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hadn’t known his father, not really. His daddy had left to fight in the war back in, oh, must have been ’63 or ’64, marching to Atlanta and never marching home again. But before he’d gone, he’d given Joel something. A coin, a double-eagle. He said it was gold and it sure did shine like it was gold, and his daddy said he wanted Joel to look after it and he’d come back for it.
    He didn’t come back for it, but that was OK. The coin was in Joel’s pocket and when he carried it he knew his daddy was with him, marching by his side. Heading west, toward the future, toward the light.
    Joel packed up his bivouac and rolled his blankets and turned his back to the sun, and marched onwards across the Unassigned Lands.
     
    By the end of the first day of the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889, the dusty Unassigned Lands had become two cities, Oklahoma City and Guthrie. After the sun had set, two newspapers and one bank had already been established, serving those who had carved a future not just for themselves, but for their children, and grandchildren, and so on down the line.
    Joel knew nothing of this. After the first day, as the horses and wagons had raced past him, as men had run past him, he walked onward, due west. He was desperate, he had nothing to lose, but he was patient, and he knew that a patient man was a man whose reward would come, in time.
    The morning of the second day was still, and quiet. Joel felt like the only man in the whole world and maybe that was so, because the only thing he’d heard in the night was someone calling, far away, the voice carried on a dull wind even before Joel was fully awake. He thought of the voice now, and as he walked west, across a dusty plain of dry grass, with not a soul from horizon to horizon, he wondered if maybe his daddy really was there with him, calling out for his son to keep on marching and keep on fighting because a patient man would find his true reward.
    The coin in his waistcoat pocket felt heavy. Joel kept marching and dipped a finger and a thumb into the pocket. He stopped, pulling his hand away, hissing like he’d just been bit.
    Because the day was getting hot already and the blue sky above was an unbroken dome, and the coin in his pocket was cold, cold like the bottom of a blue ocean, the ocean Joel often dreamed of.
    He stopped and kicked the dirt and looked around, but he was alone in the world. He looked down at his waistcoat, his eyes following the line of buttons running down to his belt. His suit was old and black, dusty, a relic from another time, something his daddy left behind when he marched to war. Like the silver gun with the creamy pearl handle that hung from Joel’s waist. Why his daddy hadn’t taken the gun to war with him, Joel didn’t know. He’d found it in the closet, along with the suit and a box of ammunition. He hadn’t fired the gun yet, not even to test it, perhaps afraid that the weapon was too old and would explode in his hand. Maybe that was why it had been left behind. But with the gun on his waist and the coin in his pocket, Joel felt as though his daddy was watching over him.
    Joel gritted his teeth and slid his fingers into the pocket where the fob watch should have been, had he not hocked it somewhere back in Tennessee the previous week, getting just enough money to reach Indian Territory by high noon. The watch was nothing and was worth virtually the same, but it had been just enough. The coin was worth a lot, Joel knew that, even if it wasn’t gold like his daddy told him (but it was, it was). But the coin was his father and his father marched with him, to the west, to the future.
    Joel took the coin between two fingers and pulled it out. It was cold, although not burning cold like it had been moments before. Joel held it up and turned each side in the sun, the embossed bird on each catching the sunlight and shining, shining like the eagle itself was alive.
    And then Joel heard the voice again.
     
    The cave was deep – less