Bone River (16 page)

Junius said, “I thought you were more a scientist than this. Your father would not have shirked it.”

That was true. Just because my father had been here and taken only bracelets and beads did not mean he wouldn’t have returned for bodies had it been asked of him. My sentimentality was a weakness. It made me feel as if all my study was only pretense.
What kind of scientist are you?

“If you tell me we can send the mummy to Baird this week, I’ll leave them,” Junius said quietly.

But I could not do that either. I swallowed hard. “No. Go ahead. We’ll send these.”

“Good,” Junius said briskly, and then to Daniel, “Get the bags.”

I stepped back, and Daniel hurried back down the path, and Junius slid his hand along the elongated skulls, the sloped foreheads. “High caste, too. Baird will be ecstatic.”

I said nothing. I left Junius there with the skeletons and went farther up the narrow precipice, to the edge, where I stood with my hand on a bent spruce and looked out onto the bay. The clouds had gathered more thickly now, there were no longer sunbreaks, and the water was deep gray and chopped, with little whitecaps. The wind blew tendrils of loosened hair about my face, and I pushed them aside. I watched the birds, the crows and the gulls and the pelicans—for how long I couldn’t say—and tried not to think of what was going on behind me, because Junius was right. I shouldn’t care. Knowledge was what mattered, and I had always believed that. What was happening to me, that a couple of dreams and a mummy had unsettled me so deeply?

I heard footsteps behind me, a rustling of the underbrush. Junius come to tell me he was finished. But it wasn’t Junius who came up beside me to stand on the narrow promontory. It was Daniel.

“He says to tell you he’s ready to go back,” he said.

I nodded. But I didn’t move.

He said, “It’s beautiful up here.”

“It’s going to rain,” I said.

Daniel said, “All you had to do was look away, you know. I would have pretended I hadn’t seen them.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you, if you mind so much?”

“Because I
shouldn’t
mind. Those are only bones. I’ve handled bones before.”

“Human bones?”

I hesitated. Then I said, “No. But it shouldn’t matter.”

We were quiet for a moment. I listened to the wind, the slap of waves upon the rocks below, and he said, “Why did you want that basket? What was so important about it?”

I glanced at him. He was watching me carefully, as if he could read something in my face, as if he waited to catch me in a lie, and I was startled at the urge to tell him the truth. To say:
I saw it in a dream
. But it was too strange. It sounded absurd. It
was
absurd, and to tell him was even more so. So I said the lesser truth, “It had the same pattern as the one the mummy was buried in.”

“Ah.” He looked again out to the bay. “How badly do you want it?”

I laughed a little. “Too much so. But I suppose Junius is right. If there are answers, they’ll be in the cave.”

“If you want me to, I’ll go back and get it for you.” He didn’t look at me, but I felt his tension, sharp and still.

“Sanderson won’t sell it to any of us now.”

“I don’t mean to buy it.”

I looked at him more carefully. “Then how—?”

“Do you want it or not?”

“But I...” Suddenly his meaning came clear. “You mean to...to steal it?”

He said nothing. His gaze settled on the horizon as if it were locked there.

I was startled. And alarmed at the ease with which he’d suggested it. Junius’s words came back to me.
We don’t know anything about him. Let’s not assume he’s trustworthy until he proves it.
I thought of Bibi’s warnings, my own sense that he was bad luck, that there was something dangerous in him.

But then I thought of that basket in my hands. The dream. Answers waiting to be found.

My hair blew into my eyes. When I pushed it back, one of the charms of Bibi’s bracelet snagged in a tendril as if to remind me forcibly of her words.
You will regret it now he is here
. I stared down at it, at the way the overcast light played upon the iridescence of the shell, green and blue, pink and silver. And I came to myself.

I said, “No.” And then, because the dream lingered and I wanted that basket, and if Daniel was willing to take the risk for me, I was willing that he did, and that frightened me more than I could say, I said more strongly, “No. I don’t know why you would think I could approve of such a thing.”

His gaze caught mine and held. There was something in his that made me uncomfortable—again I felt he saw so much more than I wanted him to see—and I saw the challenge there and felt nervous and uncertain.

He smiled then. Very small, barely there, and looked away. “Actually, that wasn’t what I meant to do. It’s only that I think I could talk him round.”

I knew it wasn’t true, but it was a relief to accept the fiction, to pretend it was what he’d meant. “You really think you could?”

“I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”

I thought of when we’d first met, the charming smile, the way he’d had those women in Bruceport eating from his hand. “Yes, I imagine so. I saw you at the dance. Honey to ants, your father said.”

“Did he?”

“He said you were like your mother.”

Daniel’s expression shuttered. He turned to go back down the path. I watched him go, and I found myself wondering what had truly brought him here, what made the kind of man who would so willingly...
persuade
. I wondered what made him offer such a service to me, whom he’d made no secret of disliking, apology notwithstanding.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “You’d best come,” he said. “Your husband is waiting.”

There was nothing to do but follow.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
dawned cold and raining, too windy and wet to make the trip across the bay to Toke’s Point, and Junius sat at the table brooding over it while he mended a tear in his boot with heavy thread and a thick, curved needle. The two of us were alone; Lord Tom had not yet come in for breakfast, and Daniel was apparently still asleep.

“I told you what McKenna said about those German collectors up north.” Junius spoke lightly, but I tensed, already knowing where this would lead, where it had led a hundred times before.

“Yes,” I said warily.

“Maybe we should go too. Sell the claim and the whacks. Try something new for a change.” He glanced up at me, a soft plea in his eyes.

But I’d seen that expression so often it only left me weary. “Junius—”

“Yes, I know.” He sighed. “You don’t want to go. Well, you can’t blame a man for trying.”

No, I couldn’t, though his restlessness had always troubled me.
Itchy feet,
as Daniel had said. I had always thought that Junius’s continuing to stay in a place he hated was evidence of
how much he loved me. But now I heard Daniel’s voice, a needling whisper,
“My guess is that it’s something else...”

I pushed the thought away. It had been an insult only, meant to wound. There was no truth in it.

Junius said, “I need to get something off to Baird this week, though I’d prefer to wait to see if there’s something in that cave.”

“Sanderson said there were only broken pots,” I told him, relieved at the change in subject.

“And
skeletons
,” he amended. “We’ve already got the two, and that skull. I don’t know if that’s enough to impress him. It would be better to send more.”

I tried to hide my distaste. I reminded myself that I was a scientist. I drank the rest of my coffee and rose. “Well, I’m going to the barn.”

He knotted the thread and bit it off, setting the boot aside. “I’m going up to Bruceport. I’ll take Lord Tom and the boy.”

I tried not so show my relief, and just for good measure, I leaned over to kiss the top of his head. He grabbed me about the waist, pulling me down onto his lap, kissing me soundly. When I looked up, it was to see Daniel standing at the foot of the stairs, watching.

I was suddenly embarrassed. I said, “Good morning,” and tried to pull away from Junius, but he kept a firm hold and glanced over his shoulder at his son. I couldn’t believe he was so blind as to not see the resentment in Daniel’s expression, but whether Junius did or not, he obviously didn’t care.

“There you are, boy. Get some breakfast. We’re going into Bruceport today.”

Daniel’s glance came to me. “You too?”

I shook my head, extricating myself from Junius’s hands. “I’m working on the mummy.”

“Then if you don’t mind, I’ll stay behind as well,” Daniel said.

I felt a quick dismay. “You don’t want to go into town?”

“Well, as compelling as Bruceport is, I’ll manage to resist it somehow. I’d like to take another look at her, and to talk to you as well. About how you found her. It’s important for the story.”

“Go ahead and stay, then. I can get by just as well with Lord Tom,” June said, and I thought he seemed relieved.

I thought of yesterday, the offer Daniel had made, my wariness. “It won’t be that interesting, I promise you. I’ll be drawing mostly. Measuring. I can tell you whatever I discover.”

“Then I’ll watch. I don’t mind it, really.”

Junius shoved his foot into his boot and looked it over. “Let him stay, Lea. No sense in him going out to get cold and soaked. At least you won’t get any gawkers out here in this weather. And as long as you’re staying, boy, I need you to fix the screen on that rain barrel out back. Bugs have been getting into it. A few leaves, too.”

“I’ll see to it,” Daniel said.

Junius rose and headed to the back door, pausing to kiss me before he went outside. “We won’t be late. Back before dark.”

When he was gone, Daniel said, “Are you ready to get started?”

I looked at him in surprise. He seemed as eager as I was. “Don’t you want breakfast? I can fry you up some salt pork if you like. Or there’s brined salmon.”

He shook his head. “You’re not my mother or my servant. And you look ready to bolt out that door to the barn.”

“I would like to get to her,” I admitted.

“Don’t let me delay you.”

When Daniel and I went outside, the rain was sheeting from the eaves of the porch, pockmarking the gray surface of the river beyond.

Daniel pulled the brim of his hat down. “I guess we’ll have to run for it.”

He was off the porch in a moment, sprinting down the steps and across the field, and I grabbed up my skirt and did the same, reaching the barn just behind him, breathless and wet.

I went to the trunk while Daniel lit the lamp. As always, I felt her the moment I came inside, but it was muted today, as if Daniel had somehow muffled it—something I was grateful for, though it was disconcerting, too, and flickers of my dreams came and went, piercing my consciousness in little snippets until I pushed them forcibly away.

I reached into the trunk, lifting her out, putting her on the table, into the circle of light from the lamp Daniel held. As the light played over her I felt that rush of excitement, again the need to touch her, to know her.

“Is that the color her hair was, do you think?” he asked.

“Close to it. It’s faded some. It was darker and richer. When the sun shone on it, it was—” I stopped when I realized what I was saying, when I realized I didn’t know it for a fact, that it was only an image from my dream, and I looked up to find him staring at me curiously with a little frown. “I mean...I think it must have been. I can’t be certain, of course.”

“Have you measured her skull yet?”

I reached into my pocket for the measuring tape, grateful for the distraction of facts and numbers. I held it out, letting it unravel to the floor. “We’ll do that now. Take out your notebook.”

He reached for his pocket, paused, and then with an embarrassed little laugh said, “I’ve forgotten it.”

I teased, “What kind of a reporter forgets his notebook?”

“A very poor one, apparently,” he said.

“Run back to the house and get it. I’ll wait.”

He grimaced and shook his head. “Not in that rain. Give me yours. I’ll take notes for you. If you let me look at it again tonight, I’ll work from that.”

I took out mine, along with the pencil, and handed them to him. I leaned over her. “Stand back. Your shadow’s in the light.”
Obligingly, he did, and I bent to the work, measuring the length and the breadth in every permutation. I had never done this before, and I had little idea of what exactly I needed, so I tried to get everything. Later I would attempt to interpret the numbers; for now just getting them was enough. I read each one out to Daniel, who jotted them down as any faithful assistant, and I felt as if I were a real scientist with a real assistant, instead of serving perpetually as an assistant myself.

When I was finished I straightened, putting my hands to the small of my back to stretch. Daniel glanced up. “Aren’t you going to do the jaw?”

I frowned. “The jaw?”

“From here to here.” He touched the end of the pencil to a point below her ear and then to the apex of her chin. “I think you’ve forgotten it.”