Where the Lost Wander: A Novel(30)

“John, you’re sick. I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t want you here.” I want my dignity, and there is none in the sickness that sweeps through the emigrant trains. Loose bowels and heaving sides—no one can keep the medicine down, though the medicine simply gives the fretting something to do. I’m not sure it helps all that much.

“I’m going to help you sit up,” she says. “You need medicine. It’ll make you feel better. I mixed it myself.”

“Please . . . go away. I can look after myself,” I moan.

“Drink,” she demands, scooping her arm beneath my neck. My head lolls against her breast, and I press my lips together to hold back the bile that rises against my will. I heave myself to the side before retching into a bucket she has placed by my head. I fall back, pushing her away with a weak shove.

“I won’t keep the medicine down,” I say.

“Then just sip it slowly. The best time to drink is when you’ve just been sick,” she says, confident, calm, like she’s certain I’m going to be just fine. I believe her for a moment, and then my stomach rebels again.

I push her away once more.

“If you don’t let me help you, someone else will try, and I know you like me,” she says.

“That’s why I want you to go away,” I groan.

“I know. And that’s why I won’t. Now drink.”

Hours pass. I am hardly aware of anything beyond my own agony, yet the shadows change and the temperature too, and when I am at last delivered, the pain becoming an echo instead of a roar, Naomi is still beside me.

“I was afraid you were going to die,” she says.

She looks as ragged as I feel. Her lips are dry, her eyes are ringed, and her hair is a curling mess around her wan face.

“You’re beautiful,” I say. And I mean it. She smiles, a radiant beam of relief and surprise, and I say it again, dazzled. Her very presence is beautiful.

“And you’re delirious,” she argues.

“No.” I try to shake my head and am overcome by dizziness. I wait for the nausea, for the pain to sweep through me, but I am simply weak, simply tired, and I open my eyes when the spinning slows, finding her face above mine. I don’t think she is breathing.

“John?”

“C?ikstit tatku,” I whisper. I am well. “The pain is gone. I’m just tired.”

“Do you promise not to leave?” she asks. I know she isn’t talking about the trail or the journey west. She’s talking about dying.

“I promise.”

“Then I will let you sleep. But drink a little first.” She helps me lift my head and holds the tin cup to my lips. It is brackish, and I take little sips, willing my stomach to hold steady.

“You should sleep too,” I say. Her head is bobbing with fatigue. I reach for her hand and pull it to my chest, laying it across my heart. I must look a sight and smell even worse, but she curls at my side, her head in the crook of my arm, our hands clasped across my body, and we sleep, lost in the weightlessness of the newly pardoned.



When I wake again, I feel almost restored, though a weakness remains in my limbs, and my thirst is overwhelming. Naomi is gone, though a strand of her hair clings to my shirt.

Webb sits in the opening, the two sides of the tent making a vee above his head.

“Naomi says I’m to tell her when you wake. Are you awake, John?” he asks.

“I’m awake, Webb.”

“You’re not going to die like Abigail, are you, John? I liked Abigail. But I like you more. Don’t tell Warren. Or Pa. Pa doesn’t like you, I don’t think. He says you’ve got your eye on Naomi. Do you have your eye on Naomi, John? Naomi had a husband once. His name was Daniel. But he died too. You’re not going to die, are you, John?”

My thoughts are slow and my neck is stiff, but I manage to follow the stream of questions Webb hurls at me, shaking my head in response to the question he started and ended with. “Not right now, no.”

“That’s good.”

“Webb?”

“Yes?”

“Have you been looking after my animals?”

“Yep. I been watchin’ ’em. I picketed Kettle and the mules just like you showed me. Dame too. There’s plenty of grass just over the rise.”

“Good boy.”

“Everyone else is getting ready to move on. We’re to catch up as best we can. Mr. Abbott doesn’t want to leave you, but seeing as how the cholera is following us, he said he had to.”

“Are you all waiting on me?”

“Nah. There’s a few people sick. Lucy died. Just like Abigail, and Ma said Mrs. Caldwell is laid real low. Mr. Bingham is sick too, though he’s better than he was. Pa says we gotta move on, but Naomi says not without you. Do you think you’re well enough to ride in the wagon, John?”

“I need a drink, and I want to wash . . . without Naomi. How about we wait to tell her I’m awake, okay?”

Webb fetches a bar of soap and digs through my saddlebags for clean clothes. He keeps watch for me as I wash in the creek, stripping off my soiled things until I’m naked as the day I was born and almost as helpless. By the time I’ve washed and wrung out my clothes and dressed myself in the dry ones, I’m shivering and unsteady, but Webb slings his arm around my waist and pulls my arm over his shoulders, providing a crutch as we make our way back to the camp.