Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

  “My dear child,” he read, “A great deal of sad news has arrived at Immaculate Heart in recent weeks, not the least of which has been word of your departure for Amerika. That you did not write or call upon us to deliver these tidings personally has caused some pain; and yet I do not mean to reproach you here, but rather to pass on this letter from one who now seeks to correct the wrongs he has done you . . .”

  Chapter 14

  The railways are so poorly constructed that the cars shake tremendously, and the trains don’t go any faster than back home. One English mile costs five cents, which certainly is not cheap.

  LETTER FROM DANISH IMMIGRANT, IN BORNHOLMS TIDENDE

  In her new world, Famke was far from alone. There was Heber and the flock of new immigrants; there was also an American girl called Myrtice Black, who would be in charge of the women for the rail journey and whose speech was hard for Famke to understand because she came from a place called Georgia, where people spoke differently. She wore a hoopskirt and a small bustle. At Heber’s suggestion, she and Famke shared a room and a bed at the hotel, but Myrtice was clearly in no mood for chatting; she unbraided her straw-colored hair, brushed it as if disciplining an unruly animal, and braided it up tight again. She slid her somewhat thick body all the way to the far end of the bed.

  Famke gathered that Myrtice was some widowed relative of Heber’s first wife, Sariah, and therefore might be resentful on that woman’s account. In any event, she was glad that, after the tumult of finding the hotel and dining with her former cabinmates, she and Myrtice had a room to themselves—and, just down the hallway, access to a real flush toilet, in a clean-smelling water closet where Famke was able once again to lay Albert’s sketch upon her knees and remind herself why she was here, in America, the new world, a marvelous land where even an ordinary woman was entitled to modern plumbing.

  The next morning, after a flurry of eating, food shopping, and prayer, Heber and his flock crammed into a series of horse-drawn omnibuses and let themselves be borne through the packed streets to New York’s South Station. This, no less than the streets outside, was a vast, bustling, echoing place, full of the deafening shriek of engines and wheels, with more cinders than breathable air making their way to the immigrants’ lungs. Famke found herself shrinking closer to Heber and Myrtice, even as the latter eyed her with obvious disapproval. Famke had not expected this chaos. How could she ever find Albert, if just one American city had so many people in it?

  Famke still wasn’t prepared, either, for the interest that a flock of Mormons would excite in the American citizens. Like the yard of Castle Garden, the station was crowded with fashionably attired men, and even some women, all gaping and pointing at the Saints. Despite the heat, Famke pulled her shawl over her head—and then pulled it down again, as she’d already realized that it marked her clearly an immigrant. She followed her husband down the platform.

  “This way!” Heber called in the voice he usually used for preaching. A long line of Mormons trailed after him, lugging their bundles and boxes.

  Their train was obviously an old one—not at all the sort that Famke had imagined in her visions of America—and its cargo was largely human, groups of assorted immigrants bound for points west. They spoke a variety of tongues whose harsh sounds grated on Famke’s ears.

  “Come along!” boomed Heber, at the same time as another man, right by their side, yelled it.

  Confused, Famke turned to see a large number of grubby children, mostly boys, being herded into a nearby boxcar. The man in charge of them wore the sort of sober clothes that Heber did.

  “Are all those children Mormon too?” she asked.

  Myrtice answered, in her peculiar voice, “No, those there are orphans being sent west for adoption by Gentile families. The papers call it a mercy train. Charities don’t send children to us. Now try not to get lost. It is my duty to lead the women to car forty-seven.” She hefted her own two satchels and poised to stride away.

  “Yes, dear, please keep up with Myrtice,” Heber said. “I must see to the men now.”

  Famke stuck to the Mormon girl’s heels as Myrtice wove through the crowds and guided the other women into the car reserved for them; she even pushed her way to the wooden bench that Myrtice claimed inside. To ingratiate herself, she helped Myrtice unpack boxes of silk eggs—Heber’s new livestock—from the special trunk that the egg broker claimed to have imported from China.

  “They need to breathe,” the Mormon girl said, and although Famke was finding it hard to fill her own lungs in here, she saw no advantage in disagreeing. Myrtice had been in charge of those eggs for several days already; her purpose for coming to New York was as much to collect them from the broker as to help Heber with the converts. That morning, Famke had heard her explaining to some of the other women that she was recently widowed, having gone to Georgia for normal school two years earlier and met and married her husband there. Now that he was dead, she was rejoining her aunt and family in Prophet City, to help with the new silk venture and to teach the local children; indeed, her very manner of speaking identified her as a schoolmarm. When she took off her glove to dab her eyes with a black-bordered handkerchief, her gold wedding ring gleamed.

  As she and Famke settled onto the hard seat, surrounded by the slim wooden boxes, Myrtice scowled and handed over the handkerchief. Famke realized she’d been coughing. She used the cambric square—she was amassing quite a collection—to expel a lungful of dust and smoke and the stench of half a million people crowded into a city in August.

  “There are remedies you can take for that, you know.” Myrtice looked pointedly at the wadded cloth. “And a heap of cures without alcohol that are true to our faith. Nobody has to cough anymore.”

  Before Famke had thought of anything to say—and what could she say? she did need to cough, and rather often—Myrtice propped her feet on the silkworms’ trunk and pulled out a leatherbound book embossed with a golden beehive and elaborate lettering: The Book of Mormon. She held it up as if offering it to Famke, who declined as politely as she could. She had found no real stories in her old copy of the Mormons’ sacred text, only a series of sermons and some men moving tablets around with considerably less efficiency than Heber and Myrtice were moving the immigrants. She would leave that sort of thing to Myrtice.

  Instead, Famke opened Heber’s copy of the New York Times and scanned the headlines. There was no news of Albert, but then she hadn’t really expected any; Albert was in the West, and that was where she would pick up his trail. She was pleased, however, to find a description of the scene she’d participated in yesterday. According to the correspondent, who went by the peculiar name of Hermes, the newly arrived Mormon women were “not without a share of youth and beauty, although the beauty was high in the cheekbones and rather more rugged than that of our New-York belles.”

  Famke laughed out loud. Though the correspondent did not describe her specifically, Famke had little doubt that he was the one who had followed her by the water. The article had to be about her. She read it several times, glad that in this one small way she might feel at home in the new land.

  After pulling out of the tangled city, the train’s iron wheels ate up miles of green countryside over that long afternoon. Famke saw her first mountains—hills, really, Myrtice said, but to a Dane they looked titanic. She imagined a glittering ice cave deep inside every one.

  “Mæka,” she murmured. It was as if she’d stepped into the picture on that old puzzle, a season or two after it had been painted. And Albert was just around the next curve, or perhaps the next after that. It was still hard to believe that America was much, much bigger than that puzzle mountain.

  The train made stops in towns of varying size and prosperity, and many people got off; just as many climbed on. The boys Famke had seen in the station were unloaded at a place called Buffalo, where the last drops of sunshine vanished in the black shadows of the rail barn. The boys ran after the man in the suit, who looked remarkably placid as his young cha
rges shouted above the engines and stole each other’s caps. Seeing Famke at the window, one of them blew her a kiss. Another grabbed at his pants in a gesture she’d seen before.

  There was a loud snap. Myrtice had pulled down the tattered shade and settled back into her place, glaring at Famke as if she were to blame. After a moment Myrtice dug around in the satchel at her feet.

  “Here,” she said, “read this.” And she tossed a small paperbound book into Famke’s lap—not the Book of Mormon, Famke was glad to see, but something much more intriguing: The Thrilling Narrative of an Indian Captivity.

  “My teachers gave it to me,” Myrtice said. “It might could learn you something about life out West and what happens to ladies who don’t tend to their persons.”

  Famke opened the book politely and began, though the car was now rather dark and the print very fine and fuzzy. Myrtice watched her for a few minutes, then pulled the spectacles off her face and handed them to Famke. “You’re obviously far-sighted,” she said, using a term Famke had never heard before. “See if these help. I have two pair.” She closed her eyes and leaned against the seatback, feigning sleep.

  Famke slipped the gold-wire curves over her ears and let the small weight settle on her nose. She wondered if they made her ugly. But any such question fled her mind when she looked down at the page: The print was much clearer now, and she quickly discovered that the book was about a woman who’d been known to walk provocatively through the streets of her small town. This woman was captured by savages during a massacre and had to live with them for some years.

  Thrilling indeed—fearful and fascinating. She hardly noticed when the train pulled out of the station.

  Chapter 15

  Nothing can give such a vivid impression of the greatness of our country, and the adventurous character of our people, as the sight of these boundless prairies and the habitations of the hardy pioneers who are rapidly turning the buffalo sod and exposing the rich black soil to the fertilizing action of the sun and air, and substituting for nature’s scant forage, abundant harvests of corn and wheat.

  STANLEY WOOD,

  OVER THE RANGE TO THE GOLDEN GATE

  Rail life rolled on with a clackety-clack. The farther they traveled, the longer were the stretches passed without seeing another train, and Famke’s boredom was relieved only by the book and a few isolated incidents. Once, in Michigan, they stopped because of an accident on the rails: Another engine had hit a cow and derailed. Most passengers bewailed the delay, but Famke peered with interest through the window, trying to get a glimpse of the carnage. She saw nothing.

  Other events posed more serious threats. The Mormon Saints, and especially their women, were the object of insatiable interest to Gentiles; and in pursuing that interest, Gentile men occasionally grew violent. After the Saints switched trains in Chicago, a posse of reporters stormed the women’s car, and the station guards had to help the Brothers beat them away. Thereafter, Myrtice kept the doors locked. In Des Moines, Iowa, a man actually broke one of the narrow windows in the front of the car; Myrtice jabbed him calmly with her umbrella until he fell.

  Even in the face of violence and chaos, Myrtice was never less than calm. Despite the wilderness through which they were passing, she insisted on conducting English lessons for the immigrants, though she excused Famke with a grudging admission of her proficiency. She was even calm when Heber stopped in to say a few encouraging words, though Famke noticed they didn’t actually speak to each other. She wondered if that were some particular Mormon custom: a man was not allowed to speak to his wife’s niece.

  “Is this the West?” she asked in Omaha, and Heber said it was. At her request, he bought a newspaper in the next station, and she opened it with a pleasant surge of excitement. There was nothing about Albert—but perhaps she simply had not come far enough yet.

  Thereafter she surrendered herself to the journey, and hills and mountains, forests and prairies swept by the grimy window in a blur. The wooden seats made for sleepless nights, and Famke soon felt as if all life were passing in a daze. Sudden shifts in altitude made her dizzy, and everything smelled like coal dust. Other immigrants were still ill enough to vomit, and many of them coughed all day (though without reproof from Myrtice). Decomposing cows and their shaggy buffalo cousins became commonplace sights; naked bones gleamed whitely in the moonlight. She read The Thrilling Narrative several times, until it, too, became dull. She put her ear to the boxes of sleeping silkworms, but the crates were silent as coffins; when she opened them, on the sly, the eggs were so tiny and round and blue-white that she nearly didn’t see them and might have squashed them by mistake. She almost wished for lessons, so as to have something to do.

  And then at last, just as she was beginning to forget any other life, they were in Utah, in Salt Lake City. Down on the ground, the yardmaster swung his red lantern side to side, and the train braked, blowing sparks and steam from the wheels. The hot brick station into which they pulled looked just like all the other buildings in the West; the lone difference was that here the new Saints were herded out—in rapid time, as a Gentile conductor studied his watch and threatened all manner of consequences if they delayed.

  An excited Heber left Famke and Myrtice with their baggage in order to bring the other new Saints to headquarters downtown, and to hire a wagon for his family’s trip out to Profit. They wouldn’t waste any time in the capital; Heber said they would return anyway in a few days, and Famke knew he was thinking of their official sealing and her baptism in the Endowment House.

  She put those events out of her mind and asked for a newspaper. Myrtice bought one at the depot office, then handed it over with the sort of severe look usually reserved for an importunate child. She also passed Famke a bottle of brown liquid proclaiming itself “Deseret’s Elixir for Common Coughing, completely free of alcohol and other stimulants.”

  “You see,” said Myrtice, “no one really needs to cough anymore.” She sat down on the trunk of silk eggs.

  Famke obediently uncorked the bottle and swallowed. What followed was the worst taste she’d ever known—something like the smell of burnt hair, in liquid form. She coughed, and then there was the faint tang of blood.

  Myrtice pressed her lips together and glared as though Famke were trying to spite her. Now Famke felt unable to open the precious newspaper. She used it to fan herself, for Utah was hot, and the sheltering bricks didn’t stop the station from feeling like an oven. Even the stationmaster gleamed with perspiration, and Famke could have sworn she smelled roasting meat coming from his window.

  She thought she might be ill. “Where is the privy?” she asked, too loudly, and Myrtice hushed her with a gesture that managed to communicate that even out West, ladies did not ask for such things.

  “We call it the convenience,” she said. “But follow me.” They crossed the depot and Myrtice briskly opened a double set of doors, shutting the last one on Famke so hard that the china knob rattled halfway out of its groove.

  For the first time in days, Famke was alone. She locked the door, gathered up her skirts, and squatted down carefully, pondering. All trace of illness left her as she realized that once again she had a choice: She was in the West at last, and she could simply walk out of this station and set off to find Albert. Why waste her time riding all the way to Profit City? Somewhere in this newspaper, or in some other she might buy soon, there would be a clue that would lead her to him.

  But there was all the trouble: buying. She would have to pay for newspapers and trains and countless sundry other items, unimaginable now but adding up and surely expensive in the end. Her only earthly asset was the tinderbox, and she did not want to part with it again. No, for once in her life, she would be prudent. She would bide her time, wait for the right moment, the proper clue.

  Just as she reached this conclusion, the door was flung open again, and Myrtice filled the doorway. “You listen to me, Ursula”—she looked at Famke the only way she seemed to know how, with a glower—“because
this might could be our one chance to talk. I want to say that you may not be married all the way to Mr. Goodhouse, but you’re married partway, and you had best be righteous and stand by him or I’ll know the reason why! If you can’t do that, you might just as well leave us right now.”

  I’ll know the reason why: It was only an American expression, but it struck cold fear into Famke. She was overcome with the unpleasant feeling that Myrtice, like a saint of the early days, possessed the power to read people’s thoughts. Once again Famke felt ill.

  “Of course I will be right,” she said. “Righteous. I am going to Profit City. But how did you open the door?”

  “Hairpin.” Myrtice held up a metal object, its prongs tangled from having worked through the lock. “Well, any road, I thought you should know where I stand.”

  “Thank you,” Famke said, for she could think of nothing that would get Myrtice out of the doorway faster.

  Alone again, Famke took her time in the convenience, making herself as comfortable as she could for the wagon ride to what she must now think of as her home. She washed her face and spit vigorously into the basin, ridding her throat of that awful taste of Deseret’s Elixir, then wiped her lips on a handful of the old newspaper squares provided by the depot.

  She had to hold her own paper over her head on the jolting ride overland. She had never encountered a sun like this one, not even on the ocean; within minutes she’d soaked through her new underclothes. And yet the sun was no worse than the powdery dust, which caked in her throat and dried it till she knew coughing would be useless. Even the few stray cows they passed on the range looked parched and as if the very blood had left them to blow in the relentless breeze. In fact some patches of dust were not an ordinary brown or black but a sickly red.