Cora hesitated a moment longer. “I hate this. You run like hell.”
Bridget ran for the trees and Jake.
“Hey!” Chief yelled. “Get the ox and come straight back! Don’t set foot in that place.”
Bridget ran past both of his barns and reached the gate. She didn’t need anyone.
In the pasture, Chief ’s cows were scattered dark huddles paying no attention to Bridget. Once across, she scraped between two strands of the barbed wire fence and ran on. At Old Mag, she stopped as she’d done many times before, struggling to catch her breath, pressing her sweating palms on the trunk, wanting the tree to give her hope and her legs the energy to run again.
She smelled smoke even before she left the trees and stepped into the clearing, winded again. Jake stood still hitched to the back porch. She saw no sign of Rev. Jackdaw, but the lodge windows were bright with flame behind them. Had Rev. Jackdaw built a fire even though the night was warm? Had a log rolled out onto the old floorboards?
She reached Jake, feeling the heat from the fire. “Come on, we’ve got to go.” She fumbled for her knot at the rail, found it larger and tighter than she’d made it. She tried the rope around his neck. Coils and loops. Too tight.
Rev. Jackdaw stepped out of the darkness and glared down on her. His beard orange in the light, his cold eye white. “Where is she?”
Bridget’s side stitched, her fingers stung with the effort of prying at knots, but the clench of fear in her stomach hurt more. Rev. Jackdaw wore his white shirt and black trousers, but over them was a red dress. Behind him, the orange in the window swelled.
“I asked you a question. Where is she?”
She worked at the knot. “Effie’s gone. She got on the train . . . yesterday. She said she was going west. She’s clear to Butte, Montana. It’s very far away.”
His bad eye bore into her, but the muscles around it were still. That stillness scared her; he’d made a decision. The fire was his, deliberate.
Inside, the lodge cracked and thudded with noises. She imagined the table collapsing, the bed with its dry shucks roaring. The Never Forget quilt turning black. She jumped back and Jake jerked his head at the next crash, his eyes wide, his body straining.
“You better come down,” she said to Rev. Jackdaw. “It’s burning fast.” Her fingernails felt torn back, but she pried and pulled. She’d not tied the rope this tight. Rev. Jackdaw had. He’d planned on letting Jake burn alive.
“What devil got my wife?”
If she said the Thayers, Rev. Jackdaw would leave and go there. Mr. Thayer deserved having to face a shotgun, but she couldn’t tell on Effie. She tried to sound convincing. “The Lord has blessed her, that’s all. The baby is her just desserts.”
He raised his gun slowly, stopped when the barrel pointed directly at her chest.
She couldn’t move, felt that was exactly what he wanted.
Gray smoke, curling out from between the logs, circled Rev. Jackdaw, making him cough and his bad eye weep. “She’ll never spend another night under a roof I paid for.” He leaned forward, the gun barrel now little more than an arm’s length away. “You either. You double-crossed me.”
“I didn’t.” If she turned and ran, he’d shoot her in the back. He wanted someone dead and with Effie gone, a dead orphan would be good enough. “We can go to Butte,” she begged. “We can find Effie. You can build a church there. A great big one.”
A section of roof thundered down into the lodge, throwing light over many of Wilcox’s upper branches. The swelling smoke stung Bridget’s eyes and made her cough. The gun still pointed at her. The anger in Rev. Jackdaw’s face said, “Run, Rooster, so I can shoot you.”
Jake pulled on the rope, stood three yards back. The rail wobbled.
“Walk on!” she screamed.
Jake tugged again, and the short landing rail came off in one piece and hit the ground. He stopped.
“Walk on!” she tried again. Her throat was making silly, sucking noises. Rev. Jackdaw was going to shoot her. She could see it in both his eyes. He’d put Effie’s hand in a trap, and now he’d shoot her. Even Jake knew and was staying right there. She clenched her eyes closed as tight as she could, her whole body trembling.
“Grandma Teegan!”
The shotgun blast knocked her backward. She hit the ground. Her ears roared. Her face stung in a hundred hurting places. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
With her ears still ringing, she felt the vibration of a lodge wall crashing down. Her stinging eyes slowly opened. She was dazed, confused to see the fire was still there, confused at still being in the same world as the fire.
The window shattered at Rev. Jackdaw’s side, sending him cursing and crouching against the flying glass as he hurried down the ramp. His dress reflected red light on the side nearest the lodge.
Dizzy and unsure, she turned to see Jake drop to his front knees. She screamed. Blood covered his wide face, pulsed over his nose and rolled off his chin.
On all fours, she scrambled to reach him.
He struggled with the effort of staying on his front knees. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Jake!” His face looked as though someone had taken a hoe and chopped at him. “I’m right here,” she cried. “I’m staying with you.”
His blood continued to pulse, running down over his wide dewlap and pooling on the ground. When he dropped over with a long lowing sound, she was holding so tight his weight pulled her over on top of him.
His back legs kicked, sawing through silt and sand.
She crawled higher, draping herself over his head, covering the raw flesh, burgundy, and white bits of exposed skull. The blood soaked into her clothes, and his breath grew louder, becoming half gasp, half moan.
She knew how it felt to be hit with a plate or fist, how it felt having lye poured on her scalp, but those pains didn’t touch this pain. She lifted her head to scream at Rev. Jackdaw. “I hate you!” She should have run. He’d have shot her in the back, and Jake would be alive. “I hate you!”
Rev. Jackdaw had stepped wide of the fire. “She was yours to watch. Why do you think I bothered with you?” The hem of his dress brushed the back of his trouser legs as he rushed.
“Jake is dying. You killed him!” It seemed so impossible she had to repeat it again for herself. “Jake is dying.”
She lay over the top of him, her hands on his cheeks either side of the large wound. Jake’s blood soaked deeper into her clothes, filled up her sleeves, drenched her shirt and britches. But she didn’t move. As long as the blood kept flowing, Jake’s heart was alive, and he knew she was there.
“You and I are going away,” she sobbed. “We’ll live on an ark.”
Crashing and splitting logs surrounded Bridget with deafening noise. Heat roared inside the lodge, rolled out and swelled in her direction. Though most of the smoke rose away from her and into the night sky, she coughed and choked. She ought to get farther away, but she couldn’t move Jake, and she couldn’t leave him. He was still alive. He needed to know she was staying with him.
His back legs kicked as if he struggled to run, and for long minutes a horrible lowing came from deep in his throat. With a hand covered in his blood, she stroked his long side, over his ribs and warm haunch. She sobbed too hard to say she loved him, but she could keep petting and petting and the feel of her hand would tell him.
In the distance a train whistle blew, the sound nearly lost in the boom of another crash from inside the lodge. Effie was gone.
Several logs thundered, a whole wall coming down in an endless crashing, log on log as though the fall of one brought down the next and the next after that. She yelped and covered Jake’s bloody ears.
Somewhere beyond the din a horse screamed. Nell! But Rev. Jackdaw would get her to safety. She needed to stay with Jake.
From her position on the ground, she could see logs breaking through the floor and catching in the stilts. Other logs rolled through supports as if they were only upright twigs. A larg
e red ember flew through the air and landed like a bird on her shoulder. She cried out at the pain burning through her shirt and slapped it off. Another wall collapsed, the logs stacking and rolling off those already on the ground, breaking out from beneath the lodge and stopping right and left of her. They brought more smoke that made breathing hard and stung her eyes.
She screamed as more timbers, rolling lines of flame, twisted and licked toward her. Stopping only feet away. She was caught. She could no longer hear Jake’s moaning, and her eyes, weeping in the smoke, made her grab and try to rub out the pain. Blind, she couldn’t see if Jake’s back legs still kicked. She felt along his body again, smelling singed fur, and down a flank to his hard, two-toed hoof. It trembled under her hand and quit.
Jake, her best friend, who’d always done whatever he was told, was dead.
She sucked for air, but smoke burned the inside of her mouth, made her choke trying to swallow. She was dizzy and hot and even trying to force her eyes to slits, she couldn’t see through the burning and watering. She pushed off Jake and stood wobbling, blind and uncertain of which way to run. The smoke was worse higher up, and after a moment she dropped back to her knees. Then dropped to her stomach, her face on the sand and in moisture she knew was Jake’s blood. But there was less smoke with her nose just off the ground.
In the heat and smoke, she was too scared even to work her way back to her knees. The whole world burned and she didn’t know in which direction to find the river. If she moved in any direction, she’d only catch on fire that much quicker. She’d stay there where she was almost asleep.
Like dancers around a Maypole, the world moved beneath her in a hot, wide, and sloppy circle.
“Ye didn’t fight death,” Grandma Teegan’s voice screeched. “Ye didn’t fight death.”
“I can’t,” Bridget tried to say. She was huddled in the corner of the croft, crying behind Grandma Teegan’s spinning wheel, clutching a tin salt cup. It was the place in the croft where Grandma Teegan spun wool and told stories of how all maidens survived—even the Goose Girl whose horse’s head was cut off. The maidens survived when they stood up and fought death, facing their skeletons like Nera.
Grandma Teegan’s voice screeched again. “Ye didn’t fight death.”
Bridget worked herself to her knees. She’d let Rowan die and Grandma Teegan hit him, and she had to fight death to make things right again. She swayed and fell back to the ground. On the second attempt, her knees held and she began to crawl, her foot knocking against Jake. She was leaving him. Her arms gave out in the effort and she dropped to her belly.
“Fight death.” Grandma Teegan was angry.
Bridget inched forward on her elbows, pushing with her toes.
She crawled because Grandma Teegan watched and Grandma Teegan left her no choice.
Cooler air touched her face. Less smoke too, or she imagined it was less. She crawled on, her elbows digging in better now, helping her cover more ground. How much longer before Grandma Teegan would say that was enough and let her sleep?
Her palm splashed water. Then both hands. Her face. She dragged herself on. The cuffs of her britches sizzled and she realized they’d begun to burn. She tried to keep moving. She wanted the deepest water. She’d find a current and be carried away.
Something tugged at her, held her back. She kicked and slapped. She would be a selkie too.
“Hey, hey.” A soft voice. Soothing.
Chief ! He knelt in the water, hugged her close to his chest, and wiped her face with scoops of river and a big hand. He scrubbed her cheeks, her forehead, palms of water over and over as if trying to see if she was alive beneath the blood and ash.
Bridget could scarce think. The world was busted into pieces. Chief scouring her face, the lodge a huge Beltane fire, Jake’s bloody face somewhere in the smoke, and the only visible thing she could make out through her burning eyes was Wilcox’s limbs, flames dancing up like golden ivy.
There were other voices besides Chief ’s. Cora’s as she came splashing out, gasping as if she’d been holding her breath since they parted in Chief ’s yard. “You’re alive!”
Chief carried Bridget out of the water, kept his arms around her as he settled her on her feet, testing if she could stand before he let go. She clung to him. Her stomach suddenly rolled. She puked plums on their shoes, her throat burning. Chief held her forehead as she puked again.
“Effie?” she asked.
“We parted at the bridge,” Cora said. “I’m sure Pete got her on the train in time.”
The vomiting eased and Bridget wrapped her arms around Chief ’s waist again. His big hand on her back held her close.
“Effie left crying,” Cora went on. With sad eyes, she reached out as if to take her from Chief. “She said you were never coming. If she waited a week or a year, it didn’t matter. You weren’t coming.” She dropped her empty hands. “I hope I did the right thing. The train was leaving . . . it just seemed safest to have her gone.”
Bridget looked up at Chief, his face still swimming behind her burning eyes. “Is Jake all the way dead?”
“He’s left this world. He’s not suffering.”
Cora put a hand on each of Bridget’s shoulders, tugged, but Bridget didn’t let go of Chief. Cora was too small, couldn’t hold her up against something as big as Rev. Jackdaw shooting Jake and the long lowing sounds he’d made dying.
Chief walked her wide of the flames around to the front of the fire. Men were gathered there, huddled in a circle halfway down the slope around an overturned buggy.
Bridget’s knees began to shake. Chief ’s hand on her back pressed with a firmer touch. Flames from the lodge panned orange reflections over Nell lying on the ground. Bridget needed another minute for her eyes to clear enough to understand all she was seeing. Nell was dead, the hem of Rev. Jackdaw’s red dress, a thin white ankle from beneath a wheel. His other leg at such an odd angle it looked to belong to a different body.
She screamed into Chief ’s wet shirt.
“I’m sorry, Bridget,” Cora said. “I know you took pity on him.”
Everything was gone: the lodge, Rev. Jackdaw, Nell. Even Effie and Jake.
“Where’d the other one go?”
Bridget hadn’t seen the sheriff approach. He’d asked the question of Cora and Chief, but she spoke before they could. “Effie is in Butte.” The man didn’t have the right to know.
“The bastard’s dead. Likely the horse spooked at the fire or stepped in a rut. Maybe just fell over dead. Its weight and the slope rolled the buggy. Jackdaw got hisself pinned.”
“Nell did it on purpose,” Bridget said.
Chief whistled and Smoke came from out of the darkness, his head bobbing and nostrils flaring. “There’s enough help here.”
Bridget clung to Chief as he grabbed the reins. “Whoa there, boy. Easy now.” He pulled Bridget’s hands from around his waist, held them both in one of his larger hands, and pushed her back the distance of his reach. He grabbed fistfuls of Smoke’s mane and in one lunge, he threw his leg over the horse’s back and was up.
I can’t ever be that man, he’d said. Bridget knew what she’d do. She’d run to the bridge, sleep under there where no one would find her.
Chief leaned down off Smoke and before she could blink enough to clear her eyes, he’d pulled her off her feet as he’d done in his barn, caught her around the waist, and drew her up in front of him. He shook the reins. “The two of us,” he said, loud enough for anyone listening, “are going home.”
Bridget kept Smoke at a walk. The day was warm and the blue sky held skeins of honking geese flying north. She leaned forward in the saddle and patted the horse’s muscular neck. Ahead were the barns and the house she loved. And Henry.
“Henry,” he’d said a day or two after the fire.
She’d been surprised. “Then why does everyone call you Chief ?”
“It keeps us separate. Lets them suppose they’re different.”
“Henry,” she
’d said, liking the feel of the name in her mouth.
Through the winter, they’d sat by a fire while Henry told his peoples’ legends and she, Grandma Teegan’s. She told him about hearing Grandma Teegan telling her to fight death the night the lodge burned. And how maybe that meant Grandma Teegan was a selkie in the river.
Henry hadn’t told her she was being silly or that she must have heard the wind or the heat of the fire whistling. His face turned and he looked out across his wide yard, through his fruit trees and to the river beyond. “Selkie,” he repeated the word.
She thought it pleased him to know Grandma Teegan was in the water with his son.
Smoke’s gait quickened as they neared the end of the lane. Bridget reined in gently as she’d been taught. “Whoa.” She wanted to ride for hours more, but Henry would be uneasy until they were safely back. He’d spent many afternoons teaching her to handle Smoke, but this was the first time he’d let her take the big horse alone, going the mile, then crossing the wooden bridge over Nettle Creek into Bleaksville.
Six months had passed since Jake’s and Rev. Jackdaw’s deaths. She liked remembering how she’d built Rev. Jackdaw’s coffin. At least helped. Henry worked with her, helping saw and hold boards, giving step-by-step instructions, but she’d pounded in many of the nails. And she’d whitewashed the box inside and out on her own.
Rev. Jackdaw deserved the whiteness. She’d read his journal and been struck by the image of a little boy crying at a farmhouse window in the 1840s while his brothers beat a horse. That child got lost, and only the meanness he’d been taught stayed. She tried not to be Salt Woman and think about the man he became, who wore a red dress, mistreated Effie, and shot Jake. She tried to remember only the child and how he’d tried to do the right thing. By going out into the night against his father’s will and trying to save a horse, he’d been Nera.
Six months had passed too, since Effie left, and now there was a letter. Bridget planned to save that for later. She’d read it to Henry after supper. Then he’d read it back to her.
River People Page 31