She found Jake several yards inside the trees, his head hanging. She feared the open skin on his flank wasn’t his only injury. Had the strikes also broken a rib? Wincing, she touched salve to his wound, afraid it hurt as much as her toes. She rubbed more salve on the raw but still attached piece of hide showing half of the Flying D brand. The skin was already crusty with ice, and she rubbed it hard to try and warm it, then pressed the fur back in place. Winter meant two good things. No gnats or flies to lay their nasty maggot eggs on the injury. And the river was frozen, so Jake wouldn’t be straying into dirty water to cool off. Running her fingers around the inside of the jar, she rubbed every bit of remaining poultice wide around the injury. Stopping his pain was more important than stopping hers. The salve might also help mask the smell of blood.
“I’m going to make you well,” she said. And promised herself she would.
She pulled the bread from her pocket and rubbed his nose as his long, thick tongue reached and curled around the offering. “They shot his ear,” she told him. She dropped her head against his cheek and though she couldn’t wrap her arms all the way around his neck, she held on to him. “I’ll never leave you. Effie can move to Omaha and leave us. We don’t care.”
Coming out of the trees with him, she widened the knot on the rope and slipped the lasso over his head. The free end she tied around the rail of the back ramp. He needed to stay close to the lodge where wolves were less likely to come. And he couldn’t follow her while she picked up the worst shards of glass—the bottoms of the bottles that sat up straight as knives. If Jake stepped on one of those, stabbing it between his toes, Deet would shoot him.
With the worst glass cleared and thrown under the lodge between the stilts, she stepped again amongst the dropped feathers and picked up dead pigeons. Many had flown over the trees before being shot and dropped into the tangled undergrowth and others had flown over the frozen river. She wouldn’t risk going for those. She picked up three, then four, then five birds along the shore. She and Effie would eat.
Using the iron grip, Effie lifted a lid on top of the four-hole stove and exposed the firebox. Cold and gray ashes, not the spark of a single live ember. She packed in kindling, a short log, and opened the small door on the front for draft. She’d spent the last weeks half starved. The last two days watching the shapes of men go about living. Two days of her mind wobbling like Granny’s.
Cold hands fingered up Effie’s spine. Daily she vowed to keep busier than the day before. To fight the fear of losing her mind, and daily she failed. Skeet’s visit should have helped, but thinking of him and Homeplace only made her ache worse. Was he right? Had she brought Granny to the lodge?
She carried a trembling shovelful of hot coals from the fireplace, dumped them into the stove’s firebox, poked and blew on the kindling.
The evening before, after the trappers left, Bridget lit the stove, plucked feathers from birds, used the tip of a knife blade and explored every tiny hole to pull out bits of feather and the lead pellet. Bridget who roasted two pigeons and pulled Effie to the table where they’d both eaten, letting juice roll down their chins, picking the last meat from the bones with their teeth.
Three dead birds remained in the pail at Effie’s feet. Today, she’d cook for Bridget. She’d hold on. Was it February? In as early as a month, the weather would start warming. Afternoon temperatures would rise above freezing. Already she was noticing longer minutes of daylight and how the sun rose higher over the clearing. Winter’s end meant workmen would finish her house in Omaha—Skeet had lied. She’d keep sane for the day she left this place. She wouldn’t die in the miserable shack, and she wouldn’t let Bridget die there either. She’d hold on for Omaha. Once there, she’d know what to do about her loveless marriage.
The back door swung open, and Bridget nearly fell through. Effie hurried to her. “What’s wrong?”
Bridget shrugged off her coat, let it fall to the floor, hobbled across the room, and sank down in front of the fire.
“Are you hurt?”
The only answer was Bridget’s whimpering. She cupped the heel of one shoe and slowly, no more than an inch at a time, eased it off her foot.
Effie cringed at the blood. “My God, what happened?”
Bridget sucked ragged breaths in between her teeth, slowly eased off her second shoe. She winced, bit her lips, and picked soaked and bloodied newsprint from around her toes.
The hope Effie felt moments before dropped away. She lifted each of Bridget’s feet, turned them looking for gashes, but saw fresh blood only on the toes. “How long has this been going on? Why didn’t you tell me?”
It’s my fault, as much as the lye. Bridget hadn’t come to her, hadn’t trusted her enough. Effie’s gut folded. Folded again. “It’s you who’s been carrying me. That’s got to change.”
She hurried for the pail, dumped the birds on the floor, and shoved the bucket under the water pump. Water rushed and stopped and she pumped again. From the nail above the sink, she grabbed the sugar sacking, stiff and gray with use. “It’s that ox. You think you can’t leave it alone a day. Like it’s your only family.” Need it to be.
She braced Bridget’s right heel in her palm over the pail, dunked the rag and squeezed icy water onto the toes.
Bridget yelped and jerked, but Effie held tight. She dipped her rag and several times rinsed each small foot of blood and newsprint ink. Cleaned, Bridget’s feet looked better. And worse. The blood came only from the tops of the toes, but the toes looked like half-chewed cranberries. Deep red gouges, bird pecked. Four toenails were pewter-colored and the toes themselves looked a sickly blue-gray. “Bridget,” she choked, “how could your feet get this bad?” She followed Bridget’s glance to what had become Bridget’s corner and the empty jar of salve from Old Mag. “That stuff ? It stopped the pain? A lot of good that did.” She wanted to march up to Old Mag’s door and give her a piece of her mind.
“Bridget,” scolding now, “I know we have no money for shoes, but . . .” But what? What could she promise?
She threw the rag into the dirty water and sank back on her heels. Did a doctor need to be fetched? There was no way to pay the man anything. Would he even come to look at Bridget’s feet, given they were river people? When Rev. Jackdaw found out she’d charge services for toes? “I can’t stand it,” she screamed, pushing herself up, pacing. “How does he expect us to live here? It’s no wonder women sell themselves! Is that what I need to do?”
Bridget’s face changed. She licked her lips. Again, wider, the way Effie had not seen her do in months. “Do you think my mum is a prostitute? Maybe she’s in Omaha.”
“Is that what you’ve been thinking? Hoping?” Effie sank back down beside her. “That your mother is living so close?”
“Rev. Jackdaw said they are Irish.”
“I’m sure your ma is not a prostitute. But who could blame her?” She wouldn’t tell Bridget yet again that the woman was dead. Had to be. She grabbed Bridget’s shoes and threw them in the fire.
Bridget sprung to her knees and stretched for the flames. “My shoes!”
Effie grabbed her, held her struggling as flames curled up and around the shoes. Smoke rose from the tops, then licked through the small eyes. The cotton laces caught fire.
Bridget slumped, her body going limp.
Effie held her. “I miss my ma, too.”
“We could have fixed them,” Bridget said. “We could have cut out the toes.”
“We’ll share my shoes. Graf will never let us charge something so costly, but Rev. Jackdaw will be back soon.” Dare she promise anything for that man?
Holding Bridget, rocking her, Effie remembered a night Ma held her. She sat in Ma’s lap feeling too big and heavy to be held at ten-years-old. Yet Ma clutched her, not wanting to let her down. They were in a straight back chair near the kitchen stove, and Ma had only inches of a lap because of Johnny, who was days from being born. Her nearly non-existent lap was the reason Ma had to hold tight through
the night to keep Effie from sliding off, so close they both felt Johnny’s stirring in her belly. Then morning and a large pool of blood on the floor beneath them. As though both were giving birth.
“Nera, Nera,” Bridget mumbled.
Effie dropped her arms. “What does that even mean? You say the strangest things.”
“It means I won’t be scared of the skeleton.”
“When you talk like that,” Effie closed her eyes, fought the picture of blood pooled beneath a chair, “are you doing it just to try and frighten me?”
The sound of a horse stopping made Effie stand. “Oh, not now.” Was it Pete or Mr. Thayer and what did they want? She flipped a corner of a curtain. “It’s Cora,” Effie sighed. “I’m not letting her in. I don’t want her seeing your feet.”
On the porch, Effie thought to run up the ridge and stop Cora there, but the woman—who always rode like a man with one leg thrown over the saddle—was already starting down. Effie tried to relax her face, make it lie. Lifting her hands, she felt instinctively for her row of small combs. How could she have lost them all? She’d crawled around on the floor looking for them between planks.
Cora smiled, a basket swinging on her arm. She wore a hat, the likes of which Effie had never seen on a woman. Something of a man’s bowler but with wide, scarf lengths of white silk or satin crossing over the top and coming down to cover her ears and cheeks and tie under her chin. A winter cape hung nearly to her knees and slim boots hugged her feet and reached up under pant legs so wide she might have been wearing a skirt. Cora wore pants.
How she must look to Cora, standing on a rotting porch, her hair hanging, and wearing a sorry dress that had grown two sizes too big.
“Good afternoon,” Cora called. “How are you?” She giggled as she slipped in the snow and her arms, though she carried a basket, flew out and she caught and balanced herself. “My arse nearly became my sled,” she said. Laughing now.
She’s having fun. The thought struck Effie like a blow. There’d been a time when she and Skeet slid down snowy hills on shovels and pans until Pa built them a sled. Did the sled still exist? Had it been used once since Granny’s arrival and Baby Sally’s death?
“The sun’s out,” Cora said. “I’m so tired of winter. I knew if I didn’t get out, I’d go crazy instead.”
Effie gripped the porch rail and struggled to keep herself steady. Crazy? If crazy really threatened Cora, she wouldn’t be joking about it. Set the basket down, she wanted to insist. Don’t come any closer.
“We didn’t talk the last time you were in the store,” Cora said. She’d reached the bottom but hadn’t yet handed up the basket. “I’ve missed you.”
I took your bug-infested meal. Wasn’t that enough? “Why?”
“Why have I missed you?” Cora’s gaze stilled. “Effie, I’m sorry for Mr. Graf ’s actions. I’d like for us to be friends.”
We can’t be. Effie had thought the same of Mae—that they couldn’t be friends. With Mae, she’d thought herself better, too good for such poverty and abject lack of hope. Or maybe she’d seen herself in Mae, knew what was coming, and been afraid. Now here was Cora, a woman so much better than her.
Womb, womb. Mourning doves harped from the trees. The wretched sound Effie hated; the mocking rising from the trees right and left of her. Worse than the endless hooting of owls and coyotes wailing through the night. The sound so haunting that on her worst days she was not sure if it came from outside or from inside her head.
“Effie,” Cora said, “is everything all right? You look so . . . fragile.”
The back and forth taunting went on. Womb, womb.
“Effie?”
She fought to bring back a scrambling attention. She would not die there. “I was thinking how much I miss Mae.” If it was Mae standing there now, offering friendship, this time she’d invite her in. Cut a slice from her old loaf, sit and chat all afternoon.
“Such a strong woman,” Cora said. “How she cried after each baby’s death. Then in a few months, she’d be carrying again.”
Womb, womb. Closer this time.
“She liked being pregnant,” Cora went on. “Having a living baby inside her. She counted herself a mother for those nine months. Thought herself blessed even for that time.”
Effie’s hands lifted to her barren stomach, but she caught herself, kept her hands moving, smoothing her brown dress over her hips. “You were close to Mae?”
Cora frowned. “Not as close as I wish we’d been. Effie, are you sure you’re all right? Is Bridget?”
“We’re fine. Bridget is fine. She’s reading.” She tried to smile, but her lips tugged. “We stay busy. Old Mag visits often. She brings sweets, and we sit by the fire and talk.”
One perfect brow lifted. “Old Mag?”
The muscles in Effie’s throat tightened. “You must know her. Old Mag? She must shop at your store.”
“Who could that be?” The ends of Cora’s scarf fluttered in the breeze. “I can’t think of anyone around here by that name. No Margaret or Madge. What does she look like? How old is she?”
Heat seared Effie’s cheeks. So hot Cora had to notice. Bridget had lied; there was no Old Mag. Now Cora thought Effie a liar. She looked at the basket, wanting to trample it under her feet, but what of Bridget? Liar or no, she was only a child, half-starved and in pain without even a pair shoes to her name. The lying would have to be dealt with and all the things she claimed came from Old Mag, but not today. I haven’t the energy today.
Cora set her basket on the edge of the porch landing and lifted out another large pie and a small object wrapped in cheesecloth. “I brought you a couple of things.”
Effie’s fingers trembled as she took the items—a tiny quaking she hoped Cora didn’t notice. “Mr. Graf ?”
Untying the scarf beneath her chin, Cora turned her face to the sun. “He’s in Omaha on a buying trip. He doesn’t like me too preoccupied in the kitchen.” She smiled at that. “I have jars of last fall’s fruit needing used, and I’ll be spending the summer in New York. I need to start now, and I do love to bake.”
“We don’t need charity,” Effie said. “Rev. Jackdaw will be back soon, and he’ll pay off the Injun.”
“I don’t mean the pie as charity. Can it be friendship?”
“Rev. Jackdaw’s moving us to Omaha.”
“That’s wonderful,” Cora said, but her eyes held doubt. She motioned to the small object wrapped in cheesecloth. “It’s a bar of my new soap. I added rose oil. I’m anxious to see what you think.”
“Would it clean out sores?” Effie hadn’t meant to ask.
Womb, womb. The haunting persisted. This time Effie didn’t flinch. She deserved the mockery of birds.
“I don’t know about the perfume in a sore,” Cora said. “I don’t think it would matter. Are you suffering?”
Shame. Standing there like Mae Thayer. Matching Mae but for the sticks in her hair. Shame for needing so much; shame for what happened to Bridget’s feet—for falling asleep with Bridget’s care, just as she’d done with Baby Sally’s.
And now shame for being so rude to Cora, a woman she suddenly didn’t want to leave. “I’m scared,” she mumbled.
The pity and question in Cora’s eyes made Effie look away. The black cloth was inside, but she pulled a mental one over her head. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Coming here with your gifts?”
Cora looked struck. “Our lives may seem wildly different, but all women share a world of sameness.”
“I can’t. Whatever you need, I can’t hardly carry what I already got.”
“All right.” Cora nodded. She hesitated before turning and starting up the frozen slope. “If you need anything, you only have to ask.”
Hurrying inside with the pie and soap, Effie shut the door with her foot. She stood well back of the window, thinking how often she stared out on others’ lives. Cora mounted her horse and rode off. Not as a passenger in a buggy with a man holding the reins, but holding h
er own reins.
Effie forced herself to turn and face the cold room and Bridget’s pain. “Look at this.” The crust was golden, and its height promised a heaping amount of fruit beneath. It smelled of tart peaches and had a dusting of sugar. Buttery filling oozed around the edges. She brought two spoons, and they scooped and ate on the floor as Bridget’s shoes burned.
Only then did Effie begin to slowly unwrap the wedge of soap. Lifting each of the four sides of the cheesecloth, her emotions went from despair to hope and back to despair. The soapcake looked smooth as farm cream and held flecks of pink rose petals. Beautiful. She closed her eyes and brought the soap to her nose. She struggled not to tear up as she rubbed the dry bar up and down her arm. Then Bridget’s. How could she explain crying over a cake of soap? Who lived so poor?
She set the soap aside and tore the cheesecloth into two-inch strips and wound them back and forth, around and in between Bridget’s toes.
“Don’t cry,” Bridget said when Effie finished.
Effie backed away, opened the rear door, and stepped out. Standing in the snow beneath the crow tree, she broke off twigs from low hanging branches. Later, after they’d eaten pigeon and more pie, she sat by the fire, whittled the sticks smooth as hairpins.
Bridget watched Effie and the funny way she stood and faced the door every time she needed to go out. Argued with her body like a bird cussing itself because it couldn’t fly. Bridget had seen it once, a robin, big, with all its feathers, and the other birds from its nest catching air from limb to limb, but it was stuck on the ground, telling its dumb wings fly, fly.
Let Effie stand there all day trying to find the courage. Bridget didn’t care. Effie was the one who threw away the shoes. Effie knew how to run up to the road and keep running until she reached Bleaksville, but she didn’t know how to be in the trees and trust them. She shouldn’t be the one who got to walk Jake in the sunshine.
River People Page 20