The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  Soon it’s only me and Flora and Nell.

  “I’ll write,” Flora whispers.

  Nell nods briskly as she scrubs at her eyes, but I can’t bring myself to promise the same. Not if it might make a liar of me. I have seven blank pages at the end of the little book Miss Bradley made for me and a stumpy pencil Mr. Conant had no use for. Once those are used up, I can’t be sure I’ll be able to get more.

  It hurt when my Lowell friends stopped coming around, but Jer and the housekeeping made me so busy and tired that I just looked up one day and they were gone. I never had to say good-bye for good. I never had to watch them walk away.

  Only days later Mrs. D, Jer, and I are back on Folsom Wharf along with twenty other passengers. There’s no attempt at order. No hand-wringing about propriety. We’re told to be on the wharf at barely-dawn with our baggage and embark on the Huntsville.

  On our way out of the International we pass Mr. Mercer signing over Annie Miller’s piano to the hotel owner, swearing front to back it’s a down payment on the whole boarding bill.

  The Huntsville is a sailing ship, not a steamship, and there are no necessaries or staterooms. There’s only an open space beneath the deck, where we’re meant to eat and bed down and do our business. The deckhands are surly and weathered and don’t wink and chuck my chin when I ask questions like What beam is the wind off?

  Still, we’re almost to Washington Territory. The captain says it won’t be more than three weeks till we get to Port Townsend. Maybe less if the weather helps. Then only a week to Seattle!

  The first few days are pretty and blue, then the sky turns a dull gunmetal gray and stays that way. I improve the section on Climate in Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet with a clumsy drawing of a palm tree like I saw in Rio.

  The girls all went on the first vessel, so there’s not much to occupy myself with. In Mr. Mercer’s mind, Miss Gower counts as a girl, so she isn’t here to hold a school. Not that there’s any room for it on the Huntsville. Mostly, I watch for the moment when the needly trees start becoming palm trees, but instead they fade into the fog, and then there’s nothing to see but fog.

  For three days it rains. Not a playful, light tropical rain, but a heavy, drenchy rain that sheets down and soaks right through the wool traveling cloak I’m now glad Mrs. D didn’t unravel for the yarn.

  I show Jer how to knit socks, but he’s too little to follow along. So I try to teach him and Jimmie Lincoln to play hopscotch instead, only the roll of the ship sends our markers tumbling, and the rain washes away the squares I chalk on the deck, and they can never remember to keep one foot in the air.

  The Huntsville arrives at Port Townsend one damp morning before dawn, and by the evening tide the passengers are divided into two smaller groups and outbound for Seattle on lumber schooners, just as Mr. Mercer said we’d be. The schooners are empty of goods, as they intend to pick up timber in Seattle for the Port Townsend mills, so the captain figures on a quick run down Puget Sound. I overhear the dockside gangers saying how the cargo of petticoats departed for Seattle two days earlier, and while it still irks me to hear my friends talked about in such a way, it won’t be long before we’re all together again.

  I reread Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet at least once a day, cover to cover, along with all my improvements. We’re in Washington Territory now, and once we land, there’ll be plenty of room for Jer to run and schoolhouses on every corner and a nice, rich banker for Mrs. D to marry. We’ll live in a big house made of new-cut boards and eat hot, tasty food at every meal and my friends will be around the corner and down the road and across town. I’ll visit someone’s house every day after school and we’ll play whist for hours.

  It’s all just through the fog. It’s all there, even if I can’t see it.

  I frown at the sailor and repeat, “That’s Seattle.”

  “Oh aye, m’girl.” He points again through the drizzle at the scattering of unremarkable white buildings cluttered along a bay like they’re trying to escape the solid wall of timber rising behind them.

  I can’t see a bank.

  I can’t see a church.

  I can’t see anything that might resemble a school.

  We’re heading toward a wharf that’s connected to a long, muddy track that stretches up and up and disappears into the timber beyond. To the left is a lumber mill where men wrestle big logs up a chute from the water into the cutting area. Some of the workers are brown men with their sleeves rolled up and their hair about their shoulders. Or rather they are bronze, like the people in Rio. They must be Indians.

  Beyond the millhands there’s no one on the wharf. No crowds of eligible gentlemen pushing and fighting for a look at us. Not even any barefoot miners hollering ugly things like in San Francisco.

  “This can’t be Seattle,” I tell the sailor, as if he could snap his fingers and make it right. Or more like he’d grin and pshaw me and we’d keep sailing and soon enough find that busy, bustling town from the pamphlet. The one that hums with Trade and Industry and other chapter headings.

  Instead, he shrugs. “What’d you expect?”

  Mrs. D comes up from below. She’s wearing her Sunday dress, and Jer’s in a clean shirt and britches. She’s already smiling that pretty-headtilt smile.

  The water here is deep enough to hold up a ship, so we won’t need to fool about with rowboats. The sailors hail the men on the wharf. Several millhands come and stand ready to catch the lines the sailors hold in massive coils.

  Mrs. D cranes her neck, peering at the dock like I did a few minutes ago. Like I could change it just by rubbing my eyes.

  The men on the dock wind the lines around the posts while the captain calls drop anchor.

  The wharf stretches in front of us, crooked and splintering. It ends where a slope of weed-strewn gravel makes a sort-of beach. Where the wharf turns into the road, there’s nothing but mud.

  There’s no sand. No blue water. Not a palm tree in sight.

  We’re here.

  And there has to be some mistake.

  11

  THE TEN OF US STAND uncertainly on the wharf while sailors pile our baggage at our feet. I’m holding Jer, because he refuses to stand on his own. Mrs. D keeps peering at the millworkers like they’ll part somehow and reveal her banker. She fidgets with the cameo at her collar, the lace around her cuffs. Already her flouncy hem is dingy just from the boards of the wharf.

  Three men clomp out of the mill. They’re wearing shirts made of red flannel and the sort of heavy blue work trousers the miners wore in San Francisco.

  “You’re Mercer’s, right?” one demands.

  I draw a sharp breath. We might owe Mr. Mercer some money, but this country just finished fighting a whole war over whether anyone could own another person.

  Mrs. Horton clears her throat indignantly. “I should think not. We’re part of the Mercer emigration expedition, yes, but—”

  “You wanna get married?”

  “Well—” Mrs. Horton makes an awkward gesture. “I—might. But—”

  “He said he was bringing us wives,” the beardiest one cuts in. “I paid good money.”

  This can’t be right. It can’t be. Mr. Mercer brought us here because we have broad minds and sturdy constitutions and we’ll enrich the territory with our industriousness and thrift and good breeding. He said as much, more times than I can count.

  Mrs. Horton lifts her chin. “I’ll only marry if a man’s got gold in his pockets and one foot in the grave.”

  “Told you,” the first says to the others, and all three of them huff in disgust and grumble off toward a white building on the other side of the wharf.

  Mrs. D looks like she might faint right here on the boards. “They were supposed to meet us on the pier. Dozens of them. Gentlemen. I was going to . . .”

  “Ma’am?” I tug Mrs. D’s puffy sleeve. “Should we find a hotel? Jer’s getting hungry.”

  Also, I’d like to get well clear of those three men and any others like them.

&nbs
p; There’s a house across from the mill. It’s made of proper boards and it’s got windows and curtains and a big porch. A man steps out dressed in a suit that’s New York–fancy. Mrs. D’s eyes light up, even though he’s old enough to be my grandfather. He introduces himself as Mr. Yesler and welcomes us to Seattle. The house is his, and so are the mill and the wharf and the land we’re standing on.

  “The others are at the Occidental Hotel,” Mr. Yesler says. “Just yonder. Mrs. Yesler is already there. She’s taken it upon herself to make sure the girls have everything they need. Here, I’ll walk with you there.”

  Mrs. D’s silly-face goes back to normal. The way he says Mrs. Yesler makes me think it’s not something he’d ordinarily put into a conversation, but he’s learned to very recently.

  “We’ll have to beg your pardon for the lukewarm welcome,” Mr. Yesler goes on. “You’re the second schooner to arrive today from Port Townsend with passengers from the expedition. We expected Mr. Mercer’s girls back in January, so when no one arrived for month after month, we figured the whole thing had fallen through.”

  “We didn’t even sail till January,” I tell him.

  “That’s what the others said.” Mr. Yesler sounds annoyed, like our not arriving till summer put him out personally.

  Away from the wharf, the town feels bigger. There are three streets that cross the mill road, but because of the shape of the bay they crook when they cross, like the bend in an elbow. We pass a big log building and smaller buildings made of milled boards. The first is the mill’s cookhouse, the next few are stores. There are other buildings too, but those don’t have signs and Mr. Yesler forgets to tell us what they’re for.

  Everything feels huddled by the water. Almost as if the wall of timber is a fat lady you’re sharing a settee with, and her large rear end is pushing you to the very edge.

  The Occidental Hotel is white and has lots of windows and a big porch like Mr. Yesler’s. It sits in a triangle made of three streets, one of which is so muddy there’s a bridge over it.

  Come to think on it, there’s no chapter in the pamphlet about roads.

  “Hungeeeeeey, Daneeeeeey,” Jer whines.

  “Of course the gentlemen wouldn’t be at the wharf.” Mrs. D is talking, but I don’t think she’s talking to me. “They’d be at the hotel. Waiting for us where there’s a teaspoon of civilization.”

  She starts biting her lips red and straightening her hat.

  Five steps inside the Occidental, Mrs. D stops in her tracks and I bump into her.

  The parlor is packed with men.

  Young, old, everywhere in between. They’re in raggedy clothes, mostly, but a few wear suits that are threadbare at the elbows and hopelessly out of fashion. Their beards look like blackberry thickets, bushy and unkempt.

  To a man, they stand up the moment Mrs. D appears in the foyer.

  I cover Jer’s ears the best I can with one hand, but they don’t start yelling vulgar things like the men did in San Francisco. They don’t say a single word. If anything, they act like someone just punched them in the windpipe and they’re recovering their wits.

  “Stand here, Jane,” Mrs. D hisses. “Don’t move.”

  She puts her chin in the air and glides over to the registry desk like a queen in a fairy tale.

  “Daneeeeeey, hungeeeeeeey!”

  One of the beardy men steps toward us. He’s got wispy brownish hair and a belly like a pillow stuffed under his red flannel shirt. He’s holding out something that looks like a shriveled-up piece of shoe leather.

  “You like jerky, son?”

  Jer takes the strip and peers at it.

  “You eat it.” He produces his own piece of shoe leather jerky and bites down. “Mmmmm.”

  Jer gnaws once—twice—on the jerky. He frowns, then offers it back. “Not for eat.”

  “I’m real sorry, sir,” I say, but the burly man only laughs and pockets the jerky.

  “He’s probably right. I’m not sure bachelor rations count as food.”

  Mrs. D rushes past me, head down. She’s breathing like a racehorse just across the finish line, and she’s not heading toward the dining room where there are voices and laughter and the clink of cutlery.

  “Thanks anyway,” I reply, and the man holds his jerky up in salute.

  “Can we eat?” Jer asks in a forlorn voice.

  I’m hungry too, and delicious smells are coming from the Occidental’s dining room. Roasted meat. Buttery bread. Pie.

  “Let’s go find your mama,” I tell him. “Then we’ll all eat together.”

  “Mama,” Jer agrees, so I hoist him higher and venture after Mrs. D. A door slams at the end of a dim corridor. There’s a fancy wooden sign on it that says LADIES ONLY. I tap on the door, and when she doesn’t answer, I peek in.

  Mrs. D is lying on a faded pink fainting couch, facing the wall. She isn’t crying, but she isn’t moving, either.

  “Mama?” Jer climbs on the couch next to her. “Mama? Up.”

  “Ma’am?” I clear my throat. “Are you feeling all right?”

  She laughs, high and shrill. “Four thousand miles, children. Four thousand miles. There’s not one gentleman to be had, not one. Just . . . men.”

  “Maybe they’re nice,” I say.

  “Nice?” Mrs. D whips around, eyes terrifying. “Do you know what they do? They’re loggingmen. Miners. This is as clean as they’ve been in a year! Half of them don’t even have a pot to piss in, much less a roof to keep us all under. That snake in the grass Asa Mercer promised me . . . I’m going to kill him with my bare hands.”

  Jer starts snuffly-crying, slides off the couch, and grabs me around the legs. I pick him up and sway aimlessly.

  We came this whole way so Mrs. D could get married. It was all she wanted, to get married and keep house. Now she can. She’s got her pick. Every single man in that parlor would trip over himself to make her smile.

  “Perhaps all the bankers are busy today,” I say, and when she makes this little strangled noise, I hold Jer tighter. I can yes ma’am Mrs. D like a champion when she’s raging or annoyed. A Mrs. D falling to pieces like Jer when he needs a nap—my throat is closing just being near her.

  So I ask if Jer and I can go eat, because at least that will solve one of our problems.

  She mumbles something that might be I don’t care. I tug out my handkerchief and wipe away the last of Jer’s tears. “C’mon, let’s go see what’s for supper.”

  “Hoss,” Jer mumbles, so I fish the toy out of my carpetbag and hand it to him. Even though it’s pointy and wooden, he hugs it close.

  As we pass the registry desk, Mrs. Grinold comes down the stairs. I tell her where Mrs. D is, and ask if she’d go look in on her. Mrs. Grinold is the closest thing Mrs. D has to a friend-who’s-like-a-sister, and right now she needs all the family she can get.

  Mrs. Pollard takes one look at me standing in the doorway of the Occidental’s dining room and pulls Jer out of my arms and plops him down next to Jimmie Lincoln. Jer is so delighted to see his small friend from the Continental that he forgets why he’s crying and helps himself to some of Jimmie’s eggs.

  When Jer stops crying, I feel less like I might start.

  Mrs. D might have had a shock, but she isn’t being fair. We’ve barely seen any of Seattle, and already she’s judging it too harshly, and Mr. Mercer, too. Sure, there seem to be fewer buildings than I pictured. More mud, too, and a lot more stumps and buildings on stilts and a strange set of wooden pipes on stilts too. And no sidewalks to speak of.

  Mrs. Grinold will talk some sense into her. Tomorrow we can take a proper tour of the town. It’ll be like stepping into the pamphlet. We’ll find the school and the bank, and Mrs. D can flirt her head off at whatever poor man is behind the counter while I figure out when to expect the school bell.

  “Miss Deming. It’s a pleasure to see you’ve arrived none the worse for wear.”

  Miss Gower appears beside me, buttoned-up prim and adjusting her spectacles an
d using big words at me. Out of habit I straighten, even though I kind of want to hug her as if she were Flora or Nell.

  “You too!” I squeal. Then I add, because it’s Miss Gower, “Ma’am.”

  “I’m delighted I’m able to wish you well before I leave.”

  “You—you’re leaving?” Not her as well. “You can’t.”

  “Yes.” She takes my arm and leads me away from Jer and Jimmie Lincoln fighting over a biscuit. “I’ve been offered a school in Olympia. The next steamer leaves the day after tomorrow.”

  “I want to keep invigilating for you,” I protest. “You were going to be the Old Maid of the Territory.”

  “Olympia is still in the territory. It’s unfortunate our geography lessons were so limited.”

  “I thought we’d all be together,” I say in a faint voice. “Here. In Seattle.”

  Miss Gower turns me by the shoulders to look out on the Occidental’s dining room. “You are. You girls are all here, but for a few weary enough to stay in California or drawn to loved ones elsewhere. You are all here together.”

  The room is full of familiar faces. Girls I played whist with. Girls I sang with beside Annie Miller’s poor pawned piano. My fellow combat veterans.

  My friends are here on their own, though. No mothers or stepmothers or brothers to tell them to knit socks or mind their manners. They laughed at Mr. Mercer when he tried to play at Father. Any one of my friends could have marched into Miss Gower’s lifeboat and picked up a slate without asking anyone’s permission.

  “I need you, too,” I reply.

  Miss Gower gives that almost-smile. “I doubt you do. After all, you admirably managed to assign yourself additional tasks all on your own account.”

  “You—you knew?”

  “The Continental wasn’t that large a vessel. Once your ruse came to my attention, I did not dissuade anyone of its origin. I saw no reason to empower those who decide matters on your behalf from a place of ignorance.” Miss Gower’s brows flutter. “I so dislike anyone who insists on preserving ignorance.”

  She means Mrs. D. She didn’t like Mrs. D making me knit socks and mind Jer instead of going to school, where I could broaden my mind and keep my promise to Papa.