Bone River (41 page)

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Junius said tightly. “Your father knew such things to be the province of savages.”

I felt my blush, but I didn’t stop. “Why must it belong only to them? Do the rest of us not get to feel something so sublime? Why then do we own it, if not to feel it?”

“It’s our eternal battle. Our struggle with the devil. To overcome such base things is a triumph. It shows God which of us is worthy.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said evenly. “I think He gave it to us for a reason. I have desired you, Junius. Is that wrong?”

He went as red as I felt myself to be. “It’s inappropriate in a wife.”

“Or perhaps there’s nothing more appropriate.”

“Why are you talking this way? This is what I mean about those stories—”

“The stories only make me see what I already feel,” I said quietly. “And they’re something I can
do.
I’m good at this. And sometimes I don’t feel as if I’m good at anything else.”

He went quiet, his anger muted by sudden thoughtfulness. “You’re a scientist.”

I waved it away. “I don’t think I can be the scientist you are, or my father was.”

“Of course you can. There’s no one better at detail work.”

“That’s not science, Junius. It’s drawing,” I said patiently. I tapped the notebook. “But I think this is my real talent, to illustrate these stories, to help people understand that world.”

“Understand it? They’ll find it obscene and barbaric. You’ll be ridiculed. Even shunned. Respectable women don’t
do
this.”

“But I
want
to.”

“Isn’t it enough to draw the relics? What you do is essential, Lea. These tales...they’re the meaningless ramblings of a culture that’s nearly gone. We’ve got Lord Tom and those who are left to tell us what things mean. We don’t need these. Your father agreed with that. He’d be horrified to hear you now.”

“My father believed a lot of things I’m not certain I agree with.”

Junius looked stunned. “You don’t mean that.”

“All these things I’m reading about this experiment of his. How it’s wrong to feel passion or desire. How he thinks the Indians subhuman for not just feeling those things, but for surrendering to them—”

“You’ve never disagreed with that.”

“I have. You just never listened. And neither did he.”

“You should hear yourself. You sound like some...some...not who we raised you to be—”

“
You
didn’t raise me,” I said, bristling. “You’re not my father, but my husband. I’m no longer your student—in anything. Listen to me, Junius: what you and Papa wanted—I don’t think that’s who I am.”

“Then who are you, Leonie? A researcher of obscenities? An intemperate woman who dances like a whore?” He leaned forward, slamming his hand flat on the table, so hard it shook the papers there, and I jerked back in alarm. “You’re my
wife
, goddammit! You’re not one of them. You’re not an Indian. I won’t let you become one.”

I stared at him in surprise. “Of course I’m not. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

He turned on his heel, storming away from me to the door, jerking it open. He was out on a waft of turbulent air that shuffled the papers on the table and rifled the pages of the open notebook in front of me, so it looked as if Loowit were flying into the mountain she became, her spirit lost in snow and ice, a heart that burned with fire.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, I woke to Junius’s terse “We’re going to Oysterville today to return that canoe.” And then, before I could protest, “You’re coming. Get ready. We’re leaving as soon as we can.”

Oysterville was just across the bay, on the Shoalwater side of a peninsula made mostly of sand and dunes that stretched nearly twelve miles from Unity on the southern end to Leadbetter Point at the northern tip. Oysterville was nearly a direct crossing for us, and the tide was in, so there was no navigating the channels that crisscrossed the bay to get there, and we just went cleanly across. Lord Tom and I took the plunger, while Junius took Daniel in Wilson’s canoe. The bay was the color of a zinc plate and just as smooth, and Junius paddled like an Indian, displacing almost no water, cutting through it as if it were butter, nearly soundless. From my vantage point it looked as if the two of them barely spoke to each other, and I watched them with my heart in my throat and my own confusion a misery. I spoke little to Lord Tom myself, too aware of his watching, of what I knew he saw. I concentrated on the sails, on catching what little breeze there was, on not thinking about the last time I’d been in the sloop or what had happened to me there. In my head it had become
the moment everything changed; there was before and there was after, though I knew the truth was not quite that.

Finding
her
was the moment. Suddenly she was there again, her presence so strong that I turned, startled, thinking to see her behind me, and Lord Tom caught my gaze and frowned.

“What is it,
okustee
?”

“Nothing,” I told him, disconcerted. The sails flapped. I tightened the sheet and pretended I didn’t feel her, that nagging connection, those dreams again, where I was both her and myself.

I felt Lord Tom’s gaze, and I glanced at him again, snapping, “What are you staring at?”

He smiled a little and looked away. “The wind is shifting,
okustee.
Time to come about.”

It was annoying to realize he was right; the sail was flapping again, and I had been too lost in my thoughts to see the shift. Determinedly, I refused to think of anything. The canoe with Junius and Daniel was far ahead. I concentrated on catching up.

Still, by the time we reached the salt meadow that separated Territorial Road from the bay, Junius was already waiting impatiently for us. We would moor the boat here, and Junius and Daniel would paddle us in. I took down the sails and Lord Tom and I anchored the boat, and then boarded the canoe. Daniel took my hand to help me step from the plunger. I did not look at him, and I thought he was careful not to look at me, but I felt the caress of his fingers, the smooth stroke of his thumb in my palm, and a shiver went through me that I was at pains to hide.

The tide was in almost to Territorial Road, the salt meadow turned into grass-topped muddy islands. The bay was full of bateaus, but no men—the tide was too high for oystering. I could see the homes and stores nearest the bay, wooden structures built on pilings and floats because sometimes the tide came in so far it would flood anything on the ground, turning wells brackish and the streets into knee-deep mud, but to be so close meant better
access to the oysters, and Oysterville, like Bruceport, was a town founded on making money.

Junius took us as far in as he could, until the islands turned to mud and Territorial Road was just before us. We got out, and he pulled the canoe ashore and said, “Let’s tell Wilson his canoe is back and get something to eat,” and we followed him into the town proper like little ducks following their mother, single file, over the sodden ground.

The buildings became more clustered; there were more houses, the office of the newspaper, a boatwright’s workshop, the Methodist Church with its gilded cross that looked like something from a Catholic cathedral—as out of place in a town where the sidewalks were made of single planks of sawn lumber as silk among calicos. One could hear the ocean from the weather beach on the opposite side, its roar muted into a constant, rhythmic murmur by the line of forest running the center of the peninsula. Men lounged in front of Clark’s Store, one or two women carrying bags and hauling children by the hand stepped out, and we got a few waves and hellos from those we passed, but Junius didn’t pause until we were in front of the Pacific House, which, along with the Stevens Hotel, the jail, and the fact that it was the county seat, made Oysterville more of a town than any other on the bay.

The Pacific House was across the street from the church, and the largest hotel in the county, two-storied, with a porch for lounging and a saloon in one wing. During court week the place was usually filled to bursting, despite the Temperance Billiard Hall just down the street, the four other saloons in town, and the dance hall above Espy’s store, which held dances twice a week during the court term, and whose floors I’d trod often enough before. But I knew as well as Junius that the Pacific House was where we could find Mac Wilson when he wasn’t out on his whacks.

Junius went up the stairs and we followed him through the door and inside.

“Wilson in the saloon?” Junius asked the man at the desk, who nodded and jerked with his thumb, and we turned and went into the saloon, which was better than any in Bruceport, and bigger too, with a long bar against one wall, and oil lamps in sconces on the walls.

The place was half full with men drinking and eating—I was the only woman in the place, and people turned to look as I came inside. But I was used to that—I wasn’t the only woman in Bruceport who went into Dunn’s, but I was the only woman who went in with the oystermen. I saw Mac Wilson at the bar, and Junius went up to talk to him while we sat at a table near the door. Daniel took the chair beside mine; I felt the press of his leg and I moved mine stealthily away, trying not to look at him—or at Lord Tom, for that matter.

When Junius came back to the table he had a bottle of whiskey and three glasses. He poured whiskey all around. “I’ve ordered stew and bread. I hope that sits well with you.” He looked at Daniel as he spoke.

Daniel nodded shortly and leaned forward, reaching for a glass. “We planning to stay here long?”

“For a bit. Why not? Look around you. It’s the closest thing to a town we’ve got in these parts. My guess is that Lea will want to do some shopping, too. It’s not like San Francisco, of course—when did you say you were heading back there?”

“I didn’t.”

“You’ve been writing to your fiancée, I hope.”

Daniel drank his whiskey in a single gulp. “She knows where I am, if that’s what you mean.”

“You haven’t received a single letter since you’ve been here.”

Daniel regarded his father—his expression was a bit hostile, a bit challenging, but not enough for Junius to take offense. “She’s not much of a correspondent. But I’ve a letter to post to her today.”

I looked at him in surprise, jealous in the moment before I realized I couldn’t show it. He avoided my glance.

“Well—good. I’d think she would be worried about you up here.” Junius fingered his glass. “Most women like to keep a man nicely harnessed—isn’t that so, Lea?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but went on with, “She must be certain of you. Not worried that you have itchy feet, is she?”

“Because of my family history, you mean?” Daniel asked wryly. “You think it runs in the blood?”

Junius leaned back in his chair, bringing his whiskey to his lips, sipping slowly, as if it were something to savor, instead of the cheapest whiskey Carruthers could sell without making his own, as Will Dunn did in Bruceport. “I hope her trust in you isn’t misplaced.”

“Junius, please,” I said.

Daniel said, “You sound as if her opinion worries you.”

“Oh, it does.”

“You’ve ignored me for twenty years. What makes you care so much now?”

Billy Griffin came to the table carrying a tray laden with bowls of stew and a loaf of bread, interrupting the conversation, and I was relieved. Billy was young and given to drinking and carousing, and I saw him as often in Bruceport as I saw him here. He gave me a big smile as he set a bowl in front of me and tossed back a heavy forelock of hair. “Good to see you. You especially, Miz Russell. I was afraid I might hear you’d capsized and drowned when you left Bruceport after that dance a few weeks back. That storm came up so quick.”

“We made it in one piece, as you see,” I said.

“Barely,” Daniel put in.

Billy smiled. “Well, I guess you was in good hands.” He clapped Daniel’s shoulder hard enough that the spoon Daniel held clacked against the bowl of stew. “You’d a been proud of him, June, taking care of your interests as if they was his own. We all commented on it.”

I felt myself grow cold. Junius raised a brow. “Is that so?”

“Hardly left her side the whole dance. Why, I would’ve thought he was her husband ’stead of you if I hadn’t known better.”

It wasn’t true; I’d only danced with Daniel the one time, but that time...Though I sensed no malice in Billy’s description, I knew what he’d seen, what had colored his perception of the evening, and I knew how Junius would take it.

“Well, it’s good to know I can trust him to do what’s right,” Junius said, lightly, casually, but I heard what was beneath it.

“Well, you all enjoy your stew,” Billy said, clapping Daniel once again on the shoulder and giving me a smile before he left. It was all I could do to keep my eyes on my bowl, to eat, though I tasted nothing, and my appetite was completely gone.

I felt Junius’s eyes on me. I felt Daniel waiting, waiting to see what I would do, wondering. When his leg brushed mine, I dropped the spoon; it fell to my bowl with a clatter and a splash.

Junius said, “You all right, Lea?”

I picked up the spoon again, forced myself to look at him. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”