Chapter Two
The next morning, Clay left before the breakfast bell.
The yard was gray at first light. Rain from the night before still clung to the fence rails and the ragged grass beyond the kitchen garden. His wagon stood on the road with its canvas cover pulled tight and his few belongings loaded beneath it.
He stood beside Nell with one hand on her neck.
Behind him, the orphanage rose dark and square against the paling sky. One window on the upper floor showed a weak yellow light. Somebody was awake. Maybe a child had heard the wagon wheels being greased. Maybe they were only cold.
Clay did not say goodbye.
He had said his goodbyes the night before. The younger children had clung to his sleeves. Franklin had stood in the office doorway the evening before and shaken Clay’s hand.
“Keep your head,” he had said.
Clay had looked at the man’s lined face and tried to find the one he remembered from years ago. He had not found him.
“I will,” Clay said.
Now he climbed onto the wagon seat, gathered the reins, and clicked his tongue.
Nell leaned into the harness. The wheels creaked. The orphanage began to fall behind him.
He passed the blacksmith’s shed, the closed dry-goods store, the little church with its white paint flaking from the boards.
A dog came out from beneath a porch and barked until the wagon turned past the last house.
Then there was only the road, damp and brown, leading north through low fields toward the trees.
He did not look back.
By midmorning, the sun had come out thinly, though clouds sat low in the west. Clay had gone perhaps six miles when Nell’s ears flicked backward.
Then, there was a scrape under the canvas. He stopped the wagon at once.
Nell turned her head, offended by the delay. Clay set the brake, took up his rifle, and stepped down. He stood still a moment beside the rear wheel. Another scrape came from inside.
Clay reached for the canvas flap.
“If you’re a thief,” he said, “you picked a poor wagon.”
He pulled back the flap.
Tucker lay curled between the blankets and the sack of beans, his knees tucked under his chin. He wore a coat that was too short at the wrists, and boots with one heel worn crooked. His dark hair stuck up on one side, as if he had slept against a wall. He looked up at Clay without shame.
“No,” Tucker said. “I ain’t a thief.”
“What are you doing in my wagon?”
“Going west.”
“No, you ain’t.”
“Yes, I am.”
Clay let the canvas fall shut and walked around the wagon once. He did this because he did not know what else to do. The road was empty in both directions.
When he came back, Tucker had crawled out and sat on the wagon bed with his feet dangling.
“You’ve been hiding since before daylight,” Clay said.
Tucker looked toward the road ahead. “You said you were going to California.”
“I am.”
“I want to go too.”
Clay rubbed his face. “Tucker.”
“I can work.”
“You’re a kid.”
“I can still work.”
“You can carry kindling. That’s about it.”
“I can carry more than kindling.”
“You can’t carry a sack of meal.”
“I could drag it.”
Clay almost smiled. “This isn’t a game. There are rivers out there. Bad water. Men who’ll take what you have and leave you in a ditch. There are storms.”
Tucker’s mouth tightened. “I know.”
Clay looked at him. The boy’s hands were tucked under his thighs against the cold. One knuckle was scabbed over from where he had fallen in the yard last week. His coat had been patched at both elbows with cloth that did not match.
Clay had seen boys Tucker’s age grow quiet at the orphanage. They stopped fighting over scraps. Stopped asking questions. They learned to keep out of Franklin’s way and to make themselves small when visitors came.
Tucker did not make himself small.
“You need to go back,” Clay said.
Tucker shook his head.
“If you say no again. I’ll turn this wagon around and take you.”
“Then I’ll just leave again. I’ll find you.”
“You might not get as far as the road next time.”
“I got this far, didn’t I?”
“That doesn’t make it wise.”
“Please.” Tucker looked down. “I don’t want to stay there.”
Clay knew that feeling. The place had been hard even when he was little, and it was only getting worse.
In winter, the dormitory windows rattled and let in drafts.
In summer, the water pump ran brown after rain.
There was never enough soap, never enough meat, never enough space for a boy to sit alone when he needed it.
Still, it had been a roof.
Clay put both hands on the wagon bed. “You’ll do what I tell you?”
Tucker lifted his head.
“If I say stay in the wagon, you stay in the wagon. If I say get down, you get down. You don’t wander off. You don’t touch my rifle. You don’t feed Nell anything unless I tell you to.”
Tucker nodded so hard his hair fell in his eyes.
“And you work.”
“I will.”
“You complain, I’ll leave you at the next decent town.”
“I won’t complain.”
“You will. You always complain.”
Tucker gave a small, uncertain grin.
Clay looked north. The clouds had thickened while they talked. A dark bank sat above the tree line, bruised looking and broad.
“All right,” he said. “Move those beans. You’re sitting on supper.”
Tucker’s grin widened.
Clay pointed at him. “Don’t make me regret it.”
At first, Tucker talked without pause. He asked how far California was, whether there were really mountains taller than clouds, whether Clay had ever shot a wolf, whether gold could be found lying loose in a creek, and whether Nell understood words.
“She understands some,” Clay said.
“Does she understand ‘Tucker?’”
Nell flicked one ear.
“There,” Tucker said. “She does.”
By noon, the wind pushed against the wagon canvas and carried the smell of wet earth from somewhere far off. Clay kept watching the sky.
The road had narrowed to two rutted tracks between stands of oak and hickory. The fields were gone. On either side, the woods pressed close, leafless branches scratching at one another overhead.
Tucker had finally gone quiet. He sat beside Clay on the wagon seat with his hands tucked under his arms. His boots did not reach the floorboards.
“Cold?” Clay asked.
“A little.”
“Blanket’s behind you.”
“I’m all right.”
Clay reached back, found the wool blanket, and put it around Tucker’s shoulders anyhow.
The first thunder came low and distant.
“That’s west of us,” Clay said.
A flash lit the clouds. Three breaths later, thunder rolled over the trees.
Clay urged Nell faster.
They went another mile before the rain started. It came in hard drops at first, darkening the road and spotting Nell’s hide. Then the sky opened all at once.
Tucker yelped and ducked beneath the blanket.
Clay bent forward, squinting into the rain. The road ahead had become a shining strip of mud. Water ran along the wagon ruts. Wind tugged at his hat.
“We need cover,” he said.
Tucker leaned close. “Where?”
“Looking.”
There was no house. No barn. Only woods and the road.
Then Clay saw a low shelf of rock on the far side of a rise with a shallow hollow beneath it. Not much, but the trees around it were thick, and the ground sloped away enough that water would not gather under the wagon.
He turned Nell off the road.
The wheels sank at once in soft ground. Nell pulled, shoulders straining. Clay jumped down into mud nearly to his ankles and took her by the bridle.
“Come on, girl. Just there.”
She laid her ears back but kept moving. The wagon lurched over roots and slid once before reaching the hollow.
Clay set the brake. “Tucker, stay inside.”
“I can help.”
“Just stay dry. Listen to me.”
Tucker made a face but disappeared beneath the canvas.
Clay worked quickly. He unharnessed Nell and led her beneath the lee of a broad oak, where the rock and lower branches took some of the wind.
He spread the oilcloth over her back and tied it down with a rope.
Then he gave her a little grain from the feed sack and filled a pan with water caught from the rain runoff.
Only after he had checked the wagon wheels and tightened the canvas ropes did he take out the tinderbox.
His hands were wet. The first spark died. The second caught in a twist of dry bark he had kept wrapped in cloth beneath the seat. He fed it shavings, then small twigs, then a few thicker sticks. Smoke curled under the rock shelf. The flame took hold.
Tucker slipped out of the wagon and crouched close beside it, blanket around his shoulders. His eyes were wide.
“You always carry dry wood?” he asked.
“Not wood. Bark. If I don’t carry it, we don’t get a fire when we need one.”
Tucker held his hands out to the heat.
Clay set a small pot near the flames and poured in water. He added a pinch of coffee grounds from a paper packet Mrs. Bell had slipped into his things. There was not enough for two proper cups, but warm water was better than none.
Outside, rain hammered the wagon roof. The woods moved in gray sheets beyond their shelter.
“Is this what it’ll be like all the way?” Tucker asked.
Clay cut two biscuits in half and gave Tucker the larger pieces. The boy took them without arguing. That worried Clay more than the questions had.
“You afraid?” Clay asked.
“No.”
Clay waited.
“A little,” Tucker said.
“That’s sensible.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“Sure, I am.”
Tucker looked at him as if Clay had said something foolish.
Clay drank from the tin cup. “Being afraid tells you to watch what you’re doing. Doesn’t mean you lie down and wait for trouble.”
The boy chewed this over.
Thunder cracked close enough to shake dust from the rock overhead. Tucker flinched. Clay did not mention it.
The storm worsened toward evening. Wind drove rain beneath the lower branches and turned the ground to black slurry. Clay tied another rope from the wagon axle to a tree root despite the wagon being sheltered enough. He did not like leaving things to chance.
When he came back, Tucker was standing at the rear of the wagon, searching among the supplies.
“What did I say?” Clay called over the rain.
Tucker turned. “I’m looking for the apples.”
“You can look after the storm.”
“I know where they are.” Tucker climbed into the wagon anyway. He knelt near the back, moving a blanket aside.
The lightning came down without warning.
For one instant the whole wood turned white.
The oak beyond the wagon exploded.
A sound tore through the rain, sharp and enormous. Clay saw the trunk split from halfway up, saw one side of it break away in a shower of bark and dead branches. The ground jumped beneath his boots.
Then darkness crashed back over everything.
Nell screamed.
Clay ran.
“Tucker!”
The wagon rocked. A branch had struck the rear corner of the canvas frame, tearing one side loose. Smoke drifted through the rain. Clay climbed into the wagon and found Tucker on his knees among the blankets, both hands clapped over his ears.
“Tucker.”
The boy did not look up.
Clay caught him by the shoulders. “Tucker.”
Nothing.
Tucker looked at Clay then, but his face had gone pale. His mouth moved. Clay could not hear what he said over the ringing in his own head.
“What?” Clay asked.
Tucker’s eyes filled. He pointed at his ears. Then he shook his head hard.
Clay understood.
The tree lay split apart twenty feet from the wagon, one half burning weakly where the rain could not quite put it out. The smell of scorched wood lay thick in the air.
Clay took Tucker’s hands away from his ears. There was no blood. He checked behind them, checked the boy’s head, his neck, and his arms.
“Tucker,” he said, loud and clear. “Can you hear me?”
Tucker watched his mouth. His lower lip trembled.
Clay swallowed.
He pulled Tucker against him, one hand over the back of the boy’s head. Tucker held onto his coat with both fists.
Outside, Nell pulled at her rope again.
Clay stayed where he was until Tucker’s grip loosened.
Then he set him by the fire and went to the mare.
By God’s mercy, the oak had missed the wagon and Nell. Clay checked her legs, her flanks, and the harness marks at her shoulders. She trembled but stood sound.
“You’re all right,” he told her.
When he returned to the shelter, Tucker was sitting with his back against the rock.
Clay pointed to the pot. “Warm water.”
Tucker nodded.
Clay poured some into a cup and held it out. The boy took it. His hands shook enough that Clay steadied the bottom until he had a better grip.
The rain eased after dark. It didn’t stop, but became a steady drip through the branches. The broken oak gave off a thin line of smoke. Clay fed the fire and moved their blankets farther from the torn side of the wagon.
Tucker lay down at last, curled beneath both blankets. He kept one hand over an ear.
Clay sat beside him with his rifle across his knees.
The road was somewhere beyond the trees. California was farther still. He had thought of it as open country, clear rivers, and mountains. He had not thought much about sleeping under rock shelves with a frightened boy who could no longer hear him.
That was foolishness.
Clay had told Tucker he could come. That made the boy his responsibility now for every mile and choice ahead. Tucker’s eyes opened.
Clay leaned toward him and spoke slowly, though he knew the boy could not hear. “You sleep.”
Tucker reached out from beneath the blanket.
Clay took his hand.
The boy’s fingers closed around two of Clay’s.