Coming Up Roses

by Duncan, Alice

  “You’re going to do more of these, aren’t you?” Haley barked. “Folks are eating them up.”

  “Absolutely.” H.L. felt the deep sense of satisfaction that came from knowing he was going to get to do what he wanted to do and get paid for it for the next ten or twenty days—or more.

  Hell, the fair was going to last until October; maybe he could do a story a week until it closed. God bless the Columbian Exposition. And God bless little Rose Ellen Gilhooley. H.L. could hardly wait to take her to the Fine Arts and Liberal Arts buildings. She’d probably been to museums in Europe, but H.L. imagined her art education was scanty at best.

  How old had she been when she’d joined the Wild West? Sixteen? Hell, she couldn’t have acquired much education in sixteen years. While Buffalo Bill was a great fellow by all reports, H.L. would bet he didn’t provide any schooling for his cast and crew. H.L. had discovered within himself a deep longing to show Rose Gilhooley things, to feed her thirst for knowledge, if she had one. He might be imagining he’d detected one in her, although he doubted it. He wanted to present the world to her even as he presented her to the world.

  Sitting back in his swivel chair, H.L. clasped his hands behind his head, clumped his feet on his desk, and thought about what marvels he aimed to pursue with Rose next. He wanted to learn the story of her childhood and youth. Rather, he wanted to learn the story of her youth before the Wild West. He supposed he could look up Buffalo Bill’s performance schedule for six years and find out the story of her years after he’d hired her.

  Was she ready to open up to him yet? Frowning into the almost-empty press room, and feeling vaguely comforted by the muffled clunk-clunk of the printing presses that seeped through from the basement print room, he considered the matter.

  She was as prickly as a poison-ivy rash, and he didn’t dare leap into anything with her. It had been hard enough getting her to visit the fair with him in the first place.

  Then again . . . H.L.’s frown tipped up into a self-satisfied smirk. He’d really done a pretty good job in softening her up, he told himself. She was so interested in the Exposition now, she probably wouldn’t balk at talking to him about other things as well.

  God, he was good at his job. He was right up there at the top, in fact. And this series of articles about Rose Ellen Gilhooley was going to make him a household name across the entire nation. H.L. envisioned his Columbian Exposition articles being picked up by newspapers from Maine to California. The New York Times, even!

  With visions of fame and fortune dancing in his head, and mental images of himself covering earth-shaking events—wars, famines, floods, and fires sprang to mind—H.L. lifted his feet from his desk, stood up, stretched, bade his few remaining colleagues a cheery good-night, and sauntered out of the Globe’s offices.

  # # #

  “I’m not sure,” Annie told Rose.

  The Wild West was over for the night. Both women had been cheered and applauded lustily by a standing-room-only crowd. Rose didn’t know about Annie, but she was bushed. It had been a busy day, and an exciting one. As soon as H.L. May had walked her back to the Wild West encampment after their daylight Ferris Wheel ride, Rose had written down the words for which she wanted definitions, wishing as she did so that she knew how to spell them.

  “I have a dictionary packed in one of my trunks.” Annie, still garbed in her costume, the bosom of which bristled with award medals, ribbons, rosettes, and all manner of prizes won in sharpshooting competitions, stood in the middle of the tent she shared with Frank and tapped her chin with a finger.

  “I’ll be happy to get it, if you know which one it’s in,” Rose offered. George snoozed peacefully on the blanket Annie had embroidered for him. Sometimes Rose wished she were a pampered poodle. Life was much easier for pets than for their owners. She didn’t want to face H.L. May again until she knew for sure what he’d said to her today. She had a fairly good memory, and had stored sentences in her head rather the way she’d seen books stored on library shelves in some of the big cities she’d visited.

  The one she was most curious about was euphemism, and why “Would you like to powder your nose?” could be considered one. It seemed like a straightforward-enough question to her, yet H.L. May claimed it hadn’t been. Rose, who loved stories and would dearly like to be able to read them better by herself, didn’t like not understanding things.

  “Oh, no, you needn’t do that,” Annie said. “I’m only trying to recollect which trunk it might be in.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, yes! I remember now

  Rose watched her dart over to a corner of the roomy tent, where two trunks were stacked in order to provide the Butlers with a writing surface. Annie flung the top trunk down with a clunk, and opened the bottom one. Glancing over her shoulder at Rose, she said, “We put the empty one on top for this very purpose.”

  For the purpose of flinging it aside? Rose, tired after a full day, didn’t ask. “Is it in there?”

  “Yes!” Annie lifted a heavy leather-bound volume. “As you know, I’ve tried hard to better my reading skills, too, just as you’re doing now.”

  Rose nodded. Yes, indeed, she did know that. It’s one of the many things about Annie that made them such good friends. “I’m not sure how to spell the first word,” she admitted. “It’s euphemism. Maybe it starts with a U?”

  “Let me see.” Sitting on the trunk she’d tossed on the floor, Annie thumbed through the well-used book. “Would it be a U and an F? Or a U and a P-H?”

  “You’re asking me?” Rose walked over and sat beside Annie. She was beginning to feel stupid again. Or—Maybe stupid wasn’t it. Maybe she was only feeling as though she were at a disadvantage. Both conditions were uncomfortable, but being at a disadvantage didn’t sound so permanent as did being stupid. It also felt a tiny bit better to think of herself as disadvantaged rather than stupid. Besides that, it was the truth.

  “I don’t see anything that begins U-F,” Annie muttered, following the words in the book with her forefinger. “Here’s Ugrian.”

  “What?”

  “Ugrian. It’s some kind of Hungarian, it says here. Or a Hungarian is some kind of Ugrian.”

  “Well, that doesn’t help us with euphemism.”

  “No. Let me look up U-P-H and see what happens.” She flipped some more pages. “Hmmm. Upheaval, uphill, uphold, upholster. No euphemism.”

  Rose sighed, feeling discouraged. “Why does he use words like that, I wonder?”

  With a shrug, Annie shuffled back through a big hunk of the dictionary. “Probably because he can, I reckon. People who like words use them a lot. Look at the colonel.”

  “That’s true. But I usually understand the words he uses.”

  “But that’s only because you and he live and work in the same environment. Don’t forget that words are Mr. May’s livelihood. He probably knows a whole lot of them.”

  “True.” Rose dropped her chin into her cupped hands, resting her elbows on her thighs. “Are there any more choices. If it doesn’t start with a U-F or a U-P-H, what’s left?”

  “Let me think.”

  Annie thought as Rose ruminated on how uncomfortable it could be to hang out with someone who had a grand education when she had no education at all. She suspected she wouldn’t mind so much if she didn’t care so much, but she did care. And she didn’t even know why. After all, H.L. May was so far out of her orbit as to belong to another solar system. She sniffed, thinking at least she knew what the solar system was. Thanks to Annie and a book she’d had her read aloud to her a couple of years ago.

  It was depressing to know that if Rose hadn’t met Annie, she’d be even more of an uneducated blockhead than she was. She wondered if H.L. May would have wanted to interview her six years ago, when she first joined the Wild West. The mere thought of having him see her as she was then made her shudder.

  “I have it!”

  Startled, Rose cried out, “What? What do you have?”

  Annie began flipping quickly throug
h the dictionary. “I remember when I first met Frank. He’s Irish, you know, and a Catholic, and it’s the first time I’d ever heard of the holy Eucharist.”

  “The what?” Rose had never heard of it until this minute.

  “Never mind. But the point is that it begins E-U. Maybe euphemism begins with an E-U, too, and doesn’t have an F in it at all.”

  Rose blinked at her friend. “Why would a word that sounds like it begins with a U begin with an E, though?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just the way these things work sometimes. Language is strange. Ours comes from all sorts of other, older, antique languages.”

  “It does?” It didn’t seem sportsmanlike to Rose that the more she learned, the less she knew, but that’s the way her education seemed to be going at the moment. She clung to the hope that any education at all was better than none, however, and didn’t run screaming from the tent.

  “Ah, yes, here we are.” Annie stabbed a finger at the page. “Oh, here’s euchre. I think the colonel and Frank play euchre sometimes.”

  “I’ve heard of euchre.” This faintly surprised Rose, who hadn’t believed she had anything at all in common with those strange words in the English language that began with E-U. “It’s a card game, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Oh, look. And here’s a euphonium. I knew a gentleman who played the euphonium once.”

  From which statement, Rose presumed a euphonium was either a musical instrument or another card game. She didn’t say anything, although she was slightly curious. Most of her energy was being expended on wondering about euphemism at the moment, though. Euphoniums could just take care of themselves.

  Preoccupied, Annie didn’t expound on the definition of euphonium. After another few seconds, she lifted her head and beamed at Rose.

  “It’s here!”

  “It is?” Rose beamed back, her heart swelling as if it had been she who’d discovered Dr. Livingston in deepest Africa rather than Mr. Stanley. She hoped the rest of the words she wanted to look up wouldn’t be as difficult to find as euphemism.

  “Ah,” said Annie, satisfaction lacing her voice. “I understand now.”

  She looked at Rose. “You told me he asked if you wanted to powder your nose when he really wanted to know if you needed to use the privy?”

  “Yes, only he called it the comfort station.”

  Annie’s smile was wide. “That’s a euphemism, too, my dear.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. Look. It says right here that a euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive word for another one. So, when a gentleman wants to know if a lady needs to use the privy, he’s being polite when he asks if she wants to powder her nose.”

  “For heaven’s sake.” Rose’s mouth dropped open at the notion of H.L. May trying to be polite. “Goodness gracious. I’ll be hanged.”

  Annie nodded. “All of those things.” Her smile faded. “When I met

  Mr. May, he didn’t appear to be the type to mince words—so to speak. Do you suppose he has ulterior motives, Rose?” Reading the shock on Rose’s face, she took her arm. “I don’t want to alarm you, Rose, but he is a man, after all, and you know what men are.”

  “Well . . . Actually, I’m not sure I do.” Rose shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I don’t have much experience, you know.”

  “I know, dear.” Annie patted her knee. “Just be careful. He’s a handsome devil, and there aren’t too many honorable men in the world anymore, particularly not handsome ones.”

  Rose lifted her chin. “The colonel is an honorable man, Annie, and he’s good looking.”

  “Yes,” her friend said dryly. “But it isn’t the colonel who’s taking you out gallivanting all over the fair every day, is it?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  “You guess not, indeed. Just watch yourself, Rose. I’d hate to see you get hurt by a sophisticated big-city reporter who’s only out for a bit of sport.”

  Rose felt herself flush. “Annie!” she exclaimed in a mortified voice.

  “Please, I know how to take care of myself.”

  Annie heaved a huge sigh. “Yes, yes. I know. You’ve been taking care of yourself for far too many years already. But you haven’t been wined and dined by a cultivated scoundrel, either.” With a gasp, Rose goggled at Annie. “Oh, Annie! Is that what he is? Do you really think so?”

  Apparently recognizing that she’d gone too far, Annie again patted Rose’s knee. “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know that’s what he is. How can I? All I’m saying is that you must guard yourself. Your feelings, most of all. I know you can keep any man from taking advantage of you physically, but no matter how well-known you are in show business, you’re still a very young woman with little experience of men.”

  Seeing the logic in Annie’s worries, Rose expelled a gust of breath, wishing her best friend wasn’t so right about her. “I understand, Annie. Truly, I do.”

  “I’m sure of it, Rose.”

  Annie gave Rose a sweet smile, and Rose almost succumbed to the urge to hug her. She missed her mother so much sometimes. And her brother Freddie. She’d been able to talk to her mother about almost anything, and the things she didn’t dare talk to her mother about, she could always talk to Freddie about. Freddie had protected her, although Rose had always pretended she didn’t need his help. Still, she knew she could have been in big trouble a few times if Freddie hadn’t warded off drunken cowboys, outlaws, gamblers, and other forms of low life often found in and around Deadwood.

  Sometimes, even with Annie and Frank Butler standing in for her family, she missed her real kin dreadfully. Often, in fact, if she’d been able to wish herself back home to Kansas, she’d have done it.

  But that wouldn’t be fair to her family. They needed Rose to be doing exactly what she was doing. One day, Rose hoped to live with her mother again, whether in Kansas or somewhere else. Every time she thought about her poor, tired mother, Rose’s heart ached. She’d given up so many years of her life on the frontier. According to Freddie and her mother herself, Mrs. Gilhooley was healthier and stronger these days, thanks to Rose.

  No. Rose knew she had to keep on with the Wild West. For her own sake and her family’s. No matter how uncomfortable living away from family could be. At least she had Annie.

  “What are the other words you wanted to know about?” Annie asked.

  Dragging her brain back from the dismal swamp into which it had been sinking, Rose sighed and said, “Let me see. Staple. Mr. May said rice is a staple for the Japanese. And metaphor. I don’t have any idea what a metaphor is.”

  So the two ladies looked up words in Annie’s dictionary, and Rose repeated the words individually and in sentences until she was pretty sure she wouldn’t again forget what any of them meant. God alone knew what the morrow might bring. For all she knew, H.L. May would keep piling words on her until she smothered under a heap of them.

  She was so exhausted when she finally got to bed that night, she didn’t even turn over for eight hours.

  # # #

  H.L. had decided Rose probably needed one more day of softening up before he began to probe deeply into her background. Or maybe not.

  He’d play it by ear. He arrived even earlier at the Wild West encampment today than he had the day before, his eagerness to see Rose propelling him. Not, of course, that he wanted to see Rose because she was Rose, but because she was the best story ever to land in his lap. So to speak.

  The notion of having Rose Gilhooley on his lap was such an appealing one, H.L. had trouble banishing it from his mind. The problem was solved a moment later when he moseyed into the arena and saw Rose in the distance, practicing with one of her white horses. H.L. couldn’t tell the two beasts apart.

  Deciding he didn’t want to interrupt her and also that it might be fun to observe her for a while without her being aware of his presence, he found a seat in the grandstand that was partially obscured from Rose’s line of sight by a pillar. He drew out a notebook and a pencil, and
started writing even before he’d sat down.

  Rose Gilhooley was an inspiring object. Seldom at a loss for words, H.L. found they flowed like water from his brain to his pencil to the page when Rose was the subject du jour.

  As graceful on horseback as a firefly at night, streamed out in lead onto the paper.

  Miss Gilhooley rides like the wind. This reporter finds it no wonder that her Indian chums gifted her with the name Wind Dancer. She belongs to the wind, as naturally as if she were herself a force of nature.

  H.L. watched Rose and pondered the words he’d just jotted down. He didn’t want to get too flowery in his praise of Rose, because folks might get the wrong impression. They might think he was enamored of Rose herself instead of her remarkable skill as a horsewoman. Not that H.L. didn’t think she was cute as a bug, because he did. But, being the cosmopolitan man of the world that he was, he didn’t find innocence all that exciting. He liked women with a few years on them. Experienced women. Women who knew what was what. Women who weren’t breakable.

  Breakable? Where the hell had that come from? H.L. squinted down at the page and realized he’d written, Miss Gilhooley, for all her poise and gumption, wears an air of fragility that would do a fairy princess proud. Good God. H.L. drew a heavy line through that sentence, knowing it was preposterous.

  Or was it? He gasped as Rose, using some gesture invisible to her audience, made her pretty white horse rear up onto its back legs and seem to dance across the field. How did she do that. Hell, H.L., who didn’t have much truck with horses on a regular basis, would have fallen off and bashed his head long before the horse quit prancing, as it did now. Without waiting for Rose to catch her breath, the horse then took off at a dead run and made two entire circuits of the arena before veering into what would have been center stage, if it had been on one, and stopping with another lift of its front legs. The sequence of events was tremendously dramatic, which he guessed was the point, but they scared the tar out of him for Rose’s sake.