by Lia Matera
“They’re wrong about us, you know,” Killy’s said, as if hearing her thoughts. “We’re fools at times, but we mean well.”
“I’d have said the same to you about Mario and the others, yesterday.”
“Where are they now?”
“A farmhouse, ten or fifteen miles north. Abandoned. It belongs to a dead soldier.”
The marshal would soon find it, she supposed. But would Mario and the others still be there?
A pair of men were coming toward them.
“Was that firecrackers?” one called out.
The other said, “You all right, young lady?”
They were nearly on the dock now. It took Ella a moment to blink them into focus. She recognized William McAdoo, the President’s son-in-law, from newspaper photographs.
“Will you stay with her?” Killy asked. “I have to make an urgent call, but I can’t have her left alone.”
Ella caught her breath. What? Marshal Killy was walking away from her? Trusting strangers to keep her here? When she’d escaped from him twice already?
McAdoo was with Governor Smith, who slipped a hand under her elbow. “You ought to get out of this hot sun, honey.”
Killy looked as if he meant to say something to her. But he didn’t. He turned and ran toward the house.
The men walked her to a boathouse bench. Smith sat beside her. He said to McAdoo, “You go on back, Bill. Tell Roosevelt and Cox not to steal the nomination before I put in a good word for myself.”
McAdoo laughed. He was handsome in the way of rich men, with their unworried smiles and uncrimped brows. “Fine way of saying it won’t be me, next year in San Francisco. When you know it will.”
Smith patted Ella’s hand, on the bench between them. He was sweet-faced man with a soft smile. His jacket was almost as rumpled as his blond and white hair. He said, “I bet the Westfields will give you the rest of the day off if you’re feeling punk. Even useless politicians can make do with only a swarm, and not an outright herd, of servants. Oh, now. Don’t cry.” He fumbled for a handkerchief, setting it on her knee. She looked down at it. An embroidered A and E flanked a larger S. “Can’t be as bad as all that.”
What would he think if he knew she’d nearly killed him?
It was a few minutes before she could speak. She managed to say, “Bless you for Triangle Shirt.” He’d been on a committee to review the factory fire—146 girls burned alive behind locked doors. Those who appointed him wanted a hasty whitewash but he gave them a three-year inquisition. “I worked in a place like that.”
Smith looked sad. “We’re not done yet. Long road ahead. But look there, old McAdoo’s come back.”
“Say,” McAdoo said. “That campaign manager of Palmer’s? Sent me down with a message for you, missy.”
She blotted her tears with Smith’s handkerchief. Killy would return soon with reinforcements. She hoped their interrogation didn’t leave her scarred. One of her neighbors had lost an eye. Another, all her teeth on one side.
“Asked if you remember Jim Corbett?”
“The big game hunter?” Smith said.
“That’s the one,” McAdoo said. “Dashing fellow, remember? Killed that man-eater in India.”
“What about him?” Ella knew this must be important. Killy wouldn’t send a man as august as the President’s son-in-law, the former Secretary of the Treasury, to relay a mere afterthought.
“Said Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim. A few minutes before Corbett shot the cur, it tore apart a girl about your age. That’s what he told me.” McAdoo laughed again. “I hope the story doesn’t frighten you?”
“No.”
“You were talking about … Champawat, is it? That’s what he said. That he didn’t know if he’d see you again later. So when I came to fetch Al—he says they want you at the house, Al—would I please mention this to you.”
Smith said, “Funny way of flirting with a gal.”
Flirting? Ella imagined Killy sitting opposite her in a restaurant. Imagined them discussing politics and history with pleasure and not with dread.
Smith rose. “So they miss me, do they, Bill?”
“How could they not, Al? It’s been a good half hour since we heard how you worked at the Fulton Market, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and vast talents.”
Smith laughed. Ella watched the men as if through a fog.
Killy didn’t know if he’d see her again? He’d said this to McAdoo?
Corbett was always sorry the tiger got a last victim.
Ella stood shakily. She extended Smith’s handkerchief. But he closed his hand around hers. “You keep it, dear.”
For a few minutes, she stood watching Smith and McAdoo walk away.
On the other side of the pond, farmland rolled through the back acres of other rich Washingtonians’ summer estates. Eventually the fields must meet dirt paths and narrow lanes. Not the road that brought her here. That would be roaring with cars soon—law men descending to pull the dynamite from the pond, to question the guests and servants. None were likely to remember Ella carrying the tray in.
Other cars would race to check abandoned farmhouses for miles around. But Mario and the rest would have left by now. Expecting trouble after what they hoped was a horrific explosion. An inestimable blow to the nation’s ruling Party.
She didn’t know how Killy would explain finding the bomb. She hoped it brought him satisfaction, but she knew it would fade. His friend the Attorney General would soon launch his raids. Palmer would bring an iron fist down on a Bolshevik revolution in America, a Red menace, that was chiefly in his own mind. Killy would see his Fighting Quaker bring unwarranted misery to tens of thousands. Then he would feel, perhaps, the way Ella did now.
She started toward the far side of the pond. Buzzing over the water, minute insects caught the sun like glitter. Farther on, rectangles of dirt lay fallow and hedges tumbled with yellow flowers.
Ella didn’t know where she was going. Not home to retrieve the small comforts bought with Mrs. Kingston’s gems. Killy might come looking for her there. He was grateful to her now: She could have let him pull her away from the bomb. She could have let it do its damage.
Later he might repent this favor.
It was bitterly hard to lose everything again. But she’d never meant to be a thief. She’d taken the jewelry thinking Mrs. Kingston had no more use for it. It would only trouble her to keep the proceeds now. She’d have to find another way.
It was worth it to know what Nicky had done. How like him, how brave, to put a sick woman’s needs above his own. To risk all to help a stranger.
Mario told Ella she’d find Nicky again if she came here. And in a sense, she had.
By the time the Westfield estate was far behind her, her arm tingled from clutching Al Smith’s handkerchief so tightly. She would never regret that he’d been spared today.
She wondered if the marshal would ever regret sparing her.
The River Mouth
“The River Mouth” was first published in The Mysterious West, ed. Tony Hillerman, HarperCollins, 1994. It was reprinted in A Moment on the Edge, ed. Elizabeth George, HarperCollins, 2004.
To reach the mouth of the Klamath River, you head west off 101 just south of the Oregon border. You hike through an old Yurok meeting ground, an overgrown glade with signs asking you to respect native spirits and stay out of the cooking pits and the split-log amphitheater. The trail ends at a sand cliff. From there you can watch the Klamath rage into the sea, battering the tide. Waves break in every direction, foam blowing off like rising ghosts. Sea lions by the dozens bob in the swells, feeding on eels flushed out of the river.
My boyfriend and I made our way down to the wet clay beach. The sky was every shade of gray, and the Pacific looked like mercury. We were alone except for five Yurok in rubber boots and che
ckered flannel, fishing in the surf. We watched them flick stiff whips of sharpened wire mounted on pick handles. When the tips lashed out of the waves, they had eels impaled on them. With a rodeo windup, they flipped the speared fish over their shoulders into pockets they’d dug in the sand. We passed shallow pits seething with creatures that looked like short, mean-faced snakes.
We continued for maybe a quarter mile beyond the river mouth. We climbed some small, sharp rocks to get to a tall flat one midway between the shore and the cliff. From there we could see the fishermen but not have our conversation carry down to them.
Our topic of the day (we go to the beach to hash things out) was if we wanted to get married. Because it was a big, intimidating topic, we’d driven almost four hundred miles to find the right beach. We’d had to spend the night in a tacky motel, but this was the perfect spot, no question.
Patrick uncorked the champagne—we had two bottles; it was likely to be a long talk. I set out the canned salmon and crackers on paper plates on the old blue blanket. I kicked off my shoes so I could cross my legs. I watched Pat pour, wondering where we’d end up on the marriage thing.
When he handed me the paper cup of bubbles, I tapped it against his. “To marriage or not.”
“To I do or I don’t,” he agreed.
The air smelled like cold beach, like wet sky and slick rocks and storms coming. At home, the beach stinks like fish and shored seaweed buzzing with little flies. If there are sun-bathers on blankets, you can smell their beer and coconut oil.
“So, Pat?” I looked him over, trying to imagine being married to him. He was a freckly, baby-faced Scot with strange hair and hardly any meat on him. Whereas I was a black-haired mutt who tended to blimp out in the winter and get it back under control in the summer. But the diets were getting harder, and I knew fat women couldn’t be choosers. I was thinking it was time to lock in. And worrying that was an unworthy motive. “Maybe we’re fine the way we are now.” Right away he frowned. “I just mean it’s okay with me the way it is.”
“Because you were married to Mr. Perfect and how could I ever take his place?”
“Hardy-har.” Mr. Perfect meaning my ex-husband had plenty of money and good clothes. Pat had neither right now. He’d just gotten laid off, and there were a thousand other software engineers answering every ad he did.
“I guess he wasn’t an ‘in-your-face child,’” Pat added. Aha. Here we had last night’s fight. “With Mr. Perfect you didn’t even have arguments. He knew when to stop.”
Me and Pat fight on long drives. I say things. I don’t necessarily mean them. It was too soon to call the caterer, I guess.
I held out my paper cup for more. “All I meant was he had more experience dealing with—”
“Oh, it goes without saying!” He poured refills so fast they bubbled over. “I’m a mere infant! About as cleanly as a teenager and as advanced in my political analysis as a college freshman.”
“What is this, a retrospective of old fights? Okay, so it takes some adjustment living with a person. I’ve said things in crabby moments. On the drive up—”
“Crabby moments? You? No, you’re an artist.” You could have wrung the scorn out of the word and still had it drip sarcasm. “Reality’s just more complicated for you.”
I felt my eyes narrow. “I hate that, Patrick.”
“Oh, she’s calling me Patrick.”
Usually I got formal when I got mad. “I’m not in the best mood when I write. If you could just learn to leave me alone then.” Like I said in the car.
His pale brows pinched as he flaked salmon onto crackers. I made a show of shading my eyes and watching a Yurok woman walk toward us. When she got to the bottom of our rock, she called up, “Got a glass for me?”
Usually we were antisocial, which is why we did our drinking at the beach instead of in bars. But the conversation wasn’t going the greatest. A diversion, a few minutes to chill—why not?
“Sure,” I said.
Pat hit me with the angry-bull look, face lowered, brows down, nostrils flared. As she clattered up the rocks, he muttered, “I thought we came here to be alone.”
“Hi there,” she said, reaching the top. She was slim, maybe forty, with long brown hair and a semi-flat nose and darkish skin just light enough to show some freckles. She had a great smile but bad teeth. She wore a black hat almost like a cowboy’s but not as western. She sat on a wet part of the rock to spare our blanket whatever funk was on her jeans (as if we cared).
“Picnic, huh? Great spot.”
I answered, “Yeah,” because Pat was sitting in pissy silence.
She drank some champagne. “Not many people know about this beach. You expecting other folks?”
“No. We’re pretty far from home.”
“This is off the beaten path, all right.” She glanced over her shoulder, waving at her friends.
“We had to hike through Yurok land to get here,” I admitted. “Almost elven, and that wonderful little amphitheater.” I felt embarrassed, didn’t know how to assure her we hadn’t been disrespectful. I’d had to relieve myself behind a bush, but we didn’t do war cries or anything insensitive. “I hope it isn’t private property. I hope this beach isn’t private.”
“Nah. That’d be a crime against nature, wouldn’t it?” She grinned. “There’s a trailer park up the other way. That is private property. But as long as you go out the way you came in, no problem.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know. We heard about this beach on our last trip north, but we didn’t have a chance to check it out. We didn’t expect all the seals or anything.”
“Best time of year, eels come upriver to spawn in the ocean. Swim twenty-five hundred miles, some of them,” she explained. “It’s a holy spot for the Yurok, the river mouth.” A break in the clouds angled light under her hat brim, showing leathery lines around her eyes. “This place is about mouths, really. In the river, the eel is the king mouth. He hides, he waits, he strikes fast. But time comes when he’s got to heed that urge. And he swims right into the jaws of the sea lion. Yup.” She motioned behind her. “Here and now, this is the eel’s judgment day.”
Pat was giving me crabby little get-rid-of-her looks. I ignored him. Okay, we had a lot to talk about. But what are the odds of a real-McCoy Yurok explaining the significance of a beach?
She lay on her side on the blanket, holding out her paper cup for a refill and popping some salmon into her mouth. “Salmon means renewal,” she said. “Carrying on the life cycle, all that. You should try the salmon jerky from the rancheria.”
Pat hesitated before refilling her cup. I let him fill mine too.
“King mouth of the river, that’s the eel,” she repeated. “Of course, the Eel River’s named after him. But it’s the Klamath that’s his castle. They’ll stay alive out of water longer than any other fish I know. You see them flash that ugly gray-green in the surf, and thwack, you get them on your whipstick and flip them onto the pile. You do that a while, you know, and get maybe fifteen, and when you go back to put them in your bucket, maybe eight of the little monsters have managed to jump out of the pit and crawl along the sand. You see how far some of them got and you have to think they stayed alive a good half hour out of the water. Now how’s that possible?”
I lay on my side too, sipping champagne, listening, watching the gorgeous spectacle behind her in the distance: seals bobbing and diving, the river crashing into the sea, waves colliding like hands clapping. Her Yurok buddies weren’t fishing anymore, they were talking. One gestured toward our rock. I kind of hoped they’d join us. Except Pat would really get cranky then.
Maybe I did go too far on the drive up. But I wished he’d let it go.
“So it’s not much of a surprise, huh?” the woman continued. “That they’re king of the river. They’re mean and tough, they got teeth like nails. If they were bigger, man, sharks wouldn’
t stand a chance, never mind seals.” She squinted at me, sipping. “Because the cussed things can hide right in the open. Their silt-barf color, they can sit right in front of a rock, forget behind it. They can look like part of the scenery. And you swim by feeling safe and cautious, whoever you are—maybe some fancy fish swum upriver—and munch. You’re eel food. But the river ends somewhere, you know what I mean? Every river has its mouth. There’s always that bigger mouth out there waiting for you to wash in, no matter how sly and bad you are at home. You heed those urges and leave your territory, and you’re dinner.”
Pat was tapping the bottom of my foot with his. Tapping, tapping urgently like I should do something.
That’s when I made up my mind: Forget marriage. He was too young. Didn’t want to hear this Yurok woman talk and was tapping on me like, Make her go away, Mom. I had kids, two of them, and they were grown now and out of the house. And not much later, their dad went too (though I didn’t miss him and I did miss the kids, at least sometimes). And I didn’t need someone fifteen years younger than me always putting the responsibility on me. I paid most of the bills, got the food together (didn’t cook, but knew my delis), picked up around the house, told Pat what he should read because engineers don’t know squat about literature or history, and every time someone needed getting rid of or something social had to be handled or even just a business letter had to be written, it was tap-tap-tap, Oh, Maggie, could you please…?
I reached behind me and shoved Pat’s foot away. If he wanted to be antisocial, he could think of a way to make the woman leave himself. We had plenty of time to talk, just the two of us. I didn’t want her to go yet.
“Got any more?” the Yurok asked.
I pulled the second bottle out of our beat-up backpack and opened it, trying not to look at Pat, knowing he’d have that hermity scowl now big-time.
“You picnic like this pretty often?” she asked.
“Yeah, we always keep stuff in the trunk—wine, canned salmon, crackers. Gives us the option.”
