“Good morning,” I said, and straightened to face her. I couldn’t help a curious glance at her pocketbook as I waited for her to speak.
She shifted uncomfortably and gave me a shy smile. “It’s my Charlie’s birthday today.”
“That’s nice.”
“And I want to bake him a cake. But I have no eggs. I was wondering if I could buy two from you.”
I knew we had eggs in the house that we were saving up to make a meal’s worth, but I suspected Momma wouldn’t let me sell those. But I hadn’t checked my henhouse yet today. My young hens didn’t lay every day anyway, so two fewer eggs could be explained away easily enough.
“Let me see what I can do.” I crossed to the chicken yard and entered through the fine new gate that Mark had made me. As luck would have it—especially the kind of luck I’d been having—there were three eggs in the nesting boxes. I removed them carefully and gave two to Martina. She gave me a nickel. I thanked her and slipped the nickel into my pocket, intending to put it in the can when Momma wasn’t looking so I wouldn’t have to explain what I had done. But as I continued to work in the garden, I started thinking again about a rooster. If I was going to get one, this nickel could be the first step. The n once I had a rooster, we could have more chickens, and more eggs, and even meat from time to time. And, more important, there would be more to sell—we’d be saving and making money.
This was the next opportunity I’d been waiting for. The money didn’t have to go into the can.
Later that same day, another neighbor showed up in the yard. “I hear Mrs. Pearsonova bought eggs from you,” she said. I smiled and nodded. Martina had married an American, but in the Bohemian district, the older women couldn’t resist adding the “-ova” ending to the name of a married woman, whether her married name was Bohemian or not.
“I sold her two,” I said, “but my hens don’t lay many yet.”
“What else do you have? Do you have cucumbers?” she asked, sounding as if she were inquiring across Mr. Johnson’s counter.
“I do,” I said. “They are small yet, though.”
She strode into my garden and bent over my plants. To my surprise, she plucked a tiny cucumber off the vine without even asking permission. She put three cents into my hand, thanked me, and marched away. I stared after her, unable to say a word.
Once again, rumor spread quickly among our neighbors. Within the week, I had more requests than I could fill. Those I could, however, brought in a few cents here, a few there, until my apron pocket jingled when I walked. By the end of the week I had enough to buy a rooster. That I could not do without my mother’s permission, so I waited until the chores were done and my mother sat down for a few minutes before starting supper. Then I showed her the money and told her where it had come from.
“Forty-eight cents this week, Momma, and that’s with our garden barely starting to produce. When everything is growing and if we had more chickens—”
Momma sighed heavily and held up her hand to stop me. “What is it you want, Trina?”
“I want to buy a rooster. Then we could get more chickens, more eggs. We need a rooster if we want enough for eggs every day and some to sell as well.”
“The eggs are nice to have, but it worries me that you always want more, Trina.”
“Please, Momma? A rooster will make things even better.”
She sighed again, but there was an unexpected gleam of humor in her eyes. “Roosters are trouble, Trina. Haven’t you heard the story of Kuratko the Terrible?”
I looked at her in surprise. I had not heard my mother tell a story since I was a little girl in Bohemia. “Who was Kuratko the Terrible?” I asked.
“He was a rooster, of course,” she said, and began the story. “There was once an old woman who wanted a baby, but she had never been able to have one. So she got a chick from a neighbor’s chicken, and she babied it and cared for it like a real child.
“‘Don’t do that,’ her husband warned her, but she wouldn’t listen. She named that silly little rooster Kuratko, and it grew bigger and more spoiled every day. It ate and ate, and grew and grew until it was bigger than the dog.”
“A rooster bigger than a dog?” I smiled at the ridiculous thought.
“Yes. And as it grew it got greedier and greedier until it had eaten up nearly everything in the house.
“‘Put it out!’ said the husband, but that silly old woman refused, saying, ‘It’s my baby!’
“But when that rooster had eaten up all the food and the old woman had nothing left to feed it, Kuratko gobbled up the old woman, all in one peck. Then it ate the old man and the dog, too.”
“That’s not a very happy ending,” I observed.
“That isn’t the ending. After eating the old man and the dog, the rooster was still hungry, so it went out in the yard, where it swallowed up the pig and the cat. But the cat used its sharp claw to cut the rooster’s craw as it was swallowed, and when Kuratko went to crow at sunrise the next morning, his craw split open and he fell over dead. And the cat jumped out, followed by the pig, the dog, the man, and the old woman, who promised never to be so silly again. And that is the story of Kuratko the Terrible.”
I laughed. “I don’t think I will let my rooster grow that big.”
“But you’ve let your dreams,” Momma said. “And just like the old woman’s, they may swallow you up if you aren’t careful.”
“But the garden hasn’t, and neither have the chickens. You said yourself they are a help.”
Momma nodded. “So they are. Very well, Trina, get your rooster. But don’t look to me for help if it gobbles you up.”
I climbed the ridge that afternoon, feeling light and happy. Momma’s opposition had been the only thing wrong with my plans for the future, and now even that was beginning to give way. And when she saw how much money we could make— as well as save, once we had eggs to sell—it would disappear entirely!
I acquired a rooster easily enough, a cocky little red fellow who had most likely been headed for the pot at the other farm. He strutted around as king of his own kingdom in my little chicken yard. Momma christened him Kuratko, and Papa and Old Jan, who related the story to my sisters, agreed the name fit his character. And this time, we didn’t have to wait for rumors of his arrival to spread. He announced it gleefully at the crack of dawn the very first morning, and every morning thereafter.
Chapter 11
WITH KURATKO making his presence known, my house once again drew visitors, the children bringing gifts of worms and grasshoppers so they could watch him strut and crow. I even saw Mr. Johnson pass by once, craning his neck toward my backyard. I stayed out of sight, but afterward when I thought about it, I felt a small satisfaction that he was worried enough to come take a look for himself.
For the next two weeks, everything went back to normal, but with more anticipation than usual, for we had one hen brooding on eggs. Mark said it would take about three weeks before they would hatch. Counting down the days in my head, I wished it would all go a bit faster. I was so eager for the new arrivals to my flock that it was nearly all I thought about, even as I washed and ironed clothes, kneaded bread dough, or endured Mr. Johnson’s glares and insults at the store.
July arrived. There were only two or three days left in my reckoning, and I had started checking regularly to see if the eggs had hatched. I was in the garden with my sisters, thinking as always about my new chicks and planning for how I would feed them, when the air was split by a long, loud screech of metal on metal that raked along my spine like fingernails on slate.
Momma appeared in the back doorway. “What on earth?”
Our eyes locked in the horror of recognition as a muffled boom shook the earth. The mine!
I dropped my hoe and began running, my mother and sisters beside me. We weren’t the only ones. Within minutes the streets were filled with other wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters, all running for the mine, all wearing the same expressions of dread.
A ch
oking cloud of dust and smoke was roiling out of the open shaft and enveloping the gathering crowd. It smelled of coal and dirt, burning rubber, and hot metal. We joined a crowd of women gathering near the great framework of the hoist. The thick cables that hauled the mesh cage of the lift into and out of the shaft had snapped, and raw-edged tangles of wire jammed the huge gears of the hoist. Ropes of cable dangled from the framework, sweeping in slowing arcs over the shaft. Beside the shaft, which should have been obscured by the lift but now gaped open, was a small booth where the lift operator manned the levers to raise and lower the lift. It was considered to be a better job than blasting through rock in the deep tunnels below, and the man who held the job was considered lucky. Today that luck had run out. The body of the hoist operator lay crumpled over his levers, his neck twisted back into an impossible position, his body gouged and scored where the broken cables had whipped him as they ripped loose. Four or five other men were sprawled on the ground nearby, gashed and bloodied by the cables, one of them screaming in pain.
My hand went to my mouth to hold back the rising fear and nausea. Crowds were gathering around the bodies, including women crying out their husbands’ names. As the man’s screams sank to moans, I wrenched my eyes away. Death, I thought, should not be a public spectacle.
My mother had drawn my sisters’ faces into her skirts so they couldn’t see the carnage. I wished I was small enough for someone to do the same for me. Momma’s face was gray and her lips were pressed so tightly together that they were turning blue. I stepped to her and put my arm around her waist, though I’m not sure who I was trying to comfort. She caught my hand in hers and squeezed, her own fear turning her grip into a vise.
“He wasn’t on it. He wasn’t on it,” she said, as if trying to reassure me, but I knew it was really a prayer.
I looked again at the broken hoist cables and let the same prayer run through my mind. The lift, a mesh cage that lowered men into the mine and brought them back to the surface when their shifts ended, must have dropped when the cables snapped. How far had it dropped, and who had been on it? Or beneath it? I remembered the muffled boom somewhere far underground, and knew that more bodies would be coming out of the mine.
Indifferent to the scene, the mine’s automatic whistle blew, reminding all of us that the shift had been changing. All the men were either entering or leaving the mine at this hour. Anyone could have been on or near the lift. Anyone. Papa, or Karel, or Mark.
I looked desperately through the men still on the surface. They were mostly clean—men on the night shift, reporting for duty and not yet into the mine. Already their wives and families were finding them, hugging and crying with relief, but there was no such relief for me. None of the faces I loved could be found.
Old Jan hobbled up beside us.
“Where are Karel and Mark?” I blurted out, hoping against hope they were late to work today and still at home.
He shook his head, then tipped it toward the mine. Around us, a grim silence was spreading through the crowd, though I could hear women whispering “trapped” or “no other way out.” I could hear men’s names, too, names of husbands, brothers, and fathers, spoken like prayers.
I said nothing. My lips were tightening down just like my mother’s, and my own determination was all channeling into that one, fervent hope. Papa wasn’t on it. None of them were on it!
An alarm bell was clanging now, and mine officials were arriving from their fine houses and offices at the bottom of the hill. They kept well away from the open shaft and the settling dust that might soil their fine black jackets and waistcoats. Workers were gathering around the open shaft, looking down it, and men were climbing into the mangled gear housings of the hoist to examine the damage. Without the hoist, they wouldn’t be bringing anyone out of the mine. The crowd of women continued to grow.
We stood for some time, watching and waiting. Finally an official came and pushed us back to a safe distance. He said they were doing all they could, that we would be taken care of, and that we should go home. I did my best to translate his words into Czech for my mother, just as other daughters were doing in Welsh, Polish, Greek, and Spanish. Despite so many tongues, we all wore a universal expression of fear. Questions were thrown back at the man in many languages, but he had no answers. We refused to go home, so we were left once again to our silent vigil.
“Trina,” Momma said, her words stiff and tight in her throat, “take your sisters home and feed them. Then get them to bed. There is no need for them to be here.”
Although I wanted to stay, I did not protest. I understood her meaning. This was no place for children. They deserved to keep whatever bit of innocence life here still left them. I wanted to be useful in whatever small way I could, so I gently pulled their hands loose from my mother’s skirts and began walking toward home.
The town seemed deserted—the houses mostly empty and unlit. I could smell burned food and coffee from more than one house we passed—many wives had been preparing supper and left it, forgotten on their stoves. Whether we knew the families or not, we went inside and removed the scorched pots from the stove tops. I was glad to do something to fight off the helplessness I felt.
Our own supper had been on the warmer when the accident had happened and so was fit to eat, but we were not fit to eat it. I filled three bowls with stew and put them on the table, but we only picked at it, and in the end it went back into the pot. Without our usual bickering, we washed our bowls and put them away. Afterward we sat briefly on the porch in the cool air, but the unnatural silence of the camp weighed too heavily upon us.
“Perhaps we should get ready for bed,” I said.
“When will Papa be home, Trina?” Holena asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Will he be here when we wake up?”
“I don’t know, Holena,” I said, putting my arm around her and pulling her to me. It was all the comfort I could offer, and yet it was so little.
Aneshka burrowed her hand into mine. “Say he will,” she begged in a small voice, her usual sassiness gone. I did not know what to say.
“Come on, let’s get ready for bed. Fretting won’t do any good,” I said.
I helped my sisters into their nightgowns and together we said our prayers with extra fervor. We lay down on top of the covers, for the summer evening was hot. I stared at the ceiling as the room grew dim, afraid to close my eyes and see again the bloody body of the hoist operator, or the dying man on the ground. Neither of my sisters were sleeping either. I turned and looked at Aneshka. She was curled into a tight ball, her eyes squeezed shut. Holena pressed her small body up against me.
“Will you tell us a story?” she asked.
I thought for a moment, but I couldn’t make my mind focus, so I told her the first story that I could think of. “Once upon a time, there was a poor fisherman and his wife,” I began. Holena closed her eyes as I told the story, and by the time I finished, she was breathing in soft, steady breaths. As for Aneshka, she hadn’t moved at all, but when I came to the end, she whispered something. I tilted my head closer to hear.
“I would wish for Papa to be all right,” she said.
“Me too,” I answered softly.
Tears squeezed from between her closed eyelids and slid down her cheeks. Then suddenly she was convulsing with sobs.
I rubbed her back and told her to be brave, but she only sobbed harder until she at last cried herself into a shuddering sleep.
When both girls were peaceful, I rose silently from the bed and dressed again. I took the pot of stew, the bowls from the kitchen, and blankets from my mother’s bed, and I returned to the mine.
Bright gaslights illuminated the area around the open shaft, and a crowd of men was gathered around the hoist, but I could not tell what they were doing. I could not keep my eyes from trailing back to the hoist controls, so I was relieved that the mangled body of the operator had been removed.
On the edge of the bright light the crowd of women still wa
ited. Among them, I found Momma and Old Jan.
“You must sit down, Momma,” I said. “You must save your strength.” It was the sort of thing I had heard people say in a crisis, though I didn’t know what she had to save her strength for. I didn’t want to think about that.
I coaxed the two of them away from the crowd a bit and they sat. For each, I filled a bowl of stew, but they had no more appetite than my sisters or me.
“Is there any news?” I asked Old Jan. He shook his head. “The hoist is ruined and the lift cage is gone. They won’t be getting anyone out without it. They’re trying to get men out of the top levels with ropes and pulleys, but most of the men are in the deeper levels. The top played out years ago.”
“But they have to get them out!” I said.
“They’ve telegraphed the head office to get a new lift down here, but it will take some time. The gears in the hoist are stripped, too. It will take three or four days to get the parts here and installed, I think.”
“Four days!” I said.
Old Jan squeezed my hand. “Now listen, your papa is a strong man and a hard worker; he’ll be all right. He wasn’t one to leave his shift before the whistle blew. He wasn’t one to crowd by the lift to get out at the first chance, either. He’s probably got some food and water left in his lunch bucket. I imagine he’s already bunked down for the night and is sound asleep.”
I smiled weakly at Old Jan. I appreciated his effort, but no matter how much I wanted to believe, I knew this was just another one of his stories—he couldn’t know for sure.
“And Karel and Mark,” I said. “Their dinner buckets were full, so they will be fine too, right?”
“That’s a good girl. That is how we must think,” Old Jan said, but I saw the pain of uncertainty in his eyes. I looked at Momma. She gave a little warning shake of her head that I knew meant I shouldn’t ask, and I pieced together the rest. The lift must have been taking men into the shaft when the cable broke. That meant Papa would not have been on it, but Karel or Mark might have been. And no one on it could have survived. I fought back my tears, but they were coming all the same.
Katerina's Wish Page 9
