“Oooh.” He grinned. “Your first loaf of kettle bread. Now that be a hard test
to pass.”
While they were shopping in Detroit, Mourning had reminded her that they
wouldn’t have a stove and bought a funny shaped pot with a concave lid, over a
foot long and about half as high.
Olivia went into the cabin, where the lid to the bake kettle was heating in the
edge of the fire. She punched the bread dough down and did as Mourning had
told her to: put it in the kettle, set the kettle in some coals on the hearth, put the concave lid on, and filled the lid with coals. Then she went back outside.
“Mourning,” she said, her eyes on the ground, “I’d be real appreciative if you
could find someplace else to be, while I clean myself up in the river. I want to
have a real bath, with soap.”
He thought for a moment. “Okay. I stay in with the team. But first come in there with me.” He strode into the barn.
She followed him, wondering, Now what? He wants to show me how to muck
it out in case I get bored?
He began running his hands over the logs in the corner that faced the cabin and the river.
“Just want you to check. See that they ain’t no holes in the chinking. No way
I can see out,” he said. “Check for yourself.”
“For heavens sake, I believe you,” she said, flushing to the roots of her hair,
horrified by the image of him peeking through a hole at her, a possibility that never would have occurred to her.
“No, you gotta see. We both gonna be bathin’ in that river till it turn cold and
you gotta be comfortable doin’ it. You ain’t gonna be, you don’t check for
yourself.”
Olivia obeyed while he rummaged through his toolbox.
“Okay, I checked.”
He held up a harmonica, slapped it against his palm, and blew into it. “I’m a
sit right here with my back in this corner and play. Long as you can hear me playin’, you know where I at, and you gonna feel comfortable. I can’t move
nowhere without you hearin’ it. So go get all shiny.” He grinned and made a shooing motion with his hand. “And you sure need it, Miz Pioneer Lady. Grizzly
bears down south in Canada been trackin’ your scent all day.”
She made a face and he began playing a halting version of “Amazing Grace.”
She hurried into the cabin for her soap, a clean work dress, and a towel. The strains of Mourning’s music followed her down to the river, where she sat on the
white rock and prepared to get naked for the second time that day. She grinned,
remembering how modest she had always been. Even when undressing alone in
her own room, with the door on the latch, she used to have her nightdress
bunched up around her neck, ready to pull down, before she slipped her chemise
off. One day out here, she thought, and I can hardly keep my clothes on.
When she was as clean as one can get in river water and had finished
dressing, she shouted to Mourning, “You can come out.”
He approached as she was hanging her towel on the line. “Your turn now?”
she asked.
“Yeah, my turn.” He held out his hand for the soap. “’Less you wanna watch, I give you a holler when I be done.” He grinned and Olivia burned red again.
