Where the Lost Wander(15)

The rain doesn’t fall in drops but in sheets, slicing the air and splashing against the sod with enough force to churn the soil. We hunker down beneath it, cowering in tents and wagons that blunt the impact but are useless against the wet that finds the cracks and seeps through the corners. Beneath Abbott’s wagon, the puddles grow and spread until even the high ground is turned to mud beneath us. Abbott doesn’t complain overmuch. I like that about him. He’s like Jennie in that way, though he has plenty to say and always has a story to tell. I let him yammer, lulled by the torrent and the forced inaction. It is wet but not windy, and there is nothing to do but wait it out. I am half-asleep when Abbott pauses in his tale of a brush with the Blackfeet in the Oregon Territory, a tale I have heard before.

“What is she doing?” Abbott asks, but I’m tired, and I don’t care to know. I don’t even open my eyes. It’s wet, but I’m short on sleep, and with my animals discouraged by the rain, I’m not worried about them getting spooked or stolen. They are clustered together, their hinds turned out, heads in, and I don’t even lift my hat to see what Abbott is muttering about.

“Well, I’ll be. I thought I’d seen it all,” Abbott mumbles.

I wish he’d keep his musings to himself. I know he’s trying to draw me in.

“That infernal woman is doing her wash in the rain.”

My eyes snap open. I don’t know how I know it’s Naomi, but I do. I push back my brim and peer out into the onslaught. The May wagons are lashed beside Abbott’s; they were the last to bring their wagons into the fold the night before, closing the gap between the head and tail of the train.

Naomi May has two buckets and a washboard and is scrubbing away in the downpour, a brick of soap in her right hand. She’s soaked to the skin beneath a thin wrap, and she’s wearing Webb’s hat instead of her bonnet, but she’s making short work of the family’s laundry. She doesn’t bother to rinse the soap or grime away but tosses each garment over the ox chain stretched between the wagons and lets the heavy rain do it for her.

“A?ka’a,” I huff beneath my breath and crawl out into the deluge. I am immediately drenched, and I stomp toward her, holding the streaming brim of my hat. I tell myself it could be worse. There is no wind in the rain, only the weight of heavy water, but it isn’t pleasant.

“You’re going to catch your death,” I bark, ducking close to Naomi, spreading the sides of my sodden coat to provide some cover over her head.

“I never get sick,” she shouts and continues scrubbing away.

“Don’t say that. The man who says never is quickly made a liar.” It is something Jennie always says, but Naomi May just shakes her head.

“I never get sick,” she insists.

I watch her for a moment, wanting to make her stop, wanting to demand she take cover, and wondering why I never thought to wash my clothes in the rain. They’re getting a good scouring now. All I need is a little soap.

“Where are your brothers?” I will be giving Webb and Will and Wyatt a talking-to.

“I took their clothes. They’re all in their underthings, shivering beneath their blankets in the wagons.” She snickers.

“That’s where you should be,” I say.

“I can sit in the wagon and be miserable, or I can do the wash and be miserable. At least this way, the clothes are getting clean.”

“If the wind picks up, those lines won’t hold, and your laundry will be in the mud.”

“Then I’d best hurry,” she says without rancor.

“ka’a,” I grunt again. I cannot leave her, so I might as well help.

The rain is beating down so hard that wringing the clothes is futile, but I do it anyway, twisting and shaking the suds and soil from the wash as she scrubs away beneath the deluge. When the last shirt is lathered and wrung, I upend the barrel of dirty water, and she piles the clothing inside of it, the garments sopping but remarkably clean.

“I’ll hang them to dry when the skies clear,” she says as I push her back toward her father’s wagon. She thanks me with a wide smile, makes me promise I will come to supper the next time she invites me, and finally takes cover.

“You sweet on the pretty widow, Junior?” Abbott asks as I roll back beneath the wagon and begin to strip off my sodden clothes. For a moment I still, the word widow clanging in my head. I am no longer cold.

“I got some dirty clothes if you got a hankerin’ to do the wash,” Abbott chortles. I ignore him, pulling dry trousers and a shirt from my saddlebags. Both are immediately damp, but I wriggle into them, tugging my woolen poncho over my head and toeing off my waterlogged boots.

“You shoulda stayed here. She didn’t ask for your help, and you can bet everyone was watchin’ you two carrying on out there. You just called all sorts of attention to yourself. Mr. Caldwell isn’t a man you want to make an enemy of. She was married to his son, and he still considers her his property.”

“Then why wasn’t he out helping her?” I grumble.

Abbott snorts, but he shakes his finger at me. “Stay away, son. She ain’t for you.”

I bristle, but I don’t respond. After wringing out my hat, I shove it on my head, pulling the brim over my eyes the way it was before I was so rudely interrupted. I sink back against my saddle and prepare to wait out the storm with my eyes closed.