Where the Lost Wander(105)

Wolfe opens his eyes near dawn, and Weda exclaims, jumping to her feet and calling for Biagwi, who comes running. We all gather around, staring down at the small boy, hopeful that the dawn will bring new life. Lost Woman holds back, watching.

“Let her say goodbye,” she says to Weda. “Let Face Woman hold her brother so she can say goodbye.”

Naomi does not understand what’s been said, and she does not lift her gaze from Wolfe’s staring eyes. Weda argues, tightening her arms and scolding Lost Woman in weary protest. She has new hope, the babe is revived, and she doesn’t want to relinquish him, but Biagwi takes the boy from her arms and hands him to Naomi. She takes him, her eyes shining with gratitude, and looks down into her brother’s face.

“Hello, Wolfe,” she whispers. “Hello, sweet boy. I have missed you.”

Wolfe’s eyes fix on her face, and his rosebud lips turn up in a hint of a smile. Then his lids close, his breath rattles, and he softly slips away.





NAOMI


The scarlet fades from his cheeks, and the warmth leaves his limbs, and I know that he is gone. Weda screams, and Biagwi moans in shock, and Wolfe is snatched from my arms. Weda falls to the ground, wailing in denial and despair, Wolfe clutched to her chest. I feel her anguish echo in my belly and kneel beside her, but she scrambles away, screaming at me, at Lost Woman, at Biagwi and John. At Washakie, who watches her with silent compassion.

She stands near the door, her eyes wild and streaming, staring as though we’ve all betrayed her. Then, with one last look at Wolfe, she sets him gently on the ground the way she did when Biagwi first laid him in her arms, a son to replace the one she’d lost. And she walks out into the snow.





JOHN


The air is cold and clean, and when I pull it into my nose, it eases the ache in my chest and the grief in my throat. I stand silently, my eyes raised upward, and I ask my mother and Winifred May to look down on me. I talk to them in Pawnee, though I know Winifred won’t understand. It is the language of my mother, and I need my mother.

The dusting of snow has left the morning new and untouched. Tracks lead from Washakie’s door to the cluster of hoofprints where Biagwi and Weda hobbled their horses. Weda ran away without her robes, riding in dazed exhaustion back toward her village. Biagwi followed, her robes slung across his horse, his back bent beneath his burdens.

Their grief is a comfort. It’s like Jennie said. It isn’t love unless it hurts, and their pain tells me Wolfe was cherished, he was loved, and he is mourned, and at the end of life, no matter how short, that is all there is.

They left Wolfe’s body behind. It is a gift, a mercy to Naomi, and she is with him now. She washed him and wrapped him in a small wool blanket with a stripe of every color. Washakie gave it to her, and Naomi said it reminded her of her mother’s coat, the coat of many colors, like Joseph sold into Egypt. I gave her a moment—gave myself a moment—to mourn alone. She is composed. Serene even. But the grief will come. We will bury him here, and the grief will come.

“There are tracks in the snow,” Lost Woman says behind me.

I nod, but Lost Woman isn’t looking at the trail left by Biagwi and Weda. She pulls at my arm, bidding me follow. The snow is deep, almost up to our knees, and we sink as we go, stepping and falling, stepping and falling, kicking up the new powder.

“See?” Lost Woman points down at the tracks leading from the rear of Washakie’s wickiup in a long straight line into nowhere. No other tracks mar the new snow.

I hunch down to see them better, and Lost Woman crouches beside me.

Footprints, too small to be a man’s, too large to be a child’s, sit on the surface of the snow. Beside the footprints, the toes clearly delineated, is a small set of paw prints, scampering away toward the trees. A woman and a wolf. I follow them, bemused, until they suddenly disappear.

“The mother came for her son,” Lost Woman says.

I stare, not understanding, and Lost Woman explains.

“Sometimes the spirits leave tracks in the snow. The tracks can guide us. Sometimes they comfort us. Other times, they lead us home. I saw tracks after my sons died and again the morning after my granddaughter was born. Different tracks . . . but always . . . the same.”

The tracks of a woman . . . and a little Wolfe.

“The mother came for her son,” I whisper, stunned. Overcome.

“Yes. And now Naomi can go home.”





1858





EPILOGUE





NAOMI


John says Wolfe freed me. I couldn’t save him, and I couldn’t keep him. I couldn’t take him, and I couldn’t leave him. So he had to leave me. John says Ma came and got him, but when he took me to see the footprints Lost Woman showed him in the snow, there was nothing left but drifts and depressions. I believed him, though, and to this day I think about Ma’s prints in the snow and what it all means. Maybe there is a place called transcendence where all the blood runs together and we’re one people, just like in Washakie’s dream.

We left the valley in early May, when the snow was gone and the grass had begun to cover the ground. Washakie’s people went one way, and John and I went another, riding Dakotah and Bungu and stringing the three mules and Magwich’s two horses behind us. We didn’t have enough possessions to fill John’s packs, but Washakie made sure we had enough dried meat to see us through to our journey’s end.