Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,100
stay here with Webb and Will. And you don’t come out, none of you, until I come back for you.” Wyatt’s holding his rifle, and his face is striped with dust and tears, but his jaw is set like he’s ready to fight.
“Stay here,” I repeat, holding his gaze. He nods once, his hands flexing on his gun, and I turn away and cock my own. I won’t need it, but I bring it anyway.
I study the scene as I approach. Two wagons, one partially burned and the other a pile of smoking rubble. The oxen weren’t taken. They’re bunched together around a watering hole, none the worse for wear. They lift their heads as I near and watch as I discover the bodies beyond them.
The top of William May’s head is a raw, bubbled wound. Blood discolors the ground between him and Warren, who is facedown, his splayed feet at his father’s head. Homer Bingham is turned away, his back to the others, but his arms are flung forward, reaching for something, clawing at the dirt as though he attempted to crawl to his wife but made it a mere foot before succumbing to the destroyer who took the top of his head.
The indignity of the death stuns me. Not just the death itself. I have seen death, but not like this, and a deep, inexplicable shame wells up in my chest. This is death I don’t understand. I can do nothing for them but give them some dignity and shield them from the eyes of the boys waiting in my wagon. Using a bit of water and my handkerchief, I do my best to clean off the worst of the blood from their faces and pull their hats over the clotted mess on the tops of their heads. And then I brace myself for what is next.
The May wagon fared better than the other wagon, though the cover is gone and the box is black. I know it’s William’s because it’s missing a wheel. Inside the May wagon are blackened provisions and sooty blankets, but that is all. The straps that kept the feed box and the water barrel attached to the side have melted and snapped, releasing their cargo. The barrel has rolled to a stop near the smoldering remains of the other wagon.
Nothing is left of the Bingham wagon but the charred skeleton and a single willow branch jutting up from the remains. An iron dutch oven, none the worse for wear, sits amid a rounded pile of debris I can’t distinguish. It radiates heat and an acrid stench, and I make myself approach it.
There is very little left of them, no hair, no shape, no flesh at all. I cannot tell who is who or the details of their suffering. What is left is just a charred suggestion of two bodies clothed in ash, lying side by side, and obscured by a four-foot section of the wagon box that has collapsed against them. My throat aches, my heart thrums, and I can’t feel my hands. I turn away and steady my breaths.
I don’t know what to do.
Winifred. William. Warren. The Binghams. The boys. Naomi.
“Âka’a,” I moan. “Naomi.”
I don’t know where she is. I don’t know how to find her, and I can’t leave the Mays. Not the boys, and not their dead. Our dead. They are mine too. They are Naomi’s. And I promised William I would take care of them.
I look around me, helpless, desperate for direction. William’s tools are scattered around the wheel he was working on, and suddenly I know what to do. I’ve just spent a week building a wagon, and I grab what I need and slide beneath the Mays’ wagon and find the bolts that secure the box to the underpinnings. When I’ve removed the bolts, I drag the box off the frame, letting it crash to the side, spilling the blackened provisions and contents onto the ground. I roll it, end over end, over to the remains of the other wagon. I need something to bury them in. Something to bury them all in. The ground is hard, and I don’t have much time. One by one, I drag the three men beside the remains of their women, and I cover them all with the upended wagon box. It looks like a table, sitting there among the rocks and the brush, but the death is hidden, the worst of the horror concealed. I go and get the boys.