River People

THREE

Wearing a faded but dry farm dress, Effie sat at the crowded supper table, holding two-year-old Curly in her lap. Meat from an old hen, boiled from the bone, doused in white gravy and layered over pasty-bread, stared up from her plate. She couldn’t eat. Earlier, she’d told Ma she was ill and didn’t want to sup, but Ma scowled. “You’ll help me, same as always.”

The others ate, knives and forks clicking on plates. Ten around a table better suited for four or six. Skeet balanced on a narrow milking stool, his shoulder brushing Effie’s. He always brought his stool next to her, the better to pinch her leg under the table—the only sibling he could torment without their screaming.

Effie let Curly pick food from the plate they shared, gravy dribbling off his chin and into her lap. She felt no anger toward the old preacher for what had happened earlier, only emptiness. In taking advantage of her, he’d tried to steal from her, but she’d already been emptied out.

From her end of the table, Granny shrieked suddenly. “Murdering thavages.”

Johnny dropped his fork in alarm and looked with wide eyes across the table at Effie.

“Savages,” Skeet sneered. “It starts with an s.”

Effie kicked him, glad to see him wobble on the peg of his stool. “Don’t correct her.”

Granny, a thin arm poking out from the folds of the patchwork quilt she’d named Never Forget, stabbed the air with a spoon. “Wanting to kill white Chrithians. Wanting our land. That what thavages want.”

Rev. Jackdaw scooped more chicken in his mouth. “Fancy shooting and God-sent plagues wiped out the heathens.”

Granny’s spoon jabbed in Pa’s direction, a trail of gravy sliding down her quilt. “He let the thavages kill my children right here in my kitchen. Thavages ain’t dead. Lincoln left all them nooths empty.”

At the other end of the table, Pa’s jaw blanched with the pressure of his gritted teeth.

Skeet jerked his leg out of Effie’s reach. “Nooses.”

“There’s worse ’an redskins,” Rev. Jackdaw said. “Whores.” He wiped the beard around his mouth with his sleeve cuff and looked directly at Pa. “I’ll take your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

Effie needed a moment to make sense of what she’d heard. Then felt something she hadn’t in over a week: the urge to laugh.

Pa wasn’t laughing, and Ma’s eyes widened as if she’d been slapped. Neither parent spoke.

The quiet grew, clutching at Effie’s throat. Why was no one roaring objections? Why wasn’t Pa using the barrel of his shotgun to nudge Rev. Jackdaw across the floor and out the door?

Granny clapped her bony hands together. “God-a-mercy!” she shrieked. “If-fee, you’re to be a preacher’th wife.”

Pa’s eyes still didn’t lift. He still didn’t rise from his chair, bang on the table, and shout, No! Not my daughter.

Rev. Jackdaw went on eating. Across the table, Johnny’s face looked fixed to weep. Skeet leaned closer to Effie. “Istressmay Ackdawjay.” Mistress Jackdaw.

“God-a-mercy!” Granny cried a second time. As though she’d just received the white dove that failed to descend on Effie at the pond. “A preacher’th wife.”

“Pa?” Effie managed. What did he suppose she’d done with the preacher? He’d sent her to Jury. He’d stood in the dark that night holding the reins of a saddled horse. “Go,” he’d ordered. “Go see that boy. Go see that boy. Wife him, need be. He’ll do what’s right by you.” He’ll do what’s right by you.”

When she arrived back home two hours later, Pa sat in the dark on the porch. He nodded and took the reins to stable the horse.

But the ploy hadn’t worked; they’d both misjudged Jury. She’d made a fool of herself, and suppose she was pregnant? If she was, she needed to wed quickly in order to fool a new husband into thinking he’d sired the baby. There were no other suitors in the picture, and if they waited too long, there might never be.

Pa took another bite; his eyes on his plate.

He’d sent her to Jury, but he hadn’t sent her off with Rev. Jackdaw. She’d listened again to what someone else wanted for her, this time the preacher.

Rev. Jackdaw spoke around the pale, pasty glob in his mouth. “We’ll be off to Nebraska. Omaha.”

Pa looked up, his eyes full of misery, or was it shame? “Omaha?” The question asked as if he wanted Rev. Jackdaw’s word on it.

“I’m to build a church there.”

Effie’s head spun. The preacher was older than Pa by nearly two decades, but her parents’ silence proved they were considering it for her. They wanted her gone. The knowing—or was it knowing again?—struck her like a fist. But leave Minnesota? Johnny, Curley, and the other boys? Leave Pa and Granny and Ma?

“Why do fish like water?” Johnny shouted.

“Cause they’re fish,” Skeet barked.

“Because,” Effie said as calmly as she could, “it’s quiet, very quiet, under there.”

“Like under the black?”

Effie listened to the silence winging around the room, telling her she was leaving. Jury didn’t want her, and she’d let Baby Sally die. One way or another, she’d killed her little sister. With the grief she’d already caused the family, she would not heap on a scandal. She deserved Rev. Jackdaw’s battered face, yellowing beard, and weak shoulders. He was the furthest thing from Jury’s youth, broad shoulders, and handsome face. But Rev. Jackdaw would take her away. He offered an escape, and maybe that would be one breath better than a watery grave in the river.

Her legs began to tremble. In her lap, Curly felt the vibration and hummed a long O sound. His voice warbled out over the table.

Pa made grunting noises in Rev. Jackdaw’s direction. Effie had heard him wrangle with more spirit over a puppy he’d trade for a few garden vegetables. And if the deal failed, he’d shrug and a week later have Skeet drown the puppy.

Granny sputtered. Her jaws and tongue worked to keep the tough chicken under her remaining teeth. “If-fee will be the pill-her of the community.”

Ma, her white hair hanging, squinted at Rev. Jackdaw as though looking at him hurt her eyes. Her gaze shifted to Pa. “He’s likely to drop dead and leave her with mouths to feed.”

“Thut up!” Granny said. “You’re a fool.”

An hour later, with Rev. Jackdaw’s trouser legs still damp, Effie stood beside him at the table not yet cleared of dishes. She’d refused to change, despite Granny’s fretting that she ought to be in green silk. Ma watched, one tired hip braced against the stove for support. Her eyes swam, but she offered no protest. Pa, eyes steely, waited at the back door, needing to hear the words spoken before he left the house, stepping out into the quick-gathering dark.

Johnny stood at Effie’s side. They grasped hands as Effie placed her other trembling hand on Rev. Jackdaw’s Bible. “I do.”

“In the name of the Lord, I pronounce us man and wife.”

He carried in his valise and journal from the barn and pulled the slim mattress from Johnny’s bed up the ladder to the dark attic. He motioned for Effie to climb.

She’d never been in the attic, and she stood motionless in the musty-smelling hold amidst cobwebs and the skittering of mice. Rev. Jackdaw left the trap door open and pointed to the mattress just visible in the meager lantern light rising from below. She lay down. He lifted her dress to her waist. His pants came off, and he dropped onto her to seal the deal he’d struck with Pa. In the kitchen, he’d pronounced them married, but the real binding, this consummation, needed done before anyone changed their mind.

She tried to quiet her weeping as he rutted, her face turned from his sour breath and from his sweeping, unwashed beard.

“Quiet,” he growled.

When he finished, she turned on her side, a fist between her teeth.

He growled again, louder. “I said quiet. That’s enough.”

The deed was done. She was his wife. Jury, her family, everything else was gone.

Later still, despite her best efforts to stop crying, he shoved at her. “Go sleep with the crazy bat.”

Only then did she realize that two stories below, Granny wailed for her. She hurried, her bare feet finding their way across the rough attic floor, her toes finding the ladder rungs down. Her body made no sound, and she had no shadow. She felt empty as the kitchen ghosts.

The upstairs lantern was out, but moonlight coming in the windows allowed her to see the open door to the room where her little brothers slept. She couldn’t see whether Johnny had crawled in with Curly or the twins. The door to the smaller room—little more than an over-large closet where Skeet slept—was closed, and Pa had dropped the bar across it. Skeet claimed the bar kept annoying siblings from disturbing his sleep. Effie believed otherwise: Pa dropped the bar each night to keep Skeet from running away. Something Skeet often threatened to do.

The open door to her parents’ room gave only a perfect, cold silence. No rhythmic breathing from Ma saying she slept. No snoring from Pa. Effie wanted to stand in the doorway, make them look at her, but sorrow threatened to buckle her knees.

“If-fee!” Granny’s cries were louder. Effie took the unlit stairs to the first floor, her tears making her way even harder to see.

“Where you been?” Granny cried.

Fumbling in the darkness, Effie found the black cloth she kept folded beneath her pillow. “In Rev. Jackdaw’s bed.”

The baby suddenly wailed overhead and Granny gasped, “Thavages killing my baby!”

Dropping onto the bed, Effie pulled up her knees and hugged them to try and stop her shaking. “No,” she managed. “That’s not your baby.” She drew the black cloth over her head.

In the attic, Rev. Jackdaw turned on his side, tried to stretch out the ache in his lower back. Effie had sobbed. Gagged when he’d done his duty and planted seed in her. If he ever felt himself growing soft in regards to her, he’d remember she gagged. He clenched and unclenched his fists, fought the demon convulsing his eye, sending the whole side of his face into a fury.

He’d lingered a week at the farm just watching Effie, waiting, knowing God was presenting him with an opportunity. After three barren wives, God was giving him Effie. She had six brothers and would bear him as many sons. Building a church could take a decade or more, and only sons could be sworn to finish the work, should it come to that.

He’d take the necessary measures to bring Effie into submission. The Bible was clear. He was husband of his property: horse, wife, and soon sons. He was a stronger man than his father, would not let his wife run off, would never let her go to a house like Miss Myra’s.

He fumbled in his valise for matches, struck a single stick and held the flame over the spot where Effie had lain. Back and forth. Another match, squinting, covering the area inch by inch. Flame burned his thumb and forefinger and went out.

Just as he suspected. No blood. That explained her father’s willingness to have her gone and out of his household. It also meant she was unclean and needed watching.