by Ann Parker
Perhaps, Inez thought, the youngster was simply visiting the fortuneteller, hoping to gain word of a better tomorrow.
Scooting up a narrow footpath squeezed between a residence and a laundry, Inez emerged with relief onto State. She hurried in the direction of Pine as the sun continued its slide down the autumnal sky to meet the mountaintops.
Soon after Abe had married Angel, they had moved from his snug one-room cabin on Chicken Hill to the less populated, far west end of State Street. “Closer to business, closer to home,” was the way Abe put it.
As she approached the frame abode, she reflected on how it seemed that, no matter where Abe settled, even if it was for only a night, he created a welcoming place. During the ten years that she, Mark, and Abe had drifted from east to west, they had lived a flowing existence, not lingering in any one place too long. Whenever they had the wherewithal or the need to lodge in a town, whether the lowest, shabbiest inn on the wrong side of the tracks or a gilt-edged hotel, they tried to stay in the same establishment, although that wasn’t always possible. Still, some places would turn a blind eye to the color of a man’s skin when the color of his coin flashed gold. Whenever Mark and Inez had cause to venture into Abe’s domain, she noticed he had covered whatever bed was in the room with the same quilt, worn soft and faded.
“It’s the one thing I kept from my life afore the War,” Abe once told her, when the three were settled by a campfire, somewhere outside of Laramie on an unseasonably warm spring night. He’d pulled the rolled coverlet out of his saddlebag, and Inez had ventured to trace one tiny line of fine stitches with a tentative finger, exclaiming over the skill of the quilter.
“My mammy said it tells a story, but I never did have a chance to find out what that story was afore she died.”
Inez paused on the small patch of dirt directly before the tiny porch, overcome by the tug of her memories. She shook her head, annoyed at the patina of nostalgia that washed over those freewheeling days of footloose camaraderie. Those times, they were no picnic. Sometimes their exploits set squarely on the right side of lawful and honest. Sometimes, they wavered on the border or tiptoed over into possibly criminal—should anyone catch them at it. A few frantic interludes saw the three of them just one whistle-stop ahead of the law or a tar-and-feathering. Then, there was the sometimes explosive nature of her marriage. Mark had a wandering eye and she occasionally retaliated in kind, out of hurt, out of anger, out of a need to kick him in a way that would wake him up, out of a desire to be loose of him, if only for a short while.
She had been sick and tired of it all when they’d blown into Leadville three years previously on a chill autumn breeze. Abe, too, seemed tired, perhaps close to calling the partnership off—tired of constant moving, of living in close quarters with a man and wife who just couldn’t seem to get along but also couldn’t be apart. They were all tired of life on the road.
Then, Mark had won the Silver Queen from a fellow in a high-stakes poker game, and everything changed.
Their timing couldn’t have been better. The silver rush in Leadville was rising, gaining momentum, the steady trickle of prospectors, speculators, and investors had turned into a flood.
And Inez was pregnant.
Their lives glowed with the promise of silver. Property deed in hand, Mark hadn’t had to work hard to convince Inez and Abe that Leadville would be a good place to set a spell, for them to build new lives. As a further incentive, as if they needed any, Mark offered that the saloon would belong equally to them all. Two men and one woman, two white and one black, they would share in the profits and losses. That was one of the things that Inez had loved and admired about Mark: he considered them all equal partners. In fact, he viewed her female presence and Abe’s dark skin as advantages, not liabilities.
“Among us, there’s not a sucker we can’t swindle, a game we can’t play,” pointed out Mark. “Whether it’s ladies only, no niggers allowed, or for colored only, not a door is closed to us.”
Abe had agreed to Mark’s Leadville proposition, not taking issue with the unspoken fact that, as man and wife, Mark and Inez ended up with two-thirds of the stake….
As Inez mounted the two steps to the porch fronting the small house, she became aware of a rising crescendo of women’s voices raised in excited tones.
“Madam,” roared a familiar indignant male voice, cutting through the chatter. “This is non-negotiable!”
Doc?
She lifted a gloved hand to knock on the green-painted door.
The babble was replaced by an unholy scream, causing Inez’s ears to ring.
The ladylike knock degenerated into desperate pounding. “Doc? Angel?” she shouted.
The door jerked open, falling away from her fist.
Doc Cramer stood, glaring at Inez from behind the half-open door, one arm braced against the frame, barring entry. That arm and its rolled up sleeve was splattered and streaked with blood. The screeching continued behind him, high and inhuman.
Inez’s hand flew to her mouth, “Angel, is she—?”
His gaze, unusually combative, softened not at all. He cut her off. “Mrs. Stannert, move to the side. Please.”
This was so unlike the peaceable, excessively polite physician that Inez knew, the physician who called her “m’dear” and was inordinately fond of good brandy, that all she could do was obey. He threw open the door wide and stepped to the threshold. A dead chicken dangled from his other hand, dripped blood onto the neat plank floor. Without ceremony, he flung the chicken into the street. He then returned inside, disappearing briefly from Inez’s line of sight. The screaming wound up in volume and pitch.
Other voices, decidedly feminine in nature, joined in, spilling protests. “No! Oh, no, Doc! Don’t! Please!”
He reappeared with a small iron pot. A tiny ancient woman, scrawny as the chicken, back bent into a question mark, was now attached to his sleeve, tearing ineffectually at the cuff. Ignoring this human appendage, Doc stepped onto the porch. As he passed Inez, she caught a metallic whiff, glimpsed a dark, viscous liquid in the container.
“No more of this voodoo-hoodoo-flim-flam,” roared Doc.
Inez had never seen him so angry, his normally flushed face pale, the jowls framed by graying muttonchops quivering. Without ceremony, he tossed the blood into the street. The falling curtain of scarlet splashed onto the chicken and splattered into the hardened dirt street around it.
The small woman ceased ripping at his sleeve, snatched the pot away, pushed past Inez with surprising strength, and scurried into the street. A liquid language—which Inez identified belatedly as a French patois—streamed from her as she retrieved the chicken, feathers now caked with dust and blood. She faced Doc defiantly. “No voodoo!” She raised the chicken high and shook it in his direction. A few feathers fell to the road. “For soup!”
Doc uttered a loud “harrumph!” He backed into Abe’s house and immediately returned, gripping a small canvas sack. “And are you going to tell me that this,” he pulled a snake out of the bag, “is also for soup??”
Inez involuntarily took a step back, before realizing that the reptile in his grasp was as limp as the chicken. Doc tossed the dead snake into the street at the woman’s feet. The canvas bag followed.
The woman’s seamed face collapsed further as she delivered a dark scowl at Doc.
He jabbed an accusing finger at her as she started gathering the scattered objects and stuffing them into the bag. “Madam, I am a trained physician. Do not try to con me with your tricks! I was in New Orleans after my years of service to the Union. I saw the insanity instituted by the Widow Paris and your ilk. I brought more men back from the edge of death with science in one week during the War than all of you with your chickens, gris-gris, powders, and incantations. Mrs. Jackson’s husband has hired me to help his wife at this time, and that I shall do, without interference from you or any of the rest
! ”
The rest?
As Inez approached the open door, a tableau revealed itself: Angel, half reclining on a worn blue velvet fainting couch, pillows at her back and her feet, three young women clustered around her. Abe’s faded quilt was spread over what would have been her lap—if she had one. Inez winced in sympathy as Angel struggled to sit up, fighting gravity and her gravid state. One of the women, a young mulatto with fine cheekbones and hair pulled tight and high off her face, patted Angel’s shoulder and furtively nudged a glass on the occasional table at Angel’s elbow.
Doc limped over to them, his cane and black physician’s bag abandoned by the door, and barked, “What is that, Miss April?”
April looked up a trifle guiltily. “Nothing bad, Doc. I swear. At Miss Flo’s, we were talking about how to help Angel. I remembered my mam swore by this, and she birthed nine.”
Doc swept up the glass and sniffed, then shook his head with a small grimace. “Castor oil? Miss April, this will cause cramping of the intestines, not induce labor. If Mrs. Jackson imbibes, she’ll suffer severe cramps, diarrhea, and possibly dehydration, all of which will do nothing but weaken her for the time to come.Better to use this stuff to polish the furniture.”
His tone softened at the stricken expressions on the visitors’ faces. “Now, now, Misses April, May, June, I understand you mean well. The best course of action for you is to return to Mrs. Sweet’s and tell her that I said you could best help Mrs. Jackson by knitting baby blankets. Winter’s coming, so blankets, caps, sweaters, that sort of thing would be useful.” Doc herded the three out the door as Inez headed toward Angel. “Mrs. Jackson needs quiet for now, not a flood of visitors. And no more potions, pills, and various magicks.”
As Doc closed the door behind them, Inez said, “April, May, June?”
“And Mrs. Sweet has recently added a July and August as well. I believe she is trying to entice visitors by conjuring up the pleasant months of spring and summer. Not that mud-season in Leadville could be termed ‘pleasant’ by any stretch of the imagination.” Doc picked up his bag and moved toward Angel.
Inez was trying to help her sit up, if struggling to a seated position with a boulder-sized lump from breastbone to hip could define the motion.
“It seems much has happened in my absence,” said Inez, “except for the one event that I felt sure would have come to pass.” She smiled at Angel and sank down on the couch beside her. “Mrs. Jackson, how are you bearing up?”
Mute by choice, Angel cradled her belly with both hands and an expressive wince.
Doc offered, “Pains?”
She nodded, then tipped her hand side to side: A little.
Doc nodded. “That is good news, Mrs. Jackson. Those twinges are the forerunners of the moment we are all anxiously awaiting, none more so than yourself and Mr. Jackson, I am certain.” He smiled fondly at her, before turning to Inez. “If you’ll pardon us a moment, Mrs. Stannert, I need to check her condition.”
Angel grabbed Inez’s hand, the gesture and the plea in her eyes clear: Stay!
Inez extracted her hand gently. “I’m not leaving, Angel. I’ll just wait by the hearth while Doc performs his examination.”
Doc set his bag on the end table, unlatched it, and washed his hands using the nearby pitcher and basin. “Excellent. I do want to talk to you, Mrs. Stannert, once we’re finished here.”
Inez wandered over to the stone fireplace and picked up the framed cabinet card showing Angel and Abe soon after their marriage. Abe sat in the high-backed chair, eyes narrowed slightly as if he was suspicious of the whole process of having his image captured and held in a frame. The pressed somber suit, the loop of silver chain across his waistcoat, all bespoke of a free black man who had successfully made his way in the world. However, the clenched fists resting on top of trousered thighs and the lines and furrows on his face—rendered a deep dark brown in the sepia tones of the photographic process—signified that this success was hard won over hard times and many obstacles. Angel stood slightly behind him and to the side, the sepia rendering her smooth, mocha skin in a palette true to life. One hand rested on Abe’s shoulder, the other splayed protectively at her waist, the plain wedding ring on her finger gleaming gold. A line of buttons marched down the front of her form-hugging bodice, ultimately surrendering to an exuberantly flounced narrow skirt. It was hard to recollect that this proper young matron, every inch the lady, had once been the prime draw at the brick parlor house owned by “Frisco Flo” Sweet.
A rustling of clothes behind her and Doc announced, “Done, Mrs. Stannert.”
Inez turned around. Angel still stood, loose dressing gown draping her from neck to floor, dark tresses cascading down and over her shoulders. All she needed was a pair of wings, thought Inez, and she could pass for one of God’s messengers. Although it seemed unlikely that any seraph would take on the rotund form of an overdue mother-to-be.
“It won’t be long now, Mrs. Jackson. If you want something to do, I recommend walking when you feel the pains. But please, stay inside. You should not be out and about. Your water could burst at any time, and at that point, you need to send word to me.”
Doc walked behind the couch to a sturdy table holding a white-and-blue china water pitcher and basin. He splashed some water into the bowl and commenced scrubbing his hands, still talking. “Mrs. Stannert, I sent Mr. Jackson to Chicken Hill to bring a woman I trust and know well to keep Mrs. Jackson company while he is not here. I must return to my surgery.” He swiveled around, pale blue eyes taking in Inez. “May I ask you to stay here with her until Mr. Jackson returns? Welcome back, m’dear,” he added belatedly. “I trust your visit with your sister and the young Master Stannert went well? Despite what I understand were some interesting developments in Manitou.” He peered at her over the top of his glasses. “By the way, I should like to hear how that story ended sometime. And would very much enjoy hearing how your son is doing.”
“Certainly,” said Inez. She moved to help Angel back down onto the settee, placing a needlepoint pillow at her back. “Mr. Stannert is at the Silver Queen and will be running a game tonight for newcomers. I’m assuming poker, but we shall see. As for William,” Inez opened her black-beaded travel reticule, “perhaps you would like to see this, Doc?” She added to Angel, “I brought it to show you.”
Inez held out the carte viste to Doc. The image taken in Colorado Springs, showed William, two-and-a-half years old, seated with William’s caretaker, Inez’s younger sister, Harmony. The expression on his face was somewhere between suspicious and terrified. Harmony looked serene with large luminous eyes. The paleness of her skin and the slight darkening of flushed cheekbones gave her an ethereal glow.
Doc took the card and examined the images. “My professional opinion: young William Stannert looks a hale and hearty youngster. His move to the East Coast appears to have suited him and his condition.” He gave Inez a sharp glance. “You did the right thing, m’dear, in sending him back there. He would have deteriorated here in Leadville. I have seen the condition many times before and since. I believe it was only an innate stubbornness, no doubt inherited from his mother, that allowed him to hang on long enough to be settled at sea-level where his lungs could recover and he could regain his health.”
Inez nodded, unable to swallow a lump in her throat. “It was the right decision at the time.”
His voice softened. “I know it was difficult for you, but it’s a testament to you that you selflessly gave him up to be raised by your family. Obviously,” he tapped the picture, “William thrives. If he had remained here as an infant, the altitude would have killed him. His lungs were far too weak for him to survive.”
Angel clutched his arm, alarmed, and shook it. He laid a calming hand on top of hers. “Pardon me, Mrs. Jackson. What was I thinking? I should not talk about such matters around you with you in your condition. You have little to fear. Mrs. Stannert’s boy was
born early, undersized, and in winter. None of which applies to your case.”
Doc held out the picture to Angel, who snatched it from him and proceeded to examine it closely. He moved to the door, indicating with a slight tilt of the chin that Inez should accompany him. “How is your sister?” he asked in a low voice, as he settled his top hat on his head. “Consumption, is it?”
“Yes,” Inez struggled to keep her voice low and neutral. “Her husband is doing everything within his power for her. He intimated that they might return to the Springs for a longer stay, perhaps semi-permanent. As to how she is doing, she is,” Inez hesitated, “I think the picture no doubt tells you what you might need to know on that account.” Harmony’s thinness and the high flush in her cheeks, apparent in the photograph, were the tells that accompanied the body-wracking coughs that she tried to smother behind her fine linen handkerchiefs.
He nodded soberly. “Take comfort, m’dear, in knowing that recovery can happen. It’s a throw of the dice, a turn of the cards. We physicians think we know it all, but a long time in this profession only humbles me and shows me how little we comprehend of how an individual’s constitution responds. I say, with complete candor, that I know any number of consumptives who have relocated to Colorado and survived long, fruitful years. I pray your sister will join their ranks.”
He paused, eyeing her, as if trying to decide whether to continue speaking. He finally added, “I’d hazard, from that picture, that she loves your son a great deal. You chose his guardian well. Perhaps they will heal and save each other, hmm?” With an encouraging smile at Inez, he opened the door and glanced back at Angel, still examining the photo. “And, Mrs. Jackson?”
