by M Dressler
The mare’s harness shakes.
Her soft muzzle breathes heavily against me. In. Out.
I look to my right. A man in a stiff, furred coat with a kerchief tied around his neck mucks stall hay out into a dirty alley.
Outside, through the open doors of the barn, a weak sun bounces over the backs of moving men and open wagons.
The man stops his work to look me up and down, surprised.
“Can I help you, Miss? Need a mount?”
So I can be seen. I look down again. I’m in my old shirtwaist, the long skirt, the boots I died in, in 1915. My black hair coils over my shoulder, red ribbons knotted in it.
I won’t look out of place here, perhaps.
I stroke the mare’s mane. “I’m looking for a way through,” I say, truthful.
“To where?”
“This is the town of White Bar, yes?”
“Is now. Was Eno Camp.” He points between the stalls. “If you want through to the center of town, there’s the square. Mind you’re not kicked.”
I thank him and leave behind steaming muzzles and twitching rumps.
Here before me lies the familiar town—though new as a Monday. The square is filled with stacked planks and muddy troughs and fresh piles of rubble. The day is snowless but must be cold, judging by the fur coats and slouch hats the men wear pulled down low over their eyes, and the red faces of the women standing shawled on the balcony of the hotel above me, calling down to me across the creak of wheels and complaints of the mules.
“Ho there! You won’t last out there, sweetie, in that airy getup! Come on up here!” They laugh. “We’ll teach you how to earn what’s warm with that muslin!”
I smile and lift my hand to them, but say nothing, picking my way across the ruts. Painted canvas banners hang from fresh balconies, announcing the names of the billiard halls. A feed store has gone up beside the Berringers’ brand-new house, along with a French bakery, a sundries, and a laundry. The jailhouse sits at the corner, newly mortared. There, across, is Ruth’s mansion, Huellet House, its dormers and chimneys unfinished over a porch tricked out with fine scrolled posts and fancy bull’s-eyed windows. The window glass is splattered with specks of mud. Two coated men are taking their ease in high-backed rocking chairs under the gingerbreaded filigree. One wears a white Panama hat, the other sports a beaver. Other caps are tipped respectfully their way by the gruff drivers of the wagons and the soggy-bearded men with kerchiefs tied around their necks. The reclining Huellets nod back.
I recognize them from their pictures in the museum. I find a corner in the mud, and watch as a woman in a black skirt with a silver timepiece pinned to her chest and a thick cape over her shoulders comes hurrying toward them. The men on the porch nod at her, as if to give her permission to come up. She climbs the porch stairs.
She bows to the white hat. “Dr. Huellet. Mayor Huellet,” she says to the brown beaver.
The leaders of the town.
“Good day to you, Mrs. Garrison,” they both say.
“A moment of your time, please, sirs? I’m afraid I’ve come to spill a mother’s heart to you both. We’ve heard news that there’s fever creeping once again along the river. And you know”—her voice grows low, anxious—“how the miners have been coming upstream from the diggings into town on Sundays. We have our boy Anton to think of. He’s a good boy, but his constitution isn’t as strong as we’d like, and I think we ought to do something to keep the rougher element from undoing all the good work you’ve done emptying out the near camp and building the school.”
The beaver hat tilts to one side. “But the men need to come on Sunday to conduct their business, Mrs. Garrison.” The mayor’s voice is deep and certain. “The economic health of our little community depends on it. You know that as well as anyone.”
“Of course, of course, I understand, Mr. Mayor, of course. My husband and I both do. We need the daily commerce at the Hardware and Tack as much as anyone. But when it comes to our children . . .”
The doctor in his white hat leans forward, smiling quickly, as if to overrule his brother. “Naturally we share your concern. And I’ll say this: a true mother can never be overzealous in her ministrations! Why don’t you come inside, Mrs. Garrison, and I’ll mix a special tonic for your son.”
“If you think it wise, Doctor? A necessary precaution?”
“I do, Mrs. Garrison, I do.” His voice is higher than his brother’s, and musical. “Good health is the armature of the soul. And the presence of wisdom ensures the absence of infection. Step inside, if you please.”
The woman puts her hands around her waist, gasping a little, as though she’s not well herself, and lifts her long skirt as she enters the unfinished house.
No sooner has she gone in than a man comes forward, in his turn, his ragged coat collar turned up against the cold. He calls to the mayor sitting alone on the porch, raising his hat politely to him.
I recognize him, too. The mesmerizing gaze from the schoolhouse. The teacher the younger children whispered of, He’ll find us. Landon Albert Longhurst.
“Mr. Mayor,” Longhurst says.
“How fare you this fine sundown, schoolmaster?”
“Well. And you?”
“In excellent spirits and health, thank the Lord.”
“How fortunate. If I might have a word with you, please?”
The mayor doesn’t invite the schoolmaster to sit, though the chair where his brother rocked gleams like an empty saddle.
The teacher clears his throat and sets his long, whiskered jaw.
“I’ve come about a pupil of mine.”
“Oh? One of those whippersnappers giving you trouble?”
“Not at all. In fact, it’s the trouble that comes to him I want to speak to you about.”
“Sickness?” The mayor tilts his head. “Lethargy? A lack of vigor? A weakness of the blood?”
“No. At least”—the mad teacher looks to his left and to his right, and as he does so notices me watching him, and blinks, surprised—“at least not, to be blunt, in the ordinary sense of the term ‘sickness.’ It’s young Jack Granger. He comes to school daily with bruises around his head.”
“A pity. My brother will mix a tonic for his—”
“I don’t consider it a matter for elixirs, sir. Jack suffers at his father’s hand.”
The mayor lowers his voice and narrows his eyes. “Has the boy said as much?”
“He hasn’t had to. You know what Granger is like. We all do.”
“Well.” The man rocks back in his chair. “Perhaps the boy has been derelict in his chores. Slow to obey. Far be it from any of us to tell a father how to school his son.”
“Sir, allow me to say—and I speak from experience—that beating is not schooling. It’s a degradation, and more often results in a hardening of the spirit, as well as unwarranted suspicion of any instance of kindness. Young Jack looks for harsh treatment. He expects, he all but asks for insult and injury. It’s pitiful, watching a boy of his eager years curl his shoulders against a lesson, for fear he’ll miss the mark, fear he’ll be hit. I presume it’s strong men we want to raise for this town and for this territory? Then you ought to have a word with Granger, in your capacity as head of the School Board.”
“Why haven’t you done so yourself?”
“The last time I saw him he was drunk, and called me a nellie.”
The mayor laughs. “And you had earned this insult, in his eyes, by—?”
“Being a schoolteacher.”
“And now you’re here returning fire, is that it? Seeking a little vengeance?”
“Not at all,” Longhurst says stiffly. “My worry is solely on Jack’s behalf.”
“Then I’ll have my brother send them both a tonic.”
“I think the cure lies in plain speaking, not more alcohol.”
“You’re a doctor, suddenly?”
“I am not, sir.” The schoolmaster clenches a fist. Anger keeping itself in check.
“Then I’d be more careful”—the wooden rocker stills—“using the word ‘cure.’ That’s far outside your ken, boy.”
“And if I were you, Huellet, I’d be careful in dosing people where there is no need. Especially young children.”
The mayor snaps, “You think you can tell us our business, do you?”
“Of course not. Why would I? When business is so good, I see.” He gestures at the house.
The mayor laughs again, relaxing. “You’ve wandered far from your purpose, boy, which I don’t suppose is appraising architecture. Your job is only to put book learning into empty heads. Well! Thank you for your visit. You’ll want to get indoors, now, before Granger and other ruffians stir at night,” he says, meaningly.
“I’m not afraid of ruffians. I’m used to them.”
The schoolmaster turns on his boot heel and goes down the steps and into the mud.
I know at once: I must follow him.
I hang back among the men and mules as he makes his way over the rutted square. He passes the undertaker’s parlor, heading toward a lane between hacked trees. I quicken my pace so as not to lose him and what this ghostly vision is meant to show me.
It’s quieter in the dusky meadow. There are fewer people milling about. At its edge stands a log schoolhouse, with chinked sides and a peaked roof and short, square belfry.
Longhurst quickly wipes his worn boots on the crate that serves as the school’s stoop before going inside. I stop, ready to do the same. But there’s no muck on my boots, nor on my skirt, when I look down. I’m not of this time. Yet Longhurst is. The time knows it, somehow.
This isn’t a ghostly vision, I understand, amazed. This is the true past I’ve traveled to. I’m haunting a world before I was born.
I push open the schoolhouse door. Longhurst is sitting at a small rough desk with a book in front of him, an inkwell at his patched elbow. The wood stove in the corner of the room flickers.
He looks at me, blinking again.
“I’m sorry . . . can I help you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m visiting.”
“I see. And your business here, Miss, is—?”
His face is courteous. Not yet the face of the murderer of children. How is it, I think, we’re all innocent before we break?
“I’m Emma Rose Finnis,” I say evenly. “And you are Mr. Longhurst.”
“Landon Longhurst, I am.”
“You have five pupils in this school.”
“I do.” He blinks again. “Are you—are you the schoolmistress who was supposed to—?” He looks suddenly upset. Or is that a flash of relief crossing his face?
“I’m not here to teach. I want to learn, Mr. Longhurst. I want to know—why would you hurt them?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I want to know why a teacher would harm his pupils.” The past holds all the answers to the present, I’m certain of it. If I ask the right questions, will I be able I stop him from hurting the others? “You must stop yourself before you—”
He frowns at me, without understanding.
Then his brow clears.
“Oh! You must have come by when we were at recess playing hide and seek in the trees! The children scream a bit when they’re excited. The little ones, especially. They didn’t mean to disturb. I apologize if they startled you. Are you new to our outpost? Where is it you’ve come from, Miss Finnis?”
It’s a terrible thing to stand in front of a man long dead who doesn’t know yet what he’ll do, or how he’ll die. He looks at me so intently, smiling. Pleasantly. As if he wants to know me. We look at each other, from different sides of the door of time. I see him staring at my thin clothes, and wondering. But he says nothing. Polite. Unknowing.
“Where are your pupils now?” I ask quickly. I need to see them. I must warn them.
“They’ve all gone home for their suppers. Excuse me.” He rises from his desk. “I must close the stove for the night. I need to save the fuel.”
I let him pass me and kneel to turn the dampers.
He straightens. “Are you from the East?” he asks, smiling. “I hear a touch of the Irish.”
“The west coast.”
“How pleasant the sea is. I miss it. All corners meet in this place, don’t they?” He sighs. “The whole world has come to California, everyone and their brother and . . .” His jaw hardens. “Including the parasites.” He looks toward the empty blue jars cradled between the logs for a window. He looks down at his tattered coat.
“What is it, Mr. Longhurst? What are you planning?”
“A well-timed question. Sometimes I’m filled with such . . . ideas. Such heat. It can be invigorating. Reflection, I mean.” He stares emptily in front of him. “When it isn’t completely futile.”
“I must go,” I say, for fear I might in some way be hastening the children’s deaths. If this isn’t a vision, can I change the course of time itself?
“Can I walk you somewhere, Miss Finnis?” So polite and well-spoken he is.
But then, so many cruel men use fine, elegant words.
“No thank you. I prefer to walk alone.”
“Then good evening to you, Miss Finnis.”
The schoolmaster’s log house, when I take one look back at it, trails a last bit of smoke into the trees. Then it goes dark. He must have good eyes, Longhurst, to see his way through the gloam. There’s just enough light left for me to hurry over a path toward the river, where I hear the sounds of people gathering in for the evening, the clamor of fire-building, cooking, washing. I reach the familiar rocky bank, where the falls churn. The whirling below is filled with pinned logs and rubble, not yet tidied after the men who died there trying to change its course.
From the other side of the water I smell the cooking of the Chinese. I remember it, from when I was a girl, as well as the murmur of their voices, and the outlines of the men in their long coats and braids. The camp seems to be all men, speaking to each other in shouts and coughs. A wooden bridge I don’t recognize spans the rushing stream. I move toward it, as others seem to be using it to cross to town.
When I’m closer to it, I see someone coming across, a shape somehow familiar to me.
It’s her. The girl with the flowered sleeves. Her thick braids, her slow, deliberate movements. The pupil who must be the one Longhurst in his letters called Ola. She’s walking, her head down, with a thick shawl around her, carrying something in a flour sack in her arms crossed in front of her. Close behind two others walk with something of her gait about them, a man and a woman, hard on her heels, as if they’re spurring a mule.
I reach them just as they leave the wooden bridge and start toward the square, now lit with lanterns and torches. The girl named Ola stops. I halt, too, and hope for some chance.
She turns to face the woman behind her. “I can’t, Mama.”
“You must, daughter.”
The man, who must be her father, says with more kindness, “Ola. We have need. Let me do it.”
She pulls the flour sack more tightly to her chest.
Her mother says slowly, “He’d want us to do what we can to get by.”
“Papa. Please! It’s all we have to remember him by.”
“It’s past time for toys, now. Let me—”
She flinches. “You won’t get enough for it.”
“Then you must go, Ola,” he apologizes. “To the smithy’s or the sundries.”
“Sundries,” the mother says firmly. “Other children in town may have good use of it.”
The girl opens the sack and takes something from it. A hobbyhorse made of red tin.
“Go in now, girl,” her mother urges, her voice hard, “alone. If all of us go, they’ll see we have no coats and pay us less, such are the sins against charity.”
The girl hunches and steps slowly onto the porch of the building that will one day be the White Bar Café. The painted sign in the window reads GOODS, TRADES, AND CLAIMS EXCHANGED. She
opens the door.
The mother says, “Don’t know as she’ll be able to do it.”
“She’s a strong girl,” her husband answers. “Drives a good bargain.”
“She’s worn down. She’s too much at the diggins. She wants only to be at school.”
“She doesn’t need any more schooling.”
“She’ll sicken.”
“She’s hale. When we hit pay dirt—”
“Yes, when we hit pay dirt. We’ll make it up to her. Yes.”
“She’s worn but still full of grit. We all are. And diggin’ season ain’t done.”
“It’s nearly done though, Tom.”
“No one’s leaving yet. Look.”
He points at the men walking slumped in front of their mounts, and others wending and weaving, mufflered, into the saloons. The women are gone now from the cold balconies above. Prospectors hurry past the undertaker’s coffins leaning against the clapboard parlor.
Death is near. Always.
I must speak to the girl of the flowered sleeves. She’s gone alone into the shop. This will be my chance, I decide. I climb onto the porch, pushing against the door, but it’s wrenched from my hand and I’m jerked, flung forward into bright white electric light.
“No one’s here.” Bill closes the café door, confused.
Harold is talking to Su Kwon. “You must be thinking we’re a bunch of liars, Su.”
I’m back in the present, I think, reeling. Why? Why?
Su is sitting in a booth with the Berringers. No one notices me.
I’m a wraith again, invisible.
“But that’s not what we’re about,” Harold goes on. “We’re not liars. Not one of us. How can something sacred be a lie? That’s how I see it. You have to protect what’s sacred. What’s special. Isn’t that right, Mary?”
I’ve been flung back across time. Time has schooled me, is that it, made this much plain: the past will not be changed, not even if you meet and know it.
I need to keep myself still and try to feel nothing. If I grow angry, with time, with fate, with truth, I’ll show myself, and my own time will be up.
Stay calm and cold, Emma Rose, I steady myself. Wait. Watch. Something will come to you.
Mary Berringer is patting Su’s hands. “Harold is right, dear. Now, Pete, you look like you’d like to add something?”
