“She says she’ll try to have a meal done when you get back.”
“She can sit by me.”
Three wagons rattled to the edge of the shell, as if they had been camped out of sight until the moment of noon, and slowly continued forward on salty flutes across the sand. Bravely three loads of women in gown and bonnet hymned together; Luke turned to locate the sound of women’s voices, faint, from mouths already closed. He climbed on top of the sod milk hut and under brimmed hands watched the approach of old wives in the dust.
“I’m glad for you. They’ll get here safely.”
Ma smiled.
The desert filled with women. They swarmed within sideboards of beaten wagons, staring ahead for sign of well or a shade in which to dismount and shake. Three cartloads plied the desert. Banded warm members, they traveled free of the farmer and cattle driver, chopped to the roots stray outcroppings of slate colored grass. These were women who rode unwatched on the dry bottom of the lake with empty breasts and nameless horses, and even the oldest unsnapped heavy collars and soured the passing miles from the tail boards where they sat and dangled their weak legs. They nodded to the thrust, the side slapping of the wheels.
“But I believe there’s trouble.” Again Luke climbed to his sod post and waited. Narrowly he glanced at Ma. “Yes, sir. Them women don’t have no water. Not a drop.”
“That’s all right.” Ma passed quickly with the basket. “You don’t draw such things to my attention.”
“Well,” Luke pulled on his hat, “I reckon they’d survive about anything.” He walked away, sat down and watched her.
And those women were roughly able to sing songs of the skewered lamb and waters driven back by faith or oath. They were dry. The boards on which they sat, scraped of fodder, might have burst aflame if the sun were caught briefly in the eye of a watch glass. They traveled in three lifeless dories with dead oarlocks and rotted sails; they sang stiffly, managed to hold the reins. They backtracked, chewed the sand and made their way over weary, salty miles to see one woman their own age brought to bed.