They dropped him at first light, his screams waking me. Snagged his front legs with a catch rope and brought him down. Tied his legs together. Mister barked the order and the stallion’s hell began. My brothers, more bone in their backs than me, hitting him with flat boards. Not breaking the skin, breaking his will. Using constant irritation, wearing him down over the hours. Slapping him on the upturned flank and shoulder, keeping him scared all that day, his upward eye wide, rolling. Sweat sliding off him in sheets.
Mister broke them using his system: my brothers doing the meanness, while he stayed away, then him bringing trickles of water like some goddamned savior. Rationing. Fooling the stressed horse into trusting him.
By evening, the stallion foamed at the mouth. Mister came again with water. Poured a short, slow stream across the big, dry lips, the horse already knowing this was the man with the water, swallowing what he could catch as it ran through his teeth on one side and out the other. Just enough to wet his tongue and throat. Smelling how most of the water went onto the ground under his head, making a mud that, with his thrashing, closed his downward eye.
That night, the stallion still fought the ropes, struggling to stand and then going still with fatigue but for the panting. Dung and urine muddying his coat. His one open eye spied the stars. Then me at the window.
Bridget looked up from her reading. Out her window, fireflies blinked on and off in the darkness with the moon on the river just beyond. Jake lay in the starlight chewing his cud beneath Wilcox. With them in place she could continue reading the journal pages. She wrapped her feet around the legs of the chair, her whole body holding on.
The next day was never better. Sitting on the fence, watching the tormenting in the August heat, and Mister giving a little more water so the horse pulled up his lips, hungry at the smell, trusting more now in Mister’s hand.
Mister grabbed me off the fence, called me a god-damned girl for my sniffling. My brothers and I were men to him or girls. Never got the chance to be boys. When he tried to make me be a man, insisting I take my turn on the stallion, I failed him. Too weak spirited to do it. He shoved me to the dirt, told me to get my “shriveling little girl’s ass” out of his sight. He couldn’t drag me to the horse, clutch my hand to the club, make me do it; he wanted the stallion to believe he was the nice one.
That evening, he knelt and tried the bit. Two days of suffering usually made a horse accept a mouthful of iron. But the stallion swung its powerful head into Mister’s chest. Knocked him over. His face looking up and me right there in the window. Mister threw down the iron and poured the next ration of water a foot away from the horse’s mouth. He’d already stressed the stallion about as far as a horse can go, and the tactics hadn’t worked. A third day might kill the animal. Mister’s reputation and good money were at stake.
Hours later, I heard the first howling. In the dark, the wolves took their time moving in until their baying told me there was no mistaking their target. On his feet, no wolf could take the horse, but on the ground, he didn’t have a chance.
The stallion knew the wolves were there, too. I felt his heart booming inside my own. Did he want them to stay away? Or did he want them to come and end his misery?
When the whole world went quiet, nothing out of the wolves but their circling paws, I went out. I’d stand guard over the stallion, fight any yellow-eyed critter that came into the corral.
The stallion’s eye widened and his nostrils flared when I climbed through the fence. I sat beside him hearing that same ragged breathing I’d been hearing since late afternoon. He knew me; he’d watched me all the hours I’d sat on the fence, then at my window, watching him. I stroked his head, feeling how it gentled down under my touch. Then it started. Him begging me to set him free. His one eye, blacker and deeper than the night, asking over and over. I believed I had to. If I didn’t, everything that happened, the wolves or the next day’s beating and thirst, would be my fault.
I brought water and ladled scoops from my bucket down his throat. I tried the knots on his front legs first. His struggling had pulled them so tight I couldn’t do a thing. He lay still, believing in me, but I needed a knife and didn’t know how I could go into the kitchen for one and come back out unnoticed. The wolves circled the corral, just yellow eyes moving in the night. I crawled in the dirt, tried the knots on the back legs. He’d pulled them just as tight.
The toe of a boot thwacked into my ribs, sent me flying over the stallion’s rump. Mister came around the horse. The second kick caught my groin. Mister kept kicking while I twisted and howled. Him cursing how I’d undone two days of work and two days of the horse’s stress. Giving the stallion hope, making him wild again.
More kicks rolled me in the dirt. One catching the side of my head, splitting open my eye. My body no more able to move now than a sack of feed. Ma’s bare feet inches away. She didn’t try to stop Mister. She stood there waiting for him to finish. Like waiting for him to finish gutting and quartering a deer so she could clean the bloody kitchen table and serve sup. She’d pick me up if I lived, bury me if I didn’t. Until she knew which it would be, she’d wait.
I remember shotguns and knew my brothers were shooting at the wolves.
When I woke, sun and heat poured in the open window. I was on the floor, my body too dirty and bloody for bedsheets Ma would have to wash. Mister’s cussing in the corral made me pull myself up enough to peek over the windowsill with my one open eye.
On his knees, Mister was trying to force the bit again. His hands struggling against the powerful jaws. His arm suddenly flew up and he flung his hand. Blood sprayed in red strings. He fell to one side, howled, then staggered to his feet, the hand clutched to his chest. Blood poured onto his shirt, dripped down his pants. Stooped like he’d been shot, he started for the house.
He bellowed my name from the stairs. Throwing open my door, he came for me. A boot lifted off the floor, aimed, but his eyes rolled back and he missed and staggered. “Git up!”
I couldn’t. He’d broken ribs, maybe my back, closed my eye, and put a gash alongside it. Fire seared in my groin. He reached down to grab me, his bloody hand splattering warm and thick on my face. Three fingers gone. Bitten clean off. “You fucking girl.” The words slow. A struggle to pronounce. I’d seen him drunk a hundred times, but this slurring had a different tone.
“A girl’s no use to you,” Ma said. Her face pleasant as if she’d entered the room to see if Mister might need her to fetch something. “I could use a girl. I’m washing and cooking all day.”
Mister stumbled wide-legged out of the room. He hadn’t agreed with Ma. He was losing blood and in so much pain he didn’t know where he was. A few seconds later, a boom and several thumps as he rolled down the stairs. Ma left the room to go help him.
The third day without Effie, Bridget led Jake into the trees to hunt for deeper scrub. They’d hide in case Chief rode by again. She’d lied to him the day before, but he wouldn’t believe her two days straight.
She spent the day at Jake’s shoulder or trailing at his heels. Staying that close to him, she wasn’t lost. In her mind, she reread Rev. Jackdaw’s pages, thinking of the little boy and the horse that stirred stars.
At the sound of the train across the river, Bridget led Jake to the road for the walk home. Dusk was lugging in shadows, a second world coming alive. Cora was gone and Chief had never visited at this hour, though she knew Mr. Thayer or Pete were likely to ride by. That was okay—they never asked to come in.
She and Jake had gone only a few yards on the easier surface when, just as she expected, Pete came around the bend. When he’d come abreast, he stopped his horse and touched his hat brim. “Hey.”
Please, Bridget prayed, don’t ask any questions about Effie. I don’t want to tell you a lie.
He remained in the saddle while she did her best to smile up at him. He looked uneasy and full of something Bridget couldn’t read. After a moment, he nodded at Jake. “Ma hooked him to our cart before I could even walk
. He’s older than me.”
It was an odd thing to say, as though he struggled to find a way into a conversation. “He’s not old.” Pete didn’t care about Jake, and he hadn’t stopped to tell her what his ma did. Had he seen Effie walk by in front of his place?
She swung her hands behind her back, clasped them together. Suppose he hadn’t, but her asking the question sent him off to the sheriff to report the news? Would the sheriff say she was a half orphan again and send her back to New York? Where police records said she was a thief and where Mum could never find her?
Pete touched his hat again, looked down the road he’d yet to cover. “You all right then?”
Chief had asked nearly the same thing. “Don’t I look all right?” She ached to keep him there. “Effie’s strong now. She takes long walks. Probably even as far as your house.”
Pete’s face stilled, and he glanced up the road like something there needed inspection. She studied his profile. His jaw was leaner, harder even than the day she rode behind him. Her eyes widened. Shadow clung to his upper lip. He was shaving now!
Wait for me, her heart cried. Wait for me to grow up, too.
But she could N-E-V-E-R say that. “I better go. Effie will be waiting.” She started forward and for a few paces Pete rode at her side. “You can take wood, if you want,” she said. “It’s not stealing. Rev. Jackdaw bought the lodge. It’s our wood now.”
“Collecting wood is women’s work. Since Ma died, we buy coal.” He clucked his horse into a trot.
She wanted to run after him. She’d tell him everything, and they’d talk until after dark. She’d ask how far he supposed Effie had gotten in three days. Did he think she was in Iowa by now? She’d ask him to stay and keep her company until she fell asleep.
Reaching the lodge, Bridget didn’t want to go inside. No one waited there for her. Jake drank from the river, and she took off her shoes and climbed into the basket of Wilcox’s exposed roots. “Mum?” Then louder, “Mum!” She screamed several more times before she had to quit and suck air into her heaving lungs. Jake came closer when she stopped. With his front feet in the water, he stretched his head to reach her. She stroked his cheek. How many times since arriving at the lodge had she screamed out over the river? Mum wasn’t ever going to step out, but Jake was there and Wilcox held her.
A fish jumped, the large flash high and amber in the waning light, and then a splash with rings rippling out over the water.
“All water is connected,” Rowan promised her the day Mum left.
The river, Wilcox and all trees, the sky with flying stars, Jake. It was all connected and all of it loved her. She was at home in the wide world, and she could unpack. Not unpack in a tiny room like she and Grandma Teegan had in New York. Or even unpack all her shiny stolen things from the walls. She could lay herself out, unfolding all the things she believed, and be safe in her skin.
She leaned back against Wilcox’s trunk and looked out at the quick-gathering stars. Mum and Pappy were walking under the same sky. Grandma Teegan in Ireland, getting her new sheep in for the night, Ogan at her heels.
“Grandma Teegan,” she whispered, “we fit under the same heaven.” And she realized that when a person fits under heaven, she fits everywhere.
Before Chief walked up the back ramp, Bridget knew he and his horse had entered the clearing. Smoke’s nearness always made her skin prickle with the sense of a larger world. Plus, they’d ridden through the trees, along the secret passageway, which made their arrival even more fairy.
She rushed to open the door. Effie had been gone five days, and by now Chief knew. His brown eyes said he knew, and when he took off his hat and stepped in, his open face said he knew. He’d spent so much time inside while Effie was healing he seemed fitted to the walls and the floor. Fitted to his spot at the table where for hours he’d taught her to hammer and saw.
He carried a small red, calico bundle and began unwrapping it. The fabric wasn’t square like Effie’s sugar sacking or one of Cora’s dishtowels, but longer than his arm with green curly ques. When he’d exposed a sandwich of sliced beef piled high between thick slices of bread, he pushed it all at her. “I see you ain’t been working.”
She ate slow while Chief tapped nails into the box she’d not touched in five days. She thought to tell him building boxes was stupid. When he finished affixing the fourth side, he slid the box in her direction just as he had the sandwich. “What you planning? Just to make a nuisance of yourself in every garden within five miles?”
“Gardens aren’t even growing yet.” Grandma Teegan’s braid lay on the table and she let her eyes rest there. Had Chief heard her crying out for Mum? Was that the reason he thought he’d better visit? “I’m all right now,” she said. She wanted him to wrap her up, carry her again, or even to reach across the table and touch her hand. She couldn’t ask. “Effie’s coming back soon. She’s visiting Old Mag.”
His eyes said, All right, whatever story you want to tell.
She crossed her arms over the bib of the overalls he’d given her and looked directly at him. “Effie’s probably coming home tomorrow. Anyway, I have Jake.”
“That so?” His lips pursed. “She wouldn’t want you helping me now and again.”
Effie would call it charity, but Effie wasn’t there. “Helping how?”
“Doing what’s needing done. Helping me get in my garden, fighting hens for their eggs, washing up after we sup.”
“You going to pay me?”
A corner of his lip turned up. He brought it back down. “Likely not.”
Then it wasn’t charity. His whole garden did need planting, he always missed one or two eggs she could find even in the dark, and she supposed old men didn’t like washing dishes. Helping, she’d be doing him a charity, just like carrying off scrap wood and taking the boy’s clothes he didn’t want. “Only until Effie gets back.”
“Only until then.”
Grandma Teegan would like him. He was old, though not nearly as old as her, and he liked trees and animals and was quiet inside. The name Grandfather better suited him than Chief. She wanted to ask if he ever got lonely, but there was no gate into something so big. She reached up and began pulling the wrapping off her head, the long strips of fabric unwinding in her hands. She turned so he saw her scars.
He nodded. Then nodded again. “You finished wearing that silly stuff now?”
“I don’t want anyone to see my burns.”
“That the only reason?” He reached for his hat, tapped it against his thigh. “Tomorrow then,” he said. He stopped at the door, his hat still thumping against his leg. “There’s not a person in the world without scars. You might as well admit you’re just like the rest of us.”
Later, alone once again, she took the strips of soiled sheeting to the fireplace and tossed them onto months’-old ashes and stabbed at them with the iron poker. Starting at the crown of her head, she brought hair from the right up over the scar, then hair from the left, her fingers learning to braid.
Bridget stretched Grandma Teegan’s braid along the red cloth Chief had given her, twisted up the fabric, and tied it around her waist. The ends hung with a fringe at her side just like the sash Chief wore. If Effie ever came back and threatened the hair, Bridget would tell her no. She wasn’t ever hiding it away again. Effie was small now, had grown small in her absence. She wasn’t still the boss.
Bridget picked up the last pages of Rev. Jackdaw’s journal.
I suffered days of fevers with the stallion running through my dreams. My back in spasms and making me cry out. The same with each bloody urination. My eye opened somewhere in the first week or two, though it jumped around my face, cried on its own.
I never learned whether the stallion lived or died. I saw how I’d wronged him with my girlish weakness. Maybe killed him. I’d cost Mister the use of his hand, too. Leaving him only one to grip a rope. Though two fingers could still grip a whiskey bottle.
Ma cut down one of her dresses and pulled it over
my head. My begging didn’t matter. I wanted to hide out behind the stove or behind anything, but she had no use for me if I weren’t going to help her. I couldn’t have survived another beating from Mister—even if my body did. I couldn’t return to the corral where he’d be. So long as I was in a dress, wearing my humiliation, living behind Ma’s skirts, and emptying his piss bucket, he could tolerate the sight of me.
He never stopped shaking his half hand in my face, reminding me I was responsible. Then a backhand would prove that even with two fingers, the hand and arm could send me to the floor. Maybe he wanted me kept alive so he could watch my shame in wearing a dress. They called me “girl.” Mister had two sons now. If he’d ever had a third, that boy was dead.
My hair grew long, and people thought me a freak.
Spending my days in the house, I saw Ma’s mind was a jar. She could dump out anything Mister did to her, rinse the glass with some lie she told herself, and despite her bruises, call him to eat an hour later. Not a trace of anger. Sometimes I wonder how Ma might have been before she married him. Did Mister break his wife the same way he broke horses?
The page ended there, and Bridget wished she had more. Slowly, she began tearing up the pages, then ripping the pieces into ever-smaller pieces. The words told a story, but they told a lie, too. Rev. Jackdaw hadn’t written so God wouldn’t forget. He wrote so he wouldn’t forget, so he could live the past over and over. He was Salt Woman, but she was too, because in her mind, Grandma Teegan left her over and over again. Maybe everyone was Salt woman, all retelling their worst stories instead of their best.
“Bridget,” Cora hurried in. The lodge doors were open, and she came in without hesitating.
“Cora,” Bridget, on her knees in front of the wash tub, scrambled to her feet. They fell into each other’s arms.
River People Page 26