The Radical Element

by Jessica Spotswood

  Ray hadn’t been able to read or write when Mrs. Lowry took her in, so the woman had read the message to her. Despite the fact that Ray couldn’t remember any family, she was immediately convinced the note was from her parents. As far back as she had memories, she’d been scavenging along the shores of the Colorado, but perhaps before that, they’d been separated while seeking out gold, Ray left behind in a tragic accident.

  “I don’t think it’s addressed to you,” Mrs. Lowry was always reminding her. “I call you Ray ’cause you treasured that clipping, that’s all. It don’t mean nothing.”

  But to Ray it meant everything. She had to believe that there was more out there for her, that she had family waiting. That if she went to San Francisco, she would find them. But Mrs. Lowry maintained that Ray had been roaming the river long before the Yankee argonauts descended on the southern trail like locusts, and that it was far more likely Ray was a Sonoran — a Mexican, orphaned by the war with the Americans — and that she was looking for family in places she would never find it.

  Ray could see the logic in Mrs. Lowry’s theory, and yet she was unable to fully accept it. If her newspaper clipping was only a piece of paper — something she’d happened upon as a child and picked up by chance — what future did she have? Yuma Crossing wasn’t her home. It was a festering hellhole of insufferable heat, no better than living on the devil’s doorstep. It was just a place she was stuck.

  “I’m begging you to reconsider,” Mrs. Lowry said, regarding Ray sadly. “Passing as a boy for the whole expedition will be impossible, and you make fair money working for Johnson right here. Do not gamble it away.”

  “I ain’t gambling and I’m not gonna lose,” Ray snapped. Mrs. Lowry gave her an all-knowing look, and Ray’s patience sizzled. “Mark my words, I’m gonna disappear one of these days. I’m gonna vanish like magic!”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” Mrs. Lowry deadpanned, “to not have to live by the rules of reality.” Her tone was cheerful, but her expression sour. Ray couldn’t figure if Mrs. Lowry was sad that Ray believed in such wishful thinking or disappointed that she, herself, could not.

  Magic was real, Ray had learned. It could inspire. It could trick. It could save. It provided an escape from the dark, grueling, unfair nature of the world.

  The catch was that magic demanded respect. Without believing in it, magic would get you nowhere.

  So Ray had practiced and perfected and practiced more, until she trusted her fingers and felt magic flowing in her veins. That was when she started conning at cards. And now she’d pull one last con aboard the General Jesup, and then she’d disappear forever.

  Ray and Mrs. Lowry ate stewed oysters, the cracking shells filling the silence between them.

  “It ain’t you,” Ray said finally, unable to stand the quiet a moment longer. “This is just something I gotta do for myself. I gotta try to find my family, or I’ll be spending my whole life wondering if maybe they’re waiting for me, too. You get that, don’t you, Mrs. Lowry?”

  The woman patted her mouth with a napkin. “Of course, dear. And you can call me ‘Ma,’ you know.”

  It was not the first time Mrs. Lowry had suggested this. Ray was grateful for all the woman had done, and sometimes she truly did think of her as a mother, but Ray couldn’t bring herself to say the word. How cruel would it be to Mrs. Lowry when Ray only planned to disappear? Still, there was a part of Ray that also worried it was cruel to withhold it.

  It had been an insufferable July afternoon when Mrs. Lowry chose Ray over her husband. Ray had been in the kitchen, scrubbing burnt beans from the bottom of a cast-iron pot.

  “’Course you don’t care about giving me a son!” Mr. Lowry had yelled from the mess. “You got that pet rat to fawn over.”

  Ray froze, standing still as a statue. The couple argued so often over children that Ray was starting to suspect Mrs. Lowry was barren.

  “Don’t talk about Ray that way,” Mrs. Lowry had countered.

  “She ain’t our kid. She’s a bit of filth using us. Turn her out.”

  “No.”

  “Turn her out or so help me —”

  “So help you what? You’ll leave? Abandon us? Frankly, that might be a blessing!”

  Skin struck skin, and Ray’s eyes went wide. She was used to their arguments. They happened nearly every time Mr. Lowry lingered in the mess after a meal to discuss something with his wife. But he had never struck her.

  “Get out,” Mrs. Lowry said, so low Ray had to strain to hear.

  “If I go, I ain’t coming back,” he threatened.

  “Good! We don’t need you. Go!”

  A door slammed so hard, a stack of dirty dishes rattled. For a moment, the mess was eerily quiet. Then came Mrs. Lowry’s crying.

  That was the day they’d left to create their own home on the opposite side of the river. It was also the first day Mrs. Lowry had asked Ray to call her “Ma.” Every day since, she’d failed to. Every week since, she’d given that horrible man a half-dollar for his silence and cooperation.

  Now Ray dunked her sourdough bread in her tea and pulled her gaze up to meet Mrs. Lowry’s. She was opposite Ray in almost every way: fair hair to dark, pale skin to brown, curves and plumpness to wiry muscle.

  “It’s just that I don’t belong here,” Ray said. “I ain’t like the Yankees, but I ain’t like the Sonorans, neither. I don’t fit with the boys at the Company, not truly, but I also don’t fit with girls. I don’t fit in nowhere, and I gotta go somewhere I might.”

  “You fit here with me,” the woman said softly.

  Ray fit with Mrs. Lowry fine in this house, where there were no secrets and Ray could be herself without fear of consequence. But not in public, not if she wanted a life beyond these walls, and passing as a boy wouldn’t be possible forever. What would she do when the ruse was up? What future did she have? The beds of civilization shifted in favor of men. Ray could be swept in the direction of their choosing or try to carve her own course. And by God, Ray was going to try.

  Come dawn, Ray stood before the banks of the Colorado, a small bag of supplies slung over her shoulder.

  The General Jesup was a beauty of a steamboat, capable of carrying fifty tons of freight on just thirty inches of water and making the trip from estuary to fort in a lightning-quick five days. Granted, she was nothing like the grandiose steamers that navigated the Mississippi back east. The General Jesup had only one deck. She was greatly exposed to the elements, little more glamorous than a flatboat. But even still, Ray felt pride looking at the side-wheeled steamer. It was no easy feat to navigate the Colorado, and the General Jesup had proved her mettle countless times over. Now it was a question of if she could prove it heading north.

  “You too, Rat?” a voice said.

  She turned to see Joe approaching, a Colt holstered on his hip. Carlos and the Bartlett twins hurried after him, each sporting their own pieces. Mr. Johnson had said to come armed, and Ray suddenly felt foolish for the lone knife in her boot. She should have asked Joe for advice. From the day she started working for the Company, he’d always been willing to give it.

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I didn’t think rats liked water,” Carlos teased.

  “You forget I ain’t actually a rat.”

  “That ain’t been proven,” he said, and scurried aboard the steamer, the Bartlett twins sniggering at his heels.

  “Just get up there quick,” Joe said, pointing at the deck, “and make ’em eat their words.” Then he winked at her before following the others.

  He’d been winking like that since the day they met.

  She’d been eleven. Her previous employer had left the river, and Mr. Johnson had agreed to take Ray on despite the fact that much of the freight was still beyond her strength.

  “You gotta lift with your legs,” Joe had called to her as she struggled with a crate. He looked about fourteen or fifteen and was lean like Ray, but clearly stronger. He squatted to retrieve his own crate and stood
with such seemingly little effort, Ray wondered if the case was full of feathers, not flour.

  “Thanks,” she’d muttered, too shy to admit she’d been given this advice ages ago and always tried to apply it.

  He winked reassuringly. “No problem, Rat.”

  “It’s Ray,” she’d corrected.

  His brows pitched up. Probably he’d already heard another stevedore use the nickname. “Well, just holler if you need help.”

  “Who do I holler for?”

  “You call for me. I’m saying I’ll lend you a hand.”

  “Yeah, I got that. I meant, what’s your name?”

  “Joe,” he’d said, smiling brashly. “I’m Joe Henry.”

  How nice, she’d thought, to have two first names when she barely had the one.

  Later he’d shown her a variety of tricks for surviving as a stevedore, plus introduced her to Carlos, who had skin as brown as Ray’s. By the end of the day, she felt like one of the boys.

  They went on calling her Rat, but Ray had decided years ago that it was a small price to pay to feel like she belonged. Besides, Joe made it all bearable. He would never imply that she actually was a rat, like the other stevedores sometimes did. To him, it was just a name, and that wink had become a silent encouragement, a secret handshake. I got your back, it said. She was lucky to have a friend like Joe Henry.

  Ray squared her shoulders to the General Jesup and hurried aboard.

  Fifteen soldiers from Fort Yuma and nearly as many civilians crowded the deck. Mr. Johnson shouted orders, anxious to set out. The boiler was loaded. Pistons fired and smoke belched from the stack. As paddles turned, muddying the Colorado, the General Jesup departed — not to the south, as she typically did, but to the north.

  Next time Ray set foot on a boat, it would be bound for San Francisco.

  She stood at the stern and watched Fort Yuma grow smaller.

  Besides the narrow canyon that the General Jesup passed through a few days after departing, the river above the fort was not all that different from the river below. It roamed and meandered through lengthy valleys, flanked by shores of mesquite and cottonwoods. Rancherías were visible on occasion; corn, bean, and melon patches peppering the banks. The rapids Mr. Johnson initially feared seemed all but nonexistent to Ray. Droves of sandbars proved just as dangerous, making navigation slow and tedious.

  Besides a few of her fellow stevedores, Ray didn’t know most of the men who’d signed on for the expedition, but she quickly decided the soldiers were as good as useless. They spent their days lounging on the deck, believing their responsibilities limited to security and defense only, and so Ray often found herself at the bow with Joe and Carlos, shouting out warnings of shoals as they appeared upriver. An old civilian named Paulino Weaver joined them on occasion. He knew the river from his days as a trapper, and only a Yuma chief the Yankees called Pascual seemed to know the land better. Paulino had a broad smile and spoke to Ray like she was an adult, not a child of fifteen, and she was quick to decide that she liked him quite much.

  Still, Ray found herself longing for home. Even smack in the middle of a noisy stretch of establishments, neighbored by a saloon on one side and a butcher on the other, Mrs. Lowry’s place had offered privacy. It had been Ray’s escape from reality, the only place where she didn’t have to pretend, and she hated to admit that Mrs. Lowry had been right. It was damn near impossible to keep up her con aboard the General Jesup.

  Ray’s only reprieve came twice a day — around noon and then again in the evening — when Mr. Johnson ordered the steamer moored so the crew could gather fuel. It was brutal, backbreaking work, and Ray was grateful for her thick work gloves, which protected her hands from vicious mesquite thorns and prickers. But she could relieve herself without fear, and she could think clearly in those quiet moments of solitude.

  Each evening, after wood had been gathered and dinner eaten, Ray felt sharp and springy, reenergized. As bedrolls were rolled out, she’d draw her cards and put on a show of dramatic shuffles and passes. Drawn by her flair, the soldiers would wander into a game, and tempted by the pot, they’d stay. Some nights, even Joe and the stevedores would join in, perhaps out of boredom. The expedition was getting rather tedious, and the money they were slated to earn from it made a game or two against Ray worth the risk.

  Regardless of her opponents, Ray always made sure to lose occasionally, but for the most part, her pockets grew heavy with winnings.

  About two weeks into their journey, the General Jesup entered its second canyon and spent the evening moored in shadowy waters. Men stretched out in bedrolls took up most of the deck, so poker was played on land. Joe, Carlos, the Bartlett twins, Weaver, and Ray were deep in a game on the rocky shoreline, and Ray was consistently losing hands she expected to win. Joe was on such a hot streak that by the time Weaver and the twins retired for bed, Ray was nearly broke.

  “You been doing awfully good tonight,” she said.

  “Luck,” Joe replied. “Same as you on your winning streaks, I reckon.”

  He winked, but Ray wasn’t buying it. Joe was never this lucky. He tried to throw players off with his theatrical expressions but always overcompensated. Any smile meant his hand was worthless. A deep frown meant his cards were solid, if not great. He was easy to read, and Ray had never lost to him unintentionally. At least not before tonight.

  Carlos folded and Ray regarded her hand.

  “I’m telling ya, you should fold,” Joe warned. A rolled cigarette bobbed between his teeth as he gave her a dimpled smile.

  It was his deal and the lantern did little to brighten their playing area, let alone make it easy for Ray to count cards. She had only the slightest guess at where the face cards sat within the deck, but her hand was too good to quit. With another king or jack, she’d have a full house. Without it, she still had a two-pair — two jacks and two kings. She met Joe’s wager.

  He replaced the single card she slid forward for a trade, then traded two of his own. As he dealt out their replacements, Ray caught it — how Joe drew the first card from the top of the deck but skimmed a second off the bottom. It was not a smooth sleight, nothing like how Ray could pad and stack the deck without a fumble. But in the dim lighting, with the canyon walls towering around them and Ray shrugging low inside her jacket to ward off the cold, her guard had been down.

  Her hand flew out, closing over Joe’s wrist. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The cigarette sagged as his gaze dipped to where her dark fingers had closed over his flannel.

  “I told you, Joe,” Carlos muttered. “I told you you were gonna get caught. Rat’s too good not to spot somebody chiseling.”

  “He’s too good, period,” Joe shot back, his eyes never leaving Ray’s.

  He suspected her of cheating, too. Her pulse beat wildly between her ribs. Joe held his chin high, but he always oozed confidence. The truth was in his eyes, crinkled at the corners, tense with fear. He didn’t want to be revealed as a cheat any more than she did. Bad things happened to cheats — things involving fists and bullets. And they didn’t know half the expedition crew. There was no way of guessing how they might react.

  “How about you just surrender the pot, and we’ll call it a night,” she said slowly. “I won’t tell the crew you been cheating, and you’ll still be able to play the rest of the journey, maybe win back what I’m taking here.”

  “Sounds like a fair deal, Rat.” He pried her fingers from his wrist. Then he leaned across the cards and coins, so close that his nose nearly touched hers. “You keep my secret,” he whispered, “and I’ll keep yours.”

  He stalked toward the steamer with Carlos, and Ray shook out her hand, flexing her fingers. She sat there on the cold rocks, shuffling the deck until her breathing steadied.

  The deck of the General Jesup had never seemed so crowded. Joe now constantly sought Ray out to discuss the art of padding a deck or counting cards or manipulating a shuffle, and the steamer seemed to grow smaller each day.
>
  To avoid having to relieve herself often, she drank and ate little while on the river. The weak winter sun and mild temperatures were a blessing, yet she still battled dizziness from dehydration. When the captain called for fuel, Ray went farther to gather it, relieving herself only when she felt she was truly alone. On the rare occasion that she needed to see to her business aboard the General Jesup, she’d take the chamber pot and disappear behind the howitzer and freight, going as fast as possible and then dumping the contents into the river just as quick, lest Joe show up in time to question why she refused to piss while standing on the lip of the steamer like a normal fellow.

  On the evenings that the crew had time for cards, she refrained from dramatic shuffles or sleight of hand. Part of her wished to quit playing altogether, but that would only look more suspicious, so she settled for taking in smaller pots. All the while, Joe watched her fingers dealing and shuffling and cutting the deck. He was only looking for proof that she cheated, too, to improve his own lackluster skills, but Ray began to worry. What if he uncovered her other secret? How would the crew feel to have been cheated by a girl? How would Mr. Johnson react to learning he’d been deceived all those years?

  Ray could be tossed aside, left on the banks to starve, or worse.

  She shook the thought aside. Those fears might be justified if any other member of the crew discovered her secret — Carlos or the twins or one of the soldiers — but she could trust Joe. He didn’t make jokes about her nickname, after all, or treat her like a rat. And for her first two years with the Company, Joe had made sure to handle her heaviest freight so she didn’t appear to be falling behind.

  Her thoughts drifted back to the first day they met. Ray had skipped home from the river to tell Mrs. Lowry all about her new friends, but instead of being pleased for her, the woman had put down her knitting to give Ray a stern glance.