River People

by Margaret Lukas

  Bridget wanted to yank his beard until he howled on one foot like an angry leprechaun. With his crow clothes, crow hands, and crow way of strutting, he looked like a creature from one of Grandma Teegan’s stories. A creature that could step out of fog or white sea-spray, touch people on the shoulder, and lead them away for a thousand years.

  His eyes raked her freckles, her red hair, even the thinness of her arms. With his hat pulled low and so much hair covering his face, she hadn’t noticed his bad scar until now. It puckered from beneath his hat at his temple and came across and curled in. The twist ended at his eye like a thick, round caterpillar.

  “Family.” The worm twitched. “They stick the knife. Know where the blade goes deepest.” His eyes stayed on her though he spoke in Matron’s direction. “She won’t steal in my house. I’ll see to that. She can be schooled to be of use? I won’t suffer a squawk.”

  He smelled of sweat and horses. “I went to school,” Bridget said. “I can read.”

  He straightened, a hand on his lower back. “A free girl that reads. You ain’t scared of animals?”

  She’d loved Grandma Teegan’s spring lambs and especially their dog Ogan, who at night always slept by her side of the bed.

  “Trees?” Rev. Jackdaw’s eyes were narrow. “You scared of trees?”

  She looked at him hard, afraid she hadn’t heard correctly. “Nobody is scared of trees.” I’m not afraid of selkies either.

  “She ain’t a papist?” Rev. Jackdaw jutted his chin up, stretching the loose skin of his neck and peering at the ledger. “You ain’t holding out on me? You ain’t got something better?”

  “She lost a boy.” Bridget nearly shouted this time and watched Matron’s face turn a sickly color. There were only two choices: prison or this man. “I want to go with Rev. Jackdaw.” She slid out from behind the desk and forced herself to stand straight as a stick. A skeleton was clambering out of a tree. “Then I can’t tell on you.”

  Matron began to sink slowly, landing in the chair behind her. “You!” Then hardly more than a whisper in Rev. Jackdaw’s direction. “You aren’t seventy yet?” Her voice gathered strength. “Only those between seventeen and seventy are eligible to take a child.” She cleared her throat, dabbed at her sweaty brow with her handkerchief, and glared at Bridget. “Thousands more just like her. Clogging the streets, stealing. Going to prison just to get their greedy hands on food.”

  Rev. Jackdaw took quick steps to the desk and reached for the pen beside the ledger. “Free and clear now? She’s mine.”

  “You’ll see she goes to school?”

  He gripped his gloves in his left hand and slapped them against a trouser leg. “Hardship clause.” He scowled. “Hardship clause says a girl can be kept home and at her work.”

  Bridget stood beside him as he signed on the line Matron indicated. On the left of the sheet was a list of children’s names. On the right, signatures or X’s if the person couldn’t write. The pen scratched: Rev. Jackdaw. The nib fell off and flecks of indigo ink ruined the signature.

  Rev. Jackdaw’s eyes widened. The worm cornering his right eye twitched. “Damn pen’s worthless.”

  Matron stared at the spot. “My work . . .” Slowly, she picked up the pen, pushed the nib back in place, and dipped it in ink. Holding it over the empty line where Bridget knew a signature for a lost boy should go, Matron flicked the tip with her thumb. A splotch landed and spread, filling that space and the one above. Her sharp eyes landed on Bridget. “I’m rid of you.”

  Nera, Nera. She’d be brave. But would a skeleton follow her now? She told her heart to stop banging so loud: she’d only be with Rev. Jackdaw until Mum and Pappy found her. Besides, until then, maybe he had a wife who wanted to be her mum. Maybe they’d all live together happy. When she went to bed at night, she’d close her eyes knowing in the morning she’d wake in the same place. The day after that, too. Until she was found.

  Walking out of the room together, she reached for his hand and felt his flinch at her touch.

  When the school doors closed behind them, he pulled away.

  Rev. Jackdaw cleared the plank walkway ahead of Bridget and stepped onto the hard-packed dirt street. His longer strides widened the distance between them, but he’d signed a paper on her, and so she hurried to keep up. They crossed to a buggy with a graying horse hitched to the front. Was this the animal he thought she might be afraid of? She wanted to run her hand down the horse’s neck and look into the large eyes. She’d tell the horse she was adopted and see what the eyes said.

  “Git in,” Rev. Jackdaw ordered. He climbed in after her, making the buggy dip with his weight, then shudder as he sat down. He lifted the reins, shook them, and the horse started forward.

  “Thank you,” Bridget said. She wasn’t at all sure she should be thankful, but she wanted to make him a friend and make her knees stop shaking.

  “Charity don’t mean kinship,” he said. “With that hair, I’ll call you Rooster.”

  “My name is Bridget.”

  “Was. Rooster now.”

  Rev. Jackdaw was, she spelled silently, M-E-A-N.

  The back of his hand smacked her mouth. Pain shot through her top lip. “Quit licking. You a dog?”

  She sucked at the hurt and tasted blood. She wanted to spell mean out loud, but that would make him hit again. She pressed her lips together and listened to the squeaking buggy, the rumble of the wheels, and the jingling of the horse’s traces. They passed a shopkeeper sweeping out a doorway, boys shooting marbles, and two old men rocking. For several blocks, she tried not to think about Rev. Jackdaw or where they were going.

  The sight of a huge brick building just ahead caught her attention. The sign said, Martin Luther College. Its wide staircase stretched across the front and went a dozen or more steps high. Many buildings in New York were as large; it was the activity on the stairs that made her stare. She was in the West where Mum lived, and a group of young ladies mingled in long skirts and waists with leg-o-mutton sleeves. Was one of them Mum? They shuffled, some going up a step, some down, laughing, arranging and rearranging themselves in two rows by height. Unable to decide who was taller, they passed their hands back and forth over each other’s heads. At the foot of the stairs, an older woman waited for them with her tripod and camera.

  “Squawks,” Rev. Jackdaw said. “Suffrages.”

  The group settled as the buggy reached them. The older woman bent to her camera and ducked under a small curtain. As she did, the back row of girls pinched the widest part of the sleeve of the girl in front and lifted the fabric like stretching up a wing. They laughed when the woman popped her head out again and frowned.

  Their glee grabbed Bridget. Could one of them be Mum? Maybe Mum wasn’t lost, only going to school. Studying each as the buggy continued to roll, not letting her eyes slide too quickly over even one, her hope faded as one after another of the faces belonged to strangers. No hair the color of hers. By the time she studied the last face, she was leaning out of the buggy and looking back.

  The force of Rev. Jackdaw’s hit knocked her back. “What’d I tell you?”

  She sat stunned. Pinching her eyes closed, she imagined the last young woman in line picking up the hem of her skirt, running down off the steps and starting after the buggy. The girl ran like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight. Her white petticoat swished back and forth around her ankles. She ran down one block and then up another, never stopping, never getting winded. She ran and ran because she wanted to be Bridget’s mum.

  “No stealing outta you. No trouble at all.”

  Bridget opened her eyes. The girl was gone. No one chased the buggy with her petticoats flying. Only thinking about Rev. Jackdaw’s scar kept tears away. Rowan, the best uncle in the world, died with a cut on the side of his face. That wound had been longer than Rev. Jackdaw’s, though it didn’t have time to grow into a scar. When they pounded nails into Rowan’s coffin lid, the gash was still open, the trough of it pale as the rest of his face.


  In the rhythmic rocking of the buggy wheels and the horse’s hooves clopping up soft puffs of dust, Bridget watched the road—its curves and washed out areas, the houses they passed, and the landmarks of big trees.

  Rev. Jackdaw wasn’t talking to her, but he kept glancing at the sky where the sun was sinking and dark clouds rumbled. He shook the reins harder. “Git up!”

  When the horse, without a word or tug on the reins, turned down a long, rutted lane, Bridget smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. Shelter was up ahead. A barn, a pigsty, and a house. Was this her home until Mum and Pappy found her? As they went down the dusty lane, the comfort of seeing shelter faded. The land either side of the buggy made her stomach hot and shaky. She grabbed hold of the red wool, imagining not just the braid inside, but Grandma Teegan too, small as a fairy.

  Every tree had been cut down. They lay scattered, trunks and branches bleached white. She counted several, then stopped, not wanting to count more or to study the small grove where stumps jutted up out of weeds grown thick between them. The trees hadn’t been chopped for firewood, but axed and sawed down and left to rot. No new growth was allowed either; not even a seed dropped by a bird allowed to root. The land looked haunted.

  Bridget closed her eyes and let go of Grandma Teegan’s braid. She didn’t want Grandma Teegan, who loved trees and especially sacred groves, to see. I won’t be afraid. She had the story of Nera, she was West, and she had Matron’s silver writing pen threaded into the hem of her dress. The pen promised she could out-smart grownups, which meant she could survive the things they took from her. Stealing from their world brought back pieces of her own.

  But how could she live here? Without trees, the birds left and took their songs. Squirrels left too, and deer and turkey and shade and singing leaves and a hundred things she couldn’t name. The whole world of fairy left. Without trees, even the land tried to run away. She covered her mouth and licked once before she brought her hands down. “I don’t want to live where the trees are chopped down.”

  Several people moved in the yard ahead, and as the buggy rolled into their midst they stopped what they were doing to stare. Brows scrunched and mouths frowned. Counting their numbers helped distract her: . . . six . . . seven . . . eight.

  Rev. Jackdaw whoaed the horse, lifted a gloved hand, and pointed to a girl standing at a clothesline. Her long, yellow hair was pinned back and held in place by a row of shiny copper combs running from one ear up and over the crown of her head to the other. She looked ready to cry. “That’s Efffie.”

  Seeing the girl helped ease the tension in Bridget’s stomach.

  “When I’m away,” Rev. Jackdaw said, “my wife’s in charge. You mind her.”

  Bridget was confused. Mind that girl? She was pretty and young enough to be Bridget’s sister. “It’s unlucky to sleep in a house where an old man sleeps with a young woman.”

  She flinched as Rev. Jackdaw’s hand lifted, his face saying she needed to be hit again. Before she could say, “It’s in a story,” he scanned the group watching them. His arm dropped. Bridget turned back to study not just the one named Effie, but the whole family. Three naked little boys, their winkels in plain sight, played with squirming puppies. A woman, looking too young for the long hair white that blew thin as wind around her head, sat on the porch step and shucked corn. A man stopped digging in his garden and stared with anger in his eyes. His face looked as cold and hard as his shovel blade. A mean-looking boy-man worked in the garden too. He held a pumpkin and stood in front of a wheelbarrow filled with other pumpkins. A baby sat on a blanket, one end of a rope tied around his waist and the other tied to the porch rail. A boy who looked no older than Bridget sat on the blanket too. He watched Effie.

  Movement higher on the porch caught Bridget’s attention. She’d not seen the very old woman hunkered in a rocker, sitting in shadows as dark as the rumbling clouds. One of her thin, aged hands clutched the rim of a tin bowl in her lap. Slowly the hand began to move, leaving the bowl, sliding across her flat thigh and onto a gun propped against one bony knee. Her lined face leaned forward, her eyes—dark and small and hooded—fixed on Bridget. That woman’s hair was white too. Rowan once said Grandma Teegan had cried herself into her old age. Had these women cried themselves into white hair?

  “God-a-mercy!” The screech from the woman in the rocker wheeled through the air. “The devil’th hair.” A claw-like hand gripped a cane, the other still fisted the gun. She struggled to stand, the bowl of snap beans clattering onto the porch floor, the empty rocker bucking behind her. “Bad luck, that one.” Her open mouth revealed missing teeth. “Thoot it.”

  Rev. Jackdaw kept his tongue. He knew their lifeless routine. They’d come in from the fields, eaten supper, and now they worked again in the last bit of dusky light. Never once picking up a Bible.

  “Nith.” The word spat from the porch.

  Nits? Lice? He hadn’t thought to wonder. He’d have Effie part Rooster’s hair and see if she spied movement. As soon as they were away. He tied the reins around the brake. He hated them all. Especially the Mad Matriarch in her rocker. Like Effie’s parents—locked up in their shallow minds and untouched by the Holy Ghost—the Mad Matriarch knew nothing of the world beyond her barren scrap of land. And the hell of her madness. He did his best to keep her quiet with Bible reading because her wailing made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. Worse at night. Screaming about children dead over a quarter century. The Mad Matriarch had seen the righteousness in the union of him and Effie, but any crumb of sense she’d had then was gone now.

  “The train came through town.” He spoke loud enough for his voice to carry to the porch and garden both. “Free orphans for the taking. This one’s Irish, so she’ll be good at scrubbing floors and hauling wood.”

  The buggy had served as his pulpit on more than one occasion. “This here’s Rooster. Until Effie has sons, this one’ll keep her company and do the chores. Now that’s the end of it.”

  He stepped out and down. Rooster would do more than keep Effie company; she’d be another set of eyes. She’d know if Effie started wandering, or men started sniffing around in his absence. Effie was a pretty thing, though she didn’t know it. Nor was her family the type to notice, or give a kind word if they did. All that spoke well of her. Still, she was awful young and had already lain with at least one. He couldn’t spare the time to find another wife.

  He ran his hand over Nell’s rump and then lower to the fetlock, lifting the spavined back leg to check the hoof. Studying the injury in the fading light, he reassured himself that even if he’d spent money to keep Nell properly shoed, the puncture might have happened. Twice he’d opened the wound with his knife and forced out pus. Then he dipped a rag in hot water and held the compress, drawing out whatever additional infection he could. The long trip to Nebraska might just be the end of the horse, but there was no other option.

  The matter of when to leave settled in his mind. Regardless of the weather, or the late hour, he’d pack up Effie. Her folks wouldn’t tolerate another mouth to feed even for a day or two, and leaving Rooster in the barn for the night might tempt her to run off. Soon as the squall passed, he’d put at least a few miles between Effie and her crazy family. “We leave tonight,” he called out.

  Turning for the barn, he refused to look back. A hasty exit was best. Like he’d done at fourteen, the night he left for good. With the stars so close they swam around his head and sat on his shoulders—God whispering in his ear—he’d saddled a horse. The horse he chose might have been common as pig muck, but that night it was a grand stallion. Together they shooed off every pig and cow and swayback on the property.

  He’d gotten far enough away before his old man came thundering out of the house in his union suit. Mister fired at him, but missed. Without a horse left in the corral, there was no way to give chase.

  The tension in all of them rolled with as much threat as in the clouds. Effie wanted nothing to do with the redheaded girl in the buggy. Rev. Jackdaw
hadn’t discussed taking a child with them. If he thought she needed help so badly, why not take Johnny? Skeet eyed the orphan, Granny clutched her gun, and though Ma held an ear of corn needing shucked, her hands had gone still. Pa thrust his shovel so deep into the ground he’d nearly buried it to the hilt. They were all upset and no telling what any of them might say next. On top of that, she was leaving yet that night!

  The first drops of rain plopped, and she grabbed clothes from the line. The Lord was punishing her with the orphan. She’d bled four times since she’d married, and now she was leaving home with no baby in her womb and an orphan as a substitute.

  She looked out over the pasture where cows hung heavy heads and trees lay rotting. The world around her was dying. The land, Granny, even her parents were headed that way. At least Rev. Jackdaw had dreams. He would build her a big house in Omaha. No one around New Ulm, not even young men like Skeet and Jury—thinking of Jury made her stomach fold up in to a tight little square—wanted more than a strip of land to plow and a hog to butcher in the fall.

  “Effie,” Ma yelled, her face pinched and twisting, “quit your daydreaming. Get that washing in!”

  Effie didn’t understand Ma, and now she never would. She hurried down the line, pulling pins and filling her arms with small britches and shirts. Life with Rev. Jackdaw would be different, not always “Effie do this. Effie do that.” There’d be invitations to fine homes, community picnics with races and cakewalks and chips of ice in lemonade. She’d experience new things, meet people with hope in their eyes.

  The rain came harder. Startled by the heavy drops, the twins ran for the porch, their bare backsides still showing signs of the chubby-legged toddlers they’d been. The baby blinked from his blanket, and two-year-old Curly ran for her. She dropped her armload of clothes into the basket and knelt. His baby-boy body rushed into her arms, and she inhaled his dusty scent. Tears dampened her eyes. How could she leave these boys? It was her fault Ma was cold to every child born since Baby Sally’s death. Ma preferred washing, slopping pigs, or even fixing fence to rocking a child. Scared to love something fragile as a baby again. Effie understood, yet who would the little boys have when she was gone?