Sophie's Journey - Chapter 35
Only a Mother
The Wyoming high desert was sharp and empty. The horizon always seemed farther away at every step. The wind never stopped. It carried the fragrance of sage and dust, leaving Sophie’s mouth dry and bitter. There was no green here, only tan and gray, like the tired faces around her. Her handcart rattled over the rough ground. The wood groaned with every bump. That beat was the only rhythm left to them.
Sophie watched the man ahead, his trousers loose around legs of skin and bone. As she moved, she counted every step as the leather strap pressed into her chest. The cart seemed heavier with each step.
Next to her, Peter pulled with his head down, his narrow shoulders stooped in a way that made him look like a weary old man instead of a ten-year-old boy.
"Steady, Peter," Sophie murmured, her speech sounding thin and unfamiliar. "Watch the stones. We cannot afford a broken axle today."
The boy did not look up. He held the crossbar tighter, his knuckles clenched in the sun. Behind them, the carts moved slowly as the ground rose. The company was quiet now. The singing had stopped.
Sometimes someone sobbed. Sometimes a sub captain shouted. The group was falling apart. No one talked about Iowa anymore.
A cry broke the march. Sophie slowed and saw that a man had fallen into his handcart. It was Brother Jensen, the carpenter from Aalborg. He used to laugh loudly and work with strong hands.
Now he lay in the dirt, face down. He wept. The trail had taken everything.
Captain Willie moved forward, his coat draped loosely over his thin frame. He looked at Jensen without pity, only the need to keep moving. Sophie thought that his look was colder than the wind.
The company could not stop. To stop was to die. The captain reached down. Sophie thought he might help Jensen up. Instead, the slap cracked amid the silence. Jensen’s head whipped back, eyes open wide.
The captain, with his hand still raised, said in a stern voice loud enough to be heard along the trail, "Get up, Brother Jensen. Pull your cart. Do not let the adversary take your legs while your children are watching."
Sophie turned away. She watched Jensen climb back to his cart, moving like a machine. The slap had forced him to keep going, but Sophie felt sick. No prayer could change what she had seen.
She looked at Marianne, walking beside the cart. Marianne’s eyes were empty, staring ahead. She had not flinched at the slap. She was somewhere far away inside herself.
"Mother, why did he hit him?" Anne asked, in a small, terrified whisper out of the back of the cart where she sat huddled with Otto. She was holding her small shawl around her shoulders, her eyes dark with a precocious understanding of the violence they had just witnessed.
"To save him," Sophie said, though the words felt wrong. "He had to make him move. Now, be quiet and try to rest. We have miles yet before we camp."
By sunset, reports spread that someone had stolen flour from a widow’s sack during the night. Now everyone watched their neighbors with suspicion.
Sophie watched the leaders load the last supplies into three wagons. Men stood guard with sticks. No one trusted anyone now. Every neighbor looked like a rival.
Sophie stood in line at the supply wagon. When it was her turn, her hands quivered as she received the small ration that was supposed to sustain them for the next twenty-four hours. It was a small pile of gray flour. Back at the campsite, her children watched her divide it into their meager portions. She felt something cold inside.
"We should have stayed in Florence," Peder Mortenson said, moving into the edge of their firelight, his own small bowl of gruel held tightly against his chest. He looked at Sophie with a pragmatic bitterness, his eyes showing the wavering orange flames. "Savage was right. We are burning our own fat to move these wooden boxes, and now we are guarding our food from one another like dogs in a kennel. Is this the Zion they promised us, Sophie?"
Sophie didn't look up from the small fire she was nursing with twigs and buffalo chips. "Zion is where we arrive, Peder. Not where we are now. If you have breath to complain, you have breath to continue.”
"The trail doesn't care about our breath," Peder muttered, kicking a stray pebble into the dust. "Nor does it care about Zion."
Sophie threw another handful of twigs into the flickering flame, watching the smoke curl upward before speaking. "Then it is a good thing we care, even if the dirt beneath us does not."
Peder spat in disgust as he leaned forward. "Faith won't keep the frost out of our bones, Sophie. Look around—it is already the middle of October, and we haven't even reached the base of the mountains yet. The heavy snows are coming, and we are running out of days."
He paused, resting a hand heavily on his hip. "The livestock are failing, Sophie. Have you looked at the oxen? They are walking ghosts. If we don't cross the river tomorrow, we'll be hauling the wagons ourselves by Sunday. The captains are talking about fording the Sweetwater River again to save the climb over the ridge."
Sophie looked at the river ahead. Captain Willie wanted to ford to save strength. The water was low enough to cross, but it meant entering freezing currents. It was a hard choice.
In the morning, after a silent meal of flour gruel, Sophie and Peter pulled the handcart toward the riverbank. The Sweetwater River was a wide, shallow expanse of moving currents. When it was time to cross the river, Sophie pulled, and Peter steadied the cart. As Sophie stepped into the river, she felt the water's first touch through her leather boots, a shocking, icy chill that pulled the very heat from her bones.
"Hold onto the cart!" she shouted to the children over the rush of the water. "Do not let go! Peter, stay on the downstream side! Use the cart to steady yourself!"
She pulled with all of her strength; her skirts were saturated with water, dragging at her legs. The current pushed against the cart. The wood groaned. She saw the lead wagons struggle at the far bank. The oxen fell to their knees in the mud, their ribs showing.
The climb on the other side was steep and sandy. The animals struggled. Teamsters shouted and whipped, but the wagons barely moved. When they reached the shore, Sophie fell to the sand. Her legs shook. Her feet were numb. Anne cried next to her.
She looked at the trail ahead, twisting up toward the mountains. The crossing was over, but now the climb would take what little strength they had left.
"We have to move, Mother," Peter whispered, his voice cracking. He stood over her, his clothes dripping and his face colorless, but his eyes were steady, showing a maturity shaped in the freezing water. "If we sit, we'll freeze. I can help more. I'll take more of the weight."
Sophie nodded and leaned on Peter’s shoulder to stand. Together, they seized the cart’s handles. Their fingers were numb on the wood. Each step up the steep incline was hard. The wind took the last of their warmth. As her legs woke from the cold, hunger returned.
Hunger was sharp now, not just an ache. Sophie saw a woman from the Welsh company by the trail, chewing a strip of rawhide cut from a boot. The woman’s eyes were empty.
Sophie looked away and kept climbing. Her hands burned on the frozen wood. Each breath hurt her chest. The trail leveled on a bare ridge. The company moved slowly, each step a struggle.
Finally, the signal came to stop for the night. Sophie barely had enough energy left to help with the tent. After the few bites of flour gruel that she had for supper, she collapsed in the tent.
"Sophie?" Marianne whispered, her speech faintly discernible over the whistle of wind gusts through the tent. She turned her head, her eyes seeking Sophie’s in the subdued light. "Is there... is there anything left? Just a bite? My head is so light, I feel like I might float away."
"No, Marianne," Sophie said, her speech unemotional and clinical, a sound that gave no space for argument. "There is nothing left. We all have the same ration. You must try to sleep and save your strength for the morning."
She was only a mother now. Nothing else mattered. Keeping her children alive was her only goal.
Night appeared on the desert, cold and dark. Sophie lay in the tent, holding Otto and Anne close. Her body was the only heat that she could give them.
She heard the guards walking outside, boots on hard ground. A wolf howled far away. Sophie did not pray for Zion or the captains. She closed her eyes and listened to her children breathing.
She thought of the miles ahead, the river, and the mountains waiting in the dark. The company was breaking apart. Sophie would pull the cart as long as she could, for her children and no one else.
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