River's Song - The Inn at Shining Waters Series (3 page)

"How horrible!"

Grandma nodded. "Then one day when I am girl, about as big as you, moving man take our people, the Siuslaw, aside and say, 'You free to leave reservation now.' They say we can have land back, only we must file claim. My mother cannot read, cannot write. Her younger sister, Aunt Dora, she white man's wife. They live in Florence town. Because her husband white, she not go to reservation. My mother say, 'Dora will help us. We go to Dora.' And so we walk and walk and walk. Fifty miles down the beach. But it is a good walk. We are happy. We are free. We gather berries. We catch fish and dig clams. It is a party. But much walking."

Anna had listened carefully, hoping that Daddy had heard this story too, had written it all down. She had no idea that Grandma Pearl's life had been this exciting. It was almost as good as a motion picture. Naturally, Mother had never mentioned any of this to Anna. Most of the time it was almost forgotten that they had any Indian blood. This was the way Mother wanted it. She never said as much, but Anna knew it was true.

"We go to Dora," Grandma continued her tale, her eyes looking far away. "But Dora is unhappy. When her husband at work, she tell us he is mean man, that he beat her like dog. Dora show us bruises and scars. So Mother tell her sister about free land, and when Dora's husband hear about free land, he act nice. He help write claim. He think he get land. After claim is filed Dora leave her bad husband."

"And is that when you came to live here?"

Grandma shook her head. "No. My mother and Dora work in the town. They clean house and wash clothes for moving man wives. I sit on chair for hours and hours waiting for my mother to finish her work. And sometimes the white woman yell and call my mother bad names. But my mother does not fight back. I ask her why. She say it is only way for us to survive. Then white man say I must go to mission school. I must learn to read and write. I must learn white man ways. To talk right. I go and I begin to forget the ways of my people. I learn that life is easier when I look and talk like the white people."

"That must have been sad."

"Yes. Then I get older and my mother send me to Indian school up north. I ride train by myself. I am frightened. I learned more white men's ways at their school. I unhappy there. But I meet John." Now Grandma smiled, once again revealing her yellowed teeth.

"Is that my grandpa? John?"Anna knew she had heard the name before.

"Yes. John was also at Indian school. His mother was Siuslaw, a friend of my mother. John's father was from Alsea Tribe, but he die on the reservation like my father. Most men die on reservation. Only women and children live. John promise to marry me when we finish school and return to Florence town. And he keep promise. John build this house." Grandma set down the bowl of peas on the rough-hewn table outside of her cabin, looking proudly at the little two-room wooden house. "My mother and John's mother live here too. John was logger. He be in woods for two, sometimes three weeks before he come home again. We women only at home."

"And were you happy then?"Asked Anna. She had been reading fairy tales lately, and liked the ones where everyone lived happily ever after the best.

Grandma smiled. "We were happy. The mothers knew old ways. They remember how to gather what we need from the land. John's mother know how to make medicine with plants. My mother know to make baskets. They teach me their ways. I know to sew because I learn at Indian school and I make clothes for us, for Marion too. Living on river is good medicine, Anna. River make us well again." And just then, Anna's mother had called, saying it was supper time. It had been like being pulled out of a storybook, but it was a good place to end. It wasn't until many years later that Anna had heard other parts of Grandma Pearl's story, and much of it was not so happy.

When Anna was almost twelve, Grandmother Pearl died suddenly, taking all of her Indian ways with her—or so it seemed at first. But to everyone's surprise, especially Mother's, the coastal newspaper ran a special obituary, noting that Pearl Martin might have been the last of the full-blooded Siuslaws. Anna had proudly clipped it out and read it aloud with tears choking her voice. For the next few weeks, she spent many hours in Grandma's little cabin mourning her absent friend. It was the first time she'd ever lost a loved one and it hurt deep inside of her, like a stomachache that wouldn't go away.

At first, Anna held it against her mother that she hadn't been kinder to Grandma Pearl while she was alive. Later Anna became confused and even rankled at the way Mother seemed to slip into a deep depression over the death of her mother. Anna couldn't understand. If Mother had cared so much about her mother, why hadn't she spent more time with the old woman? It just didn't make sense. Now she understood the sorrow only too well.

Anna picked up another basket, running her hands over its smoothly woven surface. This one was probably watertight. She traced her fingers over the dark, triangular design of the intricate weave. It seemed familiar, and suddenly she wondered if Mother might have saved some of Grandma Pearl's things after all. At the time of Grandma's death, her mother had dismissed Anna's questioning about Grandma's things, saying that they were all old and worthless and "probably full of bugs." For the first couple of years, Anna had maintained Grandma's little cabin, almost like a shrine. But then as time passed and she grew older, with more distractions at school and in her social life, she went to the cabin less and less.

It wasn't until she was sixteen that she realized that everything had been cleared out of the small cabin. Anna had assumed it was her mother's doing and she feared that everything had been dumped. In fact, she punished her mother with the silent treatment for nearly a week as a result. She later learned that several years after Grandma's death, Daddy had decreed that nothing should be thrown away. Just stored. And he told her that he'd very carefully boxed up some of the more special things, like trade beads and a ceremonial dress and some old beaded baby moccasins . . . things he thought Anna might appreciate when she was older. As far as she knew, these were still safely stored somewhere in the attic.

But by far the best thing that Daddy had saved was the
River Dove.
Apparently, Grandma Pearl had told Daddy that the little dugout canoe was to go to Anna. Grandma Pearl had told Anna about how she'd acquired this sound little boat. Her husband—not John but the second one, Crazy Bob, the one who drank too much—had brought it home quite late one night. It was only a "squaw canoe," only big enough for one small person, and Crazy Bob could barely squeeze in or out of it. He told her he'd won it gambling, and since no one ever showed up to reclaim it, she figured it must be true. She was glad to have the canoe and happily used it for many years.

Daddy told Anna that dugout canoes had been fairly common before the turn of the century (and the reservation woes) and that many Indians had used them as their primary mode of transportation, traveling up and down the river to follow fish and food wherever it was to be found. "But," he explained quietly, probably so that Mother wouldn't overhear, "nowadays the old craft of making the dugout is nearly lost, like so many of the Indian ways. Lucky for you, Grandma Pearl told me all about it, and I'll explain it all to you too someday."

That summer, Daddy made Anna prove her aquatic ability by swimming all the way across the river while he paddled the little canoe alongside her. "Grandma told me that no selfrespecting man would use a canoe like this," he called out as she swam. "But I kind of like it so if you change your mind and decide to swim back, I won't mind." The twinkle in his blue eyes told her that he was just teasing.

And Anna showed herself to be a strong swimmer that day. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been able to at least dog-paddle, but she had never actually swum all the way across the river before; in fact she'd been forbidden to even attempt such a thing. But she had always accepted her parents' extreme caution when it came to river safety because she knew they had lost their firstborn child, a brother she'd never even met, when he apparently toddled off the edge of the dock and drowned. No one had witnessed the tragedy, but the theory was that the child had been tempted by Grandma Pearl's canoe, which had been tied to the dock at the time. He had been begging for rides in the canoe, but Mother had been afraid it was too tippy for a small child.

Daddy had spotted him from the store, floating just below the surface of the water. Dropping a bottle of fish oil, which shattered right behind the counter (the stain remained after all those years), he'd dashed out to rescue his son . . . too late. Little Eric Joseph, named after a grandfather in far-off Sweden, never saw his third birthday. It had been the one dark shadow of sadness on their otherwise rather blissful little lives, and they rarely spoke of it. But because of losing little Eric, Daddy had made certain that Anna could swim even before she could walk.

Anna could still remember the look of sheer joy on her father's tanned features when she triumphantly reached the other side. She would never forget how he had pulled the canoe onto the shore and handed her the paddle. Then, to her surprise, he stripped off his shirt. "It's your canoe now." Then he jumped in the river, swimming next to her this time, as he shouted instructions and she clumsily paddled back across the river to their own dock.

After that day, the canoe became her ticket to freedom on the river. And before long, at least during summer and on weekends, she took to wearing her dark hair in two long pigtails, just like Grandma used to do. And as she paddled along the river, she imagined herself to be a Siuslaw Indian princess. Like her grandma before her, Anna called her little canoe
River Dove
because of the bird's head that was carved into the bow, but unlike her grandma (at least she'd assumed) Anna secretly called herself the "Indian Princess of Shining Waters." Because in her mind, she ruled the river—or at least the portion directly in front of their store. Customers seemed to acknowledge her reign as they smiled and waved to her, careful not to rock her in their wake as they docked their boats and went into the store for supplies and the latest news. Life had been so sweet and simple then.

Anna sighed. If only it were so simple now. She looked out the window again. At the present moment, her river didn't look any more like the Shining Waters than she felt like an Indian princess. She set the woven basket down and sank onto the old, familiar camel-hair sofa, pulling a shabby pink and green knitted afghan over her legs. She fingered the crocheted throw with sadness. Already it was falling apart, whether from moths or too much use, and it would soon be a useless pile of pink and green yarn bits. And yet her mother's own hands had meticulously hooked each loop on this blanket. Anna still remembered how, so many years ago, after several months of crocheting each evening, her mother had draped the pink and green fruit of her labors over the back of this very sofa with such pride—a white woman sort of pride. And now the blanket looked so shabby and pathetic and stringy. Compared to the beautiful Indian baskets on the coffee table, the afghan seemed rather silly . . . and useless . . . and sad.

And for the first time, in a very long time, Anna cried.

When Anna awoke, the house was dark and silent and, feeling cold and disoriented, she had to take a moment to remember where she was. Then relief washed over her as she realized that she was home.
Really home.
Now if she could only remember how to start up the old generator. It had obviously been turned off by the neighbors to save fuel while the house was unoccupied. And although it was late June the air was cold and damp today, not unusual for this region, where the summer could be windy and cool and autumn could be balmy.

Stumbling through the darkness toward where she thought the fireplace lay, she inched her fingers along the mantle until she located the ever-present kerosene lamp and a box of matches. They were always ready for those unexpected moments when the generator would shut down. Soon a warm golden glow illuminated the room, and she soon found several other lanterns, which she lit and placed strategically. She found kindling and wood and before long had a crackling fire burning. Perhaps she wouldn't need any electricity tonight after all.

She stepped back and held her hands over the flickering flames, admiring her handiwork, and then admiring her father's. He'd designed and built this fireplace himself. He had shown her the very spot where he had collected the big smooth stones from a bank up the river, telling how he'd made dozens of trips in his little rowboat until he finally had enough. That was long before Anna, or even Eric Joseph, had been born. Anna knew it had taken them nearly five years to conceive their first child. And then four more after Eric's death to conceive Anna. As a child, she occasionally wondered why she didn't have any other siblings, although Grandma once alluded to some health issues that occurred during Anna's mother's childhood.

Just the same, Anna enjoyed the attention lavished on an only child. The first time she heard the term "only child," it had come from Babette. With Babette's thick French accent, Anna had thought she'd said, "You are a lonely child,"And Anna had answered, "I'm not a lonely child. I have lots of friends, and Grandma Pearl, and Daddy and Mother." And then Babette had laughed the way that only Babette could laugh, deep in her throat until her bosom shook like a small earthquake. But when she regained her composure, she kindly explained to Anna what "only child" meant, and that she had only just learned the term herself.

It wasn't until Anna was about to become a mother herself that her mother explained that the reason they didn't have more children wasn't that they didn't want them, but a result of some "female problems" that prohibited her from conceiving." But we've always been thankful to have you," she told Anna a couple of days before Lauren was born. "And we hope you and Adam give us lots of grandchildren. Nothing makes me happier than to see you happy, dear."

As a result, Anna had always gone to great effort to ensure her parents remained oblivious to her troubled adult life. She sent cheerful letters and photos of Lauren wearing the fancy store-bought clothes her mother-in-law provided. Sheltering her parents from the realities of her miserable existence, she wrote about how Lauren took dance classes and excelled in school and anything she could think of to fill a page and a half of a letter. Sometimes she simply wrote the words larger, taking care to use perfect penmanship, filling the blank space with lovely cursive letters. It seemed the least she could do for them. Her parents had already survived their own troubled childhoods. Besides the hardships her mother had endured, Anna knew that Daddy had been orphaned as a young teen, and that he'd snuck out onto a freighter from Sweden, traveling halfway around the world to make his own way in life. Anna hadn't wanted to push her parents out of her life; she'd simply wanted them to be happy.

Her mother had been so pleased and proud when Anna had caught the eye of the strapping young lumberman who had been tearing up and down the river in a very impressive motorboat. Adam Gunderson, fresh out of college, had been spending time at one of the larger mills along the river. Not as a worker, but as a member of a prosperous Northwest logging family. His uncle owned the mill on the Siuslaw. And his father owned a similar but smaller mill on the other side of the coastal range mountains in Pine Ridge. Adam had come to the coast to observe some of the new technology and machinery his uncle had recently installed in his mill. He'd also spent some time observing and being observed by the local girls.

Barely out of high school, Anna had been helping out at the store and making plans to go to teachers' college in the fall. Of course, Adam had changed all that. First she'd ignored the flirtatious behavior of the handsome young man—imagining him to be a spoiled, rich brat, which wasn't far from the truth. But he seemed to take her standoffishness as a personal challenge and by the Fourth of July he had talked her into going on a picnic and to the fireworks show with him. Naturally, she only agreed to this after he promised to let some of her friends come along as well. It was quite an exciting day and evening and, as Dorothy said, the boy was smitten. And when Adam called Anna his Indian princess a few days later, she was equally smitten.

One thing led to another and by the summer's end they were officially engaged, with a wedding date set for the following June. Adam went back to Pine Ridge to run his family's mill and Anna continued with her plans of continuing education at the teachers' college in Monmouth. Her mother tried to talk her out of this, saying that she should use the year to prepare for the wedding by learning to cook and preparing a trousseau. But Anna imagined herself to be an independent young woman. A fan of Katharine Hepburn and some of the other take-charge sort of popular young actresses of the day, Anna had seen a variety of movies, and she liked to imagine that she too was like that—a capable, confident, modern sort of woman. Going to college seemed the way to prove that.

When Adam showed up on campus shortly before Christmas break, he declared his undying affection to Anna, insisting that he couldn't live another day without her, convincing her that their only solution was elopement. Flattered and excited, not to mention somewhat homesick and thoroughly disenchanted with her lackluster college classes, she agreed. And since they were both of age, he drove them to Reno where they were quickly and quietly married. Anna's parents sounded understanding when she placed the collect call to the store, but she could tell that her mother was disappointed. She had wanted to sew the wedding dress, prepare a trousseau, and host a lovely wedding by the river—all things that Anna would've enjoyed as well. But now she pushed those thoughts from her mind, telling herself that being married to Adam was all that mattered.

"The house isn't much,"Adam told her as they returned from their honeymoon three days before Christmas. "I've been so busy at the mill that I haven't had time to keep it up." He parked his roadster in front of a sweet looking little cottage with cedar shingles and white shutters and flower boxes.

"I love it," she told him as he picked her up into his arms. She laughed as he carried her over the threshold. Of course, once inside the cottage, she realized that it did need some work. But, never mind, she was a hard worker. The next morning, Adam went off to the mill and Anna tied her hair in a bandana and put on a pair of Adam's dungarees, belting them tight to keep them on. She rolled up the sleeves of one of his old flannel shirts and went right to work. Cleaning and scrubbing with an intensity that surprised even her, she intended to make that cottage sparkle and shine before Christmas!

It was mid-afternoon when she opened the front door to throw out what must've been her tenth bucket of blackened mop water when a well-dressed middle-aged woman walked up the brick-paved walk. She had a brown crocodile handbag on her arm and wore shoes that matched it. "Oh, my!"Anna cried, stopping herself from dousing the woman with the filthy water.

"Who are
you?"
the woman asked with narrowed eyes.

"Excuse me?"Anna set the bucket aside, studying the slightly built fair-haired woman. Her eyes were pale blue and cold.

"Oh, I see." The woman nodded with a relieved expression." Adam must've hired a cleaning woman. Yes, it's about time. That cabin is appalling. I've told my son a pig wouldn't live there."

"Your son?"Anna wiped her hands on the back of her dirty pants.

"That's right. Adam Gunderson is my son. I am Mrs.Gunderson." The woman turned to leave then stopped abruptly. Turning back around, she wore a curious expression. "You
are
a cleaning woman, are you not?"

Anna was speechless.
Hadn't Adam told his mother about her—about their marriage?

As Mrs. Gunderson came closer, her arched brows drew together and she looked very worried. "Please, answer me, young woman. You do speak English, don't you?"

Suddenly Anna was aware of her Indian heritage. "Yes, of course, I speak English," she said quickly.

"Did my son hire you to clean his house or not?" she demanded.

Anna's heart was pounding so hard, she could feel it in her throat. This was Adam's mother! This woman had no idea that Adam was married! Anna took in a deep breath and made a forced smile. "I'm so sorry to meet you under such awkward circumstances, Mrs. Gunderson."

"Who are you?"

"I am Anna Larson. Actually, that's not quite right, I'm—"

"What are you doing in Adam's house?" she demanded." Did you
sleep
here?"

Embarrassed, Anna lowered her gaze to the ground. "Adam and I—we were married—about a week ago in Reno."

"You are lying!" she shrieked.

Anna looked back up to see that Mrs. Gunderson's face was even paler than before and she was clutching her chest as if in pain.

"Are you all right?"Anna ran over to help her.

But the woman backed away, holding up her hands as if she thought Anna might hurt her. "Keep your filthy hands off me."

Anna just stared in horror as Mrs. Gunderson turned and hurried over to where a shiny black sedan was parked on the other side of the street. It took her a few moments to get inside and start the car, but once the engine turned over, the car's tires squealed as it roared down the quiet street. Sickened by what had just transpired, all Anna could think was that she wanted to go home. She wanted the familiarity of the river . . .her parents . . . and peace.

Anna stood and walked over to the fireplace, tossing a couple more logs onto the still-red embers. So now she was home with the familiarity she had longed for. Although her parents were gone . . . and that sense of peace felt elusive . . . but at least the river was still here. That never changed.