by Harmon, Amy
“I know why they call it Sweetwater,” Ma says. “They call it Sweetwater because there’s never been a sweeter sight.”
To Ma’s sentiment there is a chorus of hearty amens. It is not the taste or the quality—though it’s cool and clean—but the triumph of our arrival. We camp near its mouth to avoid the wagon city at the base of the big rock, and we splash and wash to our hearts’ content, each woman taking a turn in the center of a circle of skirts to scrub all the bits that never feel clean. We wash our hair and launder our clothes, talking and laughing and singing a little too.
Pa takes the boys to the big turtle rock to sign their names. He brings a chisel and a mallet, and they spend the day climbing and combing the monument, making their mark among the rest. John goes too, though he explores on his own, and when he comes back, he is as scrubbed and shiny as the women.
It’s a week too late to celebrate the Fourth of July, which is how the rock reportedly got its name, but we celebrate anyway, with a wedding and a day of rest. Adam and Lydia have decided to marry, and every family contributes something to the wedding feast. Lydia’s fixed a bit of lace on her coiled braids, and I let her borrow my new green dress. It’s a little big on me, and Ma and I haven’t had the chance to alter it. It fits Lydia just right, and I hope John won’t mind that I’m sharing his gift. He didn’t say two words when he gave it to me. He just laid the packages at my feet and walked away. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, wearing the blue and pink and splattered yellow, day after day. It is a special occasion, even if it’s not mine. I wear my blue dress again tonight but add a matching ribbon to my braid.
Deacon Clarke gives us a heartfelt speech that turns into a sermon. Lydia clears her throat and reminds him she wants to be wed, and her father rambles to a pronouncement, giving Adam permission to kiss the bride. Adam complies, kissing Lydia like a chicken darting down to peck at the dirt. Everyone cheers, raising their tin cups and stampeding for the tables we’ve constructed out of sideboards.
After we eat, our makeshift tables are emptied and pushed aside for dancing. Homer Bingham has a fiddle, and he knows a few lively songs. I coax Warren to take a spin with me. He’s a good dancer, always has been, and before long he’s smiling big and breathing hard, a welcome sight to all who have had to watch him suffer. Wyatt cuts between us, showing him up, and I dance a few rounds with him and a dozen others, including the new groom, who thanks me for being so nice to Lydia, before I plead for a drink and a chance to catch my breath. I think I see John standing in the shadows, and I slip away, determined to draw him out. He stands beside the dun, repairing a bit of rope, but he raises his head as I approach.
“That fiddle is out of tune,” he says, his tone dry.
I laugh.
“It is. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone is singing along.”
“A pack of wolves could do better.” There’s a smile in his voice, but he isn’t wrong.
“But a pack of wolves can’t dance nearly as well.” It feels good to dance. I danced at my wedding. I was the last woman standing. Daniel had to coax me to quit.
“What was his wife’s name? Adam’s wife,” John asks, still braiding his rope.
“Lucy.”
He nods, pulling off his hat and setting it aside. “It must be hard for her mother, seeing him marry again so quick.”
“Sometimes we do what makes sense. Life is too hard to be alone,” I say. “Elmeda said as much herself.”
“She would rather it was you, I reckon.”
I study him for a moment, and then I grin. “Are you jealous?”
I am pleased at the notion. I haven’t caught my breath from the dancing, but I spin a few times anyway, kicking up my heels and swishing my skirts. I can still hear the fiddle and the deacon keeping time with his tin pot and wooden spoon. I grab John’s hand and swing his unwilling arm, ducking beneath it, in and out, making him dance with me even though his feet are planted and his left hand hangs at his side.
“You haven’t made me jealous,” he murmurs. “I like seeing you smile and hearing you laugh. You work so hard, and there is so little joy in your life. But I don’t want to dance.”
He touches my face, brushing his thumb across my cheekbones and over the bridge of my nose, like he’s tracing my freckles. I step into him and rise up on my toes, my body brushing his as I press my mouth to his throat, warmth and salt and smooth skin against my lips. He lowers his chin and returns the caress, moving his lips across my jaw and over my cheek before settling his mouth against mine, inhaling as he does, his lips slightly parted, pulling me in.
He says he doesn’t want to dance, but that is what we do. It’s just a different kind of dance. His mouth is pressed to mine, seeking and sinking, moving together and apart, all things working toward the same end. Or the same beginning. We are a circle of two.
It is not like the first kiss we shared. That kiss was all clash and confrontation. He wanted me to run, and I wanted to stay and fight. This kiss is not a fight. This kiss is slow and languid like the Platte, hardly moving, while beneath the surface the silt shifts and settles. His arms snake around me, and my palms flatten over his heart, needing and kneading, and heat grows in my belly and in my heart and where our mouths are moving together.
“I need you to marry me, John,” I whisper against his lips.
I need it because I know too much. I am not a girl afraid of a man’s touch or a man’s body. I’ve lost my maiden dread, and I know the pleasures of the flesh and the marriage bed. Daniel was gentle, and he was quick, doing his business without lights and without baring me or himself more than necessary. I didn’t really mind, though I always felt a little resentful that Daniel finished before I could even get started. It only hurt the first time, and I was curious and confident enough to find contentment in the coupling throughout our short marriage.
But even then I knew there was more. I felt it in the liquid expectation in my limbs, in the coiling in my belly, and in the need in my chest. I just never knew how to draw it forth before it was all over.
With John it is an ever-present ache, and he makes me want to find it, whatever it was that Daniel found when he closed his eyes and shuddered like he’d swallowed a piece of heaven. Like he’d found that transcendence Ma talks about.
“Why is that?” John whispers back, and I hear the same need in his voice. It gives me confidence.
“Because I want to do more than kiss you. I want to lie down with you.”
For a minute he stays curved over me, his cheek against mine, his big hands circling my waist. And then he speaks, so soft and so slow that his words tickle my ear and the heat grows.
“That isn’t going to happen, Naomi. Not here. Not now.”
“I know it isn’t,” I murmur, curling my fingers into his shirt. “But I want to. I want to so bad that I can’t wait until we get to California.”
“Naomi,” he breathes. “I won’t live in another man’s wagon or marry another man’s wife.”
“Is that how you see me? Another man’s wife?” I gasp.
“That’s not what I meant.” He shakes his head. “I cannot . . . marry you . . . under these circumstances. Not with your dead husband’s family looking on, your family listening—” He stops abruptly, and his embarrassment billows around us. “I have nothing to give you.”
“I have nothing to give you either,” I whisper. “But all I want is to be beside you.”
“That’s not your head talking,” he says, shaking his head, and his hands fall from my waist, leaving me unsteady. “Thinking takes time. Feeling . . . not so much. Feeling is instant. It’s reaction. But thinking? Thinking is hard work. Feeling doesn’t take any work at all. I’m not saying it’s wrong. Not saying it’s right either. It just is. How I feel . . . I can’t trust that, not right away, because how I feel today may not be how I feel tomorrow. Most people don’t want to think through things. It’s a whole lot easier not to. But time in the saddle gives a man lots of time to think.”
“What do you think about?” I ask, trying to swallow my disappointment and cool the warmth still coursing through my limbs.
“I think about my place in the world. I think about what will happen when we reach California. What’ll happen when you decide you can do a whole lot better than John Lowry.” He doesn’t sound wistful. He sounds convinced.
“There is no one better than John Lowry.”
“And how would you know that?”
“How do you know I’m wrong?” I shoot back.
“Because you don’t think, Naomi. You just . . . do.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. You just throw yourself into the wind . . . into the river—do you remember crossing the Platte? Or demanding a horse from Black Paint? You throw yourself forward and don’t consider for a moment that there might be a better way.”
“Sometimes when we think too long and too hard, we let fear get a foothold. But I think about you plenty, John Lowry.”
“No. You aren’t thinking. You’re feeling. And I’m glad of it.” He clears his throat, pausing. “But I’m afraid of it too.”
“Why?” I’m trying not to lose my temper.
“Because eventually, time thinks for us. It cuts through the fog of emotion and delivers a big bowl of reality, and feelings don’t stand a chance,” John says with bleak finality.
“Then why are you here? Why didn’t you turn around at Fort Kearny, if you’re so sure about who I am? I thought we had an understanding.”
“I’m here because I have thought it through. I’ve thought you through.”
“You’ve thought me through?” I repeat. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re the woman I want. I won’t change my mind on it. I won’t ever want something different.” He pauses and enunciates the next words. “Someone different. I’ll always want you.”
I stare at him, stunned and stirred, right down to the soles of my aching feet.
“But I’m not going to kiss you again . . . not anytime soon. And I’m not going to pretend you’re mine. I’m not going to hold your hand or tell you that I love you. And I’m not going to let that preacher say the words over us.”
The joy that coursed through me only minutes before disintegrates like it never was, so completely gone I can’t even recall what it felt like.
“You don’t know me at all,” I whisper.
His eyes search mine, but I cannot tell what he is thinking. “I know you. And I’m sure. But I want you to be sure.”
“I’ve told you how I feel.” I swallow back my anger and my disappointment, refusing to cry out my frustration.
He nods. “I know. And I don’t question how you feel.”
“You just question what I think,” I say flatly. “Or whether I think. Or if I’m even capable of deep thought.”
“Naomi,” he says, the word filled with protestation. “I will not ever be an obligation again. My mother did not have a choice of whether she wanted me. Most women don’t. My father . . . did his duty. Jennie too. I know that is what life is about. Duty. Responsibility. There is great value in that. But I want you to see all your choices . . . and still want me.”
“So all the way to California, huh? No kisses. No promises. No love. Just waiting. Waiting until you decide that I’ve thought us through long and hard. How long do you think that will be, John?” My words wobble with anger, and my heart is so hot with outrage I want to clap my hands over it so it doesn’t disintegrate and leave a gaping hole in my chest.
“As long as you need.”
“You’re a fool, John Lowry. I keep throwing myself at you. I keep telling you exactly what I think. I’ve never tried to keep it from you. I don’t have much. My dresses are worn out. My shoes too. I don’t have a husband or a home or even my own pots and pans. I don’t have much,” I say again, “but I have my pride. And I am not going to beg.”
JOHN
I have hurt her. I have known Naomi May—I still can’t call her Naomi Caldwell and probably never will—for two months. Two of the hardest months of my life. Two of the worst. Two of the best. I’ve almost died, and I’ve never been more alive. I’ve told her things no one else knows. I’ve laughed. No one and nothing makes me laugh. But Naomi makes me laugh.
And I have hurt her.
She’s been quiet. More than quiet. She’s avoided me altogether. I can’t blame her. She tells me she wants to lie with me, and I tell her no. She tells me she’s ready to be my wife, right now, wagon train and all, and I tell her not yet.
I am a fool, just like she said. I should swoop her up, claim her, bed her, and make sure no one can ever take her away from me. It’s what I want. But it isn’t what I want for her.
I didn’t explain myself very well. I insulted her intelligence and caused affront. Yet thinking back on my words, I don’t know how I could have said it any differently. I meant what I said. I just didn’t say all the things I could have.
I could have told her I want to lie with her and kiss her more than I want to breathe. That I want to make her smile and talk to her in the darkness. I could have said I want to be with her too. She’s the reason I’m here, the only reason I didn’t turn back at Fort Kearny and go home. But I didn’t tell her those things, and I have hurt her.
California is still so far away.
11
THE SWEETWATER
JOHN
I do not dream in English, and I do not dream in Pawnee. My dreams are like my childhood, garbled with sounds and gestures that belong to both of my worlds—or all of them. My mother worked among whites from the moment I was born. I heard English. I understood it. I heard Pawnee; I understood it. But sometimes what I understood I could not speak. When I went to live with my father, I hardly said anything at all. Not for a long time. Not because I did not understand, but because the words of my mother and the words of my father both danced in my head. Sometimes the words would fade and grow faint in my head. Then I would return to my mother’s village and sit at my grandmother’s feet, listening until the words were bold again. I started being less afraid when I realized that the Pawnee words always came back. Through the simmering soup of languages in my head, the words would sink like meat into my mouth, heavier than all the others. Then the world of my mother would open back up to me, if only for a while.
As I grew older, there were more sounds and more languages.
A man of the Omaha tribe worked with my father for a while. A Potawatomi village sat a mile from the farm my father sold. A Kaw woman did the wash for Jennie when we moved to St. Joe, and there was Otaktay, the half Sioux who taught me to fight. When Abbott came back from California, he traveled with some trappers from Fort Bridger. One had a young Shoshoni wife who made it all the way to Missouri only to be abandoned in an unknown world when the trapper died suddenly a day out of Independence. Abbott brought her to Jennie, who made her a little room in the cellar and put her to work. The Shoshoni woman reminded me a little of my mother, industrious and unassuming and completely lost. She knew a little sign talk and a few words in English, but Jennie was convinced I would be able to talk to her and dragged me around to interpret, though I’d never heard Shoshoni before.
“You have the gift of tongues, John Lowry,” Jennie told me. “You always have. It won’t take you long.”
There were sounds that were the same and sounds that weren’t, patterns that I recognized and those that I didn’t. But Jennie was right. It didn’t take me long. Abbott called her Ana, though I doubt it was her name. It must have been close enough to the right sound, for she accepted it and referred to herself that way. Ana’s voice became part of the soup in my head, and I could speak with her well enough—and understand her even better—by the time she left. She told me her Newe, her people, were called Snake by the whites, after the river that ran through their lands.
For three years she lived beneath Jennie’s wings, working and watching, until one day she was gone, and Jennie didn’t know where. Ana could
n’t write, but Jennie found a crude drawing on Ana’s cot in the cellar. It was a stick figure depiction of a woman with a pack on her back, the sun above her and pointed triangles of varying sizes in the distance. A curving line ran through them. Mountains. Tipis. A river. I knew what it meant the moment I saw it.
“She went home,” I told Jennie.
“All the way?” Jennie gasped. “All by herself?”
“Well . . . she’s alone here. She is all by herself . . . here.”
I regretted the words as soon as I said them. Jennie looked stricken.
“She is not alone,” she sputtered.
I just shrugged, letting it go, knowing it would hurt Jennie to insist.
It is impossible to explain to someone who is surrounded by their own language and people just how lonely it is to not understand and to not be understood.
Jennie put the picture Ana left between the pages of her Bible and prayed for her every day. My father said she’d gone with a wagon train. He had it on good authority, and Jennie was slightly reassured. He seemed relieved to have her gone. I think Ana reminded him of my mother too, and he was never comfortable in her presence. My father was never comfortable in my presence, and it made me uncomfortable with myself. It made me nervous with others. It made me quiet and cautious. It made me doubt myself.
I’m definitely doubting myself right now. Jennie was right; I am good with languages and good with sounds, but I am not always good at hearing what people don’t say. Naomi is not saying anything, and I am stumped. I need her to talk to me in order for me to understand her. She doesn’t come find me when I am on watch—she hasn’t since I told her I wasn’t going to kiss her again—and I’m too proud to seek her out. So I’m miserable. And if her downcast eyes and stiff shoulders are any indication, she’s miserable too. Damn, if the days aren’t long. It is not easy, once you’ve been bathed in light and warmth, to be shut out in the cold.
We are forced to cross the Sweetwater again and again as it winds and turns through gorges and canyons where we cannot follow, only to veer back across our path before turning again. One day we ford it three times before making camp and rising again the next, when we don wet boots to walk several miles before doing it again. And like the river, I swing between what I want to do and what I need to do, not really sure which is which.
