Page 31 of The Harvey Girls

Twenty-Three

After they’d completed their purchases (a silver charm with a tiny pebble of turquoise for Henny’s charm bracelet and a lovely little earthenware bowl that Billie planned to bring home to her mother), they ate their packed lunch at the rustic tables behind the trading post and watched the wind rustle the scrub brush across the desert and the occasional car or truck trundle over the one-lane suspension bridge.

When they returned to the Harvey Car, Henny climbed in back with Billie—“I might rest my eyes for a minute,” she said—and Charlotte was left to sit in front with Will.

Now it was late afternoon, and they were heading west along the Little Colorado toward Grand Canyon Village, the sun sliding down behind a patchwork of wispy clouds.

Unlike the ride to Cameron, no one spoke, but to Billie it seemed a satisfied kind of silence.

It reminded her of the picnics she took with her family beside the Big Nemaha River, where they would wade and splash and run after one another for the better part of a Sunday afternoon.

On the ride home the kids would hunker down like a litter of piglets, tangled up and drowsy in the truck bed or against Maw’s shoulder in the cab.

(All except Duncan, of course, who spent his time trying to ping road signs with rocks fired from his slingshot.

“Got one!” he’d yell occasionally, and someone would rouse long enough to give him a half-hearted punch.)

This Harvey Car was certainly more comfortable than her father’s cantankerous truck, but Billie wouldn’t have minded if the now-snoozing Henny had tipped over like one of her siblings and laid her head in Billie’s lap.

She had never had so little bodily contact in her life, and she missed the comfort of it.

Billie was nodding off, too, when Will said quietly, “I hear Boston’s quite a city.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said after a pause. “It is.”

“Nothing around here quite like it.”

“No.”

Well, this is some fascinating conversation , thought Billie wryly.

Her eyelids were almost closed when Charlotte said, “I like the newness here.”

“The newness?” Will’s tone was so casual he almost sounded bored. This in itself made Billie blink herself fully awake. Will wasn’t bored, she sensed. He was being careful not to scare Charlotte off.

“Yes. It barely has a history.”

“Well, it does,” Will said mildly.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Charlotte corrected herself. “The Indians.”

“Only it’s not recorded.”

“Ruth at the Hopi House says the stories are handed down orally.”

“So then it is recorded,” said Will. “Just not in a way we recognize.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment, but Billie could feel their alertness to each other.

“I suppose what I meant,” said Charlotte quietly, “is that I don’t have a history here.”

Will only nodded.

“It’s a fresh start,” said Charlotte.

“I know what you mean.”

Sitting behind Will, Billie could see Charlotte glance briefly at Will for the first time. “Do you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

Again they paused, each absorbing this new information about the other.

“Recently, I’ve been wondering,” said Charlotte.

“Wondering?”

“Maybe the word is ruminating .”

“Pondering,” said Will.

“Yes. Pondering.”

The car slowed almost imperceptibly, the motor growling at a slightly lower volume. He doesn’t want to miss a word , Billie realized.

“I’ve been pondering fresh starts,” said Charlotte, “and whether they exist at all. Whether one can simply disconnect oneself from the past as a train uncouples from cars it no longer requires.”

“That’s a very good question.”

“Do you think so?” Now Charlotte was the casual one. Having revealed what was perhaps her most central worry, she retreated to a lightness she certainly didn’t feel.

“I do.”

Billie wanted to give him a little slap on the back of his head as she would any of her brothers. I do? What sort of answer was that?

But then he went on. “I think there are cars that we’re welded to, that we’ll always pull along behind us. And others we might be able to let go of.”

“Which ones do you think we can let go of?”

“Not many,” he said. “The past is the past, and there’s no changing it. But…” He tipped his head slightly in thought.

Charlotte turned to gaze at him.

“I’d like to let go of the pain,” he said. “I can accept the past. But there’s a carload of pain I’d pull the pin on.”

Charlotte smiled. “Pulling a pin. Wouldn’t that be nice.”

Will glanced over at her, and Billie could see his cheek go round as he smiled back.

And then they were quiet again.

Billie watched them, eagerly hoping that more would be revealed, but the two sat in what seemed to be a contented silence as the car rumbled along.

A memory came to her of a time she was watching the little ones while her mother delivered dinner to a sick neighbor.

Duncan was riding Ian around on the back of his bike and Ian’s big toe got caught in the bike chain somehow—Billie still didn’t know how he’d done it, but leave it to Ian—and Duncan carried the wailing boy into the kitchen yelling for Billie to save the damn toe and yelling at Ian to stop his damn howling.

Duncan felt guilty, Billie knew, and his response to an unpleasant feeling was always to yell at someone else.

There was blood everywhere, and Angus came in and gasped, “Holy feckin’ Christ!” which only made Billie’s skyrocketing worry rise even higher, and Catriona threatened to tell Maw about his awful dirty mouth, and all the while Ian was howling and wouldn’t stay still to let her look at the wound.

When Da came in from work saying “What in the bloody hell…?” and took over, Billie had been so relieved.

That’s how she felt now about Will talking in such a way with Charlotte.

Finally there was an adult in the house.