Into the Wilderness

In her father’s absence, Lily gave the woman a drink of water and gently wiped her feverish face with a cool cloth. The woman’s eyes fluttered briefly. “My baby?”

“A boy.”

The woman’s features relaxed and she closed her eyes, her breath now coming in irregular rasps.

After a few moments, Ezra led the father into the room, followed by Rose carrying the newborn. The father rushed to his wife’s side. “Good news, Patience. We have a son.”

Rose placed the baby in his mother’s arms. She opened her eyes and gazed at the child, her limp fingers caressing his face, his hair, his tiny hands. A tear traced its way down her sunken cheek. “Beautiful,” she murmured.

Lily turned away.

The husband knelt at his wife’s side, cradling her and his son. His body language conveyed knowledge of the end, but his words spoke denial. “My love, our boy will grow into a fine young man.” He kissed her forehead.

Once more the mother examined the baby. As her son studied her in return, his little hand curled around her finger. “Alas.” The word came with an effort. “I shall not see that day, Jacob.”

His expression wild with questions, the husband looked around the room, seeking reassurance. In honesty, neither Lily, nor Rose nor Ezra could offer any. Then a strangled “No!” rose from his chest. When he looked back down at the bed, the baby kicked weakly against the lifeless body of his mother.

Lily bowed her head, struck, as always, by the random quality of death, whether it claimed her brother, her mother or this hapless woman. God, in Your mercy, bless this dear soul, her motherless baby and her grieving husband. She bit her lip and then added, And help me to accept what is so difficult to understand.

After Ezra led the father away, Lily washed and prepared the corpse while Rose went in search of a wet nurse among the women of the wagon train. This poor soul! One more poignant example of the risks women took in the isolated country they traversed.

When Lily finally left the hospital, the eastern sky was streaked with pale light. Too disturbed to go home, she instead sought refuge in the cemetery. Better than anyone, her mother would understand her tears of helplessness.

As she crossed the parade ground near the officers’ quarters, she noticed a man sitting in the shadows of the porch. Caleb. She couldn’t think about him right now. Yet standing beside her mother’s grave a few moments later, he was the person she thought of.

He, too, was a son whose mother had died in childbirth. How had that loss affected the young boy and influenced the man he had become?

Tonight’s was the first birth she’d attended that didn’t have a happy outcome, and she could not have foreseen how deeply it would affect her. She wept for the mother and father and for their baby. She wept for herself. And she wept for the motherless eight-year-old Caleb.

* * *

Caleb stood at the edge of the cemetery, not daring to interrupt what seemed to be a sacred moment. In recent days, he had rarely spoken to Lily privately. When she had emerged so early from the hospital and walked toward the cemetery, lost in her thoughts, some impulse that she not be alone seized him and he’d followed her at a distance. Yet drawn to her as he was, he hesitated, trapped in self-doubt.

He watched as she touched the headstone, much as one might dip fingers into holy water, and then, head down, walked toward him. Fearful of startling her, he spoke softly. “Miss Kellogg?”

She looked up and upon recognizing him, halted. In her piteous glance he read both exhaustion and sorrow. “Captain?”

He hastened to answer her unasked question. “I saw you walking across the parade ground at this unusually early hour. You looked sad, and I wanted to be of assistance...comfort...” He struggled to find the right note. “It is not my intent to intrude, but...”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “No harm. You are right, I am overwhelmed with grief, frustration—and questions.”

Confused by her answer, he tucked her hand in both of his. “Pray what has happened to cause you such distress?”

She shook her head as if dispersing cobwebs. “I shall not burden you with my concerns.”

“Let us walk together.” He took her elbow and they started slowly toward the hospital. “You could never burden me. If you want to speak of whatever has happened, I will gladly listen.”

Then, more to herself than in dialogue with him, she told of the senseless death of the settler’s wife despite efforts to save her. She bit her lip in the effort, he guessed, to keep from crying when she told him about the precious little boy, now motherless. As if coming out of reverie into the harsh light of reality, she vented. “I can’t bear thinking about the travails of women, subject to the whims or ambitions of their husbands, who risk their lives and the lives of their children, for what? For some distant paradise gained only by crossing vast miles of unknown land where death waits at every turn of the trail?” She stopped again, sweeping one arm in a gesture encompassing the empty horizon. “Who leads them? God or ruthless ambition?”

Caleb knew he should be shocked by her outburst, which went beyond the accepted standards for polite conversation. Instead, he was moved by her passion and grateful that she could speak so openly.

“Last night had to be a wrenching ordeal. I have known that same kind of powerlessness to stop the inevitable.” His jaw worked as he recalled his inability to alter the unconscionable massacre at the Washita, over in a matter of minutes but horrific for its victims. “Sometimes there are no answers to the question ‘Why?’”

“God may know, but at times like this, that is little comfort.” She cocked her head to one side, studying him intently. “Tell me about your mother. How did you go on without her?”

He rarely spoke about that time before his mother died when she filled the house with laughter and song. About her cinnamon rolls which had spoiled him forever from savoring any others. About the way she cuddled him and his brother at bedtime and made Bible stories come to life.

He must’ve gone to another place, because Lily’s voice returned him to the present. “Forgive me, Caleb. That is an overly personal question.”

“Not between friends,” he said, swallowing hard. They resumed strolling. “As a little boy, I thought I was the luckiest child in the world to have a mother who looked like a princess. Ours was a happy family. My older brother, Seth, and I never tired of her songs and stories. But she also didn’t put up with too much mischief from us. As hard as I try, though, there are some things I can never remember. But I always knew she loved me.” He was silent for several minutes. “After she died, Father, Seth and I had difficulty speaking of her. It was too painful. Besides, boys don’t cry. It was easier to let baby Sophie divert us.”

“Your mother would be proud of the man you’ve become.”

“I hope so.” Yet even in that breath, guilt washed over him. His mother, who had revered each living creature God had put on the earth, would have been appalled by what happened with Black Kettle and his band and, no doubt, ashamed of her son’s role. And even though it was a necessary cause, could she have countenanced his behavior in the heat of battle in the War between the States when his very survival depended upon killing the enemy? He sighed as he thought about the dubious acts he had committed when following orders. Perhaps it was best that he would never know what his mother might have thought of his soldiering, nor was he eager for Lily’s opinion.

The two of them were approaching the hospital when she said, “Thank you for your concern on my account and for sharing memories of your mother. Death is hard, but perhaps it shapes us in ways known only to God. We must believe something good ultimately comes from such experiences.”

He prayed it could be so, but nightmares and insomnia argued to the contrary. “Your outlook is more sanguine than mine.”

She looked up at him. “It would appear we are both searching for answers.”

To lighten the dark mood, he said, “Perhaps we should turn to the poets. John Donne would say, ‘Death, be not proud.’”

She smiled sadly. “Indeed.”

They had reached her door. “Thank you for coming to my side this morning,” she said, her eyes glistening with unshed tears, the blue-gray cast to the skin beneath her eyes an indication of her exhaustion.

He gave a short bow. “Miss Kellogg, we seem to have traveled some similar roads. It is a comfort to know I am not alone.”

Now the smile relaxed and her eyes deepened into pools of blue. “Lily. My name is Lily. Your friendship is most welcome.”

He exhaled in relief. “Lily.” The name was melodic on his tongue. “Until we meet once more.”

He waited until she was safely inside and then ambled toward his quarters. The sun was full now on the horizon, and morning activity buzzed all around him. But he was ignorant of it, lost in the memories of his mother, the horrors of battle and of the one person who might either understand it all or condemn him. Lily.

Chapter Five

On an afternoon in late April, Rose, Lily and two lieutenants’ wives, Carrie Smythe and Virginia Brown, gathered around Effie Hurlburt’s dining room table to sew bandages for the hospital. Talk ranged from the gardens they planned to variations on bean recipes. Effie, ever cheerful, laughed when they complained of the upcoming heat of summer. “You cannot stop the seasons in their turn. Just as the cold winds blew in January, so July will become an oven. Best not to let either overwhelm your spirit.”

Lily acknowledged Effie’s sound advice even as she felt weighed down by the prospects of boiling temperatures. “I wish I shared your optimistic nature,” she said.

“Bother. It’s all in what you decide—life is either a pleasure and an opportunity or a dismal ordeal to be endured.”

Carrie shrugged. “You are undoubtedly right, but there are days it is hard to keep positive.”

“I think what Mrs. Hurlburt is trying to say,” Rose interjected, “is that it serves no purpose to let conditions we can’t control alter our natures.”

Lily lowered her eyes to her sewing. Was her sister criticizing her desire to escape the frontier? In fairness, each single day was bearable, made sweeter by proximity to her family. But taken in total, day after day of this existence with no end in sight ravaged her soul. Boredom was the greatest enemy. Perhaps she should be grateful for her work at the hospital, the occasional conversations with people like Effie and Caleb and the solace of a good book.