The House Near the River Page 4

  She was beginning to have a theory about the whole thing. She had been moved in time like a checker on a board. If some divine spirit was managing this or it was just the universe out of whack, she couldn’t guess, but though the Harpers remembered meeting her, in her world it hadn’t happened yet and perhaps never would.

  She held out her hands, palms up in a gesture of helplessness. “What do I do now, Clemmie?”

  The other figure sagged slightly. “Give it a few days. Stay here with us and see what comes back to mind. Tobe, the sheriff, will be back tomorrow to check on David. We can tell him he belongs to you.”

  “The sheriff?” The idea of a law official disturbed her for some reason.

  “Sure. We figured that little boy had strayed off from somewhere and his folks were frantic.”

  “They were. Mom never got over it and Dad . . .well, Dad just keeps hoping.” She stopped suddenly, realizing Clemmie was staring at her. “Just a flash,” she mumbled, “but it’s gone now. Don’t even know where it came from.”

  “Reckon your brain has been injured some way and it’s trying to heal. That’s a good sign.”

  “I suppose,” Angie agreed because she didn’t know what else to say.

  They heard the back door close and knew Matthew was finally coming in. He probably was hoping Angie had already gone to bed. Surprise, she thought sourly. I’m still here.

  He came in, bringing the scent of the outdoors with him. “Looks like it might be building for a storm,” he said, greeting the both of them with a nod.

  Clemmie looked concerned. “Didn’t hear anything on the radio.”

  “Sometimes they just pop up sudden like. Don’t worry I’ll stay up for a while and keep an eye on things.”

  Clemmie got to her feet. “I’ll just hurry the girls along so you can give David his path.” She looked to where her two older children were absorbed in their game. “You two go ahead and get into your pajamas. You can bathe in the morning before school.”

  Reluctantly, the boy protesting, they got to their feet and put the dominoes away and followed their mother to the back of the house.

  Except for David, she was alone with the man who said she’d promised to marry him.

  “He’s your brother. And his name is David. You remember that much?”

  She had to admit knowing it, otherwise they’d take him away from her. She nodded.

  “Doesn’t look much like you.”

  This was a sensitive point and she spoke before she thought. “I was adopted. My parents thought they couldn’t have children and then they had David.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That was a convenient memory to pop up.”

  Since there was no good reply, she kept her mouth shut.

  He left the room without trying to engage her in conversation any further. She was sure he thought she was lying. Well, she was, but only about not remembering.

  After David’s bath, Clemmie showed her to a bedroom next to her own on the main floor. The children’s bedrooms and the one occupied by her brother were all upstairs, she explained. This one was for guests.

  “We have quite a bit of kin come to stay,” she said. “Charlie’s folks and mine.”

  It was a plain, but comfortable room with a double bed covered with homemade quilts. David was already tucked in bed so Angie slipped back to the bathroom to put on the worn cotton nightgown Clemmie had handed her.

  She thought of the suitcase she’d left in her car and wondered what she was going to do for clothing, then reminded herself that she faced more significant problems.

  David demanded a story as they lay together in the darkness, but fell asleep before she’d more than got started. She heard him murmur ‘Mommy’ in his sleep and felt her heart ache. No matter what else had happened, she reminded herself, David was back with her and safe.

  She couldn’t understand what had happened to him, but was just thankful for the fact of his presence.

  In the next few days she fell into the routine of life at the Harpers’ home, wearing Clemmie’s cotton dresses that she learned were made from the cloth sacks the chicken feed came in, and her own running shoes, which looked strange to the others.

  After burning an item or two, she began to learn how to cook on the old oil stove, which they hoped to replace if the cotton crop in the fall brought in sufficient income.

  Matthew was busy days getting the crop planted. The older kids were finishing the last days of the school year and itching to be free for the summer. She helped Clemmie with feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, giving milk to the young calves, and always trailing after her were David and Shirley Kay.

  The sheriff, the big man named Tobe who obviously had more than a passing interest in Clemmie, dropped by and seemed to accept her loss-of-memory story, telling her she’d best take advantage of the Harpers’ hospitality along with her brother while he put out a search for a woman and a little boy who had gone missing.

  On the third evening after her arrival, Clemmie pulled out a stack of photo albums. Matthew and Danny had gone off somewhere and even Sharon had gone to bed. The evening was warm for May and they took glasses of ice tea along with the albums out to the front porch, sitting on a wooden bench that was close to the same spot where Angie remembered a swing. Light from the hallway behind them cast enough of a glow to see the pictures as Clemmie opened page after page, first showing those of her children and husband.

  Angie blinked back tears at the sight of that happy family, now broken by a soldier’s death at war. Clemmie didn’t say much more than to comment on a child’s age at the time of the photography. Most were snapshots of doubtful quality; Angie couldn’t help wishing the already fading black and whites showed facial features a little more clearly. As they went back to the older albums, more of the pictures were professional shots. Perhaps ownership of camera was rare back then.

  She was stopped short by a picture of a couple, probably taken on a wedding day. The man was seated, the woman stood at his side. Unsmiling, they stared straight ahead, he in a dark suit, she in a long gown with a prim neckline and long sleeves. Her skirt reached past her ankles.

  But what had caught her attention was the woman’s face. At first she thought it was Grandma when she was young. Then she shook her head at that impossibility. She knew quite well that Gran had been born in the late forties. She wasn’t quite seventy yet. This woman’s clothing indicated a time not long after the turn into the twentieth century.

  Still she looked a whole lot like Gran. “Who is this?” she asked her hostess, indicating the woman in the picture.

  “That’s my parents on their wedding day. “ She turned over the picture and looked at the back. “April 1903. They hadn’t been in the territory long when they met.”

  “Territory?” Angie asked, confused.

  “Oklahoma wasn’t a state until 1907.”

  Somehow Angie remembered Grandma, in her stories about the family, saying the family had settled here in 1902.

  “Mother came here with her family in 1902. She met Daddy at one of those dances they held back then at somebody’s house. You know with a fiddler and such.” She smiled at the memory. “Daddy died years ago, but Mother lived long enough to see all her grandchildren, even Shirley Kay.

  “She told me how they met. She was at a party and looked around to see this young cowboy smiling at her. She said Daddy swept her off her feet. He was good looking.” She focused more closely on the photo.

  “I like the way she looked too. There’s a sweetness in her face.” Or maybe she was seeing the generous spirit that was her Grandmother’s in the other woman’s face.

  The resemblance was too close to be coincidental. “Harper,” she said.

  “Of course that was her married name.”

  “Oh, of course. “ She felt a little foolish not to have realized that immediately. Women almos
t always changed their names back then.

  Clemmie went on. “They homesteaded this farm, living in a dugout at first. Then they built a two-room house where they raised their children. It wasn’t the late twenties that this house was built. Dad didn’t live long to enjoy it.”

  So the woman who looked so much like her own grandmother had lived her last years in this house. She frowned. “This farm has always been in the family?” She didn’t wait for Clemmie’s answer. Somehow it had changed hands in the future because her grandparents had been named Ward, as was her father and now she and her brother.

  But that didn’t explain the clear resemblance she was seeing. Another puzzle. These days her world was full of them.

  She looked at other pictures and thought she saw more familiar traits, the way this man’s hair grew, this woman’s mouth, but wasn’t sure but that she imagined the whole thing. When you started looking for something, you usually found it.

  Then she looked again at the wedding photo and her assurance strengthened. This woman had to be related her grandmother.

  After a while, the full moon casting enough light so they could see their way around, the two of them strolled around the farm yard. The chickens were locked in for the night, safe from predators; the cows drowsed in their pastures, the young calves in their pens. To Angie’s surprise she learned that the countryside was limited as to wildlife. There were coyotes, who seemed able to survive anywhere and anytime; rabbits, some quail, but no deer and, of course, the buffalo that had once roamed the plains were long gone.

  She distinctly remembered the warnings Amanda had given her about so many deer that she must be careful not to hit one, which would be a disaster for her and the deer.

  More people lived here now, she realized, than in the next century. In these days it didn’t take so much land to survive and Clemmie spoke of homesteads on every eighty acres. And families were larger.

  Much of America earned its living on the farms then . . .now. . .in the forties. The country and its lifestyle had utterly changed in the intervening decades and, with more habitant available for a variety of animals. In her time, they were staging a comeback.

  The night lay before them, cool and beautiful and silvered by moonlight. The air felt fresh and to Angie, accustomed to the noises and smells of the spreading city that was gulping up all available land, newly made. She felt a peace and rightness about things she couldn’t remembering experiencing in a long, long time.

  Back of the barn, she saw a little area fenced off, and thought at first it must be another animal pen. As they grew closer, she saw with a shiver that it enclosed a grave marker and a carefully tended grave.

  Just one grave. She didn’t know why it mattered, but it looked so isolated and solitary there in the moonlight.

  Clemmie opened the little gate and led the way inside. “Oftentimes, I come out to spend a little time with Luiza,” she said.

  “A family member is buried here? From the early days?”

  Clemmie shook her head. She pointed to the name inscribed on the weathered stone. She read the words aloud, “Luiza Barry.”

  “She was here before any of my kin came. The story they heard was that she was a young mother who died having her babe and had to be left here, buried on the trail while her family moved on.”

  “How horrible!”

  “Catches the imagination. Anyhow, over the years my family has kept her company, took care of her grave. Just wish that her people who had to move on and leave her behind in such a heartbreaking way had known she wouldn’t be left alone here with her poor babe.”

  “She and the baby were buried here together.”

  “I’ve always supposed so.”

  Not that she believed in ghosts, but Angie couldn’t help picturing that pioneer woman and her child wandering these acres alone, perhaps wondering why her family had abandoned her.

  She gave her body a slight shake as though throwing off such imaginings. Good thing she didn’t believe in ghosts. No doubt this woman had long ago gone on to her reward and, hopefully, met up with her family again in some heavenly hereafter.

  “Mother’s family came here in a covered wagon. They traveled through snow in the winter from Denton County, Texas. It was pretty miserable, I guess.”

  “Why didn’t they wait for good weather to travel?”

  “Wanted to be here in time to plant spring crops.”

  They chatted as they walked back to the house and once inside, Clemmie went back to bed. Tonight Angie’s body rebelled. She wasn’t used to going to sleep at 8:30 p.m. She liked to sit up and read or network on the computer or listen to music . . .well, she guessed she could read. She went over to look through the limited choice of selections on the shelf and ended up choosing Booth Tarkington’s Seventeen, a book she’d never heard of, but which sounded in the opening paragraphs as though it might be funny.

  She peeked in to make sure David was sleeping soundly, then went back into the dining room to find a comfortable seat in one of the big chairs and starting to read.

  She was chapters into the amusing adventures of young William Sylvanus Baxter when she heard the back door open and Danny and Matthew came in. They were muddy and tired-looking and Danny looked as though he’d been soaked.

  “Fell in the pond,” the boy told her with casual pride. “Accidentally.”

  “Yeah, accidentally,” his uncle agreed with considerable irony in his voice. “Fish weren’t biting. Didn’t catch a thing.”

  Angie hadn’t known where they were. She remembered vaguely that there had been a small pond somewhere on the property.

  Matthew sent his nephew to take a bath and go to bed, then settled into one of the big chairs to wait his turn. She guessed that though it had been an unsuccessful fishing trip, he and his nephew had enjoyed themselves. She could imagine how important that was to the fatherless nine-year-old.

  She became conscious that he was staring at her. She put her book down. “What?” she asked.

  Faint color tinged his face. “Sorry,” he said, “but I couldn’t help looking at you. I’m still afraid you’ll vanish any minute.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She could hardly apologize for something she hadn’t done. Instead she openly observed his face. He looked healthy enough, though tired and thin, but his eyes were troubled. She thought him bothered by more than a missing finance who had suddenly returned.

  “You fought in the war,” she said. “In Europe or the Pacific?”

  “In Europe,” the answer was clipped as though he couldn’t spare a word on the subject.

  She knew little of the war. It had seemed ancient history and the men who had served never seemed to want to talk about it. So much had happened since: Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan . . . It was ironic to think that back in the second decade of the 20th century people had actually thought they were fighting the war that would end warfare.

  She couldn’t imagine anyone being that optimistic anymore. No, even in World War II, the war in which this man had fought, the highest goal was to save civilization. She smiled bitterly at the thought. How public thought had declined. They fought over oil these days.

  She stumbled over the thought. Those days. The future where she belonged.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” he said, studying her with tenderness. “Were you remembering something?”

  She lay her book aside. “Not worth that much,” she returned lightly. “Anyway, I thought you believed I was only pretending to not remember.”

  “I’m not sure what I believe.”

  She looked into his face and found herself wanting to trust him. She needed so much to talk honestly with someone. “I have to pretend,” she blurted out the confession, “nobody would believe the truth.”

  They could hear the sound of water running through the pipes for Danny’s bath and she wondered
that everyone was not awakened by the noise. Outside a lone coyote made his call.

  He waited for what she would say next. “You were in the war?” she asked again.

  He nodded.

  “Was it awful?”

  His face contorted. “Sometimes it wasn’t so bad. I’ve never been so close to anyone as to those men I went through battle after battle with . . . I longed for home and now I’m missing for all those who didn’t come back. It doesn’t seem fair. Nothing so special about me that I should survive when they didn’t.”

  She thought she could understand and wanted him to know that. She needed someone to confide in and was willing to listen if he needed to talk.

  “They have words for that now. It’s called survivor’s remorse. Don’t let it ruin your life. Don’t you know that the best thing you can do for those who didn’t come home is to live your life fully?”

  “Knowing and doing are two different things.” Suddenly he straightened. “I don’t want you to think I feel sorry for myself. I can go for days being fairly normal and then suddenly I’m back there again, watching a tank burning or seeing a buddy shot in the face, the blood pouring . . .” He stopped, his voice harsh with pain.

  She saw that his hands were shaking and his whole body trembled. He tried to get to his feet and she jumped up to grab his hands, pulling him back down, then seated herself at his feet.

  “It’s what you learn about yourself that’s worse.” His face was chiseled stone, though his hands still shook. “I never knew what a coward I was.”

  “A coward? What do you mean? Did you run away or fail at some task?” her voice trailed off. She didn’t know how to deal with such deep anguish.

  He wouldn’t look at her. “No, I held up all right as long as I was there. It was when I came home that I was such a wreck. Ask Clemmie. She saw me at my worst, delusional, crying, reeling from nightmares, unable to even go around friends. I was so ashamed, I still am.” His crooked grin expressed no humor. “And I always thought I was so strong and could take anything. But when I came back and they told me Charlie was dead. . .you see, they kept it from me that he was killed in that other world, in the Pacific, and when I learned Clemmie had lost her husband, the children their dad . . .” he broke off, obviously unable to go on.