No Certain Home

by Marlene Lee

  The editor looked amused. “What are you going to do with all that money?”

  Agnes picked up her fork and played with the food on her plate. She longed to tell the editor about John, Myrtle, Sam, Father.

  “My father— ”

  “Have you been to Elitch’s Gardens?” the editor interrupted. His heavy-lidded eyes grew dreamy. “I saw Sarah Bernhardt at Elitch’s. I used to ride the roller-coaster when I was young. They call it the helter-skelter now.”

  “I don’t have time for such things.”

  “Time!” said the editor, throwing back his head. “Time? My dear girl, you have all the time in the world!”

  Agnes said nothing. He was educated and rich, and Aunt Tilly hadn’t told him about the Smedleys and Rallses, about the poor Missouri farm and the mining camps around Trinidad.

  “Your aunt is a remarkable woman,” the editor was saying. “One of the most beautiful women in Denver. She has a wide acquaintance in the city. You’re a fortunate girl,” he added, “to have her help.”

  Agnes laid her fork on her plate. This stranger didn’t have to tell her about her own aunt. Irritated, she cast a sharp eye about the room. Suddenly she hooted.

  “Look at that hat!” she exclaimed, pointing to a woman diner on whose head rested a collection of quivering flowers and fruit. “Is that what you want me to write about in the society page?”

  “Forget about the newspaper business,” the editor said, annoyed. “Buy yourself some nice clothes and find a husband.”

  “I don’t want a husband.”

  “You don’t know what you might want.”

  After dessert they climbed a broad staircase to a parlor on the second floor. The editor seated her next to him on a red velvet sofa and ordered two brandies. “So you want to write,” he said. He laid his arm along the rich carving behind Agnes’ head. She felt a stir of nervous pleasure.

  “I could write book reviews,” she said, and hitched herself closer to the edge of the sofa. “I could write a better book review than the ones you print now.”

  “You need to learn about life if you’re going to be a writer.” He held his brandy glass close to his chest and leaned toward her. “You’re still young. Life will teach you to write.” He smelled subtly of shaving lotion and tweed. Her wish to rest against his shoulder alarmed her.

  She stood. “I’d better get back,” she said.

  The editor stopped swirling his brandy. “We just got here. What’s your hurry?”

  “I have to go,” she said. She handed him her glass and headed for the staircase. On the landing she halted, astonished. A midget, his face old and lined, hopped toward her up the stairs. Agnes remained motionless. At the top of the flight the old man turned back and laughed. He reached as high as he could, grasped the newel post, hauled himself up the last step, then threw back his head and laughed once more. Agnes laughed, too, a loud, free sound.

  “It’s not polite to laugh,” said the editor, catching up to her. He took her arm and ushered her down the stairs and out onto Larimer Street. “H.H. Tammer owns a circus. He puts the performers up at the Windsor. Midgets, giants, fat women … .” He spoke with arch amusement.

  Agnes felt a blast of kinship for the freaks of the world. She knew, without being told, that the little old man had arthritis; that he climbed stairs with a sideways gait to ease his small joints. She felt an impulse to go back into the hotel and talk to the short people, tall people, fat people, thin people. But the editor was propelling her forward. They turned the corner and passed saloons and brothels along Market Street.

  “Does your aunt know you live down here?”

  She turned to face him. “It’s nobody’s business where I live.”

  The editor was silent for the length of a block. “Come to work next Monday,” he said when they stopped in front of a run-down house where Agnes rented a room. “You can start off as a magazine agent. Later we’ll see about book reviews.”

  “You won’t be sorry,” Agnes said.

  “Thank your aunt,” said the editor, and kissed her on the lips. “That was for life,” he said when he’d finished.

  Agnes entered the rooming house. “That was for a job,” she murmured, and wiped her lips hard with the back of her hand.

  Texas 1911

  “Where are you off to this week?” Tilly asked.

  “New Mexico. Texas.”

  “Can you stop off and see your sister in Raton?”

  Agnes shrugged. She always shrugged at the question, as if she weren’t sure train schedules would permit. In fact, she did not want to see Myrtle. She did not want to see John and Sam, either. She did not want even to think about them. If at night, falling asleep, Agnes felt Mother stir somewhere in the darkness and question her about the children, Agnes grew defensive and angry. Half-asleep, she would lift her chin and retort; her retorts were sharp, and she woke up exhausted.

  Agnes had grown to know the conductors and porters on the Denver and Rio Grande; the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; the Southern Pacific. She met the traveling salesmen who criss-crossed the Southwest by train. Often they invited her to the dining car for a meal; even bought subscriptions from her because she was so young and spunky. Her slender body, intelligent eyes, bold face, her infectious laugh and unaffected grin worked well with the men on the train, and worked well in the hotels and cafes along the tracks where she peddled a variety of reading matter. But Agnes was not successful with women.

  “Could I interest you in a subscription to McCall’s?” she would begin, standing on someone’s front stoop and holding out a free pen that said, ‘What is black and white and read all over? Our fine publications everywhere.’ She would try to make eye contact with the housewife behind the screen door. “Are you interested in cooking and fashion?” Squinting to see through the screen, she might add, “Do you sew?” But the women in their gingham house dresses did not like to see this young girl striding through the streets selling. Their daughters belonged in school or at home, and so did she. They distrusted Agnes, and Agnes distrusted them.

  Tascosa, Texas was a half hour’s walk up a canyon from the train tracks. Agnes passed a cemetery, the local boot hill. As she climbed the dusty road, her valise in one hand, a cowboy rode toward her. His tired horse picked its way downhill.

  She stopped and pushed the damp hair off her forehead. “Where’s the telegraph office?”

  He pointed with a single, plain gesture toward the string of adobe buildings ahead, and rode on. After several more minutes of climbing, switching her suitcase from one hand to the other, she left the dry, caked ground for planking and stepped up onto the porch of the two-story hotel. Cowboys sat in the shade, their boots and spurs resting on the porch rail. They paused in their tobacco-chewing to assess her.

  “I’m expecting a wire,” she said to the tired-looking clerk behind the desk. He watched her with weak and watery eyes.

  “No wire come today,” he said.

  “But there should be a wire and some money waiting for me,” she insisted.

  “No wire come.”

  She glared, then stepped back in the small lobby and counted her money. Just enough for one night in the hotel if she didn’t eat any meals. She paid for a room. The clerk gave her a large key on a string and she climbed the staircase to the second floor. As soon as she was inside Room Six she took a piece of paper from her valise, sat down on the edge of the bed, and drafted a wire to the editor.

  “I am stuck in Tascosa, Texas. Stop. Need money. Stop. Wire me care of Exchange Hotel. Stop. A. Smedley.”

  She sent the wire collect and waited through the hot afternoon, but no money arrived. She went to bed hungry. The next day she hung about the lobby again, casting anxious glances at the clerk and trying to ignore the smells of food from the dining room. Now and then she stepped out onto the shaded porch, but the idle cowboys eyed her between tobacco juice squirts over the rail and she returned to the lobby where ceiling fans circled and flies droned.


  “Is there a wire for A. Smedley?” she asked again.

  “No wire come.”

  Agnes felt hot and light-headed. She went up to her room and lay down on the thin mattress. After a bit she dragged herself down the hallway to wash her face and swallow some water. Back in her room, she fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed that Mother and the children were walking up the canyon from the depot, looking for her. They needed a train ticket. When they held out their hands for money, Agnes gave them a free pen each. When she woke, the sheets were damp with sweat. Once more she went downstairs to the lobby.

  “No wire come,” said the clerk. “You’re past due to check out.”

  Agnes lifted her head. “My editor’s wiring me money,” she said. “Can you let me stay one night on credit?”

  The clerk didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. Agnes climbed the stairs to Room Six where she dropped into another numb sleep. Night fell. She did not hear the horses in the street below; the stomping and violin music coming from the saloon; the coyotes howling down the hot Texas night.

  But when the key turned in the lock, she came wide awake. In the moonlight that half-lit the room she lay and watched the door open. Before she could even sit up, someone was on top of her. She tried to reach the little dagger she kept under her pillow, but the man had pinned her. His breath stank and his sweat stank. Rage and revulsion gave her strength. She brought one knee up hard and threw him off.

  “Whore!” grunted the clerk. Agnes was surprised that such a weak-faced man could be so strong. He staggered back from the bed. Agnes braced herself against the headboard and tried to see into the dark corner.

  “You let me stay here one more night and I won’t tell your boss,” she hissed. She felt about for the dagger. The room swam. “And let me have some food tomorrow. My uncle’s coming to get me,” she lied, “and if you help me, he won’t bother you.”

  The clerk stepped out from the corner toward the bed. Agnes raised the dagger.

  “Put that thing away,” he soothed. “Keep me company tonight. You’ll like it. You know you will.” He lunged. Agnes slashed his arm from elbow to wrist. She crouched on the bed. He backed up to the middle of the room and caught his own blood in his cupped hand.

  “You come any closer and I’ll wake up everyone in this town,” she promised. Locking her gaze onto his face, she forced him to stop glancing sideways. “My uncle’s coming from Arizona to get me,” she said. “If you bring me some food and don’t ever touch me again, I won’t tell him about tonight.”

  The clerk backed to the door and left the room. The next morning Agnes opened the door a crack and saw a tray of biscuit and eggs on a table in the hallway. She ate ravenously in her room, washed up at the basin, and went down to the lobby.

  “I want to send a telegram to Clifton, Arizona,” she said to the clerk. He did not look at her.

  “What’s the last name?” he muttered.

  “’Buck,’” said Agnes, then added pointedly, “They know him all over Arizona Territory.” Big Buck had worked with her father in Colorado before he went off to the copper mines in Arizona. She hadn’t thought of him until she realized the editor was not going to send money.

  Big Buck wired the money in time for dinner. Agnes ate, paid off the previous nights’ lodging, and asked about the Southern Pacific connection to Clifton.

  The clerk looked at her sideways and sneered. “What about your editor?”

  Agnes didn’t answer but climbed the narrow wooden staircase she’d been climbing these two interminable days. She entered her room, sank onto the lumpy bed, and reached under the pillow. There was a crust of the clerk’s dried blood on the dagger. She knocked it off against the bed frame, hating the clerk, the editor, and Father, too. They snuck in your room to rape you. They left you stranded in a heat-blasted Texas town. They drank away the family money and robbed the savings from your mother’s trunk. She was not sure of Big Buck, either, or what he might expect for his money.

  She stepped to the single window. Northwest lay the coal camps of Colorado. Agnes, who had hated the camps, now felt a great longing for them and for her girlhood that seemed to have been almost happy by comparison to the present.

  Dusk was seeping through daylight and changing it. She lay down on the bed and remembered how Big Buck had swatted her once for crying. He’d taught her to lasso; to shoot a pistol; to skin a rabbit. He hated Mexicans, Indians, and Mormons. And although he had gone to the whorehouses in Trinidad every payday, he possessed a rough gallantry and would have knocked down any man who looked crosswise at her.

  Clifton, Arizona 1911

  When she alighted from the train at the Clifton depot, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a big gut, big handlebar mustache, big hat, and big, imperturbable face stepped forward and took her suitcase.

  “See you got the money.”

  “Appreciate it,” Agnes said, striding along beside him. Accumulated heat from weeks of summer lay between the canyon walls rising straight up on both sides of Clifton.

  “Nice day,” said Big Buck. They stepped back for a passing wagon. “How’s the family?”

  “Mother died.”

  “No.” Big Buck turned to look at her. For a moment his remote eyes showed feeling. “What was it?”

  “Malnutrition.” She’d looked it up after the doctor left. She would never forget the word, or how to spell it.

  Big Buck maintained silence. He didn’t ask about the children and who was taking care of them.

  “How’s your father?”

  “Between jobs.”

  At the door to the hotel Big Buck bent down and said in a low voice, “I told ‘em you’re my little sister. Best that way.”

  Agnes stood motionless, on guard, then followed him up to the third floor. He set her grip down in the hall.

  “I’ll find work as a secretary,” she said, unlocking the door to her room. “I know shorthand.”

  “First you rest and eat and get some meat on your bones,” said Big Buck. “I won’t have people saying I don’t feed my sister.” He put his hand behind his head, pushed his hat forward over his noncommittal eyes, and left her there.

  When she’d cleaned up from her train trip she found him in the lobby standing under a sign that said, ‘Any man who won’t eat prunes is a son of a bitch.’

  “Follow me,” he said, and crossed the street to the Chinese restaurant.

  “The Chinks worked for the railroad laying track,” Big Buck said, fitting shovelsful of chop suey beneath his mustache. “Chink food is the cheapest grub in town.”

  During days while he was up at the Longfellow Mine, Agnes explored the canyons on a cow pony. Following, one day, the narrow-gauge railroad track over which the ore cars shuttled between the mine up on Chase Creek and the smelter at the edge of town, Agnes met a man riding horseback down off the mountain. He was young and wore a uniform. He stopped and watched her approach.

  “Nice day, ma’am.” He tipped his hat. Agnes shook the perspiration out of her eyes and continued riding.

  “Are you going to the mine?” he asked. He’d turned his horse around and come up alongside of her.

  “No,” said Agnes.

  “You’re not lost, are you?”

  “Do I look lost?”

  “I’m the forest ranger for this district. If you have any questions or need help— ”

  “No questions,” Agnes said.

  “May I ride along for a quarter of a mile?”

  Agnes shrugged.

  “I haven’t seen you in these parts,” the ranger said.

  “I haven’t been in these parts.” She turned and looked at him. “If you’re the forest ranger, where’s the forest?” She scanned the Clifton and Morenci landscape, bald hills laden with dumps of waste rock and slag.

  The ranger looked sheepish and defensive at the same time. “Mining’s hard on the land,” he said. “They cut timber to fuel the smelter. Tailings and fumes kill the rest.”

  They rode on. The
sun grew higher and hotter in the sky. To the north brooded black, stony mountains. Agnes and the ranger veered away from the ore car tracks, their horses’ soft steps the only sound among the ajos and creosote bushes. Agnes wiped her face and neck with a handkerchief.

  “You have family here?” asked the ranger.

  “Just Big Buck,” Agnes said. After a silence she added, “He’s a mechanic at the mine.”

  “Are you married to him?”

  “Nope,” said Agnes. “He’s my brother. Not married to anybody.” The ranger pushed back his wide-brimmed, official-looking hat. He was a thin young man with a boyish smile; his eyes were hazel and his face smooth. “I can show you some pretty country,” he said. “Back in the canyons there’s trees. Lots of trees. Care to go riding on Saturday?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Agnes.

  Every weekend after that they followed the Gila River up into the mountains. Sometimes they explored Geronimo’s trail and searched for arrowheads, or rode far up into remote mountain reaches where the ranger showed her ancient, crumbling cliff dwellings built into canyon walls.

  “Seein’ the ranger quite regular, are you?” Big Buck said one evening over his chop suey. Agnes didn’t respond.

  “Mormon, and thin as a billiard cue,” he muttered to himself. Disgusted, he pushed his plate back from the edge of the table. With his thumb and forefinger he cleared debris from his mustache. “Suppose he’s asked you to the dance in Morenci.”

  “What dance?” said Agnes.

  “Arizona Statehood Dance,” said Big Buck.

  “He hasn’t asked me,” she said, “but if I want to go, I won’t wait for an invitation.”

  “You’re ridin’ over with me,” said Big Buck. “You ain’t ridin’ all the way to Morenci with a Mormon billiard cue.”

  At the close of the next Saturday’s outing, as she and the forest ranger passed the copper works on their way down into town and the canyon wall threw its stored heat into the abrupt nightfall, he asked Agnes to the dance. “Will you go with me?” he asked.

  Agnes dabbed at her neck with a handkerchief. “I’ll dance with you once I’m there,” she said.