Where the Lost Wander

by Amy Harmon

but they all seem to want the same thing. Money . . . or a way to make it.

He has a worn look around his eyes, but it’s not time,

“I don’t have to see death to know it exists, Naomi,” Ma says. “I gotta keep my mind right. I don’t have any strength for fear or sadness right now, so I’m just gonna walk on by, and I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell me what you see.”

“Anger feels a whole lot better than fear,” Ma concedes.

“Your pa works hard. Warren too.” “Not as hard as Ma.” “No. I reckon nobody is working as hard as your ma right now,” I murmur.

Daniel’s death has taught me that death is fickle and final, and it doesn’t spare anyone. It doesn’t spare us.

Arguments about indecency ring hollow when death comes to call.

but grief is draining. I am hoarding my strength and my stamina for life, and I will not spend it on death. Gotta get your mind right, Naomi May. If all I have is my will, then I must use it well.

And his thoughts, when he shares them, are like little shoots of green grass on a dry prairie. The flowers on the prickly pears that grow among the rocks.

Naomi is a romantic. A dreamer. She sees what others don’t, but what she sees, what she draws, is not reality, and our times together have the same otherworldly cast.

They’re good boys, all the Mays. It’s like my father said. It’s all in the mother; the jack doesn’t make much difference.

That’s what hope feels like: the best air you’ve ever breathed after the worst fall you’ve ever taken. It hurts.

“The hardest thing about life is knowing what matters and what doesn’t,” Winifred muses. “If nothing matters, then there’s no point. If everything matters, there’s no purpose. The trick is to find firm ground between the two ways of being.”

“Just trying to survive makes things pretty clear most days. We have to eat; we need shelter; we have to keep warm. Those things matter.” I nod. Simple enough. “But none of those things matter at all if you have no one to feed, to shelter, or to keep warm. If you have no one to survive for, why

guess it’s not what matters . . . but who matters.”

Naomi seems to know exactly who she is, and she gives no indication that she is anything but content with herself.

The men sit in council at night, excluding the women, only to go back to their own camps and seek their wives’ opinions.

“I only got one daughter, but God gave me the very best one He had.”

“We women want to make the world brighter, don’t we? Even if we have to fight our men every step of the way.”

Two worlds exist in a Shoshoni tribe. A world of women and a world of men. The two worlds overlap, creating a slice of coexistence, a place of shared toil and trouble and dependence on one another, but there are still two worlds.