River People

by Margaret Lukas

  She followed, thinking of Mae and how Rowan had died when she should have found a way to stop it. Grandma Teegan hadn’t blamed her, though. She rubbed Bridget’s back, held her hand all night, and for the first time told the story of Salt Woman.

  The sound of children laughing made Bridget look up. Watching only Jake and her black skirt kick out in front of her shoes, she hadn’t realized how far they’d walked. Up ahead, Nettle Creek—she could see the sign—flowed under its wooden bridge, and just over that the school. As many as two dozen children played in the yard. Girls in clean coats, hats, and warm leggings rode in swings and jumped ropes. Boys whittled sticks and threw their jackknives at targets. None of them noticed her on the far side of the creek.

  She left Jake and crept closer until she could hug a weathered bridge timber, half hiding behind the thick, rough support and half in the open. If a girl looked over and waved, she’d wave back.

  The school doors opened wide and a man stepped out with a bell and a waxed mustache like a big, upturned grin. When he rang the bell, the students hurried toward him and for a moment they looked like ants, going in and out of each other until they settled into two lines. Younger students in one. Older students in the other. A two-room school, she decided. They followed him inside and the large doors shut.

  Rev. Jackdaw had threatened a switching if she went into school, and she remembered the sting of a green switch to the back of her legs. That day, she hadn’t been walking fast enough, hadn’t kept up with Nell and the buggy. But the schoolyard was not school.

  She glanced back at Jake. He would not put one foot on the narrow, hollow-sounding boards without getting spooked and backing off. Anyway, she’d be right back. She’d just walk around a bit, be in the yard where schoolchildren played. Then she could take that feeling back with her, build her labyrinth, and walk with it.

  She crossed the bridge. The road continued on down Main Street where a few wagons were parked and horses swung tails and waited. None of the wagons looked like Chief ’s. She left the road and sat on a swing, then hopped in squares scratched in the dirt where she’d seen girls hop. It wasn’t enough. She ran behind the school and dropped into a crouch beneath a window. Her knees felt doughy with fear and excitement. She was being Nera, and this was as scary as stealing apples from a vendor.

  A woman talked, but her voice was too faint to understand. Bridget crawled on until she heard a man’s voice. Likely the man who’d rang the bell. His voice was much louder and rose and fell, telling her he moved back and forth across the front of the room. His big mustache smiled, she was sure.

  She sat in the sunshine, listening as he read about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Out of the breeze and with the sun’s heat radiating off the white building, she warmed. Her legs stretched out in front of her. She could see Jake, his bright white against the dying weeds, and she thought she’d never been so happy.

  The window above her made a sudden, rough, dragging sound. She flinched and looked up. The man peered down at her. She thought to run, but he winked, smiled, and took a step back. His reading continued. The window remained open an inch despite the cold seeping into the classroom.

  The next day she returned.

  Bridget heard the knocking and opened the door. Pete stood on the landing, his shoulders slumped in his worn coat, his frosty breath heaving in and out. One eye was deep in a wide circle of black and blue. He turned his cap in his hands. “She died,” he said. His bottom lip quivered, and he struggled to control it.

  Bridget knew without asking, but her mouth made the words. “Your mum?”

  Effie crossed the room, the Never Forget quilt around her shoulders. “What happened?”

  Pete’s hat moved faster, around and around through his fingers. “She’s dead now.”

  They stood silent, though to Bridget they all screamed inside.

  “The baby, too,” Pete finally said. “I cleaned him. Got him buried.” He swiped his wrist across his upper lip and nose. “I put him under the tree in the pasture. I thought Ma would live. She lived when the others died.”

  Bridget wanted to shriek, I knew it, I knew it. But what did that matter now? Her knowing hadn’t stopped anything.

  The cap in Pete’s hands, the bill soiled and frayed, circled faster. “It’s Ma. I thought, ma’am,” he nodded at Effie, “you’d lend a hand. Mr. Thayer won’t have a part to laying her out. She’d want cleaned up nice. A woman to do her hair.”

  Effie gasped. “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She hesitated, took another breath. “I know a son isn’t the one to wash his mother, but I never washed a body.” She stepped back from the door. “Can’t your pa do that?”

  “He ain’t my pa.”

  To Bridget, Effie’s face raced through a maze of thoughts. “Still,” Effie said, question lifting her brows, “he was her husband.”

  “Ma wanted it. He ain’t the kind what marries.”

  “We will help you,” Bridget said.

  “We can’t!” The ends of the Never Forget quilt trembled. “I’ve never touched the dead. There must be other women. Church women?”

  “I thought you, being a reverend’s wife . . . Ma’s never had a woman’s help with her hair. I want her to be proud of how she’s done up. One time ’fore the lid gets nailed.”

  “I can help,” Bridget said. “I helped Grandma Teegan wash Rowan.”

  “No!” Effie grabbed her back from the door. “You aren’t touching a dead person and then coming back in here.” She faced Pete. “I’m sorry.”

  Effie stood at one of the front windows, peeking around the curtain, as the Injun’s wagon rolled by with Mae’s coffin in the back. Not even a cloth of respect over the box. The Injun walked in front holding the bridles of his team. The sheriff, a shiny star on his vest flashing in the cold sunlight, rode a horse alongside the wagon, as did Mr. Thayer. The two men talked loud, chuckling and randomly spitting tobacco juice out the sides of their mouths. Pete, his cap in his hands again, walked behind along with Cora.

  “We should walk, too,” Bridget said. She stood at the other front-facing window, her curtain nearly pulled off.

  Effie’s gut coiled. “No. This isn’t ours.” She’d tried to leave death back at Homeplace, and she’d only met Mae once. She lifted a corner of her curtain again. “I don’t know why Cora is walking. I don’t know what it means. Mae and Mr. Thayer weren’t married. That’s probably why Mae wasn’t laid out at the funeral parlor. Maybe the place didn’t want to serve her.”

  “Maybe it cost too much.”

  “Or Mr. Thayer didn’t feel the need to spend it. Her not being his wife. Going out there, following them into town, would make things worse for us.” They needed to gain footing in Bleaksville, and what would Rev. Jackdaw say of her partaking in such a procession? He worked to rid Omaha of prostitutes and Mae, it turned out, was no more than that. But Cora?

  “When we took Rowan,” Bridget said, “everyone in the village walked.”

  Mr. Thayer spat again.

  “I said no. Mae isn’t kin to us.” They could perhaps stand on the porch as a sign of respect to Cora, but the Injun would see them. He might mistake that for an act of neighborliness. She dropped the curtain, went to Bridget’s window, and slapped down that curtain. “It isn’t safe.”

  Mr. Deet and five other men arrived in two wagons. The wagons stopped on the road and the men strolled past the cabin windows with their arms full and on to the skinning shed. Bridget ran out to tell Jake the news and be there for Deet to thank. She’d never met Deet, though she and Effie had been expecting him since the snow began piling up. She stood at Jake’s side while the men made a trip back up to the wagons and came again with crates and guns, moving everything up the four steps to the skinning shed. Banging inside told her someone was starting the stove.

  Bridget shivered, wished she’d grabbed the cape, and kept waiting. Deet would also want to speak to Effie and hear how no one had stolen wood—though Effie never left
the lodge to know. Which Bridget wouldn’t say.

  The men wore beards and goatees, wooly hats and hats with earflaps that tied over their heads, coats that reached mid-thigh and heavy trousers. The largest man wore a long fur coat reaching to his knees. She didn’t know if it was bearskin, maybe even bearskin over the bottom half of his face, but he looked like a bear standing there, towering over the others. Bear-man, she thought.

  A man marched up to her. His beard was shorter than Rev. Jackdaw’s and cut into to a point sharp as a pencil. His brows were heavy and the high bridge of his nose made his eyes looked punched in on either side. He had big ears. “Go on now. No need for you to be out here.”

  “Are you Mr. Deet?”

  “Go on, get out of here.”

  He didn’t want to talk to her. He wanted her rushed off, as if the sight of her offended him. Shamed him somehow.

  “Go on.” He waved a big hand in the direction of the lodge. One of the men made a snorting sound as he dropped rattling iron traps from the skinning shed onto the sled. Wind pushed at Bridget though all the trees were still. Having Deet there was a bad thing.

  “Are they coming in?” Effie asked as soon as Bridget opened the door. She’d changed into her green dress and pulled the tiny copper combs from her hair and jabbed them back in.

  “Maybe,” Bridget said, trying to make the lie sound true. She wondered if Deet was ashamed of their living there, even if Rev. Jackdaw wasn’t.

  Deet and Bear-man carried out the yoke. With Jake harnessed to the sleigh, all but Deet climbed on. Men drug their large booted feet off the sides while Jake tugged over ruts and patches of winter-hard weeds. When they’d left the small clearing, and their backs were to the lodge, Bridget ran back outside.

  Deet steered Jake along the river’s edge on cutback, and Bridget was ready to turn back when men shouted. Arms flew up, and the back of the sled swung out at an angle. Jake let out a long and throated lowing sound, the men slid onto the frozen river, and the cut back finished collapsing. Jake’s back legs sank even as his front legs on higher ground struggled for purchase.

  Bridget screamed and ran for him. She felt the pain in his knee, sharp as a stick poke. More pokes. Jake not cursing the men but saying “ouch, ouch,” and “yes, sir” as Deet cussed him.

  While Deet, who’d not fallen, shouted “Heave” in Jake’s ear, the men brushed snow off elbows and hips, no one bothering to grab hold of the sleigh runners and lifting so that Jake had a straight line pull.

  She reached them winded and stopped, not knowing what to do. Men watched her like she’d come to deliver a message they must all hear. A man laughed. Then a second. Deet stared at her. The anger he’d shown in the yard was slight compared to the new rage in his eyes. He was a proud man, and now his sleigh, the laughter, Jake, and her.

  She wanted to touch Jake, to feel his warm hide, and brush the muddy snow off his back knees. No one was doing that. Jake had regained his footing, and he was no longer saying “ouch.” He was telling her, “Thank you very much for coming.”

  The men shouted even more when they returned the next day to drag in their traps. Their eyes were red, and despite the cold, they wore their coats open and their faces shown with sweat. At Jake’s ear, Bear-man shot at a squirrel in Wilcox-the-tree. Missed. Jake’s eyes were bigger than the first day, his shoulders tighter, his heart louder. He didn’t like second days.

  She followed because Jake had thanked her for doing so the day before. But she stayed far back so Deet didn’t see her and tell Rev. Jackdaw.

  “Start my coffee,” Rev. Jackdaw barked.

  The bed groaned beneath Effie as he sat up, his long feet hitting the floor. He’d pulled down her curtains and the sun was cresting in the east, but her body ached for more sleep. He had somewhere to go and so she must be up, too. After two months away, he was leaving again after only one night. His male Lord had important work for men.

  He hadn’t returned to spend time with her; he’d come to take his pleasure and see if she was pregnant. Had he also come to check she was still there, his property where he’d left it? Or did he have spies on her and already knew?

  She forced herself out of bed and to the cold stove. He’d brought home six eggs, a bit of bacon, and a loaf of bread in a clean dish towel—the bread not from a bakery and wrapped in paper, but from a rich woman’s kitchen where losing a towel didn’t matter. He’d also carried in an armload of old newsprint. Sheets Bridget instantly started to read. Bridget reading at the table as he wrote in his journal at the other end. The two of them shutting her out.

  Effie wanted to despise the papers—something Rev. Jackdaw had acquired for free, yet dropped in the corner like delivering a gift. Knowing she couldn’t read. But she couldn’t refuse them. Bridget would read to her on cold nights and the papers would go to their toilet or be shredded into the new mud they constantly needed for repatching the walls.

  Bridget was awake now too, pushing back a flap of the buffalo hide. Effie held her breath. She dared not look at Rev. Jackdaw as Bridget unwound the long strips of soiled sheeting and exposed her scars like a skunk’s thin stripe.

  With the wrappings retied, Effie sighed. Rev. Jackdaw hadn’t looked. He scarce noticed Bridget at all unless he needed something. But he hadn’t been the one who hurt her. She’d done that.

  Effie fed kindling into the stove. Already Rev. Jackdaw was readying his things. He had a new coat, something he’d shown her the night before. And a new inkbottle, a modern invention with a screw on lid rather than a cork and with a smaller well of glass just inside the rim. He could dip his pen into that and never go too deep, never get ink on the pen’s shaft. Both the coat and the bottle were “gifts from Christ-ian women,” he’d said, the word “Christian” drawn out—as though it indicated some long-standing goodness against which Effie couldn’t compete. Both items befitted a preacher, and she scolded herself for being envious.

  She cracked the last two eggs of the six he’d brought, the yolks bright in the blackened pan. To keep off the mice, she’d put a pail over the last of the loaf. He’d groaned at seeing her “unblessed and barren” and pinched her until she’d cried out. Then another pinch: “scrawny.” Had he written those three words in his book? Scrawny, unblessed, barren.

  She wouldn’t beg him this time to stay. Doing so only fueled his anger and his need to escape her harping. Besides, her life in Omaha couldn’t begin until he’d gathered enough flock there to support them. He had to go back. Still, his desire to be there was a rejection. Something she knew well.

  She put his breakfast on the table. “My house . . .” She stopped as his cold eyes lifted and the scar, thick as a finger spooning his eye, threatened to throb and accuse her. She lived in squalor but asking even for plates without chips, and that hadn’t been covered in the blood of Pa’s family, angered him. How could she ask about the house he promised?

  He finished eating and took up the union suit she’d washed for him and hung to dry on the back of his chair. “I suppose you been wanting to wash my drawers,” he’d said the evening before. “You don’t get much opportunity to be my wife.”

  He brushed at his new coat, flicking his fingers hard. He’d not take even dust from the lodge. Did they ask him to eat in their homes? She was afraid to ask.

  Afraid to ask. Rev. Jackdaw was her husband, the man she’d trusted to bring her West, trusted with her life, yet she was afraid to ask. Because being accused of minding his business was worse than not knowing.

  But letters? Had she the right to ask about letters? “You wrote Ma?” Her palms dampened. “No letters have come for me?”

  “I’m your family now.” He folded his old coat. “I get a minute, I’ll write them again. Ask them, ain’t you worth a penny post.”

  Standing beside the bed, Rev. Jackdaw pushed down on his aged coat and tried to force it into his valise. He’d worn the long, heavy duster on the buggy ride out and packed the new, thinner, shorter coat in his valise. He’d wear the new bac
k to Omaha; Effie needed to see him riding off looking smart. The new wool marked his only gain thus far: one fastidious old woman’s support. The squawk had acquaintances though, and with her coaxing some of them might yet convert to his cause. Not continue to clutch their purse strings in their withered fists.

  Across the room, Effie stared at his breakfast plate as if not having the sense to know it needed washing. It was time she grew up. She likely coveted a new dress. Maybe even new shoes, but those wants were rooted in vanity. Lusting after material goods made women seek out whoredom—even if that meant the block-long alley of cubby holes, the fetid cribs.

  He yanked at his coat sleeves. Her green frock served her well enough. She had no need to present herself in Bleaksville. She wasn’t trying to get pulpit work, wasn’t street preaching, or being scrutinized by the public. Wasting two dollars on a new dress made no more sense than investing in a litter of cats. Nor did it make any sense for her to have a fine rocker in such a damp place. He pushed down again, imagined he could hear the faint rustle of letters in the bottom of his valise.

  He was doing nothing wrong. She was his wife, and he head of the house. Besides, she already spent too much money. He’d flinched at Graf ’s bill—putting down three dollars and swearing to pay the rest soon. God willing. He’d studied the list, counting week by week, and was surprised by how little she’d purchased to stay alive. No wonder she’d lost weight. Still, he’d pinched her. For her weight loss—there were other sources of food—but also for her failure in carrying a child. She couldn’t shrink from his dreams. If she proved herself and conceived and bore him sons, then after he’d grown his church, he’d quiet her with a couple new dresses. Sensible clothing. Nothing like the gaudy, bright dresses whores wore.