by Karen Wills
That night they ate in the school dining room. Nora felt a bit disconcerted at the sight of tables of serious Indian children, hair combed and dressed in trousers and plain pinafores. It occurred to her that their parents must miss them. She pushed away the memory of a soft, fragrant head, of small hands clutching her own.
Jim piqued the children’s curiosity more than Nora did. Dark, solemn eyes focused on him. Nora admired his unself-conscious ability to keep dining as though they ate alone on the trail. She found herself scrutinizing him with a flicker of bewilderment similar to the one of several nights before that had unsettled her so.
After dinner and visiting she lay in her narrow bed, breathing cold mountain air and trying to lie still. She wondered at herself. Could she be discovering feelings for Jim Li? She didn’t feel matched and easy as she had with Tade, or excited over forbidden fruit as she had with Bat. She found Jim Li . . . intriguing.
The more she puzzled, the more uncertain she felt. She twisted on the cot, holding her breath, hoping her restlessness wouldn’t disturb the gentle women who were the first to mother her since Mrs. Leary. The Virgin’s gaze from the wall held a touch of rebuke. Nora closed her eyes and resolved to think only of the trail ahead. That promised challenge aplenty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After four hard days of travel, Jim pulled Wink and Cotton to a stop as they topped a ridge overlooking an astonishing body of sunlit blue water strewn with a few pine-covered islands. White peaks of the graceful Mission Mountains rose to its east.
“Flathead Lake,” Jim announced. “As big as a sea.”
“It shines as bright as one,” Nora said, standing to stretch and appreciate the glorious revelation. “Jim, you’ve guided us to a place stolen from paradise.”
“We must take care,” Jim cautioned. “There may be spirits in such water.”
Nora laughed, then remembered his mother had drowned. Still, the land before them held such fruitful promise. In all America nothing could be more beautiful.
The horses descended to the lake and plodded past Lambert’s Landing where they would proceed by ferry the next day. Its few rough-hewn log buildings, a large one in the center, comprised the only settlement to be seen. They continued five more miles to the ranch where the man who played his fiddle at the Bond home lived with his Nez Perce wife and their daughter. He’d invited Jim and Nora to stay at his ranch when they came through.
“We’ll be comfortable here,” Jim said.
Wiry Dave Polson and his family welcomed them. Hosts and guests ate venison stew at a table outside as the mountaintops glowed pink with what Dave called alpenglow. They visited and watched the lake’s blue water tint to cherry, lavender, then indigo. Wrapped in her shawl, Nora sighed in surprising contentment. She helped with dishes, then returned to stay outside with Jim for awhile after the Polsons excused themselves to tuck their shy daughter in. It felt comfortable for Nora and Jim to be alone now with no real need to sort out or analyze who and what they were, the pair of them.
Nora reminded herself there were worse traits than mystery.
Next morning they bid farewell to the Polsons, then arranged to take the wagon on a big, flat-bottomed ferry from Lambert’s Landing across the Flathead River. Nora leaned against its wooden railing, enjoying the sight of transparent rippling water and mountains rising toward a cloud-strewn sky. Jim sat rigid on the wagon seat, clutching the reins with whitened knuckles. His jaw clenched until they reached the west bank. When he climbed down, he turned away from the lake and inhaled.
So, Nora thought, climbing down without his help, Jim Li truly does fear water.
“Can you not swim?” she asked. When he shook his head, she smiled. “I’ll teach you one day. You’ll enjoy it.” Jim only offered a hand to help her climb back on the wagon.
This next stretch, the ten-day leg to Demersville, proved rough going. The wagon lurched over mud that spattered them, rocks that jolted, and a rutted road that threatened the wheels. They passed rustic habitations along the shore, but chose inconspicuous campsites. Still, the company of Flathead Lake in all its moods, from mirror-like calm to foam-flecked waves, and the sight of occasional Kootenai villages fascinated the two. Nora walked often, muscles stronger as the past year’s physical ravages receded.
The sojourners stopped at the lake’s north end, five miles from the bustling town of Demersville. Steamboats stopped there in season, making it a hub of activity. They made camp in customary near silence, cooking beans, salt pork, and biscuits over the fire. While Nora watched their supper, Jim scoured the area for kindling. Stirring the thoroughly cooked beans, Nora fretted that he was taking his time about it. She disliked having Jim out of sight, although she couldn’t have said which one of them she worried about more. When he returned with several fresh trout, they cooked and ate them, Nora in secret relief that he’d returned to her unharmed.
Later, he asked, “Would you stroll down to the lake? We can keep the campfire in sight. I’ll carry the rifle.”
Nora looked up from gazing into the low flames. “I don’t mind. Sure and we could walk across the water on a trail of moonlight.” She stood, adjusting her shawl against the night air. They meandered to where water lapped and whispered like shifting campfire logs. They reached a piece of blowdown, swirled by nature into a seat for two. As they watched, the white disc of a full moon levitated into the spangled sky.
Jim began, “We are the best of friends, and you have always honored me by acknowledging me as a worthy person. You must never feel alone or afraid. I pledge this to you with my life.”
“Yes, we are.” Nora smoothed her skirt. “The best of friends. I’ve been blessed before with Rose and Bridget, but never with anyone better than you.” Rising trout occasionally dimpled the lake’s placid surface.
“Those islands could be lily pads,” Jim mused.
“I imagined they could be fishing boats, returning to shore loaded with the day’s catch,” Nora responded. She felt the heat from his shoulder against her own, and shifted away from physical contact. He didn’t speak or move, but she heard him exhale. They remained so for a long time, then wandered back, Nora to the bedroll under her tarp, Jim to his by the fire.
Jim felt some nervousness about walking into Demersville with its reputation of having bloomed into a raucous settlement. Steamboats didn’t provide the only activity there. Bands of Kootenai camped on the trade center’s fringes. Demersville boasted a store, livery, blacksmith shop, two saloons, a doctor’s office, and barber shop. Reputedly, there was a drunkard justice of the peace, but no jail. Prisoners awaited trial under guard at the local hotel. The broad-minded town boasted both a Catholic and a Protestant church. But how would a Chinese man fare?
Jim Li walked the five miles, leaving Nora with the rifle and shotgun, happy to tend horses, wash clothes, and rest in the sunshine.
Townspeople glanced at Jim with contempt, indifference, or hostility. He’d learned to avoid eye contact with denizens of frontier towns. Hunching a bit, he walked in the muddy street to avoid confrontation until he reached the Protestant church. He stopped to brush dust from his coat and straightened to his full six feet.
A portly man emerged from the frame parsonage behind the equally white church. Jim removed his hat. The man nodded as Jim approached and asked, “Can you tell me where I might find the Reverend McIntosh?” For the first time, he noticed the other’s clerical collar.
“His soul is with God. His mortal remains rest in the cemetery. What is your business here?”
“He knew my family in China. I wished to greet him.” Jim hid sharp disappointment as the new reverend explained how his predecessor’s heart had failed. He added that Reverend McIntosh’s wife and daughters moved away to live near family in Ohio. Jim, wanting to weep in disappointment, thanked him.
Once at the well-tended cemetery, he searched through rows of family plots, a Japanese section, and finally stopped at the headstone for the Reverend Douglas McIntosh, servant of God,
beloved husband and father. Someone had placed fresh flowers at its base. Jim felt nothing but irony that he came upon both parents so shortly after death claimed them. His questions, the chance to understand, never could be asked or answered. Jim stood as though waiting for his father to materialize. He did not. Reverend McIntosh would keep his reasons and his secrets forever.
Jim headed back to camp with languor combined of thwarted hopes and exhaustion. He’d expected so much. Now the obscured core of his origins remained in mist. A leaf adrift on a wild river, he must move on. His father had contributed Jim’s height and large hands. Not his ability. So be it. He would be his own man.
He took comfort in seeing the campfire’s dark thread of smoke. He, like Nora, must let the past go and make their future together, something shaped anew, battered by life as both might be.
Nora had gathered firewood and made sourdough biscuits, then washed their travel-soiled clothes. She sat mending rips and tears from rigors of the trail. Jim nodded without smiling as she waved.
He finally approached her. “I found my father buried in the Demersville Cemetery.”
She put down her mending. “I’m so sorry, Jim. You deserved to know him.”
Jim nodded, then left to fish with a willow pole and feather bobber. The sun warmed his tense shoulders, bouncing its white glare off shining water. Geese flew overhead in a lopsided V. Even nature had irregularities. The day left a taste of bitterness like unripe fruit. He’d arrived too late to know his father. He would accept it in time, and he must also put any anger against paternal abandonment behind him, must seek compassion and detachment.
A trout bit, and Jim pulled it in, dropping the glittering fish into his creel. He fitted a writhing night crawler on his hook and plopped the line into darkening water.
His thoughts drifted to a blossoming dream. Chinese neither feared nor rejected passion. Love existed as a blessing amidst challenges of existence. Perhaps his parents had not differed much, both concerned with spiritual matters. His mother achieved a state of detached holiness that his father, striving for converts, striving to support his wife and two girls, striving for accomplishment of some sort, probably never had.
“Good will, compassion, joy, detachment,” Jim whispered as another fish bit. He could achieve the first three, but what about the last? He felt an attachment to Nora that would only grow deeper as they depended on each other in the wilderness. They two alone must find a path out of the dust of illusion.
The next morning as they moved out from camp, Nora stole a look at Jim. His face, even composed, seemed a little wild, as though already affected by the untamed country ahead. His queue hung long and thick, and she found herself wondering what that straight black hair would be like hanging free. She shook her head. A ridiculous thought.
After leaving Demersville, they passed through the broad Flathead Valley. Excited, anticipating entry into the surrounding mountains, they talked of how the trail to come held threat and promise in equal measure.
Miles away that night Bat Moriarty’s eyes opened, horrified, staring as he lifted a tremulous hand to the collarless neckline of his drenched nightshirt. He’d dreamed of fire again, an apocalyptic conflagration in which he lay paralyzed. As flames licked toward his waist, he’d seen a figure, a man’s shape, the face obscured by smoke. Almost weeping in desperation, Bat reached out to the shadowy form whose hand rose and extended toward him. Instead of carrying him to safety, however, the figure’s fingers took firm grasp of the ring on Bat’s finger, wrenched it off, then disappeared.
Bat turned his head, hair matted, on the sweat-soaked pillow, and stared at the tangled, brassy curls of the woman snoring beside him. He winced as he shook her. The blister-shiny pink scars covered burns on his legs and torso that still caused pain. When she didn’t stop her soft rhythmic wheeze, he pushed her hefty shoulder again. “Lou,” he muttered, “I need help here.”
The woman groaned. “I’m tired. Can’t it wait?”
“No, damn you. It can’t.”
His blowzy bed partner denting the mattress sat up and rubbed her eyes. She looked at his condition and sighed. The springs complained when she swung her dimpled legs over the edge and shuffled to the window, opening it to let air into the stuffy darkness. She lit the lantern and appraised him. “Lord, honey. You had that dream again, didn’t you? Let’s get you into something dry.”
Bat’s eyes bored into hers with a mixture of gratitude and resentment. Hair plastered his spooned-in temples. His thin mustache had been shaved away, leaving a vulnerable, pale upper lip. Lou shifted him, pulling the soaked nightshirt over his head as though she were a nurse or his mother. The dark, circular scar of the bullet hole looked black and depthless on his chest. In a high, tired voice, Bat cursed at the pain of moving.
“Doc will be here tomorrow. Today, I guess. Sun’s coming up. He’ll have all the news from Helena,” Lou said, hurling the soaked nightshirt in a corner of the rough plank floor already piled with soiled, sick-room linens.
Lou poured tepid water from a pitcher into a chipped mug and took a swallow from it before helping Bat drink, turning the pillow over to its dry side and lowering his head back down. She watched him close his eyes and drift off, lines crazing lids covering the sockets as he winced in sleep. She shook her head. He’d been such a handsome charmer. All the girls had wanted his attentions. But it was Lou who’d gone into the saloon for Bat when she saw him lying alone, flames lapping at his legs. No puny slip of a girl could have done it, but Lou, daughter of near giants, raised on a hog farm in Iowa, had carried him out the back. Then she hoisted him in front of her like a sack of corn and rode his horse on out of town, not sure what kind of trouble he was in, or if he were dead or alive, just knowing there’d been a fight. She comforted herself in awareness that even when the pain was at its worst Bat didn’t call out any woman’s name. He seemed obsessed instead with the idea that something had been stolen from him.
Lou ran a brush through her hair and splashed water on her eyes. She let her robe hang open over a stained chemise while she straightened up the ramshackle house, including the second bedroom where she conducted business. There was plenty of that in Clancy. Big-boned and well-muscled, she scoffed at the notion that riding the miners would cause her any problems. What wore her out was taking care of Bat. Anyway, she never thought she’d have him to herself. She made breakfast, planning to tempt the invalid to eat oatmeal sweetened with brown sugar.
Before noon Doc Bentley pulled up in his two-seater. The wiry little man jumped down and tied the reins to the fence. “Hello, Lou. You look done in. How’s our boy?” He spoke with practiced, impersonal cheer.
“Bat still has those evil nightmares, Doc. All the time.”
“Well, he’s in pain. After all, he nearly got burned to a crisp after being shot. Give him time.”
Doc entered his patient’s room. Bat’s red-rimmed eyes burned as intense as the fire that almost claimed him. He grunted and swore as the doc changed his leaking bandages. Lou leaned against the wall, smoked a cheroot, and watched.
“Having as much pain?” the doctor asked, addressing the question to whichever of them might feel like answering.
“Yes. Hell. That laudanum helps some, but it doesn’t last long enough,” Bat said. “If a man could only get a night’s sleep.”
“We’ll increase the dosage.” Doc looked directly at Bat. “I’m doing this as much for her as you. Won’t do you any good to run your nurse to death.”
“Lou? Nothing could stop her. Some kind of mistake of nature. She should have been a man.”
“Life would have been goddamn easier. That’s a fact. But don’t be foolish.” Lou raised her husky voice from the doorway. “No man would have carried you out of that burning whore house.”
“You’d be right about that, I guess.” He muttered, “My darlin’,” as if it were an afterthought.
Doc promised to come back in two days. He told Lou, “I don’t like to see a patient on so much l
audanum, but you look wearier every time I call here. Your profession demands enough without you caring for a patient possessed by unholy demons.”
Lou went back to Bat’s room after the doc departed. She leaned over with a heavy woman’s grunt and gathered the stained, foul-smelling laundry, taking it to the back porch. A Chinese came by twice a week to pick it up. When she returned to their room, Bat held out a hand. “Sorry, Lou. You’re the only one who could have saved me.”
She took his hand and sat on the bed beside him. She lit a second cheroot, pulled, and exhaled. “That Chinaman came and got the laundry. He sure doesn’t look anything like ole Jim Li from Lillie’s place.”
“Jim Li? He was at Lillie’s? He was the biggest Chinese I ever saw. Half white. Educated better than the miners in Butte. That’s where I knew him. How’d he come to be at Lillie’s?”
“Somebody said he was looking for a relative. His father, I think.”
Bat turned his face away. “You smell like smoke. I can’t abide that anymore.”
Lou let go of his hand and got up. “Well, there’s an old cowboy coming up the walk right now who’ll pay good money to abide it,” she said.
“Best see to him then. I’m all right now.”
After Lou closed the door, Bat dozed in the noon warmth. The dream came again almost at once. He squirmed in the heat, struggling for breath. He heard crackling wood and crashing, shattering glass. Then the figure knelt over him. This time the flames lit the face instead of obscuring it. Bat’s eyes flew open as he screamed the name, “Li.”
From the second bedroom he heard a man growl, “What the hell is going on in there?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
High above the South Fork of the Flathead River, the place called Bad Rock Canyon taxed humans and horses. Unseasonable rains added to Nora’s wretchedness. She awakened in predawn to the relentless spatter on the canvas shielding her. Temperatures had dropped. She pulled blankets up to her stiffened shoulders. After awhile, she gave up trying to be warm and climbed out to dress, shivering under her dripping tarp. She sat on a soaked log to pull her shoes on. Everything appeared swathed in fog and misery.