American Struggle

by Veda Boyd Jones

  “We’ll fix that,” Nellie said. As gently as she could, she wrestled Sarah into several more layers of clothes. Some were Sarah’s and some were Nellie’s that she dug out of the spots where they had been stuffed. They were unused to cold weather like this, and they had no coats like the white men who sold them supplies wore. Only Lewis’s jacket had been packed. They had no extra blankets. The suppliers hadn’t brought enough, so Edoda had not gotten any since they had brought some with them. But their blankets were thin, and they were so dirty. They had served as pallets under the wagon, laid on the bare ground. But that couldn’t be helped now.

  Nellie carried one blanket to the fire and held it close until it was warm. She wrapped Sarah in it and took her own blanket and did the same, switching off the blankets as they grew cold.

  “Nellie, will I die?” Sarah asked in a small voice.

  “No, honey. You just have a cold, that’s all. You’ve been sick before. Remember that time close to Christmas last year when you were in bed for a week with the croup?”

  “Will I be in bed for a week this time?”

  “Maybe even less. I’ll be right back.”

  She carried a blanket out to warm.

  “Is the poultice ready?” she asked.

  “It has not cooked down but soon,” Etsi said. “You stir. I’ll take the blanket to Sarah.”

  “No!” Nellie had always obeyed Etsi, but she would not hear of her mother tending to Sarah. She blocked her way when Etsi started toward the wagon. “Etsi, I’ll nurse her. She’ll be fine. You can talk to her from a distance, but don’t go near her. Think about the baby.”

  “I’m thinking about my daughter,” Etsi said.

  Edoda had walked up behind them. “Nellie is right,” he said. “Lewis and I have the tent up. You need to stay there tonight. Nellie is a brave girl. She can nurse Sarah.”

  Etsi lowered her head, and Nellie could no longer see her anguished eyes.

  “She will be fine. But if there is a change, I’ll get you,” Nellie promised.

  As soon as the poultice was cooked down to a salve consistency and cooled some, Nellie took the warm goop and rubbed it on Sarah’s throat and chest. She covered the poultice with one of Lewis’s shirts and tied the arms around Sarah’s neck to keep it in place.

  “Take this to Morning Sun,” she told Lewis. “Tell her about Sarah and that I’ll check on her as soon as I can.”

  Lewis rode away on Blaze, and Nellie took up her station in the wagon. She bathed Sarah’s face in cold water to lower her fever.

  Lewis returned and said Morning Sun was asleep, but her etsi would put the poultice on her.

  “Take my coat to Sarah,” he told Nellie.

  “No, I’m already using your shirts for her. Besides, you need to stay warm, or you’ll be sick. But thanks,” Nellie said.

  Edoda checked on Sarah and reported to Etsi, who stayed away but whose worried voice could be heard right outside the wagon as she brewed up a mixture of butterfly weed with other herbs for Sarah and Morning Sun to swallow to help their coughs. Then she made a healing drink of slippery elm bark. When both were ready, she carried some to the back of the wagon for Nellie and sent Lewis to take some to Morning Sun.

  Edoda brought the white doctor, but he was there only a moment and said Nellie was doing the right things. Then he left to go on to the next sick person.

  Sarah fell asleep, and an exhausted Nellie lay down beside her.

  In the night, she warmed the blankets again and covered them both, snuggling close to Sarah to share her body heat.

  Nellie awakened before sunrise and built up the campfire so she could heat the blankets. Sarah’s forehead was hot to touch, but Nellie believed it was not as hot as it had been the day before. Was she gaining on this awful disease? And what exactly was it that Sarah had? Just a cold, or the more complicated lung disease that kept claiming the lives of the Cherokee on this forced march?

  Sarah wouldn’t eat any broth and barely choked down the cough medicine before it was time for the wagons to roll. Nellie warmed the blankets once more before the fires were extinguished. She hoped Morning Sun’s etsi was doing the same for her.

  Nellie lay by Sarah all day, hating the bumpy ride that jarred her until her teeth rattled. She welcomed the rest stops and welcomed Jesse Bushyhead’s order for forward riders to build fires along the way so the travelers could warm up. There still wasn’t much firewood, and future wagon trains would have to go farther from the road to find dead, dry wood, but right now the problem was survival. The walkers suffered mightily from the cold, the poor food, and exhaustion.

  Many times Etsi stuck her head in the opening at the front of the wagon, and Nellie would reassure her that Sarah was doing better.

  When a halt was called for making camp, Nellie thankfully climbed out of the wagon. She vowed not to complain again about walking, because riding felt even worse.

  Etsi brewed another batch of poultice. When Lewis returned from taking the medicine to Morning Sun, Nellie was standing beside the fire, warming a blanket for Sarah. Lewis jumped off Blaze and wouldn’t look at Nellie. He ran for Etsi.

  “What’s wrong?” Nellie called to him, but he wouldn’t answer.

  Etsi listened to Lewis’s low words, bowed her head, and then walked toward Nellie.

  “What’s wrong?” Nellie asked again. Fear gripped her heart. She couldn’t breathe. Tears welled in her eyes, and she knew before Etsi told her.

  “Morning Sun has passed on.”

  “No!” Nellie screamed. “No, that’s not true!”

  “It is true, Nellie.” Etsi grabbed her and pulled her as close as her extended belly would allow. “She is with God now, and she is no longer hurting.”

  Nellie sobbed. Her shoulders heaved. “Why?” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “That is not in our power to answer,” Etsi said. “It is God’s way, and we must accept it.”

  Nellie sniffed and wiped her face with her hand. “I’m tired of accepting, and I’m tired of forgiving.” She took deep ragged breaths. “I’m so tired.” She dissolved in another round of sobs that racked her spirit.

  “We must see what we can do to help Morning Sun’s family with the burial,” Etsi said.

  Nellie nodded, but she didn’t turn loose of Etsi until Sarah called from the wagon for a drink.

  “I’ll get it,” Nellie said as Etsi made a move toward the newly filled water bucket.

  Etsi stepped to the wagon and talked to Sarah, but she didn’t crawl inside. Instead, she told Nellie she would check on the burial.

  With a heavy, heavy heart, Nellie wiped her tears and carried water to Sarah. Her sister was still hot with fever, and a new terror gripped Nellie’s soul. What if Sarah was next to go?

  Her tears flowed anew, and Sarah asked what was wrong.

  “Morning Sun died.”

  “Was she the same sick as me?”

  “No. She was much worse. You are going to get well,” Nellie vowed and shook her fist at death. She would battle until her own dying breath before she let death take her sister.

  “Here, Sarah, I’m going to put a new poultice on your chest. This is going to help you get better fast.”

  She smeared on the salve, covered it, and wrapped Sarah in a warmed blanket.

  “You must drink the broth tonight. You hear me?” Nellie gripped Sarah’s shoulders harder than she meant to. “You have to eat to get your strength back. You must help, Sarah.”

  “I think I can swallow it, but Nellie, I couldn’t do it yesterday.” Tears flowed down Sarah’s cheeks. “I don’t want to be sick. I want to help.”

  “I know. I know. I’m sorry if I sound upset with you. I’m not. It’s not your fault you’re sick. I’ll get you some broth.”

  The supper was merely salt pork broth, and Sarah drank as much as she could, and then she said she would try to drink some more. “This will help me,” Sarah said.

  “Yes, it will. That’s a good girl, Sara
h.”

  Nellie waited until Sarah was asleep, and then she slipped out of the wagon.

  “Nellie.” Old Rivers beckoned her to the fireside. “I am sorry about your friend. It is hard.” “It is very hard,” Nellie said.

  “Your parents are with her family. They will bury her tomorrow morning before we leave.”

  Nellie never saw Morning Sun again. Her body was wrapped in one of the precious blankets, and she was encased in a coffin of saplings loosely tied together with woody leafless grapevines.

  As Reverend Bushyhead prayed over Morning Sun, snow fell softly, sifting through the gaps of the coffin and landing on the blanket.

  “She will be cold,” Nellie whispered to no one. “She needs a warmed blanket.” She bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and moaned. Morning Sun, the bright girl who had a sunny smile and a friendly word for everyone, was gone.

  Soon dirt formed a mound over the coffin.

  “Let’s go, Nellie,” Etsi said and put her arms around Nellie’s shoulders. They walked back to their wagon and prepared to leave.

  Nellie warmed another blanket in front of the fire and pushed it in front of her as she crawled into the wagon to Sarah. She watched out the front slit of the canvas for Morning Sun’s grave. As the wagon passed it, she crawled to the back of the wagon and looked out the back flap at the snow-covered mound.

  “Sleep with the angels, my good friend,” Nellie whispered. Then she crawled back to squat beside Sarah’s bed.

  For three more days, the gray sky spit snow, sometimes hard, sometimes softly. And then the sun came out just as the wagons lined up to cross the Ohio River.

  Sarah’s fever had broken, and she sat inside the wagon with her head barely peeking out of the front slit, so she could see the outside world again. Now that Nellie was no longer needed as a nurse, she gratefully accepted a perch on the wagon bench beside Old Rivers.

  “Long ago, this was the northern border of Cherokee land,” Old Rivers said, as they waited their turn to cross on the ferry.

  “We are not halfway there yet, are we?” Nellie asked.

  “I heard talk that after we cross the Mississippi, we will be halfway.”

  “But look how much time has passed already. Etsi’s time will come soon. I thought we would be living in the new land before the baby was born.” She wondered at the words she was sharing with Old Rivers. In the old times, before this horrible journey, she would not have talked about an indelicate subject like childbirth with an old man. But they had been through rain and snow, death and more death, and hungry times. Not talking about something as important a part of nature as the birth of a baby seemed silly.

  “She will be fine no matter where the baby is born,” Old Rivers said.

  “I pray that is so,” Nellie said.

  She rode onto the ferry atop his wagon and remembered how she had been astride Midnight when they had taken a ferry across the Tennessee River. John had not crossed that river. Now Morning Sun had not crossed the Ohio. Who would be missing when they arrived at the Mississippi?

  CHAPTER 13

  The Long Wait

  The days of November passed as the Bushyhead wagon train slowly progressed across Illinois. Nellie made it through each day, thanking God for Sarah’s recovery but unable to mention Morning Sun and her aching heart in her prayers.

  Nellie saw her long face mirrored in the faces of her etsi and the other women. Joy was missing from all eyes. Misery had taken its place.

  At Jonesboro, the mill ran extra hours and made planks that were distributed to the Cherokee to use as flooring in their tents. Each evening, Lewis carefully put the planks down to keep out the cold from the ground, and each morning, he was in charge of getting them slipped back into the wagon.

  Some of the Cherokee families used their planks to make coffins, as more people died and were buried in unmarked graves beside the road. There were three burials on one day. Nellie did not attend the services. She couldn’t. It was too soon after Morning Sun’s death to see more coffins lowered into shallow graves.

  They traveled on until they were near the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.

  They had been delayed at the Tennessee crossing by a wagon train in front of them, but it was nothing compared to the tents and wagons camped beside the ferry road.

  “We’ve caught up with Reverend Jones’s group,” Edoda told the family at supper. “They’ve been waiting some time to cross, but it could be a long wait.”

  The next day, Lewis and Nellie rode together on Blaze to look at the big river. Ice extended far out from both banks, but in the center of the Mississippi, huge chunks of ice, some the size of cabins, tumbled in the current. The chunks crashed into each other, making a horrific sound. And they kept coming. Night and day, the jagged blocks of ice collided with huge shocks. The sound haunted Nellie’s dreams.

  The river was not frozen enough for the wagons to drive across, and it was too jammed with ice floes to allow the ferry to cross. They were stuck.

  One December week turned into the next, and the camp grew. Another wagon train caught up to them, and there were more slit trenches dug, more funerals held, and the need for more food for people and animals alike.

  Yet another wagon train caught up to them, and then another. Food was so scarce some draft mules were killed and butchered for meat. One night, a hard snow blew in that continued the next morning.

  Nellie shivered in the tent, huddled with Etsi and Sarah. Edoda and Lewis had gone out in the deep snow for food, but they been gone for some time, and she was beginning to wonder why they had not returned. Old Rivers and Smoke Cloud had gone with them.

  Etsi moaned, and Nellie looked at her searchingly. Etsi was strong, and even at their darkest moments, she had kept a countenance of determined, if sometimes forced, cheerfulness. This morning had been different with Etsi’s lips drawn in a straight line. Once Nellie caught her biting her lip.

  Etsi moaned again, and this time she reached for Nellie’s hand and squeezed it so hard Nellie feared her bones were broken.

  “Oh, no. It’s time!” Nellie grabbed Etsi’s other hand. “What can I do?”

  “Get Red Blossom. She will help me.”

  “Sarah, stay with Etsi. Hold her hand. No, give her this flute to bite.” The wooden flute had recently been carved by Old Rivers, and Lewis had been trying to play it. It would help Etsi bear the pain.

  Nellie rearranged the bed and had Etsi lie down. She took one blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders against the wet snow and stepped out into what had turned into a blizzard.

  A couple of hours ago when Edoda and Lewis had left, the air was full of flakes. Now it was a complete whiteout, and the snow came halfway to her knees. She could not see two feet ahead of her, so she walked with her arms outstretched, feeling her way toward the wagon of Red Blossom.

  “Edoda!” she called out. “Old Rivers!” she shouted in the direction of his wagon, which was on one side of their tent, on the chance the men had returned. The wind whipped her words back at her.

  She turned toward the Starr wagon on the other side of their tent. She struggled alongside the wagon and had taken five steps away from it when she looked back over her shoulder and could no longer see it. Panic hit her that she might not find Red Blossom’s wagon, which was a distance of some seven wagons. And at her slow pace in the deep snow, she might not make it back in time. She stepped backward, not turning, not taking the chance of getting confused on which direction was the tent. She slipped her feet into the footprints she had left, which were quickly filling with the blowing snow.

  Backward step by backward step, she felt her way until she touched the wagon. Was there anything inside that she could use to help deliver the baby? She searched her mind for what Etsi had needed when the last baby had been born, the one that had died.

  She gasped. What if this baby died, too? What if she couldn’t help Etsi?

  “Stop and think,” she said out loud, reassured to hear her
own voice, which didn’t sound as panicked as she felt. There had been hot water, and she remembered talk of a tied cord. She’d need twine and a fire. Something to wrap the baby in. They were wearing everything they could, but surely there was a scrap of material tucked somewhere. She needed firewood, but there was none. The wooden boxes, of course. But how could she tear them apart? The ax that Lewis had rescued from home was near the back, in easy reach when the men needed it.

  Her cold fingers struggled to untie the back flap of the wagon, and she climbed inside. Discarding the blanket, she made sure she tucked it right at the end of the wagon, so she could put it back on when she left. The ax was right where it was supposed to be. Her freezing fingers closed around the handle, and she pounded on a box, breaking the small planks into splinters. Good. That would make the flame catch. This box was filled with their good dishes, and she gathered some of the old newspapers Etsi had wrapped them in to use for starting the fire.

  She felt between the boxes, shifted boxes and pinched her fingers, but barely felt the pain. She grabbed something soft. In the dim light she saw it was the gingham dress she had worn on the day they had been driven from their home.

  Now twine. Oh, the ties for the back flap. She reached into the flying snow and brought the flap inside. With the ax, she awkwardly sawed at the tie until she cut off an end, but had left enough to retie the flap.

  She needed the flint rock. Where was it? Think, she told herself. Think. It should be at the back of the wagon, too, and it was. She wrapped her twine, the splintered wood, the ax, the dress, and the flint rock in the blanket and climbed out, tying the flap as best she could.

  She felt along the wagon until she reached the end, and then she asked God to guide the few steps it would take to reach the tent. She groped for it, and sighed when her wet, freezing fingers groped waist-high snow. It was the snow-covered tent!

  “Thank You, God,” she whispered and felt along for the opening. “I’m back,” she said as she stumbled inside. She shook off snow and closed the flap behind her.

  “Red Blossom,” Etsi said in a weak voice.