“Shoo.” The beast came on. “Shoo!” She waved her arms and swatted the air with her stick. She threw it. Missed. “Go away!”
The animal’s large eyes fixed on her, one big hoof after the other just clearing the ground, curling up at the ankle and hammering back down. Was this the ox? Was the ox she needed to find white? She leaned out over her protective wall and tried to see down one long, furry side. There were markings on the animal’s flank, but from where she stood, she couldn’t be sure it was a Flying D brand.
The animal continued coming with its steady plodding. A part of her still wanted to scream, but a bigger part wanted to clap her hands. For sure, she planned to stay where she was.
The ox’s head was the size of the washtub she’d stolen from Effie’s mean brother. The head with sawed-off horns extended out from between the shoulders, not riding above them. It nodded with the motion of its massive shoulders. She stepped back and back until she bumped into the second arm. The ox reached Old Mag and stretched his head over the first arm as innocently as a lamb looking to lick salt from her palm. Even if her pockets were full of salt, she’d never stick the flat of her hand out to that mouth.
The brand was visible now: a D inside a pair of wings. This was Jake, Mr. Deet’s ox, the animal Rev. Jackdaw expected her to tend. Had the ox been coming to Old Mag to scratch? Or was he so well trained that smelling chimney smoke or hearing voices told him he needed to return to the lodge? Grandma Teegan’s sheep had known what it meant when Grandma Teegan came out of the croft with her staff. They’d known what it meant at night when she opened the barn door.
Jake wasn’t pushing against the tree to try and get to her, and he couldn’t jump over something so high. He wasn’t even trying. She took two steps forward. “I’m not scared of you.” She hoped he could see she was trying to smile. “You’re way bigger than a ram, but you aren’t mean. Are you?”
With her hands tucked safely behind her back, she advanced again until she could reach out and touch him. She wouldn’t, though maybe if she just touched his leather collar, he wouldn’t mind. He smelled of trees and musty fall leaves. She liked that. She also liked the depth of his large coal-black eyes and his long white lashes.
She’d found the ox, or maybe he’d found her. Either way, Effie wouldn’t be so worried now, and she’d thank her. Maybe she’d even want them to be sisters.
Keeping her hand high and away from the ox’s mouth, Bridget reached and with one finger touched the curly hair across the bony ridge on the top of his head. He lifted his head and bumped her hand. “You like that, don’t you.” She flattened her fingers, petting now. “You’re white and sacred bulls are white.”
She rubbed the top of his head, and finally ran her hand down the long, loose skin of his neck and petted his cheek. Nera, Nera. She climbed out slowly, ready to jump back if necessary. A narrow band of just-visible flecks of red paint ran down his side. The same red as the handles of Pete’s old cart. He and Mae not only took Mr. Deet’s wood, they used Jake to haul it. Now she felt she knew why Jake had arrived just when he did; the Thayers were home and sent him back.
She wouldn’t tell Effie. Pete had smiled at her, and Mae said he had a white goodness. Also, Mae had the space around her.
Jake was too strong, even if she had thought to bring the rope, to force back to the lodge. In Grandma Teegan’s stories, wise women didn’t try to boss mountains or trees. They moved boulders and oaks by making them want to obey.
With one outstretched hand on Jake’s shoulder, she smiled at him. “Please come with me.” They started for the lodge.
Effie reached the mercantile out of breath. A gray-haired man in an apron looked up from his scales. “Afternoon, Miss.”
A bell clanged on the door she’d ran through. “I can’t find the sheriff.” She waved her hand in the direction of the lodge. “An Injun came out to where I’m staying.”
The grocer had watched her; now he looked back to his weighing and the pile of beans in the teetering pan. “Hold on.”
“It had a wagon full of lumber. I don’t know where it came from.” She’d survived a brush with death, and the man continued weighing his beans. “Bridget and I were alone.” He brushed two beans off the scale with a hairy knuckle. “Rev. Jackdaw is gone.”
“You’re the one married to the old preacher?” He watched the scales.
“Welcome to Bleaksville.” A woman’s voice.
Effie turned to see her standing over a display of soaps and candles with a duster in her hand. She wore a white shirtwaist, so white it held a tincture of blue, and she seemed no more alarmed than the man. Did they think she’d made up the story? “It got off a wagon and ran down the hill . . . whooping.”
The grocer tipped his scale. Beans rattled into a small sack. “That would be Chief. I ain’t heard him ever doing any whooping.” He rolled the top of the bag. “Chief didn’t steal the lumber, and he ain’t what you’d call a real Indian.”
Effie felt herself shrinking. Something like Pa scolding her. “This was a real Injun. It had a braid and everything.”
“His mother was a squaw all right,” the man said, “but his daddy was white.”
A half-breed was no less dangerous. In the back of her mind, Granny was weeping, tears running down her soft face and the jaw where half her teeth were missing from being clubbed. “I tried to find the sheriff. The office is empty.”
“I’m Cora, and you’re probably lucky the sheriff wasn’t there.” Her skirts made a soft rustle as she came forward. “This is Mr. Graf, my husband. I can assure you, Chief is a good man.” She touched Effie’s arm. “You have nothing to be concerned about.”
“He was raised out there on his land,” Mr. Graf cut in. “It’s his now.” The gray brows pinched as if the length of the conversation already tired him.
“He’s always there?”
“Shops here, buys lumber in town, sells corn and produce, builds coffins when there’s a need.”
Effie felt the blood drain from her face. “And people use them for their dear ones?” She’d never become like people in Nebraska.
“His boxes are beautiful,” Cora said. “He takes great care with them, and grieving families are happy to have him close by. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Mrs. Jackdaw.” She hesitated and the catch in her throat surprised her. “Effie.” The name sounded so small.
“Chief ’s always buying lumber,” Mr. Graf said. “With his wife high-tailed away, and his son dead, folks say he’s building himself a staircase to heaven. I reckon if he wants in, that’s his best bet.”
Jokes? Did no one in Nebraska know about Custer, Wounded Knee, the Sioux Massacre? “You’re all just letting it pass for white?”
“If he wanted to pass,” Mr. Graf said, “he’d cut off his braids. Maybe buy a decent hat.”
Cora made a tsk, tsk sound in her throat.
“He said you were young,” Graf went on. More carefully weighed beans rattled into a sack. “I didn’t expect a child. How old are you?”
Effie’s palms tingled with heat. For the second time that day someone was asking her age. How old are the two of you? she wanted to ask. Cora was much younger than Mr. Graf, but not the four decades between herself and Rev. Jackdaw. She thought of Jury. She and Jury were nearly the same age. No differences between them.
She tried again. “The Injun came clear out to the lodge, all the way to my door.”
“Now, settle down,” Graf said. “Don’t start making accusations. He didn’t come all that far. He’s your neighbor.”
Sudden tears threatened. Mae and now an Injun? She’d tried to leave her nightmares at Homeplace, but this was worse. The growing horror threatened to send her running. She needed to leave, get back to the lodge, be alone, think.
“Effie,” Cora said, “I’m sure you came to make a few purchases.”
She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her run. She shuffled her feet, stuck them to the floor. �
��I would like to get a few things. Corn meal, fabric—”
“Your husband,” Mr. Graf barked, “gave clear orders. I’m not to extend credit on any nonsense. Strictly essentials. And I need that man in here regular, paying his bill.”
“Mr. Graf,” Cora said. “You’re putting Mrs. Jackdaw in an uncomfortable position. You must discuss your commerce with her husband.” She touched Effie’s arm again. “Let me show you the fabric we have left. We’ve stopped carrying it because it’s just not a seller. Ladies order most of their dresses from catalogues or take the train to Omaha for the day and shop in bigger stores.”
Effie had heard the train whistle blow in the morning and again in the evening, but she’d been too distracted to wonder where it went. “That train comes and goes into Omaha?”
“Twice a day. You can go in the morning and return at night, or stay the night and return the next morning. Your husband didn’t tell you?”
“I’m sure he doesn’t know.”
“Mr. Graf explained the schedule,” Cora said. “Perhaps your husband didn’t think to mention it.”
“Perhaps.” A bright yellow gingham made Effie’s heart ache, but it was too nice for Bridget’s dress, given how they lived. And too lightweight for covering the windows and keeping an Injun from peeking through. The only other fabric was a bolt of black. So like Baby Sally’s funeral cloth.
She fingered the mournful color. “I don’t know, it’s sad for a young girl. Rev. Jackdaw has taken in an orphan, and she needs a second dress.”
“You want to get along in this community,” Mr. Graf called from behind the counter. “Don’t advertise you’re harboring trouble.”
“The orphan?” Effie asked. Was keeping Bridget considered harboring trouble, but the Injun running free was not? She wanted out of there. “I’ll take two yards of the black.” Surely, Rev. Jackdaw wouldn’t think that nonsense. “I also need bismuth and potash.”
“You make soap?” Cora’s prim brows rose, and she pointed to a pink slab the size of a bread loaf. “Would you like a sample of mine?”
“No.” Her answer too sharp, too quick. She ached to touch and smell the luxury, but she couldn’t put that on her tab, and she didn’t need charity.
“Of course not,” Cora said. “You make your own.” She started for a row of bottles behind the counter. “We have bismuth, but no potash. Do you want lye? It’s what I use.”
Effie tried to not show her confusion. Was there a difference between potash and lye? Both came from wood ash. Mr. Graf and Cora watched her and waited for her to answer. She couldn’t admit she wasn’t making soap. If people thought an orphan was trouble, mentioning lice would only make things worse. Lye sounded too caustic, but she knew it changed in the process of becoming soap. Ma stirred up a batch of soap every month, used lye, and in the end it was gentle enough for bathing a newborn.
“Yes,” she said, “lye will be fine for my soap.”
Four days later, the sound of the door opening made Effie pull off Sally’s cloth. She squinted at bright light coming in a window and Bridget with a hand on the backdoor latch.
“You opened a curtain again. I made them for a reason.” She sat up. “Where you going?”
“I told Jake I’d come back. I came in because I’m hungry, but the cornbread is all gone.”
Effie didn’t need reminding. They’d stretched the pound of mill flour and the pound of beans to last three days, fighting hunger each one of those days. After Graf tallied the price of the black fabric, thread, needles, and the ingredients for curing lice, she’d been too embarrassed to ask for eggs or butter or a second pound of beans. She dreaded going back—the long stretch of trees, passing what she now knew was the Injun’s place, crossing the bridge into Bleaksville where they thought her river people, and facing Graf again.
“You’ve spent enough time today with that animal.” She shook her head. “Don’t say it. I don’t care what Rev. Jackdaw wants. The days are so long. You gone off where I can’t see you.” She stood, letting Granny’s Never Forget quilt slide off her shoulders. She’d been clutching Johnny’s marbles, and she took them to a back window. She missed him. She missed them all. Even Skeet and his Pig Latin.
She set the marbles on the sill and dropped the curtain. In the end, she’d torn the skirt off one of her blue house dresses, cut it into four equal pieces and spent the better part of the day hemming and making curtains. For rods, she’d sent Bridget after long, thin limbs that she peeled with a knife. With the fabric from the mercantile, she made Bridget a shorter, black skirt and attached it to the dress top. The black and blue reminded her of bruising and the top was too big, but there wasn’t fabric for a second attempt. Was it any wonder Bridget preferred the lighter blue dress given to her in New York? In the corner where she slept, the morbid dress hung on a peg as if waiting, knowing Bridget would gradually have to accept it.
A log in the fire shifted and Effie crossed the floor, used the rusty poker and jabbed at the split wood. She was keeping herself back from Bridget, keeping a wide, cold space between them, not asking where Bridget had come from or why her granny had sent her away. Getting close to the girl wouldn’t be a justice to either of them. She couldn’t say how accepting Bridget closed doors on her own family in Minnesota, but it did. She’d loved a little sister and that sister was dead. And Bridget? She was safer not trusting or relying on her. Who knew what Rev. Jackdaw intended once they settled in Omaha? Would he find Bridget another place? Or did he intend to keep his free girl?
“Jake and I will stay by the river,” Bridget said. “You can see us out the window and won’t be afraid.”
It was more of Bridget’s strangeness, standing by the river for long periods of time. Staring as if waiting for a boat to come around the corner of the bend. Or a sea creature to rise up out of the water.
Sparks popped and settled. The fall afternoons were chilly, but mostly, she just liked a fire burning. The flames gave her something to watch and made another presence in the room, distracting her from thinking about the future or the Injun. “They call him, Chief,” she’d told Bridget. “Be careful out there. Don’t walk that direction. His wife ran off and his boy is dead.” Bridget didn’t need to know the fright of the Injun building coffins.
Effie thought often, too, of Rev. Jackdaw, longing for the sound of Nell’s clopping and the squeak of the buggy returning. It wasn’t him she wanted, but to know he hadn’t abandoned them. His demanding filled space. Like welcoming a storm because the distraction pulled your mind from yourself and made you think of the washing on the line or the tender plants in the garden. And there was something else. For all his big bossing and supervising and the awfulness of him crawling on her, he had dreams and they contained promises for her, too. He’d get her to Omaha where she’d be safe and find friends.
“Effie, can I go?”
She wasn’t in the city yet; she was still traveling. The lodge was just a stopover. She wouldn’t let herself forget that.
“Effie?”
Bridget had left the door and moved to the table. One hand toyed with the cover of Dr. Chase’s book and the other rested on the red wool. Thankfully, she’d thrown away that dead woman’s hair. At first, Effie had enjoyed seeing the scarf spread out, but it was beginning to look like a large pool of blood.
“Effie?”
More demanding this time. “What? I’m right here.” How many times had Bridget called her name? Bridget didn’t understand the distraction of loss, how it sucked at your attention. She’d lost only an old grandmother and had no idea how it felt to lose a whole family. Baby brothers who counted on you. And how to keep Bridget busy and not constantly wandering off with the ox? At Homeplace there were a hundred chores, but at the lodge, no eggs needed gathering, no laundry needed to be brought in, no vegetables peeled or babies held. There were not even more corn shucks to gather. The mattress, like the curtains, was done. Yesterday, Bridget made four trips, each time bringing back her burlap bag, lumpy with corn
shucks given to her by the woman she called Old Mag. Questioned, Bridget explained that Old Mag threw her shucks in a wagon for her cows to eat but didn’t mind sharing.
“Effie?” Bridget’s voice a near shriek.
Effie started and refocused on the room. How long had she stared into space this time? “We’ll color your hair. Find the page again.” She had to keep busy, keep her mind from always skipping off. “What do we do first?”
“Do you want me to teach you to read so you can read the recipes?”
“Rev. Jackdaw said he didn’t want me distracted from my work when I asked him to teach me to read the Bible. Said it was best if he read to me and explained what the words meant.”
“Grandma Teegan taught me. Uncle Rowan helped, too.”
“Men are scared of wives learning too much. They want wives to stay teeny-tiny so they can stay big.” She shrugged. “At first, not reading seemed like trading something big for something small, being his wife. But Ma can’t read. And I owe Rev. Jackdaw.” Everything had a price. Mae sold herself for the promise of a dress, and Effie felt she’d sold herself too. Was it just to escape ever having to see Jury again? Away from New Ulm, he’d always remember her as she was now. But there was no going back, and dreaming about it hurt. Her life was this lodge and this child staring at her.
“Are you ready?” she asked Bridget. She wondered if she ought to part Bridget’s hair and look for lice before the treatment, but Granny was smart. For all the times Granny didn’t know thirty years ago from thirty minutes ago, for all the times she screamed “Thavages killing my babies!” she had other moments of clarity when she knew which jars of pickles hadn’t sealed or how to smoke the henhouse free of mites. If she said “All orphans have lice,” they probably did. Even without an infestation, there was still the issue of color. Though Bridget’s red was less rooster’s tail and more the rosy peach of a trumpet creeper, one of Ma’s favorite flowers. Or it had been a favorite back when Ma cared about things like flowers.
River People Page 11