a few words with Ah-Kee in Chinese. Then he turned to me. I was surprised when he started talking to me in broken but clear enough English.
“Ah-Kee say you have much travel together.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. We’ve traveled a good piece, me and Ah-Kee.”
“He say you save him. He alone, you brought him here with you. We all very thanking you.”
“Well, I was alone, too,” I answered. “We brought each other, I reckon.”
I cleared my throat and watched Ah-Kee with the man he’d run to. They were hugging tight like they weren’t never gonna let go. Then Ah-Kee pulled away and reached into his pocket. He pulled out that little black stone bird sculpture and held it out. And that man, standing right there in that muddy street, reached in his own pocket and pulled out an exact match. A little carving, just like the one I’d seen Ah-Kee pull out and show to folks—and bears—for more miles than I cared to count. Ah-Kee and that man stood there in the rain and held those two birds close together, a matched set reunited.
And then I knew.
I’d already known that Ah-Kee was not just along for the ride, all those miles. He had been on a mission, too, just like I was. And right then I knew that what Ah-Kee had been looking for all along was even more important than a horse.
“That fella there,” I said to the tall man next to me. My voice was kind of tight and scratchy. “That’s Ah-Kee’s papa, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he answered. “He looking long time for son.”
I nodded and sniffed.
“Yes, sir. I’m sure he was. And his son was looking for him, too.”
Ah-Kee and his father walked over to me.
I put out my hand toward Ah-Kee’s papa and he shook it, then bowed to me.
“We traveling now to Seattle,” the tall man continued. “Many jobs there. Many Chinese.”
“Oh.” I pointed down the road toward Walla Walla, the one we were gonna run down to catch my Sarah. “Me and Ah-Kee are headed—” And then I stopped. ’Cause it hit me like a horse kick in my chest.
Ah-Kee wouldn’t be coming with me.
Of course not. Against all the odds in heaven and earth, right here we’d stumbled smack into his people. He was back with his family. His folks. That’s who Ah-Kee was meant to be with. Not some orphaned kid chasing a horse. It was clear as everything, but it took my breath right away. I stood there with my words stuck fast in my throat.
Ah-Kee slipped from his papa’s arm and stepped toward me. He asked me a question, his voice steady and low and calm, like he was talking to a mama grizzly or birthing a baby. But his eyes were full of tears.
“Ah-Kee ask you if …” The tall man paused, finding the words. “He ask you if you need him. If you need him come with you.”
Tears, hot and stinging, came to my eyes.
Ah-Kee was willing to leave his family. To be without his people again, in a foreign land, just to stay by my side and help me. I blinked and looked away, embarrassed with all them grown men looking at me. But I knew the tears wouldn’t be blinked away. The thing to do was hold my head up and get it done.
“No, Ah-Kee,” I said, shaking my head and keeping
my voice firm as I could so my answer wouldn’t need no translating. “No. You need to go. With your family. You need to be with your family.”
Ah-Kee sniffled and nodded. He spoke a few more words.
“Ah-Kee say you good friend.”
“He’s a good friend, too. A real good friend.”
The tears were sure enough coming, now, and I didn’t try to hold them back. Ah-Kee talked, and the man translated.
“He say you, you … you honor. You honor your mother and father.”
I swallowed a hard lump of hurting in my throat.
“I hope so. You tell Ah-Kee that he does, too.”
The words were exchanged, and then Ah-Kee stepped right up to me. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the little black bird. The special stone memory he’d been carrying with him all along. The memory of his father. He pressed it into my hands.
I started to shake my head, but his hands were strong and sure. He closed my fingers tight around the carving and nodded once, looking in his serious way into my eyes.
I reached into my own pocket and pulled out the white stone from Papa’s grave. I pressed it into Ah-Kee’s hands, just like he’d pressed the bird into mine.
We looked at each other a minute, then we both put the other’s memory into our own pocket. They were new memories, now, but they were tied up and bound to the old. That’s how memories work, I suppose; you just go through life collecting them, never letting go of the precious ones but leaving room in your heart for more.
I shook Ah-Kee’s hand, and we bowed to each other.
The rain picked up, working up toward a full-out shower. Puddles started pooling in the mud around us. My hair slicked down wet to my forehead. My voice was choked up, but I got my next words out.
“Good-bye, Ah-Kee. It’s been a pleasure.”
Ah-Kee stepped back to his papa, and I took a backward step in the direction I was going.
Then Ah-Kee asked one more thing, and the tall man passed it on.
“What is it you looking for?”
I almost laughed. All this way, all this struggle, and poor Ah-Kee hadn’t even known what it was we were chasing after.
“A horse,” I said. “My horse.”
Ah-Kee cocked his head curious when the man gave him the answer.
“It was my family’s horse. My papa gave it to me. My mama and my sister loved it. I’m the only one left. I got to get it back.”
The man listened close, then passed my words on to Ah-Kee in Chinese.
Ah-Kee’s eyebrows rose as he listened. His mouth wrinkled down in a frown. Then he nodded at me and spoke, just a few words.
“He hope you find it. He think you will.”
“Thank you,” I told Ah-Kee.
Ah-Kee spoke again. The man repeated the words in Chinese, a question in his voice, and Ah-Kee nodded and gestured for him to tell me.
“Ah-Kee say … he say for you to keep your pants on.”
I laughed. A real, honest laugh, and wiped at my cheeks with a sleeve.
“All right. You tell him to work on his horse riding.”
Ah-Kee laughed. And then we both walked away. In different directions.
I looked back once, just as he did. The group of Chinese was walking again, their backs bent under the loads they carried. Ah-Kee was already carrying a bundle, too. He raised his hand in a wave.
I waved back, through the rain that was now pouring down, soaking me to the skin.
Then I walked away, through the dripping mud, all alone in the world.
“It’s just me and you again, Sarah,” I whispered. “I’m coming for you.”
* * *
My boots squished and squelched in the mud of the road. I left the last real buildings of Yakima behind and was soon passing the outskirts, just little shacks and houses here and there, and the railroad track off to one side. My going got slower and slower as the rain kept falling. The mud got deeper and clung to my boots and sucked at my feet, and soon every step was an effort. I was breathing hard and my heart was racing, and I wasn’t hardly getting nowhere for it.
For the third time that day, I felt tears come to my eyes. I fought to hold them in. But it ain’t a battle I won. My face was already wet with rain, and my tears mixed with it and were lost in the world. I didn’t even know what kind of tears they were—tears of sadness, or of anger, or loneliness, or frustration. Most likely a bitter mix of all of them. But I couldn’t hardly see through them. I was working my way up a hill but I was floundering in the slick and sticky mud, slipping back a step for every two I took. Finally my feet slid out from under me and I fell flat down in the mud, covering my shirt and pants, my hands buried to the wrists.
I pulled myself up to my knees but could go no farther. I knelt there in the mud, holding my tears.
I’d been a fool. A kid, wandering all over the countryside, looking for a horse he didn’t even have the money to buy back. And what if I did finally catch up to Sarah, and did manage to get her back. What then? I had no home, no family. No folks or place to call my own. I’d have no stable to put her in, no hay to feed her. I was sure enough alone in the world. Having that horse back, as much as I loved her, wouldn’t change that. Mama and Papa and Katie had left me behind. Even Ah-Kee was gone now. All that loneliness swirled around me and held me down like a giant, cold thumb.
But life is a funny thing. It just keeps on going on.
After a few minutes of kneeling there in the muck, my breathing calmed down. The rain let up a bit, winding down to just a slow, cold drizzle. A bird fluttered up, as alone as I was. He landed on the side of the road, ten or fifteen feet up, hopping and eyeing the ground sideways. Then he struck and pulled up a fat, slimy worm and flew off.
I looked around. Off in the distance, the Yakima River wound its curvy way through the valley. It made no sound from that far away, so I couldn’t hear whatever story it was telling. Behind me, a steam locomotive was pulling out of Yakima, chugging and hissing, black clouds of coal smoke billowing out of its smokestack. It was heading toward me, on the tracks running just off to the side of the road.
A thought struck me, crouching there with soggy knees. I was alone, all right. And life had surely been a hard trial for me, so far. From the time Mama and Katie fell sick, life had been one misery after the other.
But here I was. Still with breath in my lungs. And blood in my veins. And memories and voices in my heart. Good ones. And life was going on, all around me. With or without me, it was going on.
It weren’t a matter of the whole thing stopping or the whole thing going on. The whole thing was going on. It was only a matter of me standing up and deciding what part I had to play in it all.
I could be the quitting kind. Or not. I could be the kind of man my mama and papa had raised, or not.
I rose to my feet and did the best I could to scrape the worst of the mud off my coat and pants.
“Sarah is gonna be someone’s horse,” I said to myself. “And I’m sure as hell gonna make sure she’s mine.”
I took my first bold step forward and almost went right back to the ground again. In all my newfound vigor, I’d forgotten the mud. I was ready to move bravely on, but the mud had other ideas.
The train whistle blew behind me.
An idea leaped in my head like a fly-hungry trout.
I looked back at the train, moving slow but picking up speed. About a quarter mile behind me.
I swore at the mud and ran as best I could, up to the top of the rise that had been giving me such fits. Panting at the top, I squinted into the rain-blurred distance.
As far as I could see, the railroad tracks ran parallel to the road. Just right alongside it, more or less. All the way off into the distance.
Glancing back, I saw the train was closer and getting some good speed behind her. She’d be even with me in no time. I chewed on my cheek, trying to decide.
Hopping a train was a crime. If a railroad man saw you hopping on without a paid ticket, you’d likel
y feel the blow of an ax handle. You could get thrown in jail, even, if they caught you.
But my options were running out. I was only a couple hours back from Sarah now. The mud had to be slowing them down near as much as it did me. Once the rain cleared, though, there’d be no keeping up. This was likely my last and only chance to catch her. She was heading east, forever away; but she was here now, by God, and I was alive enough still to die trying to get her back.
I ran off the road and into the brush. There was a bushy Russian olive tree just back from the tracks, and I crouched down quick behind it. Those twin steel rails were humming and rattling, telling me about the train coming my way.
I slipped Ah-Kee’s little bird out of my pocket and into the satchel, making sure it was buckled shut and snug around my shoulder. Inside was a gun, and some money, and the memory of a friend; I didn’t intend to lose any of it. I threw Ezra Bishop’s whip off into the bushes to lighten my load. I hoped nobody ever found the cursed thing—but if they did, I prayed they used it for saving drowning people and not for whipping horses.
I crouched in the drizzling rain, waiting for that train to appear, and I thought about Sarah. I thought about how sometimes, if it was early-morning dark and I whistled for her across the pasture, all I’d hear was her hooves galloping toward me; at first I’d see only her white splotches in the blackness, and then she’d be right up against me, bumping me with her chest and nuzzling at my neck with the warm softness of her nose.
I wasn’t thinking about the rain or the road or the loneliness. I was thinking about things we lose, and things we have to hold on to, and things we have to fight to get back.
I wiped my hands as dry as I could on any part of my clothes I could find that weren’t covered in mud. I started to say a little prayer—either to Mama or to the Lord, I wasn’t sure—but the sound of the oncoming train grew to a roar, pushing all the words outta my head.
Then it went past, in a lung-sucking gust of wind and an ear-punching thunder that shook the teeth in my jaw. I gritted my teeth and screwed my eyes shut, willing my heart to hold tight to its courage and not let that train shake it loose.
Some Kind of Courage Page 12