Bargain Bessie

by Zina Abbott

  Bessie found the letter and pulled it from its envelope. She took a seat next to the window where enough light filtered through the curtains so she could read without lighting a lamp. She blinked to clear her vision and read aloud her Aunt Desi’s letter.

  It was big news here in Jubilee Springs when the owners of the Prosperity Mine where Aaron works decided to build company housing, enough for ten married miners, then made an offer to help defray some of the expense of bringing up brides to the town. Their reasoning was, married men made for more stable and reliable workers. I think Aaron was reliable without the incentive, but he chose to take advantage of it anyway. They contacted a bridal agency in Denver to handle the connections with interested women. The men had to put in a certain amount of their own money, too, plus they were expected to furnish most of the insides of houses and take care of the yards.

  The only way we knew Aaron had signed up was because in the course of a couple of months he received letters from two women, plus he wrote to them. He never said anything to us until a few days before the first batch of brides was due to arrive and I finally couldn’t stand it any longer and cornered him about it. When I asked him, he finally confessed he had signed up for a bride and had been writing to two women as potential wives. The funny thing is, he didn’t end up with either woman he had been writing to. One had developed a closer relationship with one of the other miners, and that is who she married. The other didn’t come to Jubilee Springs over the Independence Day weekend. Aaron was going to wait until he could meet her, but instead he felt attracted to a young woman named Andrea.

  I learned Andrea joined with the bridal agency late and didn’t have time to correspond with anyone. From what I learned later, her situation at home was not good, and she would not have been able to correspond anyway, even if she had signed up earlier. We found out just how bad it was for her when her father showed up in town and tried to drag her back home like he owned her. Our Aaron made us proud that day. He claimed his wife and stood up for her against her father. In the end, he and Aaron, backed up by me and Simon of course, came to an understanding, and the man left in peace. Andrea promised her father she would write. I hope he writes back. It will mean so much to Andrea if her pa stays on good terms with her.

  Andrea was skittish about the marriage at first, feeling she wasn’t good enough for Aaron. We are working very hard to convince her she is a wonderful young woman and just what our Aaron needs in a wife. So far, it is working out well for her and Aaron. You know how Aaron hardly talks to anyone, Bessie being the only exception I know of. Andrea is quiet and shy. The two don’t say much to each other in words. However, the way they to read together, the way they work together, and the way they look at each other or touch each other on the arm, they say more to each other without words than most couples say talking out loud and without hardly taking a breath.

  We love it up here. Seeing Aaron happily married has added to our joy. How I wish I could convince the rest of my children to come up here. In spite of there being a shortage of women of marriageable age, the town is growing and becoming more than a frontier mining town up in the mountains. I know Miriam is settled with her husband, and his job is secure, so I doubt I could convince them to come. Same with Moses. He has a good job and his wife is close to her family. I doubt they would want to leave Indianapolis. If I could pack you and Bessie on a train and bring you up here, I would, just as I’d like to grab those twins of mine by the ears and drag them up here with us. The one thing that has been difficult for us up here in Jubilee Springs is being so far away from our family in Indiana.

  Bessie quelled the emotion rising within her as she finished the letter. She hadn’t been able to see much of her aunt and uncle in recent years. Unfortunately, not only had the Carlson’s finances suffered reverses which had prevented them within the previous decade from traveling to visit family, the mercantile her uncle and aunt had owned and run in Indianapolis in what originally had been an up-and-coming neighborhood when they first built the store had ended up being in an area that had declined as property values dropped. Bessie knew from previous letters her uncle’s mercantile had been losing money for years. Without there being enough money for him to justify drawing a wage, Aaron and his siblings had each gone their own ways, Moses to work with a competitor across the city, Miriam to marriage, and the twins, David and Jonathan, had gone to work for a large ice house in the city.

  It was Aaron who, after getting on with the Prosperity Mine in Jubilee Springs, had convinced his parents to sell the property, pack up their stock and bring it to Jubilee Springs. They operated out of a tent until Aaron could help them build a store with living quarters above. Only now Aaron was married and had moved to company housing owned by the mine. Her aunt had said he still helped out at the store. Actually, it sounded to Bessie like Andrea did more of the helping out now. Her aunt and uncle were alone, but they still had Aaron and his wife nearby.

  Bessie folded the pages and returned them to the envelope. She sat with the letter in her lap as she let the words of the letter settle within her.

  When mother is gone, I’ll have no family nearby

  Emeline’s words brought Bessie out of her reverie. “Elisabeth, did you record Aaron’s marriage in the family Bible? I believe your Aunt Desi gave enough information in her letters so you should have all you need.”

  “I’ll do that right now, Ma.” Bessie stood and took the letter back to its place on top of the chest of drawers. She opened the Bible and pulled the ink and pen from the bottom drawer.

  “It won’t be long and you’ll be putting my final information in there. I need you to take care of that Bible so it can get passed along.”

  Bessie once again opened the letter to be sure she spelled Andrea’s maiden name correctly. At least with them getting married on the fourth of July, it was easy to remember the date. “I will, Ma. After your time comes, I’ll see Martha gets it so it can go down through her children.”

  “No, you keep it. If that husband of hers gets ahold of it in one of his drunken rages, who knows what he might do with it, especially with it being a King James Version instead of whatever the Catholics use. I’ll not tolerate him having the opportunity to destroy that Bible with the record of our family. Besides, I bought Martha her own Bible when she married. I didn’t want her to get caught up in the Catholic religion and forget what she had learned at home. Hopefully she’ll take care of that one.”

  “All right, Ma, I promise I won’t give it to her, at least not while Patrick’s still alive. But, I can’t keep it forever. I’m not married, Ma. I have no one to pass it down to except to a niece or nephew.”

  “The family Bible goes with the youngest daughter, Bessie, you know that. And you will get married.”

  Bessie shook her head in frustration. She and her mother had been through this conversation before. “Ma, at my age, there is little chance I will marry.”

  Emeline kept her voice soft, but confident. “You will marry, Bessie. I can feel it.”

  “I don’t see it, Ma. It certainly hasn’t happened yet.”

  “You don’t see it because you have been busy taking care of your father and I after our reversal of fortune and decline of health. Once you are free of me, your time will come.”

  “No man wants a twenty-nine year-old spinster, Ma.”

  “You may find your husband has children by a first wife who has passed, but I feel confident you will marry and have a family of your own someday. I need you to promise me something, Elisabeth.”

  Sometimes Bessie hated it when her mother called her Elisabeth. It either meant she had done something to displease her mother, or her mother was dead set on something and would not take no for an answer. “What is it, Ma?”

  “If your Uncle Simon offers to let you come to Colorado to live with him and your Aunt Desdemona, you go.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because I’m going to ask him to. You and Aaron were as close as twins can
be without being born to the same parents at the same time. You will have family there. I want you to go. And now that Aaron’s married…”

  Bessie turned to stare at her mother. “Just because Aaron married doesn’t mean I’d marry if I go there.”

  “Desdemona said in her letters there is a shortage of women up that way. You’ll find your age won’t matter to a lot of those men, especially since a lot of them will still be older than you are.”

  Bessie inhaled and looked off in the distance as she considered her mother’s words. “I don’t know, Ma. I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a miner’s wife. Aunt Desi and Uncle Simon love it up there, but it sounds pretty rustic to me.”

  “It sounds exciting to me. Simon was my baby brother, born when I was almost of an age to begin courting. But, if I were younger, closer in age to him and Desdemona, and in better health, I’d go. I have loved living in Terre Haute, but the time for the Carlson’s to call this city home has passed.”

  Bessie studied her mother, puzzling over the look of longing on her face. It was a side of her mother she had not seen before.

  “Elisabeth, promise me this. You will go if you can. I don’t want to see you return to a back-breaking job like the one you had at the hotel. It’s too hard on you, and will age you before your time.”

  Bessie answered carefully, keeping her voice soft. “It’s honest work, Ma. I don’t mind it. No, I don’t make a lot of money doing it, and it can be tiring, but it is something I know I can do. It will allow me to support myself.”

  “You can do it now, dear, because you are still young and strong. In another twenty years, your joints will ache before the day even begins, and it will only get worse as the day progresses. You will be too tired to socialize and perhaps meet eligible men. You can do better.”

  “Perhaps I can get work in a store. Perhaps I can learn to use one of those typewriting machines and I can get work in an office. We—we do have debts I need to pay off. I can’t just walk away from my obligations.”

  Once again, Emeline’s words sounded sharper than Bessie had heard in some time. “They should not all be your obligations. You bore the brunt of caring for me. Your sister and brother need to contribute their share.”

  Silence reigned for several seconds. Bessie could not dispute her mother’s words; they echoed her own thoughts.

  “Elisabeth, child, promise me. If your uncle offers to help you go to Colorado, you will go. You will not sell all the family heirlooms, but will take a few and the family Bible with you, and you will start fresh. You have done more than your fair share of being a dutiful and loving daughter. It is time for you to live your life.”

  Worried her mother might be getting too excited and it would injure her heart, Bessie did the only thing she knew to do. She agreed. “I promise, Ma. But only if Uncle Simon offers.”

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  Jubilee Springs – middle july 1881

  CHAPTER 4

  ~o0o~

  Peder Vilhelm who ran the Helsa Bath House across from the railroad depot and close to where the single men who worked not only for the mine, but also the Radcliffe Sawmill, lived and spent much of their off time, stepped into the mercantile. As soon as he spotted Simon Brinks, he hurried over to the storekeeper, a paper clutched in his hand.

  “Welcome, Peder. What can I get you today?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Brinks. I bring something to you. Mr. Thompson from the telegraph office asks me to bring you a telegram. I hope it is not bad news.”

  Simon slowly reached to take the paper. His wife Desi who had been sorting the mail that had come in on the morning train rose from her chair and joined her husband. Simon cleared his throat. “Thank you, Peder. Let me get you something for your trouble.”

  Peder shook his head. “No, no. It is no trouble. It is a slow time at the bath house with the men at work. It gave me a chance to get away for a few minutes. The little ones, they squabble, you know? I don’t know how my wife deals with it day in and day out.”

  Simon chuckled. “I understand. At least it’s not too hot yet to be out for a walk around the block. Thank you, Peder.”

  Simon watched the man turn to leave. He raised his hand as Peder offered a farewell wave just before he walked out the door. Next he focused his eyes on the telegram while he built up the nerve to open it. With his sister in Terre Haute in poor health, he hoped it didn’t contain bad news.

  “That was nice of Peder to bring the telegram to us rather than having to wait for Mr. Thompson to break free from the telegraph office to deliver it. Simon, maybe we can take a few cents off his bill as a thank you.”

  “My thoughts exactly, my dear.”

  “Simon, the words aren’t going to change by you holding it. Do you want me to open it and see what it’s about?”

  Simon heaved a breath. “No. I might as well get it over with. Who knows? It could be good news.”

  Except they both knew good news tended to travel by a slower letter, if at all.

  “It’s from Bessie. ‘Mother requests you come STOP end is soon STOP Bessie.’ Short and to the point, but I suppose it’s understandable. I don’t think they’re doing well living off of what Bessie makes at that hotel job. And I don’t think Ben or Martha, either one, are helping their mother at all.”

  “We should have done more for her, Simon. I just wish it hadn’t been such an expense and a chore to settle our debts back east and move the inventory out here, then such a struggle to get the building constructed.”

  Simon stared off down a row of merchandise without seeing anything in particular. “You’re right. My sister practically raised me until she met and married Wendell. I should have been doing more for her these past few years with her husband gone.”

  “You need to go, Simon. I can watch the store. Aaron can help with the heavy things, and our Andrea is so willing to help whenever she can, I know she won’t mind working a few hours each day while I take care of the mail. I may even train her to handle the mail. As shy as she is, she would probably prefer to do that so I’m free to manage the store and the customers.”

  Simon nodded with resolution. “You’re right, Desi. Let me get these last few crates back in the storeroom. Then before it gets any warmer, I’ll walk over to the ticket office at the depot and see about schedules to get back to Terre Haute. I better get some money from the bank, and warn Mr. Shumaker I may be writing drafts against the account. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get back there.”

  “Simon, be sure to send a telegram back to let Bessie know you are on your way and when to expect you.”

  On his way home from the bank and the train depot, Simon walked over to his son and daughter-in-law’s house to speak to Andrea. Just the Sunday before she had invited him and Desi to the house after to church to witness her recording hers and Aaron’s name under the marriage section of her family Bible. He had noticed since then she seemed far more relaxed. There was a new glow about her now that she had escaped from her bad situation back at her father’s ranch and had made a level of peace with her father. She now appeared to have fully embraced being married to her new husband. Simon knew Desi had been right when she had seen the inner beauty in Andrea and encouraged Aaron to pursue her for his bride.

  Andrea answered the door and, with a shy smile, invited Simon in.

  Simon explained about the telegram and his plans to visit his sister. “Andrea, if you feel up to it, would you mind helping Desi at the store while I’m gone? In fact, I’d like to invite both you and Aaron to supper tonight. I need to talk to him, too, about helping his ma while I’m gone. Desi said she’d like to teach you about the mail so she’s free help the customers.”

  Andrea smiled in response. “I’d like to learn to do the mail. And you know Aaron will do what he can to help. Tell Ma Brinks I baked bread and a peach cobbler this morning before it got hot. I’ll bring that for supper.”

  That night, sitting around a table set with
a cold supper, the four of them discussed Simon’s plans for going back to Terre Haute to see his sister and what the three left in Jubilee Springs would do in his absence.

  Simon warned them. “I don’t know what I’ll find when I get back there. It has been some time since Emeline has written herself. Bessie has been writing, and she may have been overly optimistic so we wouldn’t worry. She is quite an independent young woman.”

  Desi sighed and nodded in agreement. “Well, that is one more good thing to come of Aaron finding himself such a wonderful woman to marry.” Desi stopped and grinned at Andrea, who shyly smiled and looked down in response to the praise. “We have a free bedroom. Simon, unless she’s being courted and is planning to marry soon, try to convince Bessie to come to Jubilee Springs with you. I don’t like to think of her back there by herself. I doubt her job at the hotel is all that wonderful. If that is what she truly loves to do, she can either try to get on at the River Valley Inn, or she can work here at the store for a while. Just don’t leave her back there alone.”

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  terre haute, indiana – end july 1881

  CHAPTER 5

  ~o0o~

  Bessie fidgeted as she watched her mother sleep. She had received the telegram from her uncle stating he would be Terre Haute this day. She hoped he did not plan on her coming to the rail station to meet him. Surely he understood Emeline was too ill to be left alone that long. She hoped he was in a position to hire a carriage to bring him to the boarding house. Bessie vacillated between looking forward to seeing her uncle once more and being embarrassed about the reduced circumstances she and her mother currently shared.