Traveling

Josephine's body was angled to the small, curtained window inside the buggy, her stare intent on the constantly changing foliage. She was trying to keep her entire focus on the outside world--away from Grant, away from thoughts of her family banishing her to some damp, salty place she was determined to hate.

Grant was across from his sullen sister, but the buggy was so small, their knees knocked every now and then. He fancied Jospehine's eyes growing soft and glassy with each thud, but after a few moments, her visage steeled once more. For two and a half hours, they rode like this--air stifled with anger and hurt, two siblings too baffled and undone with Mitch's loss to comfort the other.

The sun was easing its way into the lower section of clear peachy-blue sky and Grant decided he had had enough.

"Jo," he said with the authority of an older brother.

Silence from his sister.

"Jo," he said with more anger than he wanted.

She turned to him and her eyes were like murky inkwells, and suddenly he felt like the careless child who had sullied them with his selfishness and self-pity.

"What?" she asked plainly.

"This is stupid," he began softer, "how can I tell mama and papa..." he stopped, not wanting to continue in something that would be irrelevant. "Josephine, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for leaving you alone by the riverbanks when I should've been picking flowers with you. Sorry for sleeping late while mama and papa told you about this. I might have helped...I might have made you feel..." Grant stopped and thought for a second, "I don't know, maybe it would all have been this same awful empty feeling. I'm just so sorry."

Josephine held his words in her ears for a moment, letting each one trickle into a makeshift sort of sense. She wanted to yell back that he should have been picking flowers and been up to hear how mama and papa declared her future. He should have done it all and she was angry that he didn't. She wanted to yell all this and hit him in the chest and shoulders--beating him like a tiny monkey with cymbals she had seen in one of the town shop's newspaper ads. But there was no point now. The carriage bumped happily along, the sun shone through the window lighting the silly curtains and she was still being sent away.

"Grant..." she paused, shifting in her seat, "Grant, promise me you'll write. Promise you'll send me scraps of home and tell me how mama and papa miss me."

Grant had to swallow back the hard knot in his throat and look at his boot for a spell. He couldn't cry in front of his sister--she was the one about to start something new and frightening--even if he was still clinging to his own sorrows.

"I promise I'll keep your letter box full--I'll make mama and papa send you your favorite cookies and...I'll think of something you like and surprise you in each letter," Grant sounded proud, like he had mended a button on a shirt with many more years of wear left in it.

"Just don't forget about me..." Jo sounded so small and pitiful, Grant took the rest of the small bench next to her and hooked his arm about her neck in what usually ended in a rough hair-tousling. Instead, Grant kissed the top of her head and laid his chin there. "I'll make sure you'll be okay, little bird-bum. Even if I have to come back down here and kick you in the pants myself..." he laughed and she shook her head and gave him a pinch in the arm.

Josephine fell asleep like this as they passed through San Francisco. Her sleep the light, dreamless rest of someone not wanting to know how far they are traveling, and still knowing that distance must be crossed again to get back home.