a safe distance from sweetwater, sam calls a halt. all night and all morning they’ve traveled. true to sam’s prediction, lucy’s feet have blistered. her eyes are gritty. she half dozes, thinking of her feather bed. she wants a rest, a bite to eat. but sam squats by the stream they’ve followed and sinks hands into the mud.
“this isn’t the time to play around with war paint,” lucy says as mud slathers sam’s cheeks.
“it’s to hide our scent. in case of dogs.”
morning’s risen on the decision lucy made in the dark. swift clouds race overhead. without buildings to shrink the sky, she’s terribly exposed. this is the land freed of its frame, loosened from a deed, and it is huge and whistling and uncontainable. she stands at the mercy of wind and weather. no longer brave or wild as she felt last night, but puny, sun-stunned, tired, hungry. she scurries behind sam, whose stride loosens as they leave sweetwater behind.
for five years lucy let more and more of herself be buried. sank into sweetwater’s slow life like a mule in quicksand, too stupid to notice till it was half-drowned. while sam, wandering, grew only more into sam. learning how to run, how to survive, how to escape dogs, how to spot who means them harm.
“you can still turn back,” sam says.
lucy glares. she slaps her hands into the mud. a familiar smell coats her, like the waters in mining country. once she drank it down complaining. now she makes herself breathe deep. she’s choosing this mud, as she’s choosing this life. she can no longer avoid the harder truths.
she asks, “did you really aim to miss that banker?”
“no.”
“why’d you lie?”
“i figured you’d leave me if i told.”
it’s lucy’s turn to say, “i’m sorry.” words alone seem insufficient. remembering what sam did in the boardinghouse, she sticks out her hand. “pardners?”
she half meant it as a joke, but sam’s grown-up face is solemn. sam grips beyond lucy’s hand, at her wrist, fingers finding the vein. lucy finds sam’s vein in turn. she waits till their blood grows peaceful, till their heartbeats match. they’re starting over.
“i promise i’m not leaving,” lucy says.
“i know that now. just—” sam swallows. “i figured you’d run too. because you look so much like her.”
“who?” there’s a queer whistling in lucy’s head, though no wind stirs. her hands and feet gone cold. she lets go of sam.
“i tried to tell you, ages ago. by the river. ba told me and i figure you deserve to know too. ma left us.”
lucy laughs. can’t quite manage carefree. it’s the old ha-ha-has of her childhood that heave up, the sound of cracked heat. sam starts to speak, but lucy puts her hands over her ears and walks downstream.
—
alone lucy pitches stones in the water. when tiredness makes her pause, her reflection in the still waters makes her start again.
she looks like her.
lucy knew for years that ba was a dead man walking after that storm. now she knows what killed him, sure as whiskey, sure as the coal dust in his lungs. ma put a wound in him that festered over three years.
“sorry,” lucy says. if ba’s haint hears, it stays quiet
beauty is a weapon, ma said. don’t be beholden, ma said. my smart one, ma said. rich in choices, ma said. ma who split up the gold as she split up the family. lucy remembers the pouch hidden between ma’s breasts. it was empty when the jackals got to it—but it wasn’t always.
slow and stupid, eight years too late, lucy thinks of how ma took a handkerchief from that pouch the night the jackals came. how she held it over her mouth. how her cheek was swollen on one side, and how she didn’t open her lips again that night. how quickly that swelling went down—a swelling big as a small egg, big as a piece of gold tucked in the cheek of a woman smart enough to hide it there. the jackals never found lucy’s nugget, which was more than enough for one ticket.
all these years lucy carried ma’s love like an incantation against the harder things. now it’s become a burden. no wonder sam leaves certain truths unspoken. lucy sinks her head between her knees. why did sam tell her now?
and then, as her blood whooshes between her ears, as her head droops heavy, she remembers ma’s trunk. the weight of it, which sam lifted onto nellie alone. sam carried the burden of ba’s love too—and lucy didn’t help shoulder it that day. she should have. she should have stood her ground, should have stayed—that day, and the other day by the riverbank five years back, and this day. she should always have stayed with sam. she stands. throws a last stone into the water, breaking that image into fragments. it’s just water. she runs back the way she came.
—
she’s almost too late. sam is packing up the campsite.
“i thought—” sam says, the old reproach, the old guilt and old secrets and old ghosts rising. how to bury them?
lucy pulls a knife from sam’s pack. asks if sam will cut her hair.
—
lucy is afraid as she kneels with sam behind her. not of the knife—of herself. these last years, her wiry hair grew in smooth and sleek at last, as ma said it would. what if she proves as vain as ma? as selfish?
she closes her eyes so as not to see it. as the hanks fall free, a space opens on her neck. a lightness.
there is, she is coming to see, a place that exists between the world ba pursued and the world ma wanted. his a lost world, doomed to make the present and future dim in comparison. hers so narrow it could accommodate only one. a place lucy and sam might arrive at together. almost a new kind of land.
sam pauses midway. “should i stop? i can’t see.”
complete dark. the jackal hour, the hour of uncertainty, is past. lucy can’t recall what creature this hour belongs to.
“keep going.”
when sam is done, lucy stands. a great weight off her head. the last of her old hair slithers from her lap. she remembers: this is the hour of the snake. her hair twists on the ground, limp, never half so important as she believed it to be. she makes to kick it. sam holds her back.
sam commences to dig.
lucy joins once she understands. ma wasn’t wrong, just as ma wasn’t right. beauty is a weapon, one that can strangle its wielder. it turned against sam, and against lucy. down into the grave they lay that long, shining hair that ma intended to pass to both her daughters. before they tamp the dirt, sam drops in a piece of silver.
—
lucy wakes early. springs a hand to her head. warily, she approaches the stream.
her hair’s been shorn to an inch below her ears, the same length all around. not a man’s cut, not a woman’s. not even a girl’s. a cut like a bowl turned upside down. up till the age of five, this was the cut lucy and sam wore before they wore a girl’s braids.
she smiles. her reflection smiles back. her face is reshaped, her chin looking stronger. this is the cut of a child, androgynous still, who can grow to be anything. she takes sam’s meaning.
swinging her new hair, lucy gets breakfast on. there’s meat in sam’s pack, and tubers, dried berries. a few sticks of candy. and two surprises.
the first is a pistol, so much like ba’s that lucy nearly drops it. she makes herself hold it out. surprising how it fits to her palm, how it cools and quiets. she lays it carefully back.
the second thing she cooks.
sam raises an eyebrow at the porridge made of horse oats, but doesn’t complain. they pass the tasteless mush between them.
“i’ve been thinking about that land beyond the ocean again,” lucy says when they’re done. “what makes a home a home? tell me a story i can dream on.”
if lucy were a gambler, she’d bet their blood beat the same rhythm now.
“it’s got mountains,” sam says, haltingly. “not like these mountains. where we’re going the mountains are soft and green, old and full of mist. the cities around them are built with low red walls.”
sam’s voice is rising, lilting. as if windows have been cut in a room that previously had none. once, anna showed lucy an instrument her father had sent. a tube that started out thin, opened at the end into a flower. pegs and holes along its length. the first note lucy blew screeched, as harsh as the train. but the second—once anna fiddled with the pegs, pulled free a plug of dust—the second note was high and clear and singing. sam’s voice does that. it opens
“they make lanterns from paper instead of glass. so the light on the streets is always red-tinted. they wear their hair braided long, even the men. they’ve got buffalo too, only theirs are smaller, and gentled, and used to carry water. and they’ve got tigers. just the same as our tigers.”
the sam who speaks is high and sweet. a child emerging from beneath five years of grit.
“why do you hide it?” lucy says.
sam coughs. tugs at the bandana. says, low and hoarse once more, “this ismy voice. men don’t take me seriously otherwise.”
“it’s such a shame, though. you shouldn’t have to hide yourself—not all men, surely, the good ones . . .”
“there aren’t any good ones.”
“what about the men you traveled with? the cowboys, or the adventurers, or the mountain man we met?”
“not him, either. not once he found out.”
“sam?”
“he only did what charles wanted to do to you.” sam shrugs. “what men do to girls. i won’t get mistaken again.”
lucy remembers the mountain man’s hunger. the prick of his eyes on her body. she touches sam’s shoulder. but whatever windows opened when sam spoke of the new land have slammed shut. there is the faintest of shivers through sam, hidden by the motion of sam leaping up to clear the breakfast things.
“doesn’t matter anyhow,” sam says, setting the pan down with a resounding clang. “we’re going far away. i’ve been searching to settle all these years, across the territories, and no place has ever been right. took me a long time to figure why. i’m ready for a piece of land of our own. not a place where we’ll have to look over our shoulders, not stolen, not belonging to buffalo or indians, not used-up. this time, we’ll go where no one will question our buying it.”
sam unbuttons the first few buttons of that red shirt. a flash of bandages over narrow chest—and then sam takes out a wallet. shakes its contents free.
sam’s secret, like all their family’s secrets, is gold.
there are flakes like the one sam used as payment in sweetwater. two nuggets near as big as what lucy found all those years ago. and every size in between. sam has more than enough for two tickets. to most, this gold would look like luck itself. lucy shrinks back. she knows better.
“where’d you get it, sam?”
“told you. i worked.”
but they worked half their lives. their bodies are still marked by it. the calluses, the blue flecks of coal. the hurt. that’s what they got for half a lifetime of work.
“sam, i know we said no questions, but this—i have to know—”
sam looks away. no—sam flinches. as if lucy’s words are blows. the shiver that started at the mention of the mountain man hasn’t ended. despite the clothes, sam looks for a moment more like ma than ever—that sadness running beneath strength, like the underground shush of an unseen river. hasn’t lucy caused enough harm with her questions? she bites her tongue. look at sam’s body now, and for all its height she sees only vulnerabilities. the bandana that hides the soft throat. the pants over the secret pocket, the shirt buttoned high despite the heat. how precarious sam seems, hidden by mere cloth.
and so lucy chooses quiet. by the time they set out, sam’s hands are once more steady. they leave that question buried, as they leave the other two graves. what difference will it make in any case, once they’re far enough to make this land, and the story of how they left it, mere history?
