The Widow's Ferry

by Dorothy A. Bell

With the bedroom door ajar, thinking she’d make less noise if she had to go down to heat more water in the middle of the night, she couldn’t miss the sound of the loud tick-tock and chimes of the downstair’s clock.

  Mr. Reason returned to his room shortly after the half hour of nine o’clock. Immediately, she heard him coming back the hall and go down stairs. When the clock chimed half past the hour of ten o’clock, she pulled a blanket about her shoulders, padded barefoot to the door, and looked up and down the hall. A soft yellow glow beamed up the stairwell, not from the kitchen, but a front parlor, she thought.

  A knit throw wrapped around her shoulders, treading lightly, she went downstairs and to the half-open sliding panel door of the front parlor. In the middle of the room, sitting upon a round, scalloped, cherry wood piecrust table, sat the little coffin, surrounded by glowing white candles. Torn between wanting to give comfort and the fear of discovery, she stood frozen as Mr. Reason laid his son in his final resting place. Muttering to himself, swiping the tears from his cheeks on his shirt sleeve, she longed to help and comfort him.

  Without thinking, she entered the room, staying on the periphery of the light. When she spoke, her voice came out barely a whisper, but loud enough to give Mr. Reason a start.

  He jerked to attention, eyes wide, head up. In the soft glow of the candle-light, she could see the perspiration on his forehead and upper lip, even though to Anora the room felt chilly and drafty. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Lydia wanted Michael…Carter, to wear this christening gown and bonnet. She wanted to dress him, but every time she tried, she burst into tears. I promised her I’d do it, but I…I can’t…do it. I can’t…” he said, shoulders slumping forward, arms dangling down uselessly. Anora came a little farther into the room.

  Head bowed, he backed away from the casket and fell into a big overstuffed chair behind him and put his hands to his head.

  Anora stepped cautiously to the coffin. The little boy lay pale and stiff, his lace and cream-colored satin christening gown half over his face. She unbuttoned the tiny pearl buttons at the back of the neck and pulled it over his cold little head, amazed she could do it without flinching, without emotion. Then she lifted his arms, so soft, feeling the delicate bones beneath the flesh, guiding them through the sleeves of the gown. Taking his fragile hands, she pulled the cuffs of the sleeves over them, then lay his hands at his sides. To the side of the coffin, she found a pair of crocheted booties and put them on his narrow little feet, tying the blue drawstring ribbons on each foot. Very carefully she shifted his little body to bring the bottom of the gown all the way down to encase his little torso. Tucking the shift around his legs and feet, she pulled the lace string up, tying it in a bow. She placed the frivolous little bonnet on his downy head—a silly thing, she thought, for a boy to wear, blue with white lace and little sequins on it. Smiling down at the infant, a tear fell unchecked down her cheek.

  “There you are, sweetheart, sleep well, Michael,” she whispered down to him, stroking his petal soft cheek with the tip of her finger. “Come see,” she whispered to Mr. Reason. He rose wearily to his feet to stand beside her, looking down at his son.

  He sobbed. “Goodbye, Michael.”

  “Funny, isn’t it, how memories come along and take us by surprise,” she said, without considering where her comment would take her.

  Michael. Mr. Reason thought of this little boy as Michael, and now, so did she. No one else in the house, except maybe Isabell, knew he’d made a slip.

  Unaware of probing into his past, as no one had ever done, not even those closest to him, she continued, saying, “You don’t want to remember, then there it is, and you can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “You know?” he asked, startled again, shaking, sweat glistening on his upper lip and forehead.

  “Oh yes, I know all about memories. It’s all I do—remember things I’d like to forget. They come up and out of nowhere, certainly without my permission. Sometime, if you’d like, you could tell me about Michael? He must’ve been a very special little person if this little fellow reminds you of him.”

  “I can’t,” Mr. Reason said, shaking his head. “I can lose this nightmare. Bury it. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.”

  “It’s a vision, isn’t it?” she said. “You can’t get away from it once you recognize the memory. It stays with you, stains you, brands your brain.”

  With his hands gripping the chair, he sat, staring at her, bloodshot eyes unblinking. “Yes, that’s it. I didn’t mean to remember. I hoped never to do so. I wasn’t very old, maybe Isabell’s age. I can’t sleep now, it’s in my head. If I close my eyes, it’s there.”

  “This pillow?” she asked, picking up the pillow off the floor. The blue satin, cool in her hands. “Do you want that beneath his head?”

  He lurched to his feet. “Oh, God, yes. I want this done before morning. We’ll bury him tomorrow afternoon up on the hill. Lydia insists she’ll be up and able to go. Paxton thinks friends and neighbors will start dropping by in the morning. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to smile. I don’t want to…I want to shout and slam doors and throw chairs.”

  “I thought maybe that’s why you went out to the barn,” she said and smiled ever so gently into his weary eyes.

  “Nothing of worth out there to break, and the horses didn’t seem to mind the curses at all, not even a flinch. Anyway, I didn’t find any satisfaction in the exercise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Seated in the wingback chair, Mr. Reason stared into the flickering candle flames. Anora slipped away, leaving him with his grief.

  Weary to the bone, she remembered the bundle of dirty, muddy clothes she’d left on the back porch. In the dark, she brushed what she could see of the mud off her cape and put her dress in a pan of soapy water to soak. Concerned, before going upstairs to her bed, she checked in on Mr. Reason.

  Sound asleep, chin tucked in, arms folded across his chest, he looked cold. Hesitating in the doorway, she’d spied a green crocheted throw on the settee and carefully draped it over his chest. A lock of hair had fallen over one eye. She reached out to tuck it back, but stopped herself. Sticking her brazen finger between her teeth, she backed out of the room.

  Sleep eluded her. When she closed her eyes, the image of the lifeless infant, the translucent pallor of his skin, the veined, blueish hue of his closed eyelids, haunted her.

  Awakened by Isabell coughing in her sleep, she heard the hall clock strike the hour of three. The call of a killdeer rushed her out of the room and downstairs, forgetting to hide the petticoat and chemise she wore to bed. In the kitchen, she fumbled in the dark to rekindle the fire in the cast-iron kitchen stove.

  Behind her, a voice in the dark caused her heart to skip several beats. “I’ll do that.”

  “Mr. Reason?” Releasing a sigh of relief, she said, “You gave me a fright. Isabell’s coughing. I came down to heat the kettle.”

  With amazing efficiency, he lit a candle on the shelf by the doorway. The candlelight moved toward her until she could make out the buttons unbuttoned down the front of his white long johns to the light reflecting off the silver belt buckle on his brown, cord trousers. Her gaze flew quickly up to the shadowed, sharp planes of his strong face. Tortured by insomnia, his eyes had sunk into two dark craters beneath his heavy dark brows.

  “You go on, I’ll bring up the water. We don’t want her to wake up and have no one there.”

  The candle came closer; she could feel the heat of the flame. In the dimness, their gazes met, and her heart stopped beating, the world stopped revolving. Resisting her instinct to hold him, rock him in her arms, Anora reached out to him. He shook his head and turned his gaze away. Cheeks burning, she lowered her arm, ducked her head, and made good her escape.

  Mrs. Reason’s voice calling, “Isabell? Hank?” sent Anora rushing up the stairs and down to the bedroom at the front of the house.

  “Mrs. Reason, it’s me, Anora,” s
he said, looking around the half-opened door. “Mr. Reason’s downstairs boiling water for a steam. Isabell’s coughing in her sleep. I felt her forehead earlier, there’s no fever.”

  With that said, Mrs. Reason lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. Anora came closer to the bed to ask, “Would you like something? Are you in pain? What can I do?”

  Silence hung on the air for a few moments, then in a soft, miserable voice that wavered, Mrs. Reason asked her, “Please, Anora, call me Lydia. I need to use the chamber pot. Will you help me stand? It’s under the bed. I feel as limp as an old dish rag.”

  “Shhh, now, you need some time to build your strength.” With the chore done, Anora helped Lydia back into bed. “Would you like a candle? Are you hungry or thirsty?”

  “Maybe some laudanum? Just a little. I’m so tired. Hank? Is Hank all right?”

  “Hank is fine,” Mr. Reason said, coming into the room. “Anora, if you want to go see what you can do for Isabell, I’ll take care of this young lady.”

  Dismissed, Anora smiled in the dark. He did love his wife. Downstairs, the look that had passed between them, that was Mr. Reason being Mr. Reason—kind, loving, caring Mr. Reason. He couldn’t help himself. And she would not read more into it than that—ever.

  For a while, replacing the poultice, mixing the vapors for Isabell, she could hear Mr. Reason’s soothing voice talking to Lydia. The house went quiet, and Anora assumed they’d at last gone to sleep.

  Sitting in the window seat, her gaze fixed on the open field to the east. She rested her eyes from time to time, long since surrendering to the fact she wouldn’t sleep. Shortly before six o’clock, the sky began to lighten.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed a shadow in the doorway. Barefooted, soundlessly, Mr. Reason entered the room. He went directly to Isabell’s bed and leaned down to kiss the little girl’s curly top. Heaving a weighty sigh, he backed away from the bed and sat next to her. “No fever,” he said.

  Still in his trousers, no shirt, just his long johns, his hair rumpled, unshaven, Anora thought him the most handsome man she’d ever seen. His nearness quickened her pulse. She blushed in the darkness for her unseemly thoughts.

  Out of the blue, he started to talk, his voice barely a whisper—more of a hum, a hum with words. “My mother, Eleanor, she died in childbirth. God was merciful. My father…the man who sired me, Curtis Bond—like Ruben, an animal.”

  Head bowed, he laid his hand on her arm, fingers relaxed. “Curtis remarried a little girl, Julie Boyd—thirteen, maybe. Curtis made her life hell. Julie took good care of me, protected me. She had a baby, a boy, Michael.

  “I helped her to deliver. I was six or seven, I guess. The old man started in on her right after, mad at having another mouth to feed. In a rage, he threw Michael against the door. Broke his neck, he died.

  “Curtis left—gone for almost a month. Julie wanted to run, but too sick to move, she couldn’t. She told me how to clean the baby. We dressed him up to look nice. I found an apple box and painted it with whitewash. I remember dressing his little body, trying hard to fix the box nice for her. We buried him up on a little rise not far from the house.”

  Anora put her hand to her mouth to hold back her emotions of sympathy, empathy, and horror. Her gaze locked to his moving lips, ears straining, she hung on to his every word. “When Curtis came back, Julie had to become more inventive and cunning to protect me. At seven, I ran away. I left her. I couldn’t save her. I saved myself.

  He sighed and shuddered, his gaze moving to the coming light of day. “The Reasons took me in. I wiped those first seven years of my life right out of my head. I never once looked back.”

  Head tilted to the side, his slid his hand from her arm to his thigh. “Not once,” he said to her face. “Not once, until the day I met you and Ben Talbot. And now, because of Carter Boyd, I’m reliving what happened to Michael—how he looked, small and fragile, eyes wide, startled, head lolling to one side. In my head, I hear Julie’s screams.”

  Her fault. All her fault. No words could ever express Anora’s sorrow, her guilt, her regret. “I’m sorry,” she said, knowing her offering inadequate. Without thinking, she asked, “Lydia? Have you told all of this to Lydia?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ve never told anyone. The Reasons and the Hayes families assumed my family had died of influenza, and I never thought to correct them. A lot of folks perished of influenza at that time.”

  The quiet, it was as if the house were holding its breath. The clock downstairs struck the half-past six. Anora put her hand over his. He turned it over and brought her cool fingers up to his warm lips. His eyes closed for a brief second, then he released her and came to his feet on a heavy sigh. “It’s going to be another long day. We’ll bury Carter on the hill across the river. Lydia wants to come. I don’t know if she can. I don’t think Isabell is well enough. Do you mind staying with her?”

  “Not at all,” she said. He turned his head, and the light from the window reflecting in his eyes pinned her to the wall behind her. For a long moment, he stared at her, looking at her again in that hungry way that made her think they had more than friendship between them.

  Nervous and self-conscious, she said, “I’ll be happy to keep Isabell company. I…I…don’t think I want to go back across the river so soon anyway.”

  Blinking, he shook off whatever he’d been thinking to ask her, “Do…do you think…?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The river, I guess…the ferry…do you think you can do it?”

  “I don’t know. Barney can’t work the ferry, not now spring is coming, he’s needed on the farm. And Whit will leave soon, I know. I’m fine with that. I don’t want him to stay. Unless Ruben shows up, I’ll have to do it if I want to keep the ferry going.”

  “Paxton and I will help if we can.”

  “You’ve already helped me. You’ve all helped me. I don’t feel alone anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Isabell, eyes bright, color in her cheeks, skipped ahead of her down the hall to the bedroom at the front of the house. Anora stopped her outside the door to re-do a couple of her buttons.

  “Is Mama very sad about the baby today?” Isabell asked for the umpteenth time.

  Tugging down the little girl’s dress, Anora said, “She’s very sad. She’ll talk to you about that. I’ll be in your room if your mama needs me.”

  Anora, picking up Isabell’s discards off Isabell’s bedroom floor, straightened when Mr. Hayes came in. She set to work folding the garments, eyes averted. He roamed about, keeping his distance from her, and finally said, “You’re looking very pretty today. The lavender brings out the color of your gray eyes.”

  On alert, she stiffened, wary of the direction in which he would steer this conversation. He huffed, and plopped down onto the edge of the bed, arms stiff. “I couldn’t talk Lydia out of going,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you would,” she said, giving her full attention to folding the blankets on the daybed.

  Hearing him sigh, she turned to look at him. He was absolutely deflated, shoulders slumped eyes cast down to the floor. “It’s good you’re here,” he said, catching her looking at him.

  He patted a spot on the edge of the bed beside him. “Sit down, Anora, I promise I won’t attack.”

  She sat, choosing the wicker chair beside the bed.

  He pulled himself up, took a deep breath, and threw out his chest. Fixing her with his steady gaze, he said, “I like you here. You look at home. Yesterday, after…after the clumsy mess I made of things, I wanted to explain. You see, I’m trying hard to sort my feelings about you. I think one thing that makes me rush heedlessly ahead of myself where you’re concerned, is this country. Oregon is changing, changing fast. I don’t want to waste time. Since coming here, I’ve grabbed hold of everything that’s taken my fancy. And now I’ve taken a fancy to you, but you’re not a thing…I know that. But the problem is, I don’t like being made to wait.�
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  Slowly, he came to his feet, towering over her. “All along, since I first saw you standing there on your porch, I’ve been drawn to you.” He crouched down on his haunches before her, hands folded in the prayer position. “You’re a strong woman, Anora Claire,” he said, one hand resting lightly on her knee.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath, feeling nothing but gratitude when he rose and paced in front of her. So far, nothing he’d said made any sense to her.

  “You’re smart, you’ve got good sense. Together we could do big things here.” He waved his arm out, gesturing to the world outside the window. Spinning around, he said, “You could have a house like this. Not this house, but a house like this.”

  His lips were saying one thing, his eyes said something else. When he swooped down on her, eyes bright with excitement, she instinctively pulled away.

  He straightened and folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “Well, I’ve gone and done it again, haven’t I? But know this, Anora Claire, I care for you. I want a better life for you. I can give you a better life. It won’t be easy. We won’t always see eye to eye. And I’m a jealous fool, I know. But it won’t ever be boring. We could have a hell of a good time making this country something great.”

  He held out his hand to her. Temporarily mesmerized by his words of future grandeur, she cautiously placed her fingers in his palm, He covered her hand with his own, then brought her fingers to his lips, his gaze never leaving eyes. “Think it over, Anora.”

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Reason said from the doorway.

  Befuddled and confused, Anora tugged her hand away from Mr. Hayes’s grasp. To cover her embarrassment, she talked too fast. “Isabell is in with Lydia. She’s much better today, talking a mile a minute…she even dressed herself. I promised her a game of checkers.”

  ∙•∙

  Hank tore his gaze away from Anora’s flaming cheeks and set his sights on Paxton, who looked smug and pleased with himself, a smirk on his swollen lips and a gleam in his eye. And to himself, he thought, You could wait until I bury my son, Paxton, before you start your campaign to seduce Anora.