Twelve Minutes Before Sunrise

Nebraska Prairie, 1892

“I ain’t goin’ back, I told you.” Jacob grabbed the reins harder, steering the rumbling wagon toward the bruised-looking horizon.

“I want Mama! Even that dang baby. Daddy’s gonna’ be real mad when he finds us gone,” Sarah whined. She didn’t have to finish the rest. It made her want to cry like a baby to think of the rest even though she was a full six-years-old now.

Jacob shook his head, eyes focused on the purple and pink streaks that hearkened dawn. “I told you, Mama won’t come, and we jes gotta go.” He set his jaw hard, and Sarah knew him immovable. But she tried again anyway.

“We could sneak in tonight after he’s gone out. Make ‘em come with us—”

“I said no, Sarah!” he cut in, sharp as Daddy’s hunting knife. “Now quieten down.”

Sarah grumbled something like “you bein’ jes like Daddy,” but did not push it.

They fell into silence and let the sounds of the waking day wash over them. Squawks and trills of prairie birds. Cows lowing, a rooster’s crow in the distance. The clop-clop of Bird’s shod hooves on the hard-packed trail.

Of a sudden, the horse snorted and shook her mane as a rise of gnats tickled her nose, making the dull brass on her tack jingle. This tipped Sarah out of her short silence.

“Think they gonna’ like us, Aunt Nettie and Uncle Joe? They ain’t but met us but that one time when I was a baby, and I don’t even remember what they look like.”

Jacob sighed a long, exasperated huff, making him seem too world weary for his ten years. “You gonna’ make me a lunatic. They want us to come, all right? They sent Mama that letter she’s been hidin’, asking for all of us to leave Daddy and come live with them. And I figure if Mama won’t leave, they’ll take whatever portion of us they can get.”

By now the bottom half of the sky glowed so peachy bright it was hard to look at, and it seemed to Sarah near the color of Mama’s best calico. When she said it aloud, it reminded Jacob of all the good things he was leaving behind, and he had to swallow back tears. But they both squinted and looked anyway, intent, in case Boston showed on the horizon anytime soon and they missed it.

“How long till we get there?” Sarah asked the question on both their minds.

“I don’t know! Alls I know is we gotta’ keep goin’ east till we hit the ocean. Then we’re sure to find it from there.”

“Ocean,” Sarah mused. “Oo-she-aan.” She dragged the word out, rolling it around her mouth like a marble, making it sound foreign, exotic. For it was to them, surrounded as they’d been their whole lives by hard prairie and brutal skies. An ocean itself, in a way, but in this world, where water had to be tapped from deep down in the earth, and used sparingly, it was impossible to imagine all that water. And now with the drought, an ocean was a king’s riches of water. With so much water Sarah wouldn’t have to be last to take a cold, dirty bath. She couldn’t wait to stand in it—not to swim, for she couldn’t swim—and feel all that wet wash over her, drench her till she became something else. Maybe a fish, like in the Bible, though she wasn’t sure she’d like to be eaten…

“Jacob, do you think if I turned into a fish, I’d get eaten?”

Jacob let out a bark of laughter. Irritating as she was, Sarah said the most entertaining things sometimes. “I don’t think you is gonna’ be a fish, so ain’t nobody gonna’ eat you.”

Jacob found he had to bring the rim of his hat down now. The sun’s edge was bulging over the horizon rim hard, like the edge of a yolk pressed with a fork and about to burst. He could smell the earth, the horse, already taking on its warmth. It would be another scorcher.

Sarah pulled her bonnet down and screwed up her face, turning to him again in consternation. “Jacob, how we gonna’ find Aunt and Uncle after we find the ocean?”

He was glad she asked. He was particularly proud of his planning on this front. “Well, I memorized their last name, Smith, and their address. I figure we can jes’ ask around and somebody’ll point us in the right direction.”

That sounded like a good plan to Sarah. She nodded.

The cool pre-dawn was fading into muggy warmth, and this premonition of just how hot it would be today, made her feel thirsty.

“I’m thirsty.”

“Look in back. I got us a few skins.”

Sarah climbed carefully over the bench like Mama always told her to, but then the wheel hit a rut, and she was sent sprawling. She landed in the back, limbs akimbo, and she thought for sure her whole body was broken like Mama said could happen, so she started to howl.

“Saints alive,” Jacob muttered, and brought Bird to a halt. He thought about Mama—feeding everybody and cleaning everything, along with taking care of this needy little girl and a constantly bleating baby all day. He’d always thought field work was harder, but now he began to wonder.

He climbed over and pulled Sarah up. “You tell me where it hurts,” he said, remembering Daddy’s words and actions after Bird had thrown Jacob when he was younger than Sarah. Before whiskey made Daddy a different man.

Tickling rivulets of sweat made their way down his back as he prodded, not too gently, his sister’s head, arms, legs, torso. She complained, but nothing made her jump out of her skin.

“You’re fine,” he proclaimed. She whined, so he gave her some water and some of the precious bread he’d been saving for several days, and they carried on down the trail.

After a moment, Sarah wailed again. “I want Mama. This bread hurts my teeth!”

“You ain’t gettin’ her, Sarah, and that’s all we got. Now quieten down before I wallop you!”

She settled, her heart aching for her mother, and they both listened to the clop-clop of the horse, the jangle of reins, quietly witnessing the sun fully breach.

Both Sarah and Jacob squinted at it, feeling like there was something different about this sunrise, something momentous, and that they daren’t take their eyes from it, or this dream of running away from their parched prairie home would crumble into so much dust.

“Jes’ a little ways yonder, sure thing,” Jacob said. “Why don’t we sing that song Mama taught us? The one about Susannah? That’ll pass the time.”

Sarah grinned. She loved to sing, even if that song was sad and didn’t make much sense to her.

She started singing, her sweet little voice carrying out so that Bird’s ears pricked and she picked up her pace unprompted.

Even if Sarah didn’t, Jacob knew Mama had awakened by now and found them gone. Daddy would still be passed out, but she would wake him, and he would mount their other horse, a bony old nag but still rideable, beat her bloody till he got some speed out of her, and come for them.

And Daddy would find them. He would take a switch to Jacob, beat him till it hurt to walk or sit, and smack Sarah in the face. He’d blame Mama and beat her after he’d drunk some, too.

But for now, they were going to see their aunt and uncle. And they were going to see the ocean.