Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  On our third night in the red wasteland, one of the boys came over for his trade. He had made some wire snares—which wouldn’t be much use on the trail, since you have to leave a snare alone and go back to check it, time and again. On the trail, you’re never in the same place twice, and riding back to check a snare means hours and miles wasted. Still, the workmanship was neat, and I thought maybe the snares would come in handy when we all settled down in the gold fields, so I took them in good faith.

  When our business was concluded, and we occupied ourselves with putting our clothes to rights, I said, “Where are we now, anyway? This place ain’t Montana; I know that much.” I said it as if I was some world-wise traveler, like I could speak with real authority on the topic.

  The boy didn’t fall for my put-on. “Jee-zus,” he said, “you are a dumb little bitch sometimes, Martha Canary. Of course this ain’t Montana. This is Utah Territory. Tomorrow we’ll be in Salt Lake City.”

  I went cold at his words, and didn’t know what to say in response. I’d never looked at a map before, but I was sure Salt Lake must be far from our destination. “Well,” I said, trying to make like I wasn’t terrified all of a sudden, “what’s the gold like in Salt Lake City?”

  The boy hooted while he did up his trousers. “By God, girl, there ain’t a bit of gold in Salt Lake. Nothin’ but Mormons there. We’re bound for California. My pa has a claim on some good farm land. If you got a brain in that ugly head, you’ll stay in Salt Lake ’stead of following us west. The Mormons will find a place for you quick enough.”

  I’d heard all about Mormons and what kind of places they had for girls like me. I wasn’t fixing to be any man’s wife just yet, and I sure didn’t aim to be one wife out of a hundred. I gave that boy such a stare as to tell him exactly what I thought about him.

  “Don’t follow us,” he said. “The desert might not kill you, but it’ll kill those little girls sure enough, and probably your brothers, too. My pa’s too hard to relent and let you back in the wagon. Besides, we’re all getting bored with your mangle and there won’t be no more trades soon. You best think hard before you try the desert with nothing to sustain you.”

  That night I lay awake for a long time in my bedroll. I could hear the little ones sleeping all around me, their breath and their dream-murmurs. I thought of what lay ahead of us, what I might do to make good for my brothers and sisters. Prospecting for gold was out of the question, but I understood by then that we would have made piss-poor prospectors anyhow, with most of us too small to wield a shovel or pan in the streams. Besides, Pa had given our prospecting tools to the wagon train as payment for our passage, and thus far the boys hadn’t traded them back.

  Children have a way of being confident in the face of the unknown. It don’t occur to a child that she might be overmatched or out of luck or even headed right over the precipice of disaster. Children just keep on doing, with might good cheer. That’s the blessing of the young: to blind yourself to the doom that’s coming, to go on as if nothing in the world is wrong. Humans are resilient creatures when we’re young. We don’t learn how to be brittle till age creeps up—till life has knocked us around some, and cheated us dirty, and taught us to doubt and to harbor suspicions.

  So, young and confident as I was, I lined up my options and examined them, as if any was just as likely to work out as all the others. Taking up as a wife to some Mormon fella was right out of the question. Wifing hadn’t agreed with my mother; I was determined not to make the same mistake. I reasoned I’d find some place to work, and just like that, I’d get a little house for the children and me, and send Cilus and Lije off to school. That was how adults did it, when they had children to care for—or that was how respectable adults did it, I was given to understand. My parents had been somewhat less than respectable, so reason told me that if I wanted to care for my brothers and sisters properly, all I had to do was whatever my ma and pa wouldn’t have done themselves.

  The only difficult part would be finding work. I was a big, strong girl, but I was still young, and I suspected I might have a trial, trying to convince some boss to let me tend tables at a restaurant or wash in a laundry. Certainly, I would need to find myself a dress that went all the way down to my ankles, if anyone was to take me seriously and believe I could do a grown woman’s work. I couldn’t sew and had no money for cloth, besides—but dresses could be borrowed from those Christianly sorts of ladies, the ones who take pity on struggling orphans.

  I was damn sure I wouldn’t work as a hostess in a saloon or as a dance-hall girl. The boys from the wagon train was one thing, but full-grown men, drunk and stinking of whiskey—maybe mean into the bargain—was another thing altogether. Besides, once I reached Salt Lake City, such carryings-on would be unforgivable in a girl of my age. I was dead set on giving my brothers and sisters a regular life, a chance for respect and dignity some far-off day when we was all grown up. God might have taken our parents for reasons only He knew, but that didn’t mean the Canary children had to consign themselves to perfect waifdom.

  I lay beside the dying embers of our fire, staring up at the night sky. The stars shone pale silver, crowded into every patch of blackness. I imagined the city would be like that: people everywhere you looked, packed in tighter than the stars. In those uncountable thousands of women and men, there must be someone who would offer me honest work. With my luck, I told myself, it’ll be laundry for sure. But the prospect didn’t trouble me over-much. I hated laundry, but if it was a path that would allow all us Canarys to forge ahead together, I was determined to wash and wring and scrub till my hands was chapped bloody, and never mind the pain.

  Next morning, some time before noon, we followed the wagon train up to the crest of a long, gradual rise. As we climbed, three of us to a horse, we could see nothing beyond the top of that hill save for blue sky, cloudless and stretching on forever, its belly tickled by the tops of the thin, wiry grass that grew in desert sand. But by the time we reached the crest, it seemed all the world lay spread out before us.

  I reined my horse to a stop. Cilus did the same, on the gray mare with Lije and Isabelle sitting a-front and behind him. We set and stared down at the valley in silence, and my mouth fell open far enough that I could have caught gnats for my supper. The sun dazzled on a great body of water, a hundred times wider than any river I had seen. It stretched almost to the horizon, and where it should have met the sky in a hard line, there was only the softness of haze, a shimmer blending water and earth and air into one rippling band of blue. The far-off peaks of mountains rose from that mobile blueness, and they was blue, too, but darker than the sky and the haze, and their jagged tops shone pale with snow.

  Cilus said, “Is that the ocean?”

  I shook my head. We hadn’t gone all the way to California, and besides, the ocean was big enough that you couldn’t see any mountains across’t it. I didn’t know much about travel, or the world at large, but I knew that much, at least. The water we stared at, though—close in and well advanced of the blue shimmer—was as golden as any thief could please. Against that near-endless plain of perfect smoothness, the sunlight was so bright it made my eyes ache. I had to squint to look down at the water. It made me long for the gold fields Pa had promised us in Montana.

  “This is as good as we’ll get,” I told the children. “That’s the only field of gold we’ll ever see.”

  Salt Lake City lay below us, arrayed on the nearest shore. It was big, with great stone-and-brick buildings that seemed almost white against the brown-gray of desert. From our vantage we could see green patches of garden and farm, like patches on a quilt amid the buildings. After our long and weary travels, and the deprivations of the trail, those gardens gave me a mighty upwelling of hope. A real craving for carrots, too, pulled straight from the ground, still tasting of damp soil. From up high, the city made me feel properly calm and collected, for it was laid out in perfect squares, neat and broad with no funny angles or roads running askew. The whole place seemed to
speak of order and comfort—everything was well in hand. Salt Lake City seemed to promise an end to all weariness and despair—and I had brought us to that welcome all on my own, without any disaster falling, unless you count Pa’s death.

  The wagon train was already snaking down the hill toward the city, rocking along the deep-rutted road. The oxen tossed their heads and shortened their strides almost to a stagger, and leaned back to brace the weight of the burdens they bore. The Canarys would find slow going if we stayed behind the fat man’s wagon. A thinner path, not much more than a deer trail, broke away from the main road.

  “Come on,” I said to Cilus.

  I kicked my horse and turned his head toward that narrow trail. Cilus followed close behind. I didn’t even glance at the wagon train as we took our leave. Not one of the children raised their hands in farewell, neither. We was all glad to be done with that pack of heartless bastards. Glad never to see those boys again, never to work another trade. A better future lay ahead. We could see it now, golden as the promise of Montana, shining and warm in the sun.

  All this talk has made my throat dry. Pour us another whiskey, Short Pants. I always liked whiskey best of all the spiteful spirits.

  I heard a preacher say that once: spiteful spirits. He told me I oughtn’t to drink, and maybe he was right, but I’ve done a powerful lot of things I oughtn’t to have done, including what I did with that preacher. He paid me with silver, and with another sermon about how I oughtn’t to fornicate for money. I wonder if anybody ever sermoned him over his own sins.

  Understand, I don’t mean to make light of my wrongs. I do feel them still. They drag at me; they hold me here, when I should have left this place long ago. The trading with the boys from the wagon train—that was no sin. But once we reached Salt Lake City, that was the moment when I fell from the narrow ledge of grace.

  Another whiskey. Then I’ll talk on.

  It took near an hour to descend the hill and find our way to the heart of the city. The roads was so broad that each one seemed like a plain itself, a vastness long and intimidating to cross. And the buildings! I’d never seen any structures so fine or new back in Princeton, Missouri. Everything made out of brick or wood was fresh and pure. Everything made from stone was pale, clean as a scraped bone. But bones are left over when something is long dead, and Salt Lake City was new, thriving—growing up fast as dandy-lions in a field.

  I had been right enough about the stars. There was at least as many folks in that city as points of light in the nighttime sky, but unlike stars, the people never held still. Crowds flowed around us like water—men with great beards spilling down their chests and women in long dresses of joyless colors with high collars and sleeves near down to their fingertips. Not a one of them looked at us. We was six children packed like panniers onto the backs of two tired old horses; one child an infant not old enough to speak her first words, and coughing something terrible, besides. And not one person looked. They simply parted and moved around us. They gave us berth, but couldn’t be troubled to see our need. That was when the truth first struck me: It would prove harder than I had supposed to find a long dress or a job, or even a crust of bread for the little ones to eat. In the maze, in the canyons of the city, we were of as much consequence as twigs swept along on a river’s current.

  We wandered up one great street and down another, crossing and re-crossing the neat squares of the town. We passed a restaurant with gentlemen and ladies seated behind its rippled glass window, talking over the pretty white plates that held their food, so clean and shiny and small. A rich, warm smell of something baking drifted from the restaurant’s door, and all at once the children began to complain of their hunger. We still had some provisions left in our flour sack, enough to pinch by for a few more days. But we had found our destination—the place we must accept as our new home, or so I thought at the time—and I thought a kind of celebration was in order.

  I slid down from my horse’s saddle and passed his reins to Cilus. “Ride up and down this street,” I told him, “and don’t cross over into any other road. You’ll see me again when I’m ready.”

  Then I set off on foot. Salt Lake was grand in its newness, but I reasoned it must operate about the same as Princeton did. I was right. Without much trouble, I found the alley that led to the back of the restaurant, and there beside a green-painted door stood several tin pails, exactly the type pig farmers set out for eateries to drop their slops into. It was the work of a few moments, to pick through the discarded bits and find a few half-eaten rolls. The bread had soaked up the foul-smelling juice of the slops, but only here and there. I pulled the soggy parts away, leaving whatever was soft and sweet intact, then stuffed the rolls in my dirty pockets and made off with my prize before I could be spotted and hollered at. In those days I feared a hollering as only a thirteen-year-old girl can do.

  I waited outside the restaurant till Cilus re-appeared, walking the horses slowly along the road and encouraging Lena to sing in her high, sweet voice, which was sometimes the only way to keep Isabelle and Sarah from fussing. Lena sang, “Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching!” and it made a funny counterpoint to the slow, head-down plodding of the horses and my two young brothers looking so worn out and tired. But when they saw me, they all perked up some, even the horses.

  “I got us something special,” I told them.

  Cilus said, “I found a green place down yonder, at the end of the street. A field or maybe a graze, but there ain’t no fence around it.”

  “If there’s no fence, then it’s public property.” I spoke as if I knew exactly what I was talking about, even though at just-barely-thirteen I was ill-versed in law—even worse than I am now.

  I walked alongside the horses; my legs was grateful for a stretch. We found Cilus’s field, a grassy lot between two fenced gardens. No one had yet built upon the lot, and it was tangled up with all kinds of weedy growth. The weeds made an acceptable screen. We sat down together in the welcoming coolness of long grass. It was powerful good not to feel the steady rock of a horse beneath you for a time. Gratefully, we rolled among the thick growing things, the tender leaves and soft clover, while the horses grazed and seemed content. Everyone felt we had come to a good place—everyone except me, but I didn’t let on about my doubts. I didn’t want to trouble the little ones till I knew I had no other choice—till I had proof that all hope was lost.

  I took the bread from my pockets. The children exclaimed over their surprise. Lena, who hadn’t yet learned to be hard and mean, pinched off bits to feed the horses and whispered praises as they ate. The horses nodded their heads, as if to say, “Yes mam, that bread is mighty good.” We all savored the rolls in rapturous silence. None of us had tasted bread in weeks, you see, except the poor flatcakes I made out of plain flour and crick water along the trail. Those flatcakes don’t count because they hadn’t any leavening, and tasted like mud besides. But those slop-bucket rolls was about as delicious as a bride’s wedding cake. I hadn’t the nerve to tell my brothers and sisters I had fished them out of pails meant for pigs’ feed. Privately, I thought it didn’t matter. If pigs ate like kings in Salt Lake City, then once I found a bit of work, the Canarys would be living high as hogs, too.

  That overgrown lot went deep, stretching back between gardens and houses till it snugged up against the steep foot of a sage-covered hill. When our bread was all gone, I clambered up on my weary legs and waded back into the tangle of grass. There was a few cottonwoods below the hill, just at the edge of our lot, and we made our camp there, far from the road. I ground-tied the horses and let them graze while Cilus rolled out our flat, dirty beds beneath the trees. Lije found a trickle of a crick and filled our skins with water, and for the first time since leaving home, we went without a fire as the sun set and evening came on. What did we have to fear, now that we was surrounded by people instead of the great arching cage of loneliness, the emptiness of prairie sky?

  Next morning, I rose early and stood still beneath the cotto
nwoods, listening to the city waking. I could hear roosters calling from the yards of distant homes, and the ringing of a hammer, repetitive and sharp, echoing down the long empty stretch of cobblestones. A faint rattle of cart wheels sounded from some unseen lane. I heard it over the swish of our horses’ tails and the wind moving gently through the leaves. In the bedroll next to Lena, Baby Sara coughed in her sleep. Her cough had picked up a fearful rasp with a sort of gurgle at the end. I didn’t like the sound of it, not one bit.

  I made my way through the grassy lot to the edge of the street. A horse would have got me around faster, but I figured a horse would make me look more prosperous than I was, too, and would somewhat diminish my useful air of patheticness. Without a horse, I might expect a Christian soul to be moved by my sad state of affairs—assuming I could find a soul to look right at me, rather than turning a blind eye, as they all had done the day before.

  I came across a laundry shop first thing, right on the edge of town. Laundries used to be on the edge of town in those days, Short Pants—the lye smelled fearful, and high-living folks didn’t take to it well. This laundry was just opening its doors for the day. It was run by a little Chinese lady who didn’t look especially old in the face, but all the same, she had the air of a grandmother about her. Maybe her small stature gave me that impression, or maybe it was the slight bend to her back. It’s terribly hard work, you know, washing day in and day out, from sun to sun. You’re stooped over the tubs all the time, and if you have occasion to straighten your spine and take a stretch, it’s a miracle worthy of celebration.