Where the Lost Wander: A Novel(9)

“You’re staring, Naomi. Maybe they don’t like that,” he warned.

“I’m not staring. I’m memorizing,” I said.

Memorizing. It is what I am doing now. Noting the details and committing them all to memory so I can recreate them later.

The line of clustered wagons waiting to cross the Missouri stretches from the landing docks to the bluffs that rim St. Joseph. There is a great fervor to be among the first to cross. Better grazing, less dust, better camping, less disease. We thought about crossing the river farther north, in Council Bluffs, and staying on the north-side route all the way to the Oregon Territory. But Council Bluffs is nothing more than a campground with everyone fighting to cross the river first and no safe way to do it. In Council Bluffs there are too many Mormons, and Mr. Caldwell doesn’t want to travel with them. Mr. Caldwell doesn’t like the Mormons, though I don’t think he’s ever met one and probably wouldn’t know if he had. Mr. Caldwell doesn’t like anyone he doesn’t understand, which to my way of thinking includes women, Indians, children, Mormons, Catholics, Irishmen, Mexicans, Scandinavians, and anyone who is different from him, which—again—includes most people.

The rumors of no steamboats in Council Bluffs and disastrous crossings on scows that could only hold two wagons convinced us that jumping off farther south would be safer, even if it extended our initial journey. Plus, we heard tell that St. Joseph was a real city with shops and streets. St. Joe had outfitters and steamboats and mules—good Missouri mules.

The younger John Lowry flits through my thoughts, and I push his image away. I’ve been pushing it away all day. The knowledge that he is traveling with us has filled me with a strange anticipation, and I haven’t yet sorted myself out. I plan to think about him before I sleep, when my brothers aren’t chatting in my ears and there isn’t so much to see.

We wanted to be in the first wagon train on the trail out of St. Joseph, but that was what everyone wanted, and everyone couldn’t be first. At this rate, we might be last. The moment the grass covered the prairie, the wagon trains began leaving the jumping-off points along the river, pushing westward. Pa has been saying for weeks, “Leave too early, and there’s no grass for the animals. Leave too late, and the grass will be gone, consumed by earlier trains.” He’s also said, more times than I can count, “Leave too early, and you’ll freeze and starve on the plains; leave too late, and you’ll freeze and starve in the mountains.”

Early or late, I’m just ready to go. I’m as hungry for this journey as I’ve been for anything in my life. I don’t know why, exactly. Going west was never my dream. It was Daniel who wanted to go west. It was Daniel who convinced our families to sell their farms in Illinois and strike out for California. It was Daniel who persuaded us all and Daniel who would never see it. Three months after we were married and a few days shy of my nineteenth birthday, he took sick and was gone in a week. When he died, I suspected I was pregnant, but heavy cramping and bleeding a few days after Daniel’s death removed that fear. I was heartbroken and . . . relieved. I didn’t want to be a widow and a mother. It was not an emotion I could easily explain without sounding vile, even to myself, so I didn’t try. I’m convinced everyone is a little vile, if they are honest about it. Vile and scared and human.

I missed him terribly in the weeks after. I tried not to. It didn’t do me any good. The pain was useless, and I was never one to wallow. I got angry instead. I got busy. I worked from sunup to sundown. It was planting season, and there was plenty to do. So I did it. I worked all my anger into the ground where Daniel slept, but I didn’t water his grave with my tears. It wasn’t until I sat down on a Sunday afternoon, when the harvest was over and the cold was setting in, that I found myself drawing his face. And then I couldn’t stop. I drew picture after picture—Daniel in all the stages of his life. Daniel as a boy pulling my hair and scaring the chickens. Daniel as a brother. Daniel as a son. Daniel as a husband, and Daniel in the grave.

I cried then. I cried and drew until my fingers were bent like claws. But I only kept one. I gave another to his mother—an unsmiling portrait of the man I married—and buried the rest in the dirt beside him.

I haven’t cried the same way since. It still hurts, but it’s been more than a year, and I am resigned to it. The Caldwells say that I am one of them now, that I am part of their family, but I still feel like a May, and without Daniel, I feel no permanent obligation to them. When I informed them that I would be traveling west with my parents in their wagon, Mr. Caldwell protested vehemently, and Elmeda, Daniel’s mother, looked at me with Daniel’s wounded eyes.

“My mother needs me,” I said simply. It was true, but mostly I couldn’t abide being anywhere near Mr. Lawrence Caldwell. Had Daniel lived, I would have been driven crazy by the end of our journey. Their daughter, Lucy, and their new son-in-law, Adam Hines, will be traveling with them, along with their sixteen-year-old son, Jeb. They’ll make do just fine without me. And being called Mrs. Caldwell makes my hackles rise. Mr. Caldwell has taken to calling me Widow Caldwell, as if I have entered old age without having ever lived the intervening years. I think Mr. Caldwell likes drawing attention to Daniel’s death. It makes folks behave more kindly to him, and it’s his way of laying claim to me. Ma and my brothers are the only ones who just call me Naomi. I suppose widowhood at such a young age gives me a certain freedom some girls don’t yet enjoy, if freedom means being allowed a bit of leeway in speech and conduct. People who hear my story shake their heads and cluck their tongues, sometimes in judgment but generally in sympathy, and I am mostly left alone, which suits me fine.