LaRose(60)

Wolfred fixed food for the children in a manic rush and saddled his horse.

Mackinnon’s head appeared at dawn, across the great river, a speck, tumping gently in place all day, preparing. Every sunrise, day after day, she woke to see that the head was waiting, greedy, steam boiling around it in a cloud. One afternoon, the head lurched into the water. Sometimes it disappeared for days. But always, it surfaced again. The tattered ears, like oars, pulled Mackinnon laboriously against treacherous currents that surged in eddies and rapids. When the river upended or sucked the head down a pool, she took heart. But it always spun back. Her eyes sharpened and she saw clearly over the distances.

The head bobbed in circles, the nose snuffling and twitching until it stopped, sensing her. If she fell asleep, the head moved closer. So she tried to stay awake. Inevitably, sleep took her. Every time she woke, the head was closer still. Soon she could see that over the years it had deteriorated; one eye was white and blinded, fire had scarred and puckered the skin, blacked the pocked nose. Hair bristled in the paddle ears and vacuum nostrils. As night came on the hairs burned like straw. Gentian light flashed in the waves. She caught its scent—not of decay but strong brine. Mackinnon had pickled his head long ago in salts and alcohol, and could not be killed.

The nurse came and bound LaRose in sheets, covered her with heavy blankets warmed with bricks, strapped her safely in to sleep. Weak as water, strong as dirt. It was taking so long to die that she had become strengthened by the effort. She was ready. The head climbed, grunting its way up the rock cliff. She couldn’t flee the bed, but she used her mother’s teaching. She thrashed out of her body, unsticking her spirit. Mackinnon’s head worried at the stones with its teeth, lashing back and forth. Gurgling with eagerness, it gnashed itself over the brim of the ledge, and was upon her. Too late. She broke out of her body and spun up through the rushing air, just as Mackinnon sank his pig tusks into her heart.

Wolfred arrived later that day. All the way there, he had felt her arms, and the weight of her behind him in the saddle. He had talked to her, told her to stay in her body. But the scent of bergamot and her warm breath between his shoulders persisted—these things made him despair. There was a tiny waiting room. He was brought there to learn the news, which was told to him by a plump, florid nurse. Indeed, his wife was sadly departed. The nurse did not have time for details. She patted his hand, and left him to bear the news in private.

Wolfred had prepared his mind for this by picturing the actions he would take. He would wrap her body tightly, carry her to his big horse. He would ride home with the reins in one hand, her on the saddle before him. Her head would rest on his chest and her hair would absorb the tears that melted down his throat. He couldn’t get Mackinnon’s head out of his thoughts. But she would at last be safe now, beyond reach. Her children would never have to endure what she had suffered. He would care for them with his life. In his thoughts, he told this to her, his words warm in the air, searching out her spirit.

He saw himself turning down the road home. He would slow to a hopeless walk. He dreaded telling their children, although they might know for she would have visited them, he thought, in their dreams. He would dismount, he decided, turn his wife across the saddle, lay her to rest upon the earth.

Then he would bring the children to address her. When he’d left, it had rained the night before and the ground was still wet in places. He closed his eyes, saw himself mixing a little mud up with his fingers. He would touch her face, smear the mud across her cheeks, down her nose, across her forehead, the blunt tip of her chin. If he’d owned a bronze shield, he’d have thrust that into the earth at the head of her grave. After she was buried, he would wander the woods, drinking from the hives of wild bees the bitter honey that had driven Xenophon’s soldiers insane.

LaRose, he said out loud in the stuffy waiting room.

Where was that nurse?

He didn’t want his beloved to be hurt in the next life, by men, the way she had been in this life. Later, he would burn all her things to send them with her.

Walk to the edge and wait for me, he said into the air. Wear your hat with the feather.

Where was that nurse?

Wolfred came clomping down the road, numb. His children ran to him. They had been keeping watch. Seeing their ever rational father disoriented confused them. They immediately became needy, loud, insistent. Wolfred rolled off the horse and put his hand across his face. They did not ask if their mother lived, they asked where she was. It took until he was inside the cabin, seated in a chair by the stove, until the fire was built up, the horse brushed down. It took a long time for him to say any word. His silence fueled their anxiety to such a pitch that they went still. Into that stillness, at last, his words struck.

Your mother has died. She is buried. Buried far away.

He held them, petted them, allowed them to weep against his vest, his arms, until they were exhausted and crept in misery into their bed. Only the youngest, LaRose, her mother’s namesake, stayed curled near him. At one point, staring into the coals, her father shook himself. LaRose heard his whisper-rasp.

Stolen. Your mother was stolen.



UNTIL THE SECOND LaRose was grown, she sometimes imagined that her mother, although stolen, perhaps by God, might actually be living somewhere. She knew it wasn’t true, of course, but the thought nagged at her. When at last she questioned her father about it, he became upset and got the whiskey bottle down off the top shelf. Wolfred only drank a spot from time to time. He never became a drunk, so his drinking of the whiskey only meant he was preparing to speak of something difficult.