Chapter Eighteen
By midday, the clouds had broken apart. Sun lay across the meadow in pale strips. Wet grass steamed where it caught the light.
They had stopped beside a shallow creek lined with willow and alder. The animals drank first. Then the women filled kettles and rinsed cloths in the current. Clay had spent the better part of an hour helping a man called Malcolm—who had recently joined the trail—repair a cracked wagon rail.
When the work was done, nobody moved on.
They had eaten well for once. A small deer, two rabbits, beans stretched with onions, biscuits baked in a covered iron pot. Even Charlotte had taken half a biscuit, though she kept it in her lap awhile before eating it.
Clay sat on an overturned bucket near the fire, whittling a curl from a piece of willow. Tucker had taken possession of the other end of the bucket. He swung his boots above the ground and watched Clay’s knife.
The rest of their party had gathered loosely around the fire. Violet sat with Brady tucked against her side, his hair still wet from the creek despite the hard scrubbing she had given him. Charlotte rested against a wheel, her hands folded over the dark skirt of her dress.
A few men Clay did not know well had come over too. They were the ones who had stayed when Everett led the other wagons away. They had been quiet since then. It made Clay wonder what they were holding back, but he could not blame them for being tired.
Harlan, who sat nearby, held out his tin cup.
“Tell us how you got that scar on your chin, McCall.”
Clay touched his chin. The scar was small and pale, nearly hidden where his jaw began. “Which story do you want?”
“The true one.”
“That narrows it down too far.”
A few people smiled.
Harlan leaned back on one elbow. “You’re always tellin’ stories. You must have lived a lot to have done all that by your young age, boy.”
“Oh, some of it happened.” Clay set the willow stick across his knee. “That scar came from a mule.”
Tucker frowned. “You said it was a bear.”
“I said it could’ve been a bear.”
“You said it had yellow eyes and teeth big as corn knives.”
“Might’ve been a very small bear.”
Brady gave a sharp laugh. Violet was smiling too.
Clay looked at Tucker. “You weren’t there.”
“I heard you tell Miss Louisa.”
“Miss Louisa was easily frightened. She’d have been disappointed if I told her a mule kicked a fence rail into my face.”
Samuel said, “A fence rail did it?”
Clay pointed his knife at him. “That part is true.”
“Thought so.”
The men laughed more openly then. It was a strange thing, how laughter changed a camp.
A little while before, they had all seemed arranged around their losses, each person sitting inside his own.
Now shoulders eased. Someone passed a bottle around.
Clay took it when it reached him, smelled whiskey, and handed it on.
Harlan asked, “You grow up on a farm?”
“Orphanage.”
Clay picked up the willow again. He shaved a strip from it with the edge of his knife. “We had a garden. Called it a garden, anyhow. Mostly we grew rocks. The little ones were made to pick them out every spring. Come summer, the same rocks came back. Meanest crop in Mississippi.”
Charlotte smiled.
“There was a cook there,” Clay went on. “She made stew every Wednesday. She said it was mutton. We never saw a sheep once in all my years.”
“What was it?” Brady asked.
Clay glanced at Violet.
She sighed. “Go on. He’ll hear worse.”
“Rat, maybe,” Clay said solemnly.
Brady’s eyes went round.
Tucker shook his head at once. “No, it wasn’t.”
“You know that for certain?”
“It was old boots.”
That brought a fuller laugh. Even Charlotte gave a soft one, then looked down as if surprised to find it had come from her.
Clay leaned toward Tucker. “Now, that’s a tale without any proof.”
Samuel had been watching Clay with an unreadable look. He reached for a twig and fed it into the coals. “How you come by that knife?”
Clay looked at the handle that had worn smooth where his palm had held it for years. Jesse had given it to him when Clay was twelve, just before he left Natchez in a blue uniform that fit badly across his shoulders. Clay had thought Jesse would be back before winter.
He closed the blade.
“Friend of mine gave it to me,” he said. “Taught me how not to ruin a hide with it. Still working on that.”
Samuel nodded once.
Harlan told of losing a loaded flour sack in a river crossing and diving after it until his wife dragged him out by the hair.
Malcolm spoke of a tobacco field outside Vicksburg where he had worked as a boy, and of the first time his wife Lydia had laughed at him for putting on airs in borrowed Sunday shoes.
“I did not laugh,” Lydia said.
“You did.”
“I smiled.” She rubbed her belly, which was large with child. Soon there would be another mouth to feed.
“You laughed enough for me to hear it across the churchyard.”
“That was because you stepped in mud.”
“I stepped in mud because I was looking at you.”
Lydia looked down, though her smile remained.
Clay saw Sarah sitting near the creek with Violet. She had been listening from the beginning, though she pretended not to. Her hair was pinned up poorly with loose wisps undone by the wind. She wore one of the plain dresses Violet had helped mend.
When Clay caught her looking, she bent over the hem of a child’s shirt in her lap.
Violet said something that Clay could not hear. Sarah replied, and Violet’s face brightened with amusement. Sarah noticed Clay watching them again. Her eyes narrowed.
Clay raised both hands, as if he had been accused of something.
The afternoon pulled long and easy. The sun dried the wagon covers.
The fire burned lower. Samuel rose, stretched his back, and told the men they would leave at first light. Watches would be doubled. Nobody was to wander beyond the creek alone after dark.
Clay helped make the assignments. Harlan took first watch with Malcolm. Clay would take the second with Samuel. The arrangement settled the camp into movement again. People carried pots to the creek. Children were sent to gather their bedding. The animals were checked and tethered close.
By dusk, the meadow had gone gray.
Clay ducked beneath the canvas of his wagon and found Sarah kneeling beside the cookfire they had made in a shallow pit near the rear wheel. A skillet sat over the coals. She was scraping the last of the beans from a pot into it with a spoon.
“You saving that for me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good. I was afraid I’d have to eat it.”
She did not look up. “You have eaten twice already.”
“I’m a growing boy.”
“You’re nineteen.”
“Exactly. Prime growing years.”
Sarah stirred the beans. “You ought to be ashamed.”
“I am, some days.”
She made a small sound through her nose. It was not quite a laugh.
Clay sat on the wagon step, being careful to leave room between them. Beyond the canvas, he could hear the others settling down. A baby cried once, then stopped. Somebody coughed hard near Charlotte’s wagon.
Sarah broke a biscuit in half and handed him one piece without looking at him.
Clay took it. “Thought you said no.”
“I changed my mind.”
“That’s generous.”
“Don’t make much of it.”
“I wouldn’t dare, Sarah.”
They ate in silence for a minute. The beans had cooled and grown thick. Clay did not care. He had known worse meals.
Sarah held her biscuit in both hands. “You had them laughing.”
“That was the intention.”
“Some of these people look to you more than Harlan. You make a joke of everything.”
“Not everything.”
“No. Only matters that ought to be taken seriously.”
Clay looked at her then. Her face was turned toward the fire. Light moved across her cheek and caught in her eyes. She looked tired. There was a bruise fading along the side of her wrist, yellow at the edges now. He had noticed it before. He had not asked about it.
“I know things are serious,” he said.
She glanced at him.
“I just don’t see why that means we’ve got to sit around looking like we swallowed nails.”
Her mouth tightened, but it did not have much force behind it. “That is a very foolish thing to say.”
“Likely.”
“Everett is somewhere on this road with men who mean us harm.”
“I know.”
“And you sit by a fire telling children how you were cooked rats for supper?”
“Old boots.”
Sarah looked away, though he saw the corner of her mouth shift.
Clay bit the biscuit to keep from grinning too wide. “I reckon it’s fair to say she did not cook rats. Never saw one in the pot.”
“Clay.”
“What?”
“Stop.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
Sarah set her food down and turned on him. “I am not smiling.”
“All right.”
Her lips pressed together. Her eyes shone with annoyance, but a smile broke through in spite of her.
Clay laughed once, quietly.
She gave him a look sharp enough to cut leather, then picked up the spoon and pointed it at him. “You’re a silly boy, you know that?”
“I’ve been told I’m too serious.”
“By whom?”
“Tucker. Mostly. He’s got good judgment.”
At that, Sarah laughed. It came out before she could stop it. She covered her mouth at once, as though it was improper.
Clay did not say anything.
The laugh left her slowly. Her hand lowered. For a few seconds she looked less guarded than she usually allowed herself to look.
Then she caught him staring.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“That is not nothing.”
Clay looked down at the biscuit in his hand. “You ought to laugh more.”
Her expression changed. It wasn’t closed off exactly, but careful again.
“I don’t see much cause for it.”
“There’s cause enough when it comes.”
She studied him. “Do you truly believe that?”
“What?”
“That things will come right if you wait long enough.”
Clay rubbed a crumb from his thumb. “No. Not by waiting.”
The campfire popped. Somewhere nearby, a horse snorted and shifted its hooves.
He went on. “But I think God gives a body what he needs to keep going. Sometimes it’s a dry place in a storm. Sometimes it’s a person who knows how to make tea. Sometimes it’s a bad joke about old boots.”
“You talk like an old preacher,” she said.
“That’s unkind.”
“You talk more than any preacher I’ve heard.”
“You might have me there.”
She shook her head. Yet she moved the skillet closer to him.
Outside the wagon, Tucker called, “Clay?”
“What is it?”
“I can’t find my blanket.”
“It’s under your arm.”
A pause followed. Then Tucker said, “Oh.”
Sarah’s shoulders shook once.
Clay stood, taking the skillet off the fire before it burned. “That boy’s going to run a bank one day.”
“He’ll lose every dollar.”
“No. He’ll keep it under his arm.”
Sarah rose too. She reached for the pot at the same time Clay did. Their hands touched over the iron handle.
Her fingers were warm. She pulled back at once.
Clay lifted the pot before it could tip. “Sorry.”
“You did that on purpose.”
“I surely did not.”
“You’re always doing something on purpose.”
“That is a terrible opinion to have of your husband.”
Sarah’s eyes flashed. “You are not my husband.”
“I am going to be, according to half the people in this camp.”
“Then half the people in this camp are fools.”
Clay set the pot aside. “I won’t argue with that.”
She folded her arms, trying to look angry, but the corner of her mouth gave way again.
He stepped down from the wagon. “Get some sleep, Sarah. You’ve got enough work waiting for you tomorrow.”
“So do you.”
“I’ve got watch first.”
“Second.”
“Second, then.”
She stood beneath the canvas with one hand resting on the wagon frame. “Clay.”
He turned.
Her eyes went to the ground. “Thank you. For today.”
“For what?”
“For making them laugh. You’ve convinced me.”
The answer sat between them, small and plain.
Clay nodded. “You’re welcome.”
He walked away before she could say anything else. Behind him, he heard Sarah scrape the last of the ashes over the coals and settle the pot beneath the wagon.
The night was cold enough that breath showed pale in the dark. Clay found Tucker asleep with his blanket twisted around his legs and Brady curled nearby, both boys crowded close to the warmth of the dying fire.
He covered Tucker properly, then stood a moment looking across the camp.
Sarah’s shape moved behind the wagon canvas. Samuel was already checking the rifle he would carry on watch.
There were too many people now. Too many reasons for a wrong choice to cost more than Clay could bear.
He looked toward the black line of trees beyond the creek.
Then he picked up his rifle and went to find Samuel.