This Valley Called Sorrow
My family is gone.
All of them—Titus, the boys, my baby, my sweet Jordan Rose—are dead. I cannot make sense of this loss. It is like the sky overhead, too immense to take in all at one time.
I did not hear the Blackfeet attack our home. I was down at the river, scrubbing clothes on the rocks, humming a song. Did my family cry out in pain? Did little Rose scream in fright? I will never know, but I can imagine. Imagining might be worse than knowing.
It was the Bible pages that warned me something was wrong. As I knelt on the riverbank, a single thin page of scripture wafted past me on the breeze, followed by another. And another. I snatched them out of the air before I realized what they meant. Then I dropped them and ran to the cabin, afraid of what I might find.
I think they shot Titus first. He was lying a couple feet away from the cabin, arrows bristling from his chest and his scalp bloody. Japheth, my second-born, had been cut down in the meadow, halfway to the pine trees. I think he tried to stop the Blackfeet. They did not shoot him in the back as he ran. He was facing them. Maybe he thought he could delay them long enough to give Jericho and Rose time to escape if he sacrificed himself. That’s something Japheth would have done for his brother and sister.
Jericho, my brave boy, my first-born, had scooped up Rose and tried to save her. They were right at the edge of the forest, Jericho’s arms still around her, when they fell.
All of them are dead. All of them are gone.
Only I am left to grieve.
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I must have passed out, because when I awoke, I was lying in the grass, my limbs flung wide. When I tried to stand, my legs were as weak as water, so I crawled on my hands and knees to the cabin.
“Adinah, you gotta get us into the ground.” I heard Titus’ voice then, as clear as if he were standing right next to me. “You gotta get us in the ground before the critters get to us.”
And like I always do—or did—I listened to Titus.
Slowly, I hung onto the side of the cabin and pulled myself up, then stood, swaying like a lodgepole pine in the breeze, struggling to find my balance.
I found the shovel beside Titus’ body. Then I started to dig. I selected a spot between the forest and the cabin, where several wild rose bushes were in bloom. Rose had admired them greatly, touching one small finger to their pink petals. I thought it was a fitting place to bury them.
The soil is not deep here, not like in Indiana. I ran into rocks almost right away, but I did not stop. Stopping meant I had to think, to feel. Digging let me ignore my truth for a little while longer. The sun reached its zenith and was halfway down the sky by the time I had two shallow graves dug and my palms were raw with blisters. I could do no more.
“That’s all right, Adinah,” Titus told me, his voice comforting, calm. “You can cover us with stones.”
Perhaps I should have buried him first. He was my husband, after all, the patriarch of the Sutton family. Instead, I fetched Jericho and Rose, staggering under their combined weight as I lifted them in my arms and carried them to the cabin. I could not put them in the ground right away. It seemed too further a step. I had to kneel and pray for strength before I laid them ever so gently in the grave I had dug. Titus came next. I wept tears of grief and frustration as I dragged him over the rough ground, stopping every two feet or so to rest. He was heavy. And silent. Sometimes even Titus knows when it’s best not to offer advice.
Japheth, my Blue Jay, was last, his slender body heavy as I carried him to lie in Titus’ arms.
I covered their faces last. I told myself they were sleeping. I told myself that their spirits were long gone, that their souls had flown up toward heaven hours earlier, that their mortal shells wouldn’t mind being covered with dirt. I minded, though. Never to see their faces again seemed a fate far worse than death. Finally, I whispered words of prayer, asking God for a little more strength, and I did what had to be done.
If sorrow has a sound, it is the scraping sound of dirt sliding off the end of a burial shovel.
When they were covered with soil, I trudged to the river and I loaded my apron with water-smoothed rocks, and I carried them to the graves. I moved back and forth between the graves and the river until it got dark, and I couldn’t see to walk anymore. Then I picked up a quilt that was lying in the grass in front of the cabin, and I wrapped myself in it and lay down between the graves and prayed that God would take my soul before the sun came up on another day.