Time Is a River

by Mary Alice Monroe

  Staring into the flames, Mia couldn’t remember ever feeling so desolate. She wanted to weep. She’d endured so much in the past year, only to be defeated by a toaster oven. Someday, she would tell this story at a party and everyone would laugh, including her. At the moment, though, it was really too pitiful. It wasn’t just that she hadn’t learned how to do common household repairs. She didn’t think she could name one friend who could. She suddenly realized that she couldn’t take care of herself. Out in the wilderness—even in the city—she’d come to rely on others to take care of her. Up here in the mountains, her independence needed to be redefined.

  She set the ice cream aside and went to the library shelf. Books had always been a source of comfort. The narrow beam of her flashlight traveled across the titles. She’d read The Awakening and A Room of One’s Own hoping to be inspired by these great feminist authors. She’d had no great awakening up here, and the only inspiration she had from Woolf was to fill her pockets with rocks and walk into the deepest point of the river.

  She moved her beam of light to another shelf. It was filled with books on fly-fishing. A safer topic, she thought, given her frame of mind. She pulled out six books. They were very heavy and coated with a thick layer of dust. Wrinkling her nose, she balanced the weight of them against her chest to get a good grip. As she hoisted them up, her flashlight slipped. She twisted to catch it. The stream of light illuminated the back of the bookshelf.

  The dust on the shelf was streaked where the six volumes had sat, but in the open space on the left she spied a single volume covered in dust, lying flat against the back. Curious, she set the stack of fly-fishing books on the table and returned to the bookshelf and brought the light close for a better look. The slender, leather volume was wedged behind the row of books. Wiggling it, she found it was also stuck in the shelf. She pushed aside the other books and gently tugged, easing it out, careful not to tear it. Once free she brought it closer to the light of the fire. The navy leather was soft and lustrous in the rosy light. She brushed a layer of dust from the cover with her palm. In gilt lettering, surrounded by a circlet of gilt acanthus leaves, were the initials KW.

  “Kate Watkins,” Mia whispered.

  She eased back in the rocker and laid the book on her lap. The pages seemed pressed tightly together, probably from so many years wedged in the bookcase. With great care, she opened it.

  The pages were as thin as butterfly wings. Mia drew her breath and studied the neat, careful script written on the lines of blue. It was the penmanship of a child.

  June 12, 1912

  Dear Diary,

  Mia’s breath caught in her throat. This was the diary of young Kate Watkins.

  She sat back in her chair and stared at the thin volume in her hand. She was hesitant to read it. These were just the innocent writings of a child, true. Almost a hundred years old. What harm could there be? Didn’t libraries treasure such historical pieces? Yet she had come to feel the presence of Kate Watkins in this cabin. Would it be a transgression as her guest? A diary was someone’s private thoughts.

  A gust of wind fluttered the thin pages. Mia felt goose bumps spring up along her arms, knowing the windows were shut. She told herself she was acting as childlike as the girl who wrote these words, but remembering the gossip that the cabin was haunted, she scooted her chair a few inches closer to the fire. Looking again at the diary she spied something in the middle. Skimming the pages, she found a photograph. The sepia-toned photo showed a man and a young girl. They were standing outdoors by a river. On closer inspection, it looked like the very pool outside this cabin. The man wore a tweedy three-piece suit and was carrying a fishing rod, a wooden net, and an impressive string of large fish. A wicker creel hung from his shoulder on a wide leather strap. His posture was relaxed, as was his smile. He appeared a man who was quite pleased with the day.

  Mia shifted her attention to the girl standing beside him. She looked to be on the precipice between girlhood and teens. She wore an old-fashioned dark skirt over high-buttoned boots and a white blouse with a wide collar that fell over her shoulders. Her long, lustrous dark hair was drawn up at the sides and gathered in the back with an enormous bow, typical of young girls at the turn of the century. The girl stood straight, proudly holding a fishing rod that was taller than she was. She was a beautiful girl, unusually so. But it was something in her eyes—intelligence—that gave her the aura of not a child but a young woman. She seemed to be looking straight at Mia from the photo—from another time—with a small smile playing at her lips as though she were thinking, I know who you are and what you want.

  The minx, Mia thought as she turned the photo over to see if there was writing on the back. In faded pencil she could barely read WW and KW, 1912.

  This was young Kate Watkins. WW, she assumed, was her father. They looked rather alike in the long forehead and the dark eyes. He was a gentleman. That much was obvious in the style of his clothes and his posture. So, she thought with a small smile of discovery, ol’ mountain woman Kate Watkins was a gentleman’s daughter. Interesting, she thought as she set the picture aside.

  She would read the diary, she decided. She sensed that there was something in these pages she was meant to read. Perhaps one of the answers she was searching for. Leaning back in her rocker and raising the flashlight into position, she opened the diary to the first page and began to read.

  June 12, 1912

  Dear Diary,

  I am alone in my room. Mrs. Hodges thinks to punish me and told me to write in this diary. It will teach me not to draw on the walls. She was very angry and said I was not the lady my mother was. That was very hurtful of her to say. I don’t remember my mother.

  I don’t see what the fuss was all about. After all, it is my room isn’t it? And my drawings are quite lovely. I spent a very long time on the Turk’s cap lily. It is a very difficult shade of red-orange to get right. There are so many different kinds of wildflowers. Lowrance knows the names of all of them. I hope that by knowing the names and habits of things wild, I shall feel a little less afraid of the woods. I do not wish to be afraid.

  Daddy says that fear is our greatest enemy. He also tells me that we are most afraid of what we do not know. I believe this, too.

  So that is why I painted wildflowers on the walls. Not to be headstrong or selfish, like Mrs. Hodges said. Not at all! I thought if I painted the flowers on the wall, I would see them each morning when I awoke and each evening before I fell asleep and I would learn their names.

  I do hope Daddy won’t be angry at me. My Daddy is the handsomest man in the county, everybody thinks so. People tell me we both have the Watkins dark eyes. His eyes have so much love in them that seeing them makes me want to try harder to be a good girl. I don’t think Daddy ever sins like I do. I wonder, can ministers sin?

  I won’t write any more in this silly diary. I shall lie in bed and read Wind in the Willows. I wish I could escape from this stuffy old house and live with Rat and Mole at Toad Hall. When I grow up I shall live deep in the woods and fish and hunt and do whatever I want to do—even if I am a girl.

  So, this is good-bye Diary!

  Kate Watkins

  Mia finished the entry and stared into the fire. What a precocious girl, she thought. Mia could almost hear her voice. She reached over to pick up the picture and looked once more into the girl’s face. She saw the challenge in the lift of her chin. There was a maturity to her writing—even wit. Most certainly, there was stubborn will. She smiled ruefully as she set the photograph aside. Wasn’t it amusing that both she and Kate were afraid of the woods, Mia thought, feeling a bond with the young girl.

  And what a lovely idea of hers to paint the wildflowers on the wall. She had once read how Whistler had painted the walls of Lillie Langtry’s drawing room with gold fans because she’d found the room so dull. Mia thought that Kate’s choice of indigenous wildflowers was much more clever. Her mind went to the china she’d discovered in the armoire. Each plate was hand-painted with a
wildflower. Mia smiled, making one more link.

  Eager for more, she tucked a leg beneath her and turned again to the diary.

  June 13

  Dear Diary,

  It is because of Daddy that I have decided to write again in this diary. I would do anything for him. He is more than just my father. He is my teacher. My fly-fishing companion. My best friend.

  Last night he walked slowly along the wall, hands behind his back, studying my paintings. Then he stopped before my painting of the Turk’s cap lily. “A very good rendition,” he told me. “But there should be six segments, not five.” He told me if I was going to be a serious student of nature, then I had to pay attention to the details. He said, “Nature is nothing if not a miracle of details.”

  When Daddy asked me why I had painted on the walls I told him about my plan to learn the names of all things that live in the woods. He liked that idea a lot. I could tell by the look he got in his eyes. It was the same look he gets when he catches a fish. Then he called me his own little naturalist. Me! I’ve never heard him call Lowrance a naturalist. He went to his room and brought back his fishing diary. Its binding looked like the heavy tweed of his outdoors suit. There were neat black lines that were filled with my father’s tidy script and pencil drawings of trout and the flies he used to catch them.

  I never even knew there was such a thing as a fishing diary! But I knew at that very moment that someday I was going to make a fishing diary of my very own. I looked up at Daddy and he laughed and said I looked like a trout on a hook! Daddy told me to take pains to be accurate with my entries. He said it is better to write one entry carefully than to write a dozen willy-nilly. In life, he said, I should trust my own eye and not rely on what others tell me.

  This is my plan. I will begin with wildflowers. Then I will move on to trees. Then critters. By the end of summer I will know as much as Lowrance. Maybe more. Most of all, I will not be afraid. I will make the woods my own!

  Very truly yours,

  Kate, the Brave

  Mia leaned back and rocked for a long time. Gazing at the fire, she thought of the words she read and the spirit behind them. Even though just a girl, Kate had confronted her fears. Children were innocent of their own mortality and it made them fearless. Yet Mia felt that spirit still lived in all women’s souls. Don’t we all need to go bravely into the woods? she thought.

  As she rocked, Mia stared into the flames and saw herself lying on the gurney, waiting to be rolled into surgery. She was pale and thin, looking up into the fluorescent lighting, trying to be brave knowing that in a short while her body would be cut in a battle to save her life. She was offering her breast as a sacrifice to the gods with hope they would be appeased and let her live. Mia remembered the fear she felt when the oxygen mask was placed over her mouth, wondering for one black moment if she would ever wake up.

  She had confronted death, and hadn’t she found her way back from that darkness? Wasn’t that brave, Mia asked herself?

  Mia stopped rocking, rose from the chair, and went from window to window, opening them wide to the dark. What, she demanded of herself, was she afraid of? The night had no hold on her. Every moment of her life was a victory over death. Standing in the middle of the room she called out, “I am Mia the Brave!”

  Chapter Five

  Dear Diary,

  Today I begin my life as a naturalist! Isn’t it a lark? I am beginning a nature journal and will go into the woods to gather wildflowers. I adore them! When I walk into a mountain meadow and see bursts of pale pinks, shimmering white, deepest reds, I am certain I am entering a fairy land. Or when Daddy takes me with him to the river early in the morning, I see the daintiest blossoms peeking at me through the rocks. I think I’ve never seen anything more lovely.

  Every day I will go a little bit farther into the woods. Day by day, until I am no longer afraid.

  Very truly yours,

  Kate, the Naturalist

  Mia hummed as she drove down the dusty road. She should be tired. She’d read Kate’s diary until the wee hours of the morning and woke when she heard the early birdsongs outside her open window. She laughed aloud. How wonderful it was to let the music in!

  She’d never slept so well. Certainly not since she’d arrived in the mountains. Before going to bed she’d put that ridiculous, humongous knife back in the kitchen drawer where it belonged. With the window above her bed open, Mia fell asleep to sounds she’d found frightening earlier: the melodic calls of a night bird, the hoots of an owl, the stirring of trees in the wind lulling her to sleep with whispered rustling. She’d slept without a single bad dream or haunting memory. And when she woke, she wasn’t sweaty and groggy. She felt deliciously refreshed. Looking up at the sky, she saw it was a brilliant cerulean without a cloud in sight. Mia tapped the wheel in time to the music on the radio.

  She went first to Shaffer’s for coffee. The little bell clanged as she came in, and Becky called out a welcoming hello.

  “You’re back!” she exclaimed from behind the counter.

  This time Mia wasn’t aloof; she smiled warmly and ordered a coffee and a powdered-sugar cruller. Then she pulled out a second chair at her table. “Care to join me for a cup?” she called out.

  Becky’s brows rose. Then she smiled wide and came around, limping slightly. Gripping the sides of her chair she eased gracefully, though slowly, into the chair.

  “How are you?” Mia asked, concerned about her leg.

  Becky adjusted her seat and shrugged. “There are good days and bad days. Today’s a pretty good one.” She waved her hand, eager to change the subject. “Anyway, how are you doing up there in the Watkins cabin? Any good ghost stories to share?”

  “Not unless you consider the lights going out a ghostly event.”

  “Really? They just went out?” Becky slapped her hand on the table and her eyes gleamed. “I knew it. The place is haunted. What did you do? Whooee, I’d’ve been out of that cabin and in my car in two seconds flat. Gimp leg or no.”

  Mia laughed and shook her head. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it wasn’t a ghost. It was the toaster oven. I blew a fuse.”

  Becky laughed heartily, enjoying the joke. “Damn. And here I thought all those stories we heard about Kate haunting that house were true.” She wiped her eyes, chuckling again. “I’m thinking you might do best to keep that bit about the toaster oven to yourself. It’s good that folks think that place is haunted. Keeps the kids from going up there if it stands empty. They’re always looking for a place to hang out.”

  “Becky, what do you know about Kate Watkins?”

  Becky took a sip from a mug of steaming coffee.

  “Not too much. She used to be kind of a legend in these parts. I guess you could say she went from famous to infamous. Why?”

  “Living in her cabin makes me curious. That’s all.” She set down her cup and put her chin in her palm. “What was she famous for? The murder?”

  “No, no, that mess all came later. Our Kate used to be famous for fly-fishing.”

  “Really?” she said, inordinately delighted by this. So Kate made it as a fly fisherwoman after all. She noted that Becky had referred to the woman as our Kate.

  “I didn’t think women did much fly-fishing back in the nineteen hundreds. Wasn’t it a male sport? All clubbish and no-women-allowed kind of thing?”

  “It still is in some parts. When anglers come in to pick up their coffee and doughnut, I still hear some old farts grumble about women in the streams, like they have no right to be there.” She harrumphed. “But it’s changing. We’ve got groups of women coming up here to fish now, same as men.”

  “So Kate was a pioneer.”

  “I guess. Of course, she had the social standing to back it up. When you got money, you can get away with a lot and no one gives you grief. At least not to your face.”

  “Oh? What social standing?”

  Becky looked at her sideways. “She was a Watkins.”

  When Mia still looked at her wi
th puzzlement, Becky said, “You know this town is called Watkins Mill, don’t you? She was one of those Watkinses.”

  “I’m not from these parts so I don’t know the family. Are they like the Vanderbilts?”

  “Well, hell, honey. There aren’t many that can stand with the Vanderbilts. You ever been to the Biltmore? Who hasn’t, eh? Such opulence! Some two hundred and fifty rooms in that house. And I complain about cleaning my eight. Famous people from all over the world came to visit them back when.” She reached over to help herself to a piece of Mia’s cruller. “The Watkins house isn’t too shabby, though. Did you ever see Watkins Lodge just up the road a piece?” She popped the doughnut into her mouth, sprinkling her chest with powdered sugar.

  “I’ve seen the brochure.” Mia recalled the impressive Queen Anne mansion on the rolling grounds. She had thought Kate came from money. The diary photograph indicated a certain lifestyle, and her father had a housekeeper and a cook. But she didn’t expect the level of wealth that would have been required to live at an estate. “That’s quite a grand place.”

  “It’s been added on to over the years, of course. All the new buildings, the lodge, the spa—none of that was there back when Kate lived there. But the main house, that’s where she grew up.”

  Mia smiled, thinking of the little girl’s bedroom walls painted with wildflowers. She wondered if the child’s paintings were still there, lighting up the plain white walls. Probably not. They undoubtedly had been painted over by new owners. Made into the dull and proper hotel room.

  Becky took another sip of her coffee, getting a little caught up in the topic. “The Watkins family owned a chunk of land hereabouts, too. Thousands of acres. But then the Depression came and they went under.”

  “That’s when they sold their house?”

  “It was a common enough story back then. Lots of estates were sold off.”

  “The loss of a fortune is hardly a scandal or a mystery.”