We are stopped in low country, a hot and foul place Papa calls “the oven.” Actually it is somewhere in the Dacotahs. Same thing as an oven, as far as I am concerned. Why, I do not doubt I could bake a loaf of bread right on the wagon’s tailgate as we roll along. Except that loaf would bounce off and burn to a cinder on this foul, scorching ground.
We have been making poor time. Bub and Bib, our oxen, are moving slow and Papa isn’t switching on them much. I am glad of it, as you can hear them breathing hard with each step.
Papa has taken to defending his decision to outfit our wagon with one brace of oxen rather than two. When I brought up the topic, he said, “Fewer beasts of burden will reduce our days of burden to all the fewer.” I suspect he does not believe that. But it is neither here nor there since we are far from home with no hope of procuring a second brace, nor reversing our journey, not that anyone among us would, save for Bib and Bub.
Papa says he would like to change the way we do things and travel by night, if he can figure out how to make sure the route won’t lead us over a cliff.
Problem is, here in these Dacotahs, every now and again we come upon great ravines like cracks in the earth you will see after a rain when the sun comes out and jags up the mud something fierce. Only these cracks are big enough to swallow up everyone in Missouri and then some. No warning, just “blup” and there they are.
I think we should keep moving during the day, no matter how hot it is. I cannot stand the thought of walking on solid ground one minute then stepping off into nothing the next, only to land a hundred feet down, all broke up and not able to do a thing while snakes and lizards and only God knows what else tuck into me like I am a Sunday meal.
We will be staying here today as the heat has taken the steam out of the oxen. A rest is in order, except it is so hot no one will do much more than sweat. Papa and Tom and Will have gone off early this morning to scare up a mess of game, as Papa says. What that likely means is Will and Papa will hunt and Thomas will not be allowed to fire his gun. Still too young, Papa says.
Thomas says that’s not fair because when William was his age he was providing for the table for a year or more, and on his own, too. Papa tells Thomas to hold his horses, that life on the trail is different. But really it’s because Papa doesn’t trust Thomas with a gun yet, I know it. We all do, though no one says as much. Can’t say as I blame Papa, but I do feel bad for Thomas. Still, he ought to work harder at pleasing Papa instead of sneaking biscuits when he thinks no one can see him.
There wasn’t much more I could do but watch them leave. There went Papa, thin gray hair trailing out from under his brown felt slouch hat, his neck canted forward, reminding me of a turtle I’d seen years before. I always think of him that way—a turtle-looking sort of man. But as if he were the kindliest turtle who’d ever lived. And he is. The kindliest man I’ve ever known, that is. Not really like a turtle.
As I watched, I noticed that Thomas and William both hold their heads the same way as Papa. Their necks leaned forward, their hats nudged back on their foreheads. Even their hair has that wispy look, Will’s the color of browned leather, Tom’s darker but not quite black, more like swampy slough water.
And their shoulders—all three hold them the same way, pulled back but slumped, too, as if they are tugged by strings like on the marionettes I saw at the fair a few years back.
Seeing their hair waving like that in the sweltering day makes me think of when Mama was alive, cooking for us and singing over the stove. She’d open that oven door and heat from the firebox would rush out and blow the stray strands of her hair. Her cheeks red as fall apples, sweat shining on her forehead, her hazel eyes—Papa says I have the same—bright and kind, her mouth always smiling. Always.
And then the fever came. Typhus, Papa said. I did not understand then, and in truth I still do not. I am holding a grudge against God and I don’t care who knows it. Papa said it happened for a reason, but I don’t think he believes that any more than I do. Anyways, if there is a reason for it, I’d surely like to know of it. No sign yet, but I am still waiting. I reckon it being God and all that I can wait. Time I’ve got.
But there it was, one day Mama was gone. Papa didn’t talk on it very much. Still doesn’t. He cried, and right in front of me, too. That surprised me, for I had never seen Papa cry. Had never seen him do much of anything but smile, sweat, grit his teeth, sometimes be a little bit angry with Thomas or the mule, but mostly be my happy, smiling Papa.
After Mama died he became old. For the better part of two years he stopped smiling all the time, didn’t much laugh anymore, his hair grew long. It turned gray like the feathers of that old goose we had who honked and hissed and not much else, his old feeble wings dragging their tips, his leathery feet squishing through his own greasy leavings. And then he got better, especially after he decided we were to head west. Papa, not the goose.
The goose ended up stewing on the stove for a full two days, then we ate his stringy old self. He wasn’t any more pleasant between my teeth than he had been honking and flapping at me all over the yard. I am certain there’s a lesson nested in there somewhere, but I don’t have the patience to dig it up.
As they were leaving this morning, Papa gave me one last smile and a quick wave, sort of sheepish-like. I watched the back of his head, my brothers, too, as they all strode, longlegged, into this hot-as-hell wild place that surrounds us.
Papa is hoping to scare up a few rabbits. I have my doubts that anything worth eating lives in the Dacotahs, but I smile and wave and set to work on the baking before the day really hots up.
I would not say so to Papa, but this trip is proving to be a trial.