Riding the Flume Read online

  She must have followed Carrie here, trailing behind her as she’d wandered among the trees. She didn’t remember seeing her sister put messages in that hole, but it would have been like Carrie to do it. She had followed her sister everywhere in those days, keeping up as best she could, watching Carrie ride the wildest horse, hike the hardest trail, climb the highest tree. Carrie had known the names of all the plants that grew in the mountains and all the animals who lived there. Carrie had made it to the summit of any mountain she decided to climb. “You can see to the end of the world,” she’d tell Francie when she returned. She’d laugh when Francie would fall off her pony or stumble over her own baby feet on a level path. “You’d better stay away from the top of the mountain,” she’d tease. “You’re sure to fall off.”

  Francie shook the memories away. “But I’m still here,” she whispered. She turned and followed her mother back to town.

  • • •

  It was just plain bad luck that brought James Cavanaugh along the road from St. Joseph at the very time that Francie and her mother were hurrying back from Connor’s Basin. They heard the quick trot of horses’ hooves behind them and stepped off the rutted dirt road to let the rider pass. But instead he pulled up beside them.

  “What are you doing out here?” Francie’s father asked. “Who’s watching the hotel desk?” His mare, always a little skittish, sidestepped at the noise and the irritated jerks he gave to the reins. He looked down at his wife. “She’s been at the basin again, hasn’t she, Mary?”

  “Herbert can manage very well.” Francie’s mother answered his first questions but ignored his last. “After all, that’s why we hired a desk clerk, isn’t it?” She looked down and brushed off her skirt with restless fingers. “We’ve only been gone for a few minutes.”

  Francie’s father gave a short, mirthless laugh. “You may have been gone only a few moments, but I’ll wager Frances has been away most of the afternoon.” He looked at her. “Is that right, daughter?”

  Francie sighed. “I was counting the rings of that old stump—you know, the first one they cut in the grove.” She raised her chin. “Mr. Court asked me to find out how old the tree was. I’ve counted 2,500 rings so far, and I’m not done yet.” She saw a flicker of interest cross her father’s face, but it died instantly.

  “Yes, well, we did know those trees were old—that’s why they’re so big.” He gave her a hard look. “But you know very well I don’t want you wandering alone in these mountains.” He touched his heels to the mare’s sides and moved his hand up on her neck. “We’ll talk about this at supper,” he said over his shoulder as the mare trotted on toward Connorsville.

  Francie and her mother exchanged a look. “I’m sorry, Mama,” Francie whispered. “I really wasn’t doing anything dangerous.”

  Her mother sighed. “I know,” she said. “But he worries so much about you.”

  Francie shrugged. That wasn’t quite the way she’d describe it, but it would help nothing to get into that argument now. Francie followed her mother to town and thought instead about how soon she could get back to take a better look at that message.

  • Chapter Two •

  Even before she stepped into the kitchen, Francie could smell the stew her mother had left simmering on the stove. The rich odor of beef and potatoes made her mouth water.

  “Please set the table,” Francie’s mother said, tying her apron on over her skirt.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Francie answered. She went to the cupboard and brought plates and silver to the table, but after one look at her father’s grim face as he sat waiting for the meal, her eagerness for supper faded. She laid the places in silence and was careful not to meet her father’s eyes.

  Francie helped her mother carry the steaming dishes into the dining room, and at her mother’s signal, took her chair. She watched as her mother ladled potatoes, carrots, and chunks of tender beef onto her plate, but worry sat like a stone in her stomach, and she knew she would not be able to eat.

  “For what we are about to receive,” her father prayed, bowing his head and folding his hands, “may the Lord make us truly grateful.”

  “Amen,” murmured Francie and her mother. Francie kept her head bowed and watched out of the corner of her eye. After her mother took the first bite, Francie and her father could begin to eat. For too many long minutes, the only sound at the table was the gentle clink as silver touched china. Francie picked up a roll, broke it into pieces, and began nibbling on one corner.

  She jumped as her father put down his fork and cleared his throat. “Frances,” he began, “please explain to me why it was so important for you to visit the basin today against our wishes.”

  Francie put the roll down on her plate. “I’d promised Mr. Court, Father. He’s writing an article on the sequoias for his paper.” She met her father’s eyes. “I couldn’t break my promise.”

  Francie’s father frowned. “So instead you broke our rules.”

  “But, Father,” Francie said, “this is important.”

  Her father’s frown grew darker. “And our rules are not?”

  Francie bit her lip. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. She took a breath. “What I meant is that Mr. Court is going to write an article for his newspaper. He wants to stop the logging of the sequoias. He thinks it’s a waste.” She leaned forward, her eyes on his face. “It is a waste, Father. You know it is.”

  Her father picked up his napkin and placed it beside his plate. “What I know is that the logging has kept us in business,” her father said, his voice turning hard.

  Francie saw her mother’s warning look, but she couldn’t stop. “Mr. Court says they could log the other trees that don’t take so long to grow and leave the sequoias,” she persisted.

  “Each one of those big trees can supply enough wood to build forty, five-room houses, Frances! They’re our economic future!” He shook his head. “I will hear no more talk about it. And you may not go to Connor’s Basin anymore,” he added. “It’s entirely too dangerous for a young girl.”

  “You let Carrie go anywhere she wanted to,” Francie burst out before she could stop herself. Even hearing that name caused her parents such pain that her sister was rarely mentioned in the household.

  Her father’s face turned pale. I’ve gone too far this time, Francie thought. But she couldn’t go back now.

  “That was entirely different,” her father said. His voice had sunk almost to a whisper. “Carrie was capable . . .”

  Francie dug her fingernails into her palms under the table, and the prick of pain reminded her to hold her tongue. She took a deep breath. “Father, I’m careful,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. “That’s what I’ve learned since the landslide. I don’t take risks.”

  She looked up at his blank face—his eyes were dull and without emotion. She knew it wasn’t any use. She pushed back her chair and stood up, the anger boiling up inside her like a volcano. “I’ll never be as perfect as your wonderful Carrie, will I, Father?” Hot tears sprang to her eyes, but she ignored them and kept staring at his flat, expressionless face. She wondered suddenly what it would take to bring some feeling back to him. How far would she have to go?

  When she heard her mother’s soft whimper, remorse washed over her. How could she be so cruel? She hung her head, but the words of apology didn’t come.

  There was a long silence. Then finally her father spoke. Even his voice sounded flat. “I don’t think we need to continue this conversation any longer,” he said. Carefully he folded his napkin and stood up. “My rule still stands. You may not go to Connor’s Basin. Do you understand?” He glanced once at Francie’s mother, as if making sure she, too, understood the rule. Then he straightened his waistcoat and left the room.

  Francie stood with her head bowed, listening to her father’s footsteps, hoping he’d come back. She heard the creak of the kitchen door as he opened it. There was a pause, as if he were standing in the doorway waiting, and her heart seemed to jump into he
r throat. But then the door slammed. She heard him go down the porch steps. He must be going back to his work at the hotel, she thought. He wasn’t going to change his mind.

  Her mother was leaning her head into her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. “Mama?” Francie knelt beside her mother’s chair and put her hand on her arm. “Mama, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you pain.” She sighed. “It’s just . . .”

  Her mother raised her head and wiped away her tears with her fingers. “Why do you anger him so?” she asked, touching her daughter’s cheek. “If you just wouldn’t provoke him, he wouldn’t feel like he had to punish you.”

  Francie pulled her own chair next to her mother’s and sat down. She clasped her hands in her lap. “He’s angry that I’m helping Mr. Court,” she whispered.

  “He’s worried about you,” her mother said. “Can’t you see that?”

  “He’s punishing me for Carrie’s mistake,” Francie retorted. “He can’t hear a word said against her.”

  Her mother looked at Francie. “If you only knew how much you’re growing to look like Carrie,” she said, and her voice was soft. “How much you sound like her. Even when you argue with your father, you sound like her.” Her mother looked away and a small smile came to her lips. She looked back at Francie. “Especially when you argue with your father,” she added. “Don’t you remember?”

  Francie swallowed. “I remember,” she whispered. She closed her eyes. Every time she looked in the mirror she remembered. It was why she’d cut her front hair in bangs and wore her back hair loose. It would have been so much more convenient to put it up in a bun like Carrie had worn her hair. But she couldn’t stand the startled glances of her neighbors or the pain that crossed her father’s face when he looked at her. She wiped away her tears with a corner of her napkin. Would she be forever in Carrie’s shadow? In death as well as in life?

  Her mother touched her cheek. “You would have been quite a pair, you know,” she said. The words hung in the air for a long moment. Then Francie’s mother pushed back her chair and stood up. “Josie?” she called to the young woman they’d hired to help around the house and the hotel. “Is the water hot?” She began collecting plates and cups and stacking them on the tray.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Josie, appearing in the kitchen doorway with a towel in her hand. Francie’s mother handed her the tray, and the two of them went into the kitchen.

  It was Francie’s job to put the rest of the tableware back on the sideboard and fold the napkins into their rings for the next meal. She did it absently, thinking about her mother’s words. “Quite a pair,” she’d said. Somehow Francie had never imagined herself and her sister as a “pair.” How could they have ever been a pair, she thought. Carrie had been so much older—fifteen when she died, and Francie only nine. If Carrie had lived she’d be . . . Francie figured it out. Carrie would have been twenty-one. A woman grown. And Francie herself was only just fifteen now. How could she ever have caught up?

  She threw the napkins into the basket with the others on the sideboard. She arranged the everyday salt and pepper shakers on the shelf with the ones for formal occasions and banged the cupboard door shut with more force than was necessary. “No,” she said aloud. “I’ll always be running behind her. Even now when she’s dead.”

  She stomped up the stairs and plopped down in the chair by her vanity, carefully avoiding the oval mirror on the wall beside her. Her eyes fell instead on the framed photograph of the family, taken perhaps a year before the landslide. Father, sitting in the leather armchair in the parlor with the women gathered around him. Mother, in a dark dress with white buttons down the front and with an unfamiliar formal look on her face, her hand on her husband’s shoulder. Francie, leaning against her father’s knee. And Carrie, her long chestnut hair wound about her head in a complicated twist, was standing on Father’s other side looking as if she wanted to laugh out loud.

  Francie stared at the photograph, realizing again that anyone who didn’t know the family might have taken Carrie for Francie. There was her sister, caught forever inside the little frame. And quietly, without thinking about it, the scrawny eight-year-old who had been leaning against her father’s leg was, indeed, catching up. “In fact,” she said aloud, finally looking at herself in the mirror, “I have caught up. I’m fifteen now, older than Carrie was then. She gathered her hair, twisted it, and wound it around her head, but immediately let it go. It was uncanny how much she looked like her sister.

  “I wonder what it would have been like,” she asked aloud, “if we’d been the same age.” She picked up the deep blue cologne bottle on her vanity that used to be Carrie’s and ran her fingers over the bumpy surface. She pulled the glass stopper out of the top and sniffed—the bottle had been empty for years. Carrie had given it to her long before the landslide. But the spicy smell of the cologne still lingered. “Would you have been my friend, Carrie?” she asked the picture. Carrie seemed to be looking out of the frame right into Francie’s eyes. Her mouth held its almost smile. But the only answer was silence.

  • Chapter Three •

  The only safety is in secrecy. The words hung in the air and Francie sat straight up in bed. She’d been dreaming. In the dream Francie had been standing at the bottom of the tallest part of the lumber flume, watching her sister climb up to the top. The night breeze fluttered Carrie’s white nightgown and made Francie shiver. “Don’t do it!” Francie called. She could feel her heart beating furiously in her chest. Something terrible was going to happen. “Please,” Francie cried. “Please stop!”

  Carrie looked down, hanging onto the wooden crosspiece with one hand. Her laugh was the same rippling musical sound that Francie had always loved. “I’m going to ride the flume,” she called back, and kept climbing, step by step, to the top. Her arms and legs moved together in the easy, fluid movements that characterized everything Carrie did.

  Now she had reached the top of the flume, so far away that she looked like a tiny white bird standing on the edge of the wooden track. She stretched her arms out wide, as if to embrace the star-studded sky. Her long hair streamed out behind her. Francie saw her climb into the flume boat and crouch down, gripping the sides with white fingers. Then the little wooden raft started to move, slowly at first. Francie sucked in her breath as it picked up speed, racing faster and faster down the track. Water splashed out on either side, cascading down the structure like a waterfall of sparkling diamonds.

  “No!” Francie shouted. She tried to follow it, running below the little flume boat as it sped down the track. It was coming to the first sharp curve. If she could only get ahead, climb up, stop it somehow. . . .

  She looked up as the boat hit the turn, bounced off the track, and went flying into the air. The scream stuck in her throat as she saw Carrie hold out her hands. “Remember,” Carrie cried, “the only safety is in secrecy!”

  Now, with the darkness engulfing her and her heart pounding, Francie wasn’t sure if the words were in her dream or if she’d actually heard them spoken aloud. She fumbled with the matches and finally lit the candle she kept on her nightstand. She watched as the flickering light slowly brought the furniture into focus—the spindles flanking the foot of her bed, the wardrobe in the corner, the washstand and the white pitcher. Comforted by the light, she leaned back against her pillows. It was a stupid dream. Not even Carrie would have tried to ride the lumber flume—the thirty-mile track that floated the lumber out of the woods and down into the town of St. Joseph. It was too dangerous. She shook her head. A year ago Sean O’Brien and Buck Murphy, two of the biggest daredevils in the logging camp, had ridden it into St. Joseph—people had talked about it for months afterward. But Carrie would never have tried it.

  But while the substance of the dream quickly faded, the feeling of guilt, of something she needed most urgently to do, lingered on. She couldn’t remember the exact words of the message she’d found in the tree, except that part about the only safety being secrecy, but she thought it h
ad communicated the same urgency. Something terrible about to happen, something someone had to stop.

  But that had been six years ago. Who had the message been for? Who would have been meeting Carrie at Turkey Fork? Francie snuggled down under the covers. The answer to that, at least, was easy. If the note had not been meant for her cousin, Charlie, he would probably know who it was meant for. Carrie and Charlie had been best friends, even though Carrie had been two years older. If Charlie didn’t know what Carrie had been talking about, then nobody would.

  • • •

  The raucous chorus of birds calling woke Francie just as the sky was beginning to turn pink. Summer was short in the high Sierras, and the birds didn’t waste a moment of daylight. Francie’s eyes still burned, and she was already tired, but she made herself get up. She didn’t intend to waste any of the day, either. Her mother needed her in the hotel kitchen, but first she would talk to Charlie.

  She pulled on an old dress, tied her apron over it, and tiptoed down the stairs. The house was silent—Mama and Father must still be in bed, she thought. Slowly she lifted the latch and opened the heavy front door—it moved smoothly on its hinges without even one squeak—and then she was out in the chilly dawn.

  Across the narrow side street, her father’s hotel loomed up twice as tall as any building around it. When they’d first moved to Connorsville, when Carrie was a baby, the family had actually lived in the hotel along with the guests, but when Francie was born, Mama had put her foot down and insisted they move to a real house.

  Francie’s old shoes made no sound in the dirt as she ran along the street. She turned the corner onto Main and glanced up, wishing as she often did that she could have a room on the top floor of the hotel. She would have a bird’s-eye view of the whole town and the woods beyond; it would be almost like a tree house. But she knew better than to suggest it—she had heard her mother say often enough that owning a hotel was one thing; living in it was quite another.