CHAPTER 15

i i i

After we’d eaten and fed Casey, Dillan finally coaxed Mule across the water with oats from the feed bag in the wagon. The trail finally smoothed out and the swaying wagon lulled Casey to sleep. I felt myself nod off, but kept one half-open eye on Dillan. The fingers of his right hand relaxed on the reins, and he massaged the muscles at the back of his neck. But his eyes were worried, passing back and forth over the unchanging landscape: dead grass with a hint of spring green, blue sky lightly ribboned with clouds stretched to the horizon.

A short distance ahead a graveyard loomed, in it a huge white crypt, probably eight feet long and six feet wide, and standing three feet high. Around this monstrous thing were small headstones, the lesser of the family relegated to the underground. Dillan had started to fidget, leaning forward, his mouth open.

“It’s a mausoleum,” I offered with a yawn.

“What?”

“A mausoleum. You know, like the Greek ruler who built a permanent shrine to himself. My father figures he was just afraid of the dark. Maybe that was this poor soul’s problem.” I yawned again and then dismissed my own words with a wave of my hand. “He was probably just afraid he’d be forgotten out here once everything grassed. That he’d be just like everyone else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That tomb we just passed. Didn’t you see it?”

“Yeah, two miles west and we’ll be home.” He was sitting straight, shaking a little. He caught my surprise at the word home and turned away still smiling. “What were you saying?”

“Never mind.”

Mule plodded in silence while Dillan perched at the edge of his seat. I scoured the land around us, but could see nothing to indicate any change, no distinctive feature from this side of the wagon to that.

“We’re looking for a stick then,” he offered. “Just a small piece of cut lumber to show us the edge of the homestead.”

Casey woke up. “You’re almost home,” I whispered in his ear. He giggled. I nodded and said to Dillan, “It will be good for him I think.”

“Yeah.”

We peered into the distance, Dillan hunched further forward in an undeclared contest to be the first to see the marker. He was so excited. I wanted to let him be first. But competition is hard to ignore, and soon I was gazing as intensely as he. I saw the stick. Casey and I stood, balancing against the seat, and I pointed toward it, hollering.

“There it is. Don’t you see it? There.” Jabbing again, and waving my arms as though this would help his vision. “Right there.”

And then he saw it, a smile creasing his face. He took a huge breath, his chest swelling visibly. He whooped and laughed like a fool, like the surveyors’ stick marked more than just the corner of a piece of land. Casey’s eyes were wide and he started to squirm, his father’s excitement contagious. Dillan dropped the reins, took Casey and swung him into the air. “We’re here, boy. We’re home.”

“Home,” the boy said quietly. It was the first word I’d heard him speak.

As we passed the stick, I sat down again and Dillan put Casey between us. Glancing from one side of the trail to the other, I searched, but everything – the near, the far – was exactly the same: flat, barren and treeless. We’d worked ourselves up for this. A laugh came out in a snort.

“It’s not that bad.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that...well...if I don’t laugh...” I was surprised at the lump in my throat. “I might...”

“Oh Jesus,” he said.

Despair, too, is contagious and the muscles around his mouth started to twitch, his nose flared. If only there were more trees, a creek, something. Nothing was distinguishable except the stick. Mule had slowed and was barely moving.

Dillan whipped the reins across the animal’s back. “Get up there.” He set his face, refusing to let my disappointment ruin his moment.

My stomach curled into a knot, and I tried to smother my fear. He was right. This was real and we had much to do in order to survive. I would have to keep my fears hidden.

“We’ll set up the tent,” he said. “Get the boy settled. Find some water. There’s only enough in the barrels there for a few days.” He motioned behind us in the wagon.

I straightened up. “Maybe we should just let Mule find us a bog.” I tried to grin.

He smiled back, grateful I think. Ahead, a lone elm tree spread its old worn branches, stretching up as though to beseech the heavens.

“There, that old tree. It’s a sign.” He pointed. “We’ll set up there.”

Small birds with white bellies flitted in front of us on the trail and finally flew up to scold us from the tree. A fox, bushy red tail flowing out behind him, ran a short distance, looked back and smelled the air, then ran again. Dillan stopped Mule and helped me down. Under the tree was a large rock and beside it, tucked under its sheltering face, were tiny purple flowers just starting to open, their petals covered in soft down.

“Crocuses, I think.” I breathed the words out. “In town, they were talking about crocus season.”

“Well, I think they’re a good sign too,” Dillan said. “We’ll set up here for now. At least the tree will give us a little shade in the afternoon once it leafs out.”

It was midday and the still-bare branches threw a criss-crossed pattern of shade. The air was deliciously warm, the cool morning dew burned off in the new heat of a cocky spring sun. A meadowlark trilled its scale in thirds on the way up, quick and chromatic on the descent. The sound burst through the silence. Dillan closed his eyes and breathed deeply as though he were purging winter, or something worse, from his lungs.

“What are you doing?” I tried not to laugh.

“Don’t you feel it?”

“The wind?”

“Well that too, but...well...the newness. Spring, I guess. The air is so clean. It’s like everything just woke up and washed.”

I wanted to understand, but if there was beauty, it was blanketed in isolation. I stood there, breathing it in, and smiled. Maybe I felt it a little, smelled what he smelled. I waved my hand at the emptiness around us. “It’s just so big.”

He turned to unhitch Mule. The wind was picking up, the dead grasses rustling. “We better get that tent up before it gets too windy.” He busied himself. “There’s an old man in town. Told me about winds kicking up dust so thick you can’t breathe.”

I didn’t want to hear the terrible musings of some crony and went to the wagon to let him enjoy what he appeared to think might be his last peaceful moment. Among the provisions I found bread and some soup I’d made in the boarding-house kitchen. We ate a little and unloaded the wagon. I felt strong helping in that way, as much as I could, with no expectation that he be chivalrous, just two people doing what needed doing. It reminded me of how it felt to work side by side with my father, a kind of freedom in having no awkward assignment of roles. Casey toddled circles around us, tripping over small hazards, happy to be out of the wagon.

Dillan pulled the tent out from the rest of our things and sized it up, trying to hold down one section of the canvas while puzzling over another. By the time we figured out front and back and where the posts should be positioned, the wind had grown, threatening to rip the tent out of his hands. I tried to help, but soon felt like a flag waving at the end of its pole, hair flying wildly around my face.

“This won’t work,” he said. “We’ll have to do it in the morning when the wind is down.”

“And what until then?”

“Sleep on the ground I guess.”

“Oh Lord.” He watched me, trying not to react as I let go a huge sigh.

Dearest Aileen,

Today I sense a freedom I haven’t felt in months. Maybe silence is liberating. No, not silence, for I hear crickets chirping like an insect symphony, the crackle of our small fire providing an inconsistent percussion and the wind blowing like reed instruments in the background. Always the wind. It is not silence, but an absence of sound, of people, in the space out here.

I am lying under the wagon on a bed of blankets with a lantern beside me. I have Casey with me. He is Flaherty’s small son. I hear him sigh quietly from time to time. It is a rather peaceful scene, if bizarre. Bizarre, but at least not terrible...

i i i

Casey whimpered in his sleep, found his ever-willing thumb. The wagon offered at least a primitive shelter from the elements, a small protection from the dark world. I felt an affinity for the boy, sent out into a world where he appeared to have survived more by sheer grit than good care.

He was an unnaturally quiet child. When I helped to change his clothes he didn’t fuss, though his pale, thin body was quickly covered in goosebumps, and he shivered long after he was dressed. And he never gave any indication of hunger, yet he gobbled down the potatoes I boiled and mashed with a little water and salt. The newborns I’d helped deliver made more noise in their first few hours than Casey made all day. I couldn’t help wondering if he was normal. His light blue eyes were bright enough and inquisitive about the new face I presented. The calm knowing in his gaze was unnerving. It made me wonder what he’d seen.

I looked across the fire at Dillan spreading his blankets for a bed. It was a comfort he was there, distant enough I needn’t worry about his intentions, close enough to protect us if necessary. He was a mystery, darting about, looking for all the world like a willing idiot who hadn’t an idea what to do next. I feared if someone were to yell run, he would, without a clue as to his destination.

But he appeared tough and athletic, jet-black hair in fast-growing curls, the permanent shadow of stubble adding darkness to an already swarthy complexion. His face was thin, with a long, bony nose and high cheekbones. It was his eyes that really drew attention, slate grey, set far apart and huge, with unnaturally long lashes for a man. They forced a person to look into them, like you might see something about the world in those eyes. Maybe that’s what his wife had seen.

The next day would be our first in the tent. Dillan said it would be our home until a house could be built. He said it was very large, leaving me to wonder if it would be large enough, the air around us crowded with tension, the huge expanse of land and sky reduced to a pinpoint.

Dillan pulled off his boots as I watched, then lay down and covered himself. It seemed intimate even from a distance. I wondered what he was thinking, if his mind was reeling with questions and secrets, as mine was. A coyote sang in the distance. Another answered not far away to the east, and soon a chorus of yipping laughter filled the cool night air and sent a tingle up my spine. Casey’s eyes were wide, listening to the song. Pulling him closer, I tucked the blankets around us.

“You all right then?” Dillan called softly from across the fire.

“We’re fine. I think he’ll go back to sleep.”

“Okay then.” There was a long pause. Dillan must have fallen asleep just like that. “Good night, my sweet boy.”

For a moment I wasn’t sure I’d heard it, but I had, the soft voice of a father. The outline of Dillan’s body glowed red through the flames.

From under the wagon I could see stars filling the sky from one horizon to the other. Earlier the sunset had been achingly beautiful, and just as it became a pink memory, a brilliant orange moon emerged, glowing huge against the night. As it rose it grew smaller, fading into regular moon colours again.

People in Ibsen had told me the prairie was harsh and unforgiving, and I’d be lucky to last the winter. But perhaps it was instead a kindred spirit of sorts, its obvious failures pocking the surface for the world to see: the slough dried up before the ducks could hatch their eggs, the would-be trees stunted into shrubs, the fledgling grasses destined always to wait for the sun. My failures simply blended in.