Where the Lost Wander

by Harmon, Amy

  If I squint, the long grass to the north shivers and sways like waves on the sea. Pa still talks about Massachusetts and living near the ocean. I imagine it’s one of the reasons he wants to go to California. He was born in Massachusetts, but his family moved to New York when he was ten and then to Pennsylvania when he was thirteen, trying to find work on lands that had to be cleared and farms that didn’t produce enough to make a good living. When Pa was eighteen, his father moved the family to Illinois, where Pa met Ma. Pa says in Massachusetts there are great lighthouses that sit in the bays, signaling to the ships on the water.

  There are no lighthouses on the prairie and no ships in sight. No Wyatt, no John, no loose mules or horses either.

  “Make enough stew for the Caldwells too, Naomi,” Ma says, moving up behind me. Her voice is soft, but I hear her strain. She’s been watching the waves too.

  “What happened to Lawrence Caldwell reaping what he sows?” I mutter.

  “Only God decides when and how the reaping comes. That has nothing to do with us. We worry about what we’re sowing.”

  “I can live with that . . . just as long as the reaping is slow and painful and I get to watch,” I say.

  “Naomi,” Ma scolds, but I don’t apologize. Ma is a better woman than I am. Or maybe she doesn’t want to invite God’s wrath with her thoughts of vengeance while Wyatt is in need of His blessing.

  “Jeb and Adam and Elmeda could use some looking after,” Ma adds softly, “whether you think Lawrence is deserving or not.”

  “I’ll make enough, Ma,” I relent, but when she moves away, I whisper, “Are you watching, Lord? I’m doing a good deed, so I’d like one in return.”

  Adam and Jeb are grateful for the stew and thank me kindly, eating with fervor, their eyes on their bowls and their hands filled with bread. I know Mr. Caldwell is hungry too, but he turns his back to me and folds his arms, as if I am invisible to him. I don’t bother to make myself seen. I simply climb in the back of his wagon to check on Elmeda, prepared to spoon the supper into her mouth if I have to. Her eyes are open this time, but her hands are folded in the same position, and she won’t take the spoon I offer. Her hair is matted and in need of a wash, and she hasn’t changed her dress since Lucy’s burial.

  “You’re going to eat, Elmeda,” I say, folding myself beside her on Lucy’s little wooden chest. It is filled with all her favorite things.

  “I don’t want to eat,” Elmeda whispers, and I am encouraged that she is talking at all.

  “I know you don’t. But Jeb wants you to eat. He’s lost his brother and his sister, and now his mama is carrying on. So you can do it for him if you don’t want to do it for me.”

  Mention of Jeb makes tears rise in her eyes. Elmeda loves her children, all of them, but she still won’t raise her gaze to mine.

  “I’ll help you. And then I’m going to brush your hair. You’ll feel better when I’m done.” I prop her up, pulling the pillows beneath her head so I can feed her without choking her. She lolls against me like a rag doll, but I hear her stomach gurgle and know she is hungry.

  “I’m not asking you to talk. I’m not asking you to look at me. I’m asking you to eat.”

  She still doesn’t look at me, but she opens her mouth when I hold the spoon to her lips, letting me shovel little bites onto her tongue. When the bowl is empty, I help her drink a little water, and then I brush her hair and rebraid it, talking to her softly as I do, telling her what a beautiful evening it is and how full the moon is going to be. When I’m done, Elmeda rolls over, turning her back to me.

  “I brought you something, Elmeda. I thought you could put it in Lucy’s chest with her things. When we get to California, you can put it in a frame and hang it on the wall of your new house. That way Lucy can be there with you . . . and you can look at her every day.”

  Elmeda doesn’t respond or roll back toward me. I set the drawing of Lucy, the one I made on her wedding day, on the blanket she has pulled over herself.

  I leave her like that, hiding beneath the covers from a world she’s not ready to face, but as I climb down from the wagon, I hear the crinkling of the page and know she’s just been waiting for me to go. I’ve only taken a few steps beyond the Caldwells’ wagon when the crying starts. Great gulping sobs rip from Elmeda’s throat, and I press my hand to my heart, willing my compassion to leave me be. I have no strength for it. Adam and Jeb stare at me, and Jeb rises, handing me their empty bowls. Either they wiped every last taste with their tongues or they’ve rinsed them clean. Ma was right. They were hungry and needed supper.

  “Thank you, Naomi,” Jeb says. I nod, distracting myself with the dishes and swooping up the empty stewpot that someone has finished off.

  “Crying is better than silence,” Jeb says. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after her.”

  I nod again, and without a word for Mr. Caldwell, I hurry back to my own fire, as far from Elmeda Caldwell’s sobs as I can get. And I continue to watch for John and Wyatt.

  With the moon so huge and high, the prairie is lit up well enough to travel. Some members of the train want to resume walking after supper to make up for lost days, but Abbott appeals to the men—who have gathered in council without us womenfolk—to hold up one more night to let the ill rest, as well as those who’ve been tending to them. He doesn’t mention Wyatt and John, but he’s added another guard to the rotation to make sure no one else’s animals turn up missing. I hear Pa telling Ma everything that was discussed, the way he always does.

  I pitch John’s tent in case he comes back in the middle of the night, but when dawn comes, I have to take it down again.

  Breakfast is cleared, and the oxen are yoked in when Webb begins to shout. “I see ’em. I see Wyatt and Mr. Lowry and the mules!”

  I begin to run, following Webb’s voice, shading my eyes against the glare of the rising sun. I hear Webb clambering down from the wagon box behind me, where he’s been on lookout since dawn, but I am the first to reach them.

  John is listing in the saddle, Wyatt too, and for a minute I can’t tell who is who. They are both riding mules, and Wyatt is wearing John’s black felt hat, though beneath it his cheeks are scarlet. His jaw is clenched, and his hands are fisted tight in Trick’s wiry mane. He’s exhausted, fighting for control of his emotions. John lifts his head enough to greet us, but he can’t dismount by himself. I reach for him, not caring who’s watching, but Wyatt is suddenly there beside me, his arms upraised, and together we pull John down, supporting him between us.

  “Where’s Dame, John? Didn’t ya find Dame?” Webb asks, incredulous, looking over the mules. Will and Pa and Warren have come running. Ma too, and Warren and Will start herding the animals toward the water.

  “We found her,” Wyatt says, and his voice cracks with emotion. “But I lost my hat. John made me wear his.”

  “Where is she, John?” Webb presses, his chin starting to wobble.

  John doesn’t answer, and I’m not sure he’s completely conscious of anything but his feet and the next step. Wyatt speaks for him.

  “Some Pawnee braves found the mules. They wanted two of them. One of mine, one of John’s. But John wouldn’t let ’em go. He gave ’em Dame instead.”

  “Dame’s livin’ with the Indians now?” Webb cried.

  “Shh, Webb. It’s all right,” John mutters. “It’s better this way.”

  “What took you so long? I thought you was never comin’ back!” Webb howled, giving voice to everyone’s feelings. It has been a long twenty-four hours.

  “We had to go slow, almost as slow as the oxen do, ’cause John could hardly stay in the saddle,” Wyatt says. “But he did. He did, and we made it. And we got the mules.”

  “That’s right. You’re here now,” Ma says, patting Wyatt’s sunburned cheeks.

  “You did good, Wyatt,” John murmurs. “I’m proud of you.” And Wyatt can only nod, his tears creating dirty stripes across the red.

  “You’re all grown up, Wyatt. All grown up,” Ma whisper
s. “And you’re a fine man.”

  John rides in the back of Warren’s wagon for two days, too weak to do much but sleep and eat the little bit of mush I force upon him. Pa says if I am going to spend so much time alone with him, he’s going to ask the deacon to marry us.

  I tell Pa, “Fine with me,” and that shuts Pa right up. I sit with John as much as I can, trying to draw as we lurch along.

  “We found one of your pictures, me and Wyatt,” John says softly, and I raise my eyes from the page.

  “I left five or six. Maybe more.”

  “Why?”

  “I was leaving you a trail,” I say. “Silly, I know. But it felt wrong to just go on without you. People leave signs and mile markers. I left pictures.” I shrug.

  “I wish I’d found them all.”

  “They weren’t my best. I had no trouble parting with them.”

  We are quiet for a moment, me drawing, John’s eyes closed.

  “Do you know the problem with your pictures?” he says after a while.

  “What?” I think he’s going to criticize the many I have drawn of him.

  “None of them are of you,” he answers.

  John does not flirt. He doesn’t say pretty, empty things. He listens, soaking everything in. John’s a doer. An observer. And his thoughts, when he shares them, are like little shoots of green grass on a dry prairie. The flowers on the prickly pears that grow among the rocks.

  “I’ve never tried to draw myself,” I muse. “I’m not sure I could. It’s hard for me to summon my own face to my mind’s eye.”

  “I would like a picture of you,” he says, and I am touched by the soft sincerity in his voice. “I would like many pictures of you,” he adds.

  “You can look at me whenever you like.” I realize I sound coquettish and cover my mouth, wishing I could take the words back. “You know what I mean,” I amend.

  “Not anytime I want.”

  “You can look at me now.” I stick out my tongue and pull out my ears, trying to make myself look as homely as I can. John just raises his eyebrows, but the silliness eases the tension that always starts to build inside of me when I’m with him. I sigh, letting it out in a whoosh.

  “If I were to draw a picture of myself . . . for you . . . would you want a portrait . . . or a place? Would you want a picture on the trail or perched on Trick? Or bouncing around in this awful wagon?” I ask.

  “All of those would be just fine.”

  I shake my head and laugh.

  “I want a picture of you sitting on a barrel in a yellow dress and a white bonnet in the middle of a crowded street,” he says, looking up at me.

  It takes me a minute to remember. When I do, my nose smarts and my eyes sting, but I smile down at him.

  “I’m gonna sleep now,” he says, closing his eyes.

  I spend the next hour sketching the day we met, imagining myself the way he described me, but when I’m done, the arrested expression on my face reflects the way I felt when I saw him standing there beneath the eaves of the haberdashery, his arms full of packages, his stance wide, and his eyes unflinching, watching me. One long gaze, one meeting of our eyes, and I was caught. I haven’t been able to look away since.

  Just like I did with Elmeda, I leave the drawing on his blanket for him to find.

  8

  THE SANDY BLUFFS

  NAOMI

  The bluffs are soft with sand, and the travel is slow, but we have no trouble finding water, though we veer north one day to avoid a swamp, hugging the low bluffs that extend for miles, only to swing south again when the bluffs push us back toward the Platte. In some spots there is ample timber, which we need for our fires, but no water for our teams. In other spots there is good water but nothing but sage or willow bushes to burn.

  We hoard kindling and branches when we can; I threw a felled branch into Warren’s wagon at Elm Creek when Mr. Abbott warned us about the difficulty of finding timber on the road ahead, but the branch was infested with tiny insects. By the time we stopped for the night, the bugs had burrowed into the bedrolls and blankets. The branch made a great fire, but I had to beat the bugs out of the bedding with the broom, and even then we all had bites for days after.

  Maybe it was the bugs in the bedding, but John returned to riding, his mules strung out behind him, after only a couple of days in the wagon. By the time we reach the junction where the Platte forks into two, North and South, he shows no sign of having been laid low.

  Elmeda Caldwell decides to rejoin the living as well and slinks into our camp, lonely without her Lucy. It’s not pleasant to be a lone woman among men, and Ma and I welcome her after supper one night. Elmeda holds baby Wolfe for the first time, swaying to soothe him as Ma mends a hole and I sketch the dense grove across the river. Some say it’s Ash Hollow, marked on the emigrant guide we bought in St. Joe, though none of us can tell what kind of trees they are from this distance. On the north side, where we are making our way, there is only a single solitary cedar, its branches thinned by earlier trains desperate for wood. It is the saddest-looking tree I’ve ever seen, standing all alone, with nothing but plains and sky and a lazy river winding beside it. There are initials scratched in the trunk, man’s unending need to mark our presence. I was here. I AM here. This is proof.

  I’m surprised the tree has survived so long. Standing alone has made it a target, and eventually, all the attention will destroy it.

  “Mr. Abbott tells us we won’t see another tree for two hundred miles,” Elmeda says, her eyes on my sketch.

  “I’ve never seen such a lonely place,” I say, making conversation.

  “It is that. It makes a soul feel lost,” Ma says on a long sigh.

  “You and Adam are both alone, Naomi,” Elmeda says softly. “Maybe you could . . . help . . . each other. Marriages have been built on less.”

  My hand stills, but I don’t raise my head.

  “Adam might need a little time, Elmeda,” Ma says, leaving me out of it.

  “But . . . time is the one thing we don’t have,” Elmeda says. “Lucy and Abigail proved that. Gone in the twinkling of an eye.” She swallows, trying to control her emotion.

  “Well then, we best spend it with people of our choosing,” Ma replies. I say nothing, but I don’t need to. Elmeda knows full well that Adam is not my choice.

  “He’s got his eye on the deacon’s daughter anyway,” Elmeda says, defensive at my silence. “Lydia Clarke.”

  Lydia Clarke came sniffing around Warren too, but Warren was ill. He wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Warren’s body is on the mend, but his spirit keeps tripping back to the Big Blue, where Abigail lies.

  “She’s as brazen as you are with Mr. Lowry, Naomi.” Elmeda sniffs. “Lucy wasn’t even in the ground one day when Lydia started offering to mend Adam’s socks and wash his clothes.”

  “Mr. Lowry washes my clothes as well,” I say, my eyes on my page, drawing a coiled snake beneath the trees wearing Elmeda’s bonnet. “In fact, he washed all our clothes, didn’t he, Ma?”

  Ma begins to laugh, the sound pealing like bells on the wind, and after a moment Elmeda laughs too, the resentment falling from her grief-lined face. I grin up at them both, squinting against the setting sun.

  “Brazen,” Elmeda says again, but the judgment is gone, and I turn the snake into a rose.

  We say nothing for a time, but when Elmeda lays a sleeping Wolfe into Ma’s arms and turns to go, she looks at me with a sad finality.

  “I have been mourning you, Naomi. When Daniel died, we lost you too, and now Lucy is gone.”

  I abandon my sketch to embrace her, not knowing what else to do, and she cries on my shoulder, her graying hair tickling my nose and brushing my cheeks.

  “Thank you, Naomi,” she whispers, her chin wobbling as she finally pulls away.

  “Come be with us whenever you need to, Elmeda,” Ma says, and Elmeda promises she will. She brings Adam and Jeb with her too, eating supper at our fire, but Mr. Caldwell keeps his distance. He w
atches John with suspicion, as if John is the one to fear.

  One day, we noon at a creek called Raw Hide, named for a white man who was skinned alive after he killed a squaw with a babe in her arms.

  Elmeda gasps as Abbott tells the tale, and Mr. Caldwell shakes his head. “Savages,” he says. “All of ’em.” And he looks at John.

  “Who is the bigger savage?” Abbott asks. “The man who kills a young mother or the man who makes him suffer for it? Seems to me he got what he deserved. Justice is a little swifter out here, Mr. Caldwell. We might not skin folks alive, but plenty of trains have happily hung men in their companies accused of killing.”

  “What about stealing? Or setting another man’s stock loose?” Wyatt asks, but Pa sends him off to fill the water barrels, and his question goes unanswered. My brothers are almost as defensive of John as I am, and they all believe Lawrence Caldwell got away with a crime. They also blame him for the loss of Dame.

  Wyatt told us the story of the trade as best he could without knowing all that was said, telling us about the bloodied warriors and the hostility he felt, the certainty that he and John were going to be stripped of their animals or their lives.

  John does not talk about it at all, but it bothers me greatly.

  “I’m going to get you another horse,” I promise him one night, bringing him a bowl of beans and a loaf of bread, then lingering by his fire while he eats it.

  “You are?” he asks, smiling a little. “Are you going to draw me one?”

  “No. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to get you another horse, just as good as Dame.”

  “That might be hard to do. She was a good horse,” he says softly, his eyes searching the stars too. “It was Caldwell who ran my animals off. Abbott warned me about him. He doesn’t want me here.”