Morning came with a quick, swift kick to Anora’s backside, and an order to get up, get the coffee on. Rolling over, pulling all the blankets with him, his face turning toward the wall, her tormentor said, “Best start to cookin’, girl. Folks will be here come sunup.”
She rose from the bed and stood teetering forward and back. Shoulders hunched, she reached down and pulled her mackinaw around her body. To numb the pain, she escaped into the unconscious sleepwalker. Her movements jerky and slow, she donned her dress, stockings, shoes—name discarded, her past, irrelevant.
She poked the embers in the fireplace, threw in some pitch and kindling, building it up to a welcome blaze with the addition of two chunks of green oak.
By the time he rolled out of bed, she had the coffee ready. Hot biscuits, sausage with gravy, awaited his pleasure, his plate and fork in place on the table before his chair.
Dressing, he tossed her a look over his shoulder. “Hells bells, you look like somethin’ the dog puked up. Can’t you wash that damned hair of yours? Get into your other dress. That thing’s dirty as ditch water. Looks like you been sleepin’ with them goats of yours. Wash yer face. You’re the ugliest thing I ever set eyes on. You’ll have to keep that homely bonnet of yours pulled down over your sorry-lookin’ face. You ain’t decent. You’re gonna scare everybody off.”
He came to the table and sat. She poured his coffee. He started to butter a biscuit, then looked up at her. “Get out of my sight. You’re makin’ me sick with that mug of yours. I got to eat breakfast and get out there to get set up.” Standing aside the table, out of reach, she waited for his next order. “You don’t have time to be standin’ around, you got work to do.” Obeying his command, she seasoned the pot of beans in the pot over the hearth.
He’d eaten most of his breakfast, all but half a biscuit smothered in gravy. He slammed his fork down onto his plate. “Your cookin’ for the folks better taste better than this swill, or I won’t get no money out’a nobody.”
He shoved his plate off the table; food splattered her skirt, shoes, and the floor. Pushing his chair back, he stood and downed another cup of coffee. He stuffed a biscuit, dripping with butter, down his throat. He donned his rain slicker, jammed his bowler hat on his head, and slammed the door behind him.
Trembling, fingers clenching and unclenching, she’d wadded up her dress at her sides. Blinking, taking a shuddering breath, she stared into the quiet of the room—the storm had passed. Untying her apron, she wiped up the spilled food off the floor and then shook the scraps over the fire. The biscuit caught fire; she inhaled the smell of the gravy as it smoked and hissed in the flames.
She poured the sausage gravy into a slop pail under the counter where she washed the dishes. Using the top of a biscuit, she mopped out the inside of the skillet and brought the food to her bruised lips. Teeth loose from the abuse they’d taken during the night, she couldn’t open her mouth wide enough to accept it. Tearing off a little bite, she parted her lips and pushed the gravy-soaked biscuit between barely opened teeth. Her tongue felt twice its size, but she managed to swallow. Pouring herself some fresh goat’s milk, she sipped from a cup. In this fashion, she ate an entire biscuit.
»»•««
Anora wouldn’t give her tormentor credit for very many things, but he did know how to barter. If a farmer didn’t have cash, he’d exchange goods for the fee of passage. In this fashion, he kept their larder in fresh coffee beans, flour, sugar, honey, rice, and even fresh fruit.
She had potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, peas, and beans, and chicken left over from the chicken and dumplings to add to her soup pot. Alone in the cabin, she mixed up flour, soda, sugar, eggs, and butter in a large mixing bowl for soda bread.
Once she had that taken care of, she went outside and brought back into the house a pail of cold water. She lowered her head over the dented, galvanized bucket, poured water over her head with a cup and scrubbed hard. Undoing her dress, she scrubbed her bruised and clawed neck, arms, torso, her abdomen, and legs. Eyes closed, jaw clenched, she frantically tried to scrub away the filth that filled her soul.
Exhausted, she rinsed off. Dripping and cold, she found her denim dress. Turning it inside out, she wiped the water off her skin. In the wardrobe, hanging on a metal hook behind his good suit and boiled white shirt, hung a dress. It had once been the color of a fresh red rose, now faded to a dusty hue, the little bluebells in the fabric nothing more than discolored dots. Hanging on the hook beneath the dress, she found a drab cotton petticoat and a pair of black cotton stockings, mended and patched at the knees and across the toes.
Dressed, she sat on the bed to comb her hair. She didn’t allow herself to use the fine, sacred, vanity set on top of the bureau. She had a pine needle brush kept under the mattress for her humble head. She brushed and brushed her long, straight hair, then wound it up in a chignon on the back of her head, as always.
Donning her mackinaw, she went outside to start a fire in the rock pit where she made her soap and washed clothes. The fog had thickened in the predawn. She wrestled an iron tripod within the rock circle of the pit and hung the huge iron cauldron from the iron hook in the center over her fire.
Soon a wagon came around the horseshoe bend beside the barn. One wagon followed another until by sunup there were half a dozen on the hill above the landing. With the wagons had come drovers with three flocks of sheep that filled the pens with bleating, pushing, shoving rams and ewes. A half dozen milk cows and a team of mules headed back to Linnton, across the falls from Oregon City, stood quietly in the pens closest to the barn.
After milking the goats and cow, Anora checked the loaves of soda bread in the Dutch oven, stirred the kettle of soup, and moved the coffeepot to the side of the fire. By noon, she’d shed the mackinaw, swapping it for a woolen cardigan. Keeping her bonnet pulled down low over her forehead, she tied the ribbons close around her jowls. She worked quickly and silently, filling coffee cups while the men and boys talked of rain, plowing, timber, and flood. She floated like a shadow around them.
She pounded the lid of the cast-iron kettle with her metal spoon to announce the food was already, the soda bread hot, waiting on the kitchen table she’d dragged into the yard.
Anora knew he’d be coming up the hill soon. Everyone sounded satisfied with the soup, the bread—she’d heard no complaints.
Laughing and joking, he walked among the men, calling them by name if he could, asking after their families, even if he didn’t know them, a big friendly smile on his unshaven, leathery-complexioned face.
Anora filled a cup with soup and then handed it to him. Turning around, reaching out to the table, he took a piece of her bread. He ate and talked. He laughed and gossiped, blending in with the men around him.
No one would believe her. No one would believe him to be the monster she knew all too well. She refilled the coffeepot with cold water and put it over the fire with fresh ground coffee. He held out his cup for her to fill. He drank, still talking, still smiling.
A stream of black coffee sprayed over her. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and swore. Snatching the coffeepot from her, he threw it and its contents beyond the fire pit, missing her head by inches.
“Damn, Norie. You gotta be more careful. What if these folks had drunk that piss? Now you get in the house and make a good cup of coffee for these men.”
Turning back, he apologized to the gathering, shaking his head, “Sorry, boys. Norie’s a little off her usual today. She had one of her spells last night. She pretty near did herself in again. Found her out here trying to eat them rocks over there in the lane. Had a devil of a time g’tting them rocks out of her mouth. She liked to bite my fingers off. I don’t know what gets into her head sometimes.
“I don’t like to leave her alone…a man’s got to make a living. Sometimes I think it would be better if she did…could find a way out of her misery.” He bowed his head. “You know…well… I don’t like to think on it.”
The men patted him on the back, consoling him. Anora retrieved the pot and went inside. The men stood silently by, heads shaking, staring at her as she passed. She kept her head down, looking at her treasured red dress now spotted with coffee and coffee grounds.
Inside, she refilled the pot with cold water from the water barrel under her kitchen counter, the same way she’d been doing it all morning. She measured out the exact amount of freshly ground coffee into the pot, and placed the pot over the fire, bringing it almost to a boil, then took it off, allowing the grounds to settle.
»»•««
Coming from Marysville to the south, the flat-bottom boat, the Willa Jane, waddled in under the carriage line, anchoring in at the west bank docks called Takenah Landing at 2:45 p.m.
Anora ducked her head. Making no eye contact, she gathered up cups and spoons, giving no indication she had any interest in the comings and goings of the ferry traffic.
Risking a furtive glance, she saw Captain Jameson wave from across the river to the crowd gathered at the water’s edge where the ferry waited to haul more wagons, drovers, and livestock.
The Willa Jane’s passengers started to disembark. All turned to mayhem, the lane leading up to the little settlement of Takenah congested with livestock, wagons, and pedestrians.
Anora didn’t have to see, to know once the Willa Jane unloaded her freight, he’d start the ferry across, never mind the chaos.
The ferry, sitting low in the water, sounded its bell. Up on the bank under the bare branches of a big oak, Roscoe and Pete let out the cable, going around and around within their turnstiles. A large, iron ring hung from the carriage above the ferry in a loop of cable spanning the river to the opposite bank, secured to an oak tree on the Takenah side. A line of cable from the carriage ring separated and forked, attaching fore and aft on the ferryboat to keep it from drifting away in the strongest current at mid-point in the river.
Anora kept the coffee coming and made more soda bread. The rains held off for the day. A weak sun sent down beams of light to dance upon the ripples in the river current.
Near sundown, the traffic slowed. The Willa Jane sat abandoned, moored fast at the Takenah landing, her crew gone to partake of Takenah’s entertainment. Next to the bow of the Willa Jane sat the idle ferry. Her tormentor, arms folded across his chest, sat with his back against the rudder, hat pulled down over his face. Anora could hear him snoring from across the river where she stood on the porch.
A cowboy, dressed in a heavy, black canvas duster that hung to the tops of his boots, came down the bank from Takenah, leading two pack mules and his buckskin horse. Glancing up, she watched her tormentor rise slowly to his feet to crank up the ramp before he rang the bell twice. The cable lines started moving, and the ferry started across the river. Anora hung back in the shadows of the doorway, holding a bucket of goat’s milk to her chest.
The cowboy stood at the low rail to the side, watching the current pass under the raft. He had to shout to be heard, his voice echoing up and down the river. She’d heard that voice before. But where and when?
“Interesting setup you got here. I seen somethin’ like it once. Some folks I knew were gonna have a ferry just like this. They had plans. I seen ’em.”
Anora peeked around a porch post to get a better look at the man.
“Do I know you?” the cowboy asked the ferryman. The cowboy got no answer from her tormentor.
The ferry ground to a halt. The cowboy removed his hat and ran his long fingers through his black, curly hair. She caught a glimpse of a wide-toothed grin. “Hey, howdy. You’re Ruben Tillery, ain’t you? Whit Comstock, you remember me? We come across country together.”
The cowboy reached out his hand for a shake. Anora spied her tormentor’s sneer, and shuddered. The cowboy withdrew his hand, looked at it, and dropped his arms down to his side.
“Name’s Talbot, Ben Talbot,” Anora heard her tormentor say.
“You don’t say,” the cowboy said, eyebrows raised. He grinned wide. “Well, now, I sure am sorry…but you looked familiar.”
He turned his attention toward the muddy, rutted wagon track and caught sight of Anora. She made for her fire pit and started to dismantle it, turning her back toward him, keeping her face hidden, hunching her shoulders.
Ignoring the ferryman’s surly attitude, the cowboy asked, “That your misses?”
“Yep.”
Before the cowboy could ask another question, her tormentor jumped down off the boat and secured the line to the pylon on the bank. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cowboy, still grinning. With a shake of his head, he gathered up the reins of his horse and the tethers to his mules. “Well, I sure am sorry I mistook you for ol’ Ruben,” he said. “I lost track of him, and his family, at the Dalles. I been workin’ on a spread south of here. Just passing through. You wouldn’t happen to have heard the name of Tillery? Or Sennett, maybe?”
“Nope,” her tormentor answered, his head down.
The cowboy shrugged. “Well, I had to ask. A lot of people must come through here. If you happen on them folks, you tell them Whit Comstock’s keepin’ an eye out for ’em.”
“Yep. Folks come and go. Don’t usually ask names,” her tormentor answered and waved one of his big hands over his head.
The cowboy led his mules and his saddled buckskin up the muddy lane. With her head down, Anora could feel him staring at her as he passed, and she held her breath.
Dead, she had to stay dead and gone. Her past, the cowboy, the decent people, must not find her.