Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  This Chinese lady didn’t speak the language too good, but she made her meaning clear without any trouble. She had been propping open her shop door with a wedge of wood, but when she saw me coming up the sidewalk with a hopeful smile on my face she said, “You get away, you dirty girl!”

  I looked down at my dress, my ankles showing plain beneath the short hem. Both hem and boots was grimy, more grayish-brown than whatever color they had originally been. My boots was in a dreadful poor state, too, even if you didn’t account for the dirt. Scuffs had paled the toes and worn almost clear through the leather. My soles had ground away, uneven from walking countless miles along that rutted trail. I must have looked a pure fright.

  She said, “I got nothing! I want no beggars here. Got nothing to give you, so go away! Go away!”

  I said, “Mam, I am not looking for a handout—only a job. I’m stronger than I look, and I can work real hard, and I got experience doing laundry. Please take me on. I need the job real bad.”

  “You are too dirty,” she said.

  “I’ll get clean if I stick my arms in a tub of hot water while I’m washing up the shirts.”

  I guess she took my answer for sauce, though I never intended it. That little old laundress grabbed something from inside her shop’s door and came at me like a whirlwind, so fast she might have been an arrow shot from a bow. I saw that she held a stout, smooth-worn bat in her hands, the kind you use to smack a ball of wet cloth and beat all the grime out of it. She raised it up over her head as she flew toward me.

  “I only want a job!” I hollered, backing away.

  “Get out, you dirty girl, get out!”

  I felt my only course was to run away as fast as my legs would take me. I darted across the street, and by a twist of luck a wagon rumbled past at that moment, which put a barrier between the laundress and me. I’m certain to this very day that she would have bludgeoned my brains right out of my head if she’d-a caught me.

  On the other side of the road I found a bakery opening its door and rolling up the shutter of its paned window, and the wholesome, clean smell of fresh-baked bread drifted out like a cloud of glory. But the baker didn’t need to scowl at me twice. After I saw the forbidding squint of his eyes, I thought better of asking for work and kept on walking, brisk as I could, pretending I had no designs to speak with him, except for a “Morning, sir,” which was only polite.

  Next I found a dry goods store with bins of nails and seed and fabrics of all kinds lining the walls high up where dirty children couldn’t touch, and a great big jar of bright-colored hard candies on the counter, sparkling like a king’s crown. How I wished I had a few pennies to my name, so I could have brought some candies back for the kids. The shopkeeper was a fat, white-haired fella with a beard like a hill of snow and a smart pair of specs over his sharp little eyes. He looked at me, silent and skeptical, when I stepped through his door. I have no doubt that he could tell just by looking that I was penniless. But I spoke up at once and stated my need, so he wouldn’t suspect me of trying to pinch his goods.

  “I’m in real sore need of work. Can you give me a job, sir?”

  He told me in no uncertain terms that minding shop wasn’t a fit occupation for anybody who had never kept books, nor a body who didn’t know how to make change nor run fractions in their head. I didn’t even know what the hell a fraction was. There was no need for me to admit I wasn’t qualified for the work; the shopkeep could tell by the way my face fell.

  But he was a kindly sort of man, despite his suspicious glances upon my appearance inside his store. He took a grandfatherly pity on me, and advised me to inquire at the eateries down the way and at the hotel, which was near the big white half-built temple standing at the heart of town. He said the hotel sometimes hired girls my age to wait at tables, and he heard they paid fifteen dollars a month.

  “But,” he said, “you really ought to clean yourself up before you go a-calling in any more shops, young lady. No one will like the idea of letting a ball of mud such as yourself roll through their establishment, tumbleweed-fashion.”

  I said, “Mister, thank you kindly for the advice, but I got no place to clean myself up in. My ma and pa are both dead, and I got five little ones to look after all by myself, and we only just arrived in Salt Lake City.”

  The shopkeep looked real sorry then. “Lord God,” he said, “but it’s a cruel world, and no mercy for the little children.”

  He led me around out back of his shop, into an alley not unlike the one where I found the buckets of pig slops. A tin spout ran up the side of the brick building, clear to the roof, and below it was a rain barrel with a tight-fitted lid. Utah Territory didn’t look to me as if it received much rain, but somehow this man had collected whatever drips and drops fell in days long past. He pushed aside the spout and pried the lid off the barrel. The barrel was almost as high as my shoulders. It was full near to the top with rain. The water smelled of mold and moss.

  “It’s no good for drinking,” he said, “but all the dirt and bugs settle to the bottom. I scoop some out as needed, to clean the tools folks bring me to sell or trade. You can wash your face and hands here, and clean up your boots as best you can. There’s not much you can do about your dress, I suppose.” Then, before he went back inside his shop, he pulled a tortoiseshell comb from his pocket and laid it on the edge of the barrel so I could neaten the black rat’s nest of my hair.

  It took me a long while to sluice weeks of grime from my body. First I did my legs, pulling off my boots and my drawers, hiking my stiff, torn skirt up to throw it over my shoulder. There was no one in the alley but me; however, at that point I was beyond caring if anybody saw my bare behind. The old rain water stank, but it was pleasantly cool against my skin and oh, the feel of weeks’ worth of dirt and toil and shame and sorrow running off my hide! I cupped handful after handful of water and rubbed and splashed and watched the brown rivulets race away through the cracks between cobblestones. When my legs was as clean as I thought they was ever like to be, I unbuttoned the top of my dress, just as I had done when trading with the wagon boys, and reveled in the washing of my arms and chest and face.

  I had nothing to wash my hair with, but I wetted it down with rainwater and worked out all the tangles with the shopkeeper’s comb. I had no mirror to see my handiwork. The barrel was too dark, its water too ripply to offer up a serviceable reflection. I patted my head with my hands and satisfied myself that my hair was passably smooth.

  Then I went back inside to return the kindly man’s comb. I told him, “I put the top back on your barrel, Mister, and returned the spout so you needn’t worry that you won’t catch the next rain that comes through.”

  He said, “Young miss, I am no Mormon—but perhaps it’s fortunate you’ve found yourself in Mormon country. The womenfolk of these parts have a certain organization. They call it the Female Relief Society, and they make it a special mission to look out for the downtrodden. I have heard tell that they take particular pains over orphans. You might seek them out. I think they may be of some use in your predicament.”

  I don’t know why, but something rebellious rose up inside me when I heard the shopkeeper’s words. Maybe it was only because I was washed and combed and feeling more like myself. Or maybe something in me didn’t like the thought of turning the remnants of the Canary clan over to the keeping of religious women. I had only ever known religious women to be like Mrs. Sowders back in Princeton—that sour neighbor with the screeching naked child clinging to her skirt. I had contrived to bring us this far on my own, without the meddling of any religious types. Now I was set and determined to pull us back up to our feet—all six of us, whatever it might cost me to do it. I didn’t like being called downtrodden, neither, when I had trod all across the plain and survived.

  I thanked the man sincerely for his kindness, but I left that shop bound and determined to avoid the Female Relief Society at all costs. Now that my body was clean, if not my dress, I would find a job waiting tables.
I knew I could keep the family in passable comfort for fifteen dollars a month. Pa had often made less than that, between his skimpy crops and slow weeks at the faro table.

  Of course, I didn’t even get a chance to ask at the first two eateries I approached. The owner of one chased me off with shouts and curses, though not with a laundry bat like the Chinese lady had done, thank God. He was a speedy fella, and could have clubbed me a good one behind the ear if he’d had any sort of weapon to hand. At the other eatery, it was a waiting girl who drove me away, and she did it with nothing worse than a withering look. She had a guant, harried look about her face, and something hard and mean in her eyes that seemed to say, There ain’t but one job here, and I already got it, so get away before I make you wish you’d scooted sooner.

  By the time I reached the hotel near the temple, I was feeling despondent—exactly what the Female Relief Society would call downtrodden. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Mormon temple but it is a real spectacle, great towers with spires up top and its sides shining white so they almost glow in the sun. There’s no cross atop it, as you’d find elsewhere in the Christian world. Instead, you’ll find a golden statue of a man up there on the highest spire, standing tall with a trumpet raised to his lips. That’s what the temple looks like now, but back then—the year must have been 1865—the temple wasn’t finished yet. It rose two stories into the air, and the flat tops of its towers was crowned by black scaffolds. But the stone was white and beautiful, the windows high and arched. I could tell it would be a fine place someday; it already was the grandest building I had ever seen, and it wasn’t near being finished.

  I thought of all the money that must have gone into the construction. The purchase and transport of pure white stone, the labor of countless men to raise the temple higher, and ever higher still. Surely the Mormons could have spared a little money to build at least one poor-house, one place where my brothers and sisters and I could find a proper meal and a soft place to lay our heads. The longer I looked at the temple and all those tiny men moving like ants along its pure-white surface, the more it seemed as if God Himself was mocking me. Martha Canary, He seemed to say, you are one dumb little bitch, and no mistake. I took all the gold in Montana and gave it to the Mormons, and there it all is, bound up in stone where you can’t get to it, and now there’s nothing left for you or the little ones. Nothing at all.

  I think you’re a real rotten scoundrel, I said back to God. Then I got scared, because I figured He’d best like to hit me with a lightning bolt for sassing him back. And if there was one thing I didn’t need right then—one thing that would surely compound my troubles—it was swift and decisive judgment from On High.

  After a time, I figured I wouldn’t improve my odds of finding work by setting around outside the hotel—and anyhow, my eyes was watery and sore from staring up at the temple. So I stood and went on inside the hotel, mud-stained dress and all.

  The inside of that hotel was about as beautiful as the outside of the temple. Thick rugs with bright patterns of red and gold covered the floors, and everywhere was the gleam of polished wood, a mellow red-brown that made me feel sleepy and content. I knew there wasn’t a powerful lot of trees for miles around—I had seen the land with my own eyes on that long and dreary trek—so I figured whoever owned the place must have carted the wood in at great expense. If he had so much money, surely he could spare a little for me, if I worked hard at cleaning up his rented rooms or serving fancy ladies their coffee and tea. But the man behind the hotel desk wanted nothing to do with me. He shooed me off before I’d got two words out of my mouth.

  Three more bakeries sent me packing, and another laundry, which I found clear out on the opposite edge of town from the laundry where the Chinese lady waited with her cudgel. Two hands at two different livery stables laughed right in my face when I tried to tell them I had a way with horses. And no less than seven mistresses of boarding houses scolded me till I hauled my bedraggled carcass off their front steps.

  It was long past noon by the time I made it back to our little camp under the cottonwoods. I was hungry as a springtime bear, and growled at the children till they fed me on the small scraps of provisions we had left. There was a bit of stringy meat—Lije had snared some ground squirrels earlier that day and roasted them over the coals—and some hard pieces of the unleavened, flour-and-water bread I’d made out in the high, red plain two nights before we’d come down to the city. Everything else, the children had eaten in my absence. All of the Canarys had felt so much for-certain that I would find work straight away; they didn’t see the point of saving our provisions. Truth to tell, I’d been certain I would find work, too.

  After I gulped down my food, I was so well tuckered that I fell into my bedroll and slept the afternoon away. I slept most of the night, too, only waking long enough to see Lije dispatch another couple of ground squirrels among the tall grass. Baby Sara’s cough was a misery to us all. She choked and spit and hacked up till her little face was red and flustered, and after each coughing fit she had so little strength left, she could only whimper and squeeze out one small tear, maybe two. An awful despair settled into my heart as blue twilight closed around our tiny field, shutting out sight of the city. The world shrank down around us. In the half-dark, all that seemed real to me was the little ones and our two horses, the flat emptiness of the flour sack and my mud-gray dress. All I could hear was the churr of insects in between the baby’s fits of coughing. The city was gone, vanished to my dulled senses, and I was vanished to the city—transparent as a ghost, so invisible I might never have existed at all.

  I said to myself, It’s the gold fields or nothing. The Canarys wasn’t made for city life. I resolved that in the morning I would devise some plan to round up enough food—by pillaging more slop buckets or from outright theft, if need be—to get us up to Montana. All I needed was a few crumbs of gold dust, and I could by a good sensible dress that wouldn’t mark me out as a dirty, worthless orphan. With a long dress of respectable cut and color, I could find work in a laundry or an eatery, I knew it; and surely Montana was packed full of eateries and hotels. Where else did the prospectors spend all their gold? All I needed was the means to clothe myself proper, and the world would open like a rose before me.

  Well, the very thought of setting out on the trail again wearied me something awful. I tried to fall sleep once more, but the baby gave an awful rasp and my blood turned to ice with one quick beat of my heart. Then Sara stopped breathing altogether. I felt the moment when her breathing stopped; my baby sister’s terrible fear seemed to pulse along my own veins, flooding me with panic. All desire to sleep fled me in an instant. I jumped up from my bedroll like I’d been stung by a scorpion, and Lena, who was tucked in beside the baby, was just as quick to rouse. Sara’s face was dark red—even in the night-time, with only a sliver of moon, I could see her color—and her poor eyes was wide, blind with terror.

  “She’ll choke to death, Martha,” Lena screamed. I didn’t know what to do, but Lena moved by some instinct I never possessed, and walloped the baby on the back, right between her shoulders.

  Baby Sara spit out a great lump of something and began to cry. Lena relaxed a little, for now at least she knew Sara was breathing—but the baby’s voice was weak, and her wailing wasn’t especially defiant. I took one look at the poor little scrap and knew she was bound to die if I took her on the trail again.

  Lena’s scream had waked the whole Canary camp. All of us huddled around the baby, fearful and sober. We took turns rocking Sara till at last she fell asleep again, and her breathing was as clear and steady as it ever was in those days. In silence, we passed Sara around the circle, none of us saying a word, each one holding our baby sister close and kissing her dear soft thin little cheeks.

  The mood was grim as a funeral. I believe each of my brothers and sisters thought Baby Sara would die—if not that very night, then soon, for something had changed in her. A dullness had come over her, clouding her eyes as if she could
only look inward now, could only see the last battle her tiny soul must fight.

  But I was powerful set on Baby Sara’s survival. It wasn’t only for her sake, though God knows that was motivation enough. I couldn’t stand the thought of having brought her all this way only for her to perish. I had kept the mite alive out there on the trail—trading for the food she needed, chewing up roasted rabbits and the raw, stringy meat of bullsnakes and spitting that slim nourishment right into her mouth. It was a shame too immense to contemplate, that Sara should falter and fade away now, when I had carried her out of the wilderness and returned her to civilization. If she died, I would have failed my whole family—most especially my ma and pa, who never did think much of me, but even so, I was the strongest and most capable child they had.

  There was no money for a doctor. I knew that; Hell, there was no money for a dress. But Salt Lake City had something no other place could claim: tender-hearted Mormon ladies with a special fondness for the downtrodden. And I had never met a tender-hearted lady who could resist a baby in peril.

  We got precious little sleep that night, saying our farewells to Sara—so when the morning dawned red over the high mountains, most of the little ones was still sound asleep. Only Cilus saw me rise, for he was up having a piss in the long grass. He watched me head off across the unbuilt lot toward the city. When he was done pissing, he bounded after me and said, “Where you going off to today, Martha? I’m awful scared for the baby. I don’t know what to do for her if she chokes again.”