A Light in the Wilderness

  “I’m not about to expose my privates to no black slave woman parading as a wife. She don’t belong in this circle.”

  “She’s not a slave, she’s my friend and—”

  “I’s all right. You stay.” Letitia stepped farther back to a desert place without shadow.

  “This is ridiculous.” Nancy moved back toward Letitia. “Oh.”

  She smell me.

  “Please. It be easier. You go to circlin’.” Letitia motioned with her hands, then squatted, finished relieving herself, alone.

  Nancy’s hands gripped her hips. She set her jaw, then accepting Letitia’s plea, stomped back beside her mother. The stout woman curled her lip in a sneer and turned her back to the circle’s interior, held out her skirt to offer protection to the first woman who stepped inside the circle of safety. A skinny woman leaned in to Nancy and said something Letitia couldn’t hear, but Nancy nodded. Her shoulders dropped a little. When each woman had tended to her personal hygiene needs, “the fundamentals” Nancy called it, the stout woman broke from the ring and walked back to the camp without a backward glance. A few others joined her, looking back, shaking their heads. The women in Nancy’s family stayed, as did a few others who at Nancy’s insistence moved toward Letitia.

  “I’s finished.”

  Letitia dropped her bundled skirts that brushed the dirt. Hot tears pressed against her puffy cheeks. Nancy wrapped her arms around her and mercifully, said nothing, just held her. Through tears she heard two women agree to exchange a spice. A grandmother told a story about her littlest grandchild finding a frog. Nancy patted her back, released her, as Letitia wiped her eyes. “Anyone know how to keep a fever down?” These be fundamentals. Tendin’ and mendin’ and befriendin’.

  Walking back, Nancy took Letitia’s hand and said, “You should have let me argue on your behalf, Tish. People won’t change their ways if they aren’t confronted with their prejudices. They need their sensibilities confronted.”

  “I knows my place. I jus’ forgets sometime ’cause you so kind. Don’t stand for me. It make trouble for you if you seen as befriendin’ such as me.”

  “If they knew you, they’d soon see that your soul and your spirit are the same colors as theirs.” Nancy said it with a huff.

  “People don’ change ’cause you ask ’em to. They change if they let the Lord make a safe place for ’em. They don’ feel safe with me . . . like I don’ feel safe with lots of them.”

  They made their way through prairie grass and swollen streams lulled by the harness shakes of A, B, C, and D bearing their heavy yokes. Pale yellow clouds wisped into dusk as Letitia prepared a light meal. There’d be a wedding this evening. The pilot, Stephen Meek, would take a young bride, already eighteen, whom he’d known for three days.

  The night before, Letitia and little Laura had walked to the river and found turtle eggs they brought back to make the bride’s cake. The bride was a new orphan, her father having drowned days before. She had no one. Letitia baked the cake, the pleasant aroma pouring from the reflector oven.

  After the vows were spoken before a Mississippi Baptist minister, everyone danced and laughed and told stories and ate. Letitia tapped her toes to the music but stayed well away from the partying. Her own wedding came to mind. Love didn’t always draw two people together. Sometimes it was security as she suspected it was for the new Mrs. Meek. But like a good garden patch, security was the soil that made love grow strong. Marriage, spoken over sacred words, was meant to last a lifetime and she hoped that would be the case with Davey and with the Meeks.

  She watched Davey stand off with men laughing and talking. Once he looked up to where she stood in the darkness. She was out of campfire light so she knew he couldn’t see her well, but it pleased her just the same that he’d taken the time to seek her out. He gave a little wave, his white blouse sleeves ballooning in the evening breeze, the wide black belt showing his slender frame. She lifted her hand from her belly and waved back when Davey started across the dance boards loaned from someone’s wagon bottom. “Care for company?”

  “I’s obliged.”

  He slipped his arm around her plump waist. She leaned her head on his shoulder. Sometimes a body didn’t know what it needed until someone else made the offer. Marriages were made up of those small moments, she decided; she would learn to inhale them.

  “We’re going to split into three groups now.” Davey talked while she cooked a rare turtle egg in the pan.

  She wished they’d brought chickens along. Davey called her streaked meat “bacon.” It bubbled beside the egg.

  “Meek is taking the group without cattle and they’ll go ahead. Joel Palmer will take the small-stock division—where we’ll be—and the rest will go in the large stock company. We’ll rotate being in front a week at a time. Maybe there’ll be less arguing that way about who travels in whose dust.” He adjusted the wide belt at his waist. “I think I’m slipping pounds, Tish. Get me another slice of that bacon. How you feeling?”

  “I like slippin’ a few pounds.” She patted her stomach.

  “All in due time. All in due time.”

  That week they saw wolves trailing large buffalo herds raising mountains of dust in the distance. Debate about hunting them ensued, but the company voted to keep going. They encountered a group of trappers taking hides to St. Louis who offered to bring mail back to the states. The companies shut down early so letters could be written and sent off. They were also joined by a platoon of nineteen soldiers out of Fort Leavenworth pulling two wagons of howitzers along with their sidearms and rifles. “Sent for security and to be a show of force to the Indians, I ’spect,” Davey said.

  They went to bed knowing the dragoons camped not far from them. Additional security. Letitia woke with a start. The tent floor felt wet. Had her water broken? No. The crack of thunder again. “Davey. We get up and sleep in the wagon. It rainin’ hard.”

  The night lit up then, flashes of lightning split the wide sky horizontally, the boom and roll of thunder forcing her hands to her ears.

  “I’ll pull the tent under the wagon out of the rain.”

  In the flashes as she crawled under the wagon, she watched others scurrying from their tents or tying the canvas down and quieting the cries of children. Cattle bawled. Hail came then, as large as a baby’s thumb. One hit her leg and she winced. Rothwell pushed into the tent with them. Once assured that Letitia was covered, Davey moved off through the rain toward the cattle. The drovers would need help. He yelped when the hail hit him as he ran toward the rope corral to find his horse, pulled his greased hat brim down tight against the storm.

  Wind whipped up the tent side flaps, forcing water to gush onto the oiled pad. Being under the wagon was foolhardy. She was as wet as being outside. “You stay here, Roth.” She scrambled out as best she could and was drenched to the skin by the time she pulled her bulky body up into the wagon. Inside, she tugged the ropes tight at each end, shook her arms and fingers of the rain. Ran her hands over the cornrows, feeling their nubbins, then found a dry tow linen to slip over her head.

  Inside, she stared out at the vast night through the O with its puckered opening. She’d never seen such a storm as this, wind whipping the whole wagon as though it might tip over, then rocking back on its wheels. Her skin quivered with a lightning flash. The sky was so vast and their little wagons as vulnerable as rabbits beneath a sky full of hawks. The hail split a hole in the canvas and she stood to pull it tight, to keep it from tearing further. She looked around for her needle but it would have to wait. She grabbed a wooden bucket and collected the rain beneath it. She wished that Davey would come back. She didn’t like weathering this storm by herself.

  “Roth! Come!”

  He only had to be called once. She pulled the strings to the O, letting the dog soar in. The two hovered together in the rain, shivering but neither alone.

  In the morning Zach and Nancy looked out at the devastation. Wagons tipped on their sides, with blankets and barrels and c
hildren’s stuffed dolls, and a boy’s small boot spilled out into mud so thick that people grew two inches with it stuck to the bottom of their shoes. Broken wagon tongues and wheels meant a day or more of repairs. Dozens of horses and cows had been lost and a party formed to search for them. Zach left to check for wounded. Nancy saw Letitia sewing patches on the hole in the canvas, her face warm from the drying sun. Clothing lay spread on the wagon seats to dry. Nancy had attached a clothesline to her wagon and hooked it onto her mother’s so they could lay out drenched quilts. Then she headed toward Letitia.

  “Quite a tirade last night.” Nancy carried her youngest on her hip, bouncing the child while Laura clambered inside the Carsons’ wagon. “Careful,” Nancy warned her daughter. “Martha, go with her and get her back. Her feet are muddy as the Platte and don’t need to be crawling over Mrs. Carson’s things.”

  “It hard to believe the storm bring such trouble and then be all sunshine and warm right after.”

  “Guess that’s what we’re supposed to remember about hard times.” Nancy swatted at a bug near the baby’s face. “They’re always followed by the warming sun.”

  “At least this baby stay put.” Letitia’s voice caught.

  Nancy reached across and patted her hand. “You call on me. Send Rothwell if you’re alone. That Davey busies himself.” The dog’s tail began to wag at the sound of his name. “Our wagons will never be that far from yours.”

  She’d make sure Zach knew that they should be close to the Carsons. That Davey looked after the cows all right, but goodness, he wasn’t always aware of what his wife needed.

  Nancy lifted her face to the sky and inhaled. “Air is fresh too. Good day to wash off the mud. Laura, get down.”

  Letitia reached for four-year-old Laura from the back of the wagon.

  “Oh don’t you lift her,” Nancy warned.

  “I’m too big to carry.” Laura jumped through Letitia’s hands and landed with a splat in the mud. Laura didn’t even cry. She slapped the mud with her hands, tossing up black blots like freckles onto her face.

  “Mama,” Martha complained as she stepped back from the splatter.

  Nancy shook her head as she pulled Laura up and swatted her behind, then she sent her and Martha off on a task. “Time to fill the buckets, you two. See who can bring back the most water. Martha, you look after that scamp. And maybe find a little dry wood for us.”

  “Slim chance they find anythin’ dry.” Letitia shaded her eyes of the sun. “You think it safe to let them fill buckets from the river with the rains? It so swift.”

  Nancy looked. “They’ll be all right.” She turned back. “We’ve made a game of the bucket-filling. You feeling all right? You look a bit peaked.”

  “I’s not feelin’ tops.” Letitia sank against the wagon wheel. Both the Hawkinses’ and the Carsons’ sturdy Bethel wagons hadn’t been tipped over nor had anything broken. Only the tears in the canvas and soaked bedding testified to the deluge. Letitia put her hands to her cheeks. “Jus’ hot. And wishin’ this baby would arrive. Overdue by my figurin’.”

  “It’s a girl then.” Nancy spoke with certainty. “We women are always late.”

  Letitia’s laughter was interrupted by a child’s cry of “Mama!”

  Nancy turned toward the river. Is that Laura screaming? Nancy hesitated then started to run.

  “Give me Nancy Jane.”

  Nancy nearly threw her infant at her friend while she picked up her skirts, rushing.

  “Martha? Laura!”

  Martha spurted out through the willows, sobbing.

  “Where’s Laura? Where’s your sister? What’s wrong?”

  Martha’s eyes were washed with fear.

  Nancy looked beyond. “Where’s Laura?” She brushed past her daughter. “Laura! Where are you? Laura?” There hadn’t been enough time for her to get into trouble, had there?

  Martha followed her mother through the willows and stood sobbing as Nancy rushed up and down the riverbank, calling out, skirts in her hands. One empty bucket lay at the riverbank. Nancy felt more than saw her mother. Her mother-in-law. Letitia. Her sister. The river is high and swift.

  “Martha.” Nancy turned, grabbed Martha’s shoulders. “Where is your sister?”

  Martha pointed to the river, her sorrow broken with hiccups of pain. “She were there. And then she weren’t. I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry.”

  And so am I.

  15

  A Time to Weep, a Time to Laugh

  A pall like a black lamp shade in an already darkened room fell over the camp. Letitia heard that a child lay ill with typhoid and another had been run over by a wagon but had been saved by the soft mud sinking him beneath the wheels. Heavy rains take one child; another is saved by the same downpour. Doc Hawkins had set the two broken bones. Letitia heard the hacking of a child with whooping cough. Laura was gone. Not a trace of her.

  When the men returned, they too rode the riverbank seeking some sign.

  Meek, the guide, said, “By eternal Moses, that thar river is full of swifty currents enough to swirl a grown man beneath them and hold him thar for weeks afore spitting him up.”

  Nancy’s family surrounded her in her grief, but she sat dazed, seeming unaware that an infant patted her tear-stained cheeks. Laura was a child of the river now. Memories like wisps of sunset were all that remained.

  Letitia offered to milk the Hawkinses’ cow. It was what she could think to do to help. Zach nodded his thanks, his eyes red and pinched.

  Nancy repeated, over and over, “I sent her to her death. I sent her to her death.”

  “No you did not.” Doc pulled her to his chest as they sat on the quilt in the wagon shade. He patted her back as she sobbed. “These things . . . we don’t control life or death.” He cleared his throat, nodded to Letitia.

  “But I told them to go to the river. Letitia even asked if I thought it was safe. I should have known it was dangerous. I was so . . . cavalier about it. I killed her!”

  “It was a terrible accident, Nancy. I could say I should have been here helping, so it’s my fault. Or we never should have left Missouri. That’s my fault too. Poor Martha’s blaming herself. There’s no place to mark blame or go back on this map. Here is where we are.”

  Letitia touched her friend’s shoulder and squeezed. She picked up the Hawkinses’ milk bucket and stool. She waited a moment, trying to find something to say. What had anyone said to her that brought comfort when Nathan barely breathed a day?

  “‘They is a time to weep and time to laugh; time to mourn and time to dance.’ I trust that promise, livin’ it. Things go better when weepin’ and mournin’ pass. I pray you is goin’ laugh and dance again. I walk beside you ’til you do, Miss Nancy. You not grieve alone.”

  Nancy took Letitia’s hand. “You’ve lost a child. I’d forgotten. I’m so sorry. Your boy sold . . .” She turned back to her husband. “There’s no . . . body. Nothing to bury.” And she wept again.

  For Jeremiah, sold away, there’d been no body either. A living death is what Letitia mourned; Nancy too, and those were hardest.

  Doc whispered something about sorrow. Nancy nodded, wiped her nose still buried in his chest. Letitia could see the love Doc held for his wife, delaying his own grief while he worked to untangle hers.

  Later that evening the company held a memorial for Laura Hawkins. Doc took one of the quilt frame sides and cut it, transformed it to a wooden cross, and carved Laura’s name on it. They pounded it into the soft ground not far from the river. The great sadness brought back Letitia’s old feelings of wondering if she ever should have left Kentucky. Maybe her son hadn’t died, was waiting for her to find him? She spoke a healing prayer for the Hawkins family. What had Doc said, that there was no map to go back.

  The companies started wearing cantankerousness like a yoke around their necks. Davey tore at a piece of tobacco. It was worse than the town meetings squabbling over neighbors’ dogs or loose cattle in the commons. Company members compla
ined about who got to follow whom, about whether to form two lines and let the children and women walk between them or form one long line. Either way, what to do about the dust—as if anything could be done about dust. The first time they’d actually been threatened by what someone thought was an Indian attack, chaos reigned like men riding unbroken horses in the middle of a mercantile. Women and children screamed and men ran around without ammunition close by, kids hid under the wagons as though they’d find safety there. No one seemed to be in charge or everyone was. They’d lived through that and there hadn’t even been an Indian in sight. Just a voice of panic from someone seeing things that weren’t there.

  “There’s so little grass now,” Davey told Letitia, “the cattle are roaming farther and farther through the night and it’s taking us half the morning or more to round ’em up.”

  Letitia scraped the tin plates of breakfast scraps for Rothwell.

  “We have to have more than a few hours in the afternoon to travel or we won’t get to Oregon ’til Christmas. Now what’s that?”

  He stood to the sound of a braying donkey.

  “Lookee there. A little donkey’s got buffalo tails high to the wind heading west! Tish, they’re making better time than we ever will.” Davey laughed despite his annoyance. “That little donkey has guts.” He sighed, poured himself another cup of grain coffee.

  Letitia grinned watching the donkey’s antics, the big-headed buffalo running like frantic chickens.

  “Lookee. We need to move ahead with the first company, Tish. We could be on the trail right now instead of sitting here while the guards round up the cattle. There was a group far behind us that’s moved up. We best do that too.”

  “Don’ people count on each other? Aren’t you standin’ guard in, what you say, rotation?”

  “We’ll find new people.”