Where the Lost Wander_ A Novel - Amy Harmon Page 0,27
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.
“I wanted to draw you the first time I saw you. I couldn’t stop staring,” Naomi says. “I sent you running off, but I couldn’t help it. You have a . . . a beautiful . . .” She stops midsentence and changes words. “You have an unforgettable face.”
I am hot and cold, pleased and puzzled. When I say nothing, she continues as though she desperately wants me to understand. “I would rather draw faces than anything else. Pa says the landscapes would have a better chance of selling to the newspapers or maybe in a printed book someday, but most of the time, the world just can’t compete with the people in it.”
I don’t know what to say as I stare down at my eyes and my mouth and the set of my chin. I see my father. My mother. I even see Jennie, and I wonder how that can be.
“It’s the emotion, I think,” Naomi says, still trying to explain herself amid my silence. “The expressions. The wind can blow and the rains beat down, and a landscape can be transformed eventually, but a face is always changing. I can’t draw fast enough to keep up. And every face is different. Yours is the most different of all.”
I shove the book back toward her, and she takes it uncertainly.
“John?”
“You’re very skilled, Mrs. Caldwell,” I say, so wooden and stiff I could toss myself into the Little Blue and float down it like a raft. I spur Dame forward, leaving Naomi and her many faces behind.
I do more than my fair share of night watch, considering there are sixty-five men and twenty-five grown boys in the company, but I won’t sleep well until the mules are delivered. I worry about my animals. The men are sloppy and weary, and there are too many cattle to watch and horses to picket. I keep my animals as close as I can, but more often than not, I pitch my tent where they graze and sleep with my ears wide open. Catching a nap most nights after dinner has saved me from exhaustion. Two nights after we cross the Big Blue, Webb May is waiting for me in my tent at the end of my shift, curled up on my bedroll with his head on my saddle and my blanket over his shoulders. I shake him awake.
“Webb. It’s the middle of the night. You have to go back to your wagon, boy. Your folks will worry.”
He sits up in alarm, clearly upset that he fell asleep at all.
“Ma’s havin’ her baby. She’s crying. It hurts real bad to have a baby, Mr. Lowry. We didn’t want to hear her cry, so I came here.”
“Let’s go. Come on,” I say, my chest tight with worry.
We aren’t far from the wagons when a cry splits the air, like a