Bone River

by Chance, Megan

  The house felt suddenly too quiet: the hiss of the water in the reservoir, my breathing, Daniel’s presence. He was taking off his boots, wiggling his sodden toes. I still had my coat on. I undid the buttons and took it off, hanging it on the hook beside the door and taking off my own boots. I wanted to be gone, alone in my room, quiet and still. I started past him to the stairs. I said, “Good night, Daniel—”

  He grabbed my hand as I passed, stopping me, his fingers tangling in the twine that had slipped to the ball of my thumb. “What was it she said to me?” he asked.

  “Junius is right, Daniel. She’s just a crazy old woman. You shouldn’t give credence to anything she says.”

  “Then why do you wear it?” His thumb slipped over a charm. “If you shouldn’t give credence to anything she says?”

  “I don’t know,” I said softly. “Perhaps because...” I paused, but he was watching me, waiting, and I knew he would wait like that until I gave him an answer he believed. “Because I have this feeling the mummy wants me to.”

  His expression went thoughtful.

  “Please don’t tell June I said that,” I said quickly. “He wouldn’t understand. I don’t even understand, really, and I know it’s absurd, but—”

  “What did she say to me?”

  I sighed. “‘Does she know what you want?’”

  He looked confused.

  “That’s what Bibi asked you. The exact words: ‘Does she know what you want?’”

  “What does that mean? Who’s she?”

  “I don’t know. I told you to pay no attention to it.”

  He was quiet. His thumb dragged over the charm once again, and then he released me, and I drew my hand back quickly. Once more, I said, “Good night, Daniel.”

  He nodded. Distractedly, he said, “Good night.”

  It was early yet. No one had seemingly noticed that there’d been no supper. But I wasn’t hungry, and as I went up the stairs, I was overcome with exhaustion. I didn’t bother to wash, only undressed and climbed into bed, my hair still in its pins, and then I lay there and listened to my own breathing in the darkness, thinking again of the withered hands in my dream, and the words that circled in my head like a caught song. What do you want from the world?

  CHAPTER 13

  I SLEPT LATER the next morning than I had since I could remember. When I woke, it was long past dawn, and the dreams I’d had tangled like briars in my head, dark and grasping: the mummy and the drawings on the cave ceiling; Bibi putting the bracelet in my hand; Junius saying, Don’t let him come between us; and, Who are you who are you who are you? I felt unsettled and peevish, and the darkness of the day did not help my mood. Fog hung close to the ground, pounded by a steady rain into a gray miasma, and everything else looked wet and black, the whole world closed in.

  I rose, my body aching as if I’d twisted and tossed all night long. I dressed slowly, listening for any sound of life. No footsteps and no voices, and it was late enough that I knew Junius had probably already gone to Bruceport to pick up the canoe. He would have taken Lord Tom with him, and Daniel too, I hoped. I was undoubtedly alone, but still I left my room with a sense of anxiety. Daniel’s door was open; when I peeked inside, it was to see the bed made and no sign of him. Downstairs, there was no sign of anyone. There were no boots by the door but mine, and coats and hats were gone. It wasn’t until then that I allowed myself to relax. The day was my own, and I knew exactly what I would do with it.

  There was cream to be churned into butter, and clothes to wash and mend, lamp chimneys to clean, and floors to sweep, but I did none of those things. I grabbed my notebook and my pencil and I went outside. My thoughts were tangled and distressing; I needed something to focus on. I needed her.

  I glanced toward the shore as I came off the porch. The plunger was gone, as I’d expected, the canoe left behind—and I stopped, frowning. It wasn’t upended as it usually was to keep the water out. It looked as if Junius had thought to take it and changed his mind. Odd that he hadn’t turned it over again, especially in the rain. I should turn it. But I was too impatient; Junius had left it that way, he could tend to it when it was full of rain and heavy. I hurried down the stairs and across the yard to the barn, stepping inside.

  And I stopped again, because there was Daniel, bending over the mummy’s trunk.

  “What are you doing?” I asked—too sharply, startled and a little panicked, Junius’s words flooding back: I think it’s best if we never leave him alone with the mummy.

  Daniel jerked as if I’d surprised him. He looked over his shoulder and then he straightened slowly. “You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry. Why are you in here?”

  “I thought I’d take a look at her,” he said, so smoothly. He pointed to a covered pail on the table. “I milked the cow, and then...I was curious.”

  I was not soothed. I felt I’d caught him in a lie. “I thought you were going with Junius.”

  “No. He and Lord Tom went to Bruceport to see the crazy widow. I didn’t want to go. He didn’t want me to come either, so it worked out for both of us.”

  “You should have come to get me if you wanted to look at her. I’ve the key.”

  “So I’ve discovered.” He smiled—again, that charm.

  I felt it work me too. I thought of the cave, firelight molding his face. Determinedly, I pushed the thought away, remembering instead the story I’d told him, my suspicions, Bibi’s warnings about him and Junius’s. Coldly, I said, “I don’t want anyone but me alone with her.”

  “I’ve offended you.” He stepped toward me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you felt that way.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “I suppose I’d feel the same. You can’t want anyone interfering with your investigation.”

  “Exactly.” Every word he said was the right one, disarming. There was no reason not to believe him. The pail was full of milk. He didn’t seem the least nervous or dodgy. But my suspicion lingered. Be careful, Leonie.

  Daniel reached into his pocket. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I was up early. I went for a walk along the beach. I found this.” He put his hand out, opening his fingers, setting on the makeshift table a piece of sea glass the color of the sky—that is, the color of the sky when one could see it. The color of Junius’s eyes. And Daniel’s too.

  I wasn’t ready to be assuaged. I was not ready to believe him. “It’s very pretty,” I said reluctantly.

  “Hmmm. You know, it’s quite beautiful here.”

  “It’s pouring.”

  “I don’t mind the rain. It’s peaceful.”

  “How different you are from your father.”

  “I don’t mind that either.” His voice was wry. “He doesn’t find this place peaceful?”

  “Peaceful? I’d say not. I told you, he hates it. He’d rather leave.”

  “But you won’t go. I remember that’s what you said. Why not?”

  I shrugged. “I belong here.”

  “Because of your father?”

  “My father hated it too. He came for ethnology, but he was like Junius, always ready to be moving on. When I was a child, we moved constantly. He was always looking for new things to study, new things to collect.”

  “That must have been hard for a young girl.”

  “I don’t remember it being hard. I had Papa. It was just...just the two of us then, and that was all I needed. He was my teacher and my friend as well as a parent. I didn’t realize there was any other kind of life. Not until we came here and...and he became too ill to leave. Consumption. The weather was no good for him, but he hadn’t the strength to go. I was glad of it—oh, not that he was ill, but that we had to stay.” I thought of my father, bent over his notebooks in the room Daniel slept in now, the lamplight turning him golden as he wrote, unaware of my watching. How much I’d loved him. “He never understood.”

  “Never understood what?”

  I blinked away the memory. “That I loved it here.”

  “Or
maybe he understood, but he didn’t like it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s beautiful, but it’s hard,” Daniel said. “Especially for a woman. What man would wish his daughter into such a hard life?”

  “He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. To be an ethnologist.”

  “That’s different than wading around in freezing water and mud all day. He can’t have liked you oystering.”

  “No, but—”

  “Did your father ever see you dance?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then this life isn’t what he wanted for you.”

  I turned to him, bemused. “How can you say that? You never knew him.”

  “Because I’ve seen you dance too,” he said with a smile, “and no one who’s seen that could think you’re meant to hide yourself away on a farm and tong oysters for a living.”

  I did not mistake his admiration, nor my own response to it, my quick flush of warmth, and I realized suddenly what he was doing, how easily he’d turned my suspicions, how well he’d worked me after all. You’re a fool, Leonie. I said, “I know what you’re doing.”

  He turned a bland expression. “Which is what? What am I doing?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Yes, I remember your story.” Wryly spoken.

  “What do you mean to accomplish, Daniel? What is it you want?” The echo of Bibi’s words.

  It was as if he’d heard them too. I saw the flash of recognition in his eyes, and the quick way he glanced away told me I’d been right to think it.

  I said, “Why are you here?”

  “I’ve told you. I came for the story. And to meet my father.”

  “No other reason? You don’t wish for revenge?”

  His expression gave nothing away. “What would it avail me?”

  “Satisfaction.”

  “I don’t care enough about him for revenge. I wanted to meet him. I come up here to find he’s got a lucrative business—those oysters are a gold mine. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want a part of it.”

  “And the mummy? What part of her do you want?”

  “You know that too. If you discover something important about her, I want to be the writer who tells her story. I want people to know my name. Money and recognition—I suppose I’m more like my father than I’d thought.”

  “And that’s all?” I tried to measure him, but his gaze was unreadable, his stance inscrutable. “That’s all you came for?”

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  Daniel smiled thinly. “Have I done something to offend you that you think so poorly of me?”

  “Junius suspects you’ve a hidden motive,” I said honestly. “And I’m not certain he’s wrong. Bibi warned me about you. What she said last night—”

  “My father likes me about as well as I like him. He’s been collecting things too long. He thinks everyone’s a rival.” His voice was bitter, but I heard the hurt behind it. “And I don’t know why your Indian woman would dislike me. She sounds no better than a fortune teller. How did she warn you about me? What did she say?”

  “That I was to—” I struggled to remember the exact words. You will need it now he is here. Not the words so much, but the feeling...“It wasn’t what she said really. But she intimated that I should be careful of you.”

  “Careful in what way?”

  “She didn’t elaborate.”

  He laughed shortly. “You know that saying about suspicion? It’s like bats among birds, always flying at twilight. This place breeds it. I swear you can feel it in the rain.”

  It was true; I’d felt it myself. Perhaps not suspicion itself but lingering spirits, the press of the past even when the past was not cities or people but the history of floods and smoke, rain and fog, and trees so tall they blocked out the sun. Dark days, mist and wet, a depth that even sunlight did not penetrate. The brightest summer days made it beautiful but did not disguise it. I’d told my father I’d felt that way once, on a gorgeous summer day, and he told me I had a tendency to the macabre and that he hoped to God I would grow out of it. I never did. I was a little startled to learn that Daniel felt it too. I’d never known any white man who did.

  “What is it?” Daniel asked. “Why do you look at me that way?”

  “The things you say sometimes...I’ve never known anyone who speaks as you do.”

  Again, a short laugh. “You’ve been dancing in oystering boots too long.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not it.”

  “Perhaps it’s that you recognize the truth in what I say.”

  Now I laughed. “What you want to be the truth, you mean.”

  His gaze was searching, unsettling. The lamplight glazed him—I was reminded of what I’d seen in him in the cave, that strange beauty, and suddenly I was seeing him as I had the first time we’d met, when he was just an attractive man and not my husband’s son. The moment stretched out. I had to look away.

  He said quietly, “I didn’t expect you.”

  Uncomfortably, I said, “I don’t know what that means.”

  “When I came here. I didn’t know he had another wife. I suppose I hoped he’d be living in a shack somewhere, some bitter recluse, a drunk perhaps. But then I saw you and I realized why he never returned.”

  “I said I was sorry for that—”

  “I don’t want your apology. I’m...I didn’t expect you. That’s all.”

  “Then I suppose we’re even. I never expected you, either. Not your existence, nor...” I let my words trail off, uncertain what I’d been about to say, suddenly aware of a strange restlessness. A longing I didn’t understand. Who are you?

  I looked at him. I wanted him to go. I wanted not to have to say it.

  He hesitated. I thought he would not understand, but I was relieved when he nodded. “I’ll leave you to your study, then.”

  The piece of sea glass he’d put on the table glimmered, as if the lamplight had suddenly hit it, or as if it were illuminated from inside, calling my attention to it again, and I grabbed it up and held it out to him. “Don’t forget your sea glass.”

  He was halfway to the door. He turned. He said, “It’s yours. I brought it for you.”

  He put his hat on his head and turned again to the door, and when he was gone, I looked down at the glass in my hand, a polished round the color of the sky. Junius’s eyes, I thought. But his weren’t the eyes I saw, and I dropped the stone into my pocket.

  When Daniel was gone, I turned back to the mummy. I knew she could distract me from the unsettling conversation with Daniel, and I wanted to be lost in her. I felt her waiting for me, and as I unlocked the trunk and took her out I had to fight the urge to apologize for being so long, for wasting time on places that could tell me nothing about her.

  I looked her over slowly, wondering where I should begin. I knew I was supposed to be checking for signs of mummification techniques. No brain in the skull, a chest emptied of organs and filled with rags and herbs and sewn back up again. Junius’s instructions. I muttered, “Where’s the poetry in that, Junius?” and then was surprised at myself for saying it, for thinking it. Where’s the science in that, Leonie?

  But to find any chest incision, I would have to undress her, and break her. Her knees were drawn up so closely to her chest, and her arms wrapped so tightly about them...there was no way to find an incision without moving them, and no way to move them without tearing her apart.

  Can you even bear to do so? Junius’s taunt. I did not want to have to admit that he was right, but my reluctance to desecrate her was overwhelming. Desecrate. I told myself it wasn’t that. This was a body, a husk, only bones. I would not hesitate to break a rock to remove a fossil bone. I was an ethnologist; all I cared about was knowledge.

  I forced myself to step away, to get the saw hanging on a nail near Junius’s tools. No bone saw, but
this would do well enough. When I went back to the mummy I stood there, studying her, looking for the best place to start cutting. The arms first, I imagined. I set the teeth to the joint of her shoulder—

  And nearly swooned.

  I dropped the saw. It clattered to the floor and I put my hand to my eyes, trying to breathe though a wave of light-headedness. More than that. A sense of wrongness, of intrusion. Her presence was all around me, pushing at me, her horror and her anger, filling me as if it were my own, threatening, terrible, and I was suddenly so afraid I had to fight the urge to run. I clutched the edge of the table, trying to right myself, and gradually the sense of menace faded, and my light-headedness, and I was myself again, and profoundly alone.

  Junius was right; I could not do this. It felt less like failure than fear, but my failure was there too, and the fear was still too real to talk myself past, the horror of it lingering. I glanced down at her. “You don’t want me to cut you,” I murmured without thinking. “Very well. Then what?”

  My notebook lay beside her, my pencil had clattered to the floor with the saw. I could finish drawing her, I realized, and not in the pieces I’d intended, a foot or an arm, an incised chest, but whole, as she was. I would not cut into her, not today, perhaps not ever, but I could do this. Slowly, hesitantly, I retrieved my pencil, spooked now, waiting again for that sense of menace, but the dimness of the barn was benign, and so was she, and gradually I relaxed, and opened my notebook, and the drawing took over. I became lost in it, and with every stroke of the pencil she became more and more alive to me, her forthright, dark gaze and the saffron skirt shifting about a slim brown ankle and her hair glinting in the late afternoon sun...

  The world was already dark when I finally came back to myself, when sheer exhaustion claimed me. I put her away and went to the house. I’d forgotten my conversation with Daniel, but now I remembered it, and I was relieved that I did not see him anywhere about. It felt good to be alone, but I was relieved as well when Junius and Lord Tom returned. Junius’s mood was buoyant. He smiled and laughed at something Lord Tom said, and his step was light as he made his way to the kitchen, swooping past the table, wrapping his arms around my waist to nuzzle my neck. “The canoe’s in almost perfect condition. We’ll be able to send it this week.”