Heartbroke Bay (28 page)
Authors: Lynn D'urso
Later, in the grass, exhausted and bruised by the strength of their cravings, she says, “I have a husband.”
Michael raises himself to one elbow, unsure whether she speaks in threat or collusion, and gazes at her before replying. “And that split lip he gave you? Is it a good husband who does that to his wife?”
She does not argue—Michael refuses to believe it was an accident, but lies quietly as he curls himself around her. The smell of crushed heather rising from beneath her mingles with his scent against her back.
Later that afternoon Hannah sits with her back to the door, sewing kit open on the table before her, staring without seeing at the crude shelves nailed to the cabin walls and their meager burden of pans and utensils. As she stares, her hands toy with a long piece of thread, wrapping and unwrapping it tightly around one finger. Outside, the buzzing call of a thrush signals the onset of evening. The light of the lantern is soft and orange against the canvas roof.
The metallic clanking of dropped shovels signals the return of the miners, and Hannah rises to her feet as she listens to the sound of boots being knocked against stones to remove mud from the tread. She takes up a spoon and begins to stir a pot that does not need stirring.
Hans is the first to enter, followed by Dutch, who bears a load of firewood in his arms. From outside comes the sound of an ax, as Harky begins a methodical attack on a bolt of wood. The knees of her husband’s pants are worn through from kneeling all day in the gold-bearing gravel, and he is whistling. She does not look up as a canvas poke lands on the table with a solid thump. She stirs the kettle slowly, round and round, steam rising into her eyes.
“Hannah! Leave the soup a moment and come see what your husband has brought you!” The cheer in Hans’s voice brings panic rising into her throat, and it requires an effort of will to replace the pot lid and lay down the spoon before turning to see what he means.
A litter of gold nuggets washes across the plank table, spilling among her bobbins and needles. An ear-to-ear grin splits Hans’s unshaven face. “It’s still coming. Every shovel turns up a nugget! We’re really on it now.” Hans claps his hands together, as Harky enters the cabin with more firewood and kneels to dump it beside the stove. “Ain’t that right, Harky? Every beautiful shovelful’s a payday now, ain’t it?”
Harky favors Hannah with a small, pleased smile and nods. “Pretty good, all right. Michael still out huntin’?”
At the mention of Michael’s name Hannah feels a twist under her ribs and turns her back to the men. She retrieves the soup spoon and carefully wipes it clean on her apron before replying. “I haven’t seen him. I suppose so. Yes, he is.”
Hans sweeps the scatter of nuggets into a heap, flicking aside needles and buttons before transferring the booty back into its poke. “Well, we’ve done a hungry day’s work here, and that soup smells mighty good. I guess he’ll forgive us if we go on and eat without him. A man’s liable to forgive just about anything when he comes home to something like this.” He bounces the sack in his hand, measuring its weight and grinning.
The bowls are spaced four around the table, spoons placed alongside. As befits the society of the wealthy, Hans and Dutch sit primly, squares of material cut from an old shirt stuffed into their collars for napkins. Harky perches, hands at his side, shifting awkwardly as he waits for Hannah to take her place. She fiddles, first with the pot, then by feeding more wood to the fire.
Hans grows impatient with her dallying. The thought of the gold piled up in his cupboard makes him feel expansive. “What is keeping you, Hannah? Come to the table.”
She pokes at the fire, aligning the new kindling with the flames. “Hans.”
“What?”
The stove door squeaks as she closes it. Her answer is slow to come.
“Please come outside with me.”
“Come outside with you?” Hans looks puzzled, then piqued. “What for?”
Hannah’s hand flexes at her side, gripping and ungripping at nothing. She holds it against her thigh to still it, without answering.
At that moment the door rattles open. Severts steps inside, the twin barrels of the shotgun gleaming blue in the dim light. In his off hand, a brace of mallard ducks carried upside down by the feet. The warm, softly feathered bodies swing loosely in his grip as he turns to push the door closed with the gun. Holding the birds aloft, he grins. “Tomorrow’s dinner, Mrs. Nelson. Two birds with one shot.”
Dutch, still playing the laird, yelps, “Bravo, me boy, bravo!” applauding his admiration. “Good shootin’. How’d you do it?”
Michael grins at Hannah, who stands stiffly, staring at the birds. A single drop of blood swelling from the bill of the nearest threatens to fall. The duck’s eyes are clenched, and one wing hangs askew. Without taking his eyes from her face, Severts answers.
“Well, you just have to wait. Bide your shot until everything lines up just so. And when the birds are just right . . .” Severts winks at Hannah and clicks his tongue. “Pull the trigger.”
Hans, done with waiting, speaks up. “Well, lay them aside and let’s set-to on this dinner.” He points at Michael’s place and drives a spoon into his bowl. “What was it you wanted, Hannah?”
When Hannah replies, “Nothing, Hans, never mind,” a small smile flits across Michael’s mouth. He smiles again as he sits at the table and raises a spoon to his lips.
Through the days that follow, he comes for her again and again as she picks berries or washes clothes. Dark circles of guilt grow under her eyes from lying all night with her back to her husband, barred from sleep by the untenable impulse to confess. When she tries to speak of her dilemma to Michael, he takes her by the waist, saying, “It’s too late to worry about that, girl. It’s simply too late.” Drawing her to him, he whispers feverishly, “I have to have you. And I will.” Neither knows if confession or continuation is her meaning as her reply—“No good can come of it”—is smothered by his lips.
Soon the last of her reserve melts, leaving her awash in a great spasm of pleasure where muscles contract, cry out, and cry out again. A saying of her father’s—that a man may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb—becomes a taunting dirge that recycles itself over and over again to the rhythmic breathing of the man who sleeps, exhausted from his earthworks, by her side.
Michael is at times tender and gentle, educating her to the many uses of tongues and fingers; at others he growls words she cannot make out over her own cries.
And afterward there are tears, of both heart swell and guilt; it is all so large and so impossible, so rich and so fraught, that while the men see to their mining and hunting, she can only sit quietly, or move mindlessly about the cabin, a swimmer in a maelstrom of things she fears to name.
More gold rolls in every day. Hans measures a weighty fistful of nuggets into a canvas sack every night, and the box of sacks becomes heavier and heavier. Everyone laughs when Hannah tries to lift the cumbersome crate and fails.
As she laughs with the men, she is appalled at how easily she has entered into deception, how the blaze between Michael and herself can be damped in the presence of others until it fails to burn through the charade of marital devotion—and how eager she is to feed the fire every day.
Each morning Michael gathers the gun and a pack, bids the company good day, and walks into the forest. The deceit is completed after the miners gather their own equipment and leave for the gold; following with a bucket or a pan, Hannah stops along the way at a likely patch of berries, then doubles back into a mossy fen.
It is as if she had never known color and suddenly walked into a luminous spectrum; his hands seem to know what her body is thinking, and as they crush the flowers with their bodies, feathery seeds spill into the air from their writhings. Squirrels chatter, and fat, salacious marmots urge them on with ribald shrieks. They sneak away so often, her naked body grows brown as a nut, and she fears Hans will notice and wonder at the coloring of her breasts and back, or the numerous tiny scratches and rubbings left by tree bark and stones. But in the oblivion of his riches, he remains blind to all but the luster of gold.
They grow daring, watching each other’s eyes around the glowing fire at night, her awakened body offering a silent invitation in its postures and pauses. She knows from the persistence of Michael’s gaze that she is desirable, and she preens for him, standing chin up and erect, brushing her hair back with slender fingers.
In her secret happiness, she believes Dutch when he spins another wild tale of Hawaii, where the women are beautiful and wear hibiscus blossoms and frangipani in their hair. “Left side means a lady’s married. Right side’s for girls that haven’t landed a husband yet.” On a whim, she places a small sprig of lavender flowers behind her right ear. Michael’s eyes dance, and he can barely control a laugh as Dutch corrects her. Enrapt, they miss the evaporation of Hans’s smile.
The next morning over breakfast, Hans tells an involved, seemingly pointless story of harvesting corn as a boy for neighbors in Blue Lake, Minnesota. Peter and “Black Mary” Hansen, as Hans tells it, had everything his own family lacked: Acres of black soil, fat dairy herds, a warm house, and good water. “And money,” snorts Hans. “Enough to be called
mister
at the bank!”
mister
at the bank!”
“But why’d they call her ‘Black Mary’?” asked Dutch. “Was she Negro?”
Hans scoffed. “Nah. Everybody called her that after old man Hansen tarred her.”
Harky paused in the middle of spooning pulped and strained berries onto his bannock bread. “Tarred her?”
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