With each day’s westward travel toward the Big Sioux River, Effie’s uncertainty grew. The eyes of eagles, hawks, and whooping cranes spied her from the air. She imagined foxes, coyotes, and wolves watching her from dark lairs and wind-swept hilltops. Even many of the human eyes that peered from solitary doors at the sight of an old horse dragging a wobbly cart held suspicion and threat. And with each mile, they traveled deeper into Indian Territory. One old man was little protection against nature’s wild things, and he was no protection against heathen Injuns.
When they passed towering trees—thankfully few and far between—and her nerves made her grab the shotgun and her black cloth, Rev. Jackdaw lied to her. Told her again how the Injun was completely wiped out. As though he didn’t know that after the Sioux uprising Mr. Lincoln let over two hundred murdering savages go free. Squaws and papooses weren’t even arrested. Lincoln not only spared the noose, he sent the whole murdering bunch to Nebraska. On top of that, the Injun chief, Big Foot, and his band—another mob of murderers—had killed over thirty United States Calvary men right on the Nebraska border. The papooses who escaped that December morning were grown now. Angry too.
Reaching the Big Sioux River, Rev. Jackdaw turned Nell south, followed the course down to where it joined the Missouri, and then continued on roads and tracks alongside the wide, brown water. When they reached Council Bluffs days later, they camped again. In the morning, Rev. Jackdaw covered Nell’s eyes and tugged the skittish beast across the fifty-foot-high Union Pacific Railroad Bridge into Omaha.
For the first time since leaving Homeplace, Effie relaxed. Shopkeepers, men in wagons and on horses, men in top hats, and men in laborer’s caps. With so many men, all with guns in their homes and tucked under their coats, no Injun dared attack.
“We made it,” she breathed and turned to shout at Bridget through the back window.
“You aren’t staying here.” Rev. Jackdaw’s voice rose over the rattle of the buggy.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re staying at a trapping lodge just outside town.”
“But Omaha? You said—”
“You got yourself free boarding and a free girl to do your chores.” He told her about the profitable deal he’d made, how nothing was required of her but keeping an eye about the place. “Report any greedy poor stealing Mr. Deet’s firewood.”
Effie’s stomach twisted into coils. He’d lied to her. Made arrangements with a man named Deet. She wanted to scream in protest, but she knew it wouldn’t change his mind. She’d only anger him, and that anger would come back and hit her with more force.
They went on, the sun striking her side of the buggy, then hot over the top, and finally low on Rev. Jackdaw’s side. Near dusk, with Nell lathered in sweat and hitching her hind foot, they rolled down the main street of a small town: a train depot, mercantile, post office, livery, and a two-story building with a large sign—Bleaksville Hotel.
At the end of the street, just before a narrow wooden bridge leading out of town, a school. Bridget had mentioned going to school early in their trip when they passed a similar clapboard building, it earned her a slap across the face. Effie dared not turn around to see if the girl was looking to that side of the road.
Rev. Jackdaw was. “Rooster’s yours to watch. I best not hear she’s stepped in there, wasting time, acting like an uppity squawk.”
They crossed the bridge and for over a mile kept on a dusty road. Trees began appearing, then growing thick. They stretched on and on as the buggy rolled slowly by, with nothing but Rev. Jackdaw between her and all that might lurk in them.
On a ridge with flat, open land on one side and a drop on the other, he pulled hard on Nell’s reins, brought her to a stop.
Darkness was gathering fast, and she wanted to shout, “Go, go.” They couldn’t camp there. Her gaze followed Rev. Jackdaw’s. At the bottom of the slope, through even more trees, the Missouri River looked little more than a mud flat. For days they’d trailed alongside the water, sometimes with a clear view, at other times the road swung out and the river disappeared. Seeing it again, she had the sinking feeling the river followed them rather than the other way around. Or that despite the long, awful days, they’d covered no ground at all.
She batted whining mosquitoes, her stomach rolling and her eyes adjusting in the waning light. Not a stone’s throw from the water, on an apron of sandy ground, two small shacks sat looking for all the world as sinister as the woods surrounding them. Floating three or four feet off the ground. The sight made her cross her arms over her stomach, hold tight to herself, and look to Rev. Jackdaw. His bad eye twitched, delivered the awful news he hadn’t yet spoken. This was the lodge where he expected her to live.
“No,” she managed. “Not here.” She’d never imagined a house perched on sticks, and its unnaturalness seemed as evil as the lurking trees with their dark, swaying shadows and branches. This couldn’t be where she had to stay. Not down there. Not for days, maybe even a week.
Rev. Jackdaw drew back his shoulders, scrubbed his chin, and slid a hand down his long beard. His unsettled eye jumped. “It won’t take long. I’ll have a house built in Omaha.”
Effie had no words, her throat so tight breathing was labor. She studied the stilted boxes he’d called a trapping lodge. She’d expected two stories, as many as a dozen rooms. She’d expected a busy place with plenty of men carrying plenty of guns. She’d expected a fort. Never such an abandoned place. And never so many trees. Traveling from Omaha, she’d prayed the trees he spoke of would be off at some civilized distance from the lodge. Off like a field of wheat, not bleak and ugly and looming over every breath she drew. A huge walnut towered over the lodge. It looked half on the apron of land and half in the unquiet river. How many Injuns lived in that tree alone?
Rev. Jackdaw scowled as he handed her the reins. “Keep it slow.” He climbed out, made a shoving motion to Bridget, telling her to get out of the cart. He grabbed the bridle at the throatlatch and tugged. “Step on.”
Effie’s eyes widened as they started down, rolling over ruts and holes, some as deep as a foot. The cuts, from seasons of neglect and water washing down, made her think of monstrous claw marks. She clutched the reins as the buggy rocked and lurched. Each time she bounced inches above the seat, she slammed her foot harder on the brake and struggled to keep herself from flying off. She wished she’d been allowed to walk with Bridget, but she had no more say in how she descended than Nell.
“Slow!” Rev. Jackdaw yelled at her.
She tried to concentrate, to stay focused just on braking and keeping the reins taut. She couldn’t look at the lodge, couldn’t think right now about living in the uncivilized West with trees, an orphan, and a man who paid no more mind to her wants than he did to his horse’s.
“Slow!”
She stomped her full weight on the brake, the wood and leather pads gripping and squeaking. They had no choice but to go down. No one would risk leaving a horse and buggy unattended in this wild. But if a wheel sank into a furrow, though they moved against the cuts, or the bouncing snapped the old buggy’s axel, even if Nell stepped into a hole, splintering a cannon bone, Effie didn’t care. What lay at the bottom felt like dropping off the edge of civilization.
“Slow! Can’t you hear?”
Bridget stood fixed, watching Nell. The poor horse was gentle and kind no matter how many times Rev. Jackdaw struck her with the tips of the leather reins, or how bad her leg hurt. Now her eyes were wide and rimmed in white as she hitched her way down, and Rev. Jackdaw kept hollering at Effie, right in Nell’s ear.
Bridget turned away—she couldn’t watch any longer. She started for the river. Her whole body had bruises from the weeks of bouncing, and her feet blisters from the hours she walked each day, but with every step closer to the water, her fingers opened wider and her hands lifted as if to grab up the wonder. The new world surrounding her reminded her of Ireland. Not rocks and stones and crashing waves, but trees and more trees like a sacr
ed grove, and a river for selkies.
Picking up speed, laughing and breathless, Bridget ran past the cabin on stilts, stopping only when her toes reached the water. Mum could be in the river. All water was connected.
She twirled with her arms wide. “If I was a bird,” she told Mum, “I’d fly up and see how far the trees grow. But you can’t measure woods.” She knew from walking with Grandma Teegan, and from the stories, that trees liked to stretch out or bunch up.
“Whoa,” Rev. Jackdaw yelled as they finished the descent and the buggy wheels caught where clay soil met silt and sand. He kept hold of the bridle and stood staring at the shack. His cussed eye twitched. For starters, the trip from Omaha had taken several hours, not the two or three he’d expected. He pulled the letter from Deet out of his breast pocket and flung it open. Just a piece upriver from Bleaksville.
True enough, but where did he get the idea Bleaksville was only a couple of miles outside of Omaha? Not somewhere close to twenty. With that much distance and Nell’s age, each ride to Effie would be spending the miles in a horse that couldn’t spare them. Plus time away from his work in Omaha.
He glanced again at the letter. The place ain’t fit for a white woman. Reading those words back in Minnesota, the penmanship so poor it needed study, he’d shrugged off the comment. Certain the unschooled Deet didn’t know the Lord provided according to one’s merit. But this abomination? A chimney falling down, a roof no better, walls with crumbling mortar between rotting logs and chinks open to rain, cold, and varmints? At least a good supply of wood had been cut, and he owed Deet for keeping his word on that.
Effie still sat frozen in the buggy, rigid and sickly looking. Even knowing she carried the sin of lying with a man out of wedlock, he’d expected she’d earned herself a nicer place. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
He refolded the letter, shoved it back in his pocket, and felt the warm touch of vindication. The state of her soul, not his, warranted the shanty. He whispered a prayer that God still thought her worthy of bearing sons. She’d bled into her rags again on the trip down. His bad eye gave a sharp twitch, and he tried to force his mind into obedience. Forbidding himself doubt.
He worked at the harness, pulling the traces from the rings on the hames. Shacks up and down the roads they’d traveled showed women living in poorer conditions than this lodge. Even dugouts with snakes likely to stick their heads down over the supper table. Effie had no cause to complain.
Unfastening the poles from the buggy and resting them on the ground, he gave thanks. The trip was over, the buggy had survived in a single piece, and with a night’s rest, Nell could muster gimp enough for the trip back to Omaha. All of which meant the Lord’s favor. Even the ruined state of the lodge was advantageous to his cause. The disrepair explained why Deet agreed to free rent in exchange for watching over an ox, drying pelts, and his trees. Deet was no fool. Having someone living in the lodge also meant simple repairs would be done, rats and raccoons kept out.
“Lucky for you,” he said in Effie’s direction. The Lord’s ways were indeed mysterious. “If the place weren’t in such dire need, I couldn’t have struck my deal.”
His free girl skipped alongside the river as if she’d never seen water. “Rooster!” he called. “Git over here.” She started back, her red hair bouncing off her shoulders, a big grin on her face. To his credit, he’d gotten the right orphan. He held Nell’s reins. “Water her. Then find her something to eat. Don’t wander too far and get lost in the dark.” He nodded at a cleft in the trees. “Go along in there, not back up that damn ridge.” Being so close to his dreams made him nervous, and the gleam in Rooster’s eyes added to that unease. She hadn’t tried any funny business yet, but that was because of his firm hand. He’d keep on her. “People in these parts hang horse thieves. Children or no. Especially orphans.”
She reached for the reins, but he kept hold of them. Was she scared enough to behave? “You ever saw a hanging? Ever watched a man gurgle and twist? It’s a slow and miserable trip to hell.” He paused. “I’m keeping an eye on you.”
Her gaze swept back and forth between his eyes as if she tried to figure out which eye that would be. His good eye, or the bad? “Git!” he bellowed.
With Rooster leading Nell, he looked back to Effie. She still hadn’t moved and looked close to bawling. “Don’t make me step up there and pull you out.”
Obeying Rev. Jackdaw took a force of will Effie could scarcely muster. Both sides of the tiny clearing were a dark wall of trees. Broken branches hung caught in limbs and swung suspended in the air, wholly unnatural and looking like bleached bones. On the ground amongst the trunks, weeds grew knee-high over felled wood, and vines reddened by the fall temperatures twisted sinister as red snakes up massive trunks. Everything from bears to Injuns hid in such unholy places.
An eerie, raucous sound rose as if from the bowels of the earth. From the large tree half in the river, its shadow looming over the lodge where she was expected to sleep, blackness spilled out and upward, swelled to three times the size of the tree. As if signaled, an endless flood of shadowy birds rose from other nearby trees: starlings, cowbirds, blackbirds, crows. The inky net darkened an already pewter sky. The clicking, hissing, and clattering was deafening. Five hundred? A thousand? Just as suddenly, the flock reared and the evil-looking torrent swung back like a thick funeral cloth, resettled and shrouded the tree.
She trembled. Surely now they would leave, but Rev. Jackdaw in his black clothing climbed the lodge stairs and disappeared through the black maw of its doorway.
She waited for the nightmare to end. By the time his face reappeared, floating above a black-clothed body she could not make out in the darkness, she struggled to keep from fainting.
“Come down from there,” he yelled over the roar of the crows. “It’s clear. No raccoons, skunks. No varmints of any size.”
“It’s on sticks,” Effie managed.
“Necessary this close to the river. Flood waters will wash under.”
Holding Granny’s gun, the spoons in their box, and her black cloth, Effie climbed down. She’d welcome skunks and raccoons over the birds sounding like torrents of rushing water, a roar of rasping, and wings tearing at the air. She forced herself up the rickety steps and across the landing only four paces wide, but stopped at the door.
Inside, Rev. Jackdaw walked along the far wall holding a lit candle stub. “You got yourself a regular lady’s commode.” He stopped, used the toe of his boot, nudged a wooden box with a hole cut in the top. A rusty metal bucket sat beneath. “You want, you can do your business right here.”
Wooziness made Effie reach out for the doorjamb.
He leveled his eyes on her. “You’re trying me.” He walked on, flicked a large spider off a pump handle, and wiped the web clear with his hand. “Looky here, you got water inside.” Several pumps failed to draw up even a trickle. “I’ll prime it. You’ll scrub off that table and start coffee. Rooster gets back with my horse, she can help you carry in.”
Effie didn’t watch him walk out the back door, only the scuff of his footprints in the dust. The single room reeked of mouse droppings and mold. Cracks spattered the walls, some large enough for Injuns outside to squat and leer through. Four small, grimy windows, two on the front wall and two on the back. The glass crusty with wooly strings of gray webs, untold filth and leaf bits—as though the trees themselves had coughed onto the panes. Cobwebs also hung tattered from the rafters like long fingers of hundred-year-old lace. Or worse, like strong new sewing threads. Dust lay thick over a table and two mismatched chairs. Ropes sagged on a bedstead lacking a mattress. No curtains, no rugs, though one corner held a couple more rusty buckets and an aging broom so thick with cobwebs she’d never touch it. In another corner, what looked to be a pile of old and dirty furs. So lumpy they could be covering a skeleton.
When Rev. Jackdaw stepped back in through the rear door and began to slowly pour water down the pipe of the pump, she hadn’t yet moved. “Deet w
rote the well rope’s frayed,” he said, “but I ain’t going to bother changing it. You got water here. Dang waste of money buying that rope.” He poured water until the pipe overflowed and then he pumped again. Brown water trickled from the spout, but with each pump the amount increased. With each pump too, the clarity of the water increased. Satisfied, he crossed to her, pulled away Granny’s gun, and hung it with an angry flourish on nails beside the back door. He returned, reached for her spoons.
“No.” She twisted away. “I see what’s needing done.” She moved slowly. How could she ever make the place livable? And where to start trying? Everything needed done at once, and she lacked the energy for any of it.
She took another measure of the room. Was it fifteen feet across? Only the cook stove eased some of her upset. Next to it, a battered box held kindling. She took up a pail. The table Rev. Jackdaw wanted washed consisted of three stained and battered planks. Most of the damage looked like slits in the wood, as though rather than laying down their knives during meals, a dozen men over several years simply stabbed them into the wood. She knew and the knowing struck her hard: no woman had ever lived in the place.
She found the unbleached sugar sack they’d emptied on the trip. Traveling, she’d wondered what she might make with it and folded and tucked the soft fabric in with her dresses. Holding it now, she decided not to tear the cotton in half and limit its possibilities. She dunked the whole cloth into her cold well water and started on the table’s thick grunge. With the first muddy swipe, the sugar sack turned a dark brown, ruined, as lost as if it had disappeared in her hand.
The fire Rev. Jackdaw built helped light the room, and the smell of burning wood helped mask the lodge’s musty odors. As the room gradually warmed and coffee boiled, Effie promised herself things would be all right. Until she could solve the rodent problem though, she’d keep Dr. Chase’s book and her dresses in the sink. The orphan likely never had a bed and preferred sleeping on the floor, but for the first night she’d best sleep on the table. And maybe, Effie decided, I’ll join her. Rats could drop from the rafters onto the table too, or crawl up the knobby table legs just as they could bedstead legs, but the table stood higher, and the furry, ugly things would at least have to claw with more effort.
River People Page 7