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My eyes were tired of staring at the back of the wagon, but I couldn’t look any other direction, because my neck pinched from keeping my head turned all morning to watch the grasses as we tramped by. My skin itched all over from the dust working its way through my clothes to cling to every part of me. I wished I’d paid better attention when the grown-ups talked about how far it was from Missouri to Oregon, but the numbers had been too hard for me. Ma and Pa talked about markers and trading posts and the cost of going trading and how much time could be saved by taking cuts. All I knew was we’d been walking so long without seeing anything or anyone, I was starting to think any place that wasn’t Independence was make-believe. All we’d seen since leaving was stones and trees and grass and mosquitoes and ticks, and if we were lucky a buffalo to shoot, or if we were unlucky a buffalo that wasn’t in the mind to be shot. I whispered a little prayer as I remembered Uncle Abe getting trampled and withering his life away under the pain of his broken bones.
“Ezekiel, don’t touch that!” I broke away from my prayers to tell my brother.
My brother wormed his finger under a soft pile of clop left behind by our oxen. “I’m tired of searching for buffalo chips. Why can’t we use what our oxen does for us?”
“We can’t burn that, it’s wet. Ezekiel!” I scolded him again, but it did no good.
He flicked his hand up, sending the clop into the air to splat back down on the back of our cart next to the pile of chips he’d gathered. “It’ll dry. Ma and Pa will never know.”
I shuddered and hoped he was right. I didn’t want to clean that up. I turned around tried walking backwards a bit, just so I wouldn’t have to look at the mess on the back of the wagon. Everything about us was so open I would have guessed you could see all from way from Missouri to Oregon, but Oregon had yet to come into sight. I thought I ought to at least be able to see how far we’d come, but much of it looked the same to me, like we walked the same place again and again, day after day, going nowhere at all. The tiredness and the hunger became such a part of us the only way we knew anything had changed was thanks to the sun going down.
“Come up here and help me unhitch the oxen!” Pa shouted. It used to be Uncle Abe’s job to help Pa tend the oxen and settle the wagon, but now it fell to Ezekiel, just as it had fallen to Ma to help with guiding the oxen down the trail. Oxen needed a lot of minding even when they weren’t yoked, because they spent eight hours every day grazing before they were satisfied, and they’d try to wander as they pleased while they ate. Not one of them was smart enough to find their way into our care again if they so much as turned their backs to us.
Ma dug into the barrel of flour while I dragged the cookpot down from the wagon. “It’ll be skeeter cakes for supper, same as we had for breakfast unless you can find something to shoot,” She said to Pa.
“Boy! Fetch my musket for me. I need to sit down and get this stone from my boot.” Pa braced his hands on the back of the wagon behind him and pulled himself up. There was a splat and a foul odour as his bottom landed. A queer look came over his face. Ezekiel and I stopped in our tracks and looked at each other. Ezekiel turned and ran. He went in such a hurry he blazed a whole new trail out into the wild, the stalks of grass bending aside for him to pass. All I could think while Pa dragged himself out of the oxen clop was that out here in the forever that never seemed to end, Ezekiel would have to run a long way to get himself out of sight.
Ma kept silent as she arranged our meal, stirring in the mosquitoes that swarmed the batter like she no longer noticed them, and I followed her lead, bowing my head as I took Pa’s soiled clothes from him. There was no good in asking for meat tonight. Pa might have still been able to go hunting in his shirt and union suit, but Ma and I couldn’t prepare a cookfire, make the cakes, and tend the oxen all without Ezekiel there to help. We worked in silence, waiting for Ezekiel to find his bravery and come face the hiding Pa would be planning for him. By time I had the clop beat out of Pa’s pants and Ma had us gathered for supper we could still see Ezekiel running.
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The next day we pushed on to find Ezekiel waiting for us on the trail ahead. It turned out he was hungry enough to face Pa’s belt after all. Pa made me stand and watch as he lay Ezekiel out bare on the ground. Ezekiel’s hunger must have been something fierce, because he stayed down and took it, even though Pa’s anger hadn’t cooled any from a night’s rest. There was blood streaking his bottom from the edge of Pa’s buckle by time he was allowed to pull his pants back on. When it was done Ma slipped him the skeeter cakes she’d saved from breakfast, but Pa made us get back on our way. Ezekiel had to shove the cakes in his mouth as he limped along behind us, the dust stirred up from the wagon blowing in his face. There being time to discipline a child didn’t mean there was time for eating or recovering. Stopping to beat Ezekiel had slowed us enough as it was.
I kept checking over my shoulder at Ezekiel to make sure he hadn’t taken a temper and run off again. I thought he was dawdling so much because he didn’t want to be near Pa. Then I saw him yank his pants down, squat right in the trail, and let loose. Brown fluid spilled out of him like a deluge. I had to turn my face away so I wouldn’t get sick. I prayed the oxen would walk faster so we could leave Ezekiel’s mess behind. I almost thought we’d gotten clear when Ezekiel went and did it again. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to see Pa bloody Ezekiel’s bottom again. He and Ma both said sickness was God’s punishment for unholiness. If Ezekiel picked up something while hiding away from us, Pa would only tell him that was just what he could expect.
“Ezekiel, come and help with the oxen!” Pa called when we crawled to a stop for the evening. “Ezekiel!” Pa shouted again when he didn’t answer straight away. “What’s taking that boy so long?”
He didn’t know Ezekiel was trailing behind us in our dust, stopping to squat near every other minute. Sometimes he wasn’t fast enough and the mess sprayed onto his clothes and the back of his legs. I came around to the front of the wagon in his place, taking the hand from my face at the last moment. I didn’t want to be struck for holding my nose, but I couldn’t breathe that smell any longer. “Ezekiel won’t stop pooping.”
It was Ma who went to check on him. When she came back the hard line of her mouth showed what she thought of him taking ill, but the fact that she hadn’t scolded him told me she was more worried than she let on. Pa wouldn’t let Ezekiel eat or sleep near us on account of his smell. We had no spare clothes for him, and there was no river handy for him to jump in and wash. I could hear him fussing all the night and running off into the dark to relieve himself.
Come morning Ezekiel wouldn’t get up, even though he had soiled his blankets something awful. Ma poured some of our precious drops of water into him mouth to revive him. I wished we had enough for laundry. I wouldn’t even complain about scrubbing up for him if it would make him better, or at least, not complain out loud. Ma and Pa undressed him and rolled his dirty things into a ball before lifting him into the wagon.
“We need all your prayers now, Patience,” Ma said as we got on our way.
What we needed was a hole like an outhouse seat in the bottom of the wagon for Ezekiel to sit, so we wouldn’t have to take his poop with us. I folded my hands anyway and prayed out loud. “God, please cure Ezekiel of what is bothering him. Make him strong and healthy again, so he might live to see Oregon where all our dreams will come true.”
When I looked in on him to see if my prayers were answered there was more blood coming out of him than when Pa took his belt to him, as if God Himself were beating him for whatever he’d done wrong. Pa wrapped the supplies up tight so none of our rations would get spoiled, but that didn’t stop the discharge from running down his legs to puddle beneath him. Ma and Pa kept me away from the wagon after that, telling me it was to keep me from bothering him, but I ran to him again when we stopped for our evening rest.
“Come away from there, Patience.” Ma put me aside and climbed into the wagon. When she came back out she looked at Pa and shook her head. To me she said, “I’ll pass you out what you need, and you be a brave girl and handle the cooking on your own while I help your Pa with the oxen. You just go ahead and make a little less. Your brother won’t be needing none.”
I wondered at how Ezekiel didn’t wake from all the noise and shuffling about as we set about our work, and at how Pa didn’t try to rouse him to do his part. When we were settled for the night, Pa carried Ezekiel out wrapped head to toe in his dirty blankets, like Uncle Abe had been when he’d passed. I came running over to take the blankets off Ezekiel’s face.
“This is no labour for a child. You lay down out here with your head covered, and we’ll call you when it’s time to say prayers over him.”
I threw my blanket over my head as I was told, but as soon as Ma and Pa and carried Ezekiel away I took a peek into the wagon. There was still a big mess where he had lain. I went back to my blanket and whispered prayers for Ezekiel’s soul as loud as I dared, trying to cover the sound of farm tools breaking through the rocky ground. I and kept it up until I heard Pa calling my name. I came over to where Ma and Pa stood by a little mound of dirt. It was smaller than the one they dug for Uncle Abe. That didn’t make sense to me. I thought graves were all supposed to be one size. I said all my same prayers again. Both my parents were mighty pleased with me for how well I could pray. I didn’t tell them I’d rehearsed.
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“Has anyone ever seen Willamette Valley? Has anyone reached it yet?” I asked Ma as I walked close beside her the next morning, pretending I wanted to help tend the oxen. Everything around us looked the same as the spot where we buried Abe and the one where we buried Ezekiel, as if this place were all one big grave. We might as well as been walking the same spot forever. If we were walking on forever, then the people who went before us must still be walking forever too.
“There’ll be plenty of people there, more than you or I know how to count. There’ll be other girls there for you to play with, and a store that sells cloth for me to make you a dolly if you’re good, and in a year or so Pa will choose you a fine young man to marry. You’ll see it when God is good and ready for you to see, and until then you’ve got to live up to your name.”
“Why didn’t God want Ezekiel to see?”
“Sometimes God needs people with him more than we need them here with us. Don’t you worry about a thing, Ezekiel can see fine up there in heaven. There’ll be more brothers and sisters for you one of these days. There’s always more children.” Ma’s voice cracked up a bit, and she had to blow her nose on her dirty handkerchief.
“Will Ezekiel be able to find his way to heaven if he has to go all the way from here? God won’t misplace him?”
“What in the world has you asking a foolish thing like that?”
“Mary said that her Da said that we were mad because we were going across a Godless land.”
“That’s enough out of you, Patience. There’s no such thing as a Godless land so long as we keep God with us.”
I didn’t say anything more, but I remembered plenty of nights of Ezekiel kneeling with his eyes shut and his lips mumbling nonsense, only pretending he was praying. I wasn’t too sure he kept God with him often enough to help. Would God forget Ezekiel on account of Ezekiel so often forgetting Him? A loud crack broke me from my thoughts, sent the wagon listing, and staggered the oxen. I bolted away, scared one or the other would fall on me. I didn’t come back until the oxen had calmed and the wagon had settled, titled at a strange angle. We sent the oxen to graze while we unloaded the wagon so Pa could replace the broken axle. I tried to remember how much an axle had cost. I could remember that it had worried Pa, to the point we could only afford one.
“What happens if the new axle breaks?”
“We’ll be stranded out here and die. Now go help your Mama, and say your prayers.”
I prayed extra hard that night for God to love us enough that we not be forgotten to him in this empty expanse.
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“Someone needs to keep those oxen from wandering. Patience, see to it. Dishes will wait.”
Naturally Pa didn’t know how much work it was to scrape oatmeal out of a pot once it’d gone dried up and hard, but he was right about the oxen. We couldn’t afford to lose any one of them, and we would need them ready the moment the wagon was loaded. We’d have to pull hard to make up for the time we lost. I looked around a moment for my uncle and brother, knowing they weren’t there. Everything took longer without Abe and Ezekiel. What Pa needed was another pair of strong arms to lift those crates and barrels, and a boy to see to the animals, not some skinny girl. I followed the oxen out, my skirts tangling with the grasses. I lifted them high and stepped into the furrows the oxen left in their wake. The grass stirred and shushed loudly in the wind. Something smooth darted out from under my foot, and a pain hit my leg so sharp I screamed. A snake shot away under the tall grass, frightened off by my noise too late to spare me. I abandoned the oxen and ran back to the wagon, hobbled by my throbbing leg.
“Ma! Ma!”
Ma took one look at the swelling lump on my calf and grabbed hold of me to lay me on the ground. “Keep still and let us see you, there’s no use in thrashing about.”
Pa slashed away the bottom edge of my apron and knotted the rag below my knee so tight it hurt. Ma took me around the shoulders and folded herself over on top of me, her weight pining me down. Pa pried open a bullet and dumped the powder out on my leg. I couldn’t keep from whining as I waited for the gun powder to turn into medicine and take the pain away. Pa struck his flint near my ankle. A great flash of pain exploded through me as a spark found the gun powder. My legs kicked, but Pa went and sat on my lap, crushing me into the dirt.
“Hush now girl, hush now!” Ma shouted into my ear, but I kept letting out big gushing sobs and my body fought until it didn’t have fight in it anymore.
Ma wanted to make camp again so I could rest, but Pa wouldn’t let her get any further than spreading a blanket over me, saying “We have rivers to cross before the weather turns. There’s nothing for it but to try to keep going.” Pa rounded up the oxen while Ma wiped my tears and laboured to get the supplies lashed up tight inside the wagon.
“You can climb up and ride for a while on account of that wound of yours, Patience. There’s no need to be prideful.” Pa might have been trying to win my affections back after making me cry so. He might also have been worried about how slowly we were getting along to Oregon.
I thought of Uncle Abe lying in there when he was injured, moaning something awful every time the wheels jostled, and shook my head.
“Then walk up front with us so we can keep an eye on you.”
More tears leaked out when I limped up beside Pa.
“Lighting the gun powder is to burn the venom out. You’ve got to forgive me, child.”
“Yes, Pa,” I gulped. I wasn’t sure if I did forgive him, but the relief on his face made me feel like God would let me go unpunished for lying.
My leg burned like it was still on fire. I tried keeping my weight on one side of me, but with every hop my poorly leg bumped. How much further did we need to go before we could rest? I stared up at the sun, wishing for it to go down, but it wobbled in the air like the sky had a haze. It was so hot under my bonnet, and the sweat ran down my face. Would Pa strike me for loosening the strings a little?
One minute I was wiping sweat away, and the next I was down on the ground so sudden I didn’t even have time to worry the oxen might trample me. Ma had to take my hand and lift me up again. I couldn’t make it on my own. My hand felt strange as Ma squeezed mine. When I tried to grip Ma’s hand back, I couldn’t do it right. The next time I fell she picked me right up and tried to put me into the wagon.
“Now, you’re getting too big for me to carry. Your Mama don’t have the strength no more.”
“Don’t want... I don’t w-, don’t...” I tried to howl and flail. I didn’t want to get up in that wagon. That was where I’d last seen Ezekiel, as my parents lay him out. The wagon was where they put bad children to die. I wasn’t a bad girl. I prayed harder each night than Ezekiel ever prayed in the whole of his life. I was put on this Earth to get married and make babies, not die in a land with no church to point my soul to the path to heaven.
I lay there crying, and not so much as praying as begging God to make it stop hurting. Ma’s gaunt face looked in on me time to time. Her face used to be so full and round. I had liked holding her cheeks between my hands so I could feel the roundness. This country, wherever we happened to be in it, was sucking away all she had a bit at a time. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything of her left. What would happen if we both died? Would Pa go on to Willamette Valley by his lonesome and marry some other family, like old Thompson retired from mining to take a widow and her farm? I didn’t have any prayers left for asking to get better. Instead I asked God not to break my Ma’s heart when her last child passed away. I knew by now I was only coming out of this wagon in one state. I’d be buried in this great big graveyard that had already claimed my uncle and my brother. I hoped my parents had enough time to say a prayer so that God might forgive me for being laid to rest away from the hallowed ground of a church.