The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  Other women her age were busy with children and chores, and the next house was miles away, too far to walk. Quinn was friendly with Seymour, an elderly man who lived in a cabin a mile from the farm, but he was peculiar and most days he was brooding over books, mumbling about something Quinn had difficulty understanding. He was a retired history teacher and preferred to be left alone. Quinn hadn’t seen Sigrid in three years but they had spoken on the phone every so often.

  “What am I going to do?” Quinn asked Sigrid in a weak moment. “Nolan won’t go for this much longer. It’s been ten years, Sigrid, ten years. I’m thirty, how much time do I have left? I don’t know what to tell him. It’s just a matter of time until he runs around with some girl from town and she’ll end up pregnant and knowing him he won’t go for having a bastard. He’ll leave me, divorce me. I’ll have nothing. Nothing. Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?” Quinn secretly hoped Sigrid would offer her to come back home and then that worry would be off her mind.

  “Don’t be silly,” Sigrid said. “He’s not going to leave you, not if you’re smart. Now be the girl I raised and do what you need to do.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “There must be some pregnant teenager looking to give away a baby somewhere out there,” Sigrid said without missing a beat, as if that was the most logical conclusion in the world.

  “What do you want me to do? Put an ad in the paper?” Quinn asked.

  “You young girls have no imagination to get what you want.”

  It stung. Quinn thought of her father and how he had probably been just one of Sigrid’s plans; marry a rich widower who won’t last long.

  “Have you been to a doctor?”

  “More than one. They all say the same thing. Scar tissue from the infection. Nothing they can do. And to pray for a miracle.” Quinn switched subjects, asking about the town, the house, and people she remembered by name, but she didn’t dare ask about Benito. Quinn doubted Sigrid even remembered him. He was probably married by now with kids, living in Mexico on his family’s ranch. Quinn’s heart still ached but not as much as it used to. It was as if the dullness of her existence had also dulled the longing she used to feel for him.

  After they hung up, Quinn pondered Sigrid’s suggestion of finding a pregnant teenager and abandoned it just as quickly. Nothing in this town went unnoticed—nothing. A conversation she had overheard the other day after church popped into her head. Amanda Kingsley, a girl of about ten or so, known for flinching her fingers and being unable to speak in coherent sentences—at least that’s how the story was told—went to see a woman who lived on the edge of town. Said the woman gave her herbs and smudged some sort of smoking aromatic plant all over the girl’s body. Two grown men had to hold her down as she convulsed and twitched about. Then she fell into a long sleep—they said it was two weeks or longer—and when she awoke, she spoke coherently for the first time in her life. The girl’s family didn’t speak of the woman at all, not even behind closed doors or cupped hands, but the girl sat in church every Sunday, smiling, following the service. The people who gossiped about her were neither family nor kin, but random people flapping their gums, looking to tell a tale. Quinn thought it to be an outrageous story, but then there was a conversation overheard during lunch, or tidbits of conversations among groups after church, whispers at the grocery store. Talk about scorned wives’ husbands returning to them, husbands whose wives had run off with other men coming back home, sick children becoming well overnight. People paid the woman any amount they could afford. If she helped you, you didn’t tell, you didn’t gossip, out of fear your good fortune would reverse. It seemed too impossible to be true but stranger things had happened and maybe the old woman was her best bet to have a child.

  The same night Quinn made up her mind about seeing the woman, she had a dream: She stood in front of the woman’s house and it was quiet but for the sound of crickets chirping. Quinn heard the faint shoosh of a snake sidewinding its way through the dirt when she spotted a slender branch underneath a tree. It was nothing but a common stick really, smooth and without leaves, and Quinn picked it up. When she turned around, the snake had disappeared but she decided to hold on to the stick. When she looked up, there was a pack of wolfdogs spread out by the side of the house and on top of wooden crates. Some were clearly visible; others only revealed themselves by the glow of their eyes in the dark. A majestic black wolf, the biggest one of the pack, perched on the front porch, lifted its head. Then, the rest of the pack raised their heads, their noses pointing upward in primal anticipation. Their nostrils flared, their cheeks flapped as they took in her scent. Their bodies, in one fluid motion, rose. Their eyes sparkled in the dark, leaving tracers in their wake. The pack descended on her as if an ancient code told them to encircle her from all sides. Quinn drew a line in the sand with the stick. The alpha circled her, followed by the pack. Then, as if the wolf thought otherwise, he changed directions and disappeared up a hill. The pack followed. Quinn started running after them and simultaneously jerked awake, screaming.

  Nolan woke. “What’s wrong?” he mumbled as Quinn turned away from him, facing the wall.

  “Just a bad dream,” Quinn said, knowing Nolan had already fallen back asleep. She felt the heaviness of her lids, her eyes sitting like dry river rocks in the cavities of her skull, and the stickiness of her parched tongue. She longed for a glass of water and she got up and stood in the kitchen, staring at the old pitcher on the windowsill, its white bisque porcelain with the hairline crackling like streets on a map, the slightly sandy surface, and how the finish had dulled over the years. The pitcher was old, like her body, cracked, beyond its prime.

  Quinn went back to bed and Nolan scooted closer, grabbing her around the waist, pulling her toward him, until her shape fit perfectly into his. The embrace was nothing but an accidental gesture in the stupor of sleep. His hand on her body bothered her. Lately, the memories of the hunters seemed to disturb her more frequently, like a pebble in her shoe she just couldn’t shake out. Her heart beat profusely and then Nolan’s hand found her breast. Random the touch was, yet before she knew it, she was back in those woods, and she felt gnarly bark under her fingers as if she was touching its rough surface. There was a blend of pine, earth, and dew lingering in the air that made her body stiffen. Quinn attempted to move Nolan’s hand, calloused and rough, but he wouldn’t budge. The weight of his hand on her breast took her back to the oak tree where the hunters had—

  Quinn managed to wipe it all away—the intrusion after all was in its infant stage, still ethereal enough to be pushed aside with a swift brush of her hand—but if she waited any longer, the woods would be inside her, roots taking over, tangling her legs, crushing her, and then there’d be no way out. The memories would choke her, do her in completely. Nolan stirred and rubbed up against her and she felt a slight breeze creep into the folds of her nightgown, making her shiver. As she remained frozen, Nolan suddenly stopped moving, as if he’d thought otherwise. He became motionless and then his breathing slowed, deepened.

  Quinn hated Nolan then. He would not remember the moment, and if he did it would mean nothing to him, yet there she was, her heart beating out of her chest, her skin crawling, and it would take hours before she’d be able to forget. And then, just like that, it was too late. It had begun. Too long she had remained in the moment and her mind flipped, folded in on itself. There was no escape. The memory, more than a memory, a deep trench in her brain like a scar on her brain stem, evoked a vision of her facedown on a bed of acorns and leaves. Beard on top of her crushing her lungs, leaving her gasping for air. His weight lifted off her so quickly she could hardly think. Then she felt Bony Fingers dig into her. She caught a glimpse of blackened nails before he stifled her screams with his filthy hand. She could hear him panting, his breath the rhythm of an animal. He didn’t speak, didn’t tell her not to fight, didn’t tell her not to make a sound. His fingers did all the work;
he grabbed her throat as if it was the neck of a chicken, ready to be wrung. Bony Fingers would unhinge her head if any sound were to leave her lips.

  What are you all up to?

  Huntin’ season.

  And then they dragged her into the darkest part of the forest.

  —

  Quinn stood at the kitchen sink, still trembling. Nolan ate bacon and grits, then took a cup of coffee out to the barn and did whatever it was he did every day on a farm that didn’t produce anything but bales of hay in the summer and pruney squash in the fall. She still shook when she set out to visit her neighbor, Seymour Vines, the retired history teacher turned avid wildlife watcher. Seymour lived on a small neighboring plot, in a cabin, a mile down the road.

  Quinn had collected more stories about the woman—no one knew her name, everyone referred to her as the woman—and one was more outrageous than the other. Some said she made a magic salve from herbs that made it possible to communicate with the dead. A woman in town had been searching for a buried box filled with money after her husband’s fatal fall off a roof. She had turned the entire property upside down and didn’t find anything. Supposedly the woman had told her where to dig. Some people had observed her feed the mangy strays roaming the fields and watched them mate with wolves. Quinn knew there were no wolves in these parts of the country, and those stories were merely a legend: a male and a female wolf, living in a concealed thicket. Some folks from town said they had seen the woman feed them, always by hand, always one at a time. And no one knew more about animals and local lore than her neighbor Seymour.

  “Is that even true?” Quinn asked him after she sat next to him on the wobbly bench outside his cabin. “Are there wolves around here?”

  “Depends on who you believe,” Seymour said and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a red-and-white-checkered bandana. He was about ninety years old and looked every year of it, but his mind was as sharp as that of a young man. “The buffalo wolf was extinct by 1926, the Texas gray wolf by 1942. The last two wild Mexican wolves in Texas were killed in the late sixties.”

  “So that’s a no then?”

  “The red wolves are supposed to be extinct too but I don’t care what the books say,” he said, “’cause there are two roaming around these parts”—he spoke fast, with long pauses in between, as if he was constantly testing the validity of his statements—“and I’ve seen them with my own eyes.”

  “I’ve heard that a long time ago, when there were only a few wolves left, they mated with dogs and those are the ones people talk about. Hybrids, they call them, or wolfdogs,” Quinn said.

  “I don’t care what people say. I believe what I see with my own eyes and I know a wolf when I see one,” Seymour said, his voice suddenly sharp. “Wolf eyes have a heavy black eye lining. And very large feet, not rounded like dogs. And they have a dark spot a few inches down from the base of the tail.

  “It was early one morning, the sun was barely up. I was watching deer pass through the meadow by your house when I saw a wolf rolling in the grass. The male was a few feet away from the female and I watched him crush the head of a doe with one crunch, claws and jaws working together to hold down the meat while his jaws shred and broke bone. His teeth were large and more curved and thicker than a dog’s, even a wolfdog. The female then ate the doe, ripping flesh and licking the blood. See, their tails don’t curl in like a dog, they are always straight, and I’ve never seen a tail so straight on any dog. Ever.” Seymour seemed to be lost in the recollection and Quinn wondered if it was a mere half truth lodged in his mind pretending to be a memory.

  “Do they bark like dogs?” Quinn couldn’t think of anything else to say. The story line about the old woman had faded and Quinn felt herself get impatient.

  “Their bark sounds like a fast puffing sound, or a high-pitched yip that can almost sound like a coyote. They can scream when they’re agitated but I’ve never heard that,” he said and stared off into the distance.

  “What about the woman though?” Quinn asked, but Seymour ignored her.

  “A wolf’s howl is one of the most haunting, beautiful sounds you’ll ever hear.” Seymour wiped his forehead again, then clutched the bandana in his fist.

  “The woman, Seymour, what about the woman?” Quinn insisted.

  “I don’t pay any mind to old wives’ tales. She’s an old woman who grows herbs and lives alone and ignorant people call her a witch. Silly backward people live here, Quinn, you know that. I don’t talk about her. It’s none of my business.”

  “So you talk about magical wolves but you don’t want to talk about her?”

  “It’s not a matter of believing,” Seymour said, “it’s just the way it is.”

  They sat in silence and Quinn thought about leaving and coming back to see him another day, bringing him muffins or a pie to get him talking some more. He knew everything going on around here and maybe he just wanted to play coy, wanted to be courted for his stories.

  “I have to go,” Quinn said and just as she was about to get up, she heard Seymour whisper something she couldn’t quite make out. “What was that?”

  “You’ve heard about the hunter?”

  Quinn jerked, and then felt the panic rise. She yet had to discover all the words and places that harbored the memories of the woods and the consequences she lived with. Sometimes it was in Nolan’s clenched jaw, in the cracking of his knuckles. Or in a word. Hunter.

  “Back in 1834,” Seymour continued, “there was a trapper, name was George Dent. He made his way up Devil’s River. Dent’s wife went into labor and there were complications and he went to get help. He found a Mexican shepherd who agreed to accompany him back to the camp and the shepherd brought his wife along to help with the birth.” Seymour was quiet for a long time after that, as if he thought better than to tell the story.

  “And?” Quinn said with an irritated tinge in her voice.

  “They found Dent’s wife dead from childbirth. The newborn was gone, and wolf tracks were all around.”

  “What does that have to do with the woman?”

  “What woman?” Seymour looked up, confused.

  “The woman who cured that kid, the one they call a witch?” Quinn said, hoping he’d tell her more.

  Seymour spit out a mouthful of chewing tobacco, juices running down his chin. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. “I told you already, I don’t talk about her. But I’ve heard stories, you know, years later, of a girl running with a wolf pack. Seminole scouts found small human footprints mingled with the wolf tracks. A search party tracked down the pack and captured the girl. She was so wild they locked her in a shed. At night the wolves came and attacked the men’s horses. That was only a diversion, because the next day they realized the girl had escaped. For fifty years there were occasional sightings of the Wolf Girl of Devil’s River.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling you what folks around here are saying.”

  “That’s like, what . . .” Quinn paused. “That’s like”—she did the math in her head—“over one hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Well, folks around here have their legends,” Seymour said and cocked his head.

  “They say the Wolf Girl of Devil’s River lives in the woods of Aurora?”

  “They say they’ve seen her walk around in a white dress.”

  “So people say there’s a Wolf Girl out here?”

  “So the legend goes.”

  “But what about the woman who cured the girl in town? The woman who sells herbs?” The woman who does spells and hexes and gets unfaithful wives to return home to their husbands and makes stray husbands fall in love with their wives again, the one who cures warts and ailments and burns foul-smelling herbs to get lost cows to come home, speaks words over twitching children. The one who helps women conceive.

  “G
host,” Seymour called out to a white dog with numerous markings of tan, approaching from behind the cabin. “Where have you been?” He stroked the dog’s scruff and got up. “Always running off, that dog. No common sense.”

  —

  The call came on a Friday morning. Quinn heard the phone ring, Nolan’s responses short and to the point. He never handed Quinn the phone, but when he entered the kitchen, she knew something had happened.

  “Sigrid is dead. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”

  “Who was on the phone?” Quinn asked and dried her hands with a kitchen towel, continued on when they were already dry.

  “The housekeeper found her. She’d been dead for a few days.”

  That’s it, Quinn thought. Just like that. Now I have no one.

  “They want you to come and see about the house and the property.”

  “See about it? What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure. She said there’s no will and the house is in your name. Your father must have put it in your name before he died.”

  Quinn got a whiff of a chemical odor, something like ether or chloroform, she couldn’t be sure. Nolan’s fingertips were white as if they had been dipped in paint.

  “Can you drive me?” Quinn asked and took a step back, the odor so strong she felt nauseated. “I don’t want to go alone.”

  “I’m working on something,” he said, and Quinn watched him dip his hands in a sink full of cold water. “You can take the truck. The drive isn’t that far.”

  Quinn didn’t answer, but for a moment in time a thought flashed through her mind. It was a mere spark, neither logical nor feasible, really. Yet it grew, sloshed over everything.