The Shadow Catcher

He neither moved nor said a word but his gaze, steady and unwavering, bored into her, showing no emotion, as if he were a pane of glass passively returning her reflection, and she suddenly realized she must look a fright, like a woman from a madhouse, her linen shift open at the neck, her hair in disarray around her shoulders. She brought the scissors down to her side and took a small step backward, uncomfortable in his gaze and suddenly aware that not only he but all of them, the Indians, too, were staring at her. I’m Clara. I heard a noise, she wanted to say, but couldn’t, her heart suddenly too large in her chest for her to catch her breath. She took another tiny step, lifting her feet from the cold stone to warm them, and her eyes involuntarily left Edward’s and fell once more on the Indians. She parted her lips, once more trying to speak, and turned back to Edward, the unspoken thought, she knew, flashing in her eyes: They’re using my mother’s china.

You’re using my house, his challenged.

“I’m sorry,” she finally spoke, and turned and fled.

It was not the initial encounter with him that she had anticipated; and he was not the man she had expected — although, truth be told, she’d formed no image in her mind, nor any preconsidered judgment about Edward, save that he would most likely be a version of his brother, and that he had had the foresight, perhaps romantic, but most certainly optimistic, to build a room for his parents that was the most civilized, beautiful room in this largely uncivilized, not beautiful house. When she’d been unpacking her Icarus trunk, pinning her father’s paintings to the walls and rearranging the sparse furniture, she’d noticed details in the making of the room — a heart drawn in the mortar between beams, the initials “ESC” carved in wood — that had made her stop to consider just what kind of man this Edward was. She had thought he would be kind — easy to break into a smile, like Asahel. She had thought she would like him, without even trying. And he her — again, like Asahel. She had not considered that he might be cold or unfeeling or that he wouldn’t like her and what that would mean. What does it mean when a man doesn’t speak, when he holds himself bound in silence like those first Indians she’d seen selling badly made trinkets at the depot in Bismarck? She would seek him out in the morning, she had determined — seek him out and solicit a welcome or, at least, a new introduction. And though that helped her to sleep, she didn’t sleep well, knowing that he and the unnamed Indians were a small distance away, and near dawn it didn’t take more than a brief tap on her door to wake her: it was Eva. “Mother’s sick,” she told her through the door. Clara pulled on a shawl and followed her to where Ellen lay in the next room on her side in bed, her knees drawn up. “Pain,” she uttered. Her face was gray.

“Where?” Clara asked, and Ellen had pointed low on her back. Clara placed a hand on Ellen’s head, then felt along her jaw beneath her ears, prised her legs down and felt along her abdomen, rolled her over and pressed along her back, then accidentally bumped against Eva, standing next to her. “She doesn’t have a fever,” Clara whispered. “But where’s the nearest doctor if we need one?”

“Brisbane Island,” Eva told her.

“None over here?”

“Only for the animals.”

“Aunt Ellen, what kind of pain is it?” Clara asked. “Sharp or dull?”

“Sharp as the devil’s tooth, Amelia.”

“Did you urinate this morning?”

“Did I what—?”

Clara slid the chamber pot from beneath the bed, swirled the contents and offered Eva a whiff. Then she showed Eva how to administer a mustard pack to Ellen’s lower back and she made Ellen drink a beaker of water while she watched.

“She has to drink a beaker every hour,” Clara instructed Eva. “She’s passing a kidney stone.”

Eva squeezed Clara’s hand. “Thank you,” she said.

“Edward’s back,” Clara mentioned.

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“When he’s here he draws two pails of water in the morning from the pump out in the yard and leaves them for us on the porch.”

“And when he’s not here?”

“I have to draw the pails myself.”

“What else do you do?”

“I’m sorry—?”

“Around here.”

“I do all the cooking. And the laundry. And the cleaning.”

“But then how do you — how does the household — how do we make money?”

“Couple days a week, Asahel and Edward job out at the sawmill.”

“And that’s enough?”

“For what?”

“Enough to pay for everything we need?”

“Well, look around. Does it look like we need much?”

Later that morning, when she and Eva had been in the kitchen cleaning vegetables, Clara took the subject up again. “What about a school? Hercules needs schooling.”

“Christian school on Brisbane, I believe.”

“None over here?”

“Nothing that I’ve heard of.”

“But there must be children?”

“Plenty.”

“Well where do they all learn?”

“To read, you mean?”

“To read, to write—”

“I never thought about it. I don’t know.”

“Maybe we could teach them.”

“You and me?”