When she woke the next morning, her abdomen hurt terribly and she was doubled up with cramps. Her breasts were engorged with milk and leaking. Beth brought her something for the pain and bags of ice to ease the discomfort in her breasts. Emaline asked her to put in a call to Calla Plessman at the Arrowhead Diner. When she was well enough to leave the hospital, Charlie Naudain picked her up and took her back to Calla’s little house on West Overland. While Emaline dozed on the davenport, they drove to the farm to get her things. Jake was out when they pulled up. It was the time of day when a farmer should be working in the fields, but the old Ford was gone. Charlie parked in front of the house and stood guard while Calla dashed inside with the valise to pack Emaline’s things. She couldn’t believe how little the woman owned. Two threadbare dresses in addition to her good dress, which had been ruined when she was hit by Alf Muzzy’s truck. Enough underthings for three days, no more. Two slips, stockings, a jar of cold cream, a bottle of rose water, a pair of man’s overalls, worn brogans, which she obviously wore to work in the fields. Calla found Emaline’s ancient winter coat in the closet, but even with that and the overalls and the brogans, the suitcase was only half full.

28.

THE KNEELING BUFFALO, NEARLY AS VAST AS THE bluff itself, offered comfort and consolation from the far side of the river as Emaline recovered. As a girl newly arrived in Scottsbluff and miserable with longing for Wyoming and the Bighorns and the rush of Little Goose Creek, she had discerned in the pattern of sage, buffalo grass, and yucca that grew up the north flank of Scotts Bluff a kneeling buffalo two hundred feet high facing to the west, its head and hump clear in outline. The great buffalo was like the Burning Man of her dreams. It also communed with her without speaking, offered a vision of something beyond time and death, untouched by the squalor, mendacity, greed, and chaos of human existence down below.