They had built a rude chicken coop in the woods out of tied-together sassafras saplings and salvaged fence rails; it was enough to keep out the foxes, but that was all. Marie could only hope that a bear wouldn’t come by. But eggs were down, and as Marie collected them one afternoon she could see one reason why.
A three-foot blacksnake was curled in one of the nests, its body lumpy from the eggs it had swallowed; Marie could count two, perhaps three. She gazed at it. Surely it was aware of her presence, but it did not move.
There was an egg in the nest beside it. She needed to gather it. But if she reached down for the egg, the snake would bite her.
Once she would have called for Angus. He had no fear of these creatures. He would have laughed at her dread and picked it up, carried it off to the far woods somewhere.
But now there was no Angus, and she couldn’t call Michael. He would just take his almighty ax and kill it, perhaps give her a cuff for taking him away from his work, leaving her to deal with the bloody remains. She would kill it herself.
But of course she wouldn’t, she no more had it in her to kill that snake than to take wings and fly. Michael was wrong about many things, but he was right about this one—she was a soft woman, soft to the core, unsuited for the strife and scrabble of a working existence. For Michael everything was war. He was at war with the railroad builders who were always wanting to work him an extra hour for no extra money. He was at war with Ferguson in town, who had loaned him the money for the cattle. He was at war with Daybreak across the river, although she doubted if they were aware of it. Marie wasn’t sure if he considered her an ally in his wars or another enemy. Probably some of both.
At first this feeling had worked in their favor. He was angry, she was angry, and in the night they turned their anger into a strange sort of passion. They gripped each other’s biceps, they couldn’t bear to have clothing on, they pressed their faces together as if trying to push through to bone. It was animal, and it was good. Sometime in the early spring they had made a baby, although she hadn’t told him yet. She wasn’t that far along.
But then the rains came, and the farm flooded, and Angus was lost. There was no longer any way to turn Michael’s anger into anything warm or productive. The cloud under which he labored was impenetrably dense.
The first time he had struck her, she had cried, naturally. A slap across the cheek hurts. But the look on his face—proud, belligerent—gave her to know that tears would only make things worse. So she did not cry anymore, not even the time when he had popped her shoulder out of joint. She took a perverse pride in that.
She had felt worse things than the bite of a snake.
She reached into the nest, grasped the egg, warm in her fingers. She drew out her hand.
The snake did not bite.
Marie put the egg in her apron pocket and bent her way out the makeshift door of the coop. Small victories, but she would take them however she got them.
The night Angus had drowned was a blur to her now. She remembered the chill of the water, the gritty filth of it in her shoes. She remembered Michael flinging himself into it again and again, Charley Pettibone dragging him out, a mad scramble to find poles or ropes, anything to locate Angus, and their failure, the dread realization that came over them, and Michael now in a frenzy, words and cries that made no sense, and then the fear. Charley had led them up the hill to the Indian camp, where Dathan and Cedeh wrapped them in blankets. Then unconsciousness, till morning when they descended the slippery hill again to find that Michael had gathered all their possessions and piled them on a high spot farther back, and there he lay upon them asleep, like the old tales of a dragon and its hoard.
They went for days without speaking. Men and women came by to comfort them, left food, but Michael turned them away or retreated to the woods when he saw them coming. There was no funeral because there was nothing to bury. Marie lived in dread of the moment when the waters would recede and reveal Angus, lodged in a willow grove or trapped in a root wad, for then all would be raw and fresh again and Michael’s madness would return. But no Angus ever appeared as the river returned to its banks. Their grief turned to a dull, hollow pain, no less painful despite the dullness, the pain of an amputation rather than that of a wound.
Now, months later, Michael was no less mad but had grown cunning. He had built a ferry where the flood had washed out the river crossing, and sometimes in the night he deepened the hole. “Mother Nature needs our help,” he would say, slipping out the door barefoot, a shovel in his hand. He worked without a lantern so the people in Daybreak wouldn’t see him, although she didn’t know why it mattered; they kept a wagon on their side of the river and crossed in a skiff, swimming the horses. Marie suspected it was just the thrill of getting away with something that spurred him to secrecy. Hardly two travelers a week came by, so it wasn’t as though the ferry made them much money.
Marie cradled the eggs in her apron pocket. She supposed she should find Josephine and get her started in the garden. Beans were coming up and needed to be weeded. But as she emerged from the woods into the house clearing, Josephine was already out there, bent down, pulling the weeds from the roots just as she had shown her. She did not speak as Marie passed by.
Marie placed the eggs on the counter and thought about lunch. Now that it was just the two of them during the week, she sometimes forgot lunch until mid-afternoon; she felt as if she was just pushing through the days, barely able to distinguish one from another, morning from night. There were only two parts to the day, Michael-at-home and Michael-away. During Michael-away you prepared, you anticipated, you waited; and during Michael-at-home you stayed alert and ready for whatever might happen. But it was never possible to be alert and ready enough.
Her thoughts of lunch were interrupted by the ringing of the bell for the ferry. Just her luck, somebody needing to cross and Michael not here to do it. She would have to haul it across herself.
Marie walked to the river crossing. Cowling, Mrs. Smith’s man, stood on the other bank.
“Tell your husband we need his boat,” he said, a little grouchy.
“Right now?”
He shook his head. “After lunch. We are removing.”
“How many wagons?”
“Two.”
Marie considered. Two heavily loaded wagons meant two trips across, plus another for the people. Whatever else one might say about Michael, he was a good man with a device. He had braided a heavy rope around a cottonwood tree on their side of the river, then paddled across and done the same on the Daybreak side. With ropes attached to the corners of the ferry and looped over the crossing line, it no longer took much strength to pull the ferry across; even Marie could walk it over, advancing each rope a foot or two at a time. Michael would be happy at the money from three crossings in a single day.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll watch for you.”
“Husband not at home?”
“Mind your own business.”
As they stood across the river from each other, a boy came into view downstream, poling his way toward them from the rear of a twelve-foot johnboat. He worked slowly and steadily and gave no sign he noticed them until he was almost even. He looked about fourteen or fifteen, in a coarse cotton shirt and a wide-brimmed hat that had to have been someone else’s originally. He tipped it to her as he poled toward her bank.
“This the Daybreak landing, ma’am?” the boy said.
“It is.”
He steered the boat straight in, and as soon as the bow touched land he skipped lightly over the cross-members, the pole horizontal in his hands, and hopped ashore with dry feet. He dragged the johnboat farther onto the bank.
“Glad to hear it,” he said. “I been standing at the tail end of this thing for three days. Be good to walk on my own two feet for a while.”
Across the river, Cowling waved and turned away. Marie ignored him.
“They told me I wouldn’t be able to pole any farther than the Daybreak landing,” the boy said. “That right?”
“Probably so,” Marie said. “The shut-ins start just around the next bend. You could never get a boat through there. Three days, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am. Been walking for two days before that. I’m from Paragould, Arkansas, but I found this boat up in Missouri.”
“Found it tied to somebody’s dock, you mean?”
The boy grinned. “Shame on you, ma’am, for thinking ill of a man. Fact is, I’m headed north to look for work. Know anything going on?”
“There’s a railroad crew just south of here. You probably paddled right past them.”
“This is a pole, ma’am, not a paddle, and yes I did, or at least I could hear their hammers a ways off. I ain’t the hammering kind of fellow.” With his pole, he plucked a cloth bag from the middle thwart and flipped it into his hands.
“No work in Arkansas?”
The boy puckered his face. “I’m tired of flat land. If I’m going to live on the flat, I’d like to have people in it.”
“Well, there’s work across the river if you want it. Hundred acres under cultivation and not enough men to manage it.”
His face puckered again. “I never fancied myself a field hand. But what’s it pay?”
“Room and board, and your share at harvest time.”
The boy snorted. “No thank you very much,” he said. “Working on shares is not my play. What’s in it for me, that’s my question.”
That was everybody’s question nowadays, Marie supposed, the brash new generation bowing before the cold new realities of cash only, please, and payment on demand, and every man for himself.
“Well, I’m off,” the boy said, interrupting her thoughts. “Mind watching my boat for me? I’ll be back to get it.”
“What’s in it for me?” Marie retorted.
He laughed. “Point well made, ma’am. Tell you what, if I ain't back in a month, you can sell it or claim it, and no harm done. How’s that?”
“Fine,” Marie said.
The boy slung his bag over his shoulder and marched up the road toward Fredericktown. “Hey, by the way,” he called over his shoulder. “Know what I heard in Greenville? I heard some of Quantrill’s old bunch are headed down this way. They robbed the bank up in Liberty a couple of months ago, and they’re going to Kentucky or Tennessee or somewhere.”
“Just hope that wasn’t their boat you took,” Marie called after him.
“Them boys don’t ride boats. They never even get off their horses,” the boy said as he disappeared up the hill.
“You should have made him pay you to watch his boat,” said a voice behind her. Marie jumped. It was Josephine, of course, creeping up as she always did. She stepped out from behind a bush. “He had money in that bag.”
“Now how do you know that?” Marie said.
“I heard it. He had it wrapped, but I could hear it plain as day.”
“I don’t doubt you.” Marie put her arm over Josephine’s shoulder and they walked to the house. Marie never knew what to make of the girl, daughter though she was. She had to credit Michael—for all his humors, he had never unreasonably raised his hand to the child. Or was it that Josephine knew how to manage his moods so that his wrath was always directed elsewhere? No matter. Josephine was not paying the price for her unwise marriage, and that was what counted.
“Mr. Flynn will be pleased at the ferry earnings today,” Josephine said, as if reading her mind. Never called him ‘Papa’ or anything endearing. But Marie didn’t remonstrate; the girl had a father, after all.
After lunch the ferry bell rang, and the two of them walked to the riverbank. Josephine was not tall enough to reach the rope and pull the ferry across, but she could help the passengers load and unload, which she always did without being told.
It looked as though the entire Daybreak community was on the other side, gathered with Mrs. Smith and her retinue at the landing. Marie pulled the ferry across while Cowling began to swim the horses over, two at a time.
“I’ll need two of those to pull your wagons onto the ferry,” Marie said to him midstream.
“I know that,” Cowling said, grouchy.
The oversized wooden casket Wickman had built to hold Lysander Smith’s coffin took up one entire wagon, wedged in place by crates and boxes. Wilkinson, the undertaker, appeared to be in charge of that one. He eyed her suspiciously.
“Do you know what you’re doing, young lady?” he said.
“About as much as you do.”
Ignoring his growl, she led the horses onto the ferry, tied down the brake, blocked the wheels, and unhitched the team. Horses on a ferryboat were trouble; you didn’t need to be a teamster to know that.
Once the horses were safely on the bank again, she pulled the boarding planks up and began the tedious process of pulling the ferry across, hand over hand. At first Wilkinson held onto the wagon as the ferry embarked, tilting into the current, but finally politeness got the better of him.
“Let me help,” he said, reaching for the back corner rope.
“It won’t save you anything on the fee,” Marie said.
“Dear girl! I had no thought of that. I just want to cross this stream as fast as possible.”
“All right, then. When I get the lead rope set, then you pull yours ahead. Don’t pull yours until mine is firm.”
They worked their way across the river. As they approached, Cowling stepped forward, holding the bridles of the two horses he had swum across. He backed them onto the ferry, and the men hitched them up.
“This is a heavy son of a bitch for a skeleton,” Cowling muttered as he urged the horses off the ferry and up the bank.
“Not the skeleton, it’s the zinc lining and the camphor,” Wilkinson said. Now that the two were out of Mrs. Smith’s earshot, they talked more freely. “Believe me, you wouldn’t want to sit on this wagon without them.” Wilkinson nodded to Marie. “Your friend Wickman back there is a fine woodworker.” Marie noticed that all the joints and screw holes on the casket had been sealed with wax.
“I’m going to stop on the flat ground up ahead and add another horse,” Cowling said. “I don’t like that hill.”
“A word before I go back across,” Marie said. She drew the two men to her and told them what she had heard about the former Quantrill men.
“But Quantrill’s dead,” Cowling said. “They killed him last year.”
“Don’t these boys know the war’s over?” said Wilkinson.
“Ours is, but theirs isn’t,” Marie told them. “Might never be. Anyway, if you’re stopped, give them whatever they want and don’t tell them you’re from the North. These men are used to killing, and don’t think that the women in your group will save you.”
“Oh, we read all about this gang during the war,” Wilkinson said. “But Mrs. Smith will never stoop to lying to them. She makes a grand point of her principles.”
“We’ll not let her do the talking,” said Cowling. “Mrs. Mercadier can talk to them. She can talk to anyone.”
“Mrs. Mercadier?” asked Marie. “You mean—?”
It was true, as Marie learned on her next trip over. Jenny, the serving girl, had decided to join the colony, and Marie’s father’s widow, the former Mrs. Flanagan, was taking her place. Mrs. Smith, perching backward in the wagon in her velvet armchair, feigned disappointment at Jenny’s ingratitude, but she was plainly pleased at the trade.
“And with a name like Mercadier, everyone will think I have gotten myself a French maid, unless she opens her mouth, which a woman of her years will have the sense not to do,” Mrs. Smith said. Mrs. Mercadier, although she was standing beside the wagon, didn’t appear to mind being spoken of in the third person.
Mrs. Smith refused to get down from her chair, even though the wagon swayed alarmingly as they pulled it onto the ferry. “You’ll cross me over, I have no doubt,” she said. “You’re too tough a little vixen to let me fall.”
Kathleen avoided Marie’s eye and shrugged in response to her whispered question. “Why not?” she said. “There are plenty of Irish in Philadelphia. I’ll feel at home there. With your father gone, and now Angus gone, I have no reason to stay here.” She gave Marie a searching look. “You should think about that offer Mrs. Smith made you, and yes, I heard about that offer. Sometimes hanging onto a child is not the best thing you can do for it. Just think about it. Mrs. Turner has our address.”
They embraced after Marie had gotten the ferry safely to the other side, but Marie’s heart felt cold. True, she had no family connection to Kathleen, but was it really that easy for her to leave Daybreak? She remembered when Kathleen had led the group of women and children up the road after their disaster in the wilderness. Hadn’t Daybreak meant something to her then?
Kathleen seemed to sense her thoughts. She squeezed Marie’s hand as she climbed into the wagon. “Things never last,” she whispered. “Keep looking ahead. That’s what got me through all my years. Two husbands, three boys, three homes lost. Take what life gives you, but do not try to hold onto it. You’ll just bring yourself pain.”
Marie squeezed her hand in return but said nothing. She could not agree. There had to be something to hold onto in this world, something, anything. One couldn’t just keep letting go.
Marie roped the ferry across the river one more time with Josephine aboard, although it was clear that everyone who wanted to cross had already done so. She didn’t want to be by herself as the visitors departed.
The Daybreak residents drifted away to their work one by one, and by the time Marie had reached the bank, only Charlotte Turner and the new girl, Jenny, were left. Marie stepped ashore and tied the ferry to a stump. She greeted Charlotte with a nod and took Jenny’s hands.
“So you’re staying behind,” she said.
Jenny’s knee bobbed in a half-curtsey, a reflex movement that she was clearly trying to stop. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.
“Well, you follow the lead of this woman here,” Marie said. “Watch her and you won’t go wrong.” Jenny cast a sidelong glance at Charlotte, who blushed with pleasure. “Marie, you’re too kind.”
Marie turned to her and took her by one hand, and for a moment they stood as if in a ring-a-rosy, the three women in the afternoon sunshine. “How old are you, Jenny?” Marie said.
“Seventeen, ma’am,” and Marie was taken aback at her youth.
“And you’ve been in service with Mrs. Smith for how long?”
“Since I was twelve, ma’am.”
Marie looked more closely at her. She was young, it was true. But her face did not have the softness of youth. “It’s not an easy life out here, but I suppose you’ve seen enough of that to judge for yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am. House service with Mrs. Smith is not as easy as it might have looked from the outside, neither, and I’m inclined to try life on my own shake for a while.”
Marie remembered herself at Jenny’s age, a girl in years but already a woman in experience of the shocks of life, her mother gone from the cholera and her father raising her as best he could, their settlement dissolving in strife. The rosy accounts of Daybreak they had read made it seem like paradise, light work and weighty conversation, and while they knew it could not be as ideal as portrayed, still the dream had carried them along. She had been about the same age when she first arrived, and likely no wiser. And was this the place where a single young woman could make a life on her own? No worse than the rest of the country, that was for sure.
The three of them watched as the wagons disappeared up the hill. Kathleen did not turn around or look back. Take what life gives you, eh? Hardly a philosophy, but perhaps a way to cope. Marie watched the road for a moment, then turned toward home. She could see Josephine waiting on the ferry, invisible through stillness, observant as always. The sun was dropping low. Two more hours, maybe three, before Michael would be home.
And here came John Wesley Wickman, up from the village at a fast walk, an ill-concealed look of agitation on his face. He reached the three of them and stood uncertainly, clearing his throat and scratching his head.
“Mr. Wickman?” Charlotte finally said.
“After all this fuss with Mrs. Smith and her retinue, I decided to go fishing,” he said.
The women waited.
“Down river, under those sycamore trees, where the channel takes a bend to the left.” He scuffed his feet in the dirt of the riverbank, and they waited. Wickman turned to Marie.
“And I found your Angus.”
Arms reached for her as she fell.