Father unto Many Sons

by Rod Miller

  The families kept a communal kitchen, with Sarah and the Lewis girls pitching in to prepare meals efficiently. When time for the midday layover approached, it became routine for the Pate wagon to swing around the ox teams, the mules allowed to step out ahead to provide Sarah the opportunity to have a cooking fire ready when the Lewises pulled in.

  Abel rode back to the rolling wagons late one afternoon and passed along word to his father and Daniel that they would soon cross a small creek a ways ahead, and on the other side find a clearing for the wagons and good grass for the animals. Lee climbed onto the wagon seat and Melvin clambered up the back and stepped over the endgate when his father urged the mules ahead. Between the three of them, camp would be well underway when the others arrived.

  Abel swung out of the saddle and led the horse to walk beside Emma behind the Lewis wagons. “How you holdin’ up, Miss Emma?”

  “Just fine, Abel. And you?”

  “Same. Only that every day is just like the one before.”

  Emma laughed. “And, most likely, the one to come.”

  Abel smiled and they walked along in silence. With the sun’s intensity waning, Emma untied her bonnet strings and pulled it off, freeing her hair to cascade down her back. Abel noticed its sheen in the angled sunbeams that peeked through the trees. He sought something to say, but the opportunity was lost when Richard made them a trio.

  “Emma,” he said with a tip of his hat.

  “Richard.”

  “I sure do like the looks of your hair when it hangs down like that.”

  Emma rolled her eyes at the intimacy of his comment. “It is a bother, actually,” she said. “All the time gathering dust, getting tangled in the wind and all.”

  “Looks pretty, just the same.” He waited a minute, then said, “Say, Abel, why don’t you ride on ahead and make sure Pa stops at a good place.”

  Abel cocked his head to look at his brother. “Already found a good place.”

  “Well, you know Pa. The old fool’s likely to start daydreamin’ and pass it right by.”

  Abel walked on several paces wondering at a reply. “I don’t think so, Rich. Pa can take care of things just fine.”

  “Oh, sure, little brother. Like he’s been doin’ all along. Ever since we left home.” With a snort, he said, “Go on ahead, Abel. I’d like to have a little talk with Emma.”

  Abel turned to Emma and his arched eyebrows asked the question.

  “Stay here, Abel—please. Richard, Abel and I were already talking.”

  Another snort from Richard. “Hell, Emma, he ain’t got nothin’ to say. He’s just a kid.”

  “Well then, I guess that goes for me, too. Me and Abel are close to the same age. I am younger. And even if he does not talk much, he is a good listener.”

  Abel’s blush was his only contribution to the conversation. But the crimson of embarrassment soon shaded to the scarlet of anger.

  Richard grabbed Emma by the elbow and gave it a tug bordering on a jerk. “C’mon, Emma! Why bother messin’ with a boy when there’s a man to be had?”

  Abel dropped the bridle reins and pivoted around Emma and planted himself square in Richard’s path. Richard drove the palms of both hands into Abel’s chest, with the only result the younger boy taking half a step back. Richard tried again, but this time Abel thrust his forearms up and out, fending off the attempt. He followed up by duplicating his brother’s move, and his shove sent Richard sprawling. He found his way to his feet and dusted off his backside.

  “You had best watch yourself, baby brother. If I wasn’t stove up, I’d kick your ass where you stand,” Richard said, then limped up the trail in a hurry to catch the wagons.

  Still wide-eyed and breathless when they started walking, Emma said, “Why is Richard so angry all the time?”

  “Wish I knew,” Abel said. “Slightest little thing’ll set him off. He’s always been inclined that way, but it’s a whole lot worse since we left home. I reckon some if it is on account of you don’t pay him no mind.”

  “The truth is, Abel, I do not like Richard very much. His foul moods—his drinking—his disrespect for your father—he is just not the sort of man I could come to admire.”

  Abel said nothing, just walked along. After a long silence, Emma said, “Do you think there is anything to what he says? About your father, I mean?”

  It took Abel a while to formulate an answer. “I don’t know. Pa sure ain’t like most men. When he feels something, it grabs him hard. And when he takes a notion, he won’t let go. I don’t understand much about the things he worries over—slavery ruining the States, and such.” He thought some more. “I guess when all’s said and done, I figure he’s my Pa, and that’s enough. I read in that Bible of his, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’ so that’s what I try to do. He might not be right all the time— but, like I said, he’s my Pa.”

  Emma reached over and threaded her arm through Abel’s and pulled him a bit closer as they walked. His face reddened again.

  So did Richard’s when he looked back to see Abel and Emma walking arm in arm.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  A morning came when the wagons rolled out and the world changed. Rather than the dense forests wrapped around intermittent parks of open country the Pates had known all their lives, they entered a land where the woods thinned out and the trees bunched up, surrounded by miles and miles of prairie and plains.

  This was the Cross Timbers, a border region separating the green and well-watered East from the arid West. Towering hardwood trees that scratched the clouds and covered the ground—hickory, elm, ash, walnut, beech—gave way to smaller blackjack, post, and shin oaks along with other ground-hugging trees and tangled undergrowth continually thinned by fire.

  The wagons stopped atop one of the endless rolling hills one morning to give the stock a blow. Melvin, enfolded in his own arms as if cold, said to Abel, “I don’t like this. Feels kind of exposed—if someone was after you out here, they could see you from a long ways off.”

  Abel turned a slow circle, taking in the view. “You’re right, brother. On the other hand, you can see ’em coming, too.”

  “I guess so,” Melvin said with a shiver. “But I don’t like it. Too big and empty.”

  “That’s what I like about it. Feels like you can see all the way to tomorrow. Ain’t a thing between a man and what he wants.”

  And there were buffalo. The train had encountered small, scattered herds along the way, but now they saw vast herds, stretching for miles. One afternoon they bunched the wagons when a herd passed as if they weren’t there, flowing around them like ocean waves. The drumming hooves, the smell, the nearness of the giant beasts frightened the travelers and upset the mules, oxen, heifer, horse, and chickens alike.

  But the tide passed and the wagons rolled on and any discomfort over the herds was offset by their presence as a ready supply of fresh meat. When first the buffalo started appearing in numbers, Abel took his father’s long rifle and rode out to hunt—if hunt it was, in the circumstances. He rode to the top of a low ridge and in a swale below, well within range for an easy shot, a small herd of bison grazed.

  Abel dismounted, checked his load, sat down, steadied elbows on knees, and took down a young female. The other animals in the herd raised their heads to look around but did not give up their feeding until the horseback man came down the hill toward them. They loped away, leaving the cow on the ground.

  Unfamiliar with the means of dressing buffalo, Abel attacked the job as if he were butchering a beef—without the ease of a hung carcass. With lariat and saddle horn, he dragged the animal around until its head lay downslope and he used Uncle Ben’s fancy knife to slit the throat to let it bleed out. He bunged the backside, then opened the belly and pulled out the entrails and pushed them aside after saving out the heart and liver. He slit the skin up the limbs and around the neck and peeled the hide with considerable effort, even with the help of the horse to shift the carcass around. After a rest, Abel we
nt back to work, wielding knife and hatchet to carve out the hind quarters and separate the loins from the rump.

  The horse protested, but Abel laid the buffalo hide hair-side down over the saddle and horse’s rump and hefted the meat aboard, then wrapped and lashed the hide over and tied it off to any part of the saddle rigging he could find. He left the remains of the buffalo for the wolves, coyotes, and carrion birds. With the lead rope and bridle reins, he managed to get the skittish, shying horse to the wagons without it running off.

  By the time he caught up, camp was made and supper in the works. But the women, excited at the prospect of turning their culinary skills to buffalo meat, immediately set to slicing out steaks to fry and filling cast-iron kettles with meat to roast overnight for the days ahead.

  The cooking meat stimulated the appetites of the men. “If that buffalo tastes as good as it smells, we shall eat well this evening,” Daniel said.

  Melvin stood staring at the steaks sizzling in the skillets. “I reckon I could eat one by myself.”

  “You did well, Abel,” Lee said.

  Richard said nothing, but neither did he stray far from the smells of the cooking fires.

  After parceling out the meat, Abel rolled the hide and lashed it under the wagon, thinking that, later, he might want to tan his first buffalo hide. Then he sat cross-legged on the ground cleaning and oiling the rifle, and honing Uncle Ben’s big knife and the hatchet he’d used to butcher the buffalo. He was still sitting there when Emma carried him a steaming plate with a buffalo steak hanging over the edges and a biscuit, puddle of beans, and heap of rice crowding for space.

  “Abel, here you are,” Emma said.

  He looked the plate over and smiled at Emma. “Thank you— but I can fix my own plate.”

  “Oh, I know. But since you brought in all that good meat, well, you deserve to be coddled a little.” She handed him a cup of cold creek water. “There is coffee on, if you would care for some.”

  A hurried flurry of chewing and a hard swallow preceded his answer. “No thanks, Emma. I’ll have some later. Can’t wait till that heifer calves and freshens. Milk would sure taste good about now.”

  As the men and women sat and ate, they peppered Abel with questions about the buffalo hunt.

  “Sounds about as hard as shootin’ a hog in a pen,” Richard said.

  “Now, Son. . . .” Lee warned.

  “Aw, hell, Pa! Abel as much as said so hisself.”

  “He’s right,” Abel said. “It was a whole lot easier than stalkin’ a deer through the woods for the better part of a day. Funny thing was, them critters wasn’t jumpy at all. Even after I shot the one, they just kept on eating as if nothing was wrong.”

  Melvin said, “Me, I’ll just keep on eatin’ too. That meat’s right good. Ma? Got another’n of them steaks?”

  “Yes,” she said, banging a spoon against the rim of the bean pot. She wiped her hands on her apron, swept back a stray lock of hair from her forehead, picked up a fork, speared a piece of meat and lifted it from the skillet. “Well, you comin’ to get it, or do you expect me to bring it to you?”

  He grinned and held up his plate. Muttering under her breath to feign displeasure, Sarah carried the steak to him and slapped it on his plate.

  Mary gathered plates from the other men, scraped them free of scraps and slid them into the dish pan. “Jane, I believe it is your turn to wipe. I will wash.”

  “Jane, it is your turn to wipe,” Jane said, mimicking her older sister as she minced her way over. She slid her plate into the wash water and exaggerated a curtsey. “At your service, your majesty.”

  A few day’s travel left the Cross Timbers behind. The wagons rolled and rolled across the treeless plains and vistas spread on every side for more miles than the Pates ever imagined possible.

  “You ever seen anything like this?” Lee said to Daniel one day after they unhitched and unyoked their teams for the midday break.

  Daniel lifted his hat, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He mopped his forehead as he gazed at the unchanging scenery. “As a matter of fact, I have, Lee. The monotony of the seascape during our passage across the Atlantic Ocean was much like this. Very much so, indeed.” His face dulled like a clouded sun. “I hope this crossing does not bring so much grief.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Lee Pate tossed and turned in his bedroll, begging sleep to return but troubled by a recurring dream that kept him awake and overwrought. When finally the stars dimmed in the east and a ribbon of gray eased onto the horizon, he threw off the confines of his covers and stirred up the campfire and slid the coffeepot with last night’s leftovers nearer the flame. Sarah soon joined him, sitting on a packing box near the fire, staring into the flames.

  “What’s troubling you, Lee?”

  He sat poking at the fire with a stick and continued as if he did not hear.

  “Lee?” Sarah said again.

  He flinched, as if surprised at her presence.

  “Sorry, Sarah. Lost in thought, I guess.”

  “What’s got you thinking?”

  He reached out and tapped the coffeepot to test its warmth. “Can you get me a cup, Sarah?”

  She fetched two, and Lee filled them both. They blew the steam off their coffee and sipped in silence for a moment.

  After a time, Lee said, “It’s a dream, Sarah. A dream I keep having.”

  Sarah chuckled, but without mirth. “Not the first time you’ve let a dream take hold of you.”

  “This one’s different. It wakes me up nights, and if I can get back to sleep, it wakes me up again.” He sipped at his coffee and thought for a minute. “I don’t know, Sarah. It must mean something.”

  “Oh, Lee. . . .” Sarah shook her head then stared at the contents of her coffee cup. “Your dreams and your notions have caused this family enough trouble. Let it go. If you can’t, don’t let it talk you into doing something foolish. I don’t think we can stand it anymore. Whatever it is, leave it lie.”

  By now the Lewis girls were up and about. Soon they would be rattling skillets and kettles and rooting around in the kitchen boxes, laying out the fixings for breakfast. Abel rolled out of his bed and checked the livestock. Melvin shuffled to the fire, scratching and sniffing. Sarah found another cup and filled it for him. Richard sat in his bedroll bleary-eyed, waiting for wakefulness to overcome his torpor.

  Abel walked up to the fire with a wide grin. “Good news, Pa, Ma. That heifer finally dropped her calf. Good-lookin’ little bull. We’ll have to make room for it in the wagon for a while— but in another three, four days we’ll be drinkin’ milk!”

  Sarah swirled the now-cool coffee in her cup. “Good. I could sure use a squirt or two in this coffee. It’s bitter as Job’s soul.” She tossed the dregs into the fire, raising a hissing cloud of steam, then raked a hank of hair away from her face. “Guess I best get to fixin’ breakfast. Can’t leave it all to them girls.”

  Lee placed a hand on her arm. “Hold off a minute, Sarah. I’d like to talk to you and the boys. Richard, come on over here.”

  Richard mumbled and grumbled but stumbled to the fire.

  Lee let his family stew for a moment. Richard said, “C’mon, Pa. If you ain’t got nothin’ to say, I’m goin’ to see a man about a horse.”

  “Sit tight, Richard.” Lee stood and paced a short track beside the fire. “The thing is,” he finally said, “I’m worried.” He made another circuit, stopped again. “I been havin’ this dream—”

  “—Oh, shit,” Richard said. “Here we go again.”

  Sharp glances from Lee and Abel stilled Richard’s protest.

  “This dream has me worried,” Lee said, picking up the thread of his story. “It makes me fear for my family. For you-all.”

  Again, Richard. “Aw, hell, Pa—it ain’t but a dream. No matter what, it’s only a dream.”

  “Stop it, Rich,” Abel said. “Let him talk.”

  Lee said, “It’s fine. I know dreams don’t mean much to
some folks, but I put a good deal of store in mine. I believe they have meaning, and it would be foolish to ignore them.”

  “Yeah, sure. And it’s just as foolish to follow them. Look where your dreams has got us so far,” Richard said.

  “I know you see it that way, Son. And that’s what this dream is all about, I do believe. I ain’t sure exactly what it means, but like I said, it’s got me worried.” Lee paused, and his eyes lost focus as his mind went elsewhere.

  When the silence became uncomfortable, Abel said, “What is this dream, Pa? Tell us what it is.”

  Lee returned, and in a low voice said, “We—the family— we’re on a journey in some far-off place. It don’t look like anyplace I ever seen—don’t even look real, somehow. And yet it does. It don’t matter. What matters is, there’s this river. It’s a wide river—not Mississippi wide, but wide enough.

  “Some of us has crossed over—we’re there on the bank with the wagon. But you-all,” Lee said, wagging a finger back and forth at Richard and Melvin, “are back on the other side. We’re a-standin’ there on the river bank—me and your Ma and Abel— waving you-all to come on over. But you don’t. You-all just stand over there lookin’ at us.”

  Lee knuckled away a tear. “The side of the river we’re on, it’s a fine place. Grass and trees and cattle and sheep and deer and songbirds and all. ’Bout as beautiful as anyplace could ever be. The other side, over where Richard and Melvin still are, it ain’t but dirt and rocks and thorn bushes. Don’t seem like any kind of place you’d want to be. Still, Richard and Melvin won’t come on across the river. You-all just stand over there watchin’ us— but it’s like you can’t even see us.” Tears flowed freely down Lee’s cheeks, dripping off his jowls.

  The rest of the Pates sat, unsure what to say, and so said nothing.

  “Missus Pate,” Jane Lewis said, interrupting the silence. “Missus Pate, Ma’am—Mary says to tell you we got things ready to cook breakfast and wants to know, can we get started?”