A fetal shark, with white film where its eyes should be, points nose down in the jar. “Fetal” means it was a baby shark still in its mother’s belly when Father collected it.
Eustace, despite his protestations, comes over and looks. “Even if it’s only a baby,” he says, “it looks like a killer.”
I nod. “My father caught the shark’s mother off the side of a ship,” I tell Eustace, “and then he dissected it in the captain’s cabin.” My father was a very curious man. He always wanted to know what things looked like, inside and out. I’m like that, too.
“I’ll bet the captain didn’t like him cutting open a shark in his cabin,” Eustace says.
I’d never really considered that some people might not have liked the way my father did things. Except for Captain Greeney, I’ve never considered that anyone else may not have liked my father.
I decide to change the subject. “Father said that all species of sharks, but especially great whites, follow the Atlantic sailing vessels, expecting the sailors to throw over scraps, or rats, or corpses.”
I stop right there, even though there’s more to that story. The rest is that sharks are smart, and they learned that by following the slave ships crossing the ocean, they could sometimes get a free meal of the dead people who’d get tossed over. Sharks are smart, if morbid. I don’t tell Eustace that part. I don’t want him getting sad about being a slave again.
I set the jar on top of a crate. I tap the side of it, almost expecting that the shark will come to life. “I wonder if its mother ever ate any people,” I say to Eustace.
“I hope not,” Eustace says.
“I wonder if the fetal shark ate its brothers and sisters,” I continue. “That’s what all fetal sharks do. They eat each other in their mother’s womb. The ones that eat all the rest are the ones who get born. Sharks come out of the womb with a murderous past.”
Eustace shudders.
One thing about being a scientist is that you are likely to learn things that give you bad dreams or make you shudder. But that didn’t bother Father, and it doesn’t bother me, either.
But there’s one thing down here that has awakened me from my sleep a time or two. Some people with less scientific minds might call it wicked or evil or magic. And sometimes I admit I think it’s talking to me, even from far away. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I wonder if I’m going mad like those Kansas housewives.
I creep to a dark corner of the cave, the coolest area here.
The crate is small. No bigger than a watermelon. Around it, with twine, I have constructed a combination barrel sling, which means the twine goes under and around the crate. On top, I’ve twisted a butterfly loop, which creates a hook poking up from the knot for easy carrying should I ever need to move the crate in a hurry. In small letters on the side of the crate, Father painted MEDICINE HEAD, OFF COAST OF SOUTH AMERICA, 1835. KEEP COOL. DO NOT DESTROY! I wipe the dust off the top and unravel the butterfly loop until the rope rests on top of the crate, coiled up like a snake, as though protecting the contents.
Eustace shuffles his feet and clears his throat. “Um. Lu?” he says quietly. His voice sounds very nervous.
I don’t look at him. “Did you find the thunder eggs all right?” Thunder eggs are rocks, kind of like geodes, but not exactly. Instead of crystals, a melty, swirling pattern of colors is created inside an otherwise ordinary rock.
“Yes,” he says. He sneezes. “This one with the swirling white and red and orange and brown colors is my favorite.” I turn and look.
“Oh, I know that one,” I say. “It’s from America, from the western coast near the Columbia River, where Father almost lost his life once. It’s a very dangerous river to navigate.”
Eustace rubs the thunder egg between his thumb and forefinger. I’ve done that, too. “This looks like it couldn’t be found anywhere on earth. It’s too perfect.” He puts it up to his face and presses it against his cheek. The smooth, flat surface feels cool, I know.
“Keep it,” I say. “Keep that one.” Eustace ignores me. He wouldn’t keep it. Eustace has real strict ideas about what he owes and what he’s owed. He wouldn’t take the thunder egg because he feels he hasn’t earned it.
I’m worried I might have embarrassed him somehow or hurt his pride. I’m also worried when he asks me, “Are you planning on opening that crate?” He’s nodding at the Medicine Head’s box.
“You could earn that thunder egg by fixing our pig fence.” I smile brightly, trying to distract him from thinking about the crate I want to open.
“Maybe,” he says. “I’ll consider it.” He stares at me for a while, waiting for me to make a move. But I don’t. I’m not even breathing. Behind me, I can feel the presence of the Medicine Head. I can feel it so strongly, I swear I can hear it breathing. I put my hands in the air above the crate.
“Lu!” Eustace practically shouts. “I’ve got to get home. Let’s get going.”
“Just wait a darn minute, Eustace,” I say.
He quietly slumps against a cave wall as I put my lamp down.
I touch the crate that speaks to me, the one that seems alive, the one that Captain Greeney craves, the one that Father was adamant about protecting. I unknot the rope that holds the lid to the box and slide the twine off the Medicine Head’s crate.
I lift off the top and peer down into the crate.
There it is, just the way I left it.
CHAPTER 6
In the glow of the firelight, it looks more haunting than usual. The Medicine Head, an object said to bring power to whoever owns it, faces up. Here, before me, is an object, sacred to its tribe, reputed to remember history and foretell the future. Here is an object said to defy scientific explanation. I remember so well the way Father leaned over it and said these words.
I am disgusted by it. I am mesmerized, too. I have looked at the Medicine Head a dozen times, but I have never held it. Lately, I feel pulled toward it, like an invisible rope draws me close. Even while I’m in bed, in the darkest hour of night, the Medicine Head tugs on my mind. Sometimes, while I’m supposed to be doing my chores, I find myself standing in the yard, looking out over the prairie and daydreaming about the Medicine Head.
From somewhere in the cave, a voice seems to be whispering Hold me. Though I can’t explain how I know or how it’s doing it, the Medicine Head calls to me.
I trap my breath in my mouth and pinch my lips together. My fingers are inches from its skin. I’m so close that I start to worry that I will accidentally touch it before I am ready, so I move my hands back again. Its hairs extend out in every direction, like light off the sun.
I put my hands into the crate again and hold them over the head in the way I’ve seen lots of Kansas preachers put their hands over sinners. I’m sweating. I can taste salt on my lips.
“It’s hot in here,” I whisper. Everything else around me quiets and blurs.
I can feel life in the Medicine Head.
My hands shake with strain and restraint. I jerk my hands out of the crate again. “Get ahold of yourself,” I say out loud.
Eustace looks up at me. “What?” he asks. He dabs his forehead with a hankie.
I’d almost forgotten he was here. “Not you,” I say.
The reason I have never held the Medicine Head is because it is a real head, or rather, was a real human head. A shrunken head. In this crate is a disembodied cranium.
Do you know what a cranium is? “Cranium” means skull. The skull is where the brain is when a person or animal is alive. “Disembodied” means the head has been removed from the body, usually with a big knife or sword or guillotine. Have you ever seen a real human head detached from its body? Probably not. But you probably didn’t have a famous scientific father who traveled to the far reaches of the earth, either.
“What are you doing, Lu?” Eustace wants to know.
“Mind your own business,” I say. He turns his back to me while he shakes his head, as though his feelings have been hurt again.
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The Medicine Head has a nose, two eyeholes, two lips, hair, ears, and eyebrows. It’s been stripped from its skull, boiled, shrunken, tanned, and stuffed with sand, but this head used to be on a body on someone in the world. I have always imagined that it used to be a young man, though it’s hard to tell now. Inside this head used to be a brain, a mind thinking thoughts and feeling feelings. Maybe the brain that used to be in this head once looked at the night sky, wondering about the changing constellations or the phases of the moon. Even though its mouth is now stitched closed, words used to flow freely from it. Maybe he fought with his siblings and said things he didn’t mean. Maybe he said I’m sorry, and maybe he said I love you.
I feel breath at my back and I jump.
“I’d favor you putting the cover back over that head,” Eustace says.
“I’d favor you not sneaking up on me when I’m not ready,” I snap. My heart’s thumping. “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about this? Don’t you wonder about it?”
“Not really,” Eustace says. But he leans over and peers in. “What’s in the nostrils?”
“Dried leaves, I think,” I say.
“What do you think he smelled last?” Eustace asks.
“Maybe breakfast,” I say. “Maybe ordinary things like coffee, eggs, berries with milk.”
“Maybe his father’s morning tobacco,” Eustace adds. “My pa used to smoke in the morning.” He exhales loudly.
I hold my breath and wonder whether Eustace will say more about his father. He doesn’t. We quietly stare at the head.
This head used to see. Maybe the last thing he saw was a freckle on his sister’s face, the blanket his mother made for him, a bird with colorful wings. Maybe not. Maybe it was the ash of a fire, the blur of a hatchet, or his own blood seeping out of a wound.
Sounds used to dance in those ears. Maybe he heard his mother hum a lullaby or his father teach him something about trapping or identifying food. He heard the paws of an animal prowling in the night and the hoot of an owl and the giggle of a baby.
I exhale. I can hear Eustace breathing. Outside, the crickets chirp. A wolf howls somewhere in the distance.
I stretch my hands over the Medicine Head again, my fingers hovering an inch from it, maybe less. I want to pick it up, but I’m scared, so I try to reason. This is an object, I tell myself. It’s not real. It won’t bite. Its eyelids are skewered shut with wooden needles and won’t try to open. Its lips are pierced with a half dozen of those same wooden needles and crisscrossed with some kind of twine, and they won’t move, won’t shape a howl or a scream. The nose won’t suddenly flutter with breathing.
Then, very deliberately, very slowly, very tentatively, as though I were reaching out to touch a live snake and survive to tell about it, I lower one of my pointer fingers until it is touching the forehead of the Medicine Head.
We are skin to skin.
The forehead is cool, and it gives way against the pressure of my touch, as though I have pressed my finger into wet sand. I gently lower three more fingers of my right hand. My pinkie touches the ear, which feels like an old prune. My middle and ring finger touch the hair, which feels normal, like a live person’s hair. I lower my other hand and softly work my fingertips under the head, into the prickly straw that holds it. Then I lift the Medicine Head from the crate and bring it up to my eye level.
What feels like the gale from the front of a thunderstorm hits me in the face. My hair blows back. I take a big breath, the kind you take before you know you’re going underwater. Wind rushes past me. A loud whooshing noise fills my head but then is replaced by voices, some familiar and some not, yelling and screaming in my ears. I see flashes of faces—there’s Priss! And Mother the way she looked in New Bedford! I see a dock boy from Massachusetts I once liked. I see the fat smiles of my baby brothers, and then I see Father lighting his pipe, his mustache moving up and down as he puffs. Then, the wind, the voices, and the faces stop, and I am back one year.
I know this day. I’ve replayed it in my daydreams and nightmares a thousand times. I try to shake my head, to let go of this memory. I try to get out of it. I want to be back in the cave with Eustace. But I can’t.
The Medicine Head has put me here, or at least has put my mind here, and it won’t free me.
CHAPTER 7
Eustace, Priss, and I are swimming. Then I get a fluttery feeling in my gut, as though something is about to happen.
I am floating on top of the water. But my skirt wraps around my legs, and I can’t kick. I start to go under. My skirt swirls completely around my legs until I am wrapped tight like a mummy. I hold my breath, reach down, untangle my legs, and thrust to the surface. I gasp.
Priss is back-floating in absolute calm. She rights herself and swims vertically. “Lu,” she says, “what’s the matter?”
I sputter. “I nearly drowned because of this stupid skirt!” I shout. “That’s what’s the matter!”
Only Eustace’s legs appear above the water. His head is in the depths. Then his legs go arrow straight, disappear beneath the surface. His head pops up a few feet from mine.
I have a bad feeling and start paddling for the shore. “Let’s go!” I say to Eustace and Priss. “Right now! Let’s go!”
“Lu!” says Priss. “We’d never let you drown. We’d save you. Eustace or me.”
I climb out onto the muddy bank. Fob is right behind me. “Well,” I shout at Priss, “you’re the one who gave me this heavy skirt! Almost like you wanted me to get weighted down and killed.”
“Lu!” says Priss. “What is the matter with you?”
“I want to go!” I shout. “Right now!” I stand up on the shore and wring out the hem of my skirt. “This is a bad day.” I reach for my boots and slip my wet feet into them.
Eustace looks at Priss, and Priss looks at me. She says, “That’s silly, dear.” But she swims toward the shore, and Eustace follows behind her.
On our walk back home, we see a dust cloud rising up from near our place. I quicken my pace. My wet skirt slaps against my legs.
“Oh no,” I say.
“What?” says Priss. “What?” She looks up and sees the dust cloud. “It’s only horses.” She doesn’t understand. But I know the dust from the horses’ hooves is connected to my bad feeling.
Eustace squints at the dust and the shapes of horses galloping. “You know those people?” he asks. Fob growls. He knows, too.
The cloud grows, and we can hear the pounding of hooves. I look to my right and left for a good place to hide. There are only grasses and weeds. Tall and thick.
“Get in the grass!” I shout as I push Priss into the brush. “Get down!”
“What’s going on?” Priss cries. Her eyes are big as potato slices. Eustace helps me get Priss and Fob down in the brambles and thorns.
“Ow!” moans Priss, and I tell her to be quiet and I press my hand over her mouth hard. I lie down on top of her and cover her body with mine. I’m instantly aware of the rise and fall of her worried breathing.
Within a minute, I can also feel the vibrations of the horses’ hooves. Eustace has got his whole body on top of Fob and his hands around the dog’s neck. Fob’s eyes are bulged from the pressure of Eustace’s hands, but he can breathe a little and can’t bark. I’m grateful for Eustace in this second. He’s brave and quick and dependable. We catch each other’s eyes. He scrunches his eyebrows and then nods in a way that suggests to me that he understands, as I do, that something very serious is occurring.
We wait, we four—a dog, a slave boy, and a couple of girls—as the horses and riders and what I know is death itself thunder past us. As they do, though I know I shouldn’t, I raise my head and count them. Eight. I see black, shiny boots like the ones Father wore when he was in the navy.
The last rider gallops more slowly than the rest. We’re hidden well, but he’s looking at the grasses as though he knows we’re there. Even in the shadow of his hat, I can see his blue eyes, which are cold and shallow. Beneath
his mustache, it seems to me he’s grinning.
He slows his horse. I put my head back down and hold my breath. I am still as a stone until I hear the horse pick up its pace again.
Then there’s nothing but a coiling dust cloud and the wind rustling the grass. When we can’t hear them anymore, Eustace and I release our holds on Priss and Fob, who spring to life like a couple of prairie dogs out of a flooded hole. Priss slaps my hand away.
“Tell me what’s going on!” she demands.
“I don’t know exactly!” I shout. “But we’ve got to get home! Those men were the ones Father’s been fearing. I know it.”
“They sure seemed in a hurry,” says Eustace. “I’m going to get my ma to help.” He slaps his hand on his thigh, a signal to Fob to follow. Then they bolt across the flatlands toward Tolerone.
Priss and I stand up, and I start running. I turn to look for Priss, who stands where I left her. “Come on!” I scream. She runs, too.
As we get closer, the top of the big cottonwood tree comes into view, black against the afternoon sky. We keep running, even if we don’t know what toward. Then the tree, with its full top, thick and sturdy branches, and huge and solid trunk, comes into full view. I see a rope strung from one of the lower branches. It looks like a straight black line cutting the sun behind it. The sun has cast layers of orange, yellow, and pink on the horizon, and the rope intersects those lines perfectly. But the end of the rope leads into the shape of a head, then a neck, and then a body with arms and legs. And the whole thing swings.
At the end of that rope is a man, strangling. I know it’s Father. His legs kick and jerk, which means he is alive and struggling. We are a half mile from that tree, and I try to remember how long it takes me to run that distance. Three minutes? Three and a half? I want to yell to him to stop struggling, to be still. I want to shout to him that the more he struggles, the more weight he’ll put on the loop around his neck, which will put more tension in the rope, which will tighten the knot. I run faster. Priss is way behind. She can’t keep up.
Wonder at the Edge of the World Page 4
