Mildred nodded.
“I bet you were very proud of him,” Georgiana said.
“Oh, yes, I surely was.” Mildred clasped her knarred hands together. “My father was a kindly man and a fine physician. When he died, everyone in town came to his funeral. Dr. Wilburn Samuel Fisher was his name.”
“Did he ever take care of prisoners incarcerated at the state prison?” Georgiana asked.
Mildred nodded. “Yes, Father would go to the prison. Mother didn’t like for him to go there, but he had to obey that oath.”
“The Hippocratic oath?”
Mildred nodded. “Yes, that’s the one.”
Georgiana took the old woman’s hand. “Do you remember if he ever delivered a baby at the prison?”
Mildred looked beyond Georgiana, her faded eyes looking past the wall of this room, past this day and year, gazing down the tunnel of time.
Vanessa found herself holding her breath. Waiting. A part of her wanted the old woman to say that no inmate at the Deer Lodge prison ever gave birth to a child, and that would be the end of it. They had tried and failed to find a trail that would lead them to their birth grandmother, who had, after all, wanted to sever all ties with her newborn child and with the woman she called Aunt Vera, and who most likely meant for that severance also to include any progeny her cast-off child might produce. Vanessa and her sisters could spend the rest of their time in this breathtakingly beautiful corner of the world sightseeing. She and Ellie could help Georgiana haul about her photographic equipment and assist her in taking photographs of wildlife and soaring mountain peaks and the tiny wildflowers that grew above the timberline in high mountain meadows. And perhaps the experience would help the three of them become more accepting of one another’s quirks and foibles and become better friends and deal more successfully with their mother’s absence from their lives. But Vanessa also felt an intense curiosity about the woman named Hattie who had given birth to their father and hoped that the incarcerated Henrietta Polanski and Hattie were the same person. And that her crime had not been horrendous.
Vanessa watched Mildred’s face as she searched back through her life. At one point, the elderly woman closed her eyes, and Vanessa was sure she had fallen asleep, but a small sigh escaped from her lips and she began to speak.
“My father delivered two babies at the prison. One of them was stillborn. That was back when my mother was still alive. Father brought the baby home, and Mother washed the poor little dead thing and swaddled it in strips torn from an old blanket until it looked like a tiny Egyptian mummy. My father made a wooden casket for it, and he and Mother took it to the cemetery for burial.”
“What about the other baby?” Georgiana asked.
“Father brought that baby home, too. My mother was dead by then, and I kept house for Father and assisted him in his practice of medicine. I dressed the baby in clothes from my mother’s cedar chest, then went to the store to buy baby bottles and evaporated milk and corn syrup so I could make infant formula for the child. When I returned from the store, Father was making a long-distance telephone call to a lady back East who was a relative of the baby’s mother. As I recall, she lived in the state of West Virginia. And that fine lady rode the train all the way from West Virginia to Deer Lodge, Montana, to fetch the baby. A little boy it was. I cried to see him go.”
Georgiana looked over her shoulder at her sisters, tears welling in her blue eyes.
Vanessa felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the small room. Overwhelmed with emotion, she put her hands to her mouth. This frail old woman had once held their newborn father in her arms.
Beside her, Ellie was whispering, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Vanessa knew this trip had been worthwhile if only for this one sweet moment that she and her sisters would remember for the rest of their lives.
They lingered for a time while Georgiana wheeled Mildred outside and photographed her in the shade of an ancient oak tree. After a time the old woman began to nod off, and they each hugged her and thanked her. “I won’t forget about that postcard with the Empire State Building,” Georgiana promised.
The scenic drive back to Helena was magnificent. They stopped along the way so that Georgiana could photograph the spectacular vistas.
It was dusk when Vanessa pulled off the road so that Georgiana could photograph a crumbling stone house beside a rushing stream with soaring mountains all around. Vanessa drove as far as she dared down a rutted lane. Ellie and Vanessa poked around the ruins speculating about the people who had once lived there, then sat on streamside boulders and dangled their feet in the rushing water while they watched Georgiana march around through the high grass in her flip-flops, checking the building from different angles. Finally she got her tripod out of the back of the SUV and set it up near some overhanging branches, explaining that the branches would frame the house in the picture. “Isn’t it too dark to take pictures?” Ellie asked.
“Not for a timed exposure,” Georgiana said.
After she attached the camera to the tripod, she looked through the viewfinder and adjusted the lens, then moved the tripod back a bit. Satisfied with what she saw, she used a penlight in the waning light to adjust the settings.
Vanessa and Ellie watched while Georgiana took several pictures, changing the settings between each exposure to make sure she came away with one that would suit her.
“So much beauty,” Ellie said in a reverent tone. “I can understand why so many movie stars want to buy land and build homes in Montana. They have enough money to live two lives—the glamorous one in New York or Los Angeles and a secluded one on an isolated piece of land where they build a palatial log cabin for themselves and another for their horses. When they get tired of solitude, they go back home and party with their buddies.”
“If I had that kind of money,” Vanessa said, “I would buy a penthouse in Manhattan for home base and travel the world. What about you, Georgiana?”
“If I were rich, I’d buy a bunch of land out here and establish a summer camp for poor kids and teach them how to take pictures,” Georgiana said as she fussed with her camera.
“That’s a lovely idea,” Vanessa said. “Probably the most gratifying thing about having a lot of money is that one can afford to be generous.”
“You know, the best part about coming to Montana is it gives you a different perspective,” Georgiana said. “I’m going to buy some hiking boots even if they leave marks and make calluses.”
“Your Chinese podiatrist might give you another sort of boot when you get back,” Ellie warned.
“I’m getting tired of Dr. Lou.”
Vanessa and Ellie exchanged glances. Georgiana was getting tired of Dr. Lou?
“What about you?” Vanessa asked Ellie. “If you found a wonderfully virile cowboy who was looking for just the right little honey to complete his life, would you move to Montana?”
Ellie frowned. “So, you are assuming that, as a woman, I would have to be the one to give up my career and lifestyle and the only home I’ve ever known to move to a completely alien environment.”
“Seems to me that one of you would have to,” Georgiana observed. “Either the guy stops being a cowboy, or you stop being a New York fashion editor.”
Ellie was silent for a minute. “Actually, Boone and I kind of made up before I left.”
When neither sister commented on her announcement, Ellie demanded, “So what do you two have against Boone?”
Vanessa recalled the day she met Boone at the picnic and how, on the way home, her daughters seemed surprised that she wasn’t going to tell Ellie that Boone had been putting the make on Georgiana.
With her back to Ellie, Georgiana pressed her hands together prayerfully and gave Vanessa an imploring look.
“I know it was painful for you when he went back to his wife,” Vanessa said, choosing her words carefully. “Are you sure he’s sincere about you this time around?”
“Look, Boone and I enjoy being together.
Maybe something will come of it, or maybe it won’t.” Then Ellie added with a shrug, “Que sera, sera.”
Once they were back on the main highway, Vanessa stopped for gas and Ellie headed for the restroom.
As Vanessa dealt with the gas pump and washed the windows, Georgiana hovered. “Boone was waiting outside my building a couple of weeks ago,” she said. “He pretended like he ran into me by accident and tried to get me to have a drink with him. I told him to go to hell. Then he calls later that evening, supposedly to apologize if he was out of line, but goes on to say all this other stuff about how he can’t stop thinking about me. The man is a collector.”
“What do mean?” Vanessa asked.
“He’s the kind of guy who brags to his buddies in the bar how many chicks he’s screwed.”
Fifteen
MYRNA poured her evening glass of wine, turned on the television set in the sitting room that adjoined her bedroom, and curled up in an easy chair to watch her son Randall being interviewed on the NBC Denver affiliate’s evening news. The news anchor cut right to the chase, asking if Randall was planning to run for governor.
Randall admitted that he was considering the race but would be making an announcement one way or the other. He did, however, speak on issues he would want to tackle should be become governor—job creation, protection of pensions, affordable heath care, a balanced budget. When asked about the protection of the state’s wilderness areas, he said that protecting the environment and making sure the mining and tourism industries continued to thrive were not only possible but essential to the continued prosperity of the state. Randall grinned when kidded about his score in a recent pro-am charity golf tournament sponsored by the station and said that his wife was the best golfer in the family. Next year the station should invite her.
Randall had always reminded Myrna of her father, but this evening as she watched him on the television screen, that resemblance had never seemed more pronounced. Her father lacked the education and polish that Randall had achieved, but Randall’s expressions, his grin, his sense of humor, all made her think of her father. Her beloved Papa.
Myrna had always regretted not being able to tell her children anything about her past. They had been curious, of course, but all she told them was that she’d grown up dirt-poor and been on her own since she was sixteen, and that she had put those difficult times behind her and never planned to discuss them with anyone.
Sometimes, though, Myrna wished she could at least tell her children how her father died and make them understand why mine owners had to do right by their miners. It was not only humane to make the mines as safe as possible and treat miners fairly, but over the long haul it enhanced the bottom line. People nowadays seemed to have forgotten that loyal employees were the most productive.
She watched the rest of the news program, then had dinner with Willy while they watched an old Debbie Reynolds movie. Willy absolutely adored Debbie Reynolds.
Myrna read in bed until she was nodding off, then turned out the light. But when she closed her eyes, memories of her father filled her mind. Her past had been much with her lately, which was puzzling. She hadn’t revisited those years in any significant way for decades, but of late she found it difficult to keep thoughts of that time at bay.
When she closed her eyes, she could see the unpainted shack where she had been raised.
Her papa never got his health back after the mine accident in Alaska. The bad air he breathed while waiting to be rescued all but ruined his lungs. For the next two years, he somehow managed to get up at dawn and trudge down to Mr. Sedgwick’s mine, each week and month worse than the one before as his health deteriorated. The days when he collapsed and Mama had to go fetch him in the old Ford became more and more frequent until finally the mine manager told him not to return. The company physician said it was tuberculosis that had destroyed Papa’s lungs and not the mine accident in Alaska or working in the Coal Town mine, which meant that Papa wouldn’t get any sort of settlement from Mr. Sedgwick. And when Papa died, Mama wouldn’t receive any sort of widow’s benefit from the mine owner.
After her father was let go at the mine, he lived for another long, agonizing year. He was constantly coughing up blood, and each breath was labored and painful. The sound of his gasping filled every corner of their small house throughout the day and night. He had no appetite, and his body was reduced to skin and bones. The black-clad preacher came often and would ask Hattie and her mother to kneel beside the bed and pray with him. The man prayed endlessly in a singsong voice that Hattie was sure God found annoying. The prayers were so long that she thought her thighbones were going to poke right out of her knees. The preacher kept asking God to forgive and to open the doors of heaven to “this craven sinner.” Hattie wanted to tell him that her papa wasn’t a sinner. He was a good man who had done the best he could, and God should have done a better job of looking after him.
When neighbors and church folk dropped by with food and cast-off clothing. Hattie could tell that her parents were grateful but also uncomfortable with being on the receiving end of charity. Her father especially. He would weep because he wasn’t able to look after his own family.
Mama begged Papa to let her write to his father and ask for money to help them through, but Papa made her swear on the Bible that she would never do such a thing. Not more than a month or two after that, Papa received a letter from an attorney in Pikesville, West Virginia. In addition to a one-page typed letter, the envelope contained a dollar bill. The letter informed Papa of the death of his father and that according to the terms of old Mr. Wentworth’s last will and testament, his bequest to his only son was one dollar.
Papa tore up the letter and the dollar.
By then Hattie knew that the scars on Papa’s back were from a razor strap. His father had beat him from the time he was a little boy until finally he announced that he’d had enough and was heading West. His father said that if he left, he was no longer a member of the Wentworth family.
Papa had walked out the door with only the clothes on his back, and to distance himself from his father, he dropped the Went from his name and went by Worth. William Thomas Worth. From time to time he would write his mother, but he never knew if she got the letters. He wouldn’t put it past his father to keep them from her.
One snowy Saturday morning, Hattie and Papa were alone. It was too early for the preacher to make his rounds, or maybe he didn’t want to venture out in the snow. But the snow had not deterred Mama in setting off for town on foot, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with cartons full of fresh eggs. The Ford had a dead battery, and Mama needed to deliver her eggs to the grocer on schedule or else he might start buying eggs from someone who had a more reliable way to deliver them, and it was the egg money and the generosity of others that kept them from starving. When she returned, she would have a sack of cornmeal and one of beans and a tin of syrup to pour on the cornmeal mush Mama cooked for breakfast.
With Mama gone to town and the house surrounded by silently falling snow, the only sound was her father’s labored breathing. Hattie carried her library book into the bedroom and asked Papa if he wanted her to read to him. “This week I’m reading Robinson Crusoe,” she told him.
Papa grabbed her arm. Gasping for breath between every word, he told Hattie that he needed to die and would she please help him.
Then he handed her a pillow.
Hattie understood. Her mama would not have had the courage to do such a thing, so he had waited until she was gone to ask. With a pounding heart, she shook her head and pulled her hand away. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“Please,” he begged. “I need to die. It’s time for me to die.”
Hattie stood there for a long time, knowing that she had to do this thing for her father but would almost rather die herself. She was wearing a tattered flannel robe over her clothes to keep warm. Her belly was empty because there would be no food until Mama returned. And if she was going to do this thing, she had to do it before Mama
came home.
She hugged him and kissed him and told him that he was the best papa in the whole world, then put the pillow over his face and lay across it using the weight of her body to keep it in place. He struggled a bit, but she knew it wasn’t because he had changed his mind. His body was rebelling on its own. Finally the struggling stopped and his body was still. She didn’t move for a long time just to make sure. Then she rolled away, removed the pillow from his face, and began to scream, a terrible uncontrollable sound that came from deep inside her. Her beloved Papa was lost to her.
Finally she was too exhausted to scream anymore. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of the flannel robe, then picked up the book and began reading to her father’s dead body. She had gotten to the part when Robinson “was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore” when she realized her mother was standing in the doorway.
“Is he…?” Mama began, but could not say the word. She walked slowly to the bed and touched his face. Then she knelt beside the bed and kissed his face and his hands with tears running down her cheeks, but Hattie could tell she was relieved. That part of the nightmare was over.
And now, all these years later, as Myrna looked back on that time in her life, she realized how liberating her father’s death had been. She would never have thought about leaving while he was still alive. With him gone, however, it was only a matter of time.
Sixteen
THE red cowboy boots were hurting Ellie’s feet, and she considered changing footwear before heading downstairs for dinner with her sisters, but that would have required changing her outfit so she stayed with the boots.
Only two tables were occupied in the hotel dining room. The couple at one table was making moves to leave. At the other a lone male diner was eating a piece of pie. Ellie glanced at her watch. It was only nine thirty! But she could tell by the looks on the hostess’s and wait staff’s faces that they had been poised to close and were not pleased to see three diners walk in the door.
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