Breath and Bones

by Susann Cokal

  Myrtice put her arm beneath Heber’s elbow and kissed his brow, for all the world as if she were his mother rather than his wife. “I have some wonderful news,” she said.

  It must be good to be a man in Denver, Famke thought, especially a man with money in his pocket. Perhaps he had just sold a horse or a cartful of silver ore; perhaps he’d been cowboying upon a ranch in the flatlands. He might be light or dark, speak English or what she thought must be some savage tongue; perhaps Mexican. Whoever he was, here he could buy himself not only a woman’s company but also an evening’s entertainment, a meal with fresh meat, a new suit of clothes. But Famke was a woman, and young, and not terribly prosperous.

  She tried to convince herself that the huge, rough, rushing city of brick buildings and carriages resembled Copenhagen. It emanated the stench that accompanied all flourishing enterprises: coal smoke, sewers, carthorse dung; and in that respect it was like home. Within fifteen minutes of leaving the station, she had seen three mutilated Indians, five gun-holstered ranchers, and whole flocks of what must have been Ludere. Seeing how many of them had curled and fluffed their hair to wildness, she wished she had not been so quick to toss her plain black wig into the darkness when at last her train crossed over the Utah border. She who had always enjoyed being looked at now felt painfully conspicuous, walking the boards of Holladay Street in her yellow shawl, casting about for a hotel or restaurant that might shelter a lone female and give her a moment in which to think. She was thirsty and wished she had a change of clothes, something nicer than her Mormon homespun; she also wished she had a companion who might know where to start seeking one British painter in a warren of brash, confident, spitting westerners. She had not counted on Denver being so big.

  Famke stopped and let the foot traffic flow around and occasionally bump into her. She wetted the shawl end in her saliva and dabbed at her eyes, but even when she was finished, they felt gritty, in testimony to her lack of sleep—she had watched the sun rise somewhere around Delta, Colorado, where a stockyard filled the air with the reek of blood and the mountains of white and brown bones inspired a lonesome feeling that very nearly made her cry.

  Seeing those jumbled ossuaries, suddenly she’d been homesick for Prophet, for Heber’s kind arms and the intimate bustle of family life. She had to remind herself, firmly, that she was sicker with longing for Albert, that she had fit much better into his life than into the Goodhouses’, that he had almost certainly sent her a letter at Fru Strand’s house (of course he had!) and must be waiting and wishing for her now. How happy he would be to see her . . . If only she could sit and catch her breath and wits, she would devise a course of action. It was not as if she could go into the next building—the bright blue tiles on the doorstep spelled out M. SILKS—and ask for advice. Indeed, she saw only men passing through that elaborately carved door, and with a quick suspicion of what the place was, she walked briskly on until she could turn a corner.

  Even there, however, she was unsafe. A man stepped up as soon as she appeared, and she saw a long chain of suits and hats and cigars scattered down the boardwalk.

  “Do you have your own room, sister?” This one’s hair was barbered and he wore tidy if inexpensive clothes; he even held his hat in his hands as he addressed her. “How much for an hour?”

  Famke understood immediately: The finer prostitutes had their houses on the big boulevard, but the itinerant lower class took to the side streets, among the Chinese laundries and the bright posters advertising Bones and Tambo minstrel shows, patent medicines, and lawbreakers with a price on their heads. Wherever she went, she was bound to be taken for a Luder, for she must have about her the air of a woman without a man’s protection—a woman looking for a man.

  Her hesitation gave this man confidence. “Eight bits should be enough,” he said; “I won’t take the whole hour.” He seized her elbow in a gesture far too eager for gallantry.

  “Fanden!” Famke shook him off, frustrated and enraged. She summoned her best English to shout, “You bloody, miserable devil!”

  But that was not what rid her of him. In her access of emotion, she bent over in a paroxysm of coughing, and he fled in disgust.

  Yes, in Denver it was best to be a man.

  These are for my brother,” Famke told the hairy little clerk in the clothier’s. She held up two white shirts, nearly identical; she couldn’t see why one should cost seventy-five cents and the other a dollar, so she chose the cheaper one. Another $1.25 bought a pair of gray cotton-blended trousers that the clerk assured her could not be distinguished from pure wool “except on very close inspection, ma’am.” He smirked, as if to imply something about the inspection she might be giving them.

  Famke leveled him an icy blue stare and ordered a cotton coat to go with the trousers, even though the clerk hinted with the same disdainful delicacy that wintry weather was coming soon. She rounded out the costume with a string tie for seven cents, suspenders for a quarter, and a soft felt hat for fifty cents, and she left the shop having surrendered $6.07 and a good deal of her dignity, which she hoped to regain as soon as she could change into her new apparel.

  It was miserable to be a woman in Denver, she had decided, even a Bohemian one. And it seemed so easy to become a man.

  In the simple hotel room she’d engaged, the Mormon union suit came in handy; she had forgotten to buy masculine underwear, and the clothes would not hang right without it. Yet despite that Saintly intervention, she found the pants chafed her inner thighs, and when she belted them the in-seam rubbed uncomfortably Down There, where the embroidered map grew scratchy. Well, she could not imagine dressing this way long; she would ignore this little discomfort as she had ignored so many worse ones while posing. Her own boots were fine for now, and when she coiled her hair up into the hat she thought the hotel mirror reflected a passable young man. On the thin side, perhaps, but so were many who came to town after weeks of eating hardtack and working a mine.

  She had hired the room for herself and a husband, so she expected no difficulty in coming or going as either man or woman; and indeed the proprietress (furtively enjoying a bottle of bitters beneath her counter) paid little attention as Famke strode through the lobby imitating Albert’s firm, fast gait.

  So here she was, on a Colorado evening, looking for one man in a territory pockmarked with small towns and deep shafts that could hide anyone, even an artist featured in Frank Leslie’s magazine, for weeks. It was a daunting task. But walking like Albert had given her an idea; she knew what he liked.

  The first saloon she entered was much like the beer hall she’d once visited with him in Copenhagen. It was louder, yes, and it looked dirtier to her; but it was a place to start. Pitching her voice deep, she asked for a glass of the cheapest and some information about strangers in town.

  The man behind the bar rolled his eyes. “Brother,” he said, “everybody in this town’s a stranger.”

  “I’m looking for an artist,” she said stubbornly. “A painter. His name is Albert Castle.”

  “What’s your interest?” He looked dubiously at her slender form, around which the obviously new jacket and trousers bagged. “If you’re a Pinkerton, I’m a dancing girl.”

  Famke had read of those detectives—brutal men. “I am his brother.”

  “Well, I ain’t heard of any Albert Castle,” he said, and turned to rinse some glasses in a sinkful of brown water. When he set one of the glasses in front of her, she shuddered, paid him the nickel he seemed to expect, and left.

  It was the same story in every saloon she visited: Famke asked after a brother called Albert and was told that no one knew anything about a particular stranger or an artist. There were many saloons, and she grew terribly thirsty. After a while she began to have a few sips of beer in each place and soon felt giddy; then she stopped drinking and her head began to ache. Finally, when the beer halls closed with the sunrise, she walked into a pharmacy and asked for a bromide, anything to relieve the pounding in her skull.

  “
Want summat for that cough, too?” asked the pharmacist, and she shook her head. In fact, she was hacking so much from fatigue and the city fumes that she couldn’t have answered.

  While she waited for him to fill a bottle, she managed to calm her lungs enough to ask, without any real hope, if the pharmacist had had any dealings with an artist called Albert Castle.

  “He the one that’s painting Amy Oggle’s girls?” the man asked, and Famke’s heart stopped.

  “Painting girls?” she croaked, holding back another cough.

  “The soiled doves, the fair but frail, the ladies as paints themselves. Amy’s got some feller making up a portrait of them all.” He pushed the bright green bottle toward Famke and stared at her curiously, flushed as she was beneath the drooping hat. She must have appeared very young or very naive, for he said finally, “Holladay Street at Fourteenth. It’s a bagnio, my friend—one of the very places causing the Holladay family to agitate for a name change.”

  Famke did not know that word, bagnio, but she recognized the street name.

  “He came in here for white lead and arsenic to help the girls’ complexions,” the pharmacist concluded, with an early-morning yawn. “That’s Amy Oggle’s. And yours’ll be nine cents.”

  “Thank you,” Famke murmured in a voice not at all like a man’s. She was so distracted by this information that she pulled a dime from her pocket and did not wait for the change.

  Chapter 23

  One feels a sense of exhilaration in the atmosphere of Denver. The bland but bracing breezes cool the fevered pulse and the abundant oxygen of the air thrills one like a draught of effervescing champagne.

  STANLEY WOOD,

  OVER THE RANGE TO THE GOLDEN GATE

  The contagion of soul, says the ancient philosopher, is quicker than that of the body, and I have yet to see the one with soul so dead as to refuse a venture in mines, and wholly resist the fever which spares neither age nor sex, yet is not fatal or even unpleasant.

  SUSAN E. WALLACE,

  THE LAND OF THE PUEBLOS

  LOTS OF BOARDERS—ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME. WELCOMING GUESTS FROM THREE O’CLOCK ONWARD: That was the legend above the door of Mrs. Amy Oggle’s house, which was further identified with her name tricked out in red tiles on the step, glowing lurid in the afternoon sun. And yet, with her thighs rubbed nearly raw and her feet blistered from walking like Albert—and most of all because the prospect of seeing Albert himself made her tremble—Famke hesitated. What if he didn’t recognize her as a man? Well, she might take care of that in a hurry—but what if she found him . . . painting another woman? Certainly she, Famke, had the prior claim, and naturally she would forgive him, but still—

  “What’s keeping you, brother?” asked a man behind her. His battered boots had obscured the Oggle on the doorstep, and his dark hand, too, was poised to knock. But he seemed to expect her to do it, and so she did.

  The door was opened immediately by a tall, bulge-browed man who somewhat resembled Brother Erastus Mortensen and introduced himself as “The Professor.” He looked down at the two ragged and unpromising customers, and he sighed. But nonetheless he held the door open for them and offered to take their hats. Famke kept hers and even clamped a hand on the crown, as the irrepressible curls threatened to send it flying.

  So this was a bagnio, a house of sin, et Bordel; the kind of place the nuns had hinted about and that Sariah had bewailed but never described. It was not what Famke had expected. It wasn’t lush or velvety, was not swagged or gilded; though the madam had made an effort to decorate it luxuriously in pink brocade, every cushion and chair was of a slightly different hue, and all were shabby around the edges. It was barely as nice as the Goodhouses’ parlor, and Famke and this skinny brown fellow seemed to be the first customers of the day. The time was a second past three.

  But there was a table for drinks, and there was a piano at which the big-browed Professor sat down and began to pound. Music came pouring forth, and with it about a half-dozen girls in gaudy dresses streamed in from a hallway. They toyed with colored ribbons and false curls, and though their giggles began to sound forced within a very few seconds, at least they made an effort at welcome.

  All females. No Albert.

  The girls sidled over, batting their eyes like wind-up dolls. They brought with them whiffs of stale cologne, alcohol, and smoke, and they gave the two customers their names:

  “I’m called Bett.”

  “Spanish Sadie.”

  “Big Kitty,” declared a tall bundle of curves, “two hundred and five pounds of lovely!” She tossed her light brown mane and set her impressive flesh to billowing.

  The other girls ignored her.

  “I’m Jo, and this is sweet Giulietta.”

  “Golden Lallie.”

  “Duchess Irene.”

  Famke was overwhelmed, confused, and powerless. Somehow she found herself seated with the other customer on a smoke-yellowed sofa, clutching a watered-down whiskey in one hand. She kept the other hand on her head, still holding the cloth hat down. Lallie, a dirty blonde, perched on the arm at the thin man’s side, and Big Kitty nearly unbalanced the couch at Famke’s. All the girls giggled and purred; Jo and Giulietta stroked each other’s hair with gestures obviously calculated to please the viewer.

  And then the madam swept in, Mrs. Oggle herself. Her hair so white it was nearly blue, she was wearing a dress of emerald green silk dark at the armpits. She looked sharply at Famke.

  “What’ll it be,” she said, “boys?”

  Famke felt Amy’s black eyes poking at her. “I am seeking—,” she began. When the girls looked at her sharply, too, she remembered to pitch her voice lower and said, “That is, I—” She couldn’t finish.

  Mrs. Oggle pulled out a newfangled brown cigarette and lit it, peering steadily through the smoke. “Not from around here, are you? What did you do, strike a mother lode?”

  The other man snorted, claiming his share of the women’s attention. “Money ain’t in the digging these days.”

  “You said it, honey.” Amy looked around the room at her pathetically bright girls and sighed.

  “I have money,” Famke blurted out, and she felt the prick of Amy’s gaze again.

  The piano music got stronger; someone had given the Professor a drink.

  “You may have the bones, young fellow, but we’ll take care of your friend first,” said the madam, not allowing Famke or the other man a moment to protest that they weren’t friends. “Which of these lovelies will you have, good sir? Cash up front and in my hand, given the times you’ve fallen on.”

  Famke watched the man make the difficult choice. Jo was striking, with her dark hair and good skin, but there was something fascinating about the size of Big Kitty, and Giulietta had a nice pink smile. In the end Lallie’s breasts were nearest, and as they pressed in closer to him he took the easiest decision.

  “Ten dollars,” Amy said.

  Famke was surprised; the man in the street had offered her far less, and she’d dressed herself for a fraction of Lallie’s fee. Women must be more highly valued here than she thought.

  The door banged shut under a legend that read, SATISFACTION CHEERFULLY GUARANTEED.

  Once he was gone, the atmosphere in the room shifted. The other girls pulled out cigarettes, too, and they turned away from Famke. One or two of them wandered off to sit with the now-idle Professor and plink halfheartedly at the keys.

  “You may as well go,” said Amy. “We don’t serve women in here.”

  Famke wasn’t too surprised; in the gaslight, she’d already felt exposed. Anyway, she didn’t see how her disguise would help her now. So she dropped all further pretense and said, “I am not here for a girl. I am looking for Albert Castle.”

  The girls’ heads whipped around, and Famke felt the hearts about her beating fast. Clearly this was a name they knew.

  “Is he here?” she asked.

  Amy exhaled a long gray breath. “Albert Castle,” she said. She bent in closer,
pulled off Famke’s hat, and unpinned her hair familiarly. “And who are you to him, if I might ask?”

  “Please, if you know where he is, tell me,” Famke said, as the hot waves of hair settled over her shoulders. She felt tears in her eyes, and she brushed stray locks away impatiently. “Is he in Denver? Is he—here now?”

  Amy shook her snow-white head. “No, hon. He left a couple days ago.”

  “He painted all of us,” Big Kitty interjected. “It’s going to be in the newspaper.”

  “Has been,” said Bett. “Days ’n days ago.”

  Famke felt her eyes welling up, and one traitorous tear slithered away. She couldn’t speak.

  “Would you like to see the picture?” Amy asked, offering her a cigarette at the same time.

  Famke shook her head at the cigarette, but she managed to squeeze out, “Yes.”

  Jo grabbed Famke’s hands and pulled her upright. “Turn around,” she said.

  The painting hung above the very sofa on which Famke had been sitting. She’d been too overwhelmed to notice it when she entered, and truth to tell it was not a very remarkable work; but now she studied it hard. The composition featured nine women—all these girls, plus Amy and another—arranged singly and in groups of three around an olive grove and mostly naked, with assorted props placed so as to accentuate their charms and hide the problematic hair Down There while at the same time suggesting it was present in abundance. Famke recognized a scroll, a flute, and a pair of large masks: one frowning, one grinning lewdly. Without these familiar props, she would hardly have recognized the canvas as Albert’s. The details were imprecise, the lines hurried—and then, too, it was a finished painting.

  Amy told her, in a puff of smoke, “The boy said he’s traveling around the West, earning his way with these pictures.”

  “You asked him to paint this?” Famke asked, feeling a telltale tickle in the lungs. “It was a job”—she’d learned that word from the men of Prophet—“not a work he chose for himself?”