The Widow's Ferry

by Dorothy A. Bell

  Looking into his honest, clear blue eyes, Anora knew it wouldn’t matter what she said to him. How could he understand that the girl she’d been no longer existed. Dreams were for fools. Her heart had shriveled up and died long ago, her soul pummeled to dust. “You don’t know what I’m talking about. I won’t sit here and argue with you, Whit, you could never understand. I love that you haven’t changed, but I haven’t. I’m not the same. I can’t run the ferry. I can’t do it. I want more than anything to hold on to it and the landing, but I can’t run the ferry. The water, I can’t go near the water.”

  He shook his head at her, a smile on his lips. He put his hand over hers and said, “We’ll go to town tomorrow and buy supplies. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. I bet you get up a kettle of soup or stew when the Willa Jane comes in?”

  Anora blinked at him, her eyes dry, stinging. “The Willa Jane, yes, she’ll be here soon. I’d forgotten. God, what will I do then? Ruben ups the price of ferrying when the Willa Jane is in. Food keeps folks from grumbling too much about the wait and the price.”

  Whit popped his third biscuit into his mouth and then licked his finger before asking, “What do you think about that?” He sat back in his chair, legs stretched out toward the fire.

  “What…do…you mean…what do I think?”

  “Well, do you want to run it that way?” he asked, gazing into the fire in the grate.

  She shook her head. “I’ve wondered why people put up with it. I never understood why someone didn’t pop him in the nose for price gouging—food or no food.”

  “Good,” Whit said, swinging back around, arms and elbows on the table, hands clasped together and leaning toward her.

  “We’ll get a couple of boards and post the fares on both sides of the river. Then you get up a sign, and price your vittles. You might want another sign, maybe sell some of them eggs and the butter. Don’t forget to say, ‘will trade for goods.’ I know Ruben was smart that way. You’re gonna be smart too but fair.

  “I’ll stay on until you get the hang of it, but dang it, Anora, if you ain’t gonna be something famous here about. You wait and see.”

  Whit threw back his head, laughed, and jumped up from his chair. Before Anora could brace herself, he swooped down on her, gathered her into his arms, and twirled her about the room, laughing, singing Sweet Betsy From Pike.

  She stiffened in his arms, his thumbs pushed up under her rib cage. She tried to lose his hold on her, but her arms simply could not push hard enough. Her elbows collapsed in on her at each attempt. Around, around he twirled her, the room spinning nauseatingly fast. Finally, he lowered her, allowing her feet to touch the floor. Gasping for air, closing her eyes against the still spinning ceiling and walls, she tucked her head into the crook of his neck.

  “Oh God, Anora, it’s grand to hold you in my arms,” he said, his breath warm on her cheek. “Last night, cold, in the barn, I thought maybe you wouldn’t let me hold you ever again. But here you are.”

  Leaving Whit’s arms dangling at his side and mouth slack, she shoved out of his embrace and headed to the porch for some much needed open space and fresh air. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and journeyed back in time. She thought about all the nights she’d come out there, bleeding, torn, pummeled, weary of her existence.

  Tonight, she couldn’t help but think of what could be. What she might be able to do. She didn’t dare call it hope.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Willa Jane had come and gone. The bustle, the noise and chaos, had kept Anora’s mind occupied. She hadn’t noticed before, but among all the men who arrived to greet the Willa Jane, there were women and children. The women stayed close to their wagons, minding their broods. From time to time, they gathered off to the side, heads together, disapproving gazes following her.

  This time Anora heard, and understood, their insulting, whispered speculations, suspicions, and criticisms. Which ranged in topic from her clothes, her hair, her cooking, but most especially, her scandalous living arrangement with the handsome new ferryman.

  The wind had a bite to it this morning, frost on the ground. She’d promised Whit several days ago she’d come down to watch the ferry cross the river. Seated close to Roscoe and Pete, she felt safe there.

  A week had passed since Whit’s arrival. The oxen and milk cow had plenty of feed now, as did the goats and chickens. She’d bartered for a slab of bacon herself, and a haunch of venison and a crock of honey. All things considered, she could chalk this week’s rush of business up as a success, albeit exhausting. Past experience had taught her, hard work kept one from examining their thoughts too closely.

  Behind her, two farm wagons rattled down the hill. One, a covered wagon driven by a man accompanied by his wife and teenage son, the other, a rickety, uncovered wagon, pulled by a pair of boney oxen. A young woman, not more than twelve or thirteen, sat beside the young man holding the reins. The wagon, the oxen, and the young couple appeared travel worn, tattered, burnt, and gaunt.

  Their conversation with Whit echoed up and down the river, and she could hear every word from her vantage point. The young woman apparently didn’t like the looks of the ferry. The young man assured her it would get them across. Whit didn’t help the matter any, joking, recounting how many times he’d almost sunk the ferry this past week. The young man attempted to laugh him off. The child-bride started to snivel. Whit loaded the wagon and team onto the ferry while the groom did his best to sooth away his bride’s fears.

  Anora could sympathize, the water, the movement, the smell, unleased memories, memories she’d thought buried. Sitting there on the bank of the river left her with no choice but to face her fear of the water, and the reasons behind those fears.

  Any revelations she had, she kept to herself. When there weren’t any customers, Whit joined her, sitting next to her, pointing out the way the current moved and how the shadows on the river changed the color of the water as the sun arched across the sky. He thought it beautiful, Anora thought the beauty of the river a cruel deception.

  Instinctively, she knew better than to share the details of what had happened to her Aunt Carrie with Whit. He had a tendency to discount whatever horror she dared to reveal, urging her to let go of the past. She didn’t see how she’d ever be able to do that.

  Pieces of one day in particular had never made sense until yesterday. Relaxed, watching the filtered sunlight skip across the water, not thinking of any one thing, Whit, ready to cast off, slipped, accidently kicking a sheep on the nose. The animal bleated and bucked. Whit, to avoid getting trampled by a flock of sheep, fell backward into the river. Luckily, the ferry hadn’t left the landing, and he sat in water up to his armpits in the shallows close to shore. The episode brought Anora to her feet, her heart in her throat.

  Memories flooded in—she remembered everything in a blinding flash of light—Ruben kicking her aunt in the face. In her mind’s eye she saw herself, the deep, wide, and dark river, Ruben and Aunt Carrie. She relived the shock of it, the terror—her feelings of helplessness. Carrie, fighting desperately to hold on to the slippery sides of the raft, every second of that day opened up before her.

  Before yesterday, in her head, she’d heard the cries of a baby mingled with the sounds of Carrie’s cries for help, but she’d discounted the cries, set them aside. Ruben’s chilling laughter echoed in her head, drowning them out.

  She’d assumed those cries were the product of her imagination, associating them with the fact Carrie was with child. Today, sitting there, her face warmed by the sun, she recognized those cries. Louise, the pet goat Carrie loved and cared for so carefully. Louise, she cried like that. She had only one eye, a birth defect; she followed Carrie like a dog. Ruben despised that goat, more than once he’d come near to beating it to death.

  Today, she concentrated on Louise, the sounds she’d made and purposefully called up the details of that gruesome, cruel day.

  Ruben feigned panic, stumbling back. He bumped Louise into the water
off the back of the raft. The poor animal, helplessly tethered, was dragged against the current and disappeared into the watery depths of the river.

  Carrie, about to get up on the box of the wagon, stopped the second she realized what had happened. She made a futile effort to reach out to grab the rope that tethered Louise to the raft.

  The raft floated about fifteen or twenty feet away from shore, well within Anora’s vision, and she could clearly see Ruben elbow Carrie into the deep water. Carrie’s arms thrashed and reached out for the raft. Ruben, on his knees, his hand out, burst out laughing. He came to his feet, tossed his head back, hands on his hips, and laughed up to the heavens. “To hell with you, you pregnant, worthless bitch. Go to your maker.”

  Carrie clawed at the back of the raft, but he kicked her, and she screamed, blood covering her face.

  Then the scene went oddly quiet, the only sounds the water and the wind sighing in the trees of the fall afternoon.

  Anora deserted herself there in the bloody water, cold and deep. Her diary entries ended there in a blank page. The one sure thing she’d taken away, death lay in wait for her in the river. Not an easy death, but a hard, harsh, strangling death. Ruben did all he could to reinforce her fears. Sitting up there on the bank, she heard every one of his whispered premonitions, his threats, his promises; cold and clear.

  Shaking herself free of her self-imposed panic, she returned to the moment, her eyes focusing on the two men coming down to the ferry landing on the Takenah side. Mounted on a big red chestnut horse, the first man, wearing a tan hat and a red and yellow Hudson Bay coat, came down the track at a leisurely pace. The other man followed close behind, wearing a black hat and a dark plaid coat, riding on a big-boned sorrel. Both men stopped at the water’s edge.

  Paxton Hayes and Hank Reason, she hadn’t seen them since Ruben had left.

  She’d wondered about them, about Isabell and Lydia. It crossed her mind more than once that they probably wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her now, now that Whit Comstock had taken up residence in her barn. They were right—a child shouldn’t be exposed to people like her. It hurt. She’d spent a nice day with them…but that was all. She’d keep that occasion as one of the few good memories of her present situation.

  ∙•∙

  Hank pulled up his horse beside Big Red.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Paxton said. Hank looked across river and waved to the girl sitting on the bank near the oxen.

  “She’s waving at us. Come on, you wanted to see her last night. At least wave to her.”

  “I’ll see her soon enough if you succeed in convincing her Lydia and Isabell need her at the house.”

  Hank looked back across the river, the ferry had started on its way back to them. “I don’t know if I can do it alone. I thought you’d help persuade her. She doesn’t want to cross the river. I think she’s really afraid of the water. It isn’t going to be easy for her. I’m surprised she’s sitting so close to the water’s edge.”

  Tipping his head toward the cowboy, Paxton said under his breath, “I wonder if he knows why she’s scared. It kills me to think she’d confide in that drifter. He doesn’t give a damn about her.”

  The ferry ground into shore.

  Hank wondered the same thing and a lot more.

  ∙•∙

  Anora stood when Hank boarded the ferry. She watched Paxton dismount. His gaze locking with hers, although the river lay between them, he waved to her. She waved back.

  A premonition of something life-changing sent a shiver across her shoulders and down her spine. She’d been in limbo a long time, waiting in the dark shadows of her fears and torment. Now a glimmer of light beckoned and teased her. Could she have more? The prospect frightened her. And yet, good or bad, she knew she couldn’t avoid it or stop it from coming.

  When the ferry came to ground at the landing, she heard Whit ask Hank, “You headed over to your place? Anora told me you’d staked out a pretty spot back there on the hill.”

  “No, not today. I’d thought to get up there on Sunday, but got sidetracked with the Willa Jane coming in. I need to speak to Mrs. Talbot. You seem to be doing all right running the ferry?”

  “Oh yeah, it’s easy once you get the hang of it.”

  Hank nodded to her. She heard him say to Whit, “I’m surprised to see her down here.”

  “Her pa had a big ferry, you know?”

  Hank shook his head. Whit went on, “Oh yeah, she told me all about it when we were on the wagon train together. She used to make the crossings with him all the time when she was a little girl. Her pa had a ferry on the Mississippi River going between Iowa and Illinois. Now that’s a river, wide and flood, you ain’t seen a flood until you’ve seen the Mississippi go out.

  “I thought maybe if she spent some time watching the ferry, and the river, she might remember more of those times, and get over the other stuff. You know it’s just like getting bucked off a horse—you can’t let your fears beat you. You have to get right back on.”

  Hank cast a glance in her direction, and Anora waved. He nodded to Whit. “I’ll be going right back after I talk to Anora.”

  ∙•∙

  Hank walked up the bank, walking toward her, he had time to study her. He didn’t understand it, but away from her, in his memory, he thought Anora a fine-looking young woman. But each time he came face-to-face with her, he saw more, seeing her as if for the first time.

  Today the change in her appearance stuck him particularly hard. She looked her age, a young woman of nineteen, in full bloom. Her complexion, smooth, creamy, fresh as buttermilk, a faint blush of peach on her cheeks. Her wide gray eyes sparkled, fringed in delicate long lashes the color of honey. Her hair had more volume today, glossy, more luxuriant than he recalled. She wore it pulled back in a long, loose braid that hung down her back to her waist. Fine wisps of feathery curls framed her face.

  She had on the faded, rose-colored dress with the little blue flowers on it. He recalled she’d worn it the day he’d planted his trees. It fit her around the waist and bodice now; back then it’d hung on her like a sack.

  Anora tipped her head to the side, looking everywhere but into his eyes. She folded one arm across her chest and lowered her head. He wanted to see into her eyes, maybe then he could assure himself she was truly all right.

  He stood quietly before her for a moment. When he reached out to touch her cheek, she pulled back and raised her head, eyes blinking, cheeks flushed. He put his hand down to his side. “You’re looking well,” he heard himself say.

  He wanted to say, whisper to her, Every time I see you, you’ve grown more beautiful. Let me kiss your rose-petal, soft lips. I have to hold your firm body in my arms—feel the warmth of your skin under my hands.

  Disgusted with his thoughts he called himself a lecherous, damn fool. Just because Lydia isn’t feeling well enough to make love is no excuse to go lusting after another women. He’d never done so before—before Anora. It isn’t…women…I lust after, it’s Anora Claire.

  “I’m feeling very well,” Anora said, pulling her arm tight across her chest, her voice trembling. She put up her chin to ask, “How are Isabell and Lydia? I hope they’re not unwell. Lydia must be close to her time?”

  The question worked like a bucket of snow-melt river water. Getting himself under control, he managed a smile for her. “You’re a mind reader. They’re why I’m here.”

  ∙•∙

  Anora shivered, uncomfortable with her newfound intuition. Hank, Mr. Reason, she reminded herself, the way he looked at her, the warmth of his gaze, intense, overflowing with unspoken regard, had her body heating with desire, desire she shouldn’t understand or recognize.

  Whit had followed him up the bank, taking his place beside her, he helped to squash her fantasies.

  Anora cast a glance across the river where Mr. Hayes paced back and forth along the water’s edge. “Is Mr. Hayes unwell? He didn’t come with you?”

  Mr. Reason shook his
head. “No, Paxton is well enough. He decided you might be…well…intimidated, if both of us ganged up on you. You see, we really need your help.”

  Beside her, Whit drew himself up and placed his hand possessively around her shoulders. “How ‘bout some coffee?” he suggested in that congenial, cozening tone he used when manipulating folks. His manner set Anora’s teeth on edge, reminding her of Ruben. Oh, Whit would never hit, but he did maneuver her into doing what he wanted, when he wanted. “It ain’t exactly warm out here. Go ahead, Anora, you and Mr. Reason go on up and have a cup of coffee. I need to check on the cable. I’ll be up, if nobody else comes along. You might bring me a cup when you head back, Mr. Reason?”

  Uncomfortable with Mr. Reason watching her every move and expression, Anora didn’t dare do more than nod in agreement. At the root, Whit really did have a good soul, he just wasn’t…she couldn’t explain it, what she could live with. His simplified, uncomplicated view of life frankly bored her. She found their talk boring. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew it wasn’t Whit Comstock. Although he’d be forever dear to her heart, as a friend. He’d come to her rescue, and for that she would always love him.

  Whit started to walk away but stopped to give her a patronizing pat on the shoulder. “You call me if you need me.” The warning look he gave Mr. Reason made her blush in shame. Whit wasn’t stupid, could be he’d seen something in her eyes that gave away her feelings. But he had no cause to suspect Mr. Reason would ever forget he was a happily married man.

  “He’s protective of you,” she heard Mr. Reason say.

  Whit had made his way down to the ferry, where he’d started to inspect the cable lines.

  She started for the cabin. “He’s leaving, you know.”

  Mr. Reason rushed to get in step with her. “Yeah, Paxton and I figured he would. Are you all right with that?”

  “Oh my, yes. I wouldn’t want him to stay. I don’t deny I need him. I can’t believe he found me again. But he has his dreams. He can’t stop talking about all his plans and aspirations to go on one cattle drive, or what he’s going to do when he goes to Mexico. Whit will always be off chasing his dreams.”