Chapter Text
Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.
From “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America” (1728) by George Berkeley
When I bent
to pick, my hands
came away red and wet
In the dream I said
I should have known
anything planted here
would come up blood
From “Dream 1: The Bush Garden” by Margaret Atwood
May, 1866
Nebraska Territory
The dust is inescapable.
Handkerchiefs do little, and bonnets seem to catch as many gritty gusts of wind as they keep out.
Beth would prefer to walk the entire length of the trail to California with her hands over her eyes, except for fear of stepping in a gopher hole and twisting her ankle, or, as the woman who ran the boarding house in St. Joseph warned, stepping on a rattlesnake.
They are not yet deep into the Nebraska Territory, and already, Beth is exhausted by the dust.
It is fortunate that their party is only two wagons drawn by oxen, and that aside from their riding mares, Nelly and Jenny, and their gentle dairy cow, Peony, they are droving no livestock, for even a small herd of cattle will kick up enough dust to nearly blind a person, depending on the direction of the wind.
No, Father saw their entire stock of cattle sold back home, along with their two fine bay gelding cart horses and Shawn’s beloved black riding mare Jet, and nearly everything else they owned, every chair and bedstead, right down to Mama’s best china dishes.
Of course Father had to send all of it away on a train to an auction house in Columbus, nearly at the Alabama state line, for their neighbours would not buy even one silver butter knife out of good Christian sympathy.
It makes for lighter traveling, considering how many hundreds of pounds of supplies they'd had to buy in St. Joseph, and Beth sees that for the good fortune it is. She tries not to let her mind linger too long on Mama’s favourite pewter candlesticks, or the lace tablecloth her grandmother made, or the piano that Beth used to play for hours on end. Nor does she allow herself to recall the strange and discordant sound of alarm the instrument made when it was loaded onto the train.
A blessing. To travel so unburdened in such a rough place must only be counted as a blessing.
What bitterness she feels cannot be indulged. Must not.
Beth tips her head and looks out around the edge of her bonnet. The late afternoon sun glares in her eyes, so that it's difficult to see the sky. At those moments when the sun does not shine directly into a person's eyes, one can actually see the whole scope of the sky, the wide, tumultuous expanse that stretches from horizon to horizon, huge beyond anything Beth has ever seen in her life, beyond what words can convey.
The sky here is so enormous, it's almost frightening.
It is no advantage, as far as Beth can tell, to see doom approaching from so vast a distance, when there is nowhere to flee that it cannot reach you.
Father is driving the wagon ten yards ahead of her. Beth has been walking since they stopped for their midday meal, preferring it to sitting up in the crowded, jolting wagon. Maggie walks beside Father, taking over driving the oxen whenever Father needs respite.
Father's steps are slow and deliberate. He's been so tired at the end of each day, worn right through by the rigours of handling the animals and the wagon. Beth worries for him. He is showing his age since Mama passed, and especially since they left Georgia.
It is early days as far as their long journey is concerned, only mid May, and she has been told that the journey ahead gets rougher as the plains give way to the high arid country, where good water and sufficient grass for the animals will be much scarcer than in the grasslands.
What is summer like in this flat place with so few trees or swimming holes, she wonders. How do people keep from fainting in the heat?
The Indians who live in these parts must have found some ways to tolerate it, although she has never learned a thing about what those ways might be.
Beth cannot imagine for herself what such methods might entail. All she can see when she turns her head is an ocean of grass that stretches out in every direction. The tireless wind makes waves in the green expanse, hissing and whistling like an unhappy spirit in some gloomy novel.
Their only guide is the deeply rutted trail bearing west, and the parallel course of the river to the north, of which they regularly lose sight.
Maggie leaves Father's side and walks ahead to the lead wagon, driven by Otis and Patricia, Beth’s late mother's cousin and his wife. Maggie talks with them a moment, then falls back, standing still and waiting until Beth catches up to her.
“We will soon stop for the night,” she says, falling into step beside Beth.
Considering the uniformity of the landscape that surrounds them, Beth cannot figure what it is that has made Otis determine that it is time to stop, except the forgone knowledge that twilight will soon spread over the land. The forward march of time is certainly indifferent to what little progress their party has made.
Beth does not mind one way or another. Walking and minding the animals, and the many chores required of her to feed them and her family, all keep her mind and body occupied.
It is the long, empty chasm of the nighttime that she fears.
Up ahead, Otis whistles sharply and waves his hat over his head, gesturing in the direction of the nearby bluffs that obscure the river.
“Come,” Maggie says. She reaches down and takes Beth's hand. “Father will need us both.”
They go to the wagon and walk alongside Father as the two teams leave the trail in the direction of a small hollow where it looks like some ancient branch of the river must once have flowed. The ground lifts up into grassy slopes on either side, resembling the dry banks of a creek, and the space there is wide enough for both wagons to be parked in its shelter.
It offers some respite from the wind, so it is a welcoming place indeed.
Maggie and Otis unhitch the oxen and take them and Peony and the horses down one by one to the river's edge to drink while Beth and Patricia begin searching for brush and buffalo chips with which to make a cookfire. In the shade of their wagon, leaning against one wheel, Father sits and rests in silence, his hat tipped down to cover his face.
There are many chores to do to make camp, but the evenings are long now. It’s mid-spring, and the sun sets with more leisure every day. The evening grows cool and quiet, too, but for the sounds of the animals grazing on the sweet spring grass that grows in such plenty in this place that it seems to Beth it could never run out.
In the lingering twilight, Otis reads to all of them from The Pilgrim’s Progress, as he has done every night of their journey, and many of the lonesome nights of grief that came before, back home.
By the time darkness sweeps across the plains, they are all bedded down for the night; Beth and Maggie in their bedrolls beneath the wagon, Otis and Patricia beneath theirs, and Father taking his turn on watch.
In spite of all the labours of the day, sleep does not come easy to Beth. Not even writing down the day's minor events and her impressions of them in her little clothbound diary puts her to sleep this night.
Beth stares up at the bottom of the wagon, at the strange shadows the moonlight makes as it filters through the spokes on each wagon wheel. Every time she closes her eyes, all she sees are flames against the sky, as though her memories have been flashed like a photograph onto the backs of her eyelids.
She doesn't want to think about it.
She doesn’t want to remember the sound of the barn’s beams cracking apart, the horses shrieking in fright, the shouts and jeers of their neighbours.
She doesn't want to remember the day Shawn and Jimmy went away. The muffled sounds of Mama sobbing in her bedroom.
She doesn’t want to think of their house turned into a convalescent home full of broken strangers, limbs torn off , eyes dark and hollow, the inescapable smells of quinine and chloroform and rotting flesh.
The day the telegrams came. The way the palms of Beth hands were stained gray from dying all their clothes black.
Nor the way their neighbours finally turned against them, for Father refused to call their cause righteous, even as their defeat became inevitable.
The typhoid fever that nearly claimed all their lives.
The sound the dirt made when Father shoveled it onto the lid of Mama’s coffin, deep in her grave beneath the hemlock tree.
The shard of mirror in her hand. The smell of her own blood.
Beth presses her face to the dusty cotton of her bedroll, swallowing her tears, desperate to quiet her memories.
Across the camp, Father sighs and walks away into the darkness to check on the animals. The moonlight is bright enough that Beth can see his figure clearly as he stands at the far edge of the camp, still and tall, his rifle in the crook of his arm. The metal shines in the moonlight, brilliant as lamplight.
Father has always abhorred guns, as long as Beth has been alive, but there he stands, holding one in his arms like it’s a precious, necessary thing.
After a time, he bows his head, then turns and walks back to the wagons. As he approaches theirs, Beth closes her eyes. She doesn’t want him to know she’s been watching him when she ought to have long since been asleep.
He comes and stands alongside the wagon. She hears him sigh again, and then he speaks, his voice so low she can barely distinguish his words.
“Why?”
She keeps her eyes shut, willing her face to go slack as if deep in sleep.
“Why have you brought us here, my Lord? For what purpose?”
Beth’s heart pounds, but she remains unmoving, and eventually, Father turns away and goes to wake Otis for his turn.
She keeps her eyes closed, desperate for sleep, desperate to forget the uncertainty in her father’s voice.
Never in all her life has she heard him sound so unconfident. So frightened.
So lost.
Sleep, when it finally comes, offers her no respite, no rest.
***
Beth wakes before dawn, before even the earliest songbirds begin to sing.
She sits beside Patricia in the darkness as they rekindle their small cookfire with what fuel remains from the previous night, just enough to boil water for coffee and bake a pan of biscuits.
Maggie takes a lantern and leads the animals down to the river, one by one, while Father and Otis sleep, and Beth takes the small wire-framed chicken coop down from the back of the wagon to allow their three hens to scratch the dirt.
The morning dawns faintly, through a cover of low, grey clouds, heavy with rain.
They eat together with scarce conversation, except for Father and Otis discussing the potential advantages and hazards of breaking camp and carrying on in the rain, or waiting it out here, in the brief shelter they have found.
When Patricia spots a few whitetail deer grazing up on a nearby bluff while she’s milking Peony, Otis is eager to take his rifle after them, and Father says they will stay the night and break camp the next morning.
It is a good decision, for not long after Otis leaves on foot after the deer, the sky cracks open and a heavy rain pours down.
Beth sits in the wagon with Maggie, crammed between sacks of cornmeal and coffee and buckets of tallow and axel grease, mending clothes, while Father stands out in the rain, watching the animals graze in silence.
Suddenly, Patricia’s loud shrieks split the quiet afternoon.
There's an indistinct commotion outside the wagon as Maggie and Beth clamber out, and by the time their shoes touch the damp ground, they are greeted by the astonishing sight of two strangers: a man standing in their camp, and in his arms, a pale, limp young boy, unconscious, his shirt blood-soaked. Nearby, beyond the wagons, is a saddled horse, its chestnut coat stained dark with sweat, shifting on its hooves as it eyes them all with nervous suspicion.
“Help him,” the man says in a gasping, frantic voice. “Your man said you’d help him!”
They stare at him.
“Please!” the man shouts hoarsely.
Father jolts as if he's been shocked and rolls up his sleeves.
“Beth, lay out a bed roll beside the wagon, there, where it's dry. Maggie, my bag?”
The girls jump at the command, Maggie climbing back up into the wagon to search as Beth grabs her own bedroll from the back of the wagon and lays it out as she's bid.
“Here,” Father says, a quick command, his voice regaining some long dormant quality of authority. “Lay him out here. What's his name?”
The strange man sets the boy carefully down on the thin pallet of blankets.
“Carl,” he says, his voice cracking. His blue eyes are tearful and wide with panic. “My boy, Carl.”
“Beth, his neck,” Father says, kneeling down in the dirt and opening his pack. “And your name?”
Beth tucks a rolled-up towel under the boy's neck, as gently as she can.
“Grimes,” the man says. “I'm Rick Grimes.”
“Hershel Greene,” Father says. “I'm going to do everything I can for your boy, but I need you to step back, now, and just give us room to work.”
The man steps away and Maggie replaces him, touching Beth’s arm with her hand.
“Go on,” she says. “I’ll assist Father.”
It’s a dismissal, one that stings, but Beth knows her feelings are a small matter beside the life of this boy and what is likeliest to save it. She nods and stands, turning around to find the man, Grimes, several feet away, watching Father, his blood-stained hands hanging at his sides.
“We have coffee,” Beth says, gesturing to the spot in the dirt where they’d built their cookfire and later sat the tin coffee pot to keep its contents warm. “Would you like a cup?”
He doesn’t reply, still staring at his son.
“Mr. Grimes?”
The sound of his own name must stir him, for he looks at her, his eyes meeting hers, and then shakes his head.
“My wife,” he mutters, his voice a dry rasp. “My wife—she doesn’t know.”
Beth blinks, unsure what response she might give.
“I—I don’t—”
“Rick!”
Mr. Grimes turns around, and Beth peers around him at the sound of another voice, and she sees Otis, accompanied by another stranger, running up to the camp.
“Otis!” Patricia exclaims, coming to stand at Beth's side.
The stranger runs to Mr. Grimes.
“Carl—”
“I told you, we’ve got a doctor,” Otis says, gasping as he tries to catch his breath. “Your boy’s in good hands. Dr. Greene is a surgeon, and he’s treated soldiers with wounds like this many times.”
Beth looks at Otis askance. It’s true that Father treated soldiers’ wounds, but never fresh off the battlefield. Their home had been turned into a convalescent hospital well away from the battles, and it was certainly never a field hospital.
“You’d better pray he’s the best damn surgeon west of the Mississippi, or else it’s gonna be you bleedin’ out from a bullet,” the newer of the two men snaps at Otis.
This man's demeanour reminds Beth of an agitated guard dog.
“What happened?” Patricia asks, looking back and forth between the men.
“I went after them deer we saw,” Otis says, his voice thick with remorse. He shakes his head. “I shot the poor child. His little brown coat—he was in the brush—I thought—”
“Oh, Otis,” Patricia murmurs.
“It don’t matter what you thought,” the other man says. “If that boy don’t make it, so help me—”
Beth glances over at Mr. Grimes. The man’s eyes haven’t strayed from his son except to blink back his tears.
“Your wife,” she says to Mr. Grimes. “You mentioned your wife?”
Mr. Grimes turns to face her. He swipes his cheeks with the backs of his bloodied hands, leaving smudges of blood on his stubbled cheeks despite his efforts. He nods.
“My wife is with our party, back some miles,” he says, in a shaking voice. “We went ahead scouting for the river. The Platte River. We have been waylaid on our journey. Carl… I should have left him with his mother, but he wanted to come along.”
“I’m sure the error does not lie with you,” Beth says, as gently as she can. Mr. Grimes looks at her, comprehension breaking through his terror, so that it seems to Beth he notices for the first time that she is standing there speaking to him at all.
“That's mighty kind,” he says hoarsely.
The other man comes to Mr. Grimes’s side and grabs his shoulder, bending his head to talk to him in an intimate way that speaks of a long connection between the two men.
“I’ll go get her,” the other man says, louder. “We’ll go get her, tell the others, bring her here. All right?”
Mr. Grimes nods.
The other man turns and points an accusing finger at Otis.
“You. You’re comin’ with me. Let’s go.”
“What do you mean?” Patricia asks, her hands fluttering at her waist. “Where do you intend to go?”
“It's all right, my dear,” Otis says, placating her. “Do not fray your nerves more than you must. It's the least I can do, to bring the boy his mother.”
Patricia shakes her head in dismay but says nothing more, and Beth reaches out to take her hand.
They watch, helpless, as Otis tacks Jenny up and the other man mounts Mr. Grimes’s horse. Then they are away, heading east back down the trail and disappearing almost as abruptly as they arrived.
“There's water,” Beth says, in the strange silence that follows.
Mr. Grimes looks at her like he didn't half hear what she said.
“For your animals. When your party finds us. There's water just over that bluff.”
“The Platte,” he says, nodding. “Knew we'd meet it eventually.”
“That's right.”
There seems to be nothing more to say, then, and so they both fall silent, and stand there in the cool, grey morning, watching her father try to save this child's life.
***
The boy survives.
The bullet went clean through his side, and did not puncture any organs. Once Father staunches the bleeding, the boy is able to rest, with his father close by.
In the meantime, Otis and the other man—Mr. Walsh, Beth has learned—had gone and fetched Mrs. Grimes, the boy’s mother, and brought her to their camp.
When Mr. Walsh helps her down from the horse, Beth is shocked to see that the woman is great with child.
Maggie and Patricia take her to Carl, where they have cleared a space in one of the wagons for him to rest, with his father and Beth's own keeping close watch.
In the tumult, Beth watches as Mr. Walsh turns away from his friends and returns to Otis, in whose face he points an angry finger as he speaks to him, too low for Beth to hear, though she can see clearly the miserable expression on Otis's face.
It is a terrible thing, what has happened to the Grimes boy, but accidents happen often when loaded weapons are in hand. Surely Mr. Walsh will see that Otis never intended to hurt anyone, least of all a child.
But Mr. Walsh's stormy face shows only a kind of rage that Beth has only ever seen once in her life—on the night their neighbours burned down their barn.
“We're ridin’ back to lead the others in,” Mr. Walsh announces.
Beth glances over at Father and Mr. Grimes and the three women, all of them huddled around young Carl. None of them seem to notice what Mr. Walsh has said.
“The others?” Beth inquires.
“The rest of their train,” Otis explains. He shakes his head. “Don't worry yourself none, dear Beth. They're fine people. Emigrants bound for Oregon and California, same as us. We'll have them here before you know it.”
Otis bids Patricia a brief farewell, and then Mr. Walsh gestures at him. They turn away to mount their horses once again and depart without another word.
Beth watches them go, unease turning her stomach.
When their figures have disappeared beyond the crest of the bluff, Beth turns away to find Maggie approaching, her expression grave.
“It is fortunate indeed that Father is so capable and experienced with wounds such as these,” Maggie says quietly. “Who knows what might have become of that poor boy if Mr. Grimes hadn’t found us.”
“Well, if they hadn’t chanced upon us at all, the boy wouldn’t have been shot in the first place,” Beth replies. “If we hadn’t left our home to come to this place—”
“All right,” Maggie says shortly, interrupting her. “I understand you and you needn’t continue. Do you not see how your argumentative ways wear on Father?”
Beth blinks, taken aback. For as long as she’s been alive, Maggie has been the quarrelsome, troublesome child of the family, while Beth was praised for her diligence and obedience. Not any longer, it seems. Not since the morning Beth broke the mirror on the washstand in her bedroom and took a shard of it to her own wrist.
Since then, Beth has been no one’s favourite.
The scar on her wrist itches, and she puts her hands behind her back, tucked against her skirt. She grabs hold of her scarred wrist with her other hand, wrapping her fingers around it, and she squeezes, digging the edges of her nails into her skin.
“How might I be useful?” Beth asks her sister, hoping to alter the course of their conversation. If Maggie notices the clumsiness in this attempt, she does not say.
“We will need fuel,” Maggie says, instead. “Especially if we will be camping here a day or two until the boy can be moved.”
“Let us go, then,” Beth says, before fetching one of the horse blankets from the wagon to use as a tote for whatever scant fuel they’re able to find.
They walk away from the campsite, down the river a short distance, towards a small stand of short, scrubby trees whose kind Beth does not know.
On the ground near the trees, they find some twigs and scraps of bark, and they spread out the blanket on the grass and begin heaping the kindling there.
Beth gathers a generous armful of dead, dried grasses and other brushy plants, some of them giving off a sweet and mushroomy scent as she holds them against her breast.
This is not a barren a place at all, she sees, if one has the patience to look closely.
They work in silence for some minutes, walking in opposite directions as they part the tangles of long grass with the toes of their shoes, their eyes clamped on the ground before them.
After a time, Maggie begins to hum, and then whistle a tune.
“It’s a happy thing that Father cannot hear you whistling, Maggie.”
Maggie laughs softly.
“Join me in singing, then, and save my soul from the wicked sin of whistling, sister!”
Beth chortles and shakes her head, then picks up the tune right where Maggie dropped it.
“When the corn is waving, Annie dear,
Oh, meet me by the style,
To hear thy gentle voice again,
And greet thy winning smile!”
Maggie laughs again and joins in, her voice rising alongside Beth’s, as they sing the words to one of the many songs Beth used to play for the family on the piano.
Beth tries not to notice how her fingers ache in longing for her dear piano's ivory keys, nor how her heart longs to hear Mama’s voice join with theirs, and Shawn’s, as well.
Instead she sings the familiar lyrics, and then those of another song, and another, as they gather twigs for their fire.
When they’ve combed the area around the trees and picked it clean of firewood, they each take up two corners of the horse blanket and carry the load back to camp.
There, they find Mr. and Mrs. Grimes crying tears of joy, as young Carl has finally opened his eyes.
“He will be all right,” Father says, some time later, once Beth has made a fresh pot of coffee for everyone and he stands beside her, sipping from his cup.
“It is fortunate that you have the knowledge to help in such a predicament,” Beth replies.
Father turns and looks at her.
“I do only what God allows,” he says. He smiles gently. “It is good to hear you sounding more like yourself than you have done lately.”
Beth nods, and fixes her expression into a smile, and tries to smother her memory of how anxious Father sounded last night as she laid awake beneath the wagon.
How lost.
Father returns to his patient, then, and the boy’s parents, to whom he brings tin cups of the hot coffee. Beth watches as Mrs. Grimes rests the side of her head against her husband’s shoulder, and he reaches down to take her hand in his.
Beth looks away.
***
They see the cloud of dust before they see the wagons.
The dust rises up over the bluffs to the east like mist over a mountain range, hanging in the midday air, thinning high overhead until it disappears on the breeze.
The first oxen team crests the bluff and slowly makes its way toward them, followed by another team and wagon, and another, and people walking alongside.
Many people. Two dozen wagons, Beth counts.
The drivers steer the wagons down into the sheltered area of the camp, stopping them once they have surrounded the Greenes’ wagons.
This many strangers would once have alarmed Beth, who hardly ever encountered a stranger until she went away to school. But after seeing what good neighbours will do, she finds there is hardly anything left to fear from strangers.
There is a commotion, then, but Beth is so busy watching these strangers and their wagons, that she doesn't notice right away that something is terribly wrong.
She doesn't notice until she hears Patricia's sobbing, and for one long, wild moment, she thinks, I must fetch Mama, she will know what to do for her dear cousin.
Except her mother remains as dead as she has been for many months.
Shaking herself, Beth rushes towards the sound of Patricia’s weeping, and on the far side of their wagons, she finds Maggie and Father holding Patricia up, and Mr. Grimes and Mr. Walsh standing apart from them. Mr. Grimes is holding his hat in his hands, while Mr. Walsh stands still, his hands on his hips.
“Accidents happen,” Mr. Walsh says, looking away from Patricia, over at the wagons and the small group of strangers gathered there, watching Patricia. “Especially out here.”
Father stares at Mr. Walsh, his expression troubled.
“Perhaps you would allow us some privacy so that we might provide comfort to Mrs. Baines.”
“Of course,” Mr. Grimes says, nodding. “Again, you have all our sympathies. Please let us know if we can offer any assistance.”
He and Mr. Walsh turn and walk away, off to meet up with their travel companions.
Father helps Patricia to her feet, slowly, as she sobs, then guides her back to the semi-privacy of their camp, sheltered by their wagons.
Beth goes to Maggie's side.
“What’s happened?”
“It's Otis,” Maggie replies, her voice cracking. “He's dead.”
Beth gapes at her.
“What? How can this be?”
“There was an accident,” Maggie replies. She swipes at the tears on her cheeks. “Mr. Walsh says Otis's horse spooked at a snake and threw him.”
“But Jenny is as gentle and steady as they come,” Beth says, astonished. “She is not like Nellie at all. She would never spook at anything so commonplace as a snake!”
“Well, she did. The fall stoved Otis’s head in,” Maggie says. She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “Oh, God. I cannot believe it!”
“Oh, Patricia. What will she do?”
Maggie lifts her shoulders and drops them, helpless.
“I do not know, Bethy. I fear I do not know a single thing for certain anymore.”
She turns then and goes off after Father and Patricia.
Beth stands alone in the long, tangled grass, the spring wind whipping her skirts about her.
Across the grassy plain, the strangers are making their camp.
She watches them for several minutes, her mind empty and her heart like a stone sitting heavy in her chest. Then, she turns around and follows the sound of her Father's voice and Patricia’s brokenhearted sobs.
***
They bury Otis beside a copse of scrubby trees, near the south bank of the Platte River in the Nebraska Territory, on the 15th of May.
That is what Beth writes in her diary, later, when the dreadful task is done.
Mr. Grimes and Mr. Walsh had accompanied Father to retrieve the body with the wagon, and Beth only catches a glimpse of Otis's large, familiar form hidden beneath a patched tent cloth, before the men ease the body into its freshly dug grave with as much care as is possible in the circumstances.
Beth and Maggie spend the late morning heaping stones atop the dirt, to keep wild animals from getting at the body.
There is no preacher to give a proper service, so Father does instead. Maggie and Beth stand on either side of Patricia, arms linked with hers, keeping her upright as the weight of her new grief nearly brings her to her knees.
Many of the two dozen and some odd strangers that comprise the wagon train join them, either for the opportunity to hear a service—inadequate as it may be—or to gawk at the mourning Greenes, Beth does not know.
As Father describes Otis's many Christian qualities, Beth looks over at the congregation of strangers who have joined them.
Mr. and Mrs. Grimes have left their son’s bedside to attend, and they stand side by side, Mr. Grimes holding his hat in his hand. Mr. Walsh, the brusque man who was with Otis when he was killed, stands behind them, hands on his hips, his hard face unreadable.
Near to them is a grey-haired woman who must once have been beautiful, and might still be, were her face not so careworn and anxious. Beside her, clinging to her skirts, is a young girl with pretty red hair in plaits, clutching a worn and stained little rag doll against her chest, despite being too grown for such a thing. The woman’s husband, if she has one, is nowhere to be seen.
Another woman stands near to them; she is fair and handsome, dressed in a fine black mourning dress, her golden hair pulled back into a tidy chignon knot at the nape of her neck. Her beauty is diminished somewhat by the somber expression on her face.
Their captain—a man about Father’s age, or perhaps a few years younger, Beth supposes, with grey hair and a beard—stands beside her. His face is intelligent and grave, but compassionate, and Beth can see right away why people would follow him even into this wilderness.
Several other men have come, also, though Beth can see that most of the young men and boys have stayed behind, keeping watch over the train's livestock.
One of the men standing close to Mr. and Mrs. Grimes is peculiar indeed, and Beth finds it hard not to stare at him. He is a young man, no older than Maggie, she guesses, with black hair that shines like polished iron and smooth skin like an unmarked sheet of parchment. He has warm brown eyes shaped unlike any Beth has ever seen; there is something thoughtful and kind about his eyes, even on this sober occasion. She wonders what sort of person he is, and how he came to be in this place. He is not dressed any differently than the other men; he wears a blue shirt and brown trousers and suspenders, and holds his wide-brimmed brown hat in his hands. When Mrs. Grimes turns her head to look at him, he offers her a reserved smile that nonetheless sends warmth pouring across his expression like a sunrise.
Beth focuses on Father’s voice.
“—neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God —”
Beth swallows, her throat tight, and lets her eyes wander once more to the strangers.
It is only when her gaze lands on one of the men that she becomes aware that she is not the only one whose attention has strayed from the matter at hand. Just as she is examining these people, so too is she being examined.
The man is watching her with narrow blue eyes.
The instant their gazes meet, he looks away, back at the pile of stones.
Beth doesn't look away. She should be paying attention to Father’s words, but she doesn't. Instead, she stares at the stranger.
He stands apart from the rest of his party, alone, his arms crossed, one hand tucked up nearly into his armpit, the other holding his hat at his side. His brown hair is somewhat shorter than is fashionable, uncombed, with shaggy bits hanging down in front of his ears. He wears a plain shirt of undyed cotton with cloth suspenders and dark trousers that have been patched and mended many times.
He is not a handsome man. There is something in his straight, unsmiling mouth that is almost mean, but somehow, that word is not quite right. He appears mean the same way a stray dog will, like he must growl first and fiercest to avoid a kick. His expression is every bit as closed off as his stance, but there is a flush to his cheeks and his ears that does not match the mild weather of the day.
Perhaps he is hot-blooded.
A hand touches hers, and Beth turns her head to find Maggie looking at her, a scolding sort of pursed-lip expression on her face. She raises her eyebrows and looks pointedly at Father.
Her cheeks burning, Beth nods and returns her attention once again to where it ought to be fastened.
“—the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come—”
Maggie has always taken a high hand with Beth, but never more than now, with Mama gone, and when Beth has so recently proven herself to be a moral deficient.
As though Maggie is not herself curious about these people, Beth thinks. She fumes to herself at Maggie’s reproachfulness and remains silent.
When Father finishes speaking, everyone bows their heads and prays together in silence. Beth tries to open her ears to God's word, but in her mind, all she can hear is wind and silence.
She tries to keep her eyes closed, but she cannot seem to help her curiosity, and she barely opens one eye in order to squint at the strangers.
But the man who was staring at her has gone. The space where he stood is empty.
The prayer over and the service—such as it is—ended, the strangers turn and go in respectful silence, leaving the Greenes alone.
They stand there for some time, the silence disturbed only by the dauntless wind and Patricia’s low keens of grief that Beth knows she is trying hard to stifle.
After an amount of time whose length Beth cannot guess, they have begun to shiver in the wind, and Father nods his head and puts his hat back on. Maggie reaches down and takes Patricia’s hand in hers, and they walk back to their camp, with Beth behind.
Along the faint path they've trod into the thick tangles of grass and sedge, Beth notices that there are clumps of small, purple flowers with ribbony green foliage. She stops, crouching down to examine them. Each flower has three silky petals, forming perfect little cupped triangles of violet that flutter in the breeze.
Beth reaches out and picks three of the wee flowers, using a piece of grass like string to bind their stems together. She turns and takes the little posey back down the path and tucks it carefully among the rocks on Otis's grave.
“Goodbye, Otis,” she says softly, then turns away to follow her family back to camp.
That night, by the faint light of the campfire's dying embers, she sketches in her diary the flowers she saw, and the long tangles of grass all around, and the pile of jagged rocks they used to cover Otis’s grave.
They break camp the next morning in the inky starless darkness of early dawn, and leave Otis’s grave behind, there beside the unfamiliar trees, never to be visited again.
