Lydia

by Tim Sandlin

  “Evangeline!”

  She glanced over her shoulder at me and then hurried faster.

  I ran. “Wait. I’m sorry.”

  She was fixing to disappear in the mist, so I picked up my speed. I could hear Bill’s footsteps pounding behind me.

  “Hold on one second,” I called.

  I never have figured out exactly what happened next. Evangeline fell forward on her hands and knees, and she screamed a curdling scream. As I ran, she floundered, trying to turn herself. The screaming stopped, but the silence was worse.

  I yelled something and ran up to find Evangeline in a hot pot, at the edge, fighting to pull herself out. I grabbed her by the shoulders and fell back, pulling her out and over my body.

  She whimpered, “Oly,” and, “Help the baby.”

  Bill was pulling her off me. He moaned, “My God.”

  When I scrambled up and lifted her in my arms, the skin peeled off her feet into the moccasins. It was the awfulest sight I ever saw. Her hands and arms were burned, and her stomach and breasts. From knees to thighs, she was coming apart.

  “Start the car,” I said.

  “Let’s take her dress off,” Bill said.

  We stripped Evangeline, poured cooking oil over her, and wrapped her in a sheet. I had a morphine tablet left from the bear incident that I forced down her throat. She wasn’t conscious, but she wasn’t unconscious either. Her head lolled back, and all that showed was the whites of her eyes.

  She said, “I’m sorry.”

  I said, “Hush.”

  She didn’t say more till we’d loaded her in the car and were moving toward headquarters. I had her in the backseat, afraid to touch her, but needing to keep her from rolling. She raised her head to look at me full in the face.

  She said, “Promise you’ll save the baby.”

  “I promise.”

  ***

  Evangeline lost the baby before we made the headquarters hospital. Coming through Golden Gate—me holding her head in my lap and keeping her from rolling with my right arm—she suddenly gasped hard and started to breathe fast and deep. She emitted a series of animal-like exhalations—terrible sounds—and a great quantity of blood and fluid burst from between her legs. There was tissue and a skull, then a body but not a body connected by the pulsating cord to a floating, gelatinous mass. I grabbed it—him—and he cried out once. He choked air for maybe thirty seconds, long enough to catch his soul, before his face turned bruise purple and he died again.

  Bill glanced back at us. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Keep going.”

  I placed the child on the floor, below the seat, so Evangeline wouldn’t have to see him. This was to be the one offspring I would ever have, and I lost him before I knew him, to my eternal shame. I didn’t tell Evangeline what had happened. I’m fairly sure she knew, though, because after that, she settled—stopped thrashing and arching her spine—and closed up within herself, I suppose concentrating on bearing the pain. Being boiled alive comes with horrible pain.

  “I’m all mixed up here,” Shannon said. “He died again?”

  Oly passed his bony hand over his bald head. “My son wasn’t alive, and then he was, and then he wasn’t.”

  “What’s the part about catching the soul?” Roger asked. “I’m interested in soul theory.”

  “Genesis, second chapter. Eve has a body but no soul until she breathes air. The soul enters the body with the first breath, so my son got hold of a soul before he left.” Oly lifted himself off the wheelchair by his hands, then lowered himself again. “I’ve had plenty of time to study on this. You mind if I finish? Thinking about this part of the story tires me out.”

  Shannon said, “Go ahead. We won’t interrupt.”

  They put Evangeline in the same room I’d been in after the bear cuffing, only where I was alone, Evangeline had a roommate, an old woman named Parthenia who’d cooked up a mess of wild mushrooms and got the wrong kind. She spent her days and nights down the hall at the toilet or asleep.

  Evangeline did get a real doctor instead of a horse vet. He said there wasn’t much could be done for her. He said she needed skin grafts, which I’d never heard of, but he couldn’t do them from Mammoth, Wyoming, and anyway, there wasn’t enough proper skin left on Evangeline to graft from. I had little to no idea what he was talking about. Bill pretended he did.

  Bill stayed with us most of the time there. He seemed to think him pledging his love to Evangeline gave him the right to be part of us. I didn’t have the strength to run him off.

  Two days into the ordeal, Bill went away to eat or sleep or something—I didn’t ask what—and Shad dropped by. I was sitting in a hard chair by Evangeline’s bed, talking quietly to her about our future. Her fingers were too messed up to hold. It upset me there was no way to touch Evangeline without hurting her. More than once, I reached over and pulled my hand back at the last moment.

  Her eyes were open. They shifted back and forth, and she blinked, but she didn’t move her head. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I thank God her face didn’t go under the way the rest of her did. Evangeline still looked like herself.

  Shad stood in the doorway, holding his left wrist with his right hand. He said, “How is she today?” He looked awkward. Shad never seemed at ease indoors.

  “Better, I think. She had some water a while ago.” To Evangeline, I said, “Look who’s come to visit.”

  She didn’t show any sign of hearing.

  Shad moved in and stood on the far side of her bed. He looked down at her, but I couldn’t read his face.

  I said, “You knew she was the woman’s daughter.”

  Shad said, “Yes.”

  “How is it you and Bill recognized her, but I never did? I keep going over the past in my head. I had no idea. I think maybe she hinted at the truth, in Paris, but I missed it.”

  I glanced at Evangeline, whose only sign of life was the rising and falling of her chest. It felt strange to talk about her in front of her, knowing, or at least being fairly sure, she could hear me, but there were things I needed to talk about. I was more trying to explain myself to her than Shad, although I can’t tell you what I was trying to explain.

  Shad said, “Bill and I saw more of Swamp Fox than you did.”

  “Bill, maybe,” I said. “But you only used her the once.”

  “I went back to chop wood for them a time or two. Bill was there quite a bit.”

  I’d seen Evangeline blink when Shad spoke the words Swamp Fox. “I hate referring to her mother that way,” I said to Shad. “Do you know her name?”

  Shad shrugged.

  Evangeline said, “Helen.” It was the first word she’d spoken since she lost the baby.

  “Helen,” I said. “That’s a nice name.”

  We waited for Evangeline to say more, but she didn’t. The old lady with mushroom poisoning came back from vomiting in the bathroom down the way, glanced at Shad and me, but not Evangeline, and climbed back into her bed. In thirty seconds, she was snoring like a fat miner.

  Shad looked up from Evangeline to me. “Bill isn’t the father. He never took her, even once.”

  Evangeline blinked again, but that was her one reaction. I felt an amazing weight lift from my forehead. It makes me more ashamed than ever, that I should feel relief while she lay there in pain.

  Shad cleared his throat and went on. “He tried to force her to bed him. Said he’d tell you who her mother was if she didn’t. She was terrified you’d find out and leave her, but she never gave in to his demands. She kept putting him off with excuses.” Shad left the bed and walked to the window. He looked down on the lawn area where I’d watched him circle my motorcycle last summer. When he talked, he looked neither at me nor Evangeline.

  “She let him come to the cabin when you weren’t there—she couldn’t stop that—but he didn’t
so much as touch her.”

  “You know this to be true?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited for more, but he didn’t give it. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  Shad exhaled a sigh. I saw he wasn’t looking out the window. He was looking at his reflection in the glass. “I’ve never been able to stop Bill. I used to try.” His voice drifted away.

  Shad turned from the window to face me. We held the contact a long time, searching for answers to questions over fifteen years old.

  “You’re thinking when all this is over, you’ll kill him,” Shad said. It wasn’t a question.

  I left off Shad to study Evangeline’s face, looking for a clue as to what she felt. Who she blamed.

  “It’s on my list of possible outcomes.”

  Shad placed his hands on his hips, thumbs back. “He really does feel love for her. I think he’s hoping you’ll kill him.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Shad nodded at Evangeline’s boiled body. “Dying for this might be easier than living with it. For you or Bill.”

  ***

  After Shad left, I stood at the foot of the bed with my hands on the iron bedposts. My hope was to memorize Evangeline. I wanted to know, intimately and with clarity, every shadow and plane on her face. I wanted the two of us to be a single person.

  I found myself talking. “I would never leave you, I could never leave you on account of your mother or what life you used to lead or any other excuse. I wasn’t even a true human before you came along. I didn’t know how to care.”

  She didn’t move, other than shallow breathing and the occasional blink. Due to the way she fell in the hot pot, her backside was spared, so lying straight still without twitching a muscle was probably the best method of making the awful pain less awful. Even today, however many years later, I suffer not knowing what Evangeline thought at that time. I’ve never given myself the benefit of the doubt that her thoughts toward me were not bitter.

  “I am so sorry I spoke cruel words to you. I would cut off my legs if that could undo the damage, and I don’t mean you falling in the water, I mean you being disappointed by me. For not living up to my vows.” By now, I was rambling, not making sense even to myself. I don’t know if Evangeline was catching what I meant as opposed to what I said or not. Having her understand felt like the difference between life and death.

  “You could have told me the facts. You should of. I would not have thought badly of you, Evangeline. I could never, ever think badly of you.”

  She stared hard into my eyes. Her voice came as a whisper. “I could not take the chance.”

  ***

  Evangeline passed at dawn, on the third day after I’d called her the daughter of a whore. Shad and Bill were in the room with us. Bill wept like a baby.

  ***

  I buried my Evangeline on a hillock at the point near where Nez Perce Creek and the Firehole come together. Nez Perce was high and brown from spring runoff, but the Firehole, being primarily hot spring fed, flowed clear. The day was brisk and blue, a spring day Evangeline would have loved. The balsamroot was blooming, and larkspur off across the river along the tree line. You can see some expanse from that point which is a mile or more from the hot pot that took her life.

  A mix of park employees stood around the gravesite, talking amongst themselves. It was kind of them to come. Being as Evangeline kept to herself and our cabin, not that many had actually met her. They attended to support me in my grief, although some no doubt were present for something to do. By May, the permanent park employees are climbing trees from cabin fever. They’ll show up for any group outing.

  We had a Lutheran minister down from Gardiner. I suspect Evangeline was baptized Catholic, but I can’t say where I got that idea. Most of the Crow were, as I recall, so maybe I assumed she was too, but I didn’t ask for a priest. I was afraid he’d feel testy toward her, on account of no last rites. I don’t care what the Catholic Church says, Evangeline had done nothing she needed forgiveness for.

  The minister said some prayers while I watched ravens working a winterkill downstream. I’d stuck the baby’s body in the box with her during the night. No one knew but me. He’d been in the hotel icehouse for four days, and I didn’t know what else to do with him.

  The minister had us sing “Nearer My God to Thee” while four motorcycle rangers, including Snuffy, worked this rope rig to lower Evangeline into the hole. Half the park people didn’t know the words, and the other half made for poor singers. If Evangeline heard, I imagine she took it as pitiful. By the end, the Lutheran was singing alone.

  Then he shook my hand and called me Otis—he never knew my name—and got into a horse-drawn buggy with a canvas top and left. In groups of one, two, or three, the others also shook hands with me, put on their hats, and said whatever you say at those times. The words are lame, but the thought is wholesome.

  The rangers picked up shovels and started throwing dirt onto the box. That was the point where I about died myself.

  Bill and Shad were the last to offer sympathy, after most of the park folks had wandered away. Bill held out his hand, but I didn’t return the gesture. Ever since the conversation with Shad, I’d been thinking about what he said, how living with this might be harder than dying for it. What I did next will make no sense to some. Others—the ones who have felt the grief that I felt—will know it was reasonable.

  The throwdown was I had to punish myself as much as Bill. We were both to blame.

  Bill said, “I feel badly that this had to happen.”

  I said, “It didn’t have to happen.”

  He shrugged and put on his floppy cavalry hat that went with his mustache and fringe jacket. I think he was hoping to get through the funeral without an ugly scene. Slim chance of that.

  He said, “I, for one, will never forget the part I played in this tragedy.” What bull. Anybody who could say I, for one wasn’t properly sad.

  I turned from the ever-growing pile of brown earth on Evangeline’s box to stare hard at Bill. “You won’t forget,” I said, “because I won’t let you.”

  Bill looked across at Shad, who’d taken a shovel from Snuffy and was throwing dirt into the hole. Shad wasn’t one to watch while another worked.

  Bill had no such compunctions. “That’s what I said. I’ll never forget.”

  “Without my help, you would,” I said. “Inside a year, Evangeline will have no affect on your daily mood. You’ll go about your business as comfortable and irresponsible as when you were a child.”

  I reached into the dirt pile and scooped up a handful of dark soil in the palm of my hand; then I held my hand out and let the dirt trickle down between my fingers onto the box. I’d seen it done in a moving picture once, in Paris, and it impressed me as a solemn way to say good-bye.

  “I’m not going to allow that to happen. You want to hear what I’m aiming to do to make certain neither of us goes a day without dwelling on the truth that we killed an angel?”

  Bill came across as uncomfortable. I think if Shad hadn’t been present as a witness, Bill would have walked away before I could finish. As it was, he turned his back to the hole that held the box that held Evangeline. He turned toward Nez Perce Creek so he wouldn’t have to look me in the eye.

  I addressed his profile. “Here’s what I propose to do, Bill. I propose to remain by your side, every day and every night for as long as we live. When you travel, I will travel. When you stay put, I will stay put.” I glanced over at Shad, who’d stopped throwing dirt and leaned on his shovel, looking at me with curiosity.

  I said, “We’re back to being the three brothers, just like we were when we took advantage of her mother. Every morning when you wake up and see my face, you’re going to think of Evangeline. Every time you drink water, I’m going to remind you that she can’t. When you warm yourself by the fire, I’ll be there so you ca
n’t forget she died in terrible, burning agony given her by you and me. Together. No one else.”

  The upshot of my resolve didn’t sink through Bill’s thick hide right away—he had to work out the nuances. He went from thinking me funny, to disbelief and dismissal, to wondering if I was serious, to realizing I was. I could see the various thoughts flicker across his face as he progressed to the point of seeing the future. At the end, he took on a look of utter horror.

  He said, “I won’t let you.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  He turned to face me full-on. “You’re not man enough to ruin both our lives.”

  I said, “Watch me.”

  ***

  And I did. I stayed with Bill from that day forward, till 1964 when he suffered a stroke and fell over dead in the White Deck Cafe there in GroVont. He would have gotten over her without me. Hell, I might have gotten over her without him, although I hope not. But the way we lived our lives, neither of us had a chance to move past Evangeline’s death.

  Bill and I were a pair spot-welded together at the hips. Local folks thought we were the apex of male friendship, sidekicks like Robin Hood and Little John, or Butch and Sundance. They never suspected there wasn’t a day of those forty years that Bill Cox and I didn’t hate each other.

  Shad died in ’58. An avalanche up on Togwotee Pass took him out. He’d been crippled for four years, on account of a tree accident, so I don’t think he minded dying when it came. He’s the only one among us who married and bore children.

  “Your Mama Maurey Pierce is his son’s daughter.”

  Shannon said, “Then Shad was my great-grandfather?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

  Agatha Ann went on to spawn a family with eighteen grandchildren. She spent the last ten years of her life in a nursing home in Muncie, Indiana, of all places. I drove out to see her in 1982, the year she turned eighty-five, but she didn’t know who I was. She didn’t know who anyone was. She just lay twisted and shriveled on a chaise lounge in front of a color TV tuned to game shows she didn’t understand.