River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  “We’ll fix a better floor if the weather holds,” Jim promised. “I need to learn hunting and trapping skills from Beartracks, although I hate to leave you alone.”

  “I’ll grow used to it. I might even enjoy a few nights all alone here.”

  September turned to October. Aspen leaves shimmered like coins, then fell to decorate pine branches, transforming them to Christmas trees, or spiraled down to hide among tawny bracken, bright yellow lost to approaching winter.

  Nora’s blisters hardened. She scarcely recognized her own hands with their splitting fingernails and ugly yellowed, callused palms. She grew used to waking half asleep, stumbling to the creek, and splashing icy water on her wind-burned face. By midday, sweat-soaked clothes dried on her back.

  Nora wore her ragged coat with sleeves now smeared by mud and sawdust, when after several weeks even midday remained cool. It wasn’t symbolic anymore, just a necessary garment.

  Strength she’d taken for granted and then lost returned to her. She healed in body and lifted in spirit, even discovered easy laughter again.

  As the log walls grew, Nora touched their rough surfaces in wonder. She carried mud to chink the walls. She’d never been certain of owning another real home after Dublin Gulch. It seemed less like a second chance than Nora being transformed into a different woman altogether in this place. For certain, she felt nothing like that naive girl who’d arrived in Butte, America. Sometimes she could remember Tade and Helen without pain. Sometimes it felt actually good to think of them. Providence showed mercy at last, she thought.

  Jim’s one extravagance had been boxed glass windowpanes wrapped with painstaking care. Thanks to real windows, they’d see the mountains even on wintry days. No windows in the alcoves, though. “No need to let in cold,” Beartracks insisted. “You’ll thank me in January.”

  He showed Jim how to use the mattock to make roof shingles from cedar logs. They hewed timber, framing in a door with elk hide hinges. Jim built bunks while Nora stuffed pine boughs into ticking. Beartracks suggested they gather the reedy stems of bear grass, knot and dry them over winter. “Untie them in spring to replace the stuffing. You’ll find it softer.”

  Aspen leaves fluttered down in sweeping showers until the trees appeared bare and fragile. After glowing lime-green, larch formed pumpkin-colored bands on mountain slopes.

  “I can’t trust my eyes.” Nora laughed. “Pines turning fall colors.”

  “They shed their needles. You’ll walk through drifts of them soon,” Beartracks told her.

  “What a grand place,” Nora sighed, putting a hand on the small of her back as she straightened. “There’s as much magic here as in the old country.”

  Jim agreed. “How easy to believe spirits live all around us, even here.”

  Nora smiled and brought up familiar themes. “I don’t know as some of the wee folk might not feel at home here. I believe I will.”

  Hardened ground turned too cold for any but fitful sleep and stiffened joints. Nora moved into the half-finished cabin, awakened by each predawn after a few restless hours to look out at moonlit spears of frost-whitened grass. Dressing in the dark, she could see puffs of her ghostly exhalations even inside the cabin.

  Beartracks left for a week to return with fresh meat, bear paw snowshoes strapped on his back. He whooped at the sight of the cabin and lean-to and at added cords of firewood he’d warned them to cut and stack before snow arrived. All that remained was to trim and caulk two cabin windows and set in Jim’s glass panes.

  In three days their home sat ready to inhabit. That evening would be their first indoors together. Nora used the space under her bunk for the tapestry satchel that had come with her on that long-ago journey from Boston. She patted its threadbare sides, an old friend.

  Their first meal would become familiar fare, venison with wild onions dug up by Nora and potatoes purchased from Nan Hogan. Before dinner Beartracks asked, “I almost forgot. Hogans are making a trip down to the valley. Do either of you have letters to mail? Back home perhaps?”

  Awkward silence descended. The friends Nora knew before lived by strict rules. Rose would be shocked beyond words that Nora slept under the same roof with a “heathen rat-eater,” not to mention her stint in the brothel. Patrick would mutter, “I told her so.” No. No letters to post. What if Rose got a letter and thought to tell Bridget?

  Nora drained the potatoes as bitterness rankled. She had no comforting memories of her infant boy. She imagined Bridget with her little son, thinking how much better off he must be than if Nora had dragged him up to the wilderness, Bridget with Nora’s own child’s head dreaming on her shoulder. She frowned. “Why would the likes of us have letters to post? We’ll let the past join the past and welcome to it.”

  Beartracks cocked his head, owl-like, and shrugged. Jim said nothing. Sullen silence threatened to chill their housewarming. With effort, they regained their spirits when Nora served the meal. Nora expected their guest to stay, but he gathered his gear after supper. “I have a place I can still make tonight,” he explained. “I think it might be harder in the morning.”

  Nora washed the dinner things as Jim brought in wood to add to the fire, then went out again to feed the horses. Nora heard a whispered patter on the roof. “Larch needles?” she asked pointing up with a spoon as he came in.

  “Snow. We finished the cabin and horses’ lean-to just in time.” Jim brushed wet white patches off his jacket.

  After a pause, Nora voiced what they were both thinking, “And the privy.” Laughter swirled away any lingering tension. Nora stoked the fire and put on water to heat, then sat down at their table still fragrant with new wood, Jim across from her. The Catholic and the Taoist became lost in, if not prayers of thanks, prayerful attitudes.

  Jim spoke first, “Beartracks left something. He brought you a special present from Nan Hogan. Rhubarb wine. Famous all over the North Fork, he says.”

  They poured the wine, clear as water, into tumblers. As they toasted to their accomplishment, the wind moaned around their new home’s corners. That night temperatures dropped to levels that could kill. Snow piled in blue drifts as dusk shaded to night, fall to winter. Inside the warm cabin, Jim lit coal oil lanterns and brought out a deck of cards. The two played poker.

  Nora dealt like a professional, beating him first, then teaching him with skills learned from the girls at Lillie’s. The fire burned while smells of logs still sticky with sap hovered strong as incense. When the card games ended, Nora stretched and walked to the window, peering into flying snow. Jim rose to stand close behind her.

  “This place suits you.”

  Nora replied without turning. “It does. We’ve built ourselves a fine shelter for winter, even if the floor is a bit on the freezing order.”

  She saw a reflected Jim hold up his hand as if to stop her. He pulled on his coat and left for a few moments to return powdered with snow, dropping a bundle to the floor. He knelt to unroll a black bearskin. “I believe you and Black Bloomers met before. He frightened you by the creek, and now he must pay the price by keeping our feet warm forever. We’ll put him beside your bunk.”

  “Why, Jim,” Nora began, “when did you do all this? I thought you were just practicing your shooting in the early mornings.”

  “I did practice. But one day I saw the fellow. As you know, Beartracks also taught me how to dress an animal and tan its hide, how to hang meat from a tall limb. It’s called a cache. Animals can’t reach it and it stays frozen in winter.”

  Jim spread the lush hide out to its full size. Stepping to the window, he pulled the inside shutter down, then raised it again. “You can prop it partway open at night. Just be sure you don’t mind if curious animals like this fellow peek in.”

  “Critters. I don’t mind them. It’s people.”

  “The man who made you feel that way no longer lives.”

  “He paid for it, right enough.” Outside, spires of old-growth pines swayed, roaring in the rising wind. A cold blast m
ade Nora shiver. She closed the window.

  Jim appraised her. “You are coming back to life. We have our home.”

  “Aye, Jim. It’s ours and it being on our land means everything. If we file a homestead claim, if that’s ever possible, it will be what they can’t take away.”

  Jim stepped back, smiled, and bowed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Later that night, Nora made coffee. Seeing Jim in the lamplight reminded her of their evening in the Bonds’ home. It seemed long ago, but Jim looked as handsome as on that night, even taller, straighter, free of white culture’s constraints.

  “Easterners hire Beartracks as a hunting guide,” Jim said. “He suggested they might want to take meals here. We could pack lunches, make fruit pies to sell, some from our own garden. We’ll have a job keeping deer out, of course. We can raise chickens, too, but the same job keeping cats away from them.”

  “Cats?”

  “Mountain lions. We’ll see grizzlies, too, looking for food in the spring. If one wants to break in, Beartracks says it will.” Jim talked on of forest fires, flooding, and more. “Avalanches can bury a man so they never find him until spring melt—bury animals—whatever’s in their way. When the mountain starts to growl, we must watch out.”

  He insisted on escorting Nora to the outhouse holding a lantern high as Diogenes, scanning the woods until she reemerged. He steadied her when she stumbled on a slippery root. Nora, somewhat embarrassed and knowing there would be times Jim would be away hunting, resolved to go on solitary trips in the dark after this. When they stepped back inside, a skiff of powder swept in with them.

  “I’ll say my good night.” Jim smiled and went to his alcove. Nora could see the movement of his undressing, a blurred silhouette behind calico.

  Pine boughs tossed outside. Sounds like crashing waves, she thought. Like winds that blow in from the sea. Being inside a sturdy shelter on a stormy night was to be blessed.

  Unable to sleep, Nora finally picked up a lantern and the rifle and stepped out, just wanting to watch winter’s first snow sweep across to the river. When she returned to the warm room, she found Jim sitting by the stove. He patted the bench. “Sit with me awhile. We’ll be snowed in tomorrow. No need to rise early.” Nora joined him. His hair fanned over his shoulders, blue black in flickering firelight. He looked to be a warrior of some ancient conquering people. He’d never looked as strong and at ease. He sat so still she thought he’d forgotten her until he turned to search her face.

  “Do you ever think you might be more than my business partner some day?” His eyes held hers. His question had really been a statement of desire, and now he waited.

  Nora inhaled. Even though she’d pondered the same question, she found herself unready for him to be so direct. “That’s not how we started out, Jim. No. Maybe it would be more honest to say I’m not ready to be like that yet. I’ve grown closer to you. I trust you. I see that you’re a handsome—a well-knit—man. Only, I’m trying to move on in a different way. I couldn’t stand more loss. It’s only peace I’ve been needing since so much happened.”

  She didn’t say that she still wondered at times if she were truly anything more than an opportunity, a means of conferring the status of a white wife. But she knew for certain that he smelled of pine and wood smoke. Doubt and desire. The ancient rhythm of wanting and love within reach. Was that to be the rule of their life? Is that all he felt?

  Jim smiled. “It takes many tributaries, many waterfalls, to feed a great river, one worthy of respect. But sometimes, in a dry season, even a fine wide river must wait for the heavens to open and the rains to come down to let it flow as it is meant to do.”

  “Well some droughts never end. Then there’s just an empty desert. I can’t have more children.”

  “No deserts exist in the North Fork,” Jim said. “Here the rains come and the forest will swell green until it leaves us so content we won’t want anything else. I have no need of heirs. I am quite aware of the difficulties of mixing the blood, the cultures.”

  She nodded. “Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not ready for such thoughts. I’d better go to my own bed so we can both be getting ourselves some sleep. It’s been a day.”

  Jim nodded. “Good night. Expect a different world when morning comes.”

  Aware of Jim’s presence just the other side of her alcove curtain, Nora undressed kneeling on her bunk. She slipped a flannel nightgown over her head, then pulled a wool shirt over that and dove under the blankets. Despite their dense weight, she shivered. Warm light glimmered from the lanterns and stove grate. Nora curled, watching it brighten and dim like auroras playing over the calico. Jim, protecting and wanting her, sat just on the other side, keeper of the fire.

  She awakened before dawn, aware the wind’s howl had died away. Dim light still shifted through the curtain. Jim had banked the fire. She’d shoved her shoes under her blankets to keep them warm and free of mice. Now Nora pushed her feet into them and pulled a blanket around her shoulders as she went to the window. Using her wooden hairbrush, she scratched away the thick white rime. Snow-filled clouds had lifted. The full moon poured its bluish, skimmed milk light over the meadow.

  Stars patterned the sky at angles and ellipses, squandering their myths and archetypes on the vast, unpeopled landscape.

  But it wasn’t empty. A purposeful shadow progressed across the blank expanse toward the river and snow-covered peaks levitating in the dark. Nora thought she might be seeing a distorted shade of mountain lion or wolf, but then realized it was Jim carrying the Winchester. He disappeared. A veil of snow falling from a branch obscured his shadow.

  “Come back, although I may never be ready for you,” she whispered. “Do I really mean that? I’m young to put such desires away.” A strengthening life force worked against memories of the lost, beloved, innocent dead still able to rise and command her future so easily. She’d tasted both lust and love. No longer young in heart, could she still give herself to a man, even a fine one?

  “What a ways I’ve come from Connemara,” she muttered. “From Boston for that matter. But I’m standing in my own place, a landowner.” She straightened her shoulders and rebuilt the fire.

  Jim had heated leftover coffee before leaving. Nora ran her thumb along the rim of his cup. “Well, he’ll be back. He fits the life here well enough, it seems,” she murmured, setting the cup down and turning to her alcove, more empty now than snug.

  When Nora rose hours later, Jim’s boots sat outside his alcove. She dressed in haste and started fresh coffee. She stifled any impulse to enquire where he’d been when he joined her. Both took care to be courteous while discussing tasks to finish before winter. Later, they steamed and bent fir to curl the front end of a toboggan, sawing and nailing round bucket covers to hold containers they’d put on the toboggan for hauling water and other necessities. Pulled over snow to the creek and back, it would carve furrows that turned dark blue at twilight like ink lines recording each day’s efforts. Jim later declared they looked like Chinese calligraphy.

  Among other chores, he cut fresh cottonwood bark to feed Wink and Cotton and shoveled rationed oats and prairie hay into their manger. The horses would be thin by spring, but would fare better next year in a real barn. The cottonwoods died from losing the stripped bark, but Jim and Nora would burn the dead wood. Hope fueled their labor, hope that they could prosper in this rough country.

  Each winter day, fragrance of fresh shavings from new floor planks mixed with the rich smokiness of larch burning in the stove. Nora had poked rags into every spare inch when they’d loaded the wagon in Helena. Now she fashioned them into a multicolored rug.

  She reveled in creating an environment so clean and new. Still memories tumbled in, twisting her with every thought of the priest’s conditions. Remembering Bat and how Jim had taken the ring added to her unease.

  Faith had returned in the monumental solitude of the North Fork. Spirituality reborn. But to Nora, spirit and Catholicism melded into one div
ine, demanding whole. It would take so long to earn absolution by paying the money to Dierdre. Nora couldn’t speak of it again to Jim who understood so much, but would never share her ingrained guilt and fear of damnation. She just had to wrest her own means of salvation from this wilderness. Guilt linked to Bat Moriarty would be a long time fading.

  One early winter morning Nora unlatched the door to see a herd of elk big as horses under a floating sea of antlers. Their whispering murmurs carried from the meadow like waves. She beckoned wildly to Jim who picked up his rifle, aimed, and fired once. A great bull fell. The herd crashed away to the river, leaving their dead sovereign, his immense, inert head reddening the snow. The once regal animal’s tongue flopped out of his gaping mouth. Nora felt a stab of pity mixed with giddy joy in storing enough meat to last until spring.

  Just as they prepared to sit down to elk steaks that night, pounding shook the door.

  “Open up, pilgrims. Beartracks Benton and Sweet Grass have come calling.”

  Nora blushed at their praise for the wood floor, the rug, the store of food.

  Next morning Beartracks invited Jim to go along to check his lines. “Learn to be a trapper and then teach Irish here. In fall I trap beaver, otter, and mink—bobcat and lynx—winter it’s marten, ermine, and fisher. Sometimes I catch raiding wolverine.”

  A visibly pregnant Sweet Grass stayed behind. During those five days the women formed a friendship in spite of occasional stumbles over language. Nora shared memories of pregnancy, mentioning Helen, but never the son whose name she didn’t know.

  Sweet Grass taught Nora how to make snowshoes beginning with steaming the fir and bending it, similar to what Jim and Nora did to make the tobaggon. Nora wrapped rawhide left to right on bent frames, fastening the front and back strips together, fashioning the webbing, and tying on boot-fastening strips, fourteen by thirty inches of hard-won wood and webbing. Her fingers ached, but she reveled in growing self-sufficiency and eagerness to show Jim. She even made and wore leggings and moccasins, shortening some of her heavy skirts for easier movement outside.