No Certain Home

by Marlene Lee

  Agnes grinned. “Agreed.” Once again she shot her work-hardened hand out to Thorberg, gave a vigorous shake to the cool, slender fingers, and strode out of the little room.

  “Where are you going?” Thorberg called after her.

  “Waiting tables at the diner,” Agnes answered. “The night shift.”

  “Where will you sleep?”

  Agnes was already on the steps. “My room is yours as long as you need it,” she called back. “I’m bunking on the first floor while you’re here.”

  In April Agnes’ little room on the third floor was already too warm. Thorberg Brundin sat fanning herself on the edge of the narrow bed when Agnes came striding down the hall and through the doorway, removed her holster, and once again slung it over the bed post.

  “Well, how did I do?” She rummaged through the closet that had been poked out of a space under the eave.

  “Best possible,” said Thorberg, forgetting to move her fan. “You’re a strong debater. I gave you highest marks.”

  Unused to praise, Agnes looked away.

  “You made your points clearly and efficiently. Your rebuttal was extremely strong. You were passionate in defense of women’s rights.”

  Agnes despised the tears gathering at the back of her throat. Thorberg’s approval was making her as weak as the women she’d defended. She turned to the closet, pulled a belt from a wall hook, and began fastening the worn cloth around the waist of her skirt.

  “I see you’re dressing for dinner,” Thorberg observed drily.

  “I don’t have time or money for fashion,” Agnes said. Thorberg looked down at her own white blouse, crisp even in this heat and fastened at the collar with a brooch her mother had insisted she take out West with her. Her pointed boots showed from beneath the hem of her long linen skirt.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” said Agnes.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Your speech and your clothes.”

  “Phoenix is my new home,” said Thorberg. She resumed the fanning motion. “I’m originally from New York.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Again, why do you say that?”

  “The way you talk. And you look rich.”

  “Believe me, not everyone in New York is rich. Neither am I.” She glanced about the room. “How long have you been at Tempe Normal, Ayahoo?”

  “Since September.” In the mirror she fixed her eye on Thorberg. “I’m a special student. Never went to high school.”

  With an expression of pleased vindication, Thorberg studied the fierce girl standing before her. “You confirm my opinion that school is unnecessary for people who want to learn,” she said. “I’m very disappointed in our schools. American education is antiquated, reactionary, and uncreative.”

  The little speech annoyed Agnes. She picked up a brush and attacked her short hair with quick, hard strokes. “You’re educated,” she said. “You can afford to be critical.”

  Thorberg continued her even fanning. “Are you going to teach when you graduate?”

  Agnes placed the brush back on the shelf under the mirror. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to stay alive. I don’t have the money to finish school. I have to stop and work.” She’d received a letter from Big Buck in early spring in which he’d written, “Seein’s how I haven’t heard from you, I hope the money done you some good in your education. As for me, I’m going to Mexico to fight in the Revolution.”

  Agnes plopped down on the foot of the bed. “Why did you come West?” she asked.

  Thorberg curled her legs under her to make room for Agnes. “My brother’s here,” she said. “He’s a surveyor for the dam.”

  “The Roosevelt Dam?”

  Thorberg nodded. She pulled up her legs and hugged her knees. “When he wrote to me from the Superstition Mountains, I had to come West. I had to see the Superstition Mountains.”

  “And what do you think of them?”

  “Marvelous. This hot, dry country is magnificent.” Thorberg picked up her fan again. “But I’m going farther west still. So is my brother. We’re going to Berkeley, California. We’re leaving as soon as my teaching term is finished.”

  Agnes spread her strong, brown hand on the dormitory blanket and studied it. To be able to say, “I’m going here” or “I’m going there” and to know ahead of time you would have the money for it seemed unobtainable bliss.

  “You and your brother, are you friends?” Agnes asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Thorberg. “We’re great friends. Do you have a brother?”

  Agnes nodded. “Two.” She got off the bed.

  “Where are you from, Ayahoo? Did you grow up in Arizona?”

  “Missouri and Colorado.” She stepped to the door. “I have to go to work now.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “In the kitchen. I’ll serve you your dinner.”

  “I’ve enjoyed visiting with you,” said Thorberg.

  “The same, I’m sure.” Agnes paused in the doorway. “Can I interview you tomorrow?”

  “I’m through at four.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you.” said Agnes.

  Agnes and Thorberg entered Laird and Dines Drugs and slid into opposite sides of a booth. Agnes immediately moved the glass canister filled with long-handled spoons to one side and put her elbows on the cool, marble tabletop.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Chocolate. My treat,” said Thorberg. She gazed about her as if she were in the habit of removing hat and gloves and had just noticed she wasn’t wearing any. “I sometimes find myself marveling that I’m actually in Arizona,” she said after her eyes had made an aloof circuit of the drugstore. From behind a row of apothecary jars lined up on the oak counter, the druggist was waiting on a cowboy. Agnes took out pencil and paper from a large pocket in her skirt.

  “Can’t you interview me some other time?” asked Thorberg. “Couldn’t we just talk?”

  Agnes grinned. “ I’ve given myself an assignment.” But she laid her pencil aside.

  “What are your plans after graduation?” asked Thorberg.

  “Maybe work on a newspaper.” Agnes’ jaw tightened. “I’ll never marry.”

  “Nor I.”

  “Men don’t know how to live as equals with women, in friendship,” said Agnes.

  But Thorberg sat taller. “My brother is my friend,” she said, “and we are equal.”

  The sodas arrived. They each took a straw and long-handled spoon from the glass canisters and bent to business, one woman blonde, her skin smooth as porcelain; the other darker, rougher, with a quick, frank expression.

  Thorberg straightened, wiped her mouth with her handkerchief, and leaned back thoughtfully. “You could do political work,” she said. “You could be quite effective.”

  Agnes dragged on her straw hungrily. “I’d rather write for the papers.”

  “Journalism is ideal for political work,” said Thorberg.

  “What sort of political work?”

  “Help the working class overthrow the capitalists. Women’s emancipation. Birth control.”

  Agnes lowered her eyes and whipped her soda into a froth.

  “Join the workers of the world,” said Thorberg. “Help bring about a socialist world.”

  “What’s a socialist world?”

  Thorberg filled the shallow bowl of her long spoon with ice-cream. “A world in which all classes own the means of production. A world in which there are no rich and no poor.”

  Agnes tapped her spoon absently on the lip of the glass. “How do you work for that?”

  “Help organize strikes.”

  “Is there any money in it?”

  “Well, no. You don’t do it for money. You do it for idealistic and political reasons. You make speeches. Write articles. As you say, write for the newspapers.”

  “They have socialist newspapers?”

  “Certainly. There’s The Call in New York City, and many others.”

  “I worked for a
n editor in Denver,” Agnes said. She sucked up the last of her soda and stared into the empty glass. “Do you know anybody on The Call?”

  “Not specifically on The Call. But Ernest and I have many friends in New York who are socialists, just as we are.”

  “Is Ernest your brother?”

  “Yes. Ernest is my brother.”

  Agnes eyed Thorberg’s shining hair, precise and refined features, well-cut dress. Her boots were real leather, of that Agnes was sure.

  “How can you be a socialist if you’re not poor?”

  Thorberg’s color rose. “The Socialist Revolution is blind to class values,” she said. “Socialism needs all of our efforts. The capitalist classes will not willingly relinquish their power.”

  “But aren’t you the capitalist class? If the Revolution comes, you won’t have money,” Agnes pointed out. “You’re on top now. You’d be pulled down. You wouldn’t have money to go to California or enroll anywhere.”

  Thorberg trailed a slender finger through the condensation on her glass. “I am only too ready to do my part,” she said. “I can give up what few advantages I have.”

  Agnes looked skeptical.

  “Have you heard about the strike of the textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts?” Thorberg asked. “The mill owners were forced to settle with the workers for higher wages. It was a great victory for the working class.” She explained the relief work and the removal of the strikers’ children to sympathetic families in New York where they were cared for until the strike ended.

  “That’s what we need in the coal mines,” Agnes said. “A strike that sticks.”

  “Is your father a miner?”

  Agnes spoke tentatively of the farm in Missouri, the move to Colorado, the poverty, coal camps, mine accidents. Slowly she approached the subject of her mother’s death, skirted it, came back to it. Thorberg listened intently and handed over her handkerchief.

  “I will never die the way my mother did!” Agnes looked at the clock on the wall and took in a sudden breath. “I’ll be late to set tables.” Thorberg paid the bill. Outside, they stopped at the corner to let a horse and wagon go by.

  “Let’s talk again before I go back to Phoenix,” Thorberg said, catching up to Agnes who had stepped into the street without waiting for the dust to settle. Thorberg’s steps were light and langorous in contrast to Agnes’ sinewy stride. “I want to introduce you to my brother. He comes down from the dam every weekend.”

  Agnes did not answer until they reached the dormitory. “Fine,” she said. “Tell me where to meet you.” And without another word she set off for the kitchen entrance at the back.

  The next Saturday Agnes and Thorberg waited at Laird and Dines for Ernest to arrive from the Roosevelt Dam.

  “What are your brothers like?” Thorberg asked.

  “Younger than me.”

  Thorberg slowly swirled a straw through her chocolate soda. “Do you see them often?”

  “No.” She’d told Thorberg about Mother’s death, but she could not say outright that her sister and brothers were farmed out in New Mexico and Oklahoma because she left home instead of taking care of them.

  It did not surprise her that Thorberg had, in addition to parents, money, and education, a brother who was her friend. Thorberg was a goddess who moved gracefully through the world, untouched by trouble. Intellectual, langorous, passive, she was everything Agnes was not. Yet this goddess seemed entranced by Agnes and never ceased asking questions. Sometimes the questions were silly. Agnes began to see that, in some ways, she knew more than Thorberg.

  A tall, gaunt young man entered the drugstore. He was darker and more weathered than his sister, and shyer.

  “Ayahoo, may I present my brother, Ernest Brundin.”

  Agnes held out her hand. Ernest solemnly shook it and slid into the booth next to his sister. His face was lean, intelligent, courteous. Compared to him, Agnes felt crude.

  She put her elbows on the table. “I’ve never met a sister and brother who were friends,” she said.

  Thorberg looked sideways at her brother as if to say, “See? What did I tell you?”

  While Ernest studied Agnes neutrally—his eyes were deeper and bluer than his sister’s—Thorberg filled the silence. “Ayahoo and I have discovered Laird and Dines chocolate sodas,” she said. “We’ve told each other the story of our lives over this table.”

  “What’s the weather like up on Superstition Mountain?” Agnes blurted out.

  “Cool and pleasant,” he replied. Then, like his sister, he looked over the drugstore. His eyes moved in the direction of the apothecary jars, the small brass scales resting on one end of the counter, and back to Agnes. Unlike his sister’s cool circuit of the room, Ernest Brundin’s gaze was private and equivocal. Agnes was not sure what he was looking at, much less what he was thinking.

  The soda jerk came to their table, retying his white apron soiled from phosphates and syrups.

  “Coffee,” said Thorberg.

  “Coffee and a ham sandwich,” said Ernest.

  “Coffee and a ham sandwich and another chocolate soda,” said Agnes. She calculated that Thorberg would buy again, and that if she didn’t, the brother would.

  “I told you Ayahoo was like no one you’ve ever met,” said Thorberg. She turned to Agnes. “You are an authentic Western type, you know.”

  Agnes bristled. “And you’re authentically Eastern.”

  “We’re not authentic yet,” Ernest said quietly. “My sister and I are still part-European. Our parents are Swedish.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Thorberg said languidly. “I am authentically American.”

  “You’re not,” he said.

  “I am,” she insisted.

  Ernest turned to Agnes. “‘Ayahoo’ is an interesting name.”

  “It’s Indian,” she said immediately. “I’m part-Indian.”

  “Which tribe?”

  “Apache.” Father had never told her what tribe.

  “I understand the Indians who settled this valley built canals,” he said. The coffee arrived. He moved his cup and saucer to make room for the ham sandwiches.

  “The Hohokam built canals,” said Agnes. “If you’re interested, I can show you an article I wrote for the paper about the Hohokam and Pima and Papago Indians. There’s a library book”—

  “Let’s not merely read about the canals,” interrupted Thorberg. The color rose in her fine-boned face. “Let’s find them.”

  Agnes whipped her soda with the straw, thrilled with the idea. She glanced eagerly from Thorberg to Ernest to Thorberg again. “I’ll ask Professor Irish,” she said. “He’ll know where the canals are.”

  Thorberg ignored her coffee. “We could meet next weekend.”

  “What’s wrong with tomorrow?” said Agnes.

  “Ernest and I have to catch the train for Phoenix this evening. In any case, we need time to plan the outing.”

  Agnes had never said “in any case” in her life. It had a fine ring. There was so much she didn’t know how to say; how to think. She’d never met people like the Brundins. She actually had a falling sensation as Thorberg spoke of going away. Without Thorberg she wouldn’t know about Socialism and journalism and New York or that she was a good debater and an interesting person. With Thorberg these past five days the world had opened, like the diaphragm in Professor Irish’s microscope, and now it was closing again. Agnes wanted to plunge into the center of this opening that threatened to snap shut and force it apart again. Thorberg must not leave her behind in the backwater of nothingness.

  Ernest broke into her thoughts. “I work with a fellow who lives on a ranch near here,” he said. “We can borrow some horses next Saturday.” He looked at Agnes. “Do you ride?”

  Agnes finished off the last of her soda and licked the far end of the straw. “Of course I ride,” she said.

  Next weekend the three of them found one of the canals, a wide, shallow depression that led through barren desert to the Salt River.
They walked their horses along the declivity dotted here and there by low clumps of stickery ground cover, as if a centuries-old water memory still had power to grow something.

  “It took a lot of labor to keep these ditches open,” Ernest said. He stepped into the middle of the broad, faintly sunken trough. Agnes watched him place his hand against the slight rise at one edge, as if he were giving a benediction to all those ditch-diggers of the past. This stirring she felt for him was mixed somehow with her emotion for the Indians.

  The next moment she felt foolish. Like a river in its deep channel, Thorberg and Ernest would flow on west, leaving her and the Hohokam behind. Some day they might think of her: “Whatever happened to that strange, authentically Western girl we met one time in Arizona?”

  The three of them walked for miles before they got back on their horses and followed the canal to the Salt River. At night, near the south bank, they spread out their bedrolls and tied the horses to a cottonwood.

  Beneath hard, bright stars, the desert lay sinister and beautiful. It had softened only at twilight when they’d made coffee over a little fire. But not for Agnes the twilight loveliness, false promise of ease that could only make her unhappy if she believed it. She even resented the river and the Roosevelt Dam that Ernest was helping to build. Water weakened the strength of the desert, and subtracted from its barren loneliness and dry threat. Water and nourishment and plenty undermined reality.

  She looked over at the two low forms near her, this sister and brother, woman and man, who were friends. Ernest treated Thorberg as his equal. Thorberg expected it. Sometimes she even dominated.

  Thorberg shifted on her bedroll. “Tomorrow is Easter,” she said. “All good Christians will be up at sunrise.” She yawned. “Workers, owners, all go to church.” Agnes stared up at the stars and tried to imagine a number large enough to count all the bits of bright material shining in the night sky.

  “People would be better off joining the Socialist Party than going to church,” Thorberg added. “You know what Marx said.” Agnes didn’t know what Marx said, and she didn’t ask.

  “Professor Irish told me about a Yaqui Indian settlement not far from here,” Agnes said.