River People

by Margaret Lukas

  Crossing Chief ’s pasture, Bridget felt the cold in her bare toes. The ground had thawed and warmed in places, while other soggy and chilly patches made her run and hop off them. Three days had passed since Rev. Jackdaw left and Effie stumbled for the first time into the skinning shed, staying until dark.

  Three evenings in which Effie stepped back into the lodge after her day in the shed and begged forgiveness. Not mentioning the burn around her neck or that the run-down lodge was now her home. Not cursing Rev. Jackdaw, only apologizing, her voice shaky, as if she didn’t believe her words of contrition amounted to much.

  Three nights of Effie rocking or pacing in front of the fire in her old slip, an orange glow reflecting off the once-white fabric. Hour after dark hour, as Bridget tried to sleep, worn and loose boards groaned under Effie’s restlessness. Last night, when Effie thought Bridget asleep, she crawled onto the buffalo hide. She lay so close Bridget could feel her breath. Very slowly, she lifted one of Bridget’s arms and laid it across her own shoulders—as if she were being hugged. Bridget left the arm there.

  Climbing over Chief ’s gate, she paused to watch Smoke in the corral with his high-stepping gait and high-swinging tail. She passed Chief ’s two barns with their closed doors, before hearing the hammering and seeing him on the roof of his house. She wasn’t going to bother him; she just wanted to spend a bit of time where he was. Wire caught her scent or saw her and came hopping and barking on his three legs, and Smoke whinnied and tossed his head. Now everyone knew she was there.

  “Come on,” she coaxed Wire and ran with him, not stopping until they reached the foot of Chief ’s ladder. “Hello.”

  From the edge of the roof, kneeling into the pitch of the slope, he looked down on her. Shaking his head, he sighed and turned back to his hammering. He didn’t want her there, but she couldn’t go home. She knelt and wrapped her arms around Wire. The dog had a hundred scars and only three legs. Someone hated him so bad they’d tried to drown him. He didn’t think about any of that, though. He wasn’t Salt Woman. He wagged his tail, jumped, and danced around on his three legs.

  Several red chickens with feathers Rev. Jackdaw would say matched her hair gathered close—though not too close to Wire. The roosters pecked the ground and strutted with their long, high tail feathers trembling in the air.

  “Rooster. Rooster.” She pointed at them. “You’re feathers are an ugly color.”

  Paying no attention to her, their long gold toes lifted and curled like fiddleheads before landing open again. Chickens the same breed as Mae’s rooster.

  She called up to Chief again. “Did you give Mae her pet?” He continued ignoring her. “Mr. Thayer killed it.”

  The hammering continued.

  “He and Pete ate it.”

  Wire squirmed away. A box full of shiny carpenter nails, sitting nearly at her feet, caught her attention. Chief didn’t want her there, and her hands itched to steal a couple of nails. She could bury them in the walls with the others. She thought then of Effie’s box and the box she’d seen on Chief ’s table after he’d rescued her.

  He started down. His worn soles scraped on and off the wooden rungs. She shifted, took a step back and adjusted the black skirt hem so it covered her bare and scabby toes. Her feet weren’t his business.

  Standing on the ground, Chief held his hammer, turning his wrist back and forth as sunlight panned across the iron head. “Belonged to my granddad. Father’s side.” He turned the tool again, watching her. “I’ve had to get a new head a few times and more’n once a new handle, but it’s still Granddad’s hammer.” He let the handle slide down through his thick grip, caught the tool by the head, turned it over and repeated the action.

  She hadn’t talked to him since the December day he brought Effie’s rocker home. And if he asked her why she’d come, she’d have to shrug and admit she didn’t know. “My feet just came,” she’d say.

  “You all right?”

  She spoke fast. “Rev. Jackdaw came home. They had a fight. A red one.”

  “She all right?”

  “I wanted to stop them, but I was scared.”

  His face said he was angry. She thought he’d tell her again that he couldn’t be “that man.” His hat tipped in the direction of her eye. “Jackdaw give you that?”

  She touched her cheekbone. The swelling was gone, and without a mirror, she hadn’t wondered if the eye was black and blue like the one Mr. Thayer gave Pete. Was the sight of her face the reason Effie apologized every time she looked at her? Was that the reason Chief first turned away?

  He tapped the box she’d admired with the toe of his boot. “Wouldn’t be hard for you to make one. You own anything needs a box?”

  “I’m a half orphan.”

  “No pencils, letters, anything like that?”

  “Mum quit writing.”

  He took up a handful of the nails and started back up the ladder. “Being a girl and a half orphan to boot, I expect you’re scared of hammers, nails. Brooms and mops, is it? You’ll make a good maid, cleaning up after others.”

  “I’m going to be a doctor, and I don’t know how to build boxes.”

  He looked down at her from the roof, his eyes deep in the shadow of his hat brim. “I imagine a girl’s scared of learning.”

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Well then. Take some of that wood,” he pointed at a scrap pile by a small shed, “and set about learning. You clean up around here, wood I can’t use, you’ve earned.”

  She looked at the short lengths tossed into a heap. If she could build a box, she’d build it for Effie. But she didn’t know how to even begin.

  “Suit yourself. I got a roof to fix.” He crouched, walking slantwise against the slope. “Change your mind, there’s another hammer in the toolshed.”

  She had to say something. “Effie’s happy you brought her chair home. She sits in it every day.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She huffed a minute as Wire bounced up onto the porch and curled in the sun. She started for the shed. Nearly at the door, she slowed. One end of Chief ’s clothesline was tied around a post, the other to a nail in the side of the shed. Clothes swayed in the breeze: two pair of short bib overalls. Too short for Chief. Too short even for Effie. Her size. The same with the two blue shirts and the pair of boy’s high top shoes swinging by their laces. Shoes almost new.

  She spun around, hollered, “You got another boy? One that’s not dead?”

  A long silence made her doubt Chief intended to answer. He stood, looking ready to step off the roof and fly. “I expect girls are too fancy for britches.”

  Maybe Chief was saying take the clothes, but could she? Accepting food from Cora—even if Effie didn’t like it—was necessary. But clothes?

  “Time I cleared out some things,” Chief called, “but there’s boys around if you’re not interested.”

  She hurried into the shed where he couldn’t see her pace and twist her fingers. She could take care of herself. That was the only reason Grandma Teegan signed Surrender Papers. Grandma Teegan didn’t just give her away. Grandma Teegan loved her.

  A hammer lay on a workbench along with other tools. The object with the most shine was a thin wrench. She slipped it in her pocket. Grandma Teegan didn’t just give her away. Feeling better, she brought the hammer and nails outside to the sunlight. The clothes on the line waved at her.

  Over and over she tried to pound in a nail, but it went no deeper than the tip before bouncing out. A nail stuck for three whacks, then leaned right and shot away from her with the fourth.

  For an hour she pounded and had a row of nails in her board, though none of them had gone completely in before folding over.

  “I got hogs to feed.” Chief stood at her side. “Best you get home.”

  She didn’t move. What about the clothes?

  He nodded at her attempts to pound in nails. “You come back tomorrow and work on that.”

  “Really?” She glanced at the clothes.


  He stepped ahead of her, gathered the clothing from the line, even untwisting the shoes. He pushed the wad at her. “They’re ugly all right, but I can’t do anything about that.”

  He was making her take the clothes because he didn’t want them. She didn’t know how she’d explain them to Effie; she couldn’t say they came from Old Mag. She started back across the yard, her arms full and the shiny wrench bumping happily against her leg.

  She stopped at Old Mag and considered her wealth. She thought briefly of hiding them there, but what good would that do? They’d get soiled and the shoes ruined. Had Chief hung them out expecting her to come after dark and steal them? Did he know she’d lost her shoes? If he’d seen Effie with Jake, he’d probably figured it out.

  With Jake at her side, she went on to face Effie. At the other end of the winding path, ready to step into the clearing, she hesitated. She was leaving the good world of the trees for the one where Effie suffered.

  The clothes dropped from her arms. Effie stood in the cold river, the water quick and high with spring thaw. She wore only the old slip, the fabric floating and billowing around her waist. Her head was flung back, her arms stretched skyward, her fingers opening and closing, as though she meant to grab fistfuls of all she’d never have. Her hands dropped and scooped up water.

  “I baptize me in this stinking river,” she cried out. “I baptize me.”

  Bridget stared. This was the worst yet. She was going to lose the house, Jake, and Effie. Everything was ending now. Effie was scared of drowning, so scared she’d never learned to swim. One misstep, one too-strong surge, and she’d go under. Yet she was there, staggering as the water gurgled and released and made her find new footing.

  Effie cupped more water, losing most of it by the time her hands reached over her head, but letting the drops she’d saved fall on her. “I baptize me with this stinking river.”

  Ten yards in front of her a large tree branch, carried by the stiff current, came into view. The sight slammed doors up and down Bridget’s body. “Effie! Watch out!”

  The branch sank in the churning water and reappeared half the distance to Effie.

  “Effie,” Bridget screamed, “watch out!”

  The branch bobbed past, only brushing Effie’s side, yet nearly toppling her. As Effie regained her balance, Bridget sank to her knees. “Please, come in. You’re baptized. You’re baptized good.”

  Effie faced her. Her eyes weren’t wild like they’d been when she struck with the plate. They were horribly sad but focused, telling Bridget she knew exactly the risk she was taking.

  “Please, Effie. I need you. We’re going to take Jake and get away. I’m coming in to get you now.”

  Slowly, the slip lowering with each step closer to shore, Effie’s body rose out of the water. Bridget ran to help her across the sand and up the ramp to the lodge.

  Cora stood just inside the front door, and for a moment, all three stood locked in surprise. “I’ve only just arrived,” Cora stammered. “The door was open and . . . what happened?”

  “She was bathing in the river,” Bridget said. She hoped she sounded casual, not as stricken as she felt.

  “She’s freezing,” Cora snatched the quilt off Effie’s bed and wrapped it around Effie’s shoulders. But not before, Bridget knew, Cora had seen everything: Effie’s skinny arms, the old slip—the straps mended again and again with black stitches—and Effie’s throat, the rope burn still red as a velvet choker.

  Bridget sat on the back landing watching the door of the skinning shed with its smell of butchery and death clinging to the traps and knives and table. If Effie stepped out and started for the river, she’d stop her. A week now since the plate, and Effie still spent her days in there. Traveling all the distance she could from what happened.

  The back door of the lodge jerked open. Bridget jumped at seeing Rev. Jackdaw again so soon. Defeat hung in his clothes, in his sagging face, in the eye that looked dying and paler than the other. “Where is she?”

  Bridget froze. Effie hadn’t asked about the clothes from Chief, either because she was too distracted to care or didn’t expect the truth anyway. But Rev. Jackdaw? And would he be mad that Effie was in the shed? Bridget couldn’t imagine why.

  Anger muscled not just Rev. Jackdaw’s eye but his whole face. “I asked you a question. She with that woman?”

  Cora? “I don’t know where she is.” She prayed Effie would hear them talking and come out. Though she told her eyes don’t do it, they glanced at the shed door and back.

  Effie lay beside Jury. He was sorry for not choosing her. He’d made a terrible mistake in marrying someone else. The worst mistake of his life. He kissed her over and over, his hand sliding slowly up her leg, touching her, waking her body. Slow this time. Not taking her as he had in his parents’ haymow, afraid of being found out before he satisfied himself. He was sorry for that, too. He’d keep her safe, build her a beautiful home, and they’d fill it with children.

  The shed door burst open with an explosion of light that made Effie blink at the brightness. Rev. Jackdaw filled the frame, his eyes angry slits. Jury was gone. The soft bed they’d shared only a butcher’s table. Loss sank over her.

  “Sinner! Whoring with yourself.”

  She pushed her slip down and sat up. Whoring with herself? The idea confused her, but there was no confusing his anger. “No, I—”

  He glowered, but stood looking as if weighing the severity of what he’d caught her doing. Weighing her worth and coming up with nothing. His face twisted, contorted, his eye, then his whole cheek took off, flapping like a bird trapped beneath his skin. A litany of evil names spewed from between his gritted teeth, and she imagined birds flying from his mouth the way they broke from trees: blackbirds, ravens, crows.

  She scooted left, then right on the table, deciding where best to jump off and run past him. His body, rigid and feral, his arms wide, blocked her way.

  “Leave me alone!” He’d been angry when he put the rope across her neck, but not this angry. This time he would kill her. “Please, please!” She’d learned not to call him a girl, not to fight, not do anything but plead.

  He lunged and caught her by the ankles. Her heart pounded at the terrible, awful strength in his hands. He yanked.

  Her hands flew up for balance then down as she tried to hold on to the table. She hit the floor on her back and cried out as her head struck, and the steel traps on the wall began to spin around her. He hoisted her up, pinned her against the table’s hard edge. She struggled against her dizziness, tried to locate the door. If she could find her legs, manage to break away, she needed its location.

  He cursed her for witching him into marrying her, his spittle flying in her face. She was damnation. Wicked as Eve. All women were. His work, his church, never had a chance because of his wives. Now this! “Making your soul unfit to carry my sons.”

  The nightmare was terrifyingly familiar. Righteous and loathing, he abandoned her for months, kept her trapped in a hovel, lifted her skirts and tried to farm her body for sons. He wrestled her toward the wall. She was reentering the nightmare. Next would be his threats of hellfire.

  She was less dizzy, the pain in her head ebbing. Rev. Jackdaw was insane. His was a true madness. She’d brought fear and pain from Homeplace, but not insanity.

  She fought, twisted, and kicked. “Let me go! Bridget, help!”

  This time it wasn’t the swish of a rope but the hard cold rattle of a trap and its chain. Her mind scrambled to find words in Pig Latin. How to say please or no? How to say I hate you?

  He held her around the waist now, the pan of the trap clutched in his fist. The last metal links of the chain clattered to the floor. She drew her legs up, kicked the air, and put her full weight in his arms, hoping it broke his back. She landed on the floor a second time, and he pinned her there with a knee on her chest. Wheezing, he used his other knee to put pressure on the trap spring. The jaws opened.

  She screamed as he pulled her hand to
the teeth.

  “If thy right hand offend thee,” the words disgorging from his mouth, “cast it from thee: for it is profitable that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.”

  His knee pulled away. The jaws sprung. The sound a soft, wet, sinking. Flesh splitting. Small bones crushing.

  The unbelievable sight of the spikes through her palm and the blood pouring out shocked her into silence. Then pain seared up her arm. She cried out.

  The agony brought dizziness. On its heels, darkness.

  Rev. Jackdaw staggered back, out of breath and with his back nearly doubling him over with pain. Effie lay on her side, silent at last. Fainted dead away. On her side, her knees pulled up, she cradled her trapped hand. She looked thirteen, fourteen. Blood ran, soaking the undergarment she wore like a harlot.

  He stepped over her and grabbed traps and knives off the walls. At the door, he turned back again. The sight of her reminded him of how he’d lain beaten and bloody. How pain could enter the body at any point and sear through the whole. The images in his head threatened to strike him down. He reeled toward the daylight and out. He would not compare what he’d done to Mister’s actions. Effie’s whoring with herself proved she was the culmination of every evil he’d spent his life fighting. Walking in on her, he’d seen the final, unutterable proof that he’d die having succeeded at nothing. Not even leaving an heir to carry his name.

  He started for the slope and his buggy, seeing the row of sons she’d denied him. Remaining unworthy of receiving them, she’d struck them down as surely as if she’d drug a knife across their throats. She’d taken his children, and he’d issued justice. If thy right hand offend thee. When she woke, she’d know he was a man, not a girl. She’d know he was as strong as his earthly father and as just as his heavenly Father.