Tinsmith 1865

by Sara Dahmen

  I watch his eyes slide over to Walter, who holds my nutmeg grater yet in one hand, gesturing with the other. A tremor runs through his fingers and up his arms, and we look at one another, sharing an understanding. Perhaps my prying did help Thaddeus surpass the anger he felt so keenly toward his father. If so, I’m glad for it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  11 January 1867

  January stretches brittle and barren across the streets of Flats Town. The cold pours in my bones whenever I go outside, and my hands peel red and raw from dipping them into the water to cool tin and copper.

  Walter feeds the handful of chickens and ducks and geese so I needn’t battle the pecking, and the pig and cow intermingle happily in the small barn. Between Thaddeus and myself, we keep the small farm in working order, and many long evenings are spent in companionable silence as we throw clean straw and feed the animals. While he is silent most of the time, I feel he respects me and the strength of my arms. Working as a team with someone is heartening, though Thaddeus is not the same as my small army of brothers.

  Watching Mrs. Andersen spin on the wheel she brings to our house, I often feel a stab of guilt at being unable to help her with her duties. But the need for my help with the metal to make money is too important. There’s no time for me to sit and do the usual women’s work. Father does not mention it, and I know I shouldn’t fret, but there are many days when I feel unbalanced.

  Who am I, really?

  A woman? A smith? No one in between the two?

  Both?

  The door slides open, protesting against the cold and frost and freezing wind. Thaddeus marches in without greeting. His arms are bare against the chill, and he wears his leathers. The copper loops in the slats gleam in the white winter sunlight. He seems flummoxed.

  “The Army has asked for more wheels. And then there’s a fancy sword, Stanley.”

  I jump on his words, though he’s speaking to Father and not me. “If the Army is in town, then there must be mail? Word of our boys?”

  He glances at me. “I’m sure there is. I didn’t ask. I was … commanded to create a list of goods in short order, some contraptions for those new Spencer rifles, and a sword to be ready by midsummer.”

  His words mean nothing to me. Father and Walter are the sword makers. I am just glad there will be letters. There has to be.

  I must find out any news. Surely someone will know something at the general.

  “I’m going to go see if anyone has word of the boys,” I announce.

  The men ignore me. Thaddeus pushes past the counter and squeezes by, his hand pressing against my shoulder hard, as Father nods and makes room on the tinner’s bench for drawings and plans of the sword, his hands quick and eager to find a pencil.

  There is sleet today, a strange mix of rain and snow adding a layer of ice to the heavy coat of snow weighing on the earth. Already I miss the smell of the garden, and the color green, and the exploding heads of colorful geraniums.

  Through the mist, lights bounce around a large crowd at the general. I hurry, hoping to hear news and dreading it all the same.

  Harry Turner stands to the side of the store’s porch, bundled in his buckskins but shivering all the same. The crowd won’t all fit inside, so the bodies spill around, shuffling feet scuffing against the crackling ice and snow. Two young men stand on the porch, and I know neither. One is supported with a rough-hewn crutch, and the other is standing, feet planted apart, and has a sheet of paper in his hands. It is grubby and torn and blotted, as if reflecting the weariness of the man holding it.

  “What are they doing?” I whisper to sweet young Else Henderssen. She doesn’t even glance at me, her eyes glazed and wide with waiting and excitement.

  “Calling off the names of the fellows who fell back in December with Captain Fetterman. And any others who they know who are captured or dead.”

  “But—I thought the Army might tell us when something happens!” I say, shocked that it is so unorganized and the news old. “Surely, when they asked for recruits and militia and local men, they’d have realized that the families will want to know—”

  The two old spinsters, Lettie Zalenski and Emma Molhurst, spin around to shush my wonderings with angry hisses, and I press my mouth shut, but Else decides to take pity on me. She speaks quite low, though her attention remains fully committed to the young man on the top of the general’s stairs.

  “There’s no money for the Army to embalm and ship back bodies and no real good way to find out where the boys are at. They say if you’re lucky, you might get someone at the Missing Soldiers Office in Washington to take your case and find your menfolk.”

  Then there may be old news. Or no news. Or the Army may never tell us. It is worse than after the War Between the States! The air is crushed and squeezed out of me. There is no way to breathe for fear of hearing my brothers’ names listed.

  The sleet bears down miserably on us all, and the ebb and flow of the crowd makes me feel like a rock in a stream. It is a tedious and painful retelling. The young man reads off a name, and usually the family calls out for more information. Sometimes he has none, and other times he will recount the happenstance or skirmish that claimed the boy’s life. One fell at a decisive massacre by the Sioux they call Red Cloud two weeks ago, and the fear curdles in my stomach. Surely my brothers would not be part of a company of fighting men? Surely they—and my Jimmy—would be safe within the walls of the new fort, building and forging?

  He calls out a Samuel Baumann and Else crumples. I catch her around the waist.

  “Dead or captured?” she manages to call out, trembling. Was he her sweetheart?

  The young man’s eyes rove over the crowd and finally land on her. He takes us both in, and then answers slowly. “Captured, miss. On woodcutting duty.”

  “He could still be alive, then,” she says to no one in particular. “My Sammy might still be alive.” It is only speculation, wildly hopeful, but hope just the same.

  “You—you’re Marie Kotlarczyk?” Somehow the young man recognizes me. It is a surprise. Do I know him? The lights of the general are greasy stains of yellow against the deep mist and heavy sleet. I almost wonder, for a strange, unearthly moment, if the young man is Jimmy all changed and battle hardened, but I blink again and know he is not, and I recognize him, finally, as Robert Newton, one of the farmers’ sons who’d left with the others.

  “I am,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I expect.

  “I have a name for you,” he says simply. “Thomas Kotlarczyk. Tom died protecting the woodcutters on a trip for fuel.”

  The name is flung softly across, but rocks fill my stomach. His fingers go down the writing swiftly. The paper is nearly transparent, and I can see the uneven ink blooming into the parchment from the back side. Others call out, impatient and eager.

  “Any word on Thunder?”

  “Alive and well, ma’am.”

  “Aw, Chrissy, that man ain’t coming back for you. He’s his own counsel.”

  “He’s a lonely cowboy just looking for money right now. He’ll be back.”

  “What about James Petit?” The voice is deep, commanding, and shouts from the edge of the crowd, expressing the restlessness I felt while waiting for my own names to be called. I look up, but cannot focus. There should be no more names. Not after Tom’s. His is the only one that matters.

  The chatter goes on, and I struggle up toward the front, hoping I can hear about Al. There has to be some hope. It is impossible to think all my brothers are gone. Gone like Lou after the War Between the States. They cannot all be gone.

  I push my tears back, smother my wailing, and clear my throat. When the crowd starts to shiver itself back into the saloons and the houses, I step up and touch Robert lightly.

  “Any word on Al? My youngest brother. Maybe he’s under a different name, his Polish one? Wojciech.”

  Robert’s head jerks up, and the circles under his eyes shine purple and red. I feel nothing as I look at him, though, no
t even a stir of pity. There are no real thoughts at all, just panic.

  “Didn’t you get a letter?” he asks.

  My heart stops, and my face must give away my fear. The lines carve deeper under Robert’s cheeks as his shoulders curl down further.

  “Ah, damn. I suppose … word was he made it to Fort Reno after Sully. He was on a different list, but I remember what your brothers said.”

  “Then he’s—”

  “Dead. Sorry, Marie. I’m sorry. I thought the Army would have sent a notice with his last bit of money. We knew of it. Tom knew. I’m so sorry.”

  I want to close my eyes and feel the impact of their deaths, but I cannot. I am frozen and crackling with grief. It is too much to hear at once. Too many names have poured out, and too many gone in one, single list.

  What will I do with this?

  I’m lost and cut, as if I am suddenly and inexplicably without anchor or compass. Every week and month has been spent pushing toward the day when my brothers—one or both—tripped back into the shop. They were supposed to just make some money, to make a point to Father, to show how they did not have to obey him so completely.

  But they were always to return.

  How will we manage without them?

  Who will tease me? Who will find me a good husband, and dance on my wedding day? Who will tousle the heads of my children, and help remember Mother’s face? Who will gently help me with tricky tin projects, or make faces at my burned meat?

  I want to cry and scream, but the sounds are so wide and impossible that they cannot make their way out. Instead, my chest curves in on itself and throttles my heartbeat, narrowing my eyes and deadening my ears.

  Young Else has disappeared—before or after my brothers were called, I don’t know. I see nothing. My vision flickers to blurriness, and I turn around, unable to say another word to Robert, but I stop after a step.

  How will I get home? I can’t think straight, let alone see straight.

  The next thought trips on itself as it forms, and blows into my forehead.

  How will I tell Father?

  A hand grabs my arm, gentle and tender. It takes me a moment to register this, and to look up into Danny’s worried gaze. He looks stricken and beside himself, but as usual he has words. They are hollow, like glass, and empty to my ears.

  “Marie. I heard. I am … there is nothing to say for such loss. Please—let me help you. I don’t know what or how, but let me do something!”

  He looks desperate to be useful, and yet I don’t know what to tell him. Danny cannot take away my awful shock, nor help me save Father from the blow of it. I dread the repeating of it all, as though saying the words again will release the truth of their deaths once more.

  Danny doesn’t remove his arm, and walks us slowly toward the shop. We pick our way through the half-frozen mud, the slushy, sleety muck, and the deep wagon ruts of the roads. Though I am used to the uneven ground, I watch it with detailed fervor. It’s brown and black and a frothy grey, speckled with snow and ice. Danny’s presence is here, but it is as if he is a specter. I cannot even feel his fingers.

  “Marya!”

  Thaddeus’s voice breaks through my numbness, and I stop and spin, twisting out of Danny’s grip, stumbling as my boot catches on a clump of mud. The snowy rain blinds me briefly, and the cold slices through my bones, shattering my blood in pieces, numbing me against reality.

  “Damn!”

  Danny checks at my cussing, but he takes my arm again in silence, ignoring it, taking me around a large pile of half-frozen horse apples.

  The realization that my brothers will no longer be around to both tease and teach me the naughty words eats at my composure, but Thaddeus reaches us and I am afraid to show him weakness. It is all I can do to muster a full breath. If I do more, I will begin to weep.

  “Marie,” he says again, his breathing short and fast from trying to catch up to us on the road. “I heard about the boys.”

  “You were there?” I ask the question blankly, wondering why he bothered. Thaddeus never wants for gossip, for all that he doesn’t seek it out. I suspect, after Harry Turner, Thaddeus is the most informed tradesman in all of Flats Town. I think these things acutely, with perfect detail, if only to stem off reality.

  “I had to find out if there was news of Jimmy at least,” he explains, a hand pulling at his dark beard and then tangling in his hair. I swallow the tears threatening to overpower my voice. I hadn’t expected to hear of Jimmy. It didn’t seem my place to ask, anyway.

  What more?

  Is there any word on the young man who tried to sweep me off my feet?

  Can I manage it if there is?

  Thaddeus has the grace to look appalled and distraught, and he runs his rough, scarred hands across the flannel of his arms, hugging himself briefly before dropping them. It is the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen him, and for one moment it jars me out of my own stupor. I reach across the cold air to put a hand on his sleeve, but he jerks away before I can touch him, and the rain eats the space in between us.

  “He’s gone,” he says simply.

  “Gone?”

  “Dead. Died weeks ago—woodcutting. The damn Indians. Damn it!”

  For a moment, the vision of Percy Davies’s quiet Sioux lover splashes across my mind, but it blurs and disappears at once. I cannot place the notion of screaming braves with the stately, calm woman who lives in the cake-house down our street.

  All at once, I think I might lose the contents of my stomach. Bending over slightly, I grip at my belly, and Danny’s hand is on my elbow, as if waiting for my knees to give away. They don’t, but my jaw is stuck while sour bile snakes its way up my lungs.

  “You’ll have to tell your father about Jimmy. And write his family in Vermillion,” I wrench out between my teeth, and Thaddeus nods silently, falling into step at my right side.

  My thoughts whirl and crash and swerve.

  Jimmy gone too.

  It’s over, then. Life in the territory is cursed before it can start. Our debts growing, with no way to pay them. Death surrounding us.

  What do I have left to wait for?

  What else is there now but some poor remainder of what had been a thriving family business?

  What should I do? How will I manage? What will Father decide?

  Do we leave now, and return to Chicago? Do we try to carry on?

  What about all our debt?

  Do we have funerals, even without the bodies?

  Jimmy’s death cuts more acutely than I’d expected, too. The disappearance of our romance, however small it was, is a rift in my heart, piercing and crying deep within me.

  In the last steps before we reach the smith shops, the wetness of the weather has bitten into my shift. Thaddeus takes my free hand, the gesture hidden in the gloaming. He is either taking or giving me comfort—I’m not sure which. His fingers are wide and bumpy with scars. Without breaking stride, I clench at him for a moment, and then he releases me. Perhaps he is able to get enough from one short, small touch. I feel a loss when he detaches, though, as if I need both him and Danny to keep me walking, but we are at the smithy anyway. Thaddeus ducks inside without a sound. Irritation speckles. I expect more of him, and of his friendship, and am oddly hurt he thinks to leave right now, in this moment of impossibility. I forget, and then remember through my own grief, how he sees Jimmy like a brother. That he must mourn in his own, angry way.

  I pause at the entry to the tinshop. The orangey glow under it means Father is still awake.

  “Do you want me to go in with you, Marie?” Danny looks apprehensively between the door and me, and I shake my head.

  “I will have to tell him myself. Thank you.”

  Forgoing propriety, I take a liberty to reach up and touch his smooth face, and clap a hand to his neck. “And thank you for your kindness.”

  “I wish I could do more, sweet Marie.” He captures my hand and presses it to his cheek. Briefly, he kisses my palm and in the middle of my sor
row I sense the attraction buried under grief. “But don’t worry. You’ll be fine. I’ll see to it.”

  Does he mean that he will keep our rent low? Ask his father to remove the pressure from Percy so we aren’t stuck in the middle? Marry me? I don’t wish to know tonight, and I don’t ask.

  “Thank you,” I repeat, and then go in. My steps are determined, but my spirit sags low and cumbersome with a new pain, which is outlandishly heavy even though it only confirms the deepest fear of my heart.

  When Father looks up, it seems he can read my face at once, but a stern flatness takes over the planes of his cheekbones, as if he is steeling himself. Or unwilling to truly hear what I must tell him.

  “There is news,” I say, finding my voice has gone hoarse.

  “Injuries?” Father asks, looking down at his hands. A deep tremble rumbles through his bones, visible even to me, pulsing through the purple-black veins rippling under his skin, as if pulsing with anticipation or dread. “Is one coming home? One is being dead? Who is it, Marie?”

  One? Who? Damn it.

  I must say it. It is on me. It will always be my duty, now.

  “All,” I whisper. “All gone. No one is alive, Father. Just you and me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  22 April 1867

  The door slams open in Thaddeus’s usual broad swipe, but there are two shadows crossing the threshold of the shop. The space smells of hot rosin flux and burning tin. I’ve been soldering and braising everything I can in one single day, and I push the coppers back into the fire as Thaddeus comes in.

  “What is it?”

  There cannot be any more bad news, at least.

  The boys are dead, and Father as good as gone for all he still breathes. Still, each time someone enters, I feel my body tense with a deep agony. Months have passed since the news of my brothers’ deaths and most nights sleep still eludes me. It helps to bury myself in the copper and the tin, to let my eyes sear with the brilliant glow of it. The trickiness of some orders keeps my mind drowning in fractions, so I will not find myself weeping.