They were in the cotton belt now, where slaves, more than ever they had seen in Tennessee, worked the broad fields. The bolls were opened full and the white fields shimmered in the glare of the sun. This white landscape with black people in it was like a photographic negative, or like that image which comes just before the loss of consciousness in a sunstroke, when everyone turns black, outlined by a glittering aureole of light. Ella Ordway’s thin cotton dress, soaked with sweat, clung to her figure, accentuating her belly. The Ordways were stared at now fully as hard as they had been when he led the team.
It was during this time that the man seated on the porch of a country store where they stopped had taken it upon himself to interfere on her behalf. Their approach to the store had, as always, been studied from afar, and now this man watched the hot, dusty, pinched, and gravid little woman climb the creaky steps and cross the sagging, creaky porch in her thin shapeless dress, her worn and dusty shoes, waited until she was inside, spat out into the road, and said to his companions at large, “Now ain’t that a sight to make you ashamed of being a man? Big lazy good-for-nothing taking his ease up there in the cool while that poor little woman has to walk along poking them oxen!” His tone was one almost of raillery. You might have thought he was baiting an old friend.
If Thomas Ordway heard this, and would have liked to hush the man for his own sake, it was already too late; there was nothing he could have said. In any case, he did not speak, and this must have seemed to the man on the porch like more of the same disregard which had been so provoking to begin with. “I’m talking to you,” he said.
As Thomas Ordway sought to locate the voice, his unseeing gaze passed without acknowledgment over his assailant.
“Here I am,” said he, stepping to edge of the porch and squinting against the glare. “It’s me that’s talking to you. I’m an old man but not too old to tell you—and to prove it on you, too—that any man who would sit on that wagon seat and let his wife, in her—”
At that point Ella returned. But before she could intervene the man gasped, uttered a strangled, horror-stricken sob, turned, and slunk along the porch and around the side of the store, a look in his eye as if he were bent on hanging himself. It was the closest call she had had. Thereafter, hot as it was, and though dizzy already with nausea, Ella Ordway wore her overcoat—which drew stares, too, but hid her condition.
In Little Rock they heard rumors of another threatened invasion like that of U. S. General Banks from New Orleans up the Red River shortly before. They would, they also learned there, have to cross that Red River. They were told of a ferry above Clarksville. Preferring redskins to Yankees, they decided to cut across the southeast corner of Indian Territory. Travelers who had been there assured them that the Indians of that section—Choctaws and Cherokees—differed only in color from folks everywhere: lived in houses, dressed in clothes, farmed small holdings, went to church. The savages were civilized, it was the white riffraff you had to fear in the Indian Territory. And even with them the Ordways’ helplessness and their poverty seemed a guarantee of safe conduct.
From Little Rock they went to Arkadelphia, from Arkadelphia to De Queen, where they entered the Territory, arriving in Broken Bow on the second day of October. They had been on the road for not quite six months, and had come nine hundred miles from home. Their money was gone. Now Ella bartered with storekeepers for supplies, beginning with the things they had been given, then dipping into their own meager possessions. Piece by piece she spent her mother’s silverware. Picture frames, china, the mantelpiece clock of imitation ormolu: all these were traded away. No longer could they rely on the hospitality of the countryside. The Arkansawyers had been poor, the Indians were even poorer. Their veneration of the blind was great, and when they came in their wagons to call, they solemnly extended their welcome through a translator, one of their children or grandchildren who had had government schooling. Still, they were more used to exacting petty tribute from travelers passing through their territory than helping them on their way. They took Ella’s mirror, her cameo brooch, her sewing scissors, the brighter-colored articles of her clothing. One anxiety of hers she was able to lay aside. With the Indians her obvious secret was safe. They saw nothing remarkable, much less reprehensible, in the fact that the pregnant squaw should walk with the team while her man rode; nor would they, had he been in full possession of his faculties. Neither were the few white men here the kind to challenge a husband’s mistreatment of his wife. As the temperature now hovered in the 90’s, it was a relief to shed that overcoat.
The Ordways were asked if the war was over. They replied, not so far as they knew. Why? Well, they were the first folks to be seen coming through headed for Texas since shortly after the war began.
They turned south. Down into the red bottomlands, where out of stagnant sloughs cane-legged blue cranes rose creaking into the air and alligators sank from sight and mud turtles and fat water moccasins dropped off logs at their approach. Where in small stump-dotted patches Indian farmers snatched a crop of cotton between risings of the river which backed water inland for as deep as five miles, leaving in the forks of trees higher than a man’s head tufts of matted trash like squirrels’ nests. Then into the dark, cool, and fragrant pine forests: trees as thick as hair, with occasional clearings hacked out of them where loggers had operated, and in the clearing a mound of sawdust blackened at the base, growing yellow as cornmeal at the top. On into the brooding stillness, and then their first glimpse of the river. Impossibly red, silent, sluggish, it was as unlike water as anything could be. It looked simply like a crossroad to the one they were on. Thick, motionless, semi-solid, it might have been a fresh-poured concrete highway; you felt that just by waiting overnight you would find that it had set, and you could walk across to Texas.
And you found that you might have to do just that. The ferry had shut down. Had not run for nearly a year, the owner having gone off, beaching his boat over on the other side. This was told the Ordways by the half-breed farmer, market hunter, trapper, who lived in the last cabin. Where the next nearest ferry was he had no notion. He did not ask if the war was over; it was doubtful that he knew there was one going on.
Though hope of crossing there was gone, they were drawn irresistibly down to the ferry landing. There for the first time the Ordways beheld Texas. Dividing them from it were only a few hundred yards. After coming a thousand miles, to be balked by so little seemed intolerable.
Ella unhitched the oxen and led them, yoked, down to the water to drink. Dexter took her hand and padded along beside her in the deep red dust. Helen remained with her father, who leaned against the wagon looking towards the river. The oxen shied at the strange water, sniffed it, blew in it trying to clear it. While they drank Ella stood resting her hands on her stomach, gazing across to the opposite shore. A wall of black-green pines rose there with pointed tops as regular as the palings of a fence. At the base of this wall, between it and the red water, which lay as flat as though it had been smoothed with a trowel, stretched the thin gold stripe of a sandbar. The woods were parted by a fine line where the ferry road ran, until lost in the shadowy depths. Ella’s eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. After this tantalizing glimpse to have to turn back, retrace their route to Broken Bow, and push on westward—who knew how far—through poor, inhospitable country until they learned of another ferry, that too perhaps shut down—the disappointment was too cruel. Frightened by his mother’s tears, the boy commenced to whimper.
A crash in the woods at their back made the oxen toss their yoked heads. Out of the trees a deer broke, streaked across the bar, and plunged into the river. Instantly it sank from view, leaving only its head above water. Straight out it swam, cutting a wake in the slow surface. It reached the middle, and there the current must have run stronger than appeared, for the deer was swept steadily downstream. It disappeared from sight. Ella caught her breath. Had it gone under? Was it drowned? Anxiously she scanned the surface, the opposite shore. Nothing could she see. O
ver the sullen river a desolate stillness hung, and seized by a fit of despair she let out her breath in a sob. Then Dexter cried, “Yonder he is! Yonder!” Far downstream the deer rose slowly from the water, silhouetted against the golden strand. Head hanging wearily, it hauled itself out. Bit by bit it drew erect, dark with wet, distinct against the shining sand. Then it was gone, vanishing into the darkness of the woods.
That night over supper the Ordways considered their predicament. Their money was gone, most everything they had was gone. It was October; before much longer the weather would begin to turn cold. And Texas lay just across the water, not a quarter of a mile away!
Thomas believed the river could be crossed. Her misgivings angered him; he ascribed them to fear of his helplessness. She pondered whether to tell him of her condition. The consequences were vivid to her. This poor, half-savage country was not the birthplace she had dreamt of for her child. With winter coming on they could not travel far with a newborn baby. Though near destitute now, they would have still less to travel on next spring, after a winter spent keeping alive in this place. It was not a very big river: only a quarter of a mile wide, if that; and quiet, hardly rougher than a pond. Once across it, and they were there.…
The cover was removed from the wagon, leaving the four hoops sticking up in the air like an arbor on which no vines had yet grown, spread on the bank, and freshly coated with waterproofing compound. Overnight this dried and next morning the canvas was given a second coat. Slits were cut in it for the four axletrees. Then it was spread underneath the wagon and drawn up over the sides. The seams were tacked to the sideboards and sealed with the last of the waterproofing compound. Inside the box a rope was passed through the grommets and the tarpaulin tied down all round. All was ready. Only then did Ella broach the question which had troubled her mind from the start. “Just one thing worries me,” she began, speaking across that space which she kept always between them.
He said nothing, did not even nod, though it was plain from the set of his face that she would not even need to name it, that his mind was made up, was not to be budged. He is a man, said Ella to herself; he understands such matters better than I do. He must know it is safe, reasonably safe. Proud as he is of those stones, he would not endanger us all for them. She heaved a sigh and said, “It would be a shame to leave them behind here, after bringing them all this way. Worse than a shame,” she added, meeting with her own his fixed, unblinking gaze, “be a sin.” She rubbed her tar-stiffened hand along the side of the wagon. “Three feet,” she mused. “That ought to be deep enough to float a pretty heavy load.” Still getting no response from him: “Well,” she concluded, “there is one way to find out!”
Thomas Ordway sat with a child on either side of him on the wagon seat. Ella, barefooted and stockingless and with her skirt tucked up to where it barely covered her big belly, prodded the oxen, and the wagon rumbled down the bank. At the water’s edge the team drew up. They had not balked; it had not yet penetrated to their brains that they were expected to enter the water, to swim that river; they just stopped, and when they felt the goad they turned upon Ella a patient look from out of their big lash-lidded liquid eyes, then lowered their heads to take a sip to drink. She stung the near one with so sharp a jab that it started, giving the wagon a lurch and taking itself and partner knee-deep into the water. Finding themselves there, they at once began backing out. But already the wagon wheels had begun to settle in the mud. Ella waded in after them and jabbed both in the rump. They balked. They would not go ahead, they could not go back. She prodded them until they set up a lowing, and tossing their heads, made the yoke clatter against their horns. Ella waded farther out, and reversing the goad, snapped the swivel in the nose ring of the inside ox. She gave it a twist. The ox bawled with pain; still he would not budge. The water now lapped their sides. Ella herself was in up to the armpits. The warm water was the color of coffee thickened with cream.
“Stubborn creatures!” Ella cried, and she gave the goad another wrench. Again the ox bawled, but it only set its hooves deeper in the riverbed. From its nose blood began to drip, spattering as though on solid ground on the surface of the water, red on red.
“Ella!” her husband called. “Stop.” She had already. She was about to say that maybe the oxen knew best what they could and could not do. “Listen now, and do as I tell you. Take Helen, and the two of you go back up to the woods. Gather all the dry brush you can find and bring it here.”
The brush was laid in two large piles on the bar just behind the wagon, one on either side. This done, he ordered them back into the woods with instructions to gather pine boughs, dead but with the needles still on. These he wanted in the wagon. He had Ella set fire to the brush piles. Then she climbed over the tailgate.
The fires began to crackle and the oxen to shake their heads. Torn between two fears, they could neither go ahead nor stand still. They rocked the wagon forward and back, rolling their eyes behind them at the fires. These were now burning at their pitch, snapping and popping, almost igniting the wagon. Still the oxen shifted and hesitated. Striking a match to one of the pine boughs, which roared aflame, Thomas Ordway dropped it across their backs.
With a deep double bellow like twin blasts from a steamship’s stack, the oxen bolted, jerking the wagon so violently that Ella was flung flat, Thomas Ordway thrown off his balance, and the two children, both crowing with delight at their father’s cleverness, sent flying backwards off the seat. The wheels tore free of the mud, the wagon shot from shore, and promptly sank. Sank to within six inches, that is, of the tops of the sideboards. To that level, but no higher, the waterline rose. They were afloat.
But the oxen, when they had swum out some fifty feet and began to recover from their fright and found themselves where they were, swung about and headed back towards the Oklahoma shore. Directly in their path another blazing branch was tossed. This turned them, but then they swung completely around the other way. To right and to left of them Thomas Ordway threw his burning boughs, while both children jumped for joy and begged to be allowed to throw one. Ella was kept busy with a pole preventing the boughs from washing into the wagon.
Resigned at last to crossing over, the oxen pushed out towards midstream. They swam scared, but powerfully, straining into the yoke, which rode far down their necks. Then, about a hundred yards out, they struck the current. Those in the wagon felt it. It came with no sudden jolt; to look at, the river here was hardly faster than inshore. But against the side of the wagon it bore down with tremendous pressure, like a bed of lava in its slow inexorable advance. They had their ballast of tombstones to thank that they were not tipped over. It was as if the water were rapidly congealing, and the oxen, rearing themselves in leaps, their humps breaking water like fishes’ fins, appeared to be struggling to extricate themselves from some thick and sticky fluid. They began to lose headway and were borne irresistibly downstream. The landing, the road between the trees on the Texas shore, slipped behind. Yet the wagon still did not pitch, scarcely rocked, and although the waterline now lapped up to within a scant two inches of the top, inside all was dry.
Midway across, maybe a bit farther, the oxen faltered. They sank back. The yoke rode up their necks until it caught on their horns. When this happened the wagon was spun round, astern to the current. Its broadside relieved of pressure, it rose, and with it, floundering helplessly, rose the oxen. They shot downstream. Throughout all this, and all that followed, hardly a sound broke the stillness. Like molasses, the smooth brown river flowed heavily on its way, indifferent to its passengers, and along both wooded shores a drowsy stillness reigned.
The oxen tried to break out of the current. When they veered aside (and the Ordways were willing now to let them choose their bank) the strain bowed the wagon tongue. Then could be seen how powerful the silent and scarcely visible current was: breaking over the bent and quivering wagon tongue the water rippled like shot silk, drawn taut. For an instant then the wagon would hang broadside in the current, shakin
g, while the team churned up and down, getting no place; then they would fade, sink back, spent, wheezing for breath, tongues lolling, drift helplessly around, and again be sped downstream.
After about three quarters of a mile of this they were carried around a bend. There the banks rose, the river narrowed, and the current quickened. Into this narrows (actually the banks were still two hundred yards apart, but to Ella they seemed to be rushing together, closing upon them) they shot as into the neck of a bottle. Presently the river took another, reverse bend. Here the main current ran not in midstream but close inshore. Still in that dreamy silence, wagon and team swung in a wide, accelerating arc towards the deeply undercut and overhanging bank along the Oklahoma side. Now the oxen dangled uselessly, held afloat by their yoke. The speed was dizzying and Ella closed her eyes, expecting to be dashed against that red wall. They were swept around this bend as though on rails, and when she opened her eyes Ella found herself clear across the river, close to the Texas side. She caught a glimpse of what lay beyond. From between the tall bluffs the river emptied into a broad shallows. It was lighter in color there, and from the Texas shore it ran far out in a flat stretch, as calm as a plate of soup. Then she became aware of the fact that she was standing halfway up to her knees in water. Over the back it was pouring in and the wagon was filling like a bucket. Mattresses, pots and pans, kegs were rising off the floor, floating. Up front on the elevated spring seat neither the children, whose legs were too short to reach, nor her blind husband, his braced against the dashboard, was yet conscious of what was happening to them.
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