The California Wife

by Kristen Harnisch

  Jacobs dropped the earpiece back in its holder. “They’ll be here when they can. In the meantime, Mrs. Lemieux, I suggest you get back out there and guard your stock.” He pointed out the window to where the white-gowned prohibs were now picking through her wagon’s wares.

  Two women lifted up the oranges, peaches and sandwiches, obviously searching for something beneath. One woman fingered the precious gold medal that Sara usually draped around her neck. She’d been so startled by their arrival, she’d forgotten to bring it with her.

  Rooting around in a proprietor’s wares without permission had to be illegal. But what could she do until the police arrived? Then Sara spied the jugs of lemonade she’d made earlier that morning. A smile crept over her face.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jacobs.” She peered out the window, and her hand flew to her forehead. “Good gracious, look at what they’re doing now!” Sara stepped aside as the stationmaster rushed to the window.

  “What is it, Mrs. Lemieux?” He adjusted his glasses. Sara turned and slid his heavy flask into her wide apron pocket. “I could have sworn one of them was drinking out of a wine bottle,” she said over her shoulder. Then she added, with a confused look, “But I don’t have a corkscrew in the wagon. How on earth could they get it open?”

  After leaving the stationmaster with a perplexed look on his face, Sara strolled back toward her wagon, pretending she hadn’t a care in the world. When they saw her coming, the women knelt down again and began to pray.

  Sara stepped between two of the protesters to reach the back of her wagon. She squatted down. From beneath the wagon, she could see that while they chanted, the women’s eyes were either closed in concentration or shielded by their straw hats. Now was the time.

  She opened the smaller jug of lemonade, cooling in a bucket of cold creek water under the wagon, and emptied the contents of Jacobs’s flask into it. She lifted the jug, shook it, and resubmerged it in the cool water. When she was certain no one was looking, she shoved the empty flask under a box of apples.

  By one o’clock, Sara had endured plenty of stares and whispers from the loitering rail passengers, though she hadn’t done business with a single customer. But if these prohibs thought she’d just pack up and leave in defeat, they were mistaken.

  The women began to wilt in the oppressive heat. Some fanned themselves with their hats, while others were sweating through their linen dresses.

  Sara sat down on her barrel, her perch when she wasn’t waiting on customers. She poured herself some lemonade from the large jug and noisily unwrapped an egg sandwich from its paper wrapper. She took two bites plus a swig of lemonade, and let out a satisfied sigh.

  Sara walked around the perimeter of the wagon, eating her sandwich and sipping her cold lemonade. She named the women she knew as she passed them. “Francine, Mabel, Susan,” she said in a syrupy voice. “This prohibitionist business is such difficult work. You ladies must be parched. Some of this nice cool lemonade, perhaps?” Sara took a sip from her cup. Many of them gulped in response.

  Susan immediately rose. “I would. Thank you,” she said, while Francine shot her a nasty look. As Sara poured lemonade into a tin cup, Susan added, “It’s nothing personal, Sara. We just feel we need to protect the innocent. Men who drink beat their wives, they commit adultery, they . . .” She had tears in her eyes.

  “I completely understand,” Sara lied sympathetically.

  She passed around the tin cups of lemonade, and her unlikely patrons drank the small jug empty. Sara counted. They’d had at least two glasses each—some three. All except that battle-ax, Francine Mason.

  Within a half hour, some of the women had fallen asleep against the wagon wheels, and others hooked their elbows over the wagon bed to keep from falling over. Francine tried to rouse them from their stupor, but they swatted her away, slurring their objections. Her eyes narrowed, and her words spit venom. “You”—she stabbed a crooked finger at Sara—“You drugged them!”

  “I did no such thing, Francine,” Sara said calmly. “They drank lemonade, just like me,” she asserted. “I think the heat’s overwhelmed them. You should take better care of your supporters,” Sara admonished. And you should know better than to declare war on an expectant mother.

  Before Francine could form a response, the police arrived. Sara, and a confused Stationmaster Jacobs, greeted them. Francine herded her lackeys back into formation.

  “These women don’t look like they’re causing trouble,” the officer said. The prohibs were chatting and linking arms, presumably in an attempt to remain upright during the long walk home.

  “They were handling my property without permission, and interfering with my business.”

  “I can’t arrest them for that. There’s no proof they did any harm. It would be your word against theirs.”

  “They must be charged with something!” Sara argued.

  “What charge would you have me bring against them, ma’am?” The officer tilted his head.

  Sara bit her lip, eyes twinkling. “Public inebriation?”

  “It’s hotter ’n the hinges of hell today,” Aurora exclaimed, wiping her brow with her hanky before hopping down from the wagon. “What have you gone and done now?” she demanded with a smirk. “Oh yes, Philippe told me. He was laughing so hard, he could barely spit the words out.”

  Sara placed a finger to her lips to silence Aurora. The windows were open and Sara didn’t want her guests to overhear.

  Aurora shot her a befuddled look while hitching her horse to the post. “They’ll be back, missy, and with more fire and brimstone than Moses himself!”

  Sara rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so, Aurora.”

  Aurora folded her arms. “And why not?”

  Sara guided her friend down the gravel walk to the front door. “Because I have a plan,” she whispered, flicking her head toward the house. “Just follow my lead.”

  Once inside, Sara presented Aurora to the five women seated around her dining room table—two of Aurora’s suffragette sisters and three of the prohibs who had protested Sara’s wagon on Friday. Ida Sumter, Boone’s mousy, sweet wife, had agreed to meet with Sara and dragged her cousin, Mary Pitt, along. Sara had cornered the three prohibs after church yesterday and implied that it would be in their best interests to call on her at three o’clock this afternoon. They wouldn’t want word to get out that they were intoxicated while protesting the drink, would they?

  Sara and Aurora sat down. Rose served water, lemonade and ham and egg finger sandwiches. Some of the women shifted around uncomfortably, while others clenched their hands together. Ida, looking bright-eyed and happy to be there, spoke first. “Thank you so much for inviting us today, Sara,” she said quietly.

  “Thank you for coming, ladies,” Sara replied. She glanced at each of their faces and smiled. “Please, do help yourselves,” she said, gesturing toward the trays of food. “I invited you all here because I have a business proposal for you.”

  All five heads snapped up in surprise. “What kind?” Mabel asked suspiciously. She poured a glass of lemonade and sniffed it. Sara bit the flesh of her cheek to keep from snickering.

  “Each one of you has a specific talent, and each one of you, if I’m not mistaken, could use some extra pocket money.” She had chosen the group carefully. Ida and Boone Sumter had lost half of their vines to the phylloxera bug and had yet to replant. Ida’s cousin, Mary, was widowed with two small children. The rest of the women around the table had sickly husbands or dying crops. Sara hoped to help them—and herself.

  “As you know, I sell produce and wine at the train station every Friday and Saturday during the spring and summer months. I’d like to offer you a chance to sell your jams, pies, breads and honey there as well.”

  “And what’s your take?” Mabel asked warily.

  “Nothing. You’ll receive all the profits from your sales.”

  “You want us to believe you’re doing this out of the kindness of your heart?”

  “I mak
e wine and piccalilli, ladies. I’m not a baker or beekeeper. And yes, I want to help you, if only a little.” Sara smoothed a hand over her large belly. “Besides, come August, I’m not going to be able to stand out in the blazing heat all day. I thought we could work in shifts.”

  Dottie, Mabel’s prohibitionist friend, leaned in. “She wants us on her side to prevent another protest at the train station,” she said smugly.

  “That’s one of the benefits,” Sara conceded, “but I don’t think the temperance union will be returning to picket me anytime soon. They wouldn’t want what happened on Friday to become public knowledge.” She locked eyes with each of the three women whom she’d witnessed intoxicated that day.

  “What happened?” Ida perked up.

  “It was a trick!” Mabel’s face reddened.

  “Nothing of great importance, Ida,” Aurora interrupted, throwing Sara a warning glance. “I think the local WCTU has decided that it has bigger fish to fry. The prohibs will most likely shift their efforts to halting the sale of brandies and whiskeys, which have the highest alcohol content and are the real threat to families. For goodness’ sake,” Aurora said, flapping a hand toward Sara, “the Lemieux family makes most of their wines for the church, your church.” She glared pointedly. “They aren’t a threat to families.”

  “And besides,” Sara added, “I don’t serve any alcohol at the station. I don’t even carry a corkscrew with me.”

  Dottie pushed back her chair and stood up. She had a gourd for a nose and her dark hair was slicked back from her face, tied in a severe knot. She reminded Sara of a black crow. She might actually frighten customers away.

  “I’ve heard enough!” Dottie threw up her hands. “This is more of your trickery, Sara, and you should be ashamed. I will not sell my honey alongside your intoxicants, and neither would any true prohibitionist.” She scowled. “And I’ll see you removed from the Napa branch of suffragettes if it’s the last thing I do!”

  “You will not, Dorothy,” Aurora interjected. “Sara and I resign from your branch of the suffrage association. We are leaving to form our own women’s club, which will be more aligned with interests of working women.”

  Sara perked up and raised her chin in a show of solidarity, even though she had no idea what Aurora was talking about.

  Dottie sputtered, “You wouldn’t—you can’t—”

  “I just did.” Aurora linked her arm through Sara’s. “And our new club will throw its full support behind the labor unions, not the temperance union.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Dottie sputtered, glaring expectantly at Mabel and Ida, who hadn’t budged an inch. “Ladies?”

  Mabel cleared her throat and said meekly, “I think it’s generous of Sara to offer us a chance to make some money.” She glanced down at the table. “I’m not in a position to turn it away. I’ve got a family to feed.”

  Ida added, “Sara Lemieux is a Christian woman, and Mary and I would love to help her.” Ida’s grateful expression nearly melted Sara’s heart. That woman had been through so much with the loss of half her crop and the embarrassment of her son having set fire to the Lemieux farm. Sara was happy she could help.

  “Susan?” Dottie addressed the other prohib, who hadn’t yet mumbled a word.

  Susan rose slowly, shifting her eyes from Dottie’s to Sara’s. “Thank you for the sandwiches.”

  “I’ll see you ladies out,” Sara offered politely.

  Dottie raced out the front door, and Sara heard the gravel crunching beneath her feet before she could even thank her for listening. “Come along, Susan,” Dottie snapped over her shoulder.

  Susan shot Sara a conciliatory smile. Sara said lightly, “Perhaps we could find a way for you to join us—later.”

  “Perhaps,” Susan replied noncommittally.

  Sara returned to her dining room to find Ida, Mary and Mabel huddled together and speaking excitedly to Aurora. Aurora grinned in answer to Sara’s bewildered expression. “Our own club? What are you thinking?” Sara asked.

  “Oh, it’s a brilliant scheme, Sara! Wait until Aurora tells you! We all want to help,” Ida gushed, and her friends followed suit.

  Aurora started in enthusiastically. “We could model our club after the California Club of San Francisco.”

  “The California Club of Napa?” Mary suggested.

  “Perfect, Mary!” Aurora replied. “Why do you think the ’96 suffrage ballot was shot down? Because the San Francisco suffrage association was run by a group of temperance advocates. The liquor lobby had no choice but to throw all their support into defeating it. If we form a club of working-class women, concerned with equality for women, then we can really stir things up, while continuing to campaign for the vote.”

  Sara was warming to Aurora’s idea. “So you mean we’d partner with the female unionists to demand things like fair wages?”

  “We wouldn’t stop there. Community property rights, shared guardianship of children—the possibilities are limitless!”

  Mabel spoke up. “We’d have to form a very large club for all that, wouldn’t we?”

  Sara and Aurora exchanged a knowing look. Sara left the room and soon reappeared with a stack of stationery and pens. “We’d best get started then, don’t you think?”

  By the fourth week of July, everything was running smoothly. Ida and Mary were selling thirty blueberry pies daily, and Mabel was contributing jars of honey and bushels of peaches and apricots. Come the end of August, she’d promised to bring baskets of mottled purple and yellow French prunes, which would sell quickly alongside Rose’s sandwiches.

  Sara was grateful to have their help and some company. She’d never carried a baby to term before, so she was constantly questioning the backaches, the number of times she had to slink off into the woods to urinate, and the sheer weight of the baby, which she found to be cumbersome in the summer heat. Between waves of customers, the ladies planned their club activities, including marching down Napa’s Main Street in late September with other women’s clubs from neighboring cities.

  Late one morning, Aurora appeared with fifteen jars each of strawberry-rhubarb and blackberry jam. She refused to let Sara lift a thing. Sara stood back, with folded arms, surprised. Evidently, Aurora had a hidden talent. “Where do you find the time to can fruit?”

  Aurora laughed. “This here’s a sampling from Susan Pritchard. I persuaded her to give it a try, although I wasn’t able to convince her to show her face. That’ll come, once she’s making decent money.” Sara clapped her hands together. One by one, she’d win them over.

  Sara’s wagon had become the social gathering place for waiting train passengers. She’d recouped the hundred dollars she’d spent on the wagon and supplies by the end of June, and cleared a thirty-dollar profit in the first week of July. With the additional five hundred dollars she expected from Philippe in August, she planned to buy a horse and another wagon to set up shop at Napa Depot in town, or maybe at Buchli Station when it opened next year. Her plan was working.

  Part III

  Chapter 24

  AUGUST 1901, SAN FRANCISCO

  Marie Chevreau had experienced her share of blood, bile and birthing babies, but this was something new. She stood behind the wall of tall aspiring surgeons, trying to wedge a shoulder in between them so she could properly view today’s instruction. She had already received enough withering glances to know she was not welcome here. She didn’t care.

  Marie shoved her way in, causing a ripple in the huddle. To her great embarrassment, Dr. Burns, their instructor, glared at her. “Yes, do join us, Miss Chevreau.”

  Marie decided to ignore him, and her fellow classmates, and just focus on the lesson at hand: the forty-five-year-old male cadaver on the table.

  Dr. Burns pulled the sheet down, revealing the man’s head, neck and chest, and proceeded to wave a hand over the body, pointing out the location of each vital organ. He invited the students to line up and feel for the tip of the liver, glands and Adam’s apple. Touchin
g a corpse was a bit strange, but Marie thought instead about all the lives she’d save with this knowledge. Wouldn’t it be intriguing when they finally sliced him open and took a gander? She could hardly wait to see.

  Just then, she heard a loud thump behind her. One of her classmates had dropped to the floor.

  The other students scoffed and returned their attention to the cadaver. Marie also assumed he’d fainted, but then his limbs began to quiver.

  She knelt down beside him, instinctively supporting his head to prevent him from smashing it on the floor. Dr. Burns said, “Miss Chevreau, don’t fuss over him. The man has no stomach for this sort of thing.” He waved her back to the table. “Leave him be. You’ll embarrass him when he comes to.”

  What a horse’s arse, Marie thought. “Doctor, he’s having a seizure, possibly brought on by epilepsy.” The man’s legs kicked violently, and his arms flailed. To prevent him from swallowing his tongue, Marie pressed it down with her pencil. Two other students rushed to help her, but she cautioned them not to hold him down, lest they break a bone.

  Dr. Burns whispered something to one of the students, who dashed out of the room. In a minute, he returned, followed by two orderlies carrying a stretcher, and the tallest, most striking man Marie had ever laid eyes on. He had wavy light brown hair and was wearing a white coat and carrying a stethoscope. His presence instantly calmed everyone in the room, especially Marie.

  When the convulsions subsided, he addressed Marie. “Help me turn him on his side to drain the secretions.” His blue-green gaze held hers a moment too long before he leaned over the patient, checking his pulse. She watched as the doctor’s elegant hands glided over the man, checking ears, eyes, nose and throat. When he’d finished his examination, he asked the orderlies to load the student onto the stretcher. Before leaving, the doctor glanced at Marie and said, loud enough for all to hear, “Well done, Miss Chevreau.” Marie blinked, speechless. How did he know her name?