Where the Lost Wander(88)

I can’t tell her. I can’t say the words. And she sees the terrible truth. She begins to fight against me, thrashing and crying, but I do not let her go.

“I can’t leave him, John. I can’t leave him!” she begs, crazed.

“And I cannot leave you,” I shout into her hair, shaking her, the weight of the last two weeks crashing down on me. “I will not leave you!” I pull back enough for her to see my face, my own wild desperation, and something dawns in her eyes, like she is coming awake. I see my own horror and fear and suffering mirrored back at me, and she folds into herself, her sobs raw and heartrending. I swing her up in my arms and carry her into the darkness, leaving the clearing as the scalp dance begins.





NAOMI


He walks and walks, his arms tight around me, his tears dripping down his chin and onto my cheeks. Or maybe they are my tears. I don’t know anymore. When he finally stops, there are no fires and no camps. No voices raised in strange celebration. There is only the sky riddled with stars above us and the grass beneath us. He is panting. He has carried me a long way, but he doesn’t put me down. He just sits, folding his legs beneath us, keeping me in his lap with his arms wrapped around me. His tears come harder, streaming silently down his face. He cries like it’s the first time he’s ever cried, like all the pain of all his twenty-odd years is rising up at once, and I can only lie in his arms, spent and useless, unable to comfort him.

I have nothing to give him. Nothing left. I try to quiet my own sobs to ease his pain, but the thing that was loose inside my chest is now broken completely, and the pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

“ka’a, Naomi. ka’a,” he whispers again and again, stroking my hair, and after a while my sobs slowly abate, leaving a gaping hole behind, one I’m afraid will never heal. As if he knows—or maybe he has the same pain in his chest—John presses his palm against my heart, his hand heavy and warm, and the tears seep from beneath my lids again. I press my hands over his, and he curls into me, pressing his cheek to my hair.

I can’t speak. I can’t tell him everything. I don’t know if I can tell him anything. There is too much to say, and some things . . . some pain . . . can’t be spoken.

I’ve been alone with my words since Pa said “Praise the Lord” and the Lord struck him down. Those words are crowding my throat and swarming in my head, and they shudder in my chest beneath John’s hand, but I don’t know how to let them out.

I don’t know how he found me. I want to ask. I want to hear it all. I want him to tell me why they let me go and what will happen to Wolfe. I need him to explain how I’m supposed to go on. But I cannot speak.

Beeya brought me to the clearing to sit among the women who gathered along the edges, too far from the center to hear what was being said or done. I didn’t know what was happening, didn’t understand the chatter or the excitement. Beeya wanted me to paint, and she set up torches all around me so I could see and be seen, and I did what was expected of me. Then Magwich came, striding through the crowd to retrieve me, his face hard and his grip harder, and I thought the bartering had begun again. Instead, he brought me to the center of the clearing, where twenty chiefs sat around the fire and another fifty sat behind them. A sea of faces gazing up at me. Then I saw John, so close and so impossible, standing beside a tall, imposing Indian chief in full headdress that hung to his knees, like something from a dream. None of it felt real. Not John, not the questions, not the words that were spoken, not Biagwi and Weda and Wolfe. And then it was over, and I was in John’s arms.

But Wolfe is not in mine.

And it is all real.

A sound rises behind us, the chuff of a horse and a soft tread. John pulls a gun from his boot, his arm tightening around me, but a reedy voice calls out from the darkness, saying his name, and he wilts. For a minute I think it is Beeya, come to drag me back, but the woman is older than Beeya, her hair so white it glows in the moonlight. She slides from her dappled pony and walks to us with hesitant steps. Her arms are filled with blankets, a waterskin, and a sack of dried berries, meat, and seeds. She sets her offering down and crouches beside us, her short legs tight against her chest, her white hair billowing. Her eyes are filled with compassion, and she brushes my cheek with a trembling hand. Then she rises and touches John’s head, speaking to him softly before she turns back to her pony and rides away, melding with the night.

“They call her Lost Woman,” John says. “She is Washakie’s mother. She followed us to make sure . . .” His voice breaks, and he doesn’t finish, but I think I know what he was going to say. She followed us to make sure we weren’t lost.

“But we are,” I say, my voice raw. Three words. I said three words. Maybe there will be more.

We are quiet after that. He pulls a blanket over me and makes me drink a little, but my stomach revolts after a few sips, and I push it away.

“I promised Wyatt and Webb and Will that I would find you,” he says.

Webb and Will. Their names make the hole swell and contract. Webb and Will. I had feared they were dead . . . and I had feared that they weren’t. Oh God. Oh, dear God, my poor brothers.

John lifts his head to look down at me, but I cannot meet his gaze and I close my eyes and turn my face into his shoulder.

“I found them, Naomi. And I put them in my goddamn wagon, with Wyatt leading the way, and I sent them ahead to find the train.” John thinks it is his fault. I can hear it in his voice. The agony, the guilt. But if he had been with us, he and Wyatt would most likely be dead too. John’s absence saved him. Saved Wyatt. And probably saved Will and Webb too. That much I know.