Marianne Wiggins - The Shadow Catcher

It wasn’t easy. The tub was light to lift but ridiculously commodious, almost knocking her and it headlong down the steps as she tried to reckon with it. Finally she slid a blanket under it and dragged it to a spot not too far from the kitchen and the stove where she would have to heat the water, a place right near the house beneath the laundry lines between two trees where she draped bedsheets in a square to hide herself. With two kettles on the boil at once, she was determined to fill it to the brim, to have a soak not just a rinse or what was called a skinny-dip, and while the kettles boiled she went searching through her mother’s things inside the Icarus trunk for the precious rectangle of authentic French thrice-milled lavender soap. Can there ever be too much of a good thing? she wondered, after so many days of nothing good at all? She draped a clean night shift over one of the laundry lines then closed the bedsheets-as-curtains all around the copper tub, steaming with hot water, and undressed. She tied up her hair, unwrapped the soap, lifted one leg over the lip, and then the other, and slipped in. The lowering, she understood, was ceremonial. Then, after lowering, there was extension, the moment when she unfurled her legs and the hot water lapped her throat and her whole body floated. Clara put her head back on the high curve of the tub and closed her eyes and began to lather herself in suspended sightlessness. She lathered her legs, her stomach and her breasts, her arms, her face and then she submerged herself entirely in the water and when she surfaced she opened her eyes and saw Edward high above her, floating so to speak, standing in bright light, staring at her from the roof. No more than thirty feet away, he was standing on the roof of the house with a hammer in his hand, staring down on her between the sheets protecting her from view on all sides except from above and for a brief moment their eyes locked, Clara’s gaze holding his own blue, and then, without a thought, she stood so he would see her, naked, dripping wet.

A rifle shot rang out just then from the woods and before Clara could understand what was happening, Edward turned toward the noise of the rifle shot, slipped, and somersaulted off the roof. She heard his body land and then there was a moment of terrible silence before she pulled her shift over her wet body and ran to him.

He lay with his torso twisted, his arms above his head, legs bent away from his hips. Kneeling next to him she could see his chest rise only slightly with a slow breath. She untied the bandana at his neck and found the pulse, the same throbbing she had touched with her lips, then she looked for bleeding and found none. His eyes were closed and when she lifted his eyelid his blue focus was rolled back in his skull. Edward , she said. She tapped his cheek and repeated his name then got to her feet and ran to the alarm on the porch, a triangle-shaped piece of hollow iron that she hit over and over again with an iron pipe, the clamor sending birds in a riot from the trees. She rang ’til she counted sixty, then she ran back to Edward. Asahel had once said the alarm could be heard all the way to the sawmill and she planned to ring it every ten minutes until someone came because from the look of his limbs she feared he had broken some bones and she was wary of moving him on her own. She cradled one of his hands and gently unfurled each finger, feeling for breaks. Whole paragraphs of written instructions for accident victims from her nursing textbooks ran through her thoughts and she determined the first order of business was to restore his consciousness, if she could, so he could respond to his injuries, respond to the pain in his body and tell her where it was. She knew she still had sal ammoniac in her traveling kit and as she stood up to go get it, she saw Mopoc and Modoc on a tear from the woods. They were at Edward’s side in a matter of seconds. He fell from the roof, she began to explain. “I need to bring him around, so stay with him while I go get—” They had dropped to their knees beside Edward’s body and Mopoc, or Modoc, held his head while the other one extracted a small drawstring bag from his belt and drew out a wad of vegetable matter, a tightly-rolled leaf. Clara sank to her knees beside him to watch as he carefully unrolled the leaf and then instantly all three of them recoiled from a stench. Clara leaned in to look at the source, her hand clapped over her mouth, vision glazed with salt tears. The cause of the caustic aroma appeared to be some sort of small organ, rotting and fetid, a fish heart, perhaps, or a liver, full of pus and disgusting, but all it took was two passes of it beneath Edward’s nose and his eyes opened and he sprang awake. Edward, can you speak? Clara asked him. He stared straight ahead. “Edward, you’ve had a fall. You may be injured. I need you to lie very still. Do you understand me?”

Still he stared, didn’t speak.

“If you can speak, I need you to tell me what year it is.”

A shadow passed through his eyes as if he had reason to fear or distrust her and she could feel both of the Indians searching her face for a reason. What year is it, Edward? she asked again, fully recalling Paragraph Two of her textbook: ASCERTAINING MENTAL FUNCTION AFTER REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS.

“1889,” Edward said, and his speech wasn’t slurred.

“Very good. And what is the name of your brother?”

“Which one?”

Clara smiled. She had forgotten Edward had two brothers, and the fact that he was remembering what she hadn’t recalled was a good sign.

“Raphael. And Asahel,” he said. “And your brother’s name is Hercules.”

“Excellent. Now I want you to follow the tip of my finger with your eyes.” He did, and so did the Indians, after which she asked him, “Are you in pain?”

He nodded briefly, glancing sideways at the Indians.

“Right hip.”

She touched him there. She could see from the angle of his legs and from the lack of blood that he might have landed on his buttocks.

“How bad is the pain?”

It was not a question, she realized once she’d asked it, that he would ever answer.

“I fear you might have broken some bones in the fall, Edward,” she repeated, “and I’m not skilled enough to diagnose or treat that condition so I need you to ask these gentlemen to go at once and fetch a doctor. Can you do that?”

Edward looked at the two Indians and nodded. They stood up.

“Wait,” Clara said. She looked at them, then back at Edward. “They understand English?” She looked at them again. “But you never do as I instruct,” she marveled.

“They take no orders from a woman,” Edward said.

Clara stood. “Before you go you need to help me move him. Off the ground into the house,” she instructed. “We’ll use those sheets hanging over there.” They nodded and went to the laundry line, returning with the sheets, onto which the three of them gently rolled him, mindful not to cause him extra pain, but doing so, she could see, despite their care. He made fists and a line of perspiration glistened on his forehead but he made no sound of protest. They lifted him inside the sheets and Clara led the way into her bedroom, turning back her mother’s hand-embroidered Belgian linen bedcover so they could lay him down. Clara drew aside the Indian who had had the fish innards and asked him, “Have you any remedy for pain?”

Again, by his masked response, she had the feeling she had asked another unanswerable question, that, although there might be some solution either she was not entitled to it or something else boycotted the reply. “Have you anything to help him?” she rephrased.

“Edward brave,” the Indian told her, as if she doubted it. “We go now,” he said.