Bone River (25 page)

“What is there to make up for?”

“It was a mistake,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for it. I wish I hadn’t offered, especially as you seemed offended. And now you don’t trust me.”

“You...interest me, Daniel,” I said, struggling for the right words, wondering why I was telling him any of this. But I couldn’t seem to stop. “You’re so well-spoken. You work hard. And yet you...I feel as if...” I didn’t know how to say it. He seemed to understand this place as I did. He seemed oddly to belong here in a way Junius never had. The peace he’d said he felt in the rain, the way he’d taken to the boats and the people, as if he knew both things already. The way he’d felt spirits in the air, in that cave. “I...I wish I understood you better.”

“Ask me a question,” he said. “Any question.”

“I don’t think it works that way. I don’t even know the question to ask.”

“I’ll answer whatever you want.” His gaze caught mine with an intensity that made me step back into the makeshift table, hard enough that it shifted, rocking off the sawhorse, slanting,
and the mummy began to slide. Quickly I twisted around, reaching for her, but the table was in the way, upending, and I succeeded only in latching onto a piece of her dress as the planks clattered to the floor. The gown slipped off her shoulder, and I made a sound of dismay, and then Daniel was there, grabbing her, saving her, and as he did, something slid from the armhole of her dress, slithering over my hand, onto my wrist, and I jerked back again, surprised and startled, thinking it was a spider or a snake, something unexpected. But when I looked down at my wrist, I realized it wasn’t anything like that at all.

It was a necklace. A worn and snapped leather thong, and dangling from it was a tooth. A familiar tooth, an inch and a half long, curved. A fossil tooth, one that had belonged to a cave bear, I knew, because I’d seen it before—just this one—and I knew it was the same, because I knew, too, the blue and red patterned beads that bordered it, and the knot in the leather thong where it had broken at least once before. I had seen it a hundred times or more, the shine of lamplight on the tooth, the gleam of the beads where they’d hung around my father’s neck.

I
STARED AT
the necklace dangling from my hand, confused beyond measure. My father’s necklace. He’d worn it every day, and then one day it had just disappeared, and when I’d asked him about it, he’d said he’d lost it. Fallen near the riverbank, he’d said. He’d lost it, and yet it was here, fallen from the mummy’s dress, and I could not put the things together; I could not make them coalesce into any kind of sense.

Daniel said, “What’s that?”

I held it up to him. The tooth twisted with my movement, shining in the light from the lamp. “It fell from her dress. It’s my father’s necklace.”

“Your father’s necklace?” Daniel frowned. He set the mummy back into the trunk, and then turned and stepped up to me, reaching out his hand. I gave it to him, the tooth in his palm, letting the thong fall to pool around it. “Where did it come from?”

“I told you. It fell from her dress.”

“I mean, why was it there?”

“I don’t know. My father lost it. Years ago. He said it fell off somewhere near the river.”

Daniel fingered the tooth. “What kind of tooth is this?”

“A cave bear. Papa always wore it.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you said she was ancient. Why would this be in her dress?”

“I don’t know.”

“It must have been in the trunk when you put her inside.”

I glanced at it. Before Junius had brought it to the barn, it had been closed up in the storage room upstairs, where my father hadn’t set foot in twenty years; even before that, as he left it to me, and never had occasion to go inside. “I’m the one who cleaned it out. There were only blankets. And there’s no padding in the trunk for it to have fallen into. Only lacquer. I would have seen it.”

“I suppose it must have found its way into the basket then.”

“The lid was closed tight. We had to pry it open.”

“Then through the weave.”

“It was too tightly woven. It was meant to be waterproof.”

“What other explanation is there?” He handed me back the necklace.

I let it dangle from my fingers, the tooth twisting back and forth. I felt stupid and slow. “I don’t know,” I said. “Unless...”

“Unless
what
?”

“Unless he found her himself, once before.”

Daniel frowned. “But that would mean he reburied her.”

I met his gaze. “Or someone did.”

“Who? Why would anyone do that? You said she was an important find. You said she was ancient. Why would he want to hide her away again?”

I looked again at the tooth, dangling from my fingers, spinning slowly in the lamplight. “I don’t know. Unless...perhaps she’s not as important as we think.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I’m not the ethnologist my father was, Daniel. Perhaps I’m wrong about her.”

“And Junius?”

I shrugged. “Perhaps he’s wrong as well.”

Daniel’s gaze sharpened. “Even I can see that’s ridiculous, Lea. You and my father both believe she’s special. Surely there have been new theories since your father died. Why would he have known more than either of you?”

“I don’t know. But what other reason could there have been for him to rebury her?”

“Maybe your Indian’s superstitions got to him.”

I laughed shortly. “Not Papa. He thought their superstitions nonsense.” I coiled the necklace in my hand, feeling my father in it, remembering how it had looked around his neck, how he played with the tooth sometimes when he was concentrating hard, twirling it in his fingers, rubbing it like a talisman. It had been the first fossil he’d found, he’d told me. Found in a cave in an Ohio wood, along with more recent arrowheads and bones from common black bears all mixed together, an Indian butchering cave, but the cave bear skeleton had been a good find. He’d had the tooth strung for good luck, and he’d not taken it off until he’d lost it. I’d been...fourteen then, I thought I remembered. Or perhaps earlier. Perhaps thirteen. What I did remember was that he had been pained by its absence. His hand went often to his throat as if he were searching for it to rub, a habit that had lasted until he died.

I glanced up at Daniel, who was watching me carefully. “I don’t know why he would have done it. I don’t know why he would have reburied her.”

“You don’t know that he did,” Daniel said reasonably. “It’s useless to speculate. You can’t know, not unless he told someone. Or wrote it down.”

I thought of the row of leather-bound journals upstairs. “He kept a record of everything. Everything he found. In his journals.”

“Those books upstairs? There must be fifty of them.”

“I don’t need to go through all of them. I only need the years before he died. Just when the necklace disappeared. Three years. Four at the most.”

“It might be easier to ask Lord Tom.”

“Tom didn’t know anything about the mummy,” I said, remembering the day I’d found her, his surprise and dismay and fear. “He was there the day we pulled her out. He would have said if Papa had dug her up before. He told me to rebury her.”

“Then perhaps he’d said the same thing to your father. Everyone’s claiming there’s something otherworldly about her. Perhaps he convinced your father that she was a danger.”

“He didn’t know she was there. I would swear to it.” I knotted my father’s necklace and put it on, closing the lid of the trunk, locking the mummy away. “I’m going to find out.”

We hurried across the field and through the mist and into the house. I didn’t pause to take off my coat or boots or hat, but made for the stairs and my father’s old room.

Daniel came up behind me. “You’re certain there’s something to be found here?”

I moved quickly to the bookshelves. “We won’t know until we look, will we?”

I reached up to take one down—I had never touched these, not since he’d died nor before—and the shelf was too high; I could not quite reach. Daniel was there in a moment, reaching from behind me, pressing close enough that I caught my breath at his proximity, and I felt him start too, and then he stilled, hesitating before he grabbed three of the thin volumes and pulled them down. He stepped back almost immediately and handed me the books.

“Which ones?” he asked, eyeing the shelves.

“He went through two or three a year.” I flipped open the covers of the ones Daniel had given me, glancing at the dates scrawled in my father’s handwriting. My throat swelled at the
sight of it. So familiar. I had not been able to bear looking through these after he’d died, and then I had to admit I’d forgotten them, caught up in my new life, my own science, my love affair with the man Papa had chosen for me.

For a moment I was lost in memories, and then I recalled myself, focusing on the date—too early, both that one and the other two. I handed them back to Daniel and gestured to the shelf. “We need later than this. I don’t know if they’re in order, but I suspect so. We’ll need some from the end.”

I backed away from the shelf before he could step forward again, out of his way, and obediently he put those back and took down two others. When he gave them to me, I opened the covers. One four years before Papa had died, one three. I felt a surge of excitement.

“We’ll start with these,” I said, handing one to Daniel. I sat down on the bed, scooting back to lean against the wall, opening the first journal, already falling into my father’s words.

January 5, 1851—

Traded today: paper of buttons for two wooden spoons, one alder, carved with seal, the second cedar and deeper bowled, perhaps a small ladle (?) and otter emblem.

One blanket for: baskets, 4; woven hat, 2 new; one emblem painted longhouse door...

It went on like that, lists of things he’d traded, things he’d collected, some of which I remembered, most of which I did not, because he’d sent them off to museums or sold them to other collectors. I’d gone through five pages of it before I realized that Daniel was on the bed beside me, propped against the footboard, the other journal open on his drawn-up knees. He glanced up as if he felt me looking at him and gave me a small smile. “Fascinating reading. I’m like to fall asleep.”

“It’s mostly a record of collecting.”

“So I see.”

“But he wrote in them every night. I know he wrote about his theories. And certainly if he had found her—”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that he would have written about her. If he found her. It’s only that we may waste two years of our lives only to discover he didn’t.”

“I tell you the necklace couldn’t have fallen into that basket by accident. It was sealed tight. We had to break the mud to get it open.”

“I believe you.” He glanced down at the open journal, reading quickly, laughing a little. “Listen to this: he quotes Morton here: ‘It makes little difference whether the inferiority of the Negro is natural or acquired; for if they ever possessed equal intelligence...they have lost it; and if they never had it, they had nothing to lose.’”

I nodded. “Yes, Papa quoted him often.”

“He goes on to say, ‘The more acquainted I am with the Shoalwater, the more I agree with Morton’s assessment that the Indian is inferior to
all
races. After hundreds of cranial measurements and phrenological studies, I feel confident in asserting that they are indeed deficient in all areas of arts and sciences, and I must conclude the brain itself so lacking that any attempt at civilization must go awry. But as to whether the experiment itself is so, it remains too early to predict.’” Daniel looked up. “The experiment? What experiment is he talking about?”

I frowned. “When was that written?”

A glance down again. “June 16, 1851.”

I would have been thirteen, and working with Papa almost daily, and yet this was the first I’d heard of any experiment. “You’re certain he said
experiment
?”

Daniel nodded.

“I don’t know anything about an experiment,” I said.

“Perhaps he didn’t share it with you.”

“I was his assistant and his student. He discussed everything with me—who else was there?” I said. “And this would be before he met Junius. I knew everything that had to do with Papa’s work.”

Daniel raised a brow. “He mentions it again here, three days later: ‘a lamentable setback. But I cannot let emotion get the best of me. I must proceed with the experiment as mapped. One cannot stay in this place without experiencing the occasional pollution—too many damn native influences! Impossible to isolate. But I refuse to admit to failure.’”

“It must be something to do with the Indians,” I puzzled. “Perhaps it was something he thought indelicate—”

“Indelicate? How so?”

“He was...reticent...about telling me some things. He felt the Indians were immoral, and he disliked speaking to me about it. He...he didn’t like that I disagreed with him. He thought my ideas unladylike.”

Daniel’s gaze went bright with interest. “Unladylike?”

“I didn’t think—I
don’t
think—the Indians particularly immoral. Just different. For example, they see nothing wrong in having multiple wives.”