In Calamity's Wake

by Natalee Caple

  Having paid for the privilege, the only way to get even with the management is to snapshot everything in the grounds. The first subject that appeals is a little old woman whose face is framed in a sunbonnet, which sunbonnet is framed in beds of tulips and orchids from a Long Island exhibitor’s hothouses. The little old gardener tells you her name is Mary, and she lives between the Exposition grounds and the poorhouse, and has one hundred and two plants of her own, which she’ll be glad to give you slips of; but things have been running down lately, and the pension’s stopped since Johnny died, and Lucy’s getting tall and expects to go out in company soon, so she wouldn’t like to go to the city to work; and when it come to working in the Exposition or working towards the poorhouse, why, the fair grounds were like play—specially as she always did love flowers so.

  Mary is a common type—but Mary’s daughter is commoner.

  After Mary and her flowers, one observes the Pan-American small boy—the same that we have always with us, except that he is without restriction, and the air of Buffalo agrees with him. He has a way of cutting across the flowerbeds to shorten distances; and the state police, who overtake him without demolishing the flowerbeds, have a way of propounding the value of tulips and underrating the comforts of the town jail, which the small boy never forgets. These state police are a new type to the New Yorker, who is used to beef and brawn on the force. They are long, lean, muscular fellows with military bearing and uniform and intelligent faces. There are also on the grounds camps of state troops and a small army of attachés for the exhibits in the Army and Navy Building. So the Exposition brassbutton girl is happy and the type she adores gets the adulation on which it thrives. No building at the fair is so popular with the younger women as the Army and Navy Building; and no girl is so envied as she who happens to know an officer, who does the honors in one of those cozy little white tents, with chests containing everything you don’t expect.

  The building next in popularity to the Army and Navy is the Manufactures and Liberal Arts. Here women predominate, and it is curious to watch the different types of women linger around those features, which would naturally appeal to them…. There are old women and middle-aged women, neat women and shiftless women, thin women and fat women, and they all had housework wrinkles—little creases that settle about the eyes and mouth from little frets and worries. They crushed forward, trampling one another’s toes and poking one another’s ribs, and their eagerness was of the sort that characterizes a hungry dog’s regard for raw meat. I knew it was a household implement before I heard a suave voice say: Ladies, it is so simple a child can use it. Other washers tear the clothes; ours will wash lace curtains without pulling a thread, or cleanse a carpet with ease. You can do a six weeks’ wash of an afternoon with our machine, and find it as pleasant as a matinee. Come, madam, let me send you one on trial. You look as if you would appreciate it. The woman addressed was small and wiry, and the housework wrinkles looked as if they were there to stay. Her admiring gaze was lifted from the washing machine to the man’s face, as she said earnestly, It looks like it would be such a comfort.

  Comfort, madam? Why, our washing machine is unquestionably the first principle of a happy home. Let me send you one on trial free.

  I guess I’ll wait, said the little woman timidly.

  Never get another chance like this, ma’am.

  I’ll speak to John about it.

  Does John do the washing?

  No, she says drearily. He doesn’t; doesn’t have to pay anything for tubs, either.

  Whereupon all the women thereabout, who had been following the colloquy with the keenest interest, looked knowing and appreciative of this vindication of their downtrodden sex, and the crowd dispersed in high good humor.

  In the center of the Manufactures Building was a gathering that defied classification. All types of women were huddled together, rich and poor, esthetic and commonplace. It was lunch-time, and they were engaged in the work of managing a free lunch. Women whose diamonds were gems and whose gowns were creations elbowed women who might have been their cooks, to get free biscuits made from the finest baking-powder on earth; free pancakes made from the only pancake flour that wouldn’t result in sinkers; free soup from the only cans containing real tomatoes; free samples of all the varieties of mustard, jam and pickles; free sandwiches of minced meat; free cheese, preserves, chow-chow, plum-pudding, clam broth, baked beans and pickled lobster.

  ANOTHER VARIATION of the schoolmarm type held forth in the Horticulture Building. She occupied a booth decorated with spheres, charts, maps and tracts, and tried to convince Pan-American visitors that the earth’s habitable surface is concave instead of convex. The crowd, whose tongues take on a kind of Exposition looseness, chafed her considerably and asked vital questions at the wrong moment, each time necessitating a fresh start. When the young woman at last was permitted to reach the end of her argument—which, fortunately, no one understood—an old lady asked pertinently what difference concavity or convexity would make to the folks living on the Earth, anyway.

  It will make this difference, replied the young woman: we can prove that the earth is concave, while Copernicus never proved, but only supposed, the earth to be convex. Now if you start with a supposition, you have no solid foundation for your science, astronomy, religion or the relations of God and man. But if you start with knowledge—

  What’s knowledge got to do with religion? interrupted the old lady. Didn’t the Lord say all you needed was faith?

  Oh, faith is all very well, replied the expounder of Koreshanity, but knowledge is better.

  Humph! said the old lady. You ain’t married, be you?

  ALL OVER the fair grounds there seemed to be a dozen women to every man. From the Horticulture Building to the Graphic Arts to the Temple of Music, the Ethnology Building, the United States Government Buildings and across the beautiful Esplanade with its flowers and fountains, there were women, women, everywhere—old women in sedan-chairs propelled at fifty cents an hour; tired women in rickshaws pulled by Japs at a dollar an hour; athletic women in calfskin boots at only the cost of leather per hour.

  The men, where were they? Packed like sardines in the United States Fisheries Building, grouped in twos and threes and hunches, their backs to the exhibits, telling fish stories.

  Don’t think much of that line of trout, said a man with chin-whiskers. Why, up near our camp in the Adirondacks, we don’t think anything of hauling them in weighing twenty to thirty pounds.

  The man with the side-whiskers nodded absently and reckoned the trout on exhibition were as big as most trout grow.

  The bass are rather cheap-looking, though, he admitted. We’ve got an island up in the St. Lawrence, and the bass up there certainly are wonderful! Great big fellows, and so plentiful they rise up in schools and bound over on the island, waiting to be cooked for breakfast.

  Yes, assented a clean-shaven boy, who was his son, I’ve seen ’em come right alongside a brushwood fire outdoors and lie there till they were broiled.

  The man with the chin-whiskers looked meditative.

  Well, he drawled at length, I’m not much on bass. Angling for trout’s the real sport, and the stream near us is just packed with ’em—great speckled beauties; and I never did see fish multiply so. Two years ago I caught a fairly good specimen. Managed to get it in the boat, but the head and tail hung out both ends. It was the end of July then, and we leave up there in September. I knew we couldn’t finish eating that fish before we went back home, so what was the use killing it? I resolved to put it back in the stream; but before doing so, I tied a big blue ribbon in its tail. Now, do you know, that fish has grown to the size of a human in two years, and multiplied the trout in that stream by two or three thousand.

  He of the side-whiskers stared and his son gasped quickly. But you can’t prove all those fish are the result of that same trout?

  That’s just what I can, said the man with the chin-whiskers, profoundly. Every one of those trout has a blue ri
bbon tied to his tail.

  THREE-QUARTERS OF the people at the Fair had followed the same route. From the Beautiful Orient to the Indian Congress the streets were black with people—whites, blacks, Indians, Mexicans, Hawaiians, Japanese, Americans; all packed so closely together they merged into one composite type, whose chief characteristic was curiosity, whose motive-power was deviltry.

  The atmosphere of the Midway is not conventional and a few inhalations produce immediate results, which are, first, a realization that Buffalo is a long way from home; second, a hallucination that nobody one knows will be met in this place, which seems so far removed from America; and third, a conviction that much knowledge may be gained from these representations of foreign countries and not one detail of the outfit should be overlooked.

  Lavinia Hart

  The Cosmopolitan

  September 1901

  Miette

  THE WOLF HOWLED, A LONG TUNNEL OF SOUND that fell off sharply without answer. I could see her through the trees, faced away from me, a dark figure standing, looking into something I could not see. Her thick tail twitched and she raised her face and cried.

  I stirred my food on the fire. The light was flat and grey but it was far from dark. I took the postcards Lew had given me out of my pack and considered them. I looked at her face, her eyes, looking directly back at the camera but unseeing, not seeing me. I put away the other pictures and stared at the picture of her on her horse at the Pan-American Exposition. This picture was blurry but it was her, caught, in life. I knew this because of her posture, the way her hand held the reins, the power in her leg, her foot in the stirrup; she was stilling her dark horse. She was thin, the outlines of her body lost beneath a thick Western costume.

  I remembered my father reading aloud to me from the newspaper we had picked up in town. It might have been the same day that photograph of my mother was taken.

  U.S. President William McKinley has been assassinated.

  I remembered mishearing him, believing that he had said the president was shot by a buffalo in the Temple of Music.

  Martha

  PRESIDENT MCKINLEY SPOKE TO THE CROWDS. Expositions, he said, are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancements. They stimulate the energy, enterprise and intellect of the people, and quicken human genius!

  Applause and stomping and cheers filled the air. The magical system invented by Nikola Tesla lit the evening with strings of glass bulbs that glowed brilliantly, hung everywhere between tall poles.

  McKinley stepped into the audience, reaching for hands, squeezing palms and fingers. He looked into the shining eyes of his constituents.

  It’s a great day, he said. It’s a great day for all of us.

  His broad shoulders were patted and squeezed as he levered his way through the crowd. His glasses fogged slightly with sweat. A woman reached to stroke his face; he took her hand and kissed it.

  A slim man in a neat dark coat stepped into McKinley’s path. McKinley looked into the still pale eyes and then down at a hand wrapped in a handkerchief pressing a gun into his belly.

  MARTHA STOOD outside the operating tent, pinched by the shifting shoulders around her. One onlooker shouted, The president’s blood! pointing to a line of drops in the sand. Reporters swung towards the blood, exploding flashes in unison.

  The interior of the tent was dark. The electrical lighting draped everywhere around the fairgrounds had not been installed in the emergency hospital. Edison was there with his X-ray machine, a black box like a coffin on wheels.

  Use it to look for the bullet in his abdomen.

  But instead the doctors looked at Edison’s wrinkled face, his broken eye, the sores across his dying hand, and said, No, it is too dangerous.

  Tears ran down McKinley’s face. I remember you, he whispered to Edison. I saw you in the crowd. Good man.

  Yes, I was there. You are going to be all right, Mr. President.

  One doctor held a metal pan up to catch the sunlight and focus it on the little well above the president’s navel. He moved to keep the light directed while another doctor dug through the blood and flesh, searching for the bullet. McKinley gasped and cried out.

  The surgery continued, a stranger’s fingers then hands still searching in the body of the president.

  He looked into the surgeon’s eyes and sputtered, Where’s Ida? Where’s my wife? Is Ida all right? Where are the damn lights?

  Miette

  THE ENGINE STEAM WAS BLUE, SPIRIT-LIKE, rolling behind the train against the watercolour sunset. Fountains of sparks flew from every wheel as the train ground uphill. When the whistle blew I could taste the sound entering my teeth. I saw the brass headlamp cast light ahead of the toothy V of the cowcatcher, and the brakeman standing on the cab step holding out his red lantern, his shoes being showered with white and yellow sparks. The carriages complained by squealing when the locomotive began to turn along the rails that led to the next quiet station.

  DORA DUFRAN had answered Mollie’s telegram with an urgent message to send me directly to Deadwood. I stalled for a day and Dora sent another telegram, so I bought a ticket to ride freight on the next train. The little card in my hand seemed too small, too thin for what it offered me. I stood by the rails and watched the train roll in, chuffing with an almost human-sounding protest as it decelerated. It stopped, tall as a building, in front of me, and the engineer leapt down and went to have a cigarette. I walked up to a man taking tickets and he looked at my ticket and looked at me.

  Do you want to ride freight? he asked.

  I don’t know exactly what it means, I said.

  It means you ride with the chickens.

  I don’t mind chickens, I said. I was afraid that he was suggesting I could not go on this train.

  He laughed at me and clipped a little hole on my ticket. He called over to the ticketmaster in his booth, Tom, how full are we?

  Not full at all, said Tom.

  I can move you to coach and you can ride with the ladies in their car, if you like, he said kindly.

  Thank you, I said feeling confused.

  When I entered the ladies’ car there was a murmur of shock and then a few soft laughs. I suppose that at first glance I looked and even smelled like a boy. The rough dirt under my fingernails and the stiff hairs all over my clothes were suddenly visible to me. I took a seat by a window at the front of the car near the door and tried to make myself smaller, less conspicuous. The windows were draped in striped navy curtains. The seats were padded and covered with worn black velvet. On the table in front of me was a little brass lamp with a tasselled gold shade. I could smell powder and perfume and other smells that were so unfamiliar I felt shame. I would have been better off with the chickens. My hand on the table was brown and dry. My nails were uneven and filthy. My boots had left a trail of muddy prints to my seat. I could not look the women in the face so I looked at their laps. Every one of them was clothed in shiny, layered skirts that ballooned around the hips. The skirts rustled persistently. The ladies held their hands neatly folded in their laps or else they held gloves, small books, bone fans, beaded purses, compact mirrors, even fuzzy grey kittens who batted at the lace peeking out from the long sleeves of the dresses. I rested my head on the windowglass and watched the landscape spinning by.

  I saw the brass buttons of coyote pupils flicker by the tracks. They played sentinel, spaced at regular intervals along, watching the train pass by with interest. The stops were frequent and at each a woman got on and one got off. At about the fifth such stop a large woman got on. She was fussing loudly about the ticket-taker’s blue eyes and his lovely smile. She swept past me and I saw her bustle, which seemed long enough to hide a horse. She turned in the aisle and faced me. She waved a fan by her neck. The effort of climbing the steps had made her sweat. She walked slowly back to me and bent down and took my chin in her gloved hand.

  It is you, she said. I have a present for you from your mother.

  The woman unpinned her hat and set it o
n the table in front of me. A great plume of pink feathers surrounded the brim.

  I moved hell and high water to intercept you, she said. Do you know who I am?

  No, I said.

  I’m Dora DuFran. I made contact with friends on the rail to be sure I found you. I was afraid you would lose your nerve and disappear. I had to come and keep you going. I run the Green Front Hotel in Deadwood. Your mother is my very good friend. Can I sit here?

  Yes, I said.

  She settled across from me primping and plumping her outfit. She was stout with a bust so big and high she reminded me of a turkey. She had a pretty face framed in brown curls and her eyes were bright blue and heavily lined with charcoal that made the colour stand out. Her lashes were curled and her cheeks were pinched pink; her lips were a darker pink. A lace collar hid a softened neck. Diamond bob earrings were clipped to her earlobes. She cocked her head to look at me.

  What’s the matter?

  My God, you look like her and Bill both, and it is only now, looking at you, that I realize even I did not believe her.

  Say her name, I said.

  Martha Canary.

  She has another name.

  I know it.

  Calamity Jane.

  Yes.

  Yes. You are Calamity Jane’s child. It’s clear even from your rudeness.

  I’m sorry.

  Dora sighed and slid a card across the table. I turned it over. It was a calling card for her business. Printed on linen was the address, her name and a brief statement that read: Come to the famous Cathouse, the Green Front Hotel, for comfort or companionship. We welcome you.

  As I said before, your mother is my truest friend. I promised her that I would give you something if I ever had the chance.

  She opened a travelling bag and handed me a large envelope. It was creased and the paper had yellowed. The edges were furry with wear. I looked at her and opened the envelope with my thumbnail. I looked inside and saw that it contained a letter. I could go no further while she watched.