back. “Just strange and . . . lonely.”
She sits up, crawls to the canteen, and brings it back to me, as if water cures loneliness. I drink even though I’m not thirsty, and she does too.
She lies back down, but we are both wide awake, and she whispers after a long silence, “Do you want to tell me about the dream?”
“Sometimes I dream about Oddie.” I don’t tell her the rest, and she doesn’t ask me to, but after a moment, she shoves the buffalo robes aside and crawls up on my chest, spreading herself over me, her cheek against my heart. I shed my shirt before I slept, and her breath is warm on my skin.
“Poor Oddie. He was tired of carrying all of us,” she says softly. I close my eyes, savoring the feel of her against me, solid and close. I reach up to stroke her hair, following its length to the base of her spine.
“I worry sometimes that you will get tired of carrying all of us, John.”
“I would carry you to the ends of the earth.”
She raises her head and looks down at me; her walls are down, and her gaze is tender. She braces her hands on either side of my head and kisses me—lips, chin, cheeks, brow—softly, sweetly, and then does it all over again. When she returns to my mouth for the third time, her breath is shallow, her heart thrumming, and the kiss is not nearly so soft or sweet. Her lips cling to mine, hungry and hopeful, and I respond in kind, my hands still but my mouth eager, molding her lips and chasing her tongue.
She wears a ragged homespun shift when she sleeps, something Hanabi gave her. It’s thin beneath my hands as I draw it up over her hips and pull it over her head. Her eyes don’t leave mine, and her mouth returns, wet and welcoming, and I can’t be still any longer. Her arms curl around me, and her legs twine with mine when I roll, changing our positions. When she stiffens, I immediately stop, lifting myself up onto my arms and taking my weight from her body. But she grips my hips and guides me home, insistent. We moan as one and move together, slow, slow, slow. Our eyes are locked and our bodies are joined, but tears begin to seep from the corners of her eyes and trickle into the pool of her hair.
“Naomi?” I whisper, kissing them away. I hesitate, but she tightens her arms and legs around me, holding me close.
“No, don’t stop. Don’t go. It’s not . . . I’m just . . . happy. And it hurts to feel good.”
“Why?” I whisper. Naomi let me know, right from the beginning, that she wanted me, and I never doubted her. I doubted fate and my good fortune, I feared and fled her advances, but Naomi never played games, and she isn’t playing now. My own pleasure is the swollen Platte, surging from a far-off place, but I hold it back, waiting for her, feeling the answering quake in her limbs. She is on the brink, but her heart is breaking.
“It hurts to be happy,” she says.
“Why?” I ask, gentle. Careful.
“Because they can’t feel anything.”
“Who, Naomi?” I know the answer, but it doesn’t matter. She needs to tell me.
“Ma and Pa and Warren. Elsie Bingham and her baby. Her husband. They’re dead. And I’m not, and it doesn’t feel right.”
Everything about us feels right. The cradle of her hips, the silk of her skin, her breasts against my chest, her lips against my face. I don’t move, though my body screams to do just that, but I don’t pull away either.
“I am here, with you, loving you and being loved, and they are in the ground,” she says, almost pleading for me to understand.
“I know.”
“So it hurts . . . to feel good.”
“Yeah. It does.” There is no denying it, and admitting it eases the ache in my chest and the strain in her face.
She wipes her tears, and I kiss her forehead, resting my lips there. We breathe together, feeling the pain and holding each other close.
Then we begin to move again.
21
FALL
JOHN
The nights are colder, and the light has changed. It doesn’t beat down from overhead but slants across the land and curls around the peaks, leaving the shadows alone. It’s more golden and faded, and soon it will be gone. We leave the Wind River Valley in mid-October—I’m not sure