The Shadow Catcher

Clara rolled her eyes as if she were conspiring with Eva, but she had determined in that moment that she would find a way to claim the tub’s first bath, one way or another. Because the pleasure was intended to be hers. And then, as if fortune, or what Ellen would have deemed to be God, were smiling on her, her opportunity arrived a few weeks later in the form of the Baptist Missionaries’ annual week-long summer retreat. Ellen was going, of course, as was Eva; and to her surprise, Hercules had asked to go as well, because their farrier was a member of the sect and had offered Hercules instruction in the craft if he were to join them for the week. Please, Hercules had wheedled in his most charming way.

“They want your soul,” she tried to scare him.

“Oh I know that,” he told her, smiling. “It’s learning a trade,” he bartered, playing on her greater fear that both of them might never break the bonds of living off charity.

“All right,” she acquiesced. When Hercules heard hoofbeats he thought of horses. She thought of unicorns or zebras, and she was secretly thinking of the baths that she could have, when everyone was gone.

Asahel would drive them in the buckboard, and no one knew where Edward was nor when he would return, and as the day of their departure dawned Clara was kept awake by the realization that she’d be alone on the compound for the first time and, strangely, this awareness left her feeling more excited than alarmed. She’d come to know the two Indians by their names, Mopoc and Modoc, and she had come to deal with them through sign language and through pictures that she drew, whenever the two of them came looking for work when Edward was away. They were harmless, she had learned, dimwitted and a bit slow to grasp her well-designed instructions, but they were, in the end, useful to the household. Once a week, usually on Sundays because they knew the other women, with whom they didn’t want to deal, would be away at their Sunday services, the Indians would wait by the barn for Clara to come to tell them what she wanted for the week. Squirrel? No squirrel. She hated cooking squirrel — they were tedious to clean, there was no meat and what meat there was was gamey. Yet every week they brought her squirrels. No rabbits, she would tell them and draw a picture of a rabbit, draw a strong black line through it to mean no rabbits yet week after week they brought her rabbit carcasses on poles until she understood that the line that she’d been drawing through her rabbit picture translated kill to the two Indians. So she’d learned to draw, then shake her head. Draw — show the picture — shake her head. And they would shake their heads. And still they brought her squirrels and rabbits when what she wanted them to hunt was boar, wild turkey or a deer, something she could salt and cure for more than just one meal. The butcher wagon came with its salt beef, dried pork and bacon twice a month, but she would rather give the household money to the Indians who brought her better quality and were, to be honest, cheaper. She was lying in the dark on the bed Edward had bought for his parents, thinking about what kind of picture she could draw to make Mopoc and Modoc understand she did not need the usual ration of meat this week because the others would be going away, when, in the room next to her own, she heard Eva stirring, heard her through the thin wall using the chamber pot, and Clara was on her feet, the anticipation of this day of independence culminating in the sudden thrill that it was here. She dressed silently and quickly, listening first to Eva’s movements then to the movements of Ellen — the hiss of her urination — and then, in her bare feet, carrying her stockings and her shoes, she tiptoed through the kitchen. Light was barely rising in the east, the birds were stirring in the realm of thinning shadows and the air was sweet with pine and the clean brine of Puget Sound as she sat down on a porch step to pull on her stockings, then stopped, noticing the two pails sitting there, filled with fresh pumped water. Edward, she understood. She stepped into her shoes without lacing them and stood. And there he was, energetic shadow, coming round the corner of the house, bending down to pick up something from the yard.

Edward, she said aloud, bringing him upright, holding something in his hand. He took one step forward, stopped, then took another as if to bring her into sharper focus. She tried to see his eyes, if he was smiling, but his face was hidden by his hat. How’s the roof? he asked.

“The roof,” she repeated, and he pointed, upward, so she looked up. “Any leaks?” he asked.

Dumbly, she shook her head.

“I’m finding shingles in the yard,” he said and held out a cedar shake to testify. “Big wind last week.”

She nodded, in agreement.