Frozen Page 12

  “Very good,” Mr. Abernackey replied. He took his key and left his luggage where he had dropped it. Then he wrapped his arm around the woman’s small waist, guiding her toward the stairs.

  “I’ll see that Howie delivers your things shortly,” Darla said with a commanding smile. “Enjoy your stay at Kettle Falls.”

  After she finished writing in a ledger, she reached across a stack of Kettle Falls postcards and rested her warm and weighty hands on mine. For a moment, I was sure she recognized me. “Now, how can I help?”

  “I’m here to find work.” My voice wasn’t as clear and strong as I would have wished.

  “Yes, I thought so.” She surveyed me from head to foot, then met my eyes, as if waiting for me to clarify.

  “Not that kind of work,” I said with a shrug of my head toward the staircase. “Cleaning, cooking, anything like that—if possible.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Darla said, her eyelids half closing. She wound a locket of hair around her finger. “This is a special hotel, dear to my heart, and anyone who works here needs to appreciate all that Kettle Falls has to offer. I wonder if you understand what I mean?”

  “You mean, am I willing to look the other way?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Yes, that’s precisely what I mean.”

  “Please. I need a job.”

  “Well, we are in the height of our season,” she said, glancing in at the restaurant, where Juju was setting tables, “—and getting busier every year. I could use you. Sort of a fill-in-where-you’re-needed job, at least to start with.”

  My shoulders lightened. “Oh, Darla. I can’t thank you—”

  “Don’t go thanking me yet. I don’t even know your name.”

  My mind went blank, until I flashed on my favorite novelist, Willa Cather.

  “Oh, it’s Catherine. Catherine Willer.”

  “Well, Catherine. Do you have a nickname? Something less formal?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t practiced at coming up with lie after lie.

  “Okay then. I betcha you’ll be cursing me after you discover how hard I’m going to work you. There will be sweeping, dusting, water to haul, laundry, kitchen work, maid work, you name it. Show me your hands.”

  Palms up, I hoped to prove her wrong. But my skin was soft and pale, and my long fingers appeared more suited to playing sonatas than scouring pots.

  “You don’t have any calluses. I’ll give you one week. One week of hard labor, and it might not look so bad to return home, wherever that is.”

  I hoped she wasn’t right. I couldn’t go back.

  “Promise. I won’t disappoint you,” I said.

  At the boardinghouse, Mama never spanked me; but the flat of Darla’s hand had smacked my bottom several times, when Mama was busy upstairs and I had spilled something in the kitchen or started whining. Darla didn’t put up with “nonsense.” That much I remembered.

  Now she held up her stocky finger at me. “Don’t promise me anything. Just take your things to Cabin 3 on the east side of the hotel. It’s for staff, and lucky you, there’s one bed open. There’s not a stitch of bedding on it, just an old blanket on the springs. But it will have to do until we get something more from town.” She glanced at the wall clock, which read 1:25. “You’ve got until three o’clock to be back in the kitchen. That’s when Agnes will need help peeling potatoes and such.”

  “Yes, Darla.”

  “Here, you call me either ‘Ma’am’ or ‘Mrs. Jonas.’”

  “You’re married?” I blurted. I couldn’t recall a Mr. Jonas or a regular man at the boardinghouse, except for a man that frightened me who dealt with unruly customers and tossed them down the back steps if they were being too rough or too drunk. His teeth were rotten to stubs, and he seemed to only appear when summoned.

  She leaned toward me, nearly spilling her breasts out of her blue dress and whispered, “Mr. Jonas, well, he’s not here too often as he has his other business interests in Chicago.” She winked. “Now go on, Catherine.”

  As I left the parlor for the front porch, she corrected me. “Wrong direction, honey. If you’re working for me, you use the back door from now on.” She pointed to the door behind her. “The entrance is for customers, and unless you’re sweeping it clean or assisting with luggage, I don’t want you out here.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Jonas.”

  Chapter 19

  I wound past the parlor counter and headed out the door leading to the back screen porch, where two young men leaned against the wall, smoking. From the end of an adjoining hallway came the thumping and high-pitched sounds of a player piano.

  “Come by for drinks,” said the one with narrow eyes and a sandy mustache.

  “And dancing,” the other added, tipping his fedora as I passed out the screen door and down the steps.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m working here.”

  “Ha! All the better, sweetheart!”

  I ignored them and stepped into the shade of the hotel. I hoped that I wouldn’t at every turn be taken for a “fancy lady.” But what did I expect? This was a hotel built in the middle of the wilderness, geared toward fishermen, loggers with pocket change, businessmen, and bootleggers. Sitting on the edge of Canada and Minnesota, the hotel, I surmised from everything I’d heard, provided a perfect location for all kinds of trade. Not always legal, but logical. The law was at a distance, and international borders provided easy refuge. All anyone had to do was know where to cross by foot, snowshoe, dogsled team, or boat.

  The path wound past a white clapboard building with a plaque above its door: Gaming Room. Beyond sat a host of storage sheds, where an orange tabby cat slipped out from a half-open door. She arched her back, then stretched out on a rock slab in the path, revealing one white front paw.

  I paused and leaned down to pet her. “Hi, pretty kitty.”

  In a flash of motion, she kicked her back claws into my hand, torqued her body, and bolted, leaving my skin slashed and bleeding.

  “That’s Brandy,” a man said with an English accent.

  I jumped and looked to my right. In the shade and on a bench next to the hotel sat a man resting both hands on a walking stick. He peered out from under a lopsided leather hat. His clothes were rags—more dirt than fabric—and he was barefoot. His toes were knobby as tree roots, his toenails amber-colored. It was if he had grown out of the earth. No wonder I hadn’t noticed him.

  “Oh.” I didn’t know how to respond. “Hello.”

  He reached into a basket at his feet and pulled out a gray folded handkerchief. “Here,” he said, flapping it open as if to show me what it was, then extending it to me. I stared at him, uncertain.

  “Dear girl, you’re bleeding. Take it.”

  I looked at the stone path, and, indeed, I was leaving droplets of blood on the walkway and on my dark skirt. I stepped close enough to accept the handkerchief and blotted my hand. “Thanks. I’m Sa—. Uh . . . Catherine. I’m starting today at the restaurant.”

  “You look mighty familiar . . . Miss Catherine,” he said, tilting his head, studying me for a moment. “Well, they call me Caveman,” he offered.

  His right shoulder tipped awkwardly toward his chest; he might have been seventy, or a terribly old-looking middle-aged man. I couldn’t honestly tell. “I, on the other hand,” he said, his left eye constantly twitching, “am finishing life here. But why not? I have lived to see whole continents and a good number of decades. The important thing is that breakfast is from seven to nine, lunch from eleven to two, and dinner from five to eight. But you probably already know that, if you’ve met Darla.”

  “And the tavern,” I added, “is open around the clock.”

  “Ah, now you are catching on, Miss Catherine. What are you looking for, by coming here?”

  His question caught me
off guard.

  “Everyone comes here—this place at the end of the earth—either running from something or looking for something. Which is it for you, dear girl?”

  I couldn’t answer, and I felt caught in his probing stare, until he nodded at the handkerchief I pressed over my hand. “You can return it to me when you are finished with it. Laundered, of course.”

  I did a slight curtsy. “Thank you. I will.” I gathered my bags and headed toward a row of six small log cabins.

  At every turn, I was meeting someone unexpected, and Kettle Falls was like a little ship that drew its passengers from the fringes of society. I would prove Darla wrong. I would not run back to the Worthingtons. My back stiffened. Victor and Trinity would be proud of my stand. I wondered if Owen would notice me gone.

  The staff cabins each boasted one small window and a wooden door. I found the one marked Number 3 and knocked. When no one answered, I entered. Immediately, my nose itched and my eyes attempted to adjust to the semidarkness. Two bunk beds, two wooden dressers, a coat rack, and a washstand with a basin and pitcher filled the room. The unlit kerosene lantern mounted above the washstand left black soot on the white-painted ceiling boards. A few pairs of boots lined one wall. And in the corner, next to a broom and dustpan, lay piles of mice or bat droppings.

  Each side of the cabin held a bunk bed. Three mattresses were covered with quilts and clothing—one folded neatly—and I found mine, the top bunk on the left, with a scratchy horse blanket and a mattress of metal coils. Hardly the bed I’d left at home. My traveling coat would come in handy until I could find better. At least I’d found a place to stay and work.

  For now.

  Exhausted from little sleep, I tossed my satchel on the end of my bunk, then climbed up the wooden ladder, and stretched out on the blanket. With my coat rolled into a pillow, I dropped into sleep.

  I dreamed I bought a ticket on a passenger ship, much like the Titanic, its fate sprawled across every newspaper several years ago. Its rooms opened to upper cabins for the wealthy, with fresh sea air to cool their bunks, and coffee and small cakes delivered to them on silver platters by waiters. I, however, was ordered belowdecks. As commanded, I crawled down the ladder as the ship swayed, and I kept descending step after step into darkness and stench. The boat groaned and creaked and rocked—and hands, too many hands, grasping and touching—were suddenly on me as my boots touched the ship’s floor, meeting a man’s murmurs of pleasure and groaning. And then I woke up.

  I tried to scream, but a hand was on my mouth, blocking my voice and ability to breathe. This was no dream—a man was on top of me! The one smoking on the back porch with the sandy mustache. “Get off me!” I tried to scream, but he didn’t remove his hand, even when I bit into his flesh.

  “Don’t worry, little whore,” he said, panting. “I’ll pay when I’m good and finished.”

  He pressed his weight on me, pinning me. I tried to hit at him, but nothing stopped him from fumbling with my skirt, lifting it, lifting it.

  Someone knocked on the door, and he pushed harder against my mouth. They knocked again, then shoved until hardware snapped.

  “What the hell is this?” A young woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted in shadow.

  The man scrambled off me.

  “Darla doesn’t tell us we have a new roommate? And then we find her here with a boyfriend? Get out of here, both of you!”

  “She was asking for it,” the man blustered, nearly falling off the ladder. “I was gonna do her a goddam favor.”

  I pulled my skirt back over my legs. I could barely breathe, let alone talk. It had happened so fast. All I’d done was lie down for a quick nap, only to find a man trying to overpower me. My whole body began trembling with shame and anger.

  I sat up. “He’s lying!” I tried to yell, pointing at him as he tucked in his shirt on his way out the door. But my words stuck in my throat. The young woman at the door let him by and, glaring, turned her gaze from him to me. She was short with a long draping ponytail of red hair, and I took her to be in her late twenties.

  “I was napping,” I finally managed in a whisper, my face crumbling. “He forced himself on me!”

  She studied me as if she’d heard this before from previous roommates.

  “Better not tell Darla. She only keeps girls on who can handle themselves out here. Men come lookin’ for a good time—she doesn’t want to ruin the atmosphere, so I wouldn’t say anything. She’ll send you packin’. You need to keep your wits about you, that’s all. Darla says she wishes her fancy ladies would wear red skirts like they used to in the old days. It would make things easier for the rest of us.” Then she thumped her chest with her forefinger. “I’m Meg.”

  “I hope you believe me,” I managed, tears welling as what had just happened started to hit me. If she hadn’t come when she had . . . His arms were steel and my efforts to push him off me were completely useless. Even biting his hand didn’t stop him. I shuddered. What if Meg hadn’t shown up?

  “I was sent for you. Darla said you’re already late. It’s five bells, and you better get your butt in the kitchen if you wanna work here.”

  I smoothed my hair with my hand, climbed down the bunk ladder, and followed Meg, who limped, her right foot shaped awkwardly to the side, like a trailing croquet club. She spun suddenly, halfway between the cabin and hotel. “I won’t say what I came upon,” she said, “as long as you promise never to call me what others call me around here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Peg Leg Meg,” she said, spitting out each word. “Call me that—I’ll knock your head off. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Willing my feet forward, I followed her every halting footstep toward the back door of the kitchen on the hotel’s east end. I glanced across the hotel’s strips of lawn.

  The late afternoon sun pierced my eyes.

  Everything felt too sharp.

  Too bright.

  Too loud.

  Bantering and guffaws shot out from the hotel screen porch. Outside, along the length of red-and-white striped awning, men clustered with drinks; women in colorful skirts and parasols laughed gaily.

  To my dread, I spotted him near the badminton net. The man with the mustache—nearly doubled over in laughter with his friend.

  A gray pain spread, pulsing in the center of my head, but I followed Meg inside, wishing more than anything that the cook’s name was Aasta—not Agnes. I would bury my head in her shoulder and sob. Instead, I held my head high, drawing breath after breath.

  Chapter 20

  For two days, I forced myself to focus on work. Agnes, the cook, was short on words, but good at pointing. With her jiggling birth-marked arm, she’d point to the twenty-gallon crock and the giant wooden spoon beside it and order, “Stir.” I stirred vats of bread batter, waited for it to rise, and then tamped it down with my fist until it rose again. In another vat, I added the beginnings of sauerkraut: sliced cabbage, vinegar, sugar, and fennel. I cut up piles of onions until tears flowed. I washed, scrubbed, and peeled mountains of carrots and potatoes.

  When Agnes didn’t have an immediate task for me, Darla did. I hauled water from the well, two buckets at a time, back and forth, until blisters broke in my palms and knives stabbed my shoulder blades. The hotel’s water was heated on top of the kitchen cookstove, and when Howard, the hotel’s skinny handyman, was too busy, I was asked to carry water upstairs. I used the dark and steep backstairs passageway instead of the parlor staircase and stopped repeatedly to keep steaming water from sloshing on my skirt.

  More than once, after knocking on a bedroom door, I would enter, only to find one of the fancy ladies stark naked, or nearly so. I learned to avert my eyes and do my work: filling pitchers, emptying washbasins, and (holding my breath against the stench) dumping thunder mugs (a smaller version of honey buckets) down
outhouse holes.

  A dozen women worked the hotel rooms, and I often wondered as I came and went how similar Mama’s life had been to theirs. As a rule, after a night of dancing in the tavern and entertaining customers in the game room and hotel bedrooms, the women slept until noon or later.

  One afternoon, when I was changing bedding upstairs, Franny, who was plump and pale as a dumpling, sat at a vanity, applying makeup over her sallow skin and dark shadows. “One of these days,” she said, “no amount of makeup is going to work anymore.” She laughed ruefully. “Yup, Darla will send me packing, and then what am I gonna do?”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t care, but I didn’t know what to say, and it dawned on me that Franny was old enough to be my mother. Old enough to perhaps have known my mother. I risked asking. “Excuse me, but . . . did you ever know Bella Rose?”

  Franny glanced at me in her mirror’s reflection. Her eyebrows closed together, as if she should be suspicious about something. Finally she volunteered, “Huh. That one. What’s it to ya?”

  “I heard she was found in the snow.”

  “Hey, why you askin’?”

  I paused. Why was I? I had to know what happened. Yet if I explained to Franny why I cared, that I was Bella Rose’s daughter, she might alert Darla and send me home. I couldn’t risk it and instead pretended to be just another rumormonger. “They say she drank herself to death. That there was an empty whiskey bottle in her frozen hand. But what do you think? Is that what killed her?”

  “Huh. Darling, I drink. Lots of us girls drink to stay sane. But Bella? No way. Not that one. How she managed without drinking I’ll never figure.”

  “That so?”