River People E-Book

Margaret Lukas

• Herausgeber: BQB Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Book 1 in the River Women series.

River People  is a powerful novel with unforgettable characters.

In Nebraska in the late 1890s, seventeen-year-old Effie and eleven-year-old Bridget must struggle to endure at a time when women and children have few rights and society looks upon domestic abuse as a private, family matter.

The story is told through the eyes of the girls as they learn to survive under grueling circumstances.

River People is a novel of inspiration, love, loss, and renewal.

Leseprobe

River People © 2019 Margaret Lukas. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published in the United States by BQB Publishing (an imprint of Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company) www.bqbpublishing.com

978-1-945448-22-5 (p)

978-1-945448-23-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 20189622660

Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com

Cover design by Marla Thompson, www.edgeofwater.com

Editor, Olivia Swenson

Praise for River People and Margaret Lukas

“In this big, ambitious novel, Lukas renders the changing world of the Midwest in the late 19th century, a world as brutal as it is beautiful. The players on its stage are admiringly human and deeply flawed. In clean, beautiful prose, and an unflinching eye, Lukas illuminates the ways in which the relentless work of survival both builds and destroys kinship and community. Threaded through, as constant as the Missouri River at the physical center of this story, is a desire for belonging that flourishes in the unexpected.”

- Rebecca Rotert, author of All the Animals We Ever Were

“Wonderfully redemptive, River People brings alive a surprising group of underdogs, their life in the backwaters, and a scoundrel or two who care more for propriety than taking care of their own. A spirited tale of early Omaha you will want to share with your friends.”

- Theodore Wheeler, author of Kings of Broken Things

“River People is a wonderful novel full of heart and humanity. A delightful read.”

- Jeffrey Koterba, Nationally Syndicated Cartoonist, author of Inklings

River People explores the harsh reality of women’s lives at a time when their days were shaped by toil, poverty, and abusive patriarchy.

But against the backdrop of that dark world, River People reveals another steeped in myth, the beauty of the Missouri River, and a woods where trees breathe, and their leaves “listen high where the spirits speak.”

A mesmerizing tale of love and redemption.

Jeff Kurrus, Editor of Nebraskaland Magazine; author of Can You Dance Like John

Thanks to my husband, Jim, and our four gorgeous children: Jen, Emily, Julie, and Dan. You stood by me, never doubting, even when it might have seemed I ignored you. I loved you every day.

Thanks to the tireless help of Kim Stokely (In the Shadow of a Queen) and Gail Weiland, (finishing her novel) who both spent endless hours reading and critiquing with me. You gave me insight, friendship, and encouragement when I struggled.

Thanks to everyone at BQB Publishing, especially Olivia Swenson, my editor for her care and wisdom, and Terri Leidich, a woman as dedicated to literature as she is to the writers she encourages and nurtures. I needed both of you, and you were there for me.

And to readers along the way who’ve given me valuable feedback: Sue Bristol, Gina Barlean, Rhonda Hall, Trish Lynn, and Heather Traymor.

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY-ONE

FIFTY-TWO

FIFTY-THREE

FIFTY-FOUR

FIFTY-FIVE

FIFTY-SIX

ABOUTTHE AUTHOR

Grandma Teegan was dying. They shouldn’t have come.

Eleven-year-old Bridget trudged up the dark stairwell. Her legs and arms ached. Water sloshed over the rim of her heavy pail. The heat in the tenement house swelled floor by floor, and sweat rolled down her neck and shoulders and dampened the back of her wool dress. She’d taken off her broken shoes and even her bloomers beneath her long skirt, but she was still hot as “frying mutton.” Through July and now into August, Grandma Teegan had muttered about the heat, but for the last week, she’d been too sick for talking or humor.

Bridget set the pail down on the next riser and wiped sweat off her face. She’d made it up three flights. Only one more to go. She changed hands, gripped the handle again, and climbed. Grandma Teegan waited for her.

Opening the door to their small room was hottest of all.

Grandma Teegan, hunched on the cot, gasped to catch her breath. Bridget let the pail thud to the floor, socked herself in the stomach, and hurried to drop to her knees in front of the elderly woman.

Moisture beaded on Grandma Teegan’s sunken cheeks though she wore only her threadbare nightshirt. Beside her lay the newsprint Bridget had stolen from a street vendor a week earlier. She picked it up and began to fan the sweaty face. Stealing the paper when she might have been caught was stupid. They couldn’t eat it. She’d tried and hadn’t been able to swallow.

She waved the paper, trying to both cool her grandmother and sweep away the shadows filling the million lines on Grandma Teegan’s face. Wisps of white hair fluttered. Was she a hundred years old? Even Mum and Pappy had called her Grandma, and in the stories she told, the women who carried their people’s history and legends in the books of their hearts, often reached a hundred years. And more.

“I’m taking care of you,” Bridget promised. And she would. Somehow. She couldn’t let Grandma Teegan die. She couldn’t have murder number two. “You’re going to get better.”

The wrinkles in Grandma Teegan’s sagging cheeks didn’t lift, her watery eyes didn’t clear, and she didn’t nod with assurance. She also didn’t place her palms on Bridget’s cheeks and say, “We yet find your mum.” She coughed and then sucked and gasped for air with a sound like soup in her lungs.

Bridget rose from her knees and sat beside her on the mattress—no more than paper sewn between rags. Nera, Nera, she prayed. I won’t be scared.

Fish lived in Bridget’s stomach. Ten, she decided. T-E-N. They swam back and forth when Grandma Teegan coughed. And other times. Lately, they never stopped swimming, even at night. Bridget’s arms and legs slept, but the fish swam. Back and forth.

“I brought water.” She hurried to dip their tin cup and hold it to Grandma Teegan’s lips. The streets below were cooler and had an occasional breeze. Ought she try and coax Grandma Teegan down the stairs and outside for a few hours? But what if Grandma Teegan couldn’t make it back? She couldn’t spend the night sleeping on the street like the homeless children who piled into brick stoops and slept huddled together like puppies. Grandma Teegan’s bones would break. Her disappearing skin made her arms and legs into sticks; her shoulders, knees, and elbows, doorknobs.

Bridget tried to think back over the months to when the coughing started. Coughing neither spring’s warmth nor summer’s awful heat had helped.

Grandma Teegan hadn’t coughed when they first arrived in New York a year ago. Hadn’t coughed in the fall when for weeks they walked up and down the Irish quarter searching for Mum and Pappy. The coughing began in winter when they continued hunting—even at night during snowstorms. Shivering up and down city blocks, Grandma Teegan yelled “Darcy!” over the biting wind. Bridget yelled, “Pappy!”

More than once, a man scooping snow into the lines of horse-drawn wagons had leaned on his shovel and looked up. But he was never Pappy. At first, she and Grandma Teegan were glad not to find him so desperate he worked with the unemployed Irish who came out during storms—men often without hats or gloves but with hungry children huddling in cold rooms.

Winter ended, the coughing worsened, and they quit walking the streets and asking strangers if they knew a Kathleen, a Darcy.

Bridget even quit insisting her parents were West—though she knew they were. Before leaving Ireland, Pappy had talked about getting to Dublin then Liverpool, the cost of steerage, surviving in New York without a sponsor, and earning enough money to outfit a rig for homesteading in the West. Mum and Pappy were there now. Nothing else explained their absence in New York. But when she insisted, Grandma Teegan’s eyes stared off until Bridget could no longer bear the sadness. Being eleven, she understood now what she hadn’t at ten. Grandma Teegan didn’t know where “West” was. They didn’t have money for next winter’s coal, even for today’s food. There was no money for a train ride into the unknown.

“Tomorrow, the ticket,” Grandma Teegan managed. “Ye sell. Ye eat.” Bridget drew in a sharp breath, and all the fish in her stomach jumped at once. She socked them.

Grandma Teegan’s bony hand dropped on Bridget’s wrist. “Na, na afraid.”

Bridget wanted nothing more than to have Grandma Teegan’s return ticket to Ireland sold—had it cost ten or fifteen pounds? But what then?

“When I’m a doctor,” she said, “I’ll make you well.” I won’t let you die. Not like Uncle Rowan.

But she wasn’t a doctor and Grandma Teegan was growing down. She missed her croft, Ireland’s green hills, her sheep, and her dog, Ogan. She missed all the graves too.

“You’re still going home.” Bridget nearly choked on the words. “You need to keep your passage.”

“Find ticket.”

“Tell me about selkies. Tell me how Mum swims in the sea and can visit us wherever there’s water.”

“Ticket.”

Bridget stood and took a step back. “I can’t. We’ll find Mum and Pappy.”

In the year since arriving, Grandma Teegan hadn’t once reminded Bridget she’d only crossed to make sure Bridget found her parents. Hadn’t once reminded Bridget she planned to leave as soon as that was done. “I’ll lie me down with ye Grandfather Seamus,” she’d said in Ireland. “My resting place be here.” As she always did at the mention of the great-grandfather Bridget had never met, she’d looked at his old tools leaning in the croft corner: a rake, a spade, and a hoe. Grave-tending tools now.

“You can’t sell your ticket,” Bridget tried again. You’ll die here. But how could she live without her? And you can’t ever leave me. Grandma Teegan had always been her most mum. Though the entire family had lived together, Grandma Teegan even then shared Bridget’s bed. It was Grandma Teegan who told the old stories, who held her when Mum and Pappy had red fights. Grandma Teegan who loved her in spite of Uncle Rowan’s death—murder number one.

She backed slowly toward the door with Uncle Rowan’s words banging in her head. It be us now who must take care of her. But Rowan grew a shadow around his body and though Bridget had seen it, she’d not been able to keep him from falling through the gloom of it. Now, Grandma Teegan was hers to take care of. Without the ticket, Grandma Teegan had no hope of ever returning home. Dark shadow would grow like a grave around her, too.

“We don’t need to sell it,” Bridget said. “I can get us food.”

“Ye take ticket. Dunot steal.”

Bridget ran out and to the stairs. Chased by Grandma Teegan’s coughing, she raced down the twisting flights, not slowing until she reached the first floor. She was relieved to see Mr. Wilcox, the man who slept in the foyer, wasn’t there with his blankets. He had a room on the top floor across from theirs, but he was so scared of fires he slept nights in the entryway, begging pardon every time someone needed to step over him. Yet, when a candle fell onto an old straw mattress and people cried “Fire!”, Mr. Wilcox ran against the flow of people fleeing and up the stairs to bang on doors and help people to safety. He’d been Nera.

Outside, the afternoon sun hung low behind buildings, and much of the street lay draped in shadow. People sat on stoops to escape the heat inside; cranky babies bounced on mothers’ laps; men smoked in their ragged clothing; children shot marbles and chased one another. Bridget’s heavy feet shuffled. She had to stay close. She wished she hadn’t run, but for a moment she’d been certain darkness, the death space, swirled around Grandma Teegan’s head.

I didn’t see shadow. She was eleven. Grown up. She had to be as brave as Nera, who in the old story stole a finger bone from an angry skeleton. She rounded the building, stepped into the empty alley, and leaned against the wall. I didn’t see shadow. She slid down the brick into a squat, tucking up her skirt to keep it off the filth. The narrow space between two buildings was quiet but smelled bad. Fifteen families emptied their chamber pots into the hole in the middle. Or not wanting to get too close, flung their smelly waste in the direction of the hole.

She dropped her head back against the brick and closed her eyes. She wasn’t taking care of Grandma Teegan, and Grandma Teegan couldn’t die in America, couldn’t be buried this side of the water. That was Bridget’s biggest fear. Grandma Teegan had sold all her sheep and bought a return ticket to make sure it didn’t happen. She needed to go back for the coughing to stop and for her skin to turn pink again, not blue and see-through as paper. And years and years in the future, if she ever did die, she needed to be buried with Grandpa Seamus. But how to live without her? And without all her stories? Folktales, Brothers Grimm, and Irish legends. Especially stories of selkies, who lived in water and on land. Grandma Teegan told stories about them the way she told all her stories. The way she’d spun wool, combing and carding and pumping the treadle of their deeper meanings. She told them holy.

Buzzing made Bridget look up. Mud dauber wasps were building a nest on the bricks several feet above her head. She watched them, blue-black in the dimming light, their long legs dangling as they swarmed. Pushing her feet out, she sank the last inches, forgetting the dirt. Grandma Teegan was dying because of her. Nera would do even the scariest thing to save her grandma. Nera would step up to a skeleton and yank off a finger bone.

Bridget sniffled. How could she do it? Being left again, being without Grandma Teegan, would be scarier than sneaking up to an old, stupid skeleton. Scarier than its bones dancing in the air. Scarier than its eyes turning red and coming alive.

She hugged her knees. Grandma Teegan would never leave her, no matter what. She couldn’t be forced into leaving her behind the way Pappy and Mum had. N-E-V-E-R. There was only one way to save Grandma Teegan: leave her. Then she’d have no reason to stay in America. She’d take her ticket and board a ship.

The nice Irish cop who’d caught Bridget stealing had told them about a train taking children West. At the suggestion, Grandma Teegan gripped her red shawl tighter around her shoulders and shook her head. “Olc! Na, strangers!” And would say no more.

In the alley, the shadows deepened. A wasp landed on the wall inches from Bridget’s shoulder and began walking up. A cart with a loud squeaking wheel rolled along the walk. Bridget sat up straighter. The cart belonged to the apple vendor who claimed a spot at the end of the street.

She walked out. Indecision and fear kept her well back of the vendor. If she did it, she had to be caught by the Irish copper. The one who’d talked about the train and only pulled her up the four flights to Grandma Teegan—twice, though the second time he’d been much angrier.

There, with him tut-tutting, Grandma Teegan had clutched Bridget as if she herself were the one who’d stolen and needed forgiveness. “Dunot steal,” she begged. “Promise.”

Bridget hadn’t promised. A nod was not a promise.

But the last time she’d tried to steal, a mean and scary cop dragged her blocks and blocks to a police station. He shoved a slate into her hands with her name chalked in large letters. In even larger letters below her name was the word “thief.” As she mumbled “Nera, Nera” to try and stop her sobbing, a man used a big camera to take her picture. Then four men pushed her into a chair, circled her, breathed on her. They called her a “street rat,” said girls were the worst because they “gnawed away at society.” They threatened to make her an inmate of a house of refuge. Then they shoved her out onto a now-dark street, and she walked hours until she found her way home.

Watching the apple cart, she shivered and took slow steps forward. She could never go to the police station again. Not even Nera was that brave. But she couldn’t let Grandma Teegan die in America, either.

The vendor in his cap watched her. Gray haired, he’d not been quick enough to catch her before, but he remembered her. This theft, she wanted him to know, wasn’t about two apples.

She waited, hardly aware of the street noise surrounding her. Finally, a blue uniform with its flash of shiny buttons appeared half a block ahead. She waited still longer. The cop ambled and talked with people while she socked her stomach. When it was time, she took a deep breath. “Nera, Nera.” Would he take her to jail this time? Or would he only huff and puff like before, trying to scare her into believing he would?

She ran at the cart. Though the vendor tried to block her, she ducked under his arm and snatched an apple. “Thief !” he yelled. “Thief !”

Pretending not to see the policeman, she ran in his direction, not veering off until he was nearly upon her. She screamed, but he grabbed her, shook her by the arm, and peeled the apple from her hand. She struggled. “I’ll give it back. I promise, I’ll never steal again.”

He pulled her down the street to shaking heads, whispers from stoops of “caught again” and “poor lass.” In front of her building, when he’d shown the occupants on the street he meant business, Bridget quit resisting.

“I have to go West,” she said. “I have to go on your train.”

He studied her, frowning. “She won’t have it.”

He had red hair too, and his accent sounded like home—though home and its sounds seemed from another lifetime. Was that why he had patience with her?

“You have to make her let me go. She’s dying.” She’d not cried in front of the man before and slapped at tears she hated now. “When I’m gone, you have to help her to the boat. She has a ticket. One ticket.”

“Oh lass,” Grandma Teegan moaned and coughed at seeing the policeman and his grip on Bridget. “Oh lass,” the words full of defeat and heartbreak.

Bridget pulled free. Grandma Teegan’s face looked as stricken as it had the day her grandson Rowan died. “It’s not your fault,” she said.

“How many times?” the copper asked. “Next time it won’t be me arresting her.” He sighed and took off his cap, tucking it under his arm. “Me mum,” he said, “I can’t let her go free again. The whole street be crying me foul. She don’t smoke, drink beer, sniff the powder. She ain’t in a gang of street rats. But all that be coming for her. She best take the train—”

“Na.” Grandma Teegan moaned the word and was struck with coughing.

Bridget knelt and dropped her head in Grandma Teegan’s lap. Had she gone too far? Would the policeman lock her up if Grandma Teegan didn’t agree? Even then, Grandma Teegan would at least be free of her.

“Look at ye,” the man said. “Ye pass this winter and what of her? It’ll be jail soon enough.”

Pass this winter? Bridget licked her lips, then wider, searching for the taste of Mum’s tears. Was the copper seeing the death shadow? “I want to go. I want to go,” she said again. “The train goes West. I’ll find Mum and Pappy. I know I will.”

Grandma Teegan made a gasping, wet noise. Tears filled her eyes, bubbled over, and disappeared in her wrinkles.

Bridget licked again, promising herself she did taste Mum’s tears. They’d lain together in the grass, watching clouds. Shoulder to shoulder, their hair spilled into one color, and they couldn’t tell the long curls apart. Mum rolled to her side, stared into Bridget’s face, and a tear dropped onto Bridget’s lips. The salty taste of that tear and their matching hair were the two best memories she had of Mum. The rest was all Grandma Teegan.

“I have to get on the train,” Bridget said. Her heart was ripping. She’d find Mum and tell her how she’d been brave enough to let Grandma Teegan go home. She’d also tell Mum about her brother Rowan, although she wouldn’t admit the death was her fault. “Please. He’s going to put me in jail.”

The cop nodded.

“Mum wants me to go West,” Bridget begged. “Grandma Teegan, you can’t put me in jail.”

The next day, they stood together in a large room before a wide desk, Grandma Teegan more stooped than upright. Her white head was bare, her long braid sawed off with a knife and wrapped in her red shawl—the bundle tied around Bridget’s waist. A man sitting behind the desk shoved papers across to be signed. Bridget held her hands over her mouth to keep her trembling lips quiet. She watched as Grandma Teegan, with her hands shaking so hard Bridget didn’t think she could do it, the great-grandmother she’d lived with and loved all her life, picked up the pen and signed her away.

Seventeen-year-old Effie sat on the porch steps of her family’s Minnesota farmhouse. Out over the pasture not a bur oak, slippery elm, or any other tree had been left standing to mar the surface. Or for an Injun to hide in. Sticking a hand out from a trunk, then pushing a foot through bark—as Granny described it—emerging fully formed with a nearly-naked, painted body. Complete with raised tomahawk.

Even the massive oak, once standing only yards from the porch and holding a swing and giving picnic shade, had been taken down. All that remained was a thick round stump, waist high for Ma’s washtub. The tub sat there now, glaring in the sun. The same tub in which seven years earlier Baby Sally had drowned.

Effie’s stomach churned. Seven years and yet it might have been seven minutes since the terrible afternoon she’d fallen asleep while tending the toddler.

The screen door behind her banged, followed by two quick raps, one on top of the next. She turned to see her little brothers, the four-year-old twins, opening and slamming the door just for the noise.

“Stop,” she scolded. “Let Granny sleep so I can have a moment of peace.”

When they banged the door again, she half stood as if she had the will to get up and give chase. They squealed and ran inside. The door rapped closed.

She slumped back down, her gaze fixing again on the washtub. For the last year, she’d been able to shift Baby Sally’s death to a smaller room in her mind. She’d been in love and dreamed of a future with nineteen-year-old Jury.

She swallowed against the knot in her throat, wanting to run off the porch and away. But where to go and cry without being seen by Granny, her parents, or one of her brothers? She wasn’t going alone into a pasture—even one stripped of its trees—and sharing a tiny bedroom with Granny meant she had no private space even inside the house. Only the small, dark place beneath Baby Sally’s black burial cloth.

The screen door squeaked open again. She started, ready to take the twins in hand. Instead, seven-year-old Johnny came out, his sweet face pinched with sadness. He sat down beside her. “I couldn’t find you.” He didn’t ask for the hundredth time how to tie his shoes or why night was dark. Or even why Granny screamed. “I couldn’t find you,” he said again.

Her sadness was affecting him. She tried to smile. He’d been hers to care for since infancy when Ma shoved the newborn into her arms.

“I been right here,” Effie said. He didn’t deserve to carry her grief. “Show me your marbles.”

He sniffled and curled, putting his head in her lap. “Skeet,” he said, his bottom lip trembling.

She brushed hair off his forehead. Yellow-white hair like her own and in need of her scissors. “I’ll make Skeet give them back. Okay?”

He moved, wiping his teary cheek on the skirt of her only good dress. It was Sunday, and though for the second week the family wasn’t showing their faces in church, Granny coaxed Effie into the green silk. Then Granny insisted the old preacher, who came down the lane days earlier in a rickety buggy pulled by a rickety horse, read from his Bible. He arrived two days after Effie heard the news about Jury. One day after Pa sent her to Jury to “do what you must. Wife him, need be.”

Johnny pinched fabric on Effie’s skirt and used it to wipe his nose. Granny would scold when she saw the stain, angry that Effie hadn’t bothered to change back into a farm dress after the Bible reading. The green had been Granny’s, and she’d paid twenty-five cents to have the seams let out and the hem let down for Effie.

A cow lowed in the distance, and Effie’s gaze lifted again to the stark and barren pasture. She ached for the shelter of the black cloth she kept under her pillow. She’d draw it over her head and shut out the world so she could weep in private. Suppose she was pregnant? What then? How long could she hide her condition? And where could she go to escape when she no longer could? Pregnant and no husband? There was no greater shame, not just for her, but for the whole family. She couldn’t hurt her parents, especially Ma. Not again.

Only ten days earlier, the whole world had seemed fixed to pop wide open for her. She thought she’d soon be leaving on Jury’s arm. Thought the two of them would live six miles up the road, not far from Johnny and the others, but far enough away to allow her to sleep at night and escape Homeplace’s ghosts.

Then Pa returned from New Ulm with their weekly supplies, his face wound tight. He dropped a sack of coffee beans on the table and turned to Effie. “Jury ain’t marrying you.”

The words gusted in her head, quick and strong. Standing at the sink washing dishes, she’d needed to grab the sides and hang on.

“He’s marrying someone else.”

She’d loved Jury long before he even noticed her. All through the winter, he’d come Sundays to court. Courting not just her, but her parents, her brothers, even Granny. Well-mannered as a man fixing any day to ask for her hand.

She dropped her eyes to the pans still needing scrubbed. Jury was marrying someone else? The hurt struck deep, knifed her where all along she’d known she wasn’t good enough for him. Couldn’t ever be enough. She’d let Baby Sally die.

Johnny, his head still in her lap, turned over. “Now this side,” he said, pressing his other cheek to the silk.

She rested her hand on Johnny’s shoulder. She’d been his mother, changing his diapers, feeding him until he was old enough to hold his own cup, and keeping him from the washtub. She was still his mama, drying his tears, scolding him when he got too close to a horse, teaching him his letters. She knew how to be a mama all right, but how could she put a roof over a child’s head and food in a child’s belly? She had no hope of ever getting a job. She couldn’t read more than the word “soda” or “salt” on a can. And no respectable family would have an unwed mother in their house, even as a maid.

She stifled a moan. She couldn’t bring such awful grief to Ma. So that Ma couldn’t walk down the street in town without people gawking even more. Ma, who’d already lost a baby daughter to drowning, given birth to a boy people thought simple, and lived with a crazy mother-in-law. A woman surely unfavored in God’s eyes.

The door to the house opened, and the old preacher stepped out. Since Reverend Jackdaw’s arrival, she’d been so consumed with losing Jury and possibly being pregnant, she’d scarce paid the man any attention. He was nearest Granny in age, and Granny was the only reason Pa tolerated the man sleeping in the barn.

The afternoon Rev. Jackdaw arrived, Effie had also been sitting on the porch, Granny sniffling and rocking behind her. Pa marched from the barn at the sound of a squeaking buggy and a horse clopping down the lane. He listened to three words of the man’s complaint and pointed down the road toward New Ulm. “Blacksmith on ahead. Take your troubles there.”

The preacher spied Granny wrapped in her quilt. He jumped down, rushed up the steps, and lifted Granny’s hand. “Rev. Jackdaw,” he said. “The Lord’s blessing on you.”

Granny sputtered.

“I see by the light in your eyes, Sister. You are one of God’s elect.”

The tip of Granny’s tongue poked around the teeth on the right side of her mouth and out the gaping hole on the left. She found her voice, insisted he stay for coffee. A piece of pie. A prayer for her nerves. When Pa objected, she pointed at him. “That one wath off fithing with hith pole.”

Pa turned and headed back to the barn.

Granny wasn’t on the porch now, nor Pa, only Rev. Jackdaw stepping up too close. His body blocked the sunlight, casting her and Johnny in shadow. She thought he wanted to pass, but he only stared down at them, his large, worn shoes inches from Johnny’s small fingers. She pulled his hand to safety.

“There’s wisdom for you in the good book.” He fisted his Bible, holding it in the air like a rock or hammer. “Passages to deliver you from your suffering.”

He recognized her suffering? She could feel Johnny beginning to tremble. “It’s all right,” she soothed, but he scrambled up and ran back into the house.

Rev. Jackdaw peered down his long nose. “Just desserts that one.”

“No,” Effie said. The man had no right. People thought the seven-year-old simple, but only Granny and Skeet—older than Effie by two years and heavier than her by thirty pounds—used words like imbecile and stupid. Said them in Johnny’s presence. Granny didn’t mean any harm; she couldn’t help the holes in her mind. How it clutched coins of reason one minute and lost them the next.

“Johnny gets scared,” Effie said. The preacher had one eye old and one scarred, twitchy, and mean. “You scare him, that’s all.”

“Follow me,” Rev. Jackdaw ordered. “I’ll deliver your soul.”

His manner, sharp as his voice, proved to Granny that God Himself had come down the lane and slept the last week in their barn. Effie didn’t agree, despite the man’s age and the long white beard. Still, suppose the half-twisted face and the shaking Bible could help her?

He struck out across the yard, his long shadow reaching back for her. “Follow me.”

“If-fee!” The cry came from deep in the house. Granny was awake. Then more insistent, “If-fee!”

She ached to run screaming down the long lane to the county road. Only Pa knew the full story of Jury. But even he didn’t know how scared she was, or how she contemplated jumping off the Redstone Bridge. Wasn’t that the best way out of her misery and the only way to save the family from more shame?

“Effie!” Ma’s voice this time. “I need you in here.”

Effie hurried after Rev. Jackdaw.

They used the cow path, walking along the crest of the pasture hill, she several steps behind. At the pond, its banks swollen by snowmelt, they stopped. Large startled frogs—last year’s survivors—jumped from the crusty edges, splashed, and disappeared under the water. She sat a few feet from Rev. Jackdaw, his teeth yellow and horsey under his beard and his strange eye. She struggled not to turn away in disgust. Instead, she concentrated on keeping as much of her skirt as possible bunched in her lap, off the ground and away from ants.

Rev. Jackdaw opened his Bible and began to read, each verse louder than the last. Suddenly, strange sounds sprung from his mouth—not words at all, but some goofy language of his devising. She’d heard of people speaking in “tongues” at revivals, but this jumble of sounds reminded her of the Pig Latin she and Skeet spoke. A way of cursing each other without Ma understanding the bickering.

Rev. Jackdaw continued spouting, shiny bits of spittle flashing in the sunlight, his voice rising and falling as he lifted his Bible heavenward.

Several minutes passed. Effie began doubting that what she saw was a show. The sounds went on too long, without hesitation, and he’d forgotten she was there. When he remembered her finally, his bad eye, looking blind only a minute earlier, burrowed into her.

“Lord, save her from her sins of the flesh.”

She froze. The sky was a hard blue, and yet she felt certain the heavens were thick with eyes. How could he know her sin without God having seen and told him?

Over the next hour, the preacher’s attentiveness held her like a pair of hands. The choice was hers, he said. Salvation could open her chest and put in the glow of a stained-glass window. Or she could refuse the invitation and send her soul to the fire of ever-lasting damnation.

She couldn’t undo her past, couldn’t bring Sally back or take back the hour in Jury’s loft. Not by herself. If she didn’t even try to be saved by this man, who was willing to do it, what other hope did she have?

He drummed his fingers, nails chipped and dirty, on his Bible. His shirt smelled of days without being washed. “Are you ready to accept baptism?”

She nodded and rose to her feet. Her family, especially Pa, needed to witness and know she’d been saved. “I’ll run and get the others, change my dress.”

“Don’t you know,” the good and the bad eye settled on her, “it’s better to pray and receive in private?”

Her face burned; she’d acted childish. She looked down, pinched the green silk of her skirt. “I couldn’t . . . Granny.” She kept from adding, It’s the only decent piece of clothing I have.

“Why take ye thought for raiment?”

He plopped a heavy hand on her head. She thought he meant to bless her, but he pushed until her knees lowered to the grass. He prayed, long and loud—his hand still heavy—that on the day of her baptism into eternal life she might be saved from her heathen shyness and false pride in her mortal body.

He drew her up by the elbow and began removing his shoes.

Her fingers found the buttons on her bodice. Rev. Jackdaw was a holy old man, and she was in need of being saved. She slid the dress off her shoulders and stepped out. Standing in only her underslip, she let him take her hand and tug her into the pond.

The icy water stung her ankles and calves. She winced. Then winced again with each step and the cold crawling higher on her legs.

With his arm around her waist, he pulled her forward. “Do not fear the Kingdom of God.”

She couldn’t stop now. Her dress was off, the water above her knees. She’d already begun moving away from this miserable world and into another full of promise. When the water reached her waist, he stopped. He prayed with more force, his words again lurching and strange. She thought of a gaggle of geese and then again of the Pig Latin she used to fight with Skeet.

When Rev. Jackdaw leaned her back, cold water raced up her spine. She jerked and clutched his arms to keep from going too deep. He draped his body over hers and held her so close she felt his chest pounding. The awful backward bending and the cold replaced by her fear of drowning, she clung to him. Baby Sally died in less than half a washtub.

He cupped water and dripped it over her forehead. Her legs trembled with the cold, the continued bending back, and fear. She turned her head away, trying to keep his unwashed beard out of her face. The horsey teeth chomping words she still didn’t understand.

His arm pulled out from beneath her. She sank. Water rushed over her. Her arms slapped and splashed. Pond water filled her mouth. She twisted and managed to turn over. Her feet found the slippery bottom. Spitting and gasping, she splashed for shore.

On the bank, her thin slip dripped and clung to her skin. He came close, as though he’d pray over her again. Hunched and hugging herself, she quaked with cold. “You made me fall.”

His wool pants dripped water over his bare feet. His nails the color of cow hoofs. He picked up her green silk, and she reached out, but he kept the dress at arm’s length. She scolded herself for still being so self-conscious of her body. She quit grabbing, closed her eyes and tried to feel the sun on her skin and the hand of the Divine on her shoulders.

She felt only cold. Where was the stained-glass window in her heart? Where was the clapper of dove wings? She opened her eyes.

Rev. Jackdaw stared at her breasts. She was near naked with her cold nipples erect, their shape and color stark through the thin cotton. She spun, putting her back to him and slapping her arms across her chest.

She wasn’t blessed. No tongues of fire crackled over her head. She felt sick the way she’d felt leaving the hayloft with Jury, the sick way she’d felt realizing how much Pa wanted her gone.

She faced Rev. Jackdaw. “Give it!”

His one eye lusted. But the other eye, the eye twisted by a scar, held such obituary she could not name the darkness. That eye hated her for her nakedness.

Grabbing back the dress, she stepped into the silk. As her cold fingers worked, button by button, the fabric turned wet and dark. She turned for home. She deserved the Redstone Bridge. One step off and it would be over.

Skeet lay in the weeds not ten yards away. “Skeet!”

He stood, gave a lopsided smirk—more a snarl—and started back at a lope.

“Skeet! Don’t tell Pa. Please, it’s not what you think!”

Coming into the yard, she saw Pa and Skeet standing side by side just outside the barn. To Skeet’s grin, Pa’s face was foreboding, his large, calloused hands fisted. His glare pierced her and then slid to her right. Only then did she hear Rev. Jackdaw just a few feet behind her.

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.

Effie stood on the porch and Pa close by, both of them watching Rev. Jackdaw climb into his buggy and slap the reins over his old horse, Nell. Every time the preacher walked the nag in from the pasture and began hitching her to the buggy—saying he was going into town to check for a letter—Pa sent Effie to the attic to be sure the man was leaving his belongings.

In the spring, she’d said, “I do.” Now it was late August and yet they remained at the farm. Week after week Rev. Jackdaw reported he still hadn’t received news from Omaha. And week after week Effie watched Pa’s frustration grow. He came in the house only for meals and sleep, biting his tongue, avoiding any rift that might cause his son-in-law to try and sneak away without the daughter. His only compensation for tolerating the situation was that Granny screamed less. Rev. Jackdaw knew to keep her occupied and distracted, reading to her from his Bible. Or from Granny’s Jonathan Edwards tract: “God holds you over a pit of hell. He holds you as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire.”

With the buggy heading down the lane, the dust rising and blowing along the pasture fence, Pa turned back to his work in the field. Effie saw Ma and Skeet bending over baskets, the twins carrying ears of corn. As always, she’d been left with the baby and Curly. Granny and Johnny too, who were no help in the field.

She shared Pa’s fears. The preacher could not leave her behind in shame. She hadn’t been pregnant, but everyone in New Ulm knew she was married—even Jury. She wouldn’t be left behind now, not with his wedding so close.

When she was sure Rev. Jackdaw wasn’t turning around for any reason, she ran through the house, climbed the attic ladder, and stepped into the heat. With shaking hands, she opened his valise. When she’d accidentally seen the dress hidden there, he’d explained it had been a favorite of his dear sister, and that he kept it in memory of her. Effie touched the edge of the red, wanting to take out the satin and feel it glide over her body. Perhaps she and his sister were the same size. But she didn’t dare. She wouldn’t get the dress refolded and tucked in exactly right. Just poking fingers down through his two extra shirts and touching the softness made her nervous.

“If-fee! Injuns!”

She turned and hurried back down. Johnny and Granny sat at the kitchen table. Granny wore her Never Forget quilt around her shoulders, patches made from the clothes of her murdered children. Red slashes of ripped cloth randomly placed on top. Symbols of spilled blood. Her cane banged up and down on the floor. “If-fee, If-fee!”

“I’m right here, Granny. Shush, you’ll wake the babies.” And to Johnny, “Everything is all right.”

Johnny held his slate but no longer practiced his name. He covered his ears against Granny’s screaming, but his eyes fixed on the rapping cane as though it were about to attack him.