The Widows

by Jess Montgomery

  Lily started to protest—But what about Daddy’s grocery?—until Daniel put his hand firmly on hers. And she had read in his expression: My love. Trust me. Trust me.

  And she had.

  Now she thinks about how Daniel rarely pursued moonshiners. He always told her that Prohibition would have to end sooner or later—it was too expensive and dangerous to enforce. Not only that, but also he had his hands plenty full with law enforcement that would make a real difference in people’s lives—stopping domestic abuse. Preventing deadly feuds over incidents that might seem petty to anyone else but mattered a great deal to the people involved.

  Though as a suffragette Lily had been for Prohibition, she understood Daniel’s reasoning that Prohibition laws were often unfair and ineffective and would no doubt eventually be repealed. Even before Prohibition was the rule of the entire country and functioning in states county by county, it seemed only to increase thirst by curiosity.

  It’s a surprise to no one that Vogel’s Tonic is about 10 percent alcohol, and what if, rather than go to the expense of producing most of it following the Volstead Act rules that governed the manufacture of “medicinal” alcohol, Vogel had a good supply of cheap, unregulated hooch? How much would that be worth to Vogel over the years?

  $12,520.68?

  She’d never thought that Daniel might be taking money to look the other way for George Vogel’s company using illegal alcohol from the county’s moonshiners—a much cheaper way to produce Vogel’s Tonic than following the regulations. Another shock, like learning of Marvena, about Daniel’s life, after his death.

  Abe draws on his cigarette until it is barely a spark between thumb and forefinger. Then he ignores the ashtray and flicks it into the budding peony bush on the other side of the porch rail. “Of course, Mr. Vogel is quite concerned that nothing interferes with his business.”

  Lily shudders, as if a skeletal hand taps her bones. Of course. George Vogel would have his own private protection, even more fearsome than the Pinkertons. During the war, Lily had scoured the newspaper and watched newsreels at the Kinship Opera House, eager for clues about what was happening on the front beyond the sparse details in Daniel’s letters. Often the news cited Mr. Vogel for donating generously to the war effort from his Vogel’s Tonic fortune, a true patriot. Just behind those words, though, was a hint of the vast power that he wielded; Vogel and a few other men, it was clear, were the true men of power behind Cincinnati’s elected officials, the men who ran the city with a reach that extended beyond the city and the state of Ohio. In every image of Mr. Vogel, Lily saw the same coldness to his eyes, the same bemused smirk he’d worn the first time she’d met him and Abe.

  Lily shudders, pushing aside for now the memory of that first meeting. Instead, she thinks about how twice in the past five years George had been in the news in connection with mobster-style killings and attempts by the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute him, but the charges had all been dropped abruptly and—Lily guesses, looking across at Abe now—that wasn’t because Vogel was a clever attorney. How many Abe Millers does he employ? How many other professionals?

  “Is the reporter Darby Turner on his payroll?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “He was waiting for me after I was sworn in. Asking if I’d fill Daniel’s shoes.”

  “I do believe Mr. Darby has been known to—what’s the term?—freelance. But back to my point. If something does come up that might affect Mr. Vogel’s business, just ask for me at the Kinship Inn. As you’ve learned, they always know where to find me.”

  Abe starts to doff his hat but instead steps forward, and taps the sheriff’s star pinned on her lapel. Taps twice. Grins. This time, with warning. “But mind you don’t wander off too far, down strange alleyways, looking for answers. Daniel isn’t here to rescue you now.”

  With that, Abe steps off the porch.

  Lily sees a delivery of bottled milk by the front door. Who’d washed the empty bottles and set them out? Mama? Hildy? Or Jolene? She shudders at Abe being here, so close to her family. Lily picks up the crate to carry it in and pushes her thoughts onto her next step. Going to see Marvena.

  CHAPTER 12

  MARVENA

  Marvena and Frankie arrive at Nana’s house just as she is serving noon dinner, two round pans of corn pone and a thin broth of root vegetables and a beef bone. Somehow, it will have to be enough for the three of them plus six other women and a host of children. These women are the wives of men Marvena trusts, plus Rowena, the widow of Lloyd, the miner who died as she watched on, the same morning that Daniel was murdered.

  After lunch, Frankie runs off with the children to the scrap of yard behind the house. Nana shoos Marvena out the back door with the bone from the soup. There’s marrow aplenty for it to be reused, but Nana insists that Marvena give it to Shep. It will help him heal, she says.

  Now Marvena stands just outside the back door, smoking a pipe—a rare treat—and watches Shep gnawing away at the bone. Then her attention turns to the backyard swirl of children, caught up in a game of baseball using a hedge apple as a ball and a large tree limb as a bat. Marvena’s heart pangs. Alistair should be among the children. The children should be at school. But Luther’s closed the school, and Alistair is in the mines.

  Frankie distracts Marvena from her mournful thoughts by hitting the hedge apple ball on her first try and running as fast as her legs can pump to a rock designated as second base.

  Marvena smiles, glad to see Frankie carefree for a few moments. The poor child had wailed piteously about Shep. Marvena had cleaned the poor dog’s wounds and put a splint around his broken paw. He’d been able to limp three-legged down the hill. As soon as Nana saw Shep, she added her own healing poultices to his wounds.

  Marvena knows that mixed up in some of Frankie’s tears for the dog were ones for her daddy and Daniel, for Eula, for Tom. Then she thinks, as Frankie runs next to third base, about how Frankie is so isolated up in the cabin; she’s getting on close to old enough to go to school, though she couldn’t go to the Rossville school without a father in the mines, if Luther ever reopens it, and Kinship is too far away for a daily trek.

  Already so much is changing without Daniel. Along with her worries about organizing the men, and her nephew, Alistair, in the mines, and the school closing, Marvena is worried, too, about her small moonshining business. Daniel had protected her only source of income—mostly barter, but better than scraping off hunting and foraging—since John’s death, even setting up a special deal with George Vogel’s business meaning that she didn’t have to sell a goodly percentage of her product to him at low cost, like other moonshiners in the county. Vogel could legally produce his “medicinal tonic” under the Volstead Act, if he produced the alcohol at a sanctioned manufacturing site. But his site was only a front. It was a lot cheaper, and quicker, for him to just buy up illegal moonshine, with Daniel’s protection. Likely he did so in other counties, with other sheriffs under his thumb. Marvena had never figured out why Daniel would agree to such a deal. All she knew was that he’d made an exemption for her. But with Daniel gone … well. Whoever becomes the next sheriff—and that man will surely fall into Vogel’s pocket, too—won’t have reason to protect her.

  She taps out her pipe, puts it back in her pocket, and goes back in, meaning to help with cleanup, but Nana and the other women have made quick work of the task and are waiting for her in the front room, gathered in a circle, sitting on a hodgepodge of chairs pulled from the few rooms of the abode. In the middle of them is a big pile of tattered clothes and linens.

  Then Marvena spots Nana’s rocking chair, empty, saved for her. Place of honor. In the next chair is Rowena, staring down at her hands in her lap. She’d barely spoken a word since Marvena had come to find her in the tent city, on the eastern edge of Rossville.

  As Marvena strides to the rocking chair and sits, she hardens her expression. These women mustn’t see any sorrow or pity in her face.

  “I know you’re
wondering why I’ve asked you to come here, to bring these clothing items,” she says. “Well, it’s because I trust you. And I trust your men.” She reaches over and puts her hand on Rowena’s arm. “Your son.”

  Rowena looks at her and offers a thin smile. “Junior’s working the chute.”

  The chute. God. That’s one of the more dangerous spots outside of the mines.

  “It means we get to stay here, where we know people.” Rowena’s voice rises defensively. “We have more than if’n we went back to West Virginia, even if Ma and Pa would take us in—”

  “It’s all right, Rowena. We’re all doing the best we can and we all want better conditions. So we’re going to take action. What I need for us to do is to make rag rugs from these scraps.”

  The women exchange puzzled looks. Rowena asks, “How does a rag rug help?”

  Marvena gives a small headshake. It’s perhaps cruel, but she wants to see how these women react when the Pinks come. She’d spotted one who’d been on the porch with Luther earlier, when she and Jolene walked through town. He’d given her a long look, then hurried off. She guesses that sooner or later that Pink or another will come to Nana’s door.

  “I will explain that later,” Marvena says. “But first—I want you all to do this. Trust me.”

  There’s a long stretch of silence. Then Rowena reaches down, grabs a man’s shirt. Rowena’s chin trembles as she looks at it. One of Lloyd’s, Marvena realizes. Course she’d have taken his clothes with her to make into other garments or hang on to for her boys. Nothing can be wasted. Rowena pulls her scissors from her pocket and begins cutting strips. Silently, the other women follow suit.

  The strips pile up quickly. Marvena picks up three, knots them at the top, starts braiding. Eventually, the women will have long, thin braided ropes, and then they’ll start coiling the braids together into circles and sew the edges to hold the coils together.

  Yellow over red. Blue over yellow. Red over blue. Repeat, repeat. The women quickly get restless, not knowing why they’ve been called together for this task. The children’s whoops from outside filter in through an open window.

  One woman sighs. “They sound so happy. Probl’y think it’s a lark, being out of school.”

  Another woman gives a short, bitter laugh. “‘Closed until further notice.’ Mr. Ross thinks he can get away with that, with Sheriff Ross gone. The need for repairs is just an excuse! The schoolhouse roof’s been leaking all winter.”

  “Ours too!” says the first. Several laugh, bitter acknowledgment of similar straits.

  The second woman shakes her head. “We din’t know how much the sheriff done for us until he was gone. Holding back his brother—”

  “Half brother, I heard. Sheriff’s mama was an Injun—”

  “Well now, there’s nothin’ wrong with that! My daddy was half Cherokee—”

  “No one was saying anything was wrong with th’sheriff, Addy Mae! I reckon we can all agree he kept his brother—half brother—under control. Least held him back a bit—”

  Nana looks across the circle at Marvena, her gaze showing irritation with the women’s gossipy tone. But Marvena just smiles. Let them list their grievances. Confirm for themselves why it’s worth the risks to fight for unionization.

  “Prices at the store’ve doubled in just the few days since the sheriff’s been gone—”

  “We had enough scrip set aside to get a nice side of ham, but now—”

  “And rent may go up, too, I heard—”

  “Well, soon enough, we’ll all have to whore ourselves out at that boardinghouse!”

  The women fall back into uncomfortable silence, cutting their eyes from Marvena. They know that she worked there once, that Eula had worked there until leaving town.

  “Like I said, we all do the best we can,” Marvena says. Yellow strand over blue.

  There’s a sudden rap on the door. All the women look up from their braids, share nervous glances. Marvena looks at Nana. “Whoever it is,” Marvena says, “welcome them in.”

  Nana opens the door to a Pink, the one Marvena had noted earlier. Nana steps back. “Well, hello, sir, don’t just stand there; come on in!”

  He brushes past Nana, glares around the room. “What is going on here?”

  Marvena stands up, looks around quickly. All of the women look startled and terrified. Good. None of them, then, are betrayers, trading news of unionization talk for extra scrip or lighter loads for their men. “We’re making rag rugs. That is all.”

  The man looks around, confused. “Rag rugs?”

  “That’s right,” Rowena says. “For Marvena. Because—”

  She falters, but another woman, the one who’d referenced the boardinghouse, says, “Because we get together and combine what we have. Make things we can use—”

  “We’re going to sell them. In Kinship.” Marvena says. “Fundraiser, for the school roof.”

  Nana says, “I reckon the fancy Kinship ladies will pay top dollar!”

  “Won’t Mr. Ross be pleased!” says someone else.

  “Enough!” he snaps, and the women fall silent. Go back to their cutting and braiding. After a moment, he shakes his head and points at Marvena. “We’re keeping an eye on you.”

  He leaves. As soon as Nana shuts the door, someone says quietly, “Marvena, what is going on? I know you don’t believe Mr. Ross will take money for roof repair.”

  “Let’s just wait a spell,” Marvena says. “Keep braiding.”

  Yellow over red. Blue over yellow. Red over blue. Repeat, repeat.

  Marvena gets to the end of her cord and then says, “You all saw my hound’s condition.”

  The women stare. It’s a shame but not a surprise—a dog attacked by a wild creature.

  “His wounds weren’t bite marks. He’d been lashed by a knife,” Marvena says softly.

  The women gasp and exchange horror-struck looks.

  “I reckon someone either got word to the Pinks that we were meeting, and told them where to find me, or someone who’d been part of our movement changed his mind, scared off by Sheriff Ross’s death. Either way, it was supposed to frighten me,” Marvena says. “I don’t think word got to the wrong ears yet about our meeting spot, or someone would have come after us there, but it’s dangerous. I want you to talk to your men, tell them to spread the word, but right carefully, about what happened to poor Shep.

  “And tell them we need to speed up preparations. No more meetings for now. In a few days I’m going to come back, and collect up the rugs you’ll finish up. Your men will pass you dynamite. Two sticks each. You’ll roll them into the rugs. Bring them here. We need just enough for a threat if Luther Ross won’t let the men talk unionization. The last thing he wants is for his business to be destroyed. I’ll take it and put it somewhere safe.”

  One of the women looks skeptical. “Now, how are you gonna know where that is?”

  Marvena smiles, thinking of her still and her hiding spots for her jars. “I’ll know. Anyone wants out, that’s fine, no judgment. Just leave now.”

  For a moment, the women look at the braids they’ve been making. The children’s voices waft through the small house. None of the women make a move to leave.

  Then one of them chuckles. “Well now, how ’bout that. Who’s going to look in a bag of rolled-up rag rugs?”

  “Now, don’t get all high-and-mighty!” Nana snaps. “I say it’s a fool plan. Dangerous.”

  Marvena holds her breath. If Nana tells them it’s not going to work, that Marvena’s likely to get caught, they’ll stop.

  But in the next moment Nana shakes her head. “But I reckon it’s the best plan we’ve got. Well, get on back to work now. I’ll make tea.”

  * * *

  After the women leave, Marvena and Nana stand out on the front porch. Marvena looks at Daniel’s lunch pail, sitting to the side of the top step.

  She reaches for it, but Nana stills her hand, asks softly, “What are you doing, child?”

  “Daniel
’s wife ain’t going to come here with his notes—if he even made any, or visited at the boardinghouse. I need to go ask after Eula myself.”

  Nana lifts an eyebrow. “Marvena, you know Jurgis wants you to lay low. It’s dangerous enough that you’re here, with all the Pinks around. You need to stop fussing after Eula—”

  Marvena jerks her arm away from Nana. “Wouldn’t you go after your own child, try to find out anything you could?”

  “Yes, but—oh, Marvena.” Nana looks down.

  “Nana, tell me! What is it?”

  Nana’s chin quivers. “Eula,” she whispers. “She came to me, for bitter herbs.”

  Marvena swallows hard. She knows this means the girl had a child she wanted to lose.

  “I—I gave them to her, told her what to do. But then … a week later she comes back to me, says it didn’t work. She wants more.” Nana looks down. Marvena has to lean forward to hear the rest of what she has to say. “I tell her no, too much will hurt her, and if what I gave her didn’t take care of … of the baby, she must be further along than she thinks. But then when I saw her again, outside the store, and I asked her how she was doing, she just smiled and said she was fine. That she’d worked everything out. She looked so happy, I thought maybe the herbs had worked after all. Later, I thought that she had told the father and they’d run off together.”

  Marvena lets go of Nana, staggers back. “Oh, Nana, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Nana shakes her head. “What would you have done? Gone to the boardinghouse, raised a ruckus, and you already have too much notice here; that’s why that Pink came by—” Tears start rolling down the old woman’s face. “I just keep telling myself Eula is fine, fine, run off with someone, maybe even someone she loves.”