Winter Rain

But he figured it would fit, eventually—like a pair of tight boots, once he got a chance to work those muscles and that new skin a bit. The wounds hurt, more than anything had hurt him in his life as he put the muscles and tendons, sinew and skin to work at last in early April. Hard, hard work.

The other two had pleaded with Jonah to let them help him as he resolutely drove the shovel into the old mound of dirt beside the first of the graves he swore he would fill.

“She’s my sister, pa,” Jeremiah said ultimately, struggling until he found the words.

Jonah saw his son’s eyes fill with pools, thinking that this must be just how his own young face must have looked of a time when he had asked a childlike Gritta Moser to be his wife and life companion, remembering how her acceptance had brought tears to his eyes.

“All right, son. I’ll be pleased to have your help.”

Jeremiah had taken their only shovel from Jonah’s hands and put his strong back into throwing the sod back into that dark, empty hole. He made short work of it, then straightened.

“Next one … my hole?”

“Yes,” Jonah answered softly. “Your grave. Fill it. I found you, Jeremiah. Fill it like you filled Hattie’s.”

Without reply, the young man bent to the work and soon had the second of the graves nearly full as Two Sleep looked on. Without the benefit of body nor coffin, and the effect of years of rain and snow eating away the mounds of dirt Jonah had left beside those empty holes back of a cold January in sixty-seven, the first two graves appeared more to be slight depressions than mounded scars marking a person’s final resting place.

Jeremiah came over to stand with his father beside the third hole. “This by mine hole—it for Zeke?”

Jonah could only nod, clearing his throat. He turned to the Shoshone, who stood close, his own eyes glistening, his jaw motionless. “Two Sleep—you help Jeremiah ease his brother down in that hole?”

Between the two of them they got Zeke lowered on ropes, then stood, waiting for Jonah as he stopped at the foot of the grave, when it started to snow. Hook knelt, scooped up some of the years-hardened soil, and tossed it in. Landing on the buffalo hide, the dirt made a dull but distinct noise there in the quiet of that late afternoon near the empty shell of the cabin the man had built for his woman and family years gone the way of time everlasting. Behind them among the hills the heavier snow crept down the slopes, falling softly without a sound but for the frosty breathing of those men and their animals near the private graveyard Jonah Hook had made of his private quest.

“I’ll always carry this pain in my heart for you, Zeke. Found your sister. Found your brother. It hurts, goddammit—hurts knowing I was a little late finding you, son. That’s a pain I’ll end up carrying in my heart for the rest of my days. As much a pain as having to think that you never really knowed me as a father … you was so young when I walked off to fight a war.”

The snow hit the shoulders of his canvas mackinaw with a soft hiss as Jonah stepped back and motioned with his free arm to the others. “A war I ain’t been able to come home from yet.”

Without a word between them Jeremiah and Two Sleep took turns hurriedly scooping dirt into Ezekiel’s grave. When they were finished, it was the only one of the three holes crowned with a rounded top. Jeremiah’s and Hattie’s had been filled with dirt only.

Yonder, on the far side of Hattie’s and right beneath the bare, skeletal, spreading arms of the elm, remained a single dark, gaping hole that stood out starkly against the new snow thinly blanketing the ground.

Jonah was already kneeling at the side of that last empty grave when Two Sleep came up to stand across from him on the far side of the yawning hole. Jonah heard Jeremiah come up beside him. The young man knelt, laying an arm across his father’s wounded shoulder.

Jonah gazed briefly at his son, eyes wet again. “I’m going back out there again, Jeremiah.”

The youth nodded, able to keep his own eyes from spilling.

“Me and Two Sleep going after your ma,” Jonah said, turning to look across that empty grave at the Shoshone with what his eyes made of an unspoken question.

The warrior nodded, his dark, ropy hands folded in front of him here among the spirits in Jonah Hook’s own private burial ground.

“I’m going with you, pa.”

The words came so strong, so sure, no faltering as they were spoken, that Jonah took his eyes off the Shoshone to look back at the face of his son. “Don’t think I could take you, Jeremiah. Gonna be a dangerous trail I’m taking now.”

“Look at you, pa. All stove up.”

“I’ll heal.”

“I know you will. Still, it don’t make no matter what you say.”

“I’m your pa, Jeremiah.”

He shook his head, his eyes brimming. “But I ain’t a little boy no more.”

That stung him, then as quickly filled Jonah with pride. “I … I plainly see you ain’t no little boy no more.”