Bone River Read Free

“What is it,
okustee
?” and I realized he’d been talking and I was just sitting there with my pen dripping ink onto the paper.
    “I’m sorry,
tot
, but—”
    There was a noise on the porch, and the door opened, bringing a blast of chill wind, the smell of the river and salt mud and Junius with it.
    I jumped up in relief. “There you are! I was worried.”
    “Nothing to fear.” He smiled at me, taking off his coat and boots and hat, hanging them beside the door. “It looks to be a bad storm, though. I hope the barn doesn’t flood. It’s going to be a wretched winter, I think.”
    I closed the notebook, but not before Junius noticed.
    His smile died, but he only said, “You should be drawing those relics Baird’s waiting for. I wanted to send them off tomorrow.”
    I looked guiltily at the bowl on the table, part of our latest collection of Indian relics that I was cataloging and drawingbefore we sent it off to Spencer Baird, the assistant secretary at the Smithsonian National Museum, who had charge of procuring Indian relics for the Centennial Exposition’s ethnological exhibit planned for next year. He’d commissioned us, along with many other ethnologists, to get him the collection he needed, and he’d been anxious and persistent. He was nervous about the exhibit’s prospects—if it succeeded, it meant money and fame for the museum, which had not much of either. He’d already sent us several letters urging us to collect more, and to hurry. “I
was
doing that. But then the night got so dark, and—”
    “And Yutilma began howling,” Lord Tom put in.
    I gave him an admonishing look.
    Junius sighed. “You shouldn’t encourage her, Tom.”
    Lord Tom turned an innocent expression. “Encourage what,
sikhs
?”
    “The two of you conspire against me,” Junius said.
    “I needed a distraction,” I said. “As you were so late.”
    “You could at least distract yourself with something elevating. There’s a Bible right over there. I’ll bet you can’t even remember who Job is. Your father would have my head.”
    “My father didn’t give a damn about Job. All he cared about was ethnology.”
    “And raising a daughter who wasn’t a savage,” Junius said. “A task he left in my hands, as I recall. And look at you, bent over a lamp and listening to Siwash superstitions. Yutilma howling indeed.”
    “Call it my birthday present,” I said.
    “That’s not until tomorrow.”
    “An early one, then.”
    Junius sighed. “You’re wearing me out, sweetheart. It was a long day and I’m tired. Now I’m for bed. You coming?”
    Lord Tom rose and put aside his coffee—his signal that he was done for the night—and I rose as well and followed my husband up the stairs. The wind sounded louder up here, clatteringagainst the roof, and the dark cold seemed forbidding and dangerous, barely kept at bay by the walls and the roof, as if Yutilma and the wind were only giving us quarter.
I’ll leave you safe and warm now, but one day perhaps I won’t be so kind.
    Voices in the wind, in the rain. Spirits in the water. I felt spooked and uneasy. That wretched eerie howling...I couldn’t remember hearing its like before. I went to the window that overlooked the Querquelin River—translated to Mouse by the settlers, though I preferred to call it by its Indian name. It was too dark to see it, but I heard its rushing and churning, which seemed violent tonight, and as full of talk as the wind.
    Junius lit a candle. “You shouldn’t listen to those stories.”
    He sounded as he had in the beginning years of our marriage, when he’d taken over my father’s role as teacher, and I chafed a little at it now, until I looked over my shoulder and saw the concern in his eyes. “They’re only children’s tales. Haven’t you said that yourself?”
    He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “It wasn’t so long ago that hearing them made you sad.”
    Sad. Yes, I had been that. But I wasn’t anymore. I’d come to