The River Widow(6)
She should’ve believed the cards.
Chapter Three
Icy spears of torture, surges of pounding pulsations, coming one after the other, increased, then grasped on to Adah as iron fangs that released venom into her body and invaded every cell. Waves of blood-stilling cold rocked her, too, and yet she could not move. She could not even open her eyes. The only movement was her own breathing, and she could not control that, either. Her body inhaled and exhaled on some primal level, directed by the most basal area of the brain. It was all out of her hands now.
No sense of how much time had passed; a new day came. The dawn began to break out of blackness into purple and pink, the pastel light before sunrise bled into the sky, and she observed its many shades, so many degrees of darkness and brightness. She lifted herself up from her makeshift bed and peered down at her body. Her shoes and socks and coat were gone; her legs and arms were scraped, scratched, and bloodied; and her head felt full of sharp spikes. Her torn and ragged dress still clung to her body, and all of her was coated with hay. She was too cold to shiver now.
Beyond the open barn door, the rain had stopped, and the air wafting in was warmer.
After cranking herself up to a stand and shaking off the stiffness, she brushed away the hay. The flood hadn’t dissipated. Water could still be seen in the distance but getting nearer. She searched out any objects she could find—an empty crate, blocks of wood, a fragment of rope—and fashioned them to make something of a way up, then climbed and clawed to the barn roof while the water crept closer.
The river was still at war with the land. Above the water, mists formed and reformed like the ghostly remains of the tribal hunters that had once roamed here. Nothing but flooded plain and the tops of trees, their branches glazed with shimmering ice. No homes or buildings in sight. It was as though the rest of the world did not exist or had forgotten this place.
Surely she would die before help could arrive. Surely this pain and thirst would kill her.
Did she want help? She deserved to die; she had killed her husband, and even worse, she had tried to cover it up. How could she live with that?
With a pulsating head, she recalled the early days with Lester. He had treated her like a free bird he’d captured and tamed for his pleasure. During the first year, a few times he’d taken her to the Arcade Theater, hosted by uniformed and brass-buttoned ushers, and the White Oak Diner, with its delicious five-cent hamburgers. Thinking of Lester in those early days—his sparkling eyes, the smooth glide of his movements, his smile as he dug into supper—nearly collapsed her. She’d appreciated and grown to love the farm—its orderly rows of burley tobacco, each plant a large green flower; the smoky tang that drifted in the air during firings; the warmth from a mule’s flank when she lay her hand against it. These things had pleased Les, and she’d instinctively taken to cooking and housework as if a mother had taught her from an early age.
Most of her life had been spent in bustling cities, surrounded by others, but the day after her marriage, she woke to an almost-silent morning, looked beyond the window, and gazed at a world run not by people but by nature. In between the lovely silences, there was the snapping of sheets drying on the line, the hammerings of something Les was repairing, the rumbling of the river, and the shrieking of hawks.
There was a sense of comfort as she walked the land entrusted to her as Lester’s wife. The shade of old trees, the smell of turned earth, and the unmistakable spirits of other lives before theirs floated on the pollen-rich air. She and Lester shared that same sense; they tasted it daily and allowed its weight to fall upon their shoulders. This, they had in common.
For a time as a couple, they had worked.
And yet there were ominous signs. One day a bird with a broken wing foundered in the grassy area before the house, and Les had taunted the bird, laughing at its helpless plight. It sickened Adah. As the Depression deepened, they couldn’t afford to make improvements to the house, which was showing its age. Les became easily frustrated and irritated, drank more and more, and the first few shoves became harsher and more hurtful. Then came slaps and pushes to the floor, and finally his fist.
She squeezed her eyes shut and covered them with her elbow, remembering: Once, in a panic, she’d tried to get away from him on foot, but Les had tracked her like a bloodhound. He’d plodded over the land that spread downriver, his head low, his expression grim, and moved closer, slowly but surely, in her direction. He had hunted her, then forced her back. He would never have let her go.
She dared not cross her husband, but it had never been her nature to cower. It required extreme acts of will to keep her mouth shut and move about lifelessly while Lester worked himself first into a state of supreme self-pity and then rage. After making her own way in the world for so long, she had no intention of letting someone master her.
And yet that was exactly what had happened.
Little Daisy had borne witness to it all.
In December, Les had been rechinking the old log curing barn, furious that he hadn’t been able to afford a new one made of wood planking and tar paper. Adah had been disgusted. They weren’t going hungry; tobacco growers in general were holding their own better than others, as people found relaxation in smoking and chewing. But she said nothing. Anything she mentioned that was contrary to his feelings was met with fury.
When a beam of sunlight poked through a slip in the clouds, she opened her eyes. Her eyes stung and her throat constricted. She sat on the slant roof, cranked her knees into her chest, and buried her head between them. At that moment, an icy wind swept in and captured her guilty soul, dumping it in a place of shame so intense that it paralyzed her, and she could not move, could barely breathe. Hell was not a place of fire; it didn’t burn. Hell was the opposite: arctic air so brutal it could break every bone. Numbness everywhere, no longer human, only a husk of a being. She was already dead.