Walk on Earth a Stranger (30 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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A
he hot sun beats down on me. It's at least a hundred degrees. There's no shade, no cool breeze, no escape. Sweat wicks off my skin faster than it forms, leaving everything caked with salt. My lips are cracked, my tongue swollen and dry. The sun is so bright it bleaches the color out of everything. I've never felt this hot, not even standing over Mama's stove in my winter dress with the fire fully stoked.

All I can think about is that cold day last January when Jefferson stood behind the schoolhouse, surrounded by melting snow, holding a copy of the paper announcing gold in California.

The article made it seem like we were called to some great national purpose, a destiny so manifest that it was inevitable we should pack up and cross the continent. The discussion of travel routes, by sea and land, made us feel a part of some greater strategy. The instructions, the lists of supplies—they all felt like foolproof plans that would protect us and deliver
us safely.

But the strategy does not matter, and our plans will not protect us.

In the end, it's nothing complicated, or grand, or beautiful. It's no more than the simple act of aiming in a direction and putting one aching foot in front of another across a baking desert until we either reach our destination or falter and quit.

Or die. We've lost too many people already. I look around at the families nearby, all trudging along with the same heat-glazed determination—the Hoffmans, the Joyners, the college men. My heart would break if we lost even one more soul.

“Another ox down!” comes the cry ahead of me.

This time it's the bachelors' wagon. Jefferson, Therese, and I run to help. Jeff reaches the exhausted animal first and unyokes it. The ox staggers free, barely able to stay on its feet.

Jefferson pulls down the bandana that protects his mouth and nose from the relentless dust. “What do we do with it?” he asks Jasper. “Do you want me to put it on a lead?”

“No,” he says. “Let it follow the wagons if it can. If it can't, then good luck to it.”

Jefferson and Jasper stare at each other a moment. Jefferson's face has a hardness to it, like that of a man twice his age. At last, he says, “I'm going to butcher it.”

Jasper nods once and turns away.

“Jeff, no!” Therese says, putting a hand on his arm. It's the closest they've been since Mr. Hoffman forbade them to
speak to each other. “I can't eat one of the oxen. I just can't.”

The look he turns on her is fierce. “You can and you will, if it comes to that. But it's not for us. Not yet.”

“Then . . .”

“Nugget and Coney,” I explain. “We have no water to spare. There's no fresh game. If we keep sneaking pieces of flapjack to them, letting them drink from our own canteens, Dilley will put them down.”

“Oh,” she says, her face blanching. It's not the meat Jefferson wants to save so much as the blood. She stares at the poor creature. Its ribs are stark and sharp, its sides heaving. “Just make it quick.”

“Of course.” He pulls his knife from his belt.

We resume our plodding journey. Jefferson stands beside the ox, waiting for us to get out of sight before doing the deed.

All the animals are struggling. For the last three hundred miles, the ground has been hard and rocky, wearing out joints and splitting hooves. Jefferson and I walk all the time now to spare our horses. He might be sneaking his water rations to the dogs, but most of mine are going to Peony. I won't lose her, no matter what.

Dust coats our trail, sometimes gravelly and coarse, sometimes fine as flour. We wear kerchiefs over our noses, but I still chew grit all day. My eyes crust over every night, and I wake each morning to find them blurry and swollen. The back of my throat is a patch of desert. My lungs burn. Andy started coughing a few days ago and hasn't stopped. And all
day long the sun pours fire on our heads.

The occasional grass is rough and sparse, and the mules ahead of us eat the best of it. Whenever I find a missed clump, I yank it up for Peony or the sorrel mare. We burn sagebrush for fuel, but it turns to ash too fast for proper cooking. My belly aches from eating little more than prickly pear.

Our trail follows the lazy Humboldt River, which was lovely and clear at first, but the water has slowed and thickened until it's little more than a marsh, and too brackish to drink. We soak our kerchiefs in it to keep out more dust, but that's all it's good for. The poor oxen drink it until they fall down sick. Soon enough, we'll start drinking it too.

“Wagon train ahead,” calls Major Craven from the bench. I crane my neck. The Missouri wagons are taking a short break, circled near a wide puddle. Men and animals alike stand knee-deep in the water to cool off. With a start, I realize we've come to the end of the river.

“This godforsaken trickle of a river just ends,” Therese says. “It turns into
nothing
.”

“Know what we'll find when we get there?” Craven says.

“All the good grass eaten and all the best water drunk or gone?” she says.

“Besides that.”

“I don't know.”

“We'll find them packing up to leave without us,” he says.

Therese mutters a few words under her breath that I'm pretty sure she learned from Frank Dilley.

As our weary group of five wagons—two for the Hoffmans,
one for Reverend Lowrey, one for the college men, and one for the Joyners—rolls into the camp, Dilley steps up onto an abandoned trunk to address everyone.

“Fifteen minutes until we roll out again,” he calls out.

“Fifteen minutes?” I can't believe my ears. “We need longer than that.”

“We can't afford to wait. That's fifty-four miles of waterless desert ahead of us. We're going to go straight through, day and night, until we reach the other side.”

“Which is why we need more than fifteen minutes,” I insist.

“Don't get your skirts in a twist, Georgia. Just take it or leave it. We've cut most of the grass already, but there's a bit left on the other side of the sink.”

I lead Peony through the water, muttering curse words that would make my mama ashamed. Peony snorts and kicks up her knees to splash water onto her baking hide. On the other side, we find an abandoned wagon, its wood splintering from the heat. Its shade has allowed a large clump of grass to thrive unnoticed. I let Peony free to graze.

Major Craven gestures for everyone to gather round, so I hurry back to the wagons. “We need to figure out what to do next,” he says. Jefferson and the dogs catch up just then. Nugget and Coney are bouncing with their recent meal, tails wagging and ears pricked.

“Our oxen are weak,” Mr. Hoffman says gravely. “We're going to put everything in one wagon, leave the other behind. They should be able to pull us through. Maybe we'll have enough to start over, once we get to California.”

The Hoffmans definitely have enough to start over if the gold I've sensed is any indication.

“That's smart,” Major Craven says. He looks at the college men, and they look at me. They've got something planned.

“Therese took the boys downstream to cut and bundle any grass they find,” Mr. Hoffman says. “But we don't mean to take it all. We'll share.”

We nod in thanks. It saves time to have his children do the work.

Reverend Lowrey says, “This is the last water we'll see for days. The Missouri men have fires already going. We should mix dough now, cook all our flour into bread, so we can feed it to the animals while we cross.”

It's the most sensible thing I've ever heard him say. “Can we do it in fifteen minutes?” I ask.

“I've got baking soda left—I can make quick bread if I get started now,” he says.

“That's a good plan,” Jasper says.

The reverend runs off to his wagon.

“I'll go mix up whatever we have left,” Henry says. “It's not a lot.”

“What about the Widow Joyner?” the Major asks.

I shake my head. He knows the answer. “She's as big as a house that's about to give birth to a woodshed,” I say. “The road's been shaking her hard for days. She's in no shape to cook.”

“I know that,” the Major says. “What I'm asking is, her being a particular sort of lady, do you think she'll mind if I
interrupt her to get the flour out of the wagon?”

How should I know? I say, “I'm sure she'll understand.”

He looks unconvinced. Major Craven has been considerate and respectful around Mrs. Joyner, but I've no doubt that dealing with a sharp-tongued widow is a lot harder than he expected.

“I'll help carry the barrel,” Tom says.

They head off together.

Jefferson says, “I'll go find . . . something to burn, I guess.”

“I'll help you,” I say, but Jasper grabs my arm before I can turn away.

“How are your oxen?” His voice is urgent.

“Down to six. Two are weak. All in all, holding up better than I expected. Mr. Joyner had a good eye for animals, and he bought the hardiest stock he could find.”

“We've got four left, and they're almost played out.”

I nod. He's not telling me anything I haven't seen.

“You've got the strongest oxen,” he says. “We've got the lighter wagon. Our chances are better for getting across the desert in one shot if we combine them. Ten animals, one light wagon.”

He's right. Except . . . “But the widow Joyner, she's going to come down sick anytime now.”

“She can have the back of the wagon when she needs it. We'll just have to make space. Major Craven says he can walk with his crutch. The rest of us are already walking.”

“Why are you asking
me
about this?” I say.

“Because you can talk to her, woman to woman, and
explain things.”

I frown. Seems to me that men only say things like this when they want to get out of doing something unpleasant. “I'll tell her the plan, but it's up to her. I won't make her do anything she doesn't want to do.”

“Fair enough,” Jasper says.

I circle around to the rear of Widow Joyner's wagon and knock on the board like I'm calling at a fancy house.

“Yes” comes her voice.

I pull open the flap. She sits propped up on her mattress, hands wrapped around her belly as if to protect it. Her blonde bun is skewed, and her hair is sweat-plastered to her head. Andy and Olive huddle at her feet, looking frightened but too listless from the heat to do anything about it.

“Jasper wants to combine our efforts to cross the desert. Our oxen, his wagon,” I say. “I told him I can't make any promises, but—”

“Do it,” Widow Joyner says. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “The Major and Tom came by for our baking supplies. They hinted at the plan. It makes sense.”

“All right. We're going to make the shift quickly.”

“Speed is of the essence,” she says with a wan smile.

“We'll be back to move you shortly.” It's odd; Mrs. Lowrey was walking alongside her wagon right up until the day she died in childbirth. Widow Joyner hasn't walked in a week.

I hop down from the back of the wagon, turn around, and jump five feet in the air—Jefferson is standing right in front of me.

“I thought you were looking for something to burn.”

“And I found it. Right here. This wood's so dry it ought to burn hot and clean.”

I can't argue with that. “Let's get the oxen into the water before we move them to the other wagon.”

All we do is unyoke them, and they rush into the water of their own accord. Once they taste it, they low pitifully enough to break your heart into a thousand pieces, but they drink up.

Therese and her little brothers return carrying three large bundles of cut grass. “Vati says these are for your animals.” She and Jefferson exchange a furtive look. The three of us walk together every single day, and she and Jefferson still talk to each other casually, though they're careful not to get too close. So far, her father hasn't made a fuss.

“Thank you,” I say. “We'll put them in the wagon.”

“No, we can load it.” She leads her brothers off, casting another longing glance Jefferson's way. I don't blame her; he's become quite a sight. His thick black hair curls slightly at the nape, framing a strong jaw—inherited from his Irish da—which balances his sharp cheekbones perfectly. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing muscled forearms burnished dark with sunshine.

Therese's eyes catch mine.

“I'm ready,” someone says.

I turn around. Widow Joyner stands in the back of her wagon, ready to topple over the edge. The children's heads pop up behind her like prairie dogs.

I hurry over to help. So does Henry Meek. Together, we carry her to their wagon and raise her gently inside. Olive clambers over the backboard to be with her mother. Andy reaches up with his arms, so I lift him and give him a quick snug before putting him beside his sister.

“What do you want from the wagon?” I ask Mrs. Joyner.

“Food and water,” she says. “And the small trunk—the one with my initials. Nothing else.”

I gather all the supplies, but I grab her red-checked tablecloth too. I waste a precious moment gazing at the dining table, silently saying good-bye.

Cracks splinter the air as Jefferson attacks the Joyners' wagon with an ax. The Major feeds the pieces into his fire to bake his bread. I run over to take one last reading from Mr. Joyner's road-o-meter.

“Sixteen hundred, eighty-seven,” I say.

“What's that?” asks Jefferson.

“The number of miles this wagon has traveled since Independence.”

“Is that all? I was worried it might be a lot.”