Tinsmith 1865

by Sara Dahmen

  “I don’t mind. It’s a bit of a lark. Everyone should have one of those here and there so I brought in the wagon for the morning. Mother thought you might like to go to the general with me and pick out some cloth for a new dress. You know I was a bit of a seamstress before I married. Let me help you. It’d be a treat.”

  The notion is frivolous at best, and I laugh. “Shall I pick out a silk?”

  “Marie, you need to wear more than a scrappy dress.”

  “I didn’t know you had a trade.”

  “Of course I did. Most of us do, to make the money. But Jacob needed a wife, not a working girl. All men do.”

  “All men …” I echo, my heart aching, knowing she’s right.

  She runs a finger along the lines of a tinderbox I have just finished. I glance down at the gown I’m wearing. It is dirty, of course, but it is the patched holes that make it look truly ratty. There was no reason to destroy it after the acid spattered it, and it is still quite serviceable.

  “Let’s go now, then,” I shrug lightly, and return her wide grin with one of my own smaller ones. Her enthusiasm is infectious, for all it’s absolutely silly to leave work undone. “But I must tell your mother.”

  Anette waits for me by the door, a child on her hip and the other two sprinting across the yard, yelling brightly.

  “Babcia! Bestemor! Grandma!”

  Mrs. Andersen stops outside the doorway of the Salomon house, a wide clay bowl cradled in her arms.

  “Oh my! You did come down today, then? Anette, kjære, how good of you.” She leans in to brush her cheek with her daughter as we approach, and then pats the heads of the children gathering around her.

  “We are off to the general,” I tell her. “Father is sleeping, and we won’t be gone long, I should think.”

  “Marie!”

  The shout carries through the quarters, and at first I think it is Walter. I peer past Mrs. Andersen’s shoulder and see Thaddeus framing the space between the forge and their house.

  “What?”

  “Stop over when you’re back,” he says. “I want to go over the new sword with you.”

  He has worked quickly. I am surprised. And as nervous as I am to try again, I crave being done with the stress of the saber.

  “I will,” I tell him, and he disappears back to the fires. Damn him! Now my morning fun is ruined and filled with apprehension. But Anette pulls me along, and I try to shove down my anxiety to match her gaiety.

  “My mother tells me she’s enjoying working for you and taking care of your household,” Anette says, her statement broken in half by a call to her little girl to keep up. “Which is very lovely to hear.”

  “She might not always enjoy working,” I say honestly. “She will get tired of it.”

  “She adores it, and has been hankering to get back at it since my youngest sister found a man and planned to moved out.” Anette waves a hand. As she says it, I realize Grete has been married almost a year. How has the time slipped by so smoothly, without an edge? Surely there have been problems? Horeb has since put five privies on top of houses, tied all the horse’s tails in knots together at the livery, and Dell Johnston is sporting a black eye from Fortuna’s fist over another argument about the names of their establishments. There was a diphtheria epidemic that took the lives of seven children two months ago, and Calvin Johnston lost both his legs after falling from his horse. He died later from bad blood, with Doc Gunnarsen saying as how there’s nothing to be done. It’s never a dull week in the West.

  We arrive at the general store, where the dusty floorboards creak and send up puffs of dirt to settle in the tucks of our skirts and in the creases of the bare feet of her children.

  “Anette!” Harry Turner, wearing a long ivory apron, greets her happily.

  Sadie runs in from the back room at the announcement, brimming with joy, work dress swinging and a broom dangling.

  “Marie! Anette! You’ll never guess!”

  We glance at one another, and Anette opens her mouth to respond, but Sadie beats her.

  “I’m getting married! Tom Fawcett has asked me!”

  Harry’s wife May, green-eyed and slim and somehow always giving the impression of being dust-free, smiles thinly at us. “Be as it may, Sadie, you’re still my hired girl and paid by the hour. Move along.”

  Anette sends her children to stare at the candy, which sparkles and beckons from the side counter.

  “Marie needs something for a new dress,” she tells Harry. He grins and turns us over to May before meandering over to the candy counter, his eyes gleaming with excitement at his little customers.

  “Something serviceable?” May glances over my worn flannel. I finger the holes in my sleeve, remembering the acid spill and feeling the apprehension of the next sword settle in my bones.

  “This will last me a while,” I reassure her, and look up the tall shelves, where bolts of colored fabric stretch into the brown-grey gloom of the ceiling. “But I suppose I ought to have something that is both serviceable and nice.”

  “There is a pretty green calico,” Anette offers, pointing over our heads. “It’s sprigged.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” May cranes her neck upward. “And then there’s also a deep red, which will go well with your coloring.”

  I am dark, like my entire family. Black hair, brown eyes and slightly sallow, just like Father. Like Mother. I’m not fair cheeked and saffron haired like Anette is, and I couldn’t wear the lovely light colors that are on one of the shelves where the silks and taffetas glisten. They’d not only fill with the blackened grime of western living, but they’d never last against the grease and the fires of the smithy.

  “Perhaps the green? Oh, bring down both.” I realize belatedly that I ought to take the advice of both women. I’ve no eye for color, only for design, and hope Anette will continue to take initiative and choose for me. What else are friends for?

  “Yes, of course. And also the blue.” May considers, then climbs the stool to bring down multiple folds of fabric.

  “The blue would do lovely for you. It’s very dark, so it would be practical.” Anette fingers each as May spreads them out.

  I touch them all with the very edges of my fingers, likely the cleanest part of my hands. “Well, that’s fine then.”

  Both women look surprised at my immediate choice, and I look up at their hesitancy.

  “What?”

  Anette chuckles, glances at her children, and then turns to me.

  “Usually there’s much consideration of a new dress, Marie.”

  “It’s a dress.” I shrug, wondering at the price, hoping it will fit under our credit. “And I’m not wearing it to be fine. I’ve no idea of notions either, to be fair. You were the seamstress, Anette. You choose.”

  May stares at me, as if judging whether to be dismissive or helpful. She finally sighs, shakes her head, and begins to cut the bolt. I can’t determine if she’s happy with my choice or thinks I’m not making a very good one. Anette beckons me over to the case of buttons and ribbons.

  “Don’t look so discouraged. Didn’t your mother care about the trimmings?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “But she chose for the both of us.”

  She smiles at me with her own mother’s easy grin, the corners of her eyes curving downward like blue crescent moons.

  “I’ll help you, Marie.”

  I’m grateful for her unencumbered kindness and matching truthfulness, so I let Anette choose the notions while I beg May to put the items on our credit. We walk out together, my package swinging with string from my arm, and each of her little ones licking a horehound sweet.

  “That was a treat,” she tells each of them, a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t tell your big brothers at home.”

  “How many children do you have again?”

  “Five living,” she tells me proudly.

  I consider her. She must be close to my age to be sure, but somehow has given birth many times over and kept so many babes alive. I
’m impressed and a little in awe of her.

  Our steps are light-hearted while we bounce between dry wagon tracks, and I catch up her youngest before we reach the forge. As we walk through the wide doorway, my eyes adjust to the change in light and Thaddeus looks up from his workbench, taking in me, Anette and the children.

  “Keep them out of the back here,” he orders her, and she nods.

  “Of course, Thad. I’ll get them around to Mother to say goodbye.”

  She wordlessly relieves me of my soft goods, and pats me on the shoulder before squeezing it.

  “I’ll see you around, Marie. This was great fun.”

  I cannot answer her, because she is immediately distracted by a child reaching for a hot metal poker. Scooping her baby from my hip, she disappears in a whirlwind of rose skirts and candy.

  My eyes must be large, because Thaddeus smirks at me.

  “Children too much for you?”

  His tease is what my brothers would say, and it loosens my muscles and my worry at the upcoming discussion about the sword.

  “They are,” I admit.

  “So, then. Here it is. The one side is ready and polished,” he reveals, opening up the hides further so I might see the finished piece. It is still breathtaking, and he has obviously felt more confident forming the blade. There’s a straightness to the upper part and a delicate curve to the tapering end. He has formed it well, the metal folded within itself, the weight of it balanced even in my unpracticed palms.

  “I’m too afraid to decorate it,” I tell him truthfully, echoing many discussions we’ve had over the dinner table. “It’s more beautiful than your last.”

  “You must, Marie. It’s your design,” he says firmly. “And as we’ve decided, you won’t be etching it. So, then. What about engraving it as you asked from the start? Or inlay? Or both?” He is eager with his ideas, his energy sudden and compelling.

  “What would you want to inlay?” I wonder. “Bone? Tin? Copper?”

  “You tell me what you’d be most comfortable doing,” he says. “And I’ve spoken to Father about it. He said he’d show you how to do a false damascening—the cross-hatching of the iron and then laying the softer metal in, but I told him that it wouldn’t hold for the pattern.”

  I nod, agreeing, running a finger along the flat end of the blade. “You’re right. Father used to talk to the boys about engraving, and it’s what I’m most familiar with.”

  “It’ll be more expensive for the Captain.”

  “But prettier,” I add. “If I can just get a cavity carved into the iron, and do it at an angle so the metal can be pressed or heated or hammered in, it might stay.”

  Thaddeus gazes at the sword with a mixture of pride and apprehension, and I hope he is not regretting allowing me to work on the piece.

  How can he be so calm? Suppose I ruin it again?

  “I could make you a burin for cutting in,” he tells me suddenly. “And you could do a dovetail profile into the blade to keep the metal from chipping out.”

  I lean over the sword, noting the swirl of steel buried deep inside the iron. “It’d have to be a sharp burin. Then it would be a true damascening.” I look up at him, where he towers over me.

  “It’s not a technique I’m familiar with.”

  “Are you sure you want me to tackle this?”

  “Yes, Marie. And also to finish the inlay to the handle too, with copper wire, horn, or bone at the least. I don’t think Captain Bush wants an old-fashioned saber. Something common, like what the men used in the War between the States.”

  He comes behind me, where I’m wedged against the wall and the bench. “At least I did not need to remake the handle itself, and it’ll be near impossible to ruin it, so you needn’t fret at all.”

  I feel solidness of his body, the brush of his chest on my back, and the brace of his arm curving around mine while he holds himself from toppling. He reaches high up for the handle. His closeness is a strange thing, a comfort, and an odd drop of something more before he moves away from me languidly, casually. I feel a flush spider along my bosom, hidden under the brown flannel.

  It is time I make my exit quickly, my fingers working over the itchy new skin on the backs of my hands. After the day’s mixed activities, I feel more at ease when I’m pressing sheets of copper. The golden-red metal oozes through the machines and the tin puddles along the seams in a way that is comforting and familiar.

  And while I am glad for the money the saber will bring, I am choked by failure. I dread touching it. If the boys had sent more funds home before they died, if the Army had ever followed through, we would be free of most of our debt. Free from need for the sword at all. Whether I wish it or not, my survival now depends on the metal. And the failure of my sword eats at my confidence.

  I still smart from the snide comments of my customers over the past few weeks. I’m not sure what’s worse: Lettie Zalenski and Emma Molhurst’s sniffs or Horeb Harvey’s off-color teasing. While some jest to show their support, others are enjoying my failure, as if it is proof a woman should not be allowed to manage metal. It only makes me wish to hold onto my position harder.

  What would Mother say? I know what I’d wish to hear. “Marya, kochanie. My sweetheart. You’re a smith. You have been for some time, whether you call yourself so or not. You will survive. You will find happiness.”

  Truth and coldness mate in my heart. When Father dies, I will have nothing. Marriage is in my future. And will a husband expect me to set aside my newfound identity? Of course. No right-minded man in Flats Town would want a wife to continue working the machines and smacking copper. He would not even give me the choice. He would expect me to take over his own hearth, to move in with him and give him children.

  Of course I will lose the shop when I marry.

  These thoughts bury themselves in my soul, so I feel frozen, like the ice crystalizing across the top of the stream in winter, with currents hidden and unending below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  2 July 1867

  “Stay within my sight!” Anette begs, causing another pause in our conversation while she instructs the toddling baby. The others have disappeared long ago into the thick deep velvet of the pines on top of the old buffalo jump, but she is somehow not concerned.

  “Are you certain they’ll be alright?” I ask, gazing about the deep green of the woods. In the distance, chattering voices can be heard bouncing off the wide bumpy bark.

  “Of course. They know this area well enough,” Anette dismisses. “And I’ve the older children with them, so they’ll watch out.”

  My mind races, wondering about the wildlife, particularly the mountain lions that would see any of her children as easy prey, but I suppose if Anette isn’t worried, I shouldn’t be either. Perhaps it is a fine thing I have no children to fret over.

  “Now, tell me plain what you’re suspecting of Danny,” she prompts.

  “I think he wishes to ask me to marry him soon,” I admit, saying it aloud for the first time. “And he might have done it sooner, but he wants to do it on his own merit, not as a way to release me from his father’s new rent.”

  “How sweet of him! Danny Svendsen is a catch. And he’s even tried to court you as prettily as the west allows.”

  “I know it,” I tell her, staring up into the waving boughs of the pine trees, my eyes trying to see through the gloom.

  “But …?”

  “Nothing. He is a catch.”

  “Then you should be encouraging him!” she bursts.

  “You sound like Thaddeus. I don’t really know how to flirt, Anette. My brothers never gave any young men a chance to court me, and I’m afraid if I tried now it would come as too forward or too false.”

  “I could have Mother say things,” she offers. “Or I could start some whispers with Harry Turner, so Danny would know your answer to the question.”

  “He ought to be brave enough to ask me without such prompting,” I retort, coming to the realization as I say it. �
��And to know my nature enough to know I will not play the role of blushing, simpering girl for him.”

  Anette shakes her head, following my lead by staring up into the trees. “All men need a little encouragement. How else do you think they know your heart? My own Jacob needed heavy helping to finally ask me.”

  “What did you do, then? To get Jacob to propose marriage?” I ask curiously.

  “I smiled a lot,” she reveals, then pauses and laughs. “Alright, I smiled very specifically at him. And I found ways to be near him, and obviously touched his arm or his hand.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well, I may have eventually mentioned how I favored him above all the other young men in town.” Anette smiles a little foolishly, likely thinking on her wide Polish husband, a man devoted to her, their children and his farm.

  “If that’s not encouragement, I don’t know what is.” I start to chuckle.

  She has the grace to blush. “As I said, he needed a lot of help to know what I wished. You should do the same.”

  I shrug, unable to tell her how relieved I am that Danny is taking his time. If I am to consider a life as a housewife, I wish to be sure I am comfortable doing it. I want to choose, not be forced into it to save my family from money woes.

  If I get just enough money from orders this summer with all the wagon trains coming in, and from the sword, I’m determined to get out from under Percy. Somehow. If I can, I’d have my reputation as a coppersmith and a tin tinker to sustain me so I’ll have no need of a husband. Imagine not touching the copper, or shaping the tin? I find it hard to believe I might ever stop forming metal now.

  “There! Is that a good area?” Anette interrupts my meandering mind by jerking her forefinger into the branches right above her head. She’s almost a head taller than me, so she can see into boughs that I cannot.

  I peer through the long, spicy needles and squint against the shadows.

  “Yes—that’s it!”

  Climbing the lower part of the tree is work for children, but they’ve scattered, so I hike my outer skirt into my waistband and scale it myself. The tang of pine and greenery fills my nose and reminds me of Christmas, though the holiday is still half a year away.