The House Near the River (6 page)

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 almost 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 Tark
ing
ton’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 20
th
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 wors
e
.” 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.

He finally looked into her face. “Sorry for telling you all this. You don’t deserve this kind of punishment.”

She understood. “It wasn’t just Charlie. It was me.”

He closed his eyes. “You were gone and I didn’t know why. You were the promise and the hope that I needed.”  He hesitated before going on. “But knowing you as I do,  I’m sure you had a good reason and I do believe you when you say you can’t remember.”