by Julie Weston
C. N. Burns, Photographer
Appointments available on Thursdays and Fridays
222 Leadville Avenue (Bock’s Boarding House)
Ketchum, Idaho
In smaller print at the bottom, she had added “Goldie’s Pies Available.” She had intended placing these cards in Ketchum, but decided to enter one or two businesses along Hailey’s main street to see if she could post her card in the window, with an offer of a discounted photograph. At the same time, she could ask how to get to the Ah Kee residence. But where to begin?
Nellie walked the two main blocks of business, crossed the street, and walked down the other side. All residents probably shopped at the Golden Rule Grocers. Schilling’s Hardware was a possibility but its windows held only dusty mining implements and agricultural small tools, reflecting mostly male customers. Many residents would stop at North’s Dry Goods. Silver Star Furniture with its gold-scripted sign on the door looked like it would appeal to the kind of customer she needed—monied or propertied or both. Someone in the Greenley Shoe Repair, the local bank office, or the pharmacy with a soda fountain might have the information she sought, and she wanted to sit down. Her knees trembled.
A thin man in a black suit, white shirt, and string tie greeted Nell from behind a polished, large oak desk as she stepped into the bank. Although clean-shaven, his face still carried a heavy shadow around his jaw.
“Can I help you?”
“I wondered if I might place this card in your window.” She showed it to him.
He looked through thick glasses at her, his eyes appearing double the normal size. “I see the business is in a boarding house.” He sniffed and his nose wiggled. “Does your husband want to set up business here in Hailey? Ketchum is falling apart. Won’t be long before it’s a ghost town, if the people there don’t use the remaining boards for bonfires.”
Should she tell him she had no husband? She decided not. “We want to begin small, but certainly in the future, we would consider the move.”
“Then I could let you put the card in the window for a while. You won’t last long in Ketchum. And we could work with you on a loan.”
The man probably expected a curtsy for his generosity. “I wondered, too, if you could direct me to the Ah Kee residence?”
The eyes became slits. “Why do you want to see them?” Then he waved his hand. “Of course that’s none of my business.” Still, his tone indicated he wanted an answer. “I always wondered why they stayed when the rest of Chinatown burned down. You’d think they’d go back to their own kind.”
“I want to deliver their photographs to them,” Nellie said, keeping a rein on her tongue. “They were one of my—our first customers.”
“Oh.” The man studied his hand, much plumper than the rest of him. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to have Chinese as customers of your studio. It’ll put off everyone else.” When Nellie said nothing to his advice, he added, “They live near the river along Della Avenue. If I were you, I’d mail the pictures. It’s dangerous in those woods. Who knows what other thieves, kidnappers, and opium-smokers hide out there?”
Nellie nodded and was almost out the door before the man called after her. “Don’t you want to display the card?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
A bell tinkled with the opening door at the repair shop, and the tangy aroma of shoe polish and leather warmed the air. Here, a man peered at her over his glasses and blinked twice. His bulky chest and the nut brown solemnity of his eyes resembled storybook drawings of dwarves, although he was not short. His hands, holding a battered boot, were stained a dark burnt umber and moved surely over the leather. He placed a small nail along the sole and seated it with taps of a hammer. Nellie dropped into the one chair available for waiting customers, relieved to rest. Her chest once again felt tight and full, and she coughed several times.
Three calendars hung on the walls—behind him near a door to the back, next to the cash register, and by a bulletin board to the right of the front door. She looked around for a clock but saw none. Days rather than hours were important to the shoemaker.
“Do you know where I can find the Ah Kees?” She might as well discover immediately if everyone in town hated the Chinese.
“The Ah Kees live near the river.” His voice was much younger than his long gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and used hands suggested. He pointed with the boot. “If you walk down Bullion Street two blocks, turn left, and walk south for three blocks, you’ll run into a path through the trees. Theirs is the only house remaining in the woods.” He placed another nail. “Do you know the Ah Kees?” The question was softly spoken.
“I have photographs to deliver.” She paused. When he said nothing, she continued. “I opened a photography business in Ketchum and they were one of my first customers.” He tapped the nail into place. “Would it be possible to post one of my placards on your bulletin board?” She placed a card next to the boot he was working on. “My name is Nellie Burns.”
“If you will wait—” the shoemaker said, and turned to go through the doorway and out of sight. The walk to the Ah Kees sounded a bit of a distance. Discouragement bent her shoulders, which were stiff from working in the darkroom. The rest of her body felt ill-used from Gwynn Campbell’s attack. She wondered if a huge bruise were growing on her chest because it felt so tender. Even the soft camisole she wore felt like too much weight.
Sammy Ah Kee stepped into the shop from the interior doorway, followed by the shoemaker. “Missee.” He bowed, folding his hands together at his waist.
Nellie stood and bowed as well. She didn’t know whether to pull out the photos because of their private nature. “Hello, Sammy. I have the prints for you. I was going to deliver them to your house. Now, I can deliver them to you.” She proffered the envelope and sat back down, in part because her legs gave way. “I need a ride back to Ketchum. Do you know anyone going that way?” The light in the ceiling seemed to swim from side to side.
“Do you work here?” The shop grew dimmer, and she began to worry if it was going to snow again and how she would return to Ketchum. Asking Sammy to drive her didn’t seem appropriate. He had his job. She could pay him, then remembered that most of the money in her bag came from him or his mother or both, and she giggled. Maybe she could telephone Mrs. Bock and ask if Rosy could come for her. He would probably charge $2.00 each way and be pie-eyed as well. Her mind dithered as she waited for Sammy to answer her question. Both he and the shoemaker continued to stare at her, the one with his hands still folded and the other blinking like a firefly. Her thoughts fluttered. Come summer, she hoped fireflies would light up the Ketchum nights the way they had done in the backyard of her grandparents’ house before it was sold to pay debts. Here, though, the stars were brighter than fireflies.
When the two men hurried to either side of her, lifted her from the chair, and carried her through the doorway into the back of the shop, Nellie could only watch herself from afar. What were they doing? The shoemaker wrapped a blanket around her, binding her arms to her sides, making her feel like a mummy trapped in its threads. What are you doing? she asked, not once, but many times. Neither answered. When they bundled her into a strange automobile with a bed in the back, the brilliant sunlight hurt her eyes and she closed them. The blanket wasn’t enough to warm her nor was the sun. The shoemaker held her so she wouldn’t get loose or call out to passersby while someone drove. It must be Sammy.
Her camera! Nellie struggled to sit up, fight off the sixteen arms holding her tight. Already, the thieves had stolen her camera. Thank god the negatives were safe. Or were they? She couldn’t remember where they were.
“The camera.” A strange voice asked for her camera. Why would anyone else want it? Then she realized it was her own voice. Would opium-smokers be next? So this was how white slavery began.
CHAPTER 22
When Nellie awoke she didn’t know where she was. She lay on her back with a weight on her chest. She smelled of Mentholatum. Af
ter her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she picked out two posts at the end of the bed. Her limbs felt heavy as death and she couldn’t lift either an arm or a hand and wondered for a while if she had arms and hands. Gradually, the heaviness left her and she felt as if she were suspended in a dark place where soft breezes blew and rocked her cradle.
Her mind wandered from image to image: the brilliant blue of Lake Michigan covered with white sailboats that changed to seagulls and flew into the sun; the cozy red muff she’d owned as a child that was lost in one of the moves from place to place; the forest green pinafore she’d sewn and worn to work at Scotto’s, then ruined by spilling developer fluid on it; and, finally, the crags of mountain peaks that transformed into the sharp teeth of a devil. She must escape, she told herself, but nothing in her body responded.
“Are you feeling any better, Miss Burns?” The devil, a woman with hooded eyes, stood beside her.
“Better?” Nellie’s voice croaked. “Where . . . ?”
“You lie in our house.”
A cool, dry hand touched Nellie’s forehead. Only then did she understand that her bed was a pyre, her body a torch. “Hot,” she managed to say, and struggled to grasp the hand to place it on her cheeks or her neck, but no part of her moved.
The presence left and reappeared and something cold covered her face, then slid along her neck, and, after the weight was lifted, it slid along her chest and stomach and down her legs and then her arms. Her dreams changed and she slogged through snow in bare feet, fell over again into icy river water, and stood naked in a snowstorm, shivering so hard she couldn’t seek shelter. Hell was like this. Hot, then cold, then hot again.
The next time Nellie awoke, darkness had lessened and a gray light sifted through a drawn curtain. She rested on the same bed where the corpse of Ah Kee had lain, and a memory of incense mixed with Mentholatum and a deeper remnant of smell that caused her a moment’s twinge. Whatever bonds had held her were gone and she sat up, shifting her legs to the edge of the bed. A long silk shift covered her nakedness. The remembrance of heat and something cool stroking her stirred forgotten feelings, and then she stood on the stack of Oriental carpets, walked carefully to the door so that the spinning quality of the air would not topple her. She opened it and stepped into an empty room.
On the table, where earlier she had noticed three settings, sat her photographs of Ah Kee, as well as the moonshadow enlargements. Her camera pack rested on the floor. A chair was placed in front of the enlargements and a magnifying glass lay alongside. For no particular reason, Nellie had also enlarged the photo of Three-Fingered Jack and it lay there too. She felt detached from it, as though this were someone else’s work. The left hand, with its missing fingers, lay stump side toward the camera. The face, although partially hidden by the ice across the nose and all of one eye, was even more recognizable as Caucasian. At the corner of the photo was the business end of the axe that the hand grasped when Nellie stumbled into the body. The same axe she had gripped later that night. How had someone killed Jack if he had an axe in hand to defend himself? The overturned table . . . There must have been a fight.
The sound of voices accompanied footsteps outside the small house. Nellie looked for a way to escape and saw the back door, but she was dressed only in a shift. Already, she was feeling the chill of the room. She hurried back to bed, leaving the door slightly ajar so she could hear whoever was coming.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t take her to the clinic or the doctor,” a voice said. Nellie’s heart lifted: it was Mrs. Bock.
“She die there.” Sammy’s statement contained no question in it. “Doctors kill.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Bock said. “Everybody died during the flu epidemic. The clinic and doctors didn’t kill them.” Her firm tread stopped by the table. “Where is she?”
Mrs. Ah Kee showed the much larger and taller woman into the room where Nellie had crept back into bed, glad to have blankets around her shoulders again.
“I’m here, Mrs. Bock.” Nellie was so glad to see her landlady, she thought she’d cry, but she willed herself not to burst into tears.
“Did these China—people—hurt you?” Mrs. Bock sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around Nellie, who rested her head on the older woman’s shoulder and tried to think what had happened. All she remembered was being held tight, traveling in a motorcar, being handled like a doll, and waking up once, no, twice.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know what happened.”
Mrs. Ah Kee, still standing by the door, snorted. “Miss Burns collapsed in the store where Sammy works. He and Mr. Green-ley brought her here and I treated her. If they had not done so, she would have died of pneumonia. She is better.” She began to back out of the room.
“Wait, Mrs. Ah Kee. I was ill?” Nellie’s aches and pains and coughs and her strange dizziness in the shoe repair shop finally made sense. “Did you give me opium?”
“I gave you my husband’s nostrum for high fever and pain. You are improving, but you should not be moved.” She looked pointedly at Mrs. Bock and then withdrew.
Nellie lay back against her pillow. Weariness invaded her limbs. “How did you know I was here?”
“When your stuff showed up at the house and you wasn’t with it, I telephoned Mrs. Olsen. She said you’d been to see old Gwynn, then left the next morning without a word. The old reprobate himself is in the hospital all stove up and maybe dying. Land sakes, we’ve been worried. Conductor said you got off the train in Hailey and walked down the road. Last he saw of you.” She patted Nellie’s arm and moved a hank of hair behind her ear. “I called the sheriff and said he had to find you. This was his fault, getting you all upset the other day. He found your trail at the bank where that sharpie said you’d been in looking pale as any ghost and he wouldn’t be surprised if you’d been doped up and kidnapped. Charlie wasn’t buying any of that. Then Mrs. Ah Kee called me up last night. Said you were sick and in her house. I come a running soon as I could. Gladys brought me. She’s waiting outside and has to go to work. Wouldn’t come in.” She leaned close and whispered, “Ah Kee was no stranger to Gladys. Says Mrs. Ah Kee don’t like her.” Mrs. Bock studied Nellie. “Your eyes are still a little shadowy, so I guess it’s right, you been sick. Stick out your tongue.”
Nellie did as she was told.
“Looks a little white still, but getting its pink back. Do you feel safe here?”
Nellie thought about it, nodded her head, and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Mrs. Bock wasn’t there anymore and the room was dark, the door closed with a murmur of voices behind it—the Chinese language spoken by Mrs. Ah Kee and her son on the train. Where had Mrs. Bock gone?
The door opened and Sammy came in with a tray. “Missee hungry?” He laid it on the floor beside the bed, helped Nellie sit up with pillows behind her, and placed the tray on her lap. A delicious meaty aroma floated from the covered dish on the tray and her mouth salivated. In the dish were noodles, broth, chunks of meat, and pale vegetable-like pieces, along with ginger. Two sticks rested beside the dish. Her puzzlement meant something to Sammy because he called in Chinese to his mother, who came in with a ceramic ladle and a fork. “You can use these.”
Nellie accepted the ladle and fork, but then picked up the sticks. Sammy took them from her and showed her how to hold one like a pencil while resting the other one on her fourth finger. She managed to click them together like a bird’s beak, laughing at how awkward her fingers felt.
“Where is Mrs. Bock?” she asked.
“Ketchum. Tomorrow you go home.” Sammy guided her sticks to the piece of meat and helped her grab hold. The first piece plopped onto the tray, but eventually Nellie got one bite and then another into her mouth. The noodles were slippery and she splashed herself as she worked to get several into her mouth at once. The ginger tasted spicy.
Sammy waited patiently while Nellie concentrated on moving noodles from bowl to mouth. He helped her twice, but
otherwise stood silently by, his hands folded at his waist.
“I didn’t know I was sick,” Nellie said and slurped a noodle. “I thought you were kidnapping me and had stolen my camera.”
He bowed.
“I’m sorry. My mother raised me to be open-minded and generous to people. I was neither one to you and the cobbler.” Slurrrp. “You don’t know as much English as your mother.” Nellie didn’t know if this was an offensive thing to say or not.
“Mother live America many years. I live two.”
“Oh.” That was food for thought. Mrs. Ah Kee left her son in China while she came to America. How could she do that? Was she forced to leave him? Those questions were too personal. “Why were you out at Last Chance Ranch the day I was there? I saw you in the trees.”
His smile disappeared. He bowed his head briefly and moved to leave the room.
“Don’t leave, Sammy. Help me solve this mystery. Who killed your father? You must want to know.”
And who killed Jack, unless it was Sammy or his mother? If they did it, they must have known Ah Kee was already dead and he wouldn’t have been buried in the snow. Or maybe Ah Kee had been an evil man and mother and son had killed him, too. What better way to hide a crime? Pretend love for someone and then smash his head in when he least expected it. And who stole Jack from the cabin and threw him in the river? Where did his arm go? Maybe the Tong chopped it off. Full with noodles and meat, she leaned back, wondering what to do with the tray.
There, beyond the foot of the bed, stood Mrs. Ah Kee and Sammy. She hadn’t heard them come in. Indeed, they could have stolen Jack from the cabin and she and Moonie would not have heard a sound.
“Miss Burns. Neither Sammy nor I killed Ah Kee.” Mrs. Ah Kee had once again adopted the familiar lilt to her words. “You murdered two men is what Sammy says.”
“I killed two men? Why in the world would I do that? I—I didn’t even know them. The first I ever saw Jack and Dr. Ah Kee was when they were dead!”
