The buffalo fell between the waterfall and a large boulder. He landed, with a rearing up of his small legs, which were now limp again. He reared up and settled back and it was as if he had sighed with relief, accepting the embrace of stone.
There was a large branch stranded on the edge of the fall, and Dorothy dragged that forward until it fell too. It slipped slowly sideways, hardly falling at all, it seemed, the heavier end of its trunk crashing down onto rocks and puddles. The upper boughs lashed the air at about the level they had been at before. Except that the buffalo was covered, hidden perhaps, safe perhaps from men.
Then Dorothy stumbled back home toward the summer kitchen. Her clothes were wet, but there was no one at home who would mind. Who needs dreams? she thought. This was better. As she walked, she felt her eyelids drooping. She picked up a stick to lean on.
It was blue-gray in the sky by the time she reached the woods over the farm. She planned to walk down out of the trees, unseen. She was idly slashing at the hickory with the stick. She thumped a large tree trunk and realized that it was hollow.
There's a hollow branch up there, she thought. And there was. Now how did I know that? She reached up into a broken branch and felt leaves and pulled.
Something came out, brown as Kansas. She shook it. It was a child's dress, very lacy. Would have been white once. And there were tiny, flaking platelets of metal sewn onto it. Dorothy held it up against herself. Definitely a child's dress.
Something stirred, as if there were something else alive within her. She felt it move. It was as if there were a dreamworld somewhere, which she could dimly see. Had she left the dress in the tree?
Dorothy remembered Wilbur. She remembered the first day and the train trip and something about staying with people on the way to Kansas. There had been another life, as if the world had divided in two. She had not always lived with Aunty Em. Dorothy rolled up the tiny brown thing and hid it in her coat.
Back down on the farm, there was nothing to greet her or welcome her. She dropped down onto her mattress and sank into the deepest kind of sleep, as deep as a well and dreamless. All unaware, she had dammed up a reservoir of dreams. They grew heavy, as if hairline cracks ran through the bones of her forehead.
As Dorothy worked that day, she stumbled. She stared ahead, terrible rings around her staring eyes. Aunty Em said, "I reckon you best rest a spell, Dorothy." Dorothy looked back at her, almost refusing. But I don't want to rest, she thought. I might have the dreams.
"Go on and lie down." Aunty Em's voice sounded sad and weary. Dorothy noted how it sounded even as she turned to obey automatically. It was easier to obey than to try to think. She plodded into the barn. Her feet were like heavy stones. She slumped down onto the bales of hay and curled up on one of them, boots drawn up under her knees. She stared ahead. She would not close her eyes. Aunty Em had told her to lie down, but she would not sleep.
Aunty Em came in.
"You're still awake," Emma said in sorrow.
Aunty Em came and sat next to her on the straw. "You don't sleep, do you, Dorothy?"
Aunty Em sighed when Dorothy did not answer. She moved closer and there was a rustling of hay. "Your clothes are soaking wet and your boots are covered in mud and grass and pine-tree needles. Where do you go, Dorothy? Where do you go at night?"
Dorothy didn't answer. She stared ahead. Aunty Em began to stroke her hair, as Dorothy had stroked the buffalo.
"What happened, Dodo? What happened to you? You were such a beautiful little girl. You'd always help around the house and were so kind to your poor old aunty. And you used to make me laugh. Like when you told off all those old ladies about the way they treated the Chinawoman. Remember? Or when we caught caterpillars and put them in preserving jars with grass to see if they'd turn into butterflies. I thought that was the funniest thing."
A shabby black sleeve on bone-thin arms with a veined and muscular brown claw at the end, smoothing down Dorothy's hair, trying to untangle it.
"Did we do anything, Dodo? Was it something we did? Is it something we can undo?"
Dorothy couldn't think. Yes, probably, she thought, but she wasn't sure she had said it out loud.
"Dorothy," said Aunty Em. "Please come back. You were the light of my life. You were what kept me going all those years, just to hear you laughing, or naming the birds, or working away at your books."
Dorothy thought just two words. The words were: too late. It was a very simple, very final thought, and she wondered how something so simple could be so complete. Too late. She could not think much beyond that and she did not need to.
"Come on, up. Let's get you into the house." Aunty Em coaxed her to her feet and led her up the wooden steps to the summer kitchen.
The next Sunday, Aunty Em went alone to Meeting. She went to howl in tongues, flushed with the love of Jesus, a stick jammed between her teeth to keep her from biting off her tongue. One of Dorothy's worst dreams had been about all of Aunty Em's talking tongues slithering out of her mouth, hydra-headed.
Uncle Henry was out communing with his fields, which meant masturbating into the dirt. It was a good summer, warm and gentle, though today was surprisingly cool.
Dorothy finished all her chores. She did them without questioning. She washed Aunty Em's clothes, her nightdress. She washed Uncle Henry's socks and his loose and baggy underwear. She went out to the clothesline with a basket and pegged all their clothes up on the line.
Then she stood up, as straight and sudden as if someone had called her name. That was it. She was finished here.
Dorothy knew she was big enough to go. Big enough and ugly as a pig's backside, but that made no difference. The weather was perfect, brilliantly sunny without being hot. Em and Henry were away, so she could steal what she needed.
She would go to St. Lou, or Abilene, or Wichita. She would go there and be one of those bad girls. It was better than scrubbing the yellow garments Emma Gulch slept in. Dorothy wasn't entirely sure what it was that bad girls did, but if it was lying with men like she had lain with Uncle Henry, she could stand it. She didn't feel anything when that happened. She knew she looked older than she was. And if they found she was younger, they probably wouldn't mind. They'd probably like it. But she needed some clothes.
She opened up Aunty Em's wardrobe and saw four dresses and stole two of them. She judged very carefully which ones she took. Em was wearing her second-best Sunday and had left her best Sunday for another occasion. If Dorothy took her good Sunday or the striped crinoline, Em would send the law after her. So she decided on the old bottle-green dress, stitched and darned back into shape. There was another old one, her coming-out dress Aunty Em called it, splotched and itchy blue. She took a dried-up old bonnet with wilted cloth flowers. It didn't matter if she looked poor. Poor meant bad and that would draw the men. It didn't matter what it looked like as long as it looked adult. Enough.