Deep River Night

by Patrick Lane

  “No,” he said quietly, absently, the hand on his leg unclenching, the one that wasn’t burned. He laid it flat on the table alongside the blistered one and pushed himself up, the chair rocking back as he swung himself away.

  “Fuck you,” he said to the Seagram’s bag and the opium that was inside it. “Just fuck you.”

  He took down the bottle from the shelf and took a jolt, the harsh liquor searing his throat. He took another and put the bottle back, the drinks at last settling his gut.

  “Hey, cat.”

  Lifting a paw, the cat ignored him from her perch by the window, taking one claw at a time in her jaws and cleaning it. The tic…tic…tic as the cat pulled a claw through each interstice was a sound Art loved. He loved the cat, even now, ruined as he was. He glanced at the floor by the door and saw the head, paws, and tail of another mouse, a streak of blood like a comma under the mouse’s tiny jaws.

  It didn’t matter what McAllister had said or not said to Claude earlier that morning. That Irene was hurt or she’d gone away or disappeared were what Claude didn’t want to know. Hurt or not hurt, here or not here, what Claude didn’t need was trouble for his sawyer. Trouble for Jim meant trouble for Claude.

  For the boss things were simple. The work went on.

  Nothing changed.

  Art sat back down and lit another match. He watched it burn down to his finger and thumb. Just before the pain flashed he saw Major Claude Harper on Pender Street back before the war, young again, a drink in his hand, laughing at something, at nothing.

  He dropped the match before it burned him.

  The cat stared at him, perfect and alone.

  Art reached out and ran his palm over the notches in the cat’s scarred ears.

  The cat shook him away and then swatted at him when he wouldn’t stop. He lowered his forehead to the edge of the table, resting it there. His sweat pooled on the dark wood.

  He thought and thought, anything to get his mind off the opium in the bag. He needed to keep his mind clear for Irene. And then he thought of Jaswant and the baby of the woman who’d wandered into the village. What was her name, Gerda something? Dinkle or Dunkle.

  He talked to the floor, his eyes following a seam in a fir plank, dirt ground into it. “That baby,” he said, “I’ll help that baby,” and he raised his head slowly up.

  He’d take the penicillin up there and see if it worked. He’d promised he would and he’d forgotten. From what Jaswant had said, the baby was sick and getting sicker. But Jaswant hadn’t been back this morning to remind him so it was probably all right. Or it wasn’t.

  One thing he knew, Irene wasn’t far away. Jim wouldn’t have dropped her off up in Blue River or down in Little Fort. Who would he know to trust her with? Who’d take her in and with such injuries? And there was no one Jim knew in the village who could care for her. The sawyer was a stranger in the river country, just as Art was.

  Shadows of cloud drifted over the forests and high cliffs on the far side of the river. Light broke through in the west. There were small birds flying in the blusters of the wind, and leaves too in the alders shining.

  He pushed his fingers up his face and into his hair to stop them from shaking.

  Something had to be done.

  The cat slipped through his legs and was gone, her black tail brushing against the sill log at the corner of the cabin.

  “Hey, cat,” he said. “Where you going?”

  He waited a moment, but he got the answer he always got from the cat. The grass and the trees the same. They never asked and never answered. They just kept on living. The cat walked by herself just like the cat he’d read about when he was a kid.

  Standing there staring at everything and nothing he put the baby back into his head. The last time he’d seen the baby it seemed to be wasting away. When was that, a week ago? The baby was probably okay now in spite of what Jaswant had said, and even if it wasn’t what could be done? He’d tried Aspirin, steam under a towel, told him to keep it warm, make sure it got enough to eat. Maybe penicillin might help. He had some now.

  He should go there right away.

  He’d go in a little while.

  He turned back into the confine of the cabin, leaving the window open enough for the cat to come back in. He straightened the covers on the bunk, picked up From Here to Eternity, folded the corner of the page he’d been reading, and put the book on the shelf. Page ninety-one, the same page it was yesterday and the day before.

  James Jones knew what it was all about, no matter his war was a different one.

  He knew, but Jones didn’t tell it all.

  The light from the east shone across the back of the table as he reached for the Seagram’s bag and undid its golden strings. He took out the small ball of opium he’d taken from the drugs that’d come up from Vancouver, peeled back the silver foil, and pinched off a tiny bit from what he’d kept for himself. He held it on his palm, the opium rolling gently along his lifeline, his heart line, and he remembered Marie reading his palm in her room above the Café Olympique. She’d told him how he was going on a long journey, and how there was going to be a struggle. He’d always thought the struggle was the war, but she said it wasn’t. She spoke of the things that they always do, teacup readers, palm readers—his life, his spirit, his heart. One night just before he went back to his unit she’d turned his teacup upside down and spun it slowly three times with the handle ending up pointing at him. She asked him to turn it over and when he did she looked into the cup for what had seemed a long time, and then picked it up and washed it in the tiny sink she had by the bureau. When he asked her what the cup’s story was she said it was nothing. C’est stupide, she told him. But when he asked again she wouldn’t say. She never read his cup again.

  But his palm?

  He remembered the last time she read it.

  Ta ligne de vie est brisée—ici, ici, she’d said, scrolling her fingernail in the groove of his hand as she pointed out the breaks. Pauvre garçon, she said, and she had laughed as he stared at his hand, thinking obscurely of what it meant to have a broken life.

  And then he knew. He’d seen people broken. He’d seen them break into so many pieces you didn’t know it was a man anymore, a woman, a child.

  He knew what kinds of death there were.

  Being with Marie was enough.

  It was, wasn’t it?

  And he rolled the foil back onto the ball and placed the opium in the Seagram’s bag and put the bag back on the shelf. He looked at the tiny bit of opium on his palm. “It’s only a little,” he said. He looked around for the cat but the cat was gone.

  He hesitated for a brief moment, for just a pinprick of time, and then careful, very careful, he put the ball on the mesh of his pipe and held the lighted match over it, the opium softening and then the smoke and he pulled hard on the pipe, his lungs filling, knowing at that moment there was enough of everything now and then he didn’t know anything at all.

  * * *

  —

  THEY WERE LYING PARTLY ON THE QUILT, a frayed corner covering Myrna’s bare legs. It was a patchwork quilt, a crazy quilt is what his mother would’ve called it, the bits and pieces of cloth all different shapes and colours sewed together any which way. He looked down at Myrna’s pink arm as she pulled the corner of the quilt farther up over the patch of blond hair she had down there, the swell of her belly curving around the damp fray. Joel knew he had to say something after what they’d just done, again, seeing how it was what caused what was in her belly, the baby she said she was having and was. He wasn’t sure he could even make sense of it. How could he? And why would she lie if she wasn’t?

  If it wasn’t?

  And if it was, then what about Alice? And he felt himself thinking of her and knew he shouldn’t. He had just done it with Myrna. For a second he tried to think of Alice, but Myrna’s scent filled up the room, the sweat, the smell of her wet from his leavings.

  Closing his eyes, he could just see Alice lying on her bed.<
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  He wouldn’t think of her, not now, but as he thought of Alice waking in the shack she was in his head and he squeezed his eyes shut at the thought of her lying there.

  “Get away,” he said, trying to drive her away.

  “What? Why do you want me to go?”

  “Not you.”

  “But who then? Who?”

  “No one,” said Joel. “It’s no one I was talking to.”

  This Myrna Turfoot, he said to himself, his hand on her breast, quiet, her hands nesting her belly, a mist slipping down the valley.

  The trouble was Myrna didn’t know how to lie, he thought. It was like she was born to be honest no matter how it confused things.

  Angry in a way he hadn’t been before, Joel said: “We can’t live here,” and then wondered why he’d said we. And frustrated, yes, not angry, he wasn’t angry, not that, he said, “I mean, I can’t live here either. You,” he added, in case she wasn’t getting it. “Neither can you. What if the baby came and you were living down here alone? What then?”

  “I wouldn’t be alone, don’t you see? I’d have you, I’d have the baby.”

  When she didn’t say anything more, he said, “Look, this’s no place to live,” knowing she was what…different? Some people called her slow and, maybe, yes, slower than some in ways, but not all, and not stupid, just Myrna Turfoot from the hill farm who for whatever reason, crazy or not, loved everything, loved even him? And why?

  He sat up, the quilt awry his thin legs. “There isn’t any running water for one thing,” he said, “and swamp water’s no good for you to drink either. What do you think’s going to happen? You think you can haul water here from your father’s farm? Or from the village? Do you think I’ll haul it here? Through the swamp or around by the road and then back down here? I don’t have a truck or nothing. Is it ’cause you’re having a baby, this baby you say is mine? Is that what you think?”

  She laughed and said, “It’s you gave me this baby, Joel. Now it’s ours.”

  She said it somehow with her whole body, rolling toward him and gripping his waist with her arms and speaking into his chest. “Joel. Joel. There’s a spring a ways back behind these trees. It’s real close. Emerson found it. He says it’s been there for a long time. He says you could run a plastic hose down from the spring where it pools back in the trees up high. There’d be lots of water then. Emerson likes to think he’s real smart. He is, but sometimes he’s not. He’s a wild one, that Emerson. That’s what Father says about him. But he’s not wild. He’s special. Joel, look in the jug on the table. It’s clean water from the pool. You look, why don’t you?”

  “Yeah, well, still,” said Joel, hesitant now, because if there was water, well then, then what?

  “It isn’t just water that you’ll be needing,” he said after thinking for a moment. He tried to get out of her arms, but she only held him tighter.

  “We’ll be all right, Joel.”

  “And what about your brother, Emerson?” Joel said. “What about him?”

  “What about him? He’s my brother. He looks out for me just like I look out for him. It’s what my father told us to do. Look out for each other. He’s to look out for you too, Joel. I told him so. And he will. He’s good that way. If you’re true to Emerson, he’ll be true to you.”

  “He told me he watched us,” he said. “He saw us doing it.”

  She started to laugh.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Stop laughing, why don’t you. Listen, this here’s no place. I know you and Emerson tried fixing this old shack up and all, but there’s a lot more needs to be done. And it’s a church. You can’t live in a church.”

  “No one’s been using it since forever. It’s just empty all the time.”

  “And if they did? What if there was a preacher come? What then?”

  “He could do his preaching at the other church near the Hall. Or he could preach right out front here in the grass, Joel. Sure, why not out there? There’s room for plenty of people. I know they’d be happy standing there singing. They could bring blankets for sitting on, and food too. People can give a lot when they want to. Preachers can preach outside. One came to the farm one time. A Baptist, my father said he was. I don’t know what that is, Baptist, but I never forgot the word for him. My father said the word came from the Lord baptizing people back by the River Jordan in the olden days. The preacher preached out in our pasture. Sheep and all. Even the horse came and the preacher blessed him too. That horse has lived a long time since the preacher blew into his nose. It’s how horses know each other. They blow into each other’s noses. The preacher said he’d blown into the noses of a lot of horses, but our horse was something special. My mother blows into mares’ noses and they blow back and after that they are like sisters to each other. She whispers horses. And people came from all around to see the preacher. Some came down from Blue River and from Clearwater too. He put people right into the horse trough and turned them to God. He tried to do it to me, but Mother stopped him. She said it wasn’t her way with a daughter. She said I was different than the boys. But Stan and Tom did it. Even Eldred. They said they couldn’t even breathe and my mother was crying, but Emerson ran away when the preacher tried it with him, so he’s not a Baptist or anything. He’s like Mother, is Emerson. Stan and Tom said they didn’t feel any different afterward anyway. Father said it was worth trying the once, but there wasn’t any talking between my mother and him for near two months. Mother says there’s a spirit in trees and in everything, trout and bears and hawks. Even in rocks. And it’s in us too. She said we didn’t need to get near-drowned in a horse trough to find the spirit. She said a beetle has just as much spirit as we do. I remember that. I wouldn’t kill or eat a critter without first asking it to forgive me.”

  Her arms loosened as she pushed her head up into Joel’s neck, her long blond hair splayed across his arm. “We’re going to be here, Joel, and if it starts raining again, why we’ll be okay, won’t we. When our baby comes it’ll be born here in the house where a god used to live.”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  “Our baby’s going to be beautiful. Just like you.”

  “Stop it,” Joel cried.

  “You be quiet now,” Myrna said, as if talking to a child. She took his hand from the quilt and placed it on her belly, her own hand circling his wrist, and quiet, her voice a whisper in the room, said, “Feel me. In there’s the baby where you put it. It’s yours and it’s ours too.”

  Joel tried to pull his hand away from her grip, but she held on to his wrist and his hand pressed against her white skin. Her skin felt warm and different than when they were doing it. He’d looked at her belly when she’d taken her dress off. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to see if it was true she was having one. And he’d looked at it too when she was laid back on the mattress and he was over her, looked down past where her breasts were fallen to the side like they did and down to where he was stiff and hard, the blond hair of her damp and waiting there, and saw her belly. He’d looked at her when she was first undressed naked and he’d asked if it would hurt the baby, doing it, though somewhere he knew even if it did he didn’t care, but was only asking, and wondering too if he’d have done it if she’d said it would. Hurt. But she didn’t. She’d pulled him into her and all.

  Her belly wasn’t huge yet like what other women’s bellies looked like. The bellies he’d seen before were way different when other women were going to have a baby. But it was early on. Still, Myrna’s stomach wasn’t exactly the same as what it was a month ago. Her belly was pushed out now in a way it wasn’t before. He lifted his hand and then let it rest back on her skin and wondered if he held it there awhile and pushed down a bit, would he be able to feel it, the baby what was in there? His mother had told him once you could feel a baby kicking after a while. But maybe it was too early for that. He was going to ask her if she could feel it move, but her hand relaxed on his wrist. Gentle now, he slid his hand out from under her loose grip
.

  What would he do about Alice now? What would Alice think if she knew Myrna was having a baby, his baby? She wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him then. So he wouldn’t tell her, but she’d find out anyway because there were no secrets around women. Girls talked and so did grown-up women. They all did, his mother and her friends, almost like their lives were a party line. And Myrna was almost like a grown-up now, somehow, because she had the baby in her. And Alice didn’t love him, not really at all, but maybe she would if he asked her to. Maybe at the dance tonight. Before someone told her about Myrna. Maybe he could explain it. Maybe she’d understand it wasn’t his fault.

  But what to do with Myrna? She said she was going to the dance too.

  He felt like he was going clear out of his head. For a moment he felt like almost killing Myrna and then he wondered how anyone could kill someone who loved them that much. Loved him, like she said she did, and did too, love him, else why would she have gone to all this trouble?

  “This here mattress is going to be a home for rats and mice quicker than you can blink,” he said. “You can’t sleep on a floor like this.”

  Myrna smiled. “You can build us a bed with some boards. My father will let you borrow his hammer. He has lots of nails in tobacco cans.”

  Joel reared up. He couldn’t stand it that she thought this old, wrecked church was a house. He swung his arm out at the room. “More of it is falling apart than is holding it together.”

  “Hush,” she said, and then she started giggling. “Why’re you so crazy?”

  “I’m not crazy,” Joel said. “You have to have a real bed to sleep on if you’re sleeping here,” and when she kept on giggling, he told her to stop, adding, “If you’re going to stay here, which you can’t. This here is like a play house. It’s not real.”

  “Our baby’s real. And if the baby’s real, so are we.”