Maria reappears before we are finished and whisks our dirty clothes away, leaving crisp cotton bloomers and chemises behind, and we begin to laugh in amazement all over again.
There is no place to sit, so everyone stands, making a crowded half circle in the clearing cloaked in flowers and guarded by the trees. Webb isn’t wearing any shoes. He hasn’t worn them since we crossed the Big Blue. His feet are as tough as horse hooves, the dirt ground in deep, but Pa has made him comb his hair, and his cheeks are still pink from the cold water of the creek. Ma keeps mending the holes in his clothes, but he’s starting to look like a patchwork quilt. They all are. Wyatt and Warren and Will and Pa. They’ve made an effort, it’s easy to see, but nothing has been left untouched by our travels.
The families of our company are all here too, wearing dusty clothes but freshly scrubbed faces. Abbott, Jeb, Lydia and Adam, Elsie and Homer, all smiling like I belong to them. Even Mr. Caldwell is here, his white hair neatly parted above his sunburned brow, and Elmeda is already weeping. Grief and joy are complicated. Love and loss too, and I know tears aren’t always what they seem. I smile at her as I approach on Ma’s arm, and she smiles back through trembling lips.
Narcissa has made us wait until very last to make our entrance, directing the service like she’s directed everything else today. Pa is crying too, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at Ma in Narcissa’s lavender dress; it’s a little short in the sleeves and tight across the shoulders, but she looks like a girl again. We drew her hair back in soft waves from her face and coiled it at her nape, and Narcissa gave us both a handful of little white blossoms to carry. She called it yarrow, and it surrounds the clearing on every side.
I keep my gaze averted from John. I know he is here, waiting for me. From the corner of my eye I can see him standing next to Deacon Clarke across from all our guests. I’m afraid if I look at him, I won’t be able to keep my mind right. I’m feeling too much, and I don’t want to share my emotion with anyone but him. I suddenly understand why he is so private, why he keeps things locked down tight. It’s because the moment you let go, those feelings aren’t just yours anymore. And I’ve been crying all day. I’ve been lost all day.
I decided against the green dress. It’s a day of new beginnings, as Ma said, and when I saw Narcissa’s yellow dress, it made me smile. Yellow, for the first time we met. It isn’t fancy, but it’s the nicest dress I’ve ever worn. The full skirt is a tad short, but the round-necked bodice fits me just right, and the elbow-length sleeves are forgiving, hemmed as they are with a skirting of lace. I’ve saved the doeskin moccasins John bought me at Fort Laramie, and I wear those too.
Deacon Clarke is wearing a black necktie and a fine black coat with his tattered trousers, but I stare at John’s boots. He’s shined them so they gleam like his glossy black hair. It’s grown considerably, and he’s brushed it straight back so it touches the collar of his new shirt, which is stiff and clean like his trousers. His sleeves are rolled, and his forearms are strong and brown like the column of his neck, the line of his jaw, and the blade of his nose. I look everywhere but his eyes, and then I look there too.
He is not smiling. He isn’t even breathing. But then his chest rises and falls, a deep breath, once and again, and his eyes shine down into mine. The lost feeling flees, and I am me again. Confident. Sure. Ready. I smile at him the way I did that first day, sitting in the middle of the street on a barrel in St. Joe. I think I knew even then.
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife. And they shall be one flesh,” Deacon Clarke says, and I feel his words to the bottom of my soul. He takes us through our promises, and we repeat his words.
“I take you, John.”
“I take you, Naomi.”
“To have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. To love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
JOHN
She is sitting at the little writing desk in the corner of the Vasquezes’ room, a candle flickering at her side, and she is wearing my shirt. The sleeves are rolled to free her hands, and the hem falls several inches above her knees, baring her pale legs. It is not a comfortable shirt. It is new and scratchy, and I couldn’t wait to take it off, but I like the way it looks on her. Her long, tangled hair tumbles down her back, and in the flickering light she is a collection of lovely shadows. I watch her between half-closed lids.
“You are beautiful,” I whisper.
“You only say that when you are dying or half-asleep,” she answers, not raising her gaze from her pencil, but her lips curve.
“But I always think it.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.” She sighs. But I’m not sorry. I can sleep later.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I am drawing a picture for Mrs. Vasquez. To thank her. A portrait. She has a lovely smile.”
“You are wearing my shirt.”
“It was easier to pull on than my dress.”
“It is easier to pull off too.”
“Yes.” Again the curve of her lips.
“Did you sleep at all, Naomi?”
“I was too happy. I didn’t want to waste it in sleep. If I stay awake, the night will last longer.” Finally she looks at me, and the same turbulence that glowed in her eyes at our wedding is there again.
“Come here,” I say.
She makes a stroke here and there on the page in front of her and then rises, the obedient wife, the candle in one hand, a sheet of paper in the other. She climbs into the bed beside me, burrowing her cold toes between my calves.
“I drew this too,” she whispers. “A wedding gift for my husband.”
The lines are clean and dark, our bodies intertwined, my head bowed over hers, the length of her naked spine and the curve of her hips visible beneath the circle of my arms.
“I don’t know if that is how we appear, or if it is only the way you make me feel. I don’t ever want to forget this day,” she says.
I take the candle from her and the picture too and, pulling my shirt over her head, vow to help us both remember. I kiss her, and she returns my fervor, but when she pulls back for a ragged breath, she cradles my face in her hands, and her thumbs stroke my lips. Love wells in my chest, so fierce and so foreign that I have to look away. I turn my face into her palm, pressing a kiss to its center.
“I don’t want to leave you behind tomorrow,” she whispers. I have told her my plans to build a wagon, and we’ve agreed that the rest of the train will leave in the morning without me and Wyatt.
“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” I murmur.
“Yes. You’re going to say it’s only a few days.” She pauses a moment. “And what do you think I’m going to say?”
“You’re going to say we don’t need a wagon. You’re going to say we can just continue on the way we have been.”
“Exactly.” Her voice is soft, and she rests her head against my arm, her eyes pleading, her lips rosy and well used.
“But if we continue on the way we have been, I won’t be able to do this.” I kiss the tip of one breast. “Or this,” I say and kiss the other. “If we go back to the way we were, I will have to keep my distance, and you will have to keep yours.”