I am worried about Winifred May. I don’t understand her husband. I would not have taken a woman on the brink of childbirth onto the plains. She does not ride in the wagon but trundles along beside it, her daughter’s arm linked through hers. I cannot blame her. The jostling wagon will break her waters. She is better off walking.
They are a handsome pair, Winifred and Naomi, though the mother is worn and softly wrinkled, her chestnut hair threaded with gray. Naomi is vibrant and slim beside her mother, but they share the same stubborn chins and smiling mouths, the same green eyes and freckled noses.
The May boys, especially Webb, have attached themselves to me like cockleburs, and though I keep gently picking them off, they latch on again before too long. Webb has memorized the names of my animals and rattles them off in a long greeting each time he sees them, like the apostles from the Bible that Jennie made me read.
“Hey, Boomer, Budro, Samson, Delilah, Tug, Gus, Jasper, Judy, Lasso, Lucky, Coal, and Pepper,” Webb cries, but he always lowers his voice reverently when he greets the two jacks, Pott and Kettle, who seem to like the boy. My horse, Dame, likes him too, and Webb doesn’t forget to greet the mare with the same enthusiasm.
“Hey there, pretty Dame,” he says, and he doesn’t shut up until I send him off or someone comes to fetch him.
I want to ask the boy questions I have no right asking. I’m curious about his sister, about her missing husband and the leather satchel she always carries, but I don’t. She introduced herself as Naomi May, and that is how I think of her, but Webb said she is Mrs. Caldwell, and the Caldwells in the train are clearly connected. I do ask Webb how his mother fares, and the little boy wrinkles his nose as if it never occurred to him that his mother might not be well.
“She’s just fine, Mr. Lowry. She says you’re welcome to come to supper round our campfire if you want to, since you don’t have anyone to look after you,” he says.
“I look after myself, Webb. Grown men do.”
“My pa doesn’t. Warren doesn’t. They let Ma and Abigail and Naomi take care of them.”
“Your pa works hard. Warren too.”
“Not as hard as Ma.”
“No. I reckon nobody is working as hard as your ma right now,” I murmur.
“Come to supper, Mr. Lowry. Naomi’s cooking, and she’s not as good as Ma, but it fills the empty places, and Pa says that’s all that matters.”
Webb invites me every day, but I don’t ever accept. After several refusals, he delivers a loaf of bread with his visit. “From Naomi,” he says, and I am awash in pleasure. I don’t know if it is a thank-you for putting up with her brothers or an invitation for something more, but I savor the bread because she made it. I am too aware of her, and I keep my distance even as I keep an eye out, falling back in the train and bringing up the rear, telling myself it is to keep Webb from straying too far from his own. Abbott approves of my playing caboose. It allows him to remain at the front without worrying about the stragglers.
Each night, the wagons are circled, the oxen are unyoked and taken to graze, and the men watch in shifts to keep the animals together and see that they don’t wander too far after better grass. When the animals begin to settle and doze, they are hobbled or picketed or driven back to the circle of the wagons, which are chained together to form a corral, and put up for the night. Those with bigger herds have a more difficult time of it and often bed down among their animals outside the circle. Most nights it is what I do, pitching my tent where my mules are grazing or simply throwing down my saddle for a pillow and sleeping underneath the sky.
On the fifth day, I awake to rolling thunder and black clouds so thick the sunrise barely lights the sky. We’ve been plagued by drizzle and light showers since leaving St. Joe, but the storm gathering is something new. Instead of preparing to move out at dawn, we keep the wagons circled, and Abbott sounds a warning to drive the picket pins and the tent stakes deep, to chain the wagon wheels and tie everything down. All the animals are moved into the center, the oxen, cattle, horses, and mules all crowded together beneath the writhing skies. I hobble my mules along with Dame and the jacks near Abbott’s wagon and roll beneath it for cover as the heavens break and begin to pummel the prairie.
The rain doesn’t fall in drops but in sheets, slicing the air and splashing against the sod with enough force to churn the soil. We hunker down beneath it, cowering in tents and wagons that blunt the impact but are useless against the wet that finds the cracks and seeps through the corners. Beneath Abbott’s wagon, the puddles grow and spread until even the high ground is turned to mud beneath us. Abbott doesn’t complain overmuch. I like that about him. He’s like Jennie in that way, though he has plenty to say and always has a story to tell. I let him yammer, lulled by the torrent and the forced inaction. It is wet but not windy, and there is nothing to do but wait it out. I am half-asleep when Abbott pauses in his tale of a brush with the Blackfeet in the Oregon Territory, a tale I have heard before.
“What is she doing?” Abbott asks, but I’m tired, and I don’t care to know. I don’t even open my eyes. It’s wet, but I’m short on sleep, and with my animals discouraged by the rain, I’m not worried about them getting spooked or stolen. They are clustered together, their hinds turned out, heads in, and I don’t even lift my hat to see what Abbott is muttering about.
“Well, I’ll be. I thought I’d seen it all,” Abbott mumbles.
I wish he’d keep his musings to himself. I know he’s trying to draw me in.
“That infernal woman is doing her wash in the rain.”
My eyes snap open. I don’t know how I know it’s Naomi, but I do. I push back my brim and peer out into the onslaught. The May wagons are lashed beside Abbott’s; they were the last to bring their wagons into the fold the night before, closing the gap between the head and tail of the train.
Naomi May has two buckets and a washboard and is scrubbing away in the downpour, a brick of soap in her right hand. She’s soaked to the skin beneath a thin wrap, and she’s wearing Webb’s hat instead of her bonnet, but she’s making short work of the family’s laundry. She doesn’t bother to rinse the soap or grime away but tosses each garment over the ox chain stretched between the wagons and lets the heavy rain do it for her.
“A?ka’a,” I huff beneath my breath and crawl out into the deluge. I am immediately drenched, and I stomp toward her, holding the streaming brim of my hat. I tell myself it could be worse. There is no wind in the rain, only the weight of heavy water, but it isn’t pleasant.
“You’re going to catch your death,” I bark, ducking close to Naomi, spreading the sides of my sodden coat to provide some cover over her head.
“I never get sick,” she shouts and continues scrubbing away.
“Don’t say that. The man who says never is quickly made a liar.” It is something Jennie always says, but Naomi May just shakes her head.
“I never get sick,” she insists.
I watch her for a moment, wanting to make her stop, wanting to demand she take cover, and wondering why I never thought to wash my clothes in the rain. They’re getting a good scouring now. All I need is a little soap.