The Broken Statue

One 1905The world drifted. Beyond the old farmhouse window light crested in the east, spreading a glittering sheen over the foot of new snow. Tall grasses lay blown over and buried, trees hung laden, and the fence posts running down the lane looked as if each held a round, fat hen. Bridget clutched her cup. At eighteen, she’d already lived in Nebraska for several years, had seen many quiet and beautiful January mornings. So why was her stomach jittery and the coffee she held quivering? Behind her, logs burned in the stove and Papa Henry sat at the table finishing his breakfast, his third coffee refill. He pushed back his plate and rose. Wire, on his three legs, came from beneath the table, his tail wagging. “It looks cold out there,” Bridget said. “Shall I run and grab you an extra shirt?” Papa took his coat from a peg by the back door, palmed his floppy leather hat, and pushed it low, covering the tops of his brown ears. He was a giant of a man to Bridget, though with his gently sloping shoulders and back, she’d grown nearly as tall. “Nebraska’s always freezing,” he said. His eyes, surrounded by crinkled and leathered skin, smiled. “Least when it ain’t hotter than Hades.” “The roads will be closed. Dr. Potter won’t be taking his buggy out. I could help you in the barn and walk into town an hour or two late.” He nodded at her books on the table. “You got your work right there. Take my chores and I’m staring at a day of boredom.” “I could help hang the new barn door.” “Nah. Facing’s rotted, need to tear that off. We’ll wait for a warmer day.” She moved from the front-facing window to the back, watched dog and man trek through the snow. At seventy-four, Papa Henry was stubborn and content to remain so. He didn’t have much time for the bother of people, white or red, and he saw no need to change his ways. He loved her fiercely, though sometimes that love scared him, and Bridget could feel the tightness in his chest clutch in her own. He’d loved his wife and son, but he’d lost them both. Now she, the daughter he’d adopted and loved, was all he had left. How could he not fear losing her too? She continued watching the pair, Papa Henry with his long white braids hanging down the back of his dark coat, scuffling in tracks for Wire’s use. She dismissed a sudden tugging at the back of her throat. He was aging, but he could still steady a plow behind a team of workhorses, pull fence, chop wood, muck the cattle barn, harvest. Man and loping dog rounded the corner of the barn and disappeared, but in Bridget’s mind, she saw Papa Henry stop at the double-wide doors, check that the long two-by-four he used as a buttress was tight, keeping the old door with its rotting hinges secure. He’d open the smaller side door only wide enough for them to slide through, and then pull it shut again, conserving as much heat as possible for the animals inside. He believed himself the brother of his horses. His four-horse team, their large, thick bodies and muscular legs, bred for labor rather than speed; and his two spotted horses, Smoke and a mare named Luna-Blue. In the spring, there’d be a spotted foal. For Papa Henry, his horses, his dog, and his land sufficed for all the “churching” he needed. Bridget sipped her cooling coffee. The breakfast dishes needed washing, and she planned to study before heading into town, but she couldn’t pull herself from the blue-gray luminous light and the shadows the farm buildings threw over the snow. There were two barns. The second, three stories tall, Papa Henry used for carpentry. He’d built an ark there, a project he’d toiled on for years. Now he worked around the great vessel making coffins for grieving families who couldn’t afford newfangled, factory-produced boxes. Or families who believed those caskets disrespected their dead. Folks preferring simple wood. She looked past the barns and through a thin growth of trees several yards beyond to the silver band of the Missouri River. A stag appeared, having walked out of the water, or from between trees, she wasn’t certain. She smiled. A second animal surprised her more. A third and then a fourth splashed coffee over her cup rim. A single male deer in mid-January, running across a pasture or along the road with a still-unshed rack, was rare. Though even then, she’d never seen a deer with such a large crown of antlers. Never seen one approach so close to the buildings. And never had she seen four seemingly conjured out of thin air. She set her trembling cup on the sill. The first animal reached the side of the carpentry barn and stopped. One by one, the others joined him, and then waited for the one behind. When they stood four abreast, they started for her. Their eyes fixed, aiming. She sucked in a breath, held it burning in her lungs. High stepping through the snow, they crossed the wide yard for the house, keeping their precise formation. Shoulder to shoulder, they might have been harnessed to an unseen sleigh. Guided by reins under supernatural control. She dared not move. She wished for Papa Henry, even Wire to bark and prove he saw the impossible too. She’d believed the animals fully formed, but as they continued coming, their bodies thickened, chests expanded, copper coats deepened, antlers swelled and swept to the height of elk crests. Breathing was hard, backing away from the window, impossible. Her knees trembled against the insides of her worn dungarees. The animals held her as if they’d thrown out a line, roped, and tethered her soul. What otherworld prompting had sent them? The closer the deer came, the more quartered she felt. Each stag taking his acre. They continued, hoofs punching through the snow, not stopping until they reached the window. The pools of their eyes locked on her. Eyes deeper than human eyes. Containers of deeper stories. She found herself nodding, sure they’d come to be seen, recognized. “Yes. I see you,” she whispered, though she had no idea what they meant her to take from the encounter. The stags blinked, their legs stiffened, and their tails shot up. Startled as if from deer dreams, they turned, the white undersides of their tails flashing. In a series of leaps and bird-like swoops, they half-flew back toward the trees and river. Vanished. Bridget’s mouth felt full of dust, her bones brittle. The animals had wrung the moisture from her, leaving her suddenly ancient. They’d also left behind darkness that made her turn and look over her shoulder. A gloom waited for her somewhere close: on the stoop just outside, under the table where Wire slept, in the next cupboard she opened. With unsteady hands, she began stacking the breakfast dishes, coaxing her heart to settle. “Nera, Nera.” The words she’d so often used as a child. Wanting to summon the will of young Nera, who in Irish legend gathered the courage to save her people by facing the most frightful thing in her world: a red-eyed skeleton hanging in a tree. And doing the most frightful thing: stealing a fingerbone from the fiend. “Stop,” Bridget scolded herself. She wouldn’t let a few deer scare her. She was grown now and would start medical school in the fall. That good fortune was incredible enough to warrant a visit from stags. They’d probably come to tell her not to worry, that she could easily make the grade and measure up to the males in her class. She knew that already. She forced her mind off the deer and onto the day, weeks earlier, when Papa Henry returned from town with the letter from the board of admissions. As she’d torn open the envelope, he’d taken a chair at the table. Staying so close, she imagined that if she crumbled on reading a rejection, he meant to be there to catch her. The interview with the board had not gone smoothly. The requirements for entry were a high school diploma, a command of the English language, and a strong moral character with a reference confirming the fact. She had the diploma and her six-page essay proved both her intelligence and command of the language. It was the third requirement—despite a glowing letter from Dr. Potter—that made the committee frown. She lived with an Indian. “A savage,” the board president had said, his eyes nearly rolling back to white. “A young female,” this from the jowled, paunchy man farther down the table, “with a female temperament.” The last two words haughty with accusation. “Unchaperoned,” another said. She’d kept her tongue, not fired back in Papa Henry’s defense. Even now, weeks later, that silence continued to shame her. Afraid of rebuttal, she’d let the wind of their hate speech blow and what they assumed was Papa Henry’s low morality go unchallenged. She’d taken her cues from two men who sat quietly but for their gentle reminders that since opening in 1880, the school had kept with the progressive model of admitting a few qualified women each year. Should such individuals present themselves. If they were to admit her, that would raise the number of females in the freshmen class to an impressive three among the nearly fifty males. “Accepted on a probationary basis,” the formal letter read, going on to say she must throughout the course of study “prove herself exceptional and above moral reproach.” She’d described the interview to Papa Henry in detail but not mentioned the board’s disapproval of her living arrangements. She felt certain he believed all acceptance letters contained probationary conditions. “I’m in,” she’d cried, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I’m in.” Neither of them felt threatened by the restrictions. Of course, she’d act above moral reproach. And without question, she would excel academically. She would fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor. When Papa Henry stepped back into the house two hours later, Bridget had not yet washed the dishes. She closed her book and waited as Wire tried to shake snow off his back and landed on his legless hip, then worked himself back onto his three legs. She waited as Papa Henry removed his coat and hung the thick wool on its peg. She waited as he palmed his large hat from his head onto hers, something he’d done affectionately every day for the six years he’d been her father. “You’ll never believe what happened.” She hugged his hat as she crossed to hang it with his coat. She told him about the deer and watched his white brows lift. “They were larger than deer,” she stressed. “I’m sure they were tricksters.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat. “Some folks can walk into a thin stand of trees and get lost. Others walk into forests and find themselves.” That sort of talk—a hundred things implied in the subtext—usually made her smile, but the volume in the animals’ eyes and how they’d left her hollowed out haunted her. “The deer?” He shrugged. “They didn’t come to me. What do you think?” “You interpret things all the time.” She cut a slice of bread from a loaf on the table, used it like a rag to wipe grease from the frying pan. “A beetle turns around twice, and you’re changing all your plans for the day.” She leaned down to Wire, and when he’d licked her cheek, she rewarded him with the bread. “Beetles visit me. The deer visited you.” Though he seemed to refuse her, his eyes held an uneasy concern. “What do you feel they said?” “I’m not sure.” He waited. “I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair, his cup swallowed in his brown hands. “Nature acting different than it does: fish in trees, rain falling up, stags in foursomes. They are messengers.” A chill clawed across her shoulders. “Messengers?” Even though she’d felt the same, coming from Papa Henry the word increased her foreboding. “Can that be a good thing?” “Could.” She thought of the animals’ march forward, the winter sun striking their endless antler points, the fur on their pole legs, each foreleg lifting from the snow and striking down again, soundless. Even through the window she’d smelled their musk and the trees and the river they’d just left. The closer they’d come, the deeper that coming pierced. Picking up her anatomy book, she hesitated, set it down again. What if she’d been wrong? Imagined the whole event or fallen asleep on her feet and had some kind of weird, waking dream. She wasn’t getting enough sleep, studying into the late hours, and only two days previously, she’d spent dawn to dawn with Dr. Potter at the bedside of a baby dying from pertussis, the horrid sound of the toddler gasping for air after each coughing spell, sending the mother into a new fit of weeping. She didn’t have to get all mystical over deer, digging into her Irish heritage full of fairies and harpies, or into Papa Henry’s Omaha Indian culture full of tricksters and animal spirit-guides. Deer were deer, and that was that. She hoped.