by Denise Dietz
When Whiskey Johnnie and Bertha arrived, they were greeted by “Amazing Grace,” sung by several members of the Salvation Army who stood outside Nolan’s Saloon.
Johnnie led Clementine down the crowded street, toward the bricked front of Johnson’s Department Store. “Set, Berry,” he said. “See that there gal with her geegaws? Soon you’ll be shopping at Johnson’s. Don’t move. I’ll be quicker’n a jackrabbit.”
Bertha watched him head toward some distant shacks. Then she bent forward, rested her face against Clementine’s furred neck and closed her eyes.
“I’m scared, Geordie,” she said, and in her head heard his reply: Open your eyes, Berry. This ain’t Denver. See how the mountains try to touch God’s feet? You’re safe now.
“I might be safe, Geordie, but I’m plumb scared.”
You was scared to sing and look how good you done.
“Whiskey Johnnie says there’s whores here, so I gotta learn me a whore’s ways and find me a gentleman to wed.”
Loving with a feller on the outside don’t make you bad inside.
“Should I love with a feller on the outside, Geordie?”
Ignoring the sound of horse hooves, squeaky carriage wheels, and the Salvation Army’s tambourines, she listened for his answer. If he said no, she’d starve with her goodness. But all she heard was the plop of Clementine’s fresh dung.
“Geordie, don’t leave me!”
A hand clasped her shoulder. She opened her eyes and sat up straight.
“We been lucky, Berry,” Johnnie said. “Leo the Lion owns them Poverty Gulch cribs and one’s empty ’cause a whore married sudden-like.”
“Did she wed her a gentleman?”
“Could be.” He cleared his throat. “I need your sack of coins to pay the rent, young ’un. Giddyap, Clementine.”
The flimsy shanty fronted Myers Avenue. It sagged, but there were no gaps in the planked walls, and the peaked roof — with its black stovepipe poking out — didn’t look like it would leak too bad. And the window panes were real glass, not paper.
Johnnie led her inside. “The gal what lived here left furniture and pretties. See? You got sheets, towels and a pillow.”
Bertha strolled around the small room, touching, in turn, the bed, the hand-hewn rocker, the wood and leather-thong trunk, and a frilly window curtain. Outside, she leaned against the door, waving until Clementine’s whisked tail disappeared from view. Then she walked forward, made an about-face, and studied her new home. Her crib stood between MINTA and BELLE. She looked up and down the street, moving her lips slowly the way Geordie had taught her, reading the other printed names.
The shacks seemed so tiny, pitted against the saw-toothed mountain range. Bertha felt a surge of pride. Her mountains. Reaching for God’s feet.
*****
A tiger salamander slithered across Bertha’s boot toe. She watched mottled spots, slimy skin and long tail turn the corner as the salamander headed toward a sad, scabbed, yella-sprigged dogwood tree. Then she dipped a brush into some red paint she’d found, and, on tiptoe, printed the name BERRY above her doorway. The letters looked almost the same size. Geordie would say “Good job, Weed.”
He’d like her pretty flowers, too, especially the white petals with green-streaked lips that formed hoods over clumps of twisty stems.
“Them there flowers are called ladies’ tresses.”
The woman who spoke had reddish ringlets, each wrapped with a scrap of colorful rag. Walking toward Bertha, she smiled. Her freckled nose crinkled and her eyes tilted at the corners. Her body was lush, her curves barely concealed by a kimono.
Clean from a quick wash, Bertha had changed into her church blouse and skirt. She cocked her head as she stared into the warm brown eyes of the whore next door.
“My name’s Minta,” said the woman.
“My name’s Berry.”
“I know. Your letters are so new, they shine.”
“They ain’t printed good?”
Minta laughed.
Bertha looked around for Clementine before she realized the braying chuckle came from the red-haired woman.
“Your letters are fine,” said Minta. “The girl who lived here before couldn’t write a stitch.”
“If she couldn’t write, how’d she wed her a gentleman?”
“She didn’t. She wed a miner, old as Methuselah, with a wooden leg. Where do you hail from, sweetie?”
“Nowhere.” The bright autumn sun danced behind a cloud-capped mountain, and Bertha shivered with a sudden chill.
“Don’t matter where you’re from. We’re all running away, me and Carmen and Belle, playing hide-and-seek from something or somebody.”
“You can’t play hidey-seek from God.”
“True.” Unknotting a dark blue scrap from her curls, Minta tied the cloth around both of Bertha’s braids so they swung as one. “There. The bow’s colored like your eyes. Blue Berry. We’ll get the miners to bring you doodads. I’ll teach you how to ask and make it sound like it’s their idea. Of course, they’d have to go some to beat them pretty bobs at your ears.”
“Them bobs were my mama’s. She died on the day I was born, and my brother said they rightly belonged to me. I didn’t steal them.”
“Never thought you did. Poor thing, no mama.” Minta spread her arms wide.
Catching her breath on a sob, Bertha buried her face against Minta’s bosom and basked in the warmth of the first female embrace she’d ever received.
*****
Bertha soon became known as Blue Berry, then Blueberry.
Inside her shack a feller could rock in her chair, drink beer, and talk about his woes. Sometimes she even darned his socks. She never rushed her gents in and out. She listened to their stories and lies like they were true. And except for Minta, she earned more wages than the other crib girls.
When they had no callers, Minta would brew tea. “It’s what them fancy ladies drink,” she’d say, lifting her freckled nose and sniffing at the air inside her shack, which in wintertime always smelled of singed wood and cinnamon.
Berry would limp a dance across the floor behind her friend. Placing her finger beneath her own nose, tilting it upwards, she’d shout, “I’m a lady too!”
After their lady-strut, they’d collapse onto the bed, kick off their shoes, wriggle their toes toward the warmth of the small cookstove, and nibble Minta’s sticky oatmeal cookies. Then they’d sing, “Thou art lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.” Berry liked the second chorus best: “How I missed her, how I missed her, how I missed my Clementine, till I kissed her little sister, and forgot my Clementine.” She told Minta it ticked her fancy, whatever a fancy was.
On the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Berry fell in love. With a gentleman.
* * * * *
Thunder drummed the sky and a smattering of raindrops snapped against the leaves.
Berry shut the window. Glancing toward the cookstove, her mouth watered. The pie on top was for tomorrow’s birthday party, but one small bite of the lemon filling—
Lightning flashed. Startled, Berry’s gaze shifted to the window and she caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure, skulking outside like some damnfool Peeping Tom. Yanking open the door, her scathing words died unborn.
Before her stood an honest-to-goodness gentleman. On his finger he wore a ring set with a twisted nugget. His left earlobe sported a gold hoop. While most other miners had beards, this handsome lad was clean shaven. Tall and slim, his shirt and trousers were blotched by raindrops. As lightning cleaved the sky again, Berry could see that his eyes were as blue as a Jay’s feathers.
His boots crushed her wildflower garden. His whiskey bottle hovered above a mouse-eared chickweed as he bowed and said, “My name’s Nugget Ned. You must be Mary.”
“Mary?”
“You’re not the Irish lass they talked about at the Buckhorn saloon?”
“No.” Berry’s heart skipped a disappointed beat. “Irish Mary bides two cribs down. Ain�
�t you seen the printed letters above my door?”
Ignoring the drizzle, he squinted upwards. “Hard to read letters when your mind’s muddled with whiskey, Mary.”
“Blueberry!”
He grinned and spit rain. “Believe Per’fessor mentioned you. White skin and black hair. Cream and pepper. I had a hankering for Irish stew but home cooking will suffice.”
“Home cooking? There’s a lemon pie atop my stove. I baked it for my birthday.” She waited for him to say happy birthday but he didn’t. “Why don’t you set while the pie cools?”
“I prefer my cuisine hot.” Loosening Berry’s bodice, Nugget Ned tasted her firm breasts.
“Come inside, sir,” she gasped.
He dropped his whiskey bottle and staggered through the shanty’s entrance. Tripping over the rocker, he pitched forward, caught the table’s edge with his fingertips, slid to the floor.
“The bed’s over there, Mr. Nugget.” Berry tried to lift him but he was too big, so she stripped off his wet shirt, placed a pillow ’neath his dark hair, and covered him with the quilt. Then she blew out all candles except one, curled up in her rocker, and nibbled at a piece of pie. I’ll set here till he wakes, she thought.
Hours later her eyes felt heavy and the empty pie plate fell from her lap to the floor.
When she awoke the next morning, her candle had guttered, pie crumbs had attracted ants, and Nugget Ned was gone.
“Please, God, bring my gentleman back,” she prayed.
*****
Nugget Ned Lytton was twenty-two. He had been booted from his Texas University, then booted from his Denver home after a series of escapades culminating in the pregnancy of the daughter of his father’s business associate. Ned had refused to marry her. Funded by a small trust fund, he planned to dig for gold.
He confessed all this to Berry during his second visit. “When I’m rich, I’ll tell Father to go to the devil. Father said I’d never amount to anything. Father said I’d crawl back to Denver. Father said I’d kneel at his feet and beg forgiveness. I’ll kneel at his grave first, Blueberry.”
“I prayed you’d come back and God heard my prayers,” she said.
He scowled. “Prayers don’t signify. How about a song?”
She folded her hands upon her naked bosom and began to sing “Oh Promise Me.”
“No! Don’t sing of love! Sing a song for fun.”
“I can sing some lines I learn’t from a piana-playin’ man, but I don’t like to recollect the saloon where I learnt them.”
“Make me laugh, damn you,” he said.
His fingers pinched the tender flesh above her elbows. He’s a gentleman, she thought, and they act different from other fellers. He don’t mean to hurt me.
“Ben Battle was a soldier bold and used to war’s alarm,” she sang, her voice blurred by tears. “But a cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms.”
Ned burst out laughing. Releasing her, he fell upon the bed. “Come lay down in my arms, Blueberry. Let’s see if you can love as good as you sing.”
“I can love good,” she said, and set about to prove it. “I can love good,” she repeated, delighted by his shouts of pleasure.
Ned Lytton cussed like a gentleman.
*****
“Ma! Ma! Where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha! Why ain’t you laughing, Blueberry?”
“I don’t care for that ditty, Ned. It’s terrible cruel.”
“Grover Cleveland admits he bedded Maria Halpin. She had a son, and Cleveland assumed responsibility.”
“But he didn’t marry her. President Cleveland ain’t no gentleman.”
“He won the election just the same. I bet my father didn’t cast his ballot for Cleveland. Father agrees with you.” Laughing, Ned searched through Berry’s leather-thong chest for a clean pair of socks.
“Are you funning me, Ned?”
“No, I’m funning Father. It amused me to think that a whore and a capitalist hold the same viewpoint.”
“It’s been a full month since we met, but I still can’t reckon half your words. What’s a cap-pill-list?”
“A person of great wealth and prominence. A nabob.”
“Is that like an earbob?”
Ned eyed her ruby earrings. “In a way. Your earbobs must be worth plenty. You could sell them, invest the profits, and soon you’d be a capitalist.”
“I’d never sell my mama’s bobs,” she gasped. Clothed in a cotton shimmy, she clutched a piece of Queen Dolly soft gingerbread. Minta said Dolly Madison dreamed up the recipe during President Jefferson’s administration—molasses, beef drippings, flour, ground ginger, cinnamon and powdered sugar. “What’s the lady’s name, Ned?”
“Maria Halpin.”
“I meant the rich lady you told me of during your second visit. The one who’s with child. Her you wronged.”
“I didn’t wrong her. She wronged me. Her name’s Johanna.” Unbuttoning his trousers, Ned slid onto the rocking chair. “Fetch my whiskey, girl.”
“Johanna.” Berry tasted the name as Ned snapped his fingers impatiently. “Please don’t drink, honey. You ain’t been drunk for days and you get nasty—”
“Fetch it! Now!”
She rose from the bed and fetched the bottle. Kneeling by the rocker, she left a trail of nibbled kisses across his thighs. If she kept her mouth busy, maybe she’d keep from asking another hurtful question.
“What’s Johanna look like, Ned?”
“Have you ever seen a Chinese dog with beady eyes and lots of hair?”
“Did you kiss Johanna?”
“How could I kiss a lady who has a mustache when I don’t?”
“Why’d you love with her?”
“Why do I love with you?”
“Did you give Johanna coins?”
“Of course not.” His eyes narrowed. “Why all the questions? Do you want me to pay for your love?”
“Oh, no! We lay for joy, not coins. I didn’t sucker you like Johanna did. When you find your gold we’ll be wed good and proper.”
“That’s right.” He pushed her face toward his open trousers.
She resisted. “Why’d you love with Johanna?”
“It seemed the thing to do at the time.”
“Did Johanna hooty-hoot for your pleasure?”
“No, Blueberry, she squeaked a mouse song.”
“Where’d it happen?”
“It was during a party given by my father, the honorable Edward Lytton. Johanna lured me into my father’s study.”
Berry watched Ned drink, then rock back and forth, his eyes half-shut. Still on her knees, she scurried across the floor to avoid the rocker’s motion.
“My father’s study,” Ned repeated, “where he used to beat me with his cane. ‘Listen to me, son,’ Father would say. ‘Dig a pit and you’ll fall into it.’ The night of the party I was somewhat the worse for drink and Johanna, who professed to be ‘tipsy,’ lifted her skirts, so I took her with her back pressed against my father’s bookcase. Dickens’ Great Expectations. Do you get the irony, Blueberry? You don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, do you? Dickens could be the man in the moon, you ignorant—”
“Eat some gingerbread. Don’t drink no more, honey. It makes you talk nasty.”
Ned tilted the bottle, finished its contents, threw it against the wall. Berry shuddered at the sound of breaking glass.
“Sing to me, Blueberry. First, help me to bed.”
She supported his heavy body, limping the short distance. Then she undressed him, lay beside him, and cradled his face against her bosom.
“My mother sang lullabies,” Ned murmured drunkenly. “She died when I was twelve. Her name was Dolly. My father built her a big house in Colorado Springs, but she left for France and never came back. She said she loved me but she lied. Love me, Blueberry.”
Dimly, she wondered why he never made love to her.
*****
Minta wiped a freckled forearm across her br
ow, trying to halt the rivulets of perspiration that streaked down her face. With disgust, she watched her friend Blueberry carefully scrub a pile of Nugget Ned’s trousers, shirts and socks. Blueberry staggered to her feet, limped behind some prickly bushes, and Minta heard the sound of retching.
“Must have been something I et.” Sinking to her knees again, Berry thrust her fist inside a sock and waved it around like a hand puppet. “Ned brung green apples and purple grapes last night,” she said, as if the gift of fruit was a string of green and purple pearls.
“You don’t have no other callers, Blueberry, and you won’t take coins from Nugget Ned. That ain’t smart.”
“I ain’t wise like an owl, Min, but I ain’t stupid like that cow that broke her leg crossing this here crick. That cow was ill-starred, while I’m lucky to find me a gentleman.”
“Nugget Ned ain’t no gentleman.”
“Irish Mary told me of the wee folk who live in a faraway city called Dublin. They leave pots of gold at the rainbow’s foot. Ned’s my pot of gold.”
“Pooh! That Irish Mary’s fibbing. Ain’t no wee folks. Gold’s found by digging. A pot’s for soup and stew. Aw, don’t turn away. You’re my friend and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“When he finds his gold, Ned’s gonna buy me pretty gowns and a fancy house. I’m to be a lady like we’ve played. And it’s Ned who’s been hurt by his pa.”
“The rich don’t hurt that bad, and don’t hump your shoulders like a dang camel!”
“Don’t you know that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? I’ll tell that straightway to Ned’s pa when we meet up.”
Minta slapped a chemise against the rocks.
“Ned says we’re gonna have babies.”
Minta stopped slapping. “Nugget Ned said he was wanting babies?”
“He says he loves to lay with me and that means babies, don’t it?”
“Not always. Mercy! Are you with child?”
“Don’t know for certain.”
“Go see Mab.”
“I can’t stomach Mab’s touch. And she walks like she’s shat her drawers.”
“Have you told Nugget Ned?”
“No, but he’ll be pleasured when I do. Ned says he loves me.”
