Bone River

by Chance, Megan

  He asked no questions, but put on his own boots. He was dragging on his coat as we went out the door, and then we both halted, stunned. The river was rising—it had already risen, the wind I thought I hadn’t heard whipping it to a frenzy. Not overflowing its banks yet, but it was a matter of half inches. Edna stood at the barn entrance, lowing and crying, udder full and bloated—I’d forgotten she even existed.

  “Oh dear God.” I was off the porch, running toward the barn, slipping and sliding through a marsh puddling and swamp-like with the heavy rain. I heard Daniel sloshing beside me.

  “The mummy first,” I gasped to him as we made it to Edna.

  He nodded. I lurched through the door; the trunk was there against the wall, closed and locked, though not watertight. The dirt floor was wet already near the walls, a growing pool of water, the lap of the river beneath the trunk. Daniel took one side and I took the other, hefting it—thank God it was so light.

  “Where to?”

  “The porch.”

  The barn was too close to the river, and it had flooded time and again, but the house was on a rise and safe, even if the river kept rising. But the salt marsh was more like a bog now, and the trunk, though light, was unwieldy, and we struggled. We got the trunk to the porch, and then I ran back to Edna, grabbing her halter, pulling her toward the house, where I tethered her to the porch.

  I glanced toward the springhouse, which was at the bend, and saw it was half-submerged already, milk and cream spreading into the water, a murky light cloud. How easily the river took what it wanted. I couldn’t help but remember what Lord Tom had said the day I’d found her. How the spirits would find a way to take back their own. But the barn was still upright, and it had never fallen in a flood, and soon the rain would stop. It always had.

  Edna lowed piteously. Daniel started. “Are we safe here?”

  “I think so.”

  He nodded. “Then I’ll milk her.”

  He left me there. I watched the river for a moment, churning and murky with silt, a fast current, too fast and too high. But there was nothing to do about it. I had no way of stopping it.

  I looked away, glancing over my shoulder at the trunk. The porch was already wet from the storm; not a safe place to keep her, so I grabbed the handle of one end of the trunk and pulled it to the door and then inside, hearing Lord Tom’s words as I did so, trying to banish my own discomfort. There were already skeletons in the house, how was this different?

  I closed the door, kneeling beside the trunk. I took the key from my pocket, turning it in the lock, opening the lid, dreading to see if there was water in there with her, if she had been damaged in any way, relieved to see her there, still in one piece, though up hard against the side as if she’d been thrown there. Daniel and I had not been gentle getting the trunk out of the barn.

  But the water had got in—the bottom was wet. She could not stay in it until I dried it out again. I reached in to lift her, pulling her out as if she were a small sleeping child, bending to lay her on the settee as if comfort mattered. I looked at her, her hair draping over the edge of the settee, her arms drawn up, lost in dreams.

  Daniel came up beside me. As if he sensed my thoughts, he said, “She almost looks alive there. As if she’s only sleeping.”

  “You’re the only one,” I said quietly.

  “The only one what?”

  “The only one who thinks of her as I do. The only one who doesn’t think of her as something to sell or hide away.”

  He was quiet for long enough that I looked over my shoulder at him. He had turned to stare out the window.

  “Do you think they would have made it to Astoria in this storm?” he asked. “You don’t suppose they drowned?”

  “If it began to be a danger, they would have beached the canoe and taken shelter. Lord Tom grew up on these shores. He knows what to do.”

  “How certain you sound.”

  “I am certain. He and Junius have traveled in weather worse than this.”

  “And he thinks nothing of leaving you here alone. With flooding rivers.”

  “There was no fear of that when he left,” I said softly. “And he didn’t leave me alone. He left me with you.”

  He turned to look at me. “What a fool he is.”

  “He trusts me,” I said. “And Daniel...I’m not going to give him a reason not to.”

  Daniel took a deep breath and nodded. He glanced out the window again. “The water’s rising quickly. Perhaps we should make for higher ground.”

  “It won’t come this far.”

  “Why not?”

  “It never has before.” I could not say why I was so certain, exactly, except for the reason I had told him, that it had never happened before, as many times as the river had flooded. And the mummy was part of my certainty too, though I would not admit it even to myself, this sense I had that she would keep us safe, that she wanted me to find the answers and the river would not take her back until she was done, and she was not done.

  He turned to look at me, and in that look was this morning, and I thought of the kitchen floor and the way he’d kissed me and the strength of my desire. I said, “Don’t look at me that way.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said.

  “You have to try,” I said. “For my sake, if not for your own. I’m married to your father.”

  “Married? You’re not married to him, not really.”

  “I made vows.”

  “Not binding ones. He was already married.”

  “They felt binding to me. They still do. I meant them, Daniel. I’ve been married to him in my head for twenty years. How can that be nothing? And...and you have your Eleanor.”

  He sighed. “Yes. Eleanor. I used to dream about her, you know. Every night, I dreamed of touching her, of...ah, never mind.”

  I felt the sting of jealousy, though I had no right. None at all. “I imagine it must be hard to be away from her for so long. You must miss her. And here...we’re so isolated...”

  He skewered me with his gaze. “Now it’s you I’m dreaming of.”

  I was shaken, warmed, aroused. “You love her, Daniel. It’s only that I’m here, and you’re lonely.”

  “That’s not the reason,” he said quietly.

  “You’re affianced. You’ve made a promise you have to keep. I think you should make yourself think of her. I think you should—”

  “Would she want me to keep such a promise now, I wonder?”

  “Of course she would. And you must anyway. This is...a passing thing. We won’t give in to it.”

  “She was my mother’s choice for me,” he mused. “I was happy about it, but now I...I wonder if...if perhaps I only loved her because my mother demanded it.”

  “Do the reasons matter? You were happy about it. And your mother knew you best. I’ve no doubt she wanted only your happiness.”

  “My mother was trapped in her own misery. What she wanted for me was not happiness.”

  That startled me. “How can you say that? She was your mother.”

  “Because I knew her,” he said, his eyes fierce. “Because I listened to her hate him every day. Because I watched her up to her elbows in lye soap and scalding water, saying one moment that he would return and save us, and the next that I must find him and take vengeance for both of us. I know why he left her, Lea. I know because I loved her but every day I wanted to leave her too. And I feel her there, in my head, urging me always—” He bit off the word and turned away.

  I stared at him, surprised by his words, feeling a sinking in my stomach for what his father and I had done to him, for the hatred that lingered in him still. “Urging you to do what?” I asked softly.

  “To hurt him,” he said. “To give her peace.”

  I felt sick. I remembered now, too late, that I wasn’t to trust him, that I hadn’t trusted him. “I...see. So...I’m to be your revenge?”

  He looked at me. The fierceness in his eyes died. They were only blue now, and weary. “Lea...the very
first time I watched you dance I wondered what it would be like to be your lover. I’ve never stopped wondering. I can’t sleep for wanting you. You’re not my revenge, and this isn’t an act. It would be better if it were.”

  His words silenced me. I felt naked before him, unbearable heat rising, this wretched confusion, this bewitchment of yearning. I didn’t know what to say. Daniel did not look away, but only watched me with a haunting stillness, as if I were a curiosity in a museum that he expected to animate at any moment—would I run? Would I stay?

  “I’ve frightened you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to tell you any of that.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, and my voice sounded high and breathless, not like mine. I swallowed, trying to right it. “Truly it is.”

  He said nothing. His smile was small and self-deprecating, and I felt absurd and comical.

  “I...I think I’ll make us something to eat. We haven’t even had coffee,” I said, needing desperately to escape him, to right myself.

  He raised a brow as if he knew it and said, “By all means. Coffee fixes all ills.”

  I fled to the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 18

  DANIEL WENT TO his room, and I busied myself with stupid tasks. I listened to the drenching rain and the roar of the river and was aware that I could be wrong about how far it would rise, that it might overtake the house and we would have to find a way to escape it, and yet I baked bread and made a meal as if the world depended upon how elaborate it was. An oyster pie and a dried berry buckle and squash made sweet with molasses. I set out pickles and fried up brined pork and put coffee on to boil, and each of these things settled me more firmly into who I was, until by the time I called up to him that it was ready, I felt myself again.

  He came down, holding one of my father’s journals, looking surprised at the bounty I’d laid upon the table. “There’s enough here for a party.” He glanced toward the settee and the mummy. “Were you planning to invite her to join us?”

  I smiled at the joke, and it broke the tension between us, as he must have meant it to do. While we ate, I kept the conversation deliberately light, and he seemed determined to help me to do so. We talked of the rain and the usual course of the winter weather, and he told me of the fog in San Francisco and how cold even the summers could be while I said it had been a good summer for harvesting and the vegetable garden had produced well, and fortunately Edna gave enough milk that the loss of what had been in the springhouse would not be too bad.

  There was an hour, perhaps a little longer, where I felt things to be comfortable and safe between us, as if we were some long-together couple, and I found myself thinking of how things might have been if I’d met him first, and the unexpected thought flustered me, so I broke off in the middle of a sentence and looked down into my coffee.

  He said nothing. He poured himself a cup of milk and took a sip, comfortable and easy as if we were the couple I’d imagined, so when he grabbed the journal from where he’d set it on the table, opening it to a place he’d marked, I could look at him again.

  “You found something?”

  He shook his head. “Only...it’s become rather interesting. In the same sort of way watching a fly is interesting, you understand. Boring and mesmerizing at the same time.”

  I smiled. “Indeed. Go on.”

  He smiled back and cast his gaze to the pages, reading aloud, “‘L has formed a gross preoccupation in Old Toke’s tales.’” He glanced up. “Who’s Old Toke?”

  “One of the Indians who lived on the bay when we first came here,” I told him. “He was an old man then. Toke’s Point was his place. He was sort of a leader among the Shoalwater, and he was the best storyteller. I think Lord Tom learned some of the legends from Old Toke.”

  “So the L is you.”

  I nodded. “I’ve told you Papa hated that I liked the stories.”

  Daniel nodded and looked down again, reading on, “‘Not the same, but all primitives are like. Superstition and weakness! I am disquieted—all is naught.’” He frowned. “Do you understand it?”

  “Not a bit.” I reached for the book, and he pushed it to my hands—how careful we were not to touch. I glanced down at the words.

  “What does he mean—‘not the same, but all primitives are like’?”

  “He found all Indian stories equally primitive, even when they weren’t about the same things. And he always equated Indian superstition with weakness.” I fingered the tooth on its thong, remembering how my father’s fingers had gone to where it had once hung around his neck even as he lay dying.

  “All beliefs are a fiction more or less,” Daniel said with a shrug.

  “How you must horrify Eleanor’s missionary father.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be wise to tell him I think that, would it? I play the image of a model son-in-law.”

  “It is only a role, then?”

  “One among many.” He met my gaze. “I say that as one actor to another.”

  I glanced away. Determined not to rise to the bait, I said, “Was...your mother very devout? Did she realize how you felt?”

  “She did when I refused to go to church any longer. Before that, she made me go every Sunday. But once I was bringing in three quarters of our living, I felt I should have a say as to how I spent my time.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.” He reached for the squash, then pushed it away again as if he’d thought better of it. “What about you? Did your father drag you to church?”

  I played with the edge of my cup. “Science was Papa’s religion. He read the Bible to me sometimes, not because he believed it, I think, but because he felt he ought to. But we never stayed anywhere long enough to go to church and when we finally came here, there was no church to go to. Not until they built the one in Oysterville. Before that, a circuit preacher came round every few months. He’s the one who married Junius and me.”

  “I wonder what that preacher thought of a girl marrying an old man?”

  I snorted inelegantly. “That history repeats itself, no doubt. It isn’t that unusual, you know. And it was either marry us or let us live in sin together. What was he to do? I was alone.”

  “Did you never think that it might be better to be alone?”

  I nodded. “I told Papa so. I told him I didn’t need to marry. That I had Lord Tom. That I would do just fine on my own.”

  “What did he say?”

  I smiled thinly. “He was most insistent otherwise.”

  “So you did as he ordered.”

  “He knew best.”

  “Perhaps you thought so at seventeen. Do you still believe it?”

  I looked up at him. “What good is it not to? I promised. I married Junius. It all turned out. I think Papa would be pleased.”

  Again, Daniel said, “Do you still believe it was best?”

  “Yes,” I said, and then, more insistently, “Yes. Papa knew me very well.”

  “Did he? Then why forbid you what you most loved? The stories?”

  “A true scientist looks at facts, not imaginings,” I defended.

  “Your father’s words, I think. What about the story you told me in the cave about those drawings?”

  I hesitated. I thought of Papa, of the lessons he tried forever to drill into my head: Where did that story come from, Lea? Do you know it to be true, or is it just fancy? Is there some savage here to tell it to you? “Imaginings, Daniel. I don’t know that’s what happened.”

  Daniel leaned forward. “You have a gift for imagining what other lives must have been like.”

  “Not a gift, a flaw,” I insisted.

  “I heard you in that cave, Lea. The things you said...I believed that you knew who had painted those things and why. I believe the things you say about the mummy and how she died. It feels...right. We can’t know everything. Instinct matters.”

  “It is a flaw. Papa was right. A real scientist would care only about the facts. It’s why I can’t understand what he saw in the
mummy that I can’t see. Why would he have reburied her?”

  “You don’t know that he did that.”

  “It’s the only explanation. There’s something about her that’s wrong. He knew it, and he put her back, and I don’t understand.”

  Daniel sighed and rose, picking up dishes, taking them to the sink.

  “Leave them,” I said. “I’ll do them.”

  “You made dinner. Leave these to me. Stop punishing yourself for what you can’t know and go do what you were meant to do. Go draw your mummy.”

  And so I did. The rain poured and I could hear the roar of the river, but it didn’t seem to be rising further, so I sat on the floor before the settee and listened to Daniel clean up, and I drew her. I still meant to cut her apart as Junius had demanded, but once I did that, this drawing would be the only thing I had of her, so each detail mattered. Again, even more so now, I had the sense that she and I were entwined, that the mystery of her would solve the mystery of who I was, even as that thought puzzled and bedeviled me. I knew who I was, didn’t I? Didn’t I?

  I glanced up. While I’d been lost in drawing, the day had faded. It was already dark. I’d been aware vaguely when Daniel finished cleaning. At some point, I heard him go out and come inside again, the thud of another pail of milk, the splash of it into the milk pans to set until the cream rose, the clang of the stove door as he fed the fire. He’d lit another lamp, and now he sat in Lord Tom’s chair, my father’s journal in his lap, his head bowed so the lamplight shone upon his golden hair. He looked up at my movement. “Finished?”

  “Not quite. I want to get every detail.”

  “And then?”

  I took a deep breath and set my notebook aside. “And then I cut her open. Junius has given me until he returns to do so.”

  “We’ll keep reading your father’s journals. We’ll find something there. But don’t hurry to tear her apart. Not on his account.”

  How did he know so clearly the things I wanted, when I hardly knew them myself? How easy it was to talk with him, to listen to him say the things I wanted to believe, to be known. The temptation to keep doing so was hard to resist, but I forced myself to remain silent. Because I was tired. My ordeal last night had left me weary, and now that my pencil was set aside, distraction gone, I was aware of him as I had never been aware of any man. I could not stop thinking of the kiss we’d shared, the thing we’d almost done. And I knew I hadn’t the strength to withstand him tonight if he should make the effort.