Time Is a River

by Mary Alice Monroe

  Belle heard Mia’s call and waved, then detoured toward where Mia was fishing. The day had been hot and the early evening wasn’t much cooler. Belle’s deeply tanned legs were cloaked in olive green hiking shorts and boots. Her long braid slapped against her back as she walked with a steady gait.

  “Look at you!” she called out as she walked toward her. An easy smile stretched across her face. “All geared up and casting like a pro. Catch anything?”

  “Caught a big one but it got away.”

  Belle raised her hands in a victory sign and made an exaggerated face of surprise.

  Mia confessed, “I caught a tree.”

  While Belle laughed, Mia recalled reading in Kate’s diary how her father had taught her never to admit when she didn’t catch a fish. She should say she caught a big one but it got away. The listener would simply assume that it was a fish.

  “There’s a big rainbow in there I’m anxious to meet,” Mia said.

  “Oh, yeah? Let me see you cast to it,” Belle said, coming closer.

  “Aren’t you going to get your rod and join me?”

  “There’s no hurry. The sun is just lowering and the fish will start biting. This is a good spot. Go on, cast a few.”

  Nervous, Mia’s wrist began to roll forward and the line did its trick of falling in a pile in the water. “It’s my wrist, I know,” she said with a groan. She expected some retort or correction from Belle but it wasn’t forthcoming. Turning her head, she saw Belle standing still with her eyes wide.

  “Where did you get that rod?” she asked in a stunned voice.

  Mia looked at the bamboo rod in her hand. “I found this in the cabin,” she replied hesitatingly. “I was having a hard time with the rod you gave me. The handle didn’t feel right. So I thought I’d give this one a try. I’ve been doing much better with it.”

  “Where in the cabin did you find it?”

  Mia heard tension creep into Belle’s voice. She navigated across the river rocks closer to Belle, who was already reaching for the fishing rod. “It was in the armoire. There are two in there. This was the smaller. I didn’t think you’d mind if—”

  “There’s another in there? Like this one?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you know?”

  Belle shook her head. She was still eyeing the rod in her hand as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing. “Show me.”

  Mia removed the boots and waders, then stood clenching and unclenching her hands as she watched Belle push aside the blue taffeta gown with annoyance to get to the second bamboo rod. She pulled out the bag and tube and let out a soft yelp of excitement when she saw the small hanging tag. “Look at this, Mia! It’s a Payne!”

  Mia watched Belle draw out the rich-looking rod as though it were made of glass.

  “My God, it’s a beauty,” she said in an awed tone, inspecting all its details. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph help me. There it is, his name on the butt cap. I’ve heard of them, of course. But I’ve never held one. And this one’s in mint condition. Absolutely incredible.”

  Mia stood anxiously by her side, wishing there was something she could say to alleviate her wrong in taking what was obviously a valuable rod from the armoire and using it.

  “I was alone and cleaning and I didn’t think you’d mind if I opened the cabinets and closets. You told me to make myself at home. Everything had coats of dust and dirt to be wiped off. Anyway, when I found these bamboo poles I didn’t think they were worth much. I used to see bamboo poles in the dime store growing up. I had no idea…”

  Belle turned her head and looked at her with a searing gaze that seemed to question Mia’s sanity. She gave a short laugh, the kind that said I don’t know where to begin. She raised the bamboo rod like a wand in her hand, something magical and otherworldly.

  “First, you never call a rod a pole. Second, Mia, this is not just some bamboo rod. This is a split cane rod. It’s made from bamboo, true. Though not just any bamboo. This is from a bamboo called Tonkin, imported from China over a hundred years ago by master craftsmen as respected and revered in their day as any great watchmaker. They began as apprentices, and then maybe, if they had the magic in their hands, they’d be allowed to create rods. For it is magic, Mia, to split the stem of the bamboo, then to put it back together, stronger and more flexible than before. Each craftsman had his own secret method which he guarded jealously. State secrets were not so well protected. The names of the great rods of this era are still spoken in awe today. A split cane fly-fishing rod is a piece of art. And a split cane rod made by Payne is a museum-quality piece.”

  “And that’s a Payne.”

  “It is.”

  “And I fished with it.”

  “You did.”

  Mia closed her eyes and felt sick to her stomach. “But aren’t the new graphite ones better? They’re lighter and stronger.”

  “You might think that. But you’d be wrong. Granted, not all bamboo rods were created equal. For every magnificent one, like this one, there were thousands of cheaper, mass-produced ones that are better left in basements than used. Some people think of these old rods as antiques, mere relics of the past. Well, I tell you those people never held a rod made by Payne in their hands. Are the new rods better? I guess it’d be like comparing a handcrafted watch with a machine-made digital.” She shrugged. “They both tell you the time.”

  Belle lifted the rod and gave it a quick forward cast. A smile of satisfaction eased across her face. “Slow and smooth,” she said in a long, easy drawl, her eyes revealing her appreciation for the rod’s flex.

  “I’m sorry I took it out,” Mia told her, feeling the gravity of the situation. “I should have asked. Really, Belle, I had no idea of its worth.”

  “No harm done.” She cocked her head. “How did it fish?”

  “It was…different.”

  Belle looked disappointed in her lackluster response.

  Mia opened her mouth, trying to find the words to describe the change she felt within herself using this rod. It wasn’t so much about how she might catch a fish with it. It was more how she and the rod became one instrument.

  Mia cracked a small smile. “It was magic.”

  Belle’s chest swelled and Mia saw she was satisfied with that answer.

  “You should take a look at the other things in the armoire. There are some real treasures in there.”

  “Yeah?” Belle put the bamboo rod carefully aside, then came back to the armoire and began rummaging through it with a businesslike efficiency.

  Belle picked up the leather wallet filled with dry flies, pausing to admire one or two. Mia could see she was enthralled, but she closed it up and tossed it back into the armoire saying, “Help yourself. Someone should use them.” She lifted a china plate, giving it little more than a cursory glance, then moved on to the silver. She picked up a knife, felt its weight, and replaced it in the box.

  “Actually, the silver is sterling,” Mia offered. “It should be quite valuable. And the china is hand-painted.”

  “Lord, Mia, I don’t know squat about silver and china. Can I sell it?”

  “I’m sure you can, but you should be careful not to get taken. There are lots of dealers out there who’ll tell you what’s wrong with it and give you a fraction of its value.” She almost laughed, thinking of Clarence’s comments about firewood. “My sister is coming up for a visit this summer. I could have her take samples to an antique appraiser in Charleston. This furniture is good, too. If you’d like, we could take photographs of them for the appraiser. At least you’ll have a ballpark figure.”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that,” Belle replied with obvious relief. She stood and looked around the room. “Tell your sister it can all go. I’m only interested in the property. I don’t want anything inside. If it was hers, then I want to get rid of it. Maybe then I can exorcise the ghost forever.”

  Mia froze and glanced nervously at the bookcase. “What about the books?”

  With a bored sigh, Belle walked over
to the library and scanned the books. She pulled out a fly-fishing text and leafed through it. Then another. “These books on fly-fishing are interesting. I’ll keep these.”

  Mia’s eyes darted to the bottom shelf where she’d put the diaries. She suddenly was terrified that Belle would find them and take them away. Her chest tightened as she watched Belle scan the bookshelves, pulling out a volume or two, perusing the pages then putting it back. Mia realized that she wasn’t ready to give up the diaries. She needed Kate’s voice. Feeling traitorous, she waited in pained silence and volunteered nothing.

  Belle looked inside the armoire again, closed the doors, then turned her back on it. “OK, that should do it. I’ll keep the fly-fishing books here in case you want to look at them. But I’ll take these bamboo rods. I still can’t believe it,” she said, handling the rods delicately. “I assumed my grandmother fished with a fabulous instrument, but I never figured it’d be a Payne. This was a pricey rod, even in her day.”

  “From what I’ve heard, Kate could have afforded about any rod she wanted.”

  Belle’s eyes flashed. “You’re hearing stories about my grandmother? How do you even know her name?”

  Mia crossed her arms over her stomach as it tensed. “Well, the people in town figured out where I was staying. They told me it was Kate Watkins’s house.”

  “I’ll just bet they did.” She turned back to the table and disassembled the fly rods with quick movements. “Damn gossips. What else did they tell you?”

  “Not much, really.”

  “You’re not a very good liar.”

  “They weren’t gossiping, really. Just curious. Mostly about the fact the cabin has been opened up. I gather Kate Watkins was a celebrity when she lived.”

  “A celebrity? Is that what they call her now? Did they tell you what she was famous for?”

  “Fly-fishing.”

  Belle snorted.

  Mia felt suddenly defensive. “I heard about the murder, if that’s what you mean.”

  Belle went still, then slowly turned around. Mia saw bitterness darken her eyes. “I’d hoped that damn story would have died with my grandmother. Why can’t they just leave it alone?” Leaning against the table she asked more softly, “What’s it going to take?”

  “I don’t think anyone meant any harm,” Mia said in a small voice. “It’s a fable. A small-town story.”

  Belle looked at Mia with a drawn expression. “This town drove my mother out with their stories and gossip.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Belle pulled out a dining chair and sat in it, resting her elbows on her thighs. Mia moved to a rocker and began rocking slowly.

  “Mama never told me the details,” Belle said, “other than to say ‘Kids can be cruel.’ I always knew she had this history she refused to share with me. I mean, we all ask questions when we’re kids. Like, Who’s my grandmother? My grandfather? Where did you grow up? Right?”

  Mia nodded. “I can remember asking my mother those questions.”

  “My mother just clammed up when I asked until I just stopped asking. Even as a child I figured it must’ve been pretty dark and deep that she couldn’t even share the basics with her daughter. I only know that she lived a rugged existence with her mother in isolation in a cabin.”

  Belle’s eyes scanned the room with a haunted expression. “She really hated this place,” she said with feeling.

  Mia followed her gaze and saw the hewn and polished logs of wood piled one on top of another with precision. She’d always thought that this was a place built with intention. How could anyone hate it? she wondered.

  “She ran off when she was seventeen, barely old enough to get married. I don’t believe she ever loved my father. She saw him as a ticket out.” She shrugged. “Who knows about him? He left us when I was three. I don’t remember him.

  “But the irony is, she never really escaped this town. All her life she tried to be herself—Theodora Carson—not Theodora Watkins with all the baggage that name carried. She was haunted by the worry that someone in Virginia would discover her past. They might see her maiden name on her birth certificate, or she’d slip and say something that would tie her to this town and to that crazy Kate Watkins of Watkins Mill. Then they’d attach her to the stories and she’d be right back in this cabin, unable to be anyone but the daughter of Kate Watkins.”

  “So she never came back?”

  Belle shook her head. “Never. Would you if your mother was the local Lizzie Borden? She warned me not to come back here, either. ‘Don’t stir up the mud,’ she told me. ‘Let the dead lie.’”

  “But Kate was her mother. Didn’t she ever write to her?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. I don’t think she ever told her I was born.”

  Mia felt a stab of empathy for both women. “That’s so harsh.”

  “Who’s to say? The name Kate Watkins was rarely spoken in our home, and when it was, it was with contempt. I grew to hate her myself.”

  “Why? You never even met her.”

  “I didn’t have to know her for her name to bring me pain.” She straightened her shoulders and sat back in the hardwood chair. “My mother was an alcoholic.” She sighed. “I can say that now, after years of therapy. My mother was an alcoholic,” she repeated slowly. “Of course, I didn’t know that big word when I was a kid. I only knew that whenever my mother drank she became mean and surly and that was the only time she’d talk. I used to tremble in my bed when I heard the ice chink in the glass at night, knowing she’d come and wake me and make me listen. When she was drunk she always wanted to have someone to talk to, and that someone was me. I didn’t like her very much when she drank. She said some pretty horrible things about Kate. And about living out here.”

  Mia felt for the young girl woken up from sleep to hear that abuse. “Didn’t she have any friends? Someone her own age she could confide in?”

  “That’s the sad part. She blamed her mother for not having any friends when she was growing up. But she never had any friends after she left, either.”

  Mia rocked and thought of the sadness and bitterness that Belle had grown up with. Right or wrong, it sounded like Kate Watkins was the scapegoat for all of Theodora’s unhappiness. She thought about the optimism and spirit she’d discovered in the diaries. She couldn’t match the cruel harridan of Theodora’s story with the girl who wrote those words. There was something amiss in this perception, but Mia didn’t know what it was.

  “Aren’t you curious about your grandmother? What she was really like? Don’t you want to know her?”

  “No,” Belle shot back like a bullet. “She’s nothing to me but a shame to get past.”

  Mia felt a stirring in the air, a breeze from the open window.

  “Belle, if you feel that way, why didn’t you sell the cabin?”

  “Who’d buy it? Folks around here say it’s haunted.”

  “Not everyone believes in ghosts. It’s a beautiful spot. Someone from off would buy it. I’d buy it if I had the money.”

  “Goddamn, it should be easy for me to sell this place. It’d make my life easier, I can tell you that. But I…I never had much family. My mother had turned her back on the Watkins name but she never met the Carson family, either. So she was pretty much alone. She did her best, but she wasn’t a very strong person and she didn’t have much education. She read a lot, mind you, but she never had the money for college so she worked as a waitress, then got promoted to a manager. But she never made much money.”

  Belle wiped her face with her palms. “So it was a shock when she died and I found out I inherited this cabin and the eighty-seven acres it sits on. My mother always was short of cash and my first thought was, Why she just didn’t sell it? She’d held on to it all those years, paid taxes on it when she didn’t have a dollar to spare. I had to ask myself, What she was holding on to? That’s why I’m going to hang on to it for a while, at least until I figure out the answer to that question.”

  Mi
a stopped rocking and studied Belle’s face. Her brown eyes, usually so calm, were full of sorrow, and lines she’d never noticed before creased her forehead. Mia hadn’t known Belle all that long but she knew Belle was the person everyone went to when they needed support. She was more a mentor than friend. It could hardly be anything other than that, considering Belle was the guide and the leader of the retreat, and now her landlord. Yet somewhere from then to now they had crossed some line toward friendship. She was glad Belle felt able to confide some of the hurt of her past. Now, at least, it wasn’t all about Mia’s pain. For a friendship to develop, it took two equals.

  Mia gripped the sides of her chair and raised herself to standing. She went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of white wine. Grabbing two small glasses she poured a liberal amount in each, then carried them back to the table. She handed one to Belle.

  “Cheers,” Mia said, raising her glass.

  Belle clinked glasses with her and they both took a long drink. Mia thought Belle looked a little uncomfortable for having opened up so much of herself.

  “Maybe,” Mia ventured, “some of your answers are here in this cabin. In this town. Maybe you should be staying here. Not me.”

  “No way.”

  “Why not? Are you ashamed of being related to Kate?”

  Belle looked incredulous. “Wouldn’t you be ashamed if your grandmother was considered a murderer?” She took another long sip of wine. “Besides, this place gives me the creeps. Maybe it is haunted, after all.”

  “If it is haunted,” Mia ventured, “the spirit isn’t angry. She’s…”

  Belle’s eyes narrowed. “What? Did you see a ghost?”

  Mia wanted to laugh. “No, nothing like that. It’s more a feeling I get sometimes. I sense a presence in the house, especially her bedroom. It’s Kate.”

  Belle looked around the house with an uneasy expression. “I don’t put any store in that crap. You’re just alone too much up here. You’ve been through a lot, Mia. Facing death can sometimes make you dwell too much on death and dying. Careful, lest you lose your balance. It could be that’s what happened to my grandmother out here.”