Where the Lost Wander(20)

“How do you feel . . . in the dream?” I know that for Ma, the way the dream makes her feel is the most important part.

“Sad. I am so . . . sad, Naomi, but I am grateful too,” she whispers. “It’s like he has come to help us. I’m beginning to sink, like Peter, and he reaches out his hand and lifts me up.” When Ma references the Good Book, no one argues.

“Like Jesus, walking on water?” I speak so softly I can hardly hear myself, but she repeats my words.

“Like Jesus, son of Mary, walking on water.”





JOHN


Once we cross the Big Blue River, we are able to follow the Little Blue River north toward the Platte and Fort Kearny, where my journey with the company will end. The terrain is familiar—I have traveled this road before, but Naomi has not. After the noonday meal, her mother relents to riding beside Mr. May, and Naomi rides Trick, who has turned out to be a remarkably sound mule, just as my father promised. Naomi is writing in her book again; it is propped up by her satchel, which rests against the saddle horn, and her body sways with the gait as her hand moves across the page. I kissed her so she would run away, yet I am the one who seeks her out, sidling Dame up beside her to see, once and for all, what she is doing.

“You’re always writing in that book,” I say, my voice accusing. “You are going to fall.”

I try to keep my eyes forward, as if my presence beside her is happenstance.

“I’m not writing.”

When she doesn’t say more, I am forced to look at her.

She shakes her head at me, wrinkling her nose a little as she grins. Her bonnet has fallen back on her head, and the afternoon sun turns strands of her brown hair red. She’s going to have a hundred more freckles if she doesn’t fix it, but I say nothing. “I have no interest in words,” she says.

“No?” I ask.

“Not the kind you put on paper.”

“What other kind are there?”

“The kind you speak. I’m interested in those words.”

I grunt, not really understanding.

“I like a good conversation. At least with interesting people. You are an interesting person. I would like to talk to you more often.” Her brow furrows, and she frowns. “Pa says if I don’t learn to hold my tongue, I’m going to get myself in trouble. Do you think I’m trouble, John Lowry?”

“You know I do.”

She laughs.

“And don’t call me John Lowry,” I grumble. When she says John Lowry like that, it makes me think of Jennie, and I don’t want Naomi to remind me of Jennie.

“How about I call you John and you call me Naomi?”

I nod once, but I don’t think I’ll be calling her anything other than Mrs. Caldwell. Not out loud. “If you aren’t writing words, what are you doing?” I press.

“Drawing. If the pictures are good enough, you don’t need words.”

“Can I see?” I ask.

She thinks about it for a minute, her eyes on mine, like she’s trying to unpeel me. I look away. I find I can’t look at her very long. I forget myself, and my mules always know when I’m not paying attention.

“All right. But promise me one thing,” she says.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t be afraid of me.”

I jerk, surprised, but I don’t think she’s teasing. She hands me the leather book and swiftly turns her head, looking forward. I don’t think she wants to watch me look through her pages. Her embarrassment, something she seemed impervious to, makes the moment more intimate, and I am suddenly reluctant to open the small clasp that keeps the pages together.

“You promised you wouldn’t be afraid,” she scolds.

I didn’t promise, but I suppose my looking means I accept her terms. I wrap Dame’s reins and the lead ropes around the horn on my saddle so my hands are both free. I open Naomi’s book, wanting to see inside more than I’ve ever wanted to see anything, yet feeling like I’m about to bed her, inclined to rush yet not wanting to cause pain.

I expect landscapes—the river, the hills, the sky, with the plains stretching out on both sides—and there are some of those, all immediately recognizable. The creeks in Kansas and the lightning-forked skies and rain-soaked swales, the dead carcasses and the littered trail of belongings strewed across the ruts. A little grave, and then another, sitting beside an abandoned chest filled with delicate bone china. She’s labeled the picture Bones in Boxes.

But it is the faces that move me.

Faces fill the pages. I recognize Naomi’s mother—a weary smile beneath knowing eyes—and her father, who the boys favor, worn and hopeful. Pictures of her brothers, Abbott, the women who walk and the children who never seem to tire. She’s even drawn the little boy, Billy Jensen, who fell off the tongue of his father’s wagon three days out of St. Joe and was crushed by the wheels before the oxen could be halted.

She notes that I have paused and glances over to see what picture I am studying.

“I wanted to give that one of Billy to his mama. But I thought it might hurt too much just yet.”

I nod and turn the page. There are many pictures of me. Left side, right side, straight on, and from behind, and I like my face the way she sees it. I am stunned by her skill. Green-eyed women with pink mouths and freckled noses who talk too much and can’t take no for an answer don’t draw like that. I don’t know anyone, man or woman, who draws like that.