Map

It had been three days since my mother coughed herself into a state of voiceless unresponsiveness that ended in her death when we buried her, under a heap of stones and a makeshift cross of two sticks twined together with my yellow ribbon on the side of the trampled road we followed. It was soon after this that Papa stopped talking and Avie began to weep. He wept for so long that his lashes clung together in yellow droplets and I had to pry them open each morning with my spit and fingers.
Five days after we buried mama papa packed up and continued west, smacking Bessie's stubborn bottom with the reins and heading on until the Mountains that had been right behind us began to diminish until only the flat drifts of dessert claimed their last peek.
I watched as that mountain was consumed, remembering when we had traveled through it, when Papa's voice was a loud curse dripping with sarcasm and often humor and mama's cough had been a soft hack. It was in those mountains towards the highest peak that Avie and I had discovered snow for the first time since last winter, and we had rolled in it, thrown it and slid in it until our clothes were plastered with white sparkles of cold. Papa had shaken his head at me, lips pressed together and eyes questioning, but mama had laughed from her bed of blankets and reached for me. "Come, Martha." Her voice was then just a whisper, "Let me feel the snow." I had gone to her and laid my head on her shoulder as her fingers, tanned with cracked nails, had moved leaden heavy over me.
In those mountains, far below the highest peek we had passed fields of wispy purple flowers and elongated ovals of red flowers, that I had twined together to make necklaces for mama, myself and Avie. "No!" Papa had shaken his head at Avie when he saw him wearing them. "Not for boys." Avie had laughed his baby giggle and ran away to mama who did not respond to his body as he thrust it at her. That was one of the last times he lay beside her while her body was still warm with whatever life her trembling heart could spread.
The mountain peek vanished on the first day of the fourth week after we buried mama, and I began to wonder if I would count my life as such from now on. The desserts now filled our eyes in both our vision and the constant blowing sand that swept across the world in spinning waves. Sometimes at night I would awaken to the cold that numbed us more than the brief winter in the mountains had, and listen to the wind quick and minor toned as it sang its howling moan. It was at these times that I was grateful for Avie's small warm body, folded next to mine as it once had been folded next to mama's for I would slip my arms around him and press my ears to his chest so that I could hear its thudding and know that I was not alone.
The second day of the fifth week since we had buried mama was the first day that we saw a face that was not one of ours. He was an old man, with a short white beard that looked as if it could have cut paper, pale yellow eyes and deep curves of wrinkles flowing from his cheeks to where his hairline once may have started. He didn't say anything to us, just watched us as we passed, leaning on his long rifle with both hands clasped around it. Papa only nodded and slapped Bessie's bottom a little harder, and shifted in his seat.
A short time after that we stopped and papa took out our chests and took out clean clothes for himself. "Find something clean to put on." He said, and I leaped away from him, fear slicing through me at the sound of his voice that I had not heard for so long. He did not seem to notice but walked away, carrying his clothes and shaking his head.
On the fifth day of the fifth week since we had buried mama we entered Willington. I do not know if it was a town, but assumed so, since it had a name. Nothing else about it would have made me think that it was a town. There were about fifteen to twenty buildings splattered in a semi circle around a larger building that announced itself as a "saloon" in large crooked letters above the door. Spilling out of this building were men in high boots and ragged clothing of faded colors. There faces all wore the same expression of suspicious distrust while their mouths moved in cow like motions as they chewed and spat their tobacco in long goblets of brown. Papa, freshly shaved and red jumped from the wagon, suddenly looking young and vulnerable as he reached up for me, his eyes meeting mine briefly in a sideways guilty fashion. I touched the ground, my boots that I had not worn for so long, crunching my toes together in a vice grip, and helped Avie down.
Avie, all eyes, gripped me around the neck in his sweaty hands and did not protest when papa pulled his thumb from his mouth. We walked past the men, papa nodding and smiling, sometimes touching his hand to his hat, and up towards what passed for a saloon in this town. I held Avie, tightly, my eyes clasped on the ground watching the men's booted feet kick the earth into sandy clouds causing their silver sharp spurs to jingle.
Inside, all was a dark shade of yellowy brown, from the floor littered with broken bottles to the tables crusted with foods from past meals. The back wall of the room was the only area lit with candles and it was here that several women sat, on bar stools and in men's laps throwing their voices and words around in loud hoots of praise. They stood out next to the men's drab colors, for they wore colors of bright reds, greens and blues, gold lined and feathered, their dresses spreading out around them like peacock feathers.
We stood their for a few moments, before they saw us, and then they stopped one by one, frozen in both body and sound, staring at us with wide open eyes, like a doe in the sight of a hunter.