Bone River

by Chance, Megan

  That night I tossed and turned, and finally I gave up any expectation of sleep. I lit the lamp and felt myself to be a little child braving nightmares, and that little child craved the comfort and reassurance of her father’s words—the things that had always comforted me in the past. He was not here, but his journals were, waiting for me.

  I got out of bed, pulling on my dressing gown, taking up the lamp. The night was dark as pitch, the sky so clouded there was no moon. I heard the soft patter of rain on the rooftop. The floor was cold on my bare feet as I padded from my bedroom and into the hallway. I glanced nervously at Daniel’s door—still closed, no light peeking from beneath it, and I hurried as quickly and silently as I could downstairs, clutched by an irrational fear that I would wake him, that he would come out to find me thus—something I most assuredly did not want.

  The journals were on the table. I picked up one and raced back to my room, closing the door gently behind me, a bit too relieved that I managed it unscathed. Unscathed—what a strange word to use. To think him capable of scathing me—I laughed, and to my surprise it caught hard in my throat. I was a fool, and I knew it. Scientists did not let emotion rule their thinking. I was, after all, the most evolved kind of being—not a man, of course, but still, as Agassiz said, one of the highest and last series among living beings. I did not have to give in to primitive feelings. I was happy in my life. I was happy, and here was my father’s journal to reassure me of it, to tell me again who I was. Leonie Monroe Russell. My father’s daughter. Junius’s wife.

  The thought restored me, and I went back to my bed and settled the lamp on the bedside table. Then I crawled between the blankets and opened the journal.

  February 15, 1852: Argument today with Old Toke. I was looking for a wooden salmon hook, which he said his people did not use anymore, much preferring bought ones made of metal, and he offered one of those, which I refused. When I said my only interests were in those that were authentic and made the old way, he was very offended and said white men cared only for the past, and not for the truth, and I said only the past was the truth. His people will all be dead soon enough, and it is irrelevant and irresponsible to imply otherwise. There is no hope to offer to his people at all. I had hoped to be able to give some solace that environment could change their future, but the experiment has not solved this question for me.

  The experiment again. I frowned and continued to read.

  The Indians here are lazy—all tribes, even the northern ones. They respect pleasure above all else. But the northern tribes are raiders as well, almost single-minded in their pursuit of slaves. This is a conundrum: their laziness requires they find others to do their work for them, and yet the aggression required to steal such slaves is also necessary. What then sets the aggressively lazy North apart from the pleasure-loving South? The weather is the same. The vegetation and animal life the same. The ocean is the same. Is it biological? At some point, did a member of an advanced culture mate with a primitive and through the pollution of miscegenation instill aggression in later stock? Or vice versa: was there a mixing of blood in the southern tribes that negated that aggressive tendency?

  The experiment has come no closer to showing me the truth except that I have seen that tendencies do pass through the blood, and environment can squelch them in some fashion. But what would happen if one were not vigilant? If I were not here to fashion it, how might it go astray?

  Whatever this experiment had been, Papa had been obsessed with it, and I didn’t even understand what it was. It wasn’t what I was looking for, of course—I wanted some indication of who the mummy was and where she’d come from—but I was puzzled and troubled by the fact that this experiment had held Papa tight in its grip and I’d known nothing of it. I had been his favorite companion—how often had he said it? I was his only assistant before Junius came, my hand had been in everything Papa did, and yet he had never mentioned to me the very thing that was the focus of his study, and I didn’t know why.

  Because he didn’t trust you to be able to continue it.

  I tried to push the thought away, but it wouldn’t go. There were too many others that reinforced it. Papa’s fear that the fact of my sex kept me from having a true faculty for study. His constant deriding of my theories about the Indians and their stories, the way he’d forbidden me to listen to them when I was a child. He had told me I had a quick mind and was proud that I’d inherited that from him. But he’d also called me too sensitive and imaginative.

  The curse of your sex, I fear, Lea, he’d told me when I was just fourteen and as devoted to him as any acolyte, and when I’d asked him what he meant, he told me, Women were created for having children. Science goes against your natural abilities—such study may indeed be impossible for your sex, but I have hopes that you might overcome it.

  I will overcome it, I had said confidently. Tell me how.

  Your mind is highly distractible. A proper scientist does what he must to ensure there will be no such distractions. Perhaps you should consider a life of celibate study.

  Like a nun? I had asked, laughing, thinking he was joking.

  He only gave me a soberly thoughtful look and said, No, my dear, I’m not talking of religious isolation, but of a life dedicated to research.

  Well, then that’s what I’ll do. I don’t wish ever to marry, I said.

  He smiled gently. It’s not marriage I object to, but perhaps you’ll be lucky, my dear. Remaining childless might help mitigate your unfortunate biology. I hope it will. I would pray for it if I were you.

  I had promised to do so, I remembered now, and for a time I’d obeyed, dutiful prayers to God each night, asking that I might be spared the curse of children so I could dedicate myself to study and collecting.

  Such prayers had not lasted the summer, but only because I’d been too busy and forgotten them. My father had been struck by the call of the Pacific Northwest Indians, and it was about that time we’d moved to some dirty little town in northern California, and Papa had been so disgusted by the degeneration of the Indians there that we hadn’t stayed long.

  And now I wondered, had such prayers truly had an effect? Here I was, childless as I’d promised him. Had God listened to the prayers of a devoted fourteen-year-old over the ones made by a woman of twenty, who had hoped for children despite their distractions, who, for a time, had wanted them more than science?

  And perhaps that was my punishment, I thought, for ignoring what I was, for having the pride to think I could be both a mother and an ethnologist. I thought of my father, and how furious he would have been at my later prayers. No doubt he’d been at God’s side, counseling Him that I didn’t know my own mind, bemoaning the lack of dedication that had allowed my biology to overtake my intellect, telling God that, despite all his work, my mind was as feeble as any woman’s, and he’d been a fool to think it could be otherwise.

  He’d known it always, hadn’t he? It was why he’d never shared the experiment with me, because he’d known I hadn’t the capacity to continue it. Because I wasn’t the ethnologist he was, and could never be, and that was why I couldn’t see what was wrong with the mummy, why I was blind to the reasons he must have had to rebury her, as I was almost certain he had.

  Imagination. Desire and yearning. Sentimentality. Flaws, every one. My objectivity was as substantial as paper melted away in rain, no matter how I tried to gain it. I dreamed about the mummy and drew her instead of cutting her open as anyone else would have done. My father was right. I was no kind of scientist at all. A real ethnologist would have seen right away who she was. A real scientist would already know her.

  I was drawn more to dreams, to a presence that could not really exist, to imagination instead of fact. I wore an ugly, cheap bracelet because a witch woman had frightened me with talk any thinking man would deride. I was attracted to my stepson—yes, I admitted it—because I sensed an affinity with him that I’d never felt for another man. Feelings, all of them. Not facts. Not science.

  But
there was still time to stop it all. Tomorrow I would finish the drawing and cut into her. Tomorrow I would get rid of this bracelet. I would give Daniel the money to go back to San Francisco. I would even take him to Bruceport myself.

  There was still time to return to the Leonie I’d been.

  Resolved, I put the journal aside and blew out the lamp. I snuggled into the blankets and closed my eyes and waited for the peace of sleep, the solace of determination.

  And the nightmare of her returned, worse than ever. Again the child on the floor, the love and doubt and fear. But this time there were voices added, muffled and changed as if I heard them through water, tones loud and angry but indistinguishable. A man’s, a woman’s. They were fighting, and it was about the child, and my fear was terrible and all-encompassing, and then again the withering away, an old woman’s hand, freckled and spotted, and then skin turning to leather, muscle adhering to bone, then crumbling to dust, crumbling and crumbling and blowing away in a moist south wind, and you don’t know who you are. You don’t know...

  I woke breathing hard, tears streaming down my cheeks, shaken and uncertain. The feelings didn’t leave me as I rose and washed and dressed, not as I brushed my hair and pinned it up. The echo of that voice stayed with me—You don’t know who you are—and I thought of the reassurance of my father’s words, of my determination to do what must be done to regain my will to be who I was, what the years of my father’s training, and Junius’s, had made me.

  I went downstairs as if set for battle. I made porridge and coffee and went to milk the cow. The wind was picking up—not the south wind from my dream but a northern one, bending the hemlocks, scattering the rain. The perfect day to be in the barn, dissecting the mummy.

  I threw a quick glance at the trunk as I left the barn, ignoring the trepidation that swept me, trying to forget the last time I’d tried to cut into her and what had happened. Superstition and imagination and nothing more. Today would be different. Today I would do what I should have done to begin with, and nothing would stop me.

  I poured the milk into the screened pans on the back porch and went in through the door there, nearly stumbling over Daniel, who sat at the table just inside. He glanced up, and suddenly I thought of when I’d seen him last, how I’d run away. I felt myself go hot; I saw him notice it in the moment before he looked away, and I felt the tension rise between us; the air charged and unstable as any storm.

  I passed by him quickly, going to the stove, pouring coffee with hands I willed to steady.

  He said, “Nightmares again?”

  I was startled, once again, by his perceptiveness, alarmed by the things he saw in me. I clung hard to my resolve. “Yes, as it happens. But I think I know the cure.”

  “There’s a cure?”

  “I’m going to cut the mummy today.”

  He went still. Then, “You’re going to what?”

  “Cut into her. Cut her apart. It’s the only way I can see if she’s been deliberately mummified or if she was sacrificed.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to do that. You said that she was at peace and you didn’t want to ruin that.”

  I winced. “That’s not scientific.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “I’m an ethnologist, Daniel. I’ve delayed too long as it is. There’s no excuse for my not doing it before now.”

  “You’re believing what he tells you and not following your own instincts—”

  “It’s stupid,” I snapped, turning to look at him. “It’s not logical. These things I feel are ridiculous.”

  “Why won’t you trust yourself?”

  I thought of my dream, my father’s words, my flaw, and in frustration and desperation, I blurted out the words without thinking. “Because I’m not good enough to trust myself. If I don’t do what needs to be done, then this is all a waste, don’t you understand? I have to prove I can do this or my life is a waste, this...this...barrenness and prayers—it’s all pointless.” I was horrified when I realized what I’d said, what I’d told him. I turned back to the stove.

  He said quietly, “Perhaps science isn’t the point, Lea.”

  I bit my lip against sudden tears. Dear God, I was a mess. I took a deep breath, staring down at the bracelet shivering on my wrist—my other resolution, I remembered. To take it off, to burn the damn thing as Lord Tom wanted.

  And then I heard the shout outside.

  Daniel said, “What was that?”

  The shout came again.

  Daniel shoved aside his coffee and rose, frowning. He hurried to the front door, opening it, and I followed him to the porch. From there I could see the plunger near the beach, sails fluttering to slow it. Adam Leach—I recognized the boat.

  Daniel went down the stairs and into the yard, and now I heard the shout distinctly, “Schooner’s on its way!”

  “The schooner,” I said, and then, “Wave to show him we heard,” and Daniel did, and the sails tightened again; Adam sailed off to tell the others on the bay. I said to Daniel, “We have to hurry. We can’t be late as we were last time.”

  He came up the stairs again; together we went into the house, and I remembered my third resolution last night. Now was the opportunity to tell him to go. The schooner was here; after we sold the oysters, he could be on it heading back to San Francisco and his fiancée. I meant to say it. But now, faced with the reality of it, my resolution wavered. I couldn’t say the words. He would want an explanation, and I could not give it to him. I could not voice it, because to voice it made it real. I could not admit to myself why I wanted him to go, and so there was no way to say it.

  I went into the house to get my things, and I said nothing of it at all.

  CHAPTER 16

  IT WASN’T LONG before we were in the sloop on our way to the culling bed. We were both soaked through before we reached it, and Daniel’s lips were colorless with cold, rain dripping from the brim of his hat. He didn’t complain; together and silently we shoveled oysters into the hold, synchronized, one shovel and then another, working rapidly, sparing only what talk we needed to get the job done. My hands and feet and knees were aching from cold when we were finished, my teeth chattering. We were off, rain spattering in our faces, the wind filling the sails, the water nothing but chop. Daniel sat silently, his hands clenched together, his eyes very blue in the pale of his face, his eyelashes spiky with rain. Like some sculpture, I thought. So still and pale and chiseled and beautiful. I turned away quickly.

  I had long since ceased to feel my hands and my feet by the time we got to Bruceport. The schooner was just coming in, men moving about the deck, blurred in the rain. I let the sail go slack and took our place in line—fourth this time. We would sell all the oysters. Good luck, for a change.

  I watched the schooner drop anchor, the first plunger scurry up to its side. Daniel said nothing, nor did I as we watched one boat after another empty its hold, and then it was our turn, and they were lowering the baskets over, and Daniel and I were working side by side, loading them while the rain beat down and the wind began to pick up. He was faster than I was, given how clumsy were my numb hands, and finally he said, “Let me do it, Lea,” and I sat down again, putting my hands beneath my armpits to try to warm them, watching him efficiently and easily complete the job.

  “Four hundred!” one of the sailors called over the side, throwing the little bag full of coins. Daniel caught it and handed it to me.

  “Let’s go get warm,” he said. “You look like a piece of ice.”

  I managed to get the plunger ashore without much trouble, though I could not manage the centerboard and Daniel had to lift it for me so we could beach it, and he was the one who covered the hold with an oilcloth to keep the rain out. Then we trudged to Dunn’s, me clumsy with the cold, tripping over the driftwood strewn about the beach so that I nearly fell, and Daniel grabbed my arm to steady me. He released his hold almost immediately, abruptly enough that it was obvious, and my nervousness settled back. He should be on his
way to San Francisco. But at least there would be others in the saloon. We would not be alone.

  The saloon was not yet full, as we’d been among the first to sell. There was a table in the corner beside a small cast iron coal stove, and Daniel pointed me toward it and went to the bar. I didn’t argue. I settled onto a bench and leaned toward the warmth. Daniel returned with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and then went back for two bowls of chowder. I took off my sodden gloves and put my pruney hands around the bowl. I would have jumped into it had it been big enough. Daniel sat down and uncapped the whiskey, pouring some into the glasses, shoving one of them toward me.

  I reached into my pocket for the bag of coins, pulling it out, trying to open the drawstring with my numb fingers.

  “Leave it,” he said, swallowing his whiskey in one gulp.

  “You’ll need to pay—”

  “I already did.”

  “Then let me count out your share.”

  “It will wait. Warm up first. I trust you to remember it.” He touched my glass with the tip of his finger. “Drink up.”

  “I don’t drink, remember?”

  “I remember that he doesn’t like you to. But he’s not here, and I won’t tell. It will help you get warm.”

  I shook my head. “I shouldn’t.”

  “I hear you say that too often. Who’s stopping you? Not me.”

  “The last time I drank whiskey it was...not good.”

  “How so? Did you get drunk and sloppy?”

  “Something like that. It was a long time ago. I don’t remember it all that well.” It had been at a dance, and all I remembered of it was how the colors had seemed so vibrant, how everything had swirled together. How I’d danced and laughed, and Junius had pulled me from Duncan Furth’s arms and dragged me home. “I made a scene at a dance. I was a little too...free. Junius took me home and I was sick all over the boat. I don’t hold it well.”