Where the Lost Wander

Chapter 1 is narrated from John Lowry’s perspective. He first sees Naomi in May 1853, as she sits primly on a barrel in the middle of a street in St. Joseph, Missouri. Dressed in a new hat and boots, John is carrying supplies for his forthcoming journey to Fort Kearny. He stares at Naomi, and she smiles at him and walks toward him.

She introduces herself as Naomi May and says her father bought a team of mules from John’s father, who is also called John Lowry. He doesn’t take her proffered hand, instead tipping his hat and calling her “Ma’am.” She flusters him, and he walks away in confusion.

St. Joseph is bustling as wagon trains prepare for the trip west. His father has sold all his best mules. John reflects that his father’s wife, Jennie, calls him “John Lowry” rather than John or Johnny to remind him of his mixed Pawnee and white ancestry. His own mother’s people call him “Two Feet”—“One white foot, one Pawnee foot” (10). He considers himself a stranger in both worlds.

In a brief flashback, John recalls how his mother presented him to his father when he was eight and told the senior Lowry to take his son in. Jennie referred to the woman as “Mary,” which she denied, saying her Pawnee name.

He enters his father’s store. John reflects that Lowry has done well since coming to St. Joseph with a donkey, two mares, three children, and Jennie. Jennie did take the boy John in and treated him well.

John asks if Lowry sold a mule team to the May family, and his father says he did. Noting John’s interest in the man’s daughter, Lowry informs John that the Mays signed on with Grant Abbott’s company so that John can watch the Mays’ mules. Abbott, Jennie’s brother, has convinced John to travel with the train as far as Fort Kearny in Nebraska. John will drive mules there, as he has done for the past five years, but will also be paid to carry a gun and help with the train as needed.

Returning to a flashback, John remembers how his mother told him to stay with the Lowrys and walked away from him. When John followed her outside, she sat next to him and remained there through the night. She was ill, with burning skin and rattling breath, and in the morning she was dead. Jennie took him inside, where he met his half-sisters, Sarah and Hattie. When Sarah asked if the boy was Indigenous, Jennie replied that he was John Lowry, Papa’s son. Soon afterward, the family moved to St. Joseph, where his father bought a good-quality jack (adult male) donkey for breeding.

John’s father asks if John will return from the trip west this time, telling him there is a Pawnee village near Fort Kearny. When John asks if Lowry thinks he belongs in a Pawnee village, his father says no. John remembers how, before the Lowrys moved to St. Joseph, he visited his grandmother in the Pawnee village as a child, and the Pawnee didn’t like him.

Lowry further surprises John by saying he loved John’s mother, Mary, and that he isn’t as bad a person as John thinks he is. He says Mary didn’t like her life with Lowry, and so he let her go back to her people. He insists that he didn’t know about John’s existence until she brought the boy to him eight years later. John feels admiration for his father but no other emotion.

As he walks back to Jennie’s house, John encounters a small redheaded boy, two older boys, and a pregnant woman in a faded dress. The woman turns out to be Naomi’s mother; the boys are Webb and two of his older brothers, Wyatt and Will.

John says he met Naomi, and William guesses she is buying paper and pencils. The Mays are planning to travel beyond Fort Kearny, all the way to California. Naomi appears and is introduced to John as “Mrs. Caldwell.” John advises the Mays to cross the Missouri river via ferry, and says he’ll see them at the trading post on the other side.

At Jennie’s house, John tells her he plans to swim his mules across the river that evening. She tells him that his father suffers when he goes, due to the suffering of being unable to shield a loved one. She adds that it “is not love if it doesn’t hurt” (25). As he starts to walk away, she calls out that the pain of love is worth it and is the “only thing that is” (26).

Chapter 2 is narrated from Naomi’s perspective. She climbs a bluff overlooking the Missouri River with her brothers and thinks about how much noisier and more crowded St. Joseph is than her hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Below them, a line of wagons waits to cross the river. Everyone wants to be the first wagon to leave, but if they depart too early, there will be no grass for the animals, and if they leave too late, there won’t be enough grass and they might freeze in the mountains.

Naomi reflects that she is ready to go, even though it was her late husband, Daniel Caldwell, who persuaded the Mays to strike out for California. Daniel died three months after they were married, just before Naomi’s 19th birthday. Naomi miscarried soon afterward and was relieved. She wonders if this is a vile thought but concludes that “everyone is a little vile” (30). She drew Daniel’s face to comfort herself.

A year has passed, and though Daniel’s family says she is a Caldwell and should make the trip west in their wagon, she still feels like a May and is making the journey in her own family’s wagon. She dislikes Daniel’s father, Lawrence Caldwell, who will be traveling with his wife, son, and daughter and son-in-law.

Below, John Lowry drives a dozen mules and two large donkeys into the river as his father watches, seeming sad. Naomi sketches all the sights she has seen in St. Joseph until sunset.

The next morning, the Mays ride to the ferry. Pa has a wagon, as does Naomi’s oldest brother, Warren, and his wife, Abigail. The Caldwells also have two wagons, along with a dozen head of cattle. They all cross the river at the ferry. Grant Abbott, leader of the wagon train, waits on the other side with John Lowry. Naomi wonders how the fair-skinned Abbott can be John’s uncle. She likes John’s dark, sharp-featured looks and wants to draw his face.

The next morning, they start off. The Mays are near the back to suit the pregnant Ma’s slower pace. The wagons bump and lurch so much that milk in the churn turns to butter.

Monotonous days pass by, with chores involved in loading up each camping spot in the morning and unloading at the new one in the evenings. Ma plods on despite her pregnancy, as does another pregnant woman, Elsie Bingham. Sometimes Naomi rides one of the mules and draws.

Rumors of cholera on the trail begin to spread, and John Lowry insists that water be hauled upstream of camp to prevent pollution. When they pass the grave of a two-month-old baby, Naomi tells Ma that she hates being a woman and is angry at the men in their party. Ma tells her that hating never fixed anything and it’s better to put energy into transcendence, thinking about “what could be” and “rising above the things you can’t change” (42) despite pain. Naomi confesses to Ma that she likes John Lowry and that is why she is mad.

Chapter 3 is narrated from John’s point of view. John worries that Naomi’s mother, Winifred, will give birth soon and thinks she and Naomi make a handsome pair. He allows little Webb May, who is obsessed with John’s mules, to trail after him. Webb invites him to eat with their family, but he refuses. After several days, Webb brings him a loaf of bread baked by Naomi, which pleases him greatly.

A thunderstorm arrives on their fifth day, and the emigrants stake their wagons in a circle with the animals in the middle. Naomi takes advantage of the rain to wash the family’s laundry. John scolds her, but when she stubbornly insists that she is fine, he helps her. Naomi makes him promise to eat with the family the next time he is invited.

Abbott wonders if John is “sweet on the pretty widow” (48), inadvertently answering John’s question of why Naomi is “Mrs. Caldwell.” He warns John about Naomi, saying that Mr. Caldwell still considers her his property. When John fails to respond, his uncle calls him lovesick.

The rain swells the Big Blue River, and Abbott tells the emigrants to prepare to cross it. Men from the Kanzas people will ferry travelers and supplies across for a fee. John swims all the animals across the river. When John reaches for one of Caldwell’s mules, Caldwell slashes the animal with a whip, catching part of John’s face. John grabs the whip and tells him the animals will simply balk if they are whipped. Naomi urges Caldwell to let John help, and Caldwell at first says he isn’t paying the “half breed” to do anything he can do himself. Finally, he agrees, and John safely guides the Caldwell wagon and mules across.

On the other side, the Kanzas ferrymen demand food, and the travelers, wary of stories of attacks by Indigenous tribes, quickly comply. Naomi remarks that John isn’t like them and asks what tribe he belongs to. He says he wasn’t raised in a tribe, but by a white woman who had a place for everything, even himself. Naomi wonders aloud where John’s place is now, and he says it is by the mules.

Naomi asks John to call her Miss May, not Mrs. Caldwell, as she wasn’t married long and never got used to the name. He replies with a Pawnee word, “âka’a,” that is used like a sigh of acknowledgment. He tells her to return to her wagon because “everything has its place” (54). She presses on, wondering about his background. He explains that he was born to a Pawnee woman but raised by his father and Jennie, then says Naomi is not like the other women in the wagon train because she doesn’t care what others think.

Secretly John believes women are trouble, having almost been seduced by one of Jennie’s friends as a boy. He didn’t go to school with his half-sisters, because he liked to fight, so Jennie taught him to read and write.

He tells Naomi that women can’t be trusted and that he isn’t afraid of her, to which she replies, “You are terrified of me” (57). Finally, she gives him an inviting look and after some hesitation, they share a passionate kiss before he pushes her away. She accuses him of being unkind because he doesn’t think they are the same, but she believes it is okay for people to be different. He retorts that “some cultures do not mix” (59), like having fins but trying to live on land. Her reply, “So be a turtle” (60), makes him laugh.