by Sara Dahmen
I hear the thump of my small trunk, and the conductor tips his fingers at me as he drops it unceremoniously at my side. How is it I have sat on a train for eight days and yet do not know the names of any of my companions, nor the different ticket agents and conductors? I would like to know his name to thank him warmly, but propriety and expected train travel etiquette chains my tongue. The rules are quite clear: no singing, whistling or loud discussion at the depots or on the train; no taking a hack between stations; no drinking; no elaborate clothing or jewels. The last is laughable. I have never had any jewels.
Other people come off the train behind me. Their rising excitement chatters and clips into the cold spring air as they walk over to a dining hall across the street. It’s so early the sun is not fully awake, but the lights at the hall blaze and the smell of bacon and grease hang heavily in my nose. It is too much. Adjusting my satchel, I pick up the small trunk in my other hand, wondering if I should carry it or not in my condition. Ridiculous! There is no reason or good end to fretting over myself. I’ve headed West for the chance at continuing a respectable reputation and to give myself the opportunity to make my own choices. I must be strong and physical and be able to carry loads. I must show the doctor that he will have no reason to send me back home. Fear skitters through me and pools in my stomach, but I push it off as I hoist the end of the trunk in my free hand. The luggage is Henry’s and very manly with stained oak sides, thick leather bands, and battered brass trim. It is heavy—too heavy. I suppose I will have to drag it.
I walk carefully beyond the depot, past the dining hall and a dilapidated saloon where a sand-whipped sign reads The Powdered Pig, and slide by several shacks and a very old abandoned livery building. Across the street is the general mercantile. Goods cram the barrels along the windows and a woman is hanging a lantern at the door as she opens for the day. Two figures already are on the porch, poised to follow her inside out of the cold. She jiggles the door of the lantern shut while the two older men scurry indoors. Their faces—one long and pale and the other fleshy and white—appear as wobbly ovals in the front glass window, gazing outside with obvious interest. My eyes slant away. Are they staring at me? Surely new people come to Flats Junction all the time.
I cross the crusted paths between buildings before the grocer can disappear into the darkness of the store. As I move, the chill of the spring morning hits my cheeks and hands and chaps them at once. My trunk hits a bump. The earth is still mostly frozen, and the bit of ground scoured clear by the wind is littered with animal dung. A particularly large, old pile of horse apples has caught the edge of my luggage and I tug it free, my arms already aching and my bones protesting the cold.
Winter is not far gone, that much is plain. I know Flats Junction is far enough north of the Missouri River to have few worries of the flooding they predicted as the train went through Yankton, and perhaps there will be more blizzards yet this season. Everyone west of Iowa speaks of them with such reverence. They cannot be as terrible as the northeasterly storms that crash upon the shores of Massachusetts, can they? Is it true that this past winter was longer and colder than any in memory? I look at the leftover snowbanks. With some imagination, I can see that the drifts could reach some rooftops. Shivering, I move on. I hope it’s all just an exaggeration.
“Excuse me,” I call to the grocer woman as I breathlessly mount the mercantile stairs. My Eastern accent betrays me immediately, and she turns to me with a frown that stops my smile halfway. Already I may have made a bad impression, and I rush to placate her obvious annoyance. “I am so sorry, please, but if you could tell me which way Doctor Kinney’s practice is, I’d be obliged.”
“What do you want with the doctor?” She stands over me, strong hands in fists on her hips. Her eyes narrow and she looks me over, taking in the lapels and plain cuffs of my grey coat, the new polish on my black shoes. I am not ashamed of my clothes or my body, though her scrutiny makes me pause. Do I look very dilapidated and travel worn? She is still frowning slightly as she takes in my hair and hands. Then suddenly her face softens, like butter and oil in a pan, melting and betraying her inordinate beauty. It is an immediate transformation.
“You’re his new housekeeper?”
I nod.
“His place is two streets over easterly, the house with the blue shutters.” She smiles at me with a new warmth in her eyes.
“I am thankful,” I say as I start down the stairs.
“He won’t be awake yet; don’t bother heading over there,” she calls. “Last night Alice Brinkley had her babe and he was up all hours. Doesn’t pay to make a bear of him by waking him earlier than he ought. Come in for a cup.”
I pause, uncertain if it is done to be so familiar with a new acquaintance, but I realize the sense in her generous words. I do not wish to start my employment on a bad footing, so I turn and follow her into the store. It smells of warm grain, rusty metal, and aging molasses. Shapes loom everywhere. Most of the mysterious bumps and heaps display their rugged, shaggy appearance once my new acquaintance lights a few lamps to ward off the last of the early morning shadows. Plows, straw hats hanging in sunny cascades by a wall stuffed with shelves of fabric, and spools of lace are stacked high along the window sill. There are two steps to a curtained door behind the counter, and she turns to me, beckoning toward it.
“Pour a cup and sit behind the curtain a spell. I’ll join you shortly. Always a bit of a rush when the five o’clock train pulls in.”
She disappears behind a large pile of seed stacks, and I am left to drag my small trunk and bang my carpet bag through the congested paths of the store before peering around the faded calico curtain. A large, blue-flecked urn is steaming.
“New?”
“Staying awhile, then?”
I spin around and hit my shin on the brass corner of my trunk. Jerking with a decidedly unbecoming grunt, my eyes settle on the two older men lounging in decrepit rocking chairs at the main window, a half-finished checkers game on a barrel between them. Both are still bundled in layers of flannel shirts of varying degrees of faded and fraying, and the rotund one has not removed his hat even indoors. I am transfixed with it, sitting on the tufts of curling, yellow-grey hair, before remembering my manners.
“Good morning.”
They glance at one another at my formal greeting, and the wizened, skeletal one rubs his hands together and leans toward me.
“Heard the doc was gettin’ himself a housekeeper from out East.” Beady green eyes narrow at me, my clothing and then my shoes. He spits into a battered tin at his elbow on the window sill. “Must be yourself, then.”
I straighten and ignore the throb of pain in my leg. “I’m Mrs. Henry Weber, of Boston.”
“Boston, is it?” The man’s skinny arm shoots out and thwacks the pudgier man on the bicep. “She’s from Boston-way, same as our Doc Kinney is. All citified up, ain’t she?”
“Yup.” The bigger man is far less interested in me than he is the game of checkers.
“Though perhaps not so much a sawbones as the doc, do you think?”
“No.”
“I’m Horeb Harvey, and this is Gilroy.”
“Greenman.”
“Gilroy Greenman, if you please him.”
I dig my heels harder into the edges of my shoe soles and smile as benignly as I can into Horeb’s scrutiny. The man is leering at me as if he is close to my twenty-eight years and not with one foot in the grave, but his partner is using the distraction to invest in a bit of devilry on the checkerboard.
“Well, Mr. Greenman and Mr.—”
“Oh, it’s Mister and sir, is it?”
“Horeb! Leave her be!” The grocer swerves around a stack of precariously balanced tins of Borden’s condensed milk with a sack on her shoulder. There’s a chatter of unintelligible language as two tittering Chinese women peer around the front door. The woman glances at them, then me, and then frowns at Horeb Harvey. “Go on back ma’am, there’s the brew still hot. Coming, coming.” T
he woman is gone as quick as she’d appeared, heaving the load out to the porch and down the stairs, followed by the Chinese pair.
I nod stiffly at the two elderly men, and Mr. Greenman’s suspender twangs with a snappy satisfaction as they return to their game.
Tugging my trunk up to the two steps along the back doorway, I take my satchel and step into the woman’s proffered sanctuary, just as a squawk fills the air.
“Goddamn you, Gil—you hellish mule! You moved my reds!”
“Ain’t.”
“You did—I’m sure of it!”
“Ain’t.”
After almost two weeks on a horrendously noisy train car, I shake my head at the strident arguing, at least on Mr. Harvey’s part, and ignore the sounds of the escalating quarrel.
There are mugs hanging on hooks over the black stove. I take one and pour myself a cup, absently sipping it before I realize what I took for tea is actually strong coffee. It is thick and muddy, and I cough a bit, glad the woman is not here to see my face after I try her concoction.
This is obviously her private space. There is a short plank table with a few stools and a bench gathered around it next to the stove. The crockery and pans are piled up haphazardly on a shelf over the stovepipe. I can see she is just as disorderly here as she is in her store. The rugs are fraying and fuzzy with use, but the bed is neat and made precisely. Curtains are nothing more than long rags hiding the blinding sun as it finally rises. There are no photographs or portraits on the walls, no artwork hanging or decorative vases on the table. She is spartan, a bit like me. I am eager to learn more of her. Perhaps she can be my first friend here.
More people enter the store. The slam and jingle of the door gives way to stomping. I hear men’s voices flowing fast and loud, though I do not trouble myself to eavesdrop any longer. Instead I pace the room. It feels good to move after being so many days on a train, and my legs still have a bit of wobble and weakness. I just want a bath, and a clean dress. Scratching my neck, I shudder. Suppose I’ve picked up nits? Lice? The idea makes me want to rip my clothing off and scrub at my skin until it’s red. My breath comes fast and hard, suddenly and without warning. My boiling fears and choking half-truths threaten to overwhelm me. What if there is no bathtub? Have I given everything up for good? Was it worth it?
Pointless. It is pointless to worry so! I’m here.
The voices are loud again, tempered by the womanly voice of the grocer. She has a tinkling laugh, a booming sales pitch, and a flippant way to send the customers out the door. Glancing around again, I wonder if she is like me: widowed and alone. The bed along the wall in the far corner is a single one. If she once was once married, she has adjusted well to being alone.
I haven’t. If anything, losing Henry has made me far too rash and foolish. Why couldn’t I just have kept my mouth shut, my inquisitiveness buried, and pretended I didn’t want to try something extraordinary? I could be adventuring in my widowhood, surely, but perhaps on a civilized steamboat tour, not as a housekeeper with an incredible amount of bone-weary work ahead of me.
It’s at least forty minutes before the grocer enters the back room and sloshes coffee in a mug, and my personal reverie is lost. She perches on her seat across the table as she guzzles the horrible liquid and continues to scrutinize me, although I am sure I am not much more interesting than any other woman. She is the opposite of me: tall, straight, with high cheeks and a straight nose. Her hair is pinned up, but it’s obviously thick and is glossy black with glints of red. I am fascinated with her hands: long-fingered, strong-nailed, and dry. She wears no wedding band. What is her life story? Will I ever have the nerve to ask?
I am worried I have imposed on her, but she immediately starts to question me, familiarly and nosily.
“So, you’ve come to keep house for the doc?” she asks again. I nod, twisting the mug in my hands. “Sit down and join me. Sit!”
I comply and answer her at the same time. “I am. He answered my letter in response to his ad.” I hope she offers something I don’t know yet. I have so few particulars about my new employer, only that he is, by complete lack of option, doctor, midwife, dentist, vet, and chemist in this town.
She dives into the subject without further prompting, to my relief.
“His former housekeeper died a few months before the holidays, same as many this long winter. She was his great-aunt. I’ve been stopping by when I have the time to try to keep his place tidy, but he’s used to the charity of others for a hot meal, and he’s rarely home.” She pauses for a moment and then looks at me squarely. “My name is Katherine. Kate.”
I nod at her and smile encouragingly. My formal name slips out, though I do not mean it to do so, nor to sound so stiff. Habits are hard to change.
“I’m Mrs. Henry Weber.”
While she nods in return, more questions crowd my mind. A rooster crows nearby. It is the third cock to sound since I entered her kitchen, and she stirs in her seat. How late in the morning is it now?
“He’ll be getting up soon now if he isn’t yet. You best be on your way if he’s expecting you.”
The doctor can’t be sure of my exact date, especially with the trains running so abnormally slow with the snow and particular coldness this year. But I am eager to get out of the musty room and breathe the cold, fresh air outside, even if it means fighting the wind. The train whistle blasts as it departs Flats Junction, and the faint echo of its steam hisses through the boards of the store.
I bite down on my tongue. It is done, then. I’m here, and ready to live the life I’ve reconstructed and planned. It will be enough.
I stand and take my emptied cup to the washbowl. “Thank you for your hospitality. I am incredibly grateful.”
“You looked like you needed it. Your man must be down on his luck for you to hire yourself out for home work,” she states, but I know there is hidden meaning in her comment.
I look down and gather a solemn expression. Guilt erupts through me in a whirling, confusing storm. I should mourn Henry more fully. I should have kept my curiosity hidden as I have schooled myself to do and stayed within the confines of society. Instead, I gave in to that same inquisitiveness and allowed myself far too much freedom. But here, all anyone must know is that I am a widow.
So, I sigh and say to Kate, “My husband, Henry, is recently deceased. I need to make my own way now. You said Doctor Kinney is two streets over? The house with the blue shutters?”
As I look up at her for confirmation, her face once again darkens, but she tries to mask her scowl and gives a tight “yes.” I take my satchel and turn my back to her. I’ll figure out her moods later, as I hope to stay in Flats Junction for a while, allowing my past to filter away as much as it can, for however long I am allowed to stay.
The two men are still at their checkerboard. They seem to have put aside their differences for appreciation of the game.
“To the doc’s, then, is it?” Mr. Harvey says smartly.
“Yes.” The trunk hits the back of my knee. Dare I try to carry it? As I scrape it out the door, wood protests against wood and suddenly, the burly Mr. Greenman swoops to pick up my luggage.
“Why thank you, Mr. Greenman,” I say, and raise my eyebrows at the amazement spreading on the skinny man’s face as he watches his friend stomp out the doorway. “And good day to you, sir.”
Mr. Harvey’s mouth twitches at the ‘sir,’ and he spits noisily as I walk out.
The roads are bumpy and the ground is dark and brown where the snow is gone or scraped away by the wind, and I find it easiest to keep my mind on my feet as I pick my way around the wagon ruts, horse prints, and dung. I try not to think of the cobbled streets I left, and the swept front porches and painted wood of the homes. Here everything is grey and brown and russet and not a bit of green or color to be seen. And oh heavens! It’s so very, very cold!
The handful of buildings I’ve seen so far are shabbier than I expected of a fresh, young Western territory town, but perhaps those are just
the less expensive ones near the rumble and dirt of the tracks. We squeeze past the post office. Ahead is a crossing where an inn and a small school stand sentinel. There are bits of white paint still clinging to the broad, planked wood of the inn, and a creaking sign of decorative wrought iron declares it to be the Prime Inn. The school is empty. Has it been too cold? Does school stop all winter long?
“First Street,” intones Mr. Greenman as we turn right and head east through town.
The blocks are long, and the houses still a mix of mean and shabby shanties with occasional well-kept two-story buildings. I want to stare more, but everything is barren, and the cold eats at my fingers and feet. As we hit yet another crossroads, the eye-watering blast of pig manure chokes me. A frenzied shout barely gives warning as a horse tries to make a run for it from the open door of the livery. Mr. Greenman doesn’t break his stride at the commotion, but I feel my heart give way to another round of apprehension, and I berate myself severely.
Don’t look at the shabbiness!
Ignore the sign above that one decorative house—did it say “free women” on it?
Stop thinking about the smells, the meanness of the houses!
Focus on what you must do to keep this job and find a place for yourself.
Be wise, Jane. Remember your choices. This was the best one.
But I forget to hedge in my natural interest in gleaning information. My voice ripples in the cold air. “How many bordellos are there in Flats Junction?”
“One.”
“But that sign . . .”
“One official. The rest, less so.”
Where am I? The cold pricks my eyes and I brush away salty tears. I’m not really weeping. It’s more the chill. I try to think of nothing negative or scary and watch Mr. Greenman’s sausage fingers on my trunk as he carries it easily along First Street toward the very easternmost part of town. It is simpler here. And there are supposed to be less strings, less society, less need to care about whether things are proper or not. I hope the simplicity of Western living will allow the town to accept me, though I am inconvenienced with an unexpected remnant of my past life.
