6. Elias
Elias
" O h my God, there it is!”
She clasps her hands to her chest, her eyes shining, as soon as the town comes into view. We got lucky enough to grab a ride on the back of a horse-drawn trailer driven by Mr. O’Leary, one of the Irish who came here a few years back.
I notice him wincing at the sound of her taking the Lord’s name in vain, and a hand flies to her mouth as though she has just realized what she’s done.
"Gosh, I’m sorry," she whispers. "I – I'll be more careful, I promise..."
I can’t help but grin.
"Don’t be," I reply, as the cart pulls to a halt and I jump down from amongst the vegetables and various hunting goods that O’Leary carries with him.
I offer her a hand as I sling the leather satchel full of my furs over one shoulder, and she takes it, a small spark passing from her fingertips to mine as she joins me on the soft ground and glances around like she can hardly believe what she is seeing.
"Woah," she breathes as she takes in town. "This is..."
"It’s not much, I know," I remark, as I steer her towards the main thoroughfare that leads through the center of the town.
On either side of the street, a handful of businesses operate – a saloon, a drugstore, a couple of grocers when they can keep the produce regular enough to sell.
Each of the buildings, hewn from wood, seems to lean up against the next for support, unable to keep their foundations without a little help.
"No, it’s awesome," she gushes, and I chuckle again. She looks to me in surprise.
I have never heard that word before — awesome. Everything about her feels different. In a good way.
“What is it...?” she asks.
"Nothing," I assure her. "Just not used to hearing people talk like that. Come on, I have to meet with John McCallum, he’s waiting to buy some furs for his daughters for the winter..."
She allows me to lead the way, glancing this way and that, as if trying to commit it all to memory.
A couple of times, she trips over her skirts, eventually hitching them up into one hand so she can pick her way through the rain-soaked ground without restraint.
I lent her a pair of my shoes, the only ones in the cabin for her to wear, and I notice a couple of people giving her strange looks as she passes through, this girl with a dress hiked up to her knees in a pair of men’s shoes.
Even if she wasn’t dressed so strangely, I know that we’d be attracting attention. Any new arrival in this place does. Jacobson Township is about as tiny as they come, basically self-sufficient.
Nobody comes or goes without someone knowing something about it, and just how she has dropped out of the clear blue sky and into this place is still a mystery, even to me.
I head to the bar, where I know John will be waiting for me. Sure enough, when I throw open the door – a little uneven and warped from the winters and summers reaching through to the wood – he tosses aside the glass he was cleaning and raises a hand to greet me.
"Elias, there you are," he begins, but then, his eyes slide towards the woman standing next to me. He cocks an eyebrow.
"And who might this be?” he continues, making his way out from behind the bar.
I tense. John gets away with being a flirt because this is the only bar for miles around, even if it does smell of damp this time of year and the stools barely reach the counter.
His moonshine is lethal, and that seems to be enough to justify his presence here, even when he can’t keep his hands off any of the town wives.
June glances to me, clearly seeking some kind of guidance in this.
"June," I introduce her. "A friend of my sister’s. She’s visiting from out of town."
"Not a fleeting visit, I hope," he continues, as he takes her hand and lifts it to his lips. I can see June wrinkling her nose at his attentions, and I step in swiftly.
"Listen, John," I tell him, voice dropping to a threatening low. "I’m here to sell furs for your daughters. And if you don’t get back behind that bar in the next minute, you’re going to have to explain a lot more to them than why you don’t have their warm clothes for the winter. You understand?”
A flash of anger crosses John’s face, but by the tone of my voice, he must know I am serious.
"My apologies, miss," he remarks to June, who seems a little taken aback by my attitude. But if she thinks I am going to allow a man like him to look at her like that, she’s got another damn thing coming. I swing the bag onto the counter – I didn’t come all the way down here not to make a sale, no matter what kind of ass John is being.
We finish up the transaction and leave to gather a few more things for June. With the money I have, I head to the tailor, Mrs. Yumi, to pick out a couple of dresses for her.
"How do you have the money for this?” she murmurs to me, as I explain to her what we’re doing. "That cabin doesn’t exactly look like it cost a whole lot, if you don’t mind me saying..."
I chuckle.
"I don’t," I assure her. "I have a good amount of savings. No family to take care of."
At least, not anymore. My family came out from Missouri a decade or so ago, but they didn’t make it far.
The little cabin my father had bought for us never saw my five siblings or my parents, apart from my youngest sister, Lizzie.
Fever took them when I was just seventeen, and I made the rest of the trip to that place with Lizzie by my side, determined to make a home for her.
Of course, by the time we got there, she passed, the heartbreak too much for her to take.
Now, it’s just me – at least the trapping keeps the money coming in, even in the face of everything else.
She picks out a couple of dresses, one in peach, one in a light lavender, and Mrs. Yumi carefully matches them to the shape of her body, prodding and picking here and there to make sure the fit is exactly as she wants it.
She doesn’t comment on June’s sudden arrival, but if anyone knows what it’s like to attract attention here, it’s her.
Still, that doesn’t stop her from shooting a few pointed looks in her direction.
I wonder how fast the gossip about this is going to spread.
Hell, let them gossip all they want. This girl walked out of the woods as naked as the day she was born and right into my cabin – I'm not going to go questioning that, not after all the pain this life has dealt me.
She is my miracle girl.
With her new dresses tucked into my satchel, we make our way back to the trail, which is lit now with a warm sunlight, the kind that often fills the air after a storm. The snow has cleared, the memory of it remaining only in the saturated earth below.
"I love my new clothes, thank you," she gushes to me, as she practically skips along the track beside me.
"Makes a change from you accusing me of stealing them..."
"Hey, what choice did I have?" she protests. "I came out of the water and everything I had left there was gone, everything I’d been travelling with..."
"So you were a traveller?”
She tips her head to the side, pondering the question for a moment.
"I guess you could say that."
"And what else could you say about it?" I wonder aloud. I don’t expect her to give me a straight answer, not after everything that has happened. There’s so much about her that doesn’t make sense, but that only intensifies my curiosity to uncover her.
What exactly is it she’s hiding under there, that spark of enticing strangeness that keeps my attention fixed. ..?
"Uh," she considers for a moment, tapping her finger against her bottom lip. "I suppose...I suppose you could say that I wrote dispatches for people, about my travels."
"What kind of people?”
"The kind of people who might want to do the same thing," she explains.
"There are others out there like you?”
"Others out there who’d like to travel like me, yeah," she replies. "Not everyone can, though."
"So why did you?”
"My mom died," she admits, her voice softening slightly, as though the memory is still painful for her to touch on.
"She – she was the one thing keeping me back in my hometown, and when she was gone, I just knew I needed to see more of the world.
I packed up everyone I had into a – into a carriage, and I took off to write and explore. "
"By yourself?”
"You didn’t see anyone else in the river with me, did you?" she teases lightly. I laugh.
"I guess I didn’t."
"Then it’s just me," she remarks. For a moment, the sound of our footsteps on the earth is the only thing between us, but then, a thought crosses my mind.
"You want to get back to it?”
"To what?”
"Travelling."
She pauses for a moment, her footsteps faltering, like it’s the first time it’s really crossed her mind.
"I don’t know," she replies, and she sneaks a playful look at me out of the corner of her eye. "If I had a good reason to stay, I could stick this out a little longer..."
I grin.
"Well, I’ll see what I can do, ma’am," I reply, with a light formality, despite everything that we’ve already shared. She laughs.
"Then I’ll do the same," she remarks, and she casts a look over her shoulder, back down towards the town. "You know, I think I could get used to this..."
"I think I could too," I agree. But, as my gaze lingers on her, I know that I’m not talking about the town, or anyone in it.
I am talking about the girl at my side, who has sparked something in me I don’t know if I’ve ever felt before.