Waits-by-the-Water stepped through a knot of women and came to him silently, reaching his side to grip his hand and put her arm around him as they stood across the narrow hole from the grieving parents. Titus sensed just how lucky he was to have a good woman at his side through everything life could throw at a man.
Iverson held up that Bible much stained with sweat and grime, asking for quiet as Titus and Scratch stepped aside, allowing the family to approach the box. When the parents stopped, looking down at the coffin, Amanda drew herself up there in Roman’s arms. Then took a long, ragged sigh, and no longer sobbed or whimpered, but instead motioned with her free arm to the children, not just the three left her, but to her brothers and sister too: Magpie, Flea, and Jackrabbit.
“The rest of you children,” she said quietly an instant before Iverson started to speak, which compelled the man to stand there with his mouth in an O as her small voice made its presence felt on them all, “all you children who played with Lucas every night on the trail … I want you to come up to stand around his grave with us now.”
He must be the closest thing this band of sojourners had for a preacher, Titus thought as Iverson finally began a reading of this Scripture, then another, and still another. And when he finally closed that worn, brown-skinned Bible, Iverson held it against his chest and began speaking from his heart.
“Not one of us knows the why of the ways of the Lord,” he reminded them. “On our journey we’ve lost babes, and we’ve lost old ones too. It is the work and wonder of the Lord, so we are left to doubt or to believe. I … choose to believe.”
There was some quiet muttering from some of the women and a handful of the men as the heat of the coming day began to tell.
Iverson pitched in again. “Last night I heard the talk of people scared of what they had done in running from homes and family to find themselves in this wilderness where the innocent can be taken from us. So let me remind those of you who were gnashing your teeth—crying that this must be a curse because we chose to chance a journey to God’s garden. What took young Lucas was not the devil, or his evil serpent. It was only one of many dangers man finds in this wilderness. Do not despair—we will get through to our Garden of Eden!”
With that last word pronounced in a louder volume, Iverson held everyone’s rapt attention. Even the old trapper’s.
“Yea, last night in the darkest of hours there were those doubters who professed to know that our Oregon company had been cursed—cursed by Hargrove and his men; cursed by young Lucas’s terrible death. But, I tell you nay! Why—don’t you remember that we have lost some of our number all along the way?”
There arose a quiet, begrudging agreement from the many.
“No,” Iverson hammered on, “I will not go along with those of you who say that these deaths are because we left the Garden of Eden behind us. No, my friends—our garden lies before us, pulling us on.”
Titus had to admit, the man did have a gift for preachifying, the way he used an alternate rhythm or different tone to hold this crowd’s attention from one moment to the next.
“Oregon awaits us, my friends. This wilderness infested with serpents and bad water is only what we must endure to reach the land where the Lord is drawing us nigh. Do not let the devil convince your hearts that young Lucas paid a blood atonement … as some of you were saying in the dark. No. I want you to look now—yes … look and see how first light is coming!”
They turned almost as one and peered east along their back trail, from whence they had come, leaving most everything behind to go west.
“This is a new day for the Lord. We must complete God’s work and bury young Lucas, for his family, for us all. Then we must be on to Oregon.”
“Can we sing a song?” a woman asked from the crowd, plaintively.
“Yes,” Iverson answered, then immediately closed his eyes and launched into a song Titus could not remember ever hearing.
Some of the crowd knew the song too, and they joined in self-consciously by the middle of the first verse. But because the entire group had not added their voices, Iverson ended after the second verse.
“Friends, it is time to consign young Lucas Burwell to the ground.”
Roman caught Amanda as her knees turned to water. Steadying her against him, they watched four men step from the throng and pick up an end of the two ropes. Carefully they raised the coffin off the ground, then swung it over the hole and began to slowly lower it to the bottom. When it rested securely, two of the men pulled the ropes from the grave.
In the coming of day Iverson bent and scooped up a handful of the dry, dark earth piled next to that hole and tossed it down upon the top of that wooden box with a muffled clatter. “Dust to dust …”
Kneeling beside the cast-iron oven, Iverson seized a handful of the cold ashes he had asked be brought here. He opened his hand, allowing the flakes and dust to fall, most of them drifting into the hole.
“And ashes to ashes,” he reminded them. “From dust we come. To dust we all will go.”
Rubbing his palm against the leg of his pants, Iverson stepped back and made a quick gesture to Roman. Mr. and Mrs. Burwell knelt at the edge of the grave, where they each tossed in some dirt clods, landing hollow on the top of that crude coffin, then reached over to toss in some ashes. Roman got to his feet first, helping Amanda as they moved aside, and Lemuel brought his two sisters forward. At the side of the grave, Lemuel turned, signaling Magpie and her brothers to join them. All bent and made their offerings to the grave.
And as the children inched back, Iverson said, “Anyone who wants to come to the graveside, offer a prayer by throwing in some dirt or ashes—now is the time.”
They shuffled around the small hole, long lines of silent folk coming from two directions. As they finished, then passed by, most every one of these emigrants reached out to touch Amanda’s hand, or shake with Roman—offering in that quiet, unspoken way something of their own grief, and hope too. Titus stood there with his arm around Waits, watching this long procession, realizing just how many friends the Burwell family had made on this unfinished journey to Oregon. Friends these were. Friends who had stood watch, knowing nothing else to do. Friends who had offered to help dig, knowing nothing else to do. Friends who brought food and drink all through the night, not knowing what else they could do. But here they stood as the words and prayers and songs were said over this deep, deep hole dug for a tiny child … because it was what they could do.
It was what they would want others to do for them if tragedy had struck their family instead of the Burwells’.
But in the end, only the Burwells stood beside that hole with the two trapper families. The others had moved off, busy with breakfast, bringing in the stock, hitching up the oxen and mules, saddling the horses, rolling up the bedding, and dousing the fires once the trumpet sounded—high and brassy on the motionless air. It was still so cool, Titus thought. But soon the earth would begin to heat up and the breeze would stir. Restless wind. It would be restless all day long and into the evening as the earth cooled once more. Wind every bit as restless as was he.
“You take your family back to the wagon now,” Titus said as he and Shad moved up after the last of the emigrants were gone. “Time to get your stock hitched up for moving out.”