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had done the bad thing, because Papa never should’ve taken a stranger’s part. My brother just rushed when the others rushed and tried to act just like them, and Ringo, too, went around the raft baying his deep voice, and maybe nobody knew it except me and Mama. But I knew it, and Mama proved me, though she didn’t look at me but only hard-eyed in the dark straight at Papa. But I knew that we knew it, the two of us together, and there was a change between us in that moment.
    My mind could not wrap around and hold it, or did not want to, or I could not let Papa being wrong wrap around me, and so the knowledge washed away in the grit and grate of landing, and I was glad, I was willing. I squatted down and put my arms around Thomas. It was only later that I remembered. By then the fact of it had slipped into the new way of our lives together, no greater or lesser than the fact, maybe, that Papa never asked the blessing before we ate supper anymore.
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    Papa did not pause when we scraped up on the sand and stilled. He hitched the mules and unstopped the wheels and drove the wagon off before he even lit the lanterns, before we hardly understood that the rolling had stopped, and then he began to load in the dark inside the wagon. The raftsmen helped him with the cookstove, but they went back upon their raft right after, laughing in their nasty language, and watched while Papa put in and took out and put in again, cursing, our wooden crates and Mama’s trunk.
    Uncle Fay came and whispered something low, and Papa answered short and sharp. Later I could hear Uncle Fayette down by the yellow light on the other raft arguing with the other raftsmen, and yowyowyow they went until Papa hollered down there, “Pay the man, Fayette!”
    It was late, late, I don’t know how late, when we moved creaking off that sandbar, and the bearded raftsmen wrapped around once in filthy quilts and lying snoring on the empty raftwood floor like dogs behind us, and the cramped space inside the wagon even more cramped and mistaken and backwards because now Mama and Lyda slept at the rear of the wagon and me and the children up front behind Papa, and the wind sneaked in upon us even with the tarp flap laid down, and I was bothered because I could not see Mama because the crates were piled up between us and the cookstove was cockeyed and Papa had loaded our possessions all wrong.
    I don’t know when we stopped, but when I woke the first time it was deep night and we were not moving. I raised up and eased the flap aside and looked out. Papa was nodding in the yellow circle of coal oil light. The mules were asleep in the traces. There was no moon or stars for light, and that wind was still blowing, though soft.
    My heart jerked tight, and I said, “Papa?”
    His head snapped up and he slapped the reins on Delia’s back. Never said a word nor looked me back, and we began to move again. I could not hear the other wagon, but I laid that off to the soft drone of wind, and I snuggled back down. I was glad for us driving on in the night. It was warm under the covers with the children, the wind was the sound of forever and sky and distance and dark, and Papa and old Sarn and Delia could carry us, the wagon rocking, the wind humming, on through the night.
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    When I woke at first light, the wind had died completely. As soon as my eyes opened I knew Uncle Fayette and Aunt Jessie and the six cousins were not close, not just because I couldn’t hear them but because I felt it, and I did not know how they could have got far ahead in such cold and wind, but I didn’t care. I was glad the wind had died. The cold now was wet cold, and stronger, seeping in through the wagonsheet. I believed we would stop then and camp, for the sake of the animals if not for Papa, but we just went on. In late morning the ice came. I understood then the meaning of the blue wind, but by then it was too late to stop and camp in a