Bone River (31 page)

He came down, holding one of my father’s journals, looking surprised at the bounty I’d laid upon the table. “There’s enough here for a party.” He glanced toward the settee and the mummy. “Were you planning to invite her to join us?”

I smiled at the joke, and it broke the tension between us, as he must have meant it to do. While we ate, I kept the conversation deliberately light, and he seemed determined to help me to do so. We talked of the rain and the usual course of the winter weather, and he told me of the fog in San Francisco and how cold even the summers could be while I said it had been a good
summer for harvesting and the vegetable garden had produced well, and fortunately Edna gave enough milk that the loss of what had been in the springhouse would not be too bad.

There was an hour, perhaps a little longer, where I felt things to be comfortable and safe between us, as if we were some long-together couple, and I found myself thinking of how things might have been if I’d met him first, and the unexpected thought flustered me, so I broke off in the middle of a sentence and looked down into my coffee.

He said nothing. He poured himself a cup of milk and took a sip, comfortable and easy as if we were the couple I’d imagined, so when he grabbed the journal from where he’d set it on the table, opening it to a place he’d marked, I could look at him again.

“You found something?”

He shook his head. “Only...it’s become rather interesting. In the same sort of way watching a fly is interesting, you understand. Boring and mesmerizing at the same time.”

I smiled. “Indeed. Go on.”

He smiled back and cast his gaze to the pages, reading aloud, “‘L has formed a gross preoccupation in Old Toke’s tales.’” He glanced up. “Who’s Old Toke?”

“One of the Indians who lived on the bay when we first came here,” I told him. “He was an old man then. Toke’s Point was his place. He was sort of a leader among the Shoalwater, and he was the best storyteller. I think Lord Tom learned some of the legends from Old Toke.”

“So the L is you.”

I nodded. “I’ve told you Papa hated that I liked the stories.”

Daniel nodded and looked down again, reading on, “‘Not the same, but all primitives are like. Superstition and weakness! I am disquieted—all is naught.’” He frowned. “Do you understand it?”

“Not a bit.” I reached for the book, and he pushed it to my hands—how careful we were not to touch. I glanced down at the words.

“What does he mean—‘not the same, but all primitives are like’?”

“He found all Indian stories equally primitive, even when they weren’t about the same things. And he always equated Indian superstition with weakness.” I fingered the tooth on its thong, remembering how my father’s fingers had gone to where it had once hung around his neck even as he lay dying.

“All beliefs are a fiction more or less,” Daniel said with a shrug.

“How you must horrify Eleanor’s missionary father.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be wise to tell him I think that, would it? I play the image of a model son-in-law.”

“It is only a role, then?”

“One among many.” He met my gaze. “I say that as one actor to another.”

I glanced away. Determined not to rise to the bait, I said, “Was...your mother very devout? Did she realize how you felt?”

“She did when I refused to go to church any longer. Before that, she made me go every Sunday. But once I was bringing in three quarters of our living, I felt I should have a say as to how I spent my time.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen.” He reached for the squash, then pushed it away again as if he’d thought better of it. “What about you? Did your father drag you to church?”

I played with the edge of my cup. “Science was Papa’s religion. He read the Bible to me sometimes, not because he believed it, I think, but because he felt he ought to. But we never stayed anywhere long enough to go to church and when we finally came here, there was no church to go to. Not until they built the one in Oysterville. Before that, a circuit preacher came round every few months. He’s the one who married Junius and me.”

“I wonder what that preacher thought of a girl marrying an old man?”

I snorted inelegantly. “That history repeats itself, no doubt. It isn’t that unusual, you know. And it was either marry us or let us live in sin together. What was he to do? I was alone.”

“Did you never think that it might be better to be alone?”

I nodded. “I told Papa so. I told him I didn’t need to marry. That I had Lord Tom. That I would do just fine on my own.”

“What did he say?”

I smiled thinly. “He was most insistent otherwise.”

“So you did as he ordered.”

“He knew best.”

“Perhaps you thought so at seventeen. Do you still believe it?”

I looked up at him. “What good is it not to? I promised. I married Junius. It all turned out. I think Papa would be pleased.”

Again, Daniel said, “Do you still believe it was best?”

“Yes,” I said, and then, more insistently, “Yes. Papa knew me very well.”

“Did he? Then why forbid you what you most loved? The stories?”

“A true scientist looks at facts, not imaginings,” I defended.

“Your father’s words, I think. What about the story you told me in the cave about those drawings?”

I hesitated. I thought of Papa, of the lessons he tried forever to drill into my head:
Where did that story come from, Lea? Do you know it to be true, or is it just fancy? Is there some savage here to tell it to you?
“Imaginings, Daniel. I don’t
know
that’s what happened.”

Daniel leaned forward. “You have a gift for imagining what other lives must have been like.”

“Not a gift, a flaw,” I insisted.

“I heard you in that cave, Lea. The things you said...I believed that you knew who had painted those things and why. I believe the things you say about the mummy and how she died. It feels...right. We can’t know everything. Instinct matters.”

“It
is
a flaw. Papa was right. A real scientist would care only about the facts. It’s why I can’t understand what he saw in the mummy that I can’t see. Why would he have reburied her?”

“You don’t know that he did that.”

“It’s the only explanation. There’s something about her that’s wrong. He knew it, and he put her back, and I
don’t understand
.”

Daniel sighed and rose, picking up dishes, taking them to the sink.

“Leave them,” I said. “I’ll do them.”

“You made dinner. Leave these to me. Stop punishing yourself for what you can’t know and go do what you were meant to do. Go draw your mummy.”

And so I did. The rain poured and I could hear the roar of the river, but it didn’t seem to be rising further, so I sat on the floor before the settee and listened to Daniel clean up, and I drew her. I still meant to cut her apart as Junius had demanded, but once I did that, this drawing would be the only thing I had of her, so each detail mattered. Again, even more so now, I had the sense that she and I were entwined, that the mystery of her would solve the mystery of who I was, even as that thought puzzled and bedeviled me. I knew who I was, didn’t I?
Didn’t I?

I glanced up. While I’d been lost in drawing, the day had faded. It was already dark. I’d been aware vaguely when Daniel finished cleaning. At some point, I heard him go out and come inside again, the thud of another pail of milk, the splash of it into the milk pans to set until the cream rose, the clang of the stove door as he fed the fire. He’d lit another lamp, and now he sat in Lord Tom’s chair, my father’s journal in his lap, his head bowed so the lamplight shone upon his golden hair. He looked up at my movement. “Finished?”

“Not quite. I want to get every detail.”

“And then?”

I took a deep breath and set my notebook aside. “And then I cut her open. Junius has given me until he returns to do so.”

“We’ll keep reading your father’s journals. We’ll find something there. But don’t hurry to tear her apart. Not on his account.”

How did he know so clearly the things I wanted, when I hardly knew them myself? How easy it was to talk with him, to listen to him say the things I wanted to believe, to be
known
. The temptation to keep doing so was hard to resist, but I forced myself to remain silent. Because I was tired. My ordeal last night had left me weary, and now that my pencil was set aside, distraction gone, I was aware of him as I had never been aware of any man. I could not stop thinking of the kiss we’d shared, the thing we’d almost done. And I knew I hadn’t the strength to withstand him tonight if he should make the effort.

Better to take the sanctuary of the bedroom I shared with my husband, to hide behind closed and locked doors. A wall I could not cross and that required no effort to erect.

I rose, pushing my loosened hair back from my face, still stiff with salt. It needed to be washed, but not tonight. I said, “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

I was tense, expecting him to make some comment, to say something suggestive, to play to my desire. He had to know it was there; it must be in my face as clearly as was his.

But he only nodded and looked back down at the journal. “Good night.”

And I was—what? Disappointed? Relieved? I didn’t know. I could not decide. The sanctuary I’d longed for seemed suddenly not a sanctuary at all. I hesitated.

He looked up again. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said, and went to the stairs. “Good night.”

Her sandaled feet shushed and crunched through the long grass, a breeze without the scent of ocean or mud, blowing her hair back from her face, drying the sweat at her temples. I felt these things
at the same time I watched her from a distance, the grace of her movements, the saffron of her skirt tangling about her legs, molding to her body, wide hips, full breasts, and then falling away again.

She came closer and closer to where I stood, and I watched her come close, even as I saw myself through her eyes, my own blonde hair loose, falling over my shoulders and down my back, haloing in the sun. I put my hand to my eyes to shield the glare and saw myself do so. I felt her smile as my own. I felt her happiness, and just when she reached me, I saw myself disappear, no longer there. I was only her, inside her head, and she kept walking, and then I was myself again, watching her go.

And then I was beneath the water, flailing in a storm, swallowing salt water, trying to find the boat or its shadow but it was too dark and I was twisting and struggling and with no breath to be found, no way to save myself or fight it. I could not find the boat. I could not find him. Choking, drowning, paralyzed with cold, tangled as if in a net, pulling me down and down and down, never ending, falling into disappearing, into nothing.

You almost died, and what a waste. What a waste, what a waste, what a waste...

The salt taste of the Shoalwater was in my mouth when I blinked awake, the words still ringing in my ears. Everything was so sharp. Instead of the darkness of night I saw myself reaching for the rope and flailing, plunging into the water. Instead of the sound of the river I heard the rush of the Shoalwater hard against my ears, and my own choking. I was freezing, my skin goose-pimpled beneath a slick layer of cold sweat.

I had almost died. Another moment and I would have. I would have given in to that nothingness. There would have been no Leonie Russell, nothing of me left but a house full of relics and notebooks with half-translated Indian tales. Nothing to remember. No children—but that hadn’t been my purpose, had it? My purpose had been research and study, and yet here I was, and suddenly the sadness I’d felt in the dream, when she’d walked
away, was overwhelming.
Who are you? What do you want from the world?

I wrapped my arms around myself, digging my fingers into my skin, trying to gain hold of my emotions, which were so tangled I could not decide what I felt. Fear and despair and then...

Then I felt her.

One moment not there and then there the next, the way the air changes just before a storm. I stared about the room in confusion; once again her presence was so strong I expected to see her standing before me. But there was only darkness, and in it anger, the terrible menace that had frightened me once before, that raised the hair on my neck, that had me whispering in terrified panic, “What would you have of me? What do you
want
?”

I stared into the darkness. And what came over me then I couldn’t explain. My fear disappeared; instead I felt peace, or no...something bigger than that, something that didn’t calm or soothe, but lit a flame instead, tiny and flickering, hope and fear and anticipation all together. And in it, I heard her voice.

Live.

T
HE STORM WAS
over. The bright overcast of early morning lightened the curtains as I stretched, wincing at the soreness in my arms, at my waist, muscles strained, and it was a moment before I remembered what had caused it. The last vestiges of my near drowning. Then I remembered my dream, the way I’d awakened in the middle of the night, the voice I’d heard in my head.