River People

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River People Page 9

by Margaret Lukas


  “In Grandma Teegan’s stories, if a girl gets in trouble, she gets herself away as fast as she can.”

  Effie lifted an iron burner plate, clanged it down. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Rev. Jackdaw heard you talk like that, he’d give you a well-deserved licking.” She put in kindling from the box on the floor. “I would be no better off leaving. Not a penny to my name. No way of getting one. I got to keep believing the Lord will send me babies when I’ve earned them. Then everything will turn out all right.”

  Talk about conceiving wasn’t something a girl Bridget’s age should hear. “I had an aunt,” Effie said. “She made a doily out of her husband’s hair and beard.” She’d keep them both busy. “You know how to make a doily out of that hair you’re holding on to?”

  “It’s Grandma Teegan’s hair.”

  “Hair is hair. It doesn’t have to be a doily.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “It’s not.” She’d tried to be nice. Rev. Jackdaw had warned her about being soft on Bridget and the trouble that could cause. “Rev. Jackdaw’s signing a paper on you means everything you own is his. The Bible says a wife is under her husband and children are under the wife.” And orphans don’t count at all. Though of course, neither did wives, really.

  Bridget squinted at Effie as though she were the strange one.

  “Anyway,” Effie said, “who wants a doily you’re going to talk to? Get rid of it.”

  “No.”

  “I can’t live with you clutching dead hair, whispering to dead people. I left that all at Homeplace. Get rid of it.”

  “Grandma Teegan gave it to me so we can stay together.”

  “That woman gave you away. That hair was to cover up her shame. She wanted rid of you.”

  “You don’t know the story.”

  “I’m warning you,” Effie said, “If you don’t get rid of it, I’ll throw it in the river.”

  She’d put Johnny’s marbles in a front window, and as the sun rose higher, light struck them. He’d given them to her to keep them safe from Skeet. She was being Skeet now. Or was it Granny, who’d certainly fret over dead hair? Her sanity rattled.

  Scrubbing at the window’s grime—layers of grease, flyspecks, and abandonment—Effie struggled to keep her mind on the work and not on the sinister-looking world outside. This was the second day since being pulled off the buggy and into the shanty perched on stilts. She had no idea how many days—surely not a week—before Rev. Jackdaw returned. Seeing the amount of wood he’d hired cut for winter fires had made her nearly sag to her knees. It ran along one entire side of the lodge. So high, Bridget needed to stand on a chair to take from the top. What was Rev. Jackdaw planning?

  She’d try not to worry. Rev. Jackdaw would come back for her. When he did, he’d expect proof that she’d worked hard in his absence. Both she and Bridget had, sweeping out dirt, mouse droppings, dead frogs. They’d even dragged the fur from the corner and found it was one huge buffalo hide. She’d wanted to lug the ugly thing all the way to the river, but Bridget wanted it for a bed. Without a mattress of any sort for her, Effie relented. They wrestled it over the back porch railing, and Bridget spent hours beating it with a stick, pounding it free of dust.

  Effie turned back to her pail and rag. She couldn’t imagine sleeping on something so awful, but Bridget, working now at plastering—little more than slapping mud over holes in the wall—had drug the hide back in and happily stretched out on it.

  “Look,” Bridget squealed and pointed to a mouse hugging the base of a wall. The mouse ran a few inches and stopped, its whiskers trembling.

  Effie hurried for the broom. Only a mouse. She could handle a mouse. On tiptoes, keeping her dress hem off the floor and standing as far back as possible, she stretched, slamming the rodent with the old bristles. Her own shrieking helped, though it sent Bridget into a fit of laughter. The mouse ran and Effie whacked again. The furry body rolled like a stone under her sweeping, its pink toes in the air, its tail flicking in a circle like a tiny whip, then on its feet again. And gone. Through a hole no bigger than Effie’s thumb.

  Bridget was still giggling and Effie nearly smiled. Only a mouse, and she’d handled it just fine. She returned to her pail and squeezed out the ruined sugar sacking. Brown water smelling of scum ran over her red-chapped hands. Still, today she was handling things—so long as God kept Injuns away.

  She scrubbed again at the pocked glass. Injuns. Her gaze skittered right and then left across the yard. The trees, so tall she lived in dark shadows, felt like bars. Granny, whose mind had frayed to one thin strand, wouldn’t survive a single night in the lodge. How many nights, Effie wondered, before the ropes of her own mind began fraying?

  “That was funny,” Bridget said.

  The lightness of the previous moment was already gone for Effie. She looked from the trees to the building Rev. Jackdaw called the skinning shed. Also perched on sticks. He hadn’t mentioned snakes, but where there was water, there were snakes. Their muscled bodies climbed. She’d seen one in the chicken coop at Homeplace, draped in a long S over a high roost. In one slick upward glide, a snake could scale any of the poles holding up the lodge. Arch its back and reach up through the rotting floor. Or slither in under a door.

  Effie scrubbed. The river scared her more than the snakes it harbored. Every time she checked for Injuns in narrow canoes, the unquiet water had changed from brown and solid to some shade of peril. At sunset it was blood red.

  “I’m hungry,” Bridget said.

  “I know.” Effie scrubbed. Bridget needed to eat. She’d complained of hunger several times that morning, a chant she’d started the day before. But she hadn’t gotten rid of the braid yet, only left it on the disgusting hide. And the walk into town and the mercantile was two miles. Along a road lined with trees. “I told you, make a thick paste. That’s running down the wall.”

  “I’ll get more dirt. Maybe I’ll see the ox.”

  “Don’t run off.” There were walnuts to eat, but how filling were they? “Just add weeds, dung if you see any.”

  At the back door, Bridget hesitated. “Remember what he said.”

  “I know he said for you to find the ox. But you’re likely to get lost. Quit pestering me.”

  It shamed Effie the way she ordered and barked at Bridget. It’s fear brings out meanness, Ma once said of Granny. “Only fear,” Effie whispered to herself. She moved to the front window and set the pail down. The sound was a soft clunk on the rotting boards. She dipped her rag in the water, wrung out the excess, drew it up to the glass, and stopped. “Someone’s coming.”

  “There’s a boy,” Bridget said. She’d dropped her pail too, and raced to Effie’s side.

  At the top of the ridge, he stood between the long handles of a worn, wooden cart and watched a woman in a wide, mustard-colored dress slowly traverse the slope.

  “Our first visitor,” Effie said.

  Bridget ran for the door. “Is it Mum?”

  “Stop!” Effie shouted. “You aren’t dressed fit. Your hands . . .” She gave chase, but the bar hit the floor and Bridget ran out.

  They stood together on the narrow landing and stared at the approaching woman.

  “It’s not Mum.” Bridget’s words a near sob.

  The closer the woman came, the more uneasy and stung with disappointment Effie felt. The strange, young-old woman looked to be in her last week or even in her last day of a long pregnancy. With a face pale as old sheets, the only color was her fatigue, curved under her eyes like slack, blue thumbs. Loose strands of hair dangled at her cheeks and the rest was piled atop her head and held with twigs. Like a nest. The woman’s bare feet scuffed dust. The puckered and bunched waist of her worn dress rode curved over the top of her huge stomach, tucked under her breasts. The hemline a foot higher in the front than the back. She carried a loaf of unwrapped bread and a red rooster. Reaching the bottom of the slope and crossing the sand, she shifted the bread and the chicken with its dull red comb and yellow ey
es from one hand to the other. Smiling, she offered the bread to Effie. “I brung this here for you.”

  Spurred by the fear of the wretched-looking creature possibly climbing onto the porch, Effie left Bridget’s side and forced herself to move down the steps. She felt upended. Not knowing what else to do, she accepted the hard, dry loaf with an unsteady hand.

  The woman smiled again. “I go by Mae Thayer.” A lilt in her voice. “You can call me Mae.” The name given with satisfaction, as if the woman thought it as much a gift as the week-old bread. And at Effie’s stunned silence, “I’m your neighbor. My man, Mr. Thayer, he said a woman was down here, but I didn’t believe it. I was right. Yous just a couple of kids.” A bee buzzed around the chicken’s head and she swatted at it. “How old you be?”

  How old are you? Effie wondered. Was Mae twenty years older than herself ? Or only ten, maybe five? Her face, with study, looked young enough beneath the pallor. Was it the number of years she’d lived or their harshness that had ruined her? Were all Nebraska women so beaten? Effie hadn’t married out of love—few women had that luxury—but she’d married with the hope of being secure, with a home and children. Not the sort of existence this creature bespoke in her ragged dress with its sorry-looking bit of old lace around the neck. Lace Mae had tried to fix with too-thick thread and clumsy hands, needing to hold on to the idea of owning lace.

  “This place ain’t fit for winter,” Mae said.

  Effie dared not turn and look at the lodge or down at her own dress. The brown hadn’t been washed in several days, but there was no soap, and with the lodge needing so much sweeping and scrubbing, bothering to rinse the dress out in a pail would be wasted effort. She reached up, brushed her cheeks as if for dust, but pressed them hard, hoping to rub in a bit of color. With little sleep since leaving Homeplace, did her own face look as tired and old as Mae’s?

  “Hello in there,” Mae said. “Can’t you say nothin’?”

  Effie’s free hand swung behind her back and fisted. She clenched it until her broken nails bit hard into her palm. Her disappointment at seeing Mae Thayer in a mustard dress was unchristian, but the woman was so stark poor she had to be unfavored in the eyes of God. Why’d God bless her?

  “I’m married to Reverend Jackdaw,” Effie managed. Both “Reverend” and “Jackdaw” increased her importance. “He preaches in Omaha.”

  “You got a name? What they call you?”

  “Her name is Effie,” Bridget cut in. She leaned on the porch rail. “I’m Bridget.”

  “I can speak for myself,” Effie said. Something in Mae’s eyes looked addled. Since stepping out of the lodge and getting a good look at her, Effie had felt as though she were sliding slowly down the damp and cold sides of a well.

  Once, in twilight sleep, her hand brushed her face and the old and loose skin she touched startled her awake. She realized she’d touched Granny’s face, but the moment when she’d thought her own face miserably old lingered, spreading chill like a broad stain over the floor of her mind. Now, here it was again, the sinking sense of premonition she got looking at Mae—the first woman she encountered in Nebraska. This time, she wasn’t sleeping.

  Bridget came down the stairs and stood beside her. “Have you seen my mum? She’s West.”

  Mae’s eyes narrowed first on Bridget then on Effie. “You ain’t sisters. Least not by the same daddy.” She quit petting the chicken’s head and used that hand to cradle her stomach. “You ain’t lost?” she asked Bridget. “You’s cared for?”

  “She isn’t lost,” Effie said. She swung the loaf behind her back alongside her fisted hand. Her stomach felt jabbed by the sharp point of Mae’s concern. Who cares for any of us?

  “I’ve seen most ever’one hereabouts.” Mae squinted at Bridget. “You don’t look like no one.”

  “Her name is Kathleen.” Bridget mimed Effie, swinging her hands behind her back. “Pappy’s named Darcy?”

  “There’s a Davey. Even got us a Dewey. But they’s Krauts. They ain’t carrot tops.”

  Effie’s breath caught.

  “With that hair,” Mae hurried on, “she ain’t a Kraut. And yous,” she looked directly at Effie, “best grow a thicker skin. We gets bullied down here. They call us river people.”

  “River people,” Effie repeated. “That’s ugly. Who says so?”

  “Folks supposing they don’t need no one but themselves. They’s small inside. Small fills up with nothing.”

  Bridget went back up the stairs. “Mum is going to come.”

  Mae leaned closer to Effie. “You trade for her?”

  “Of course not! She was a half orphan.” Explaining any more would mean Mae staying to hear. It wasn’t Mae’s business.

  “I was eight,” Mae said, “when he traded me. I brung a gallon of whiskey. A gallon for the judge too, so he’d marrying us right there. Lifted his Bible and said it was done.”

  Just as Rev. Jackdaw had done. “Eight?”

  “The law says a girl ought to be ten, but he promised me a store-bought dress if I lied.” The chicken squirmed harder and Mae cupped a palm over its face, pushing down the head. “Lived with him thirteen years till he up and died. He never did buy me no dress.”

  We can’t be friends, Effie wanted to say. I’ll never be as low as you.

  Mae’s eyes crinkled and she smiled. “Talking to you is work. You don’t help much.”

  “Rev. Jackdaw likes me quiet.” During the long trip down from Minnesota, she’d hardly spoken. The first few days she’d tried, but he seldom answered. He bartered their meals and, when he could, a bed. “He speaks for us.”

  “Course he does.” Mae’s smile remained. “But what mens know about what womens got to say?”

  “You don’t know him. You shouldn’t talk about a man you don’t know. He’s building a church and me a home in Omaha.”

  “That was a better string of words.” She lifted a thin arm and pointed in the road’s westerly direction. “I live up ’bout two miles. You’d be welcome to come by. I gets lonely.”

  Lonely. Effie’s tongue felt dry. I been lonely seven years. But climbing into Rev. Jackdaw’s buggy and leaving Homeplace had been about finding a better life. Not becoming friends with a woman worse off than her. Though Mae thought they were kindred enough to be friends.

  Effie turned to Bridget. “Get back to your work. We got so much to do.” Hopefully, the mention of work would send Mae on her way.

  “I can help,” Mae said.

  “No. We can manage.” Breadcrumbs sifted like ashes into her palm. Though decades younger than Granny, Mae carried a matching darkness. Something ghosted in her, just as something ghosted in Granny. Both were more eerie wind than solid.

  Mae still didn’t turn to leave. She could likely use a place to sit and rest, even a drink of water, but Effie couldn’t force herself to extend the invitation. “Thank you for the bread.” She forced herself to turn and face the steps.

  “Why they let soldiers,” Mae asked, “mens shot up and half starved to death, come home and name towns?”

  Effie blinked and wished for her black cloth. “Bleaksville?”

  “They come home looking like skeletons with ‘ville’ on their tongues. Mr. Thayer said half the mens in town come home from the war with pieces missing.” Mae tapped one temple. “Sometimes the missing was gone from up here.”

  The leaves on the trees either side of the clearing breathed in raspy unison. “The lodge isn’t fit for company,” Effie said. “I can’t invite you in. You want Bridget to fetch a cup of well water?”

  Mae rubbed in wide, slow circles around the rim of her belly, her stained fingers disappearing and reappearing from beneath the chicken. “I can’t bring ’em in alive,” she said. “They wheeze. Can’t breathe air.” Her hand came around again. “Long as they are fish in me, they’re alive. This here one, it’s still using its gills. You know about gills?”

  Effie’s hand shook harder. More breadcrumbs sifted into her palm.

  “I
whelped one what lived.” Mae nodded toward the boy waiting on the ridge. “That’s Pete. He’s got a white goodness.”

  A white goodness. Effie thought of Johnny, though the lad on the ridge looked older. Maybe fourteen or fifteen. “I have younger brothers . . .” Loss bubbled too close to the surface, and she couldn’t go on.

  “My boy,” Mae was still admiring him, “helps me along in here with berries. Wood too. Sometimes he’ll bring us crows to eat.”

  The hair on the nape of Effie’s neck lifted. “Mr. Deet’s wood?” She understood now why Mae hadn’t left yet. Her shoulders drew back and the bristling on her neck settled. By the blessing of the saints, Mae Thayer hadn’t come wanting friendship. She’d admitted to stealing wood, and now she wanted to trade her week-old bun for permission to continue. Effie brought the loaf from behind her back and held it out in the space between them. “I’m hired by Mr. Deet himself. You’re not to come and steal from him.”

  The chicken, half perched on the top of Mae’s belly, tried to flap and in the struggle caught a toe in the worn fabric of Mae’s dress. The foot jerked, the wings flapped, but Mae held tight. “We only take wood that’s down.”

  She did. The wall of newly chopped wood stacked against the lodge hadn’t been touched. “Even wood on the ground is stealing.”

  “Wood goes to rot.”

  “That’s no concern of yours.” Did Mae even notice the struggling bird? The unsettling, half-clucking? “I’m to go to the sheriff.”

  “Berries’ll go to rot too, call up blackbirds.”

  Effie couldn’t look into the trees, couldn’t bear to see their dark numbers swing out like an arm of the devil and back again. The scrapping and cawing of crows—a noise she’d been trying to deny since arriving at the lodge—rose higher. As if Mae commanded them. Pick every berry, she wished she could say. Cut down every tree. Carry off every branch and stick.

  For the first time in her life, though, she had something of her own: authority. She turned on Bridget. “Go back to your work. Mae doesn’t know your folks.” What good did it do Bridget to keep hoping? “Your parents are dead.”

 

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