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.”
Jeremiah reached out and folded his father into his arms. “But that don’t mean I ain’t your son no more. Nothing ever gonna change that. I know now that nothing ever could change that.”
Refusing to believe what his heart told him, Hook started to choke out the words, “I ain’t so sure I should —”
“She’ll always be my mother,” Jeremiah interrupted, turning to look down into the dark hole in the midst of all of that white swathing the ground. A wet, spring snow. “I owe her just as much to try as you do, pa.”
His heart leapt, burning with his love for that youngster he hadn’t watched grow up. Burning with love for his son who had swiftly crossed all those years they had been apart by bridging that great gulf with his own love. For a moment Jonah wondered where Jeremiah could have ever learned that sort of love … then he knew, thinking suddenly on Gritta once more, here beside her empty grave.
His voice cracked as he said, “You always did sort of favor your mother, son.”
Jonah realized Jeremiah had gotten the best his mother had to give him. It was always that way with Gritta: giving everything to her man and their children.
“I want to do this for you too, pa.” Jeremiah helped his father stand in the cold as the wind shifted, swinging out of the south.
“You sure about this, son?”
He nodded, straightening his strong back. “I ain’t really asking you, pa. I’m
Jonah brought the young man into his arms and hugged him fiercely. Holding him like he had never held Jeremiah before. As a man.
“Son, let’s go find your mother.”
And as they turned from that open black hole, so like the empty place torn through the middle of Jonah’s heart, the snow became a cold rain.
A slow, tearful, winter rain.
Epilogue
NATE DEIDECKER DARED not admit it, but he was relieved to know that Jonah Hook would be getting him back to the cabin tomorrow afternoon.
Still, with all his fears, this horseback ride into the splendid serenity of the Big Horns had been one of the singular events in the life of the young newsman. Something he vowed he would tell his grandchildren about when they gathered at his knee. Funny to think on that now, for there had been times in the past three days Nate had entertained serious doubts of ever living long enough to father any children, much less come to enjoy his grandchildren.
What stories he would regale them with, sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters all—tales to make them cringe, tales that would make their hair stand on end, make their eyes grow wide and their mouths O in surprise. These true tales of Jonah Hook.
The sun was glorious beyond belief falling into the west beyond their camp that night on the western slope of the mountains. Out there beyond, yonder in Teddy Roosevelt’s Yellowstone Park, it seemed to be settling, as here the light bled away to magnificent stillness. How the air of these evenings hummed with a radiant alpenglow, cooling quickly as the old frontiersman puttered about the camp he made them that night. Having started the fire and left Deidecker to tend it, Hook had proceeded to erect the newsman’s small dog tent, unfurling in it Deidecker’s canvas bedroll wrapped around its wool blankets. Then Jonah had unpacked the cast-iron skillet and small kettle, along with that monster of a battered pot capable of making a gallon of coffee. From a nearby freshet running through the meadow Hook had drawn them water, then set the blackened vessel on the flames to boil.
The haunch of a young doe Jonah had shot at mid-morning was sliced, and two thick slabs of the bloody meat now covered the bottom of the old man’s skillet, ready for frying when the time came. The singular, invigorating smell to the air of these mountain evenings made Nate all the hungrier. If Jonah hadn’t protected the loin steaks, Deidecker might well have tried to raise a slice or two and wolf it down raw.
In the past three days of travel through this wilderness he had come to understand why the plainsmen said
