Siri Mitchell

by Unrivaled

  Mr. Mundt shook his head. “Not the boss. The boss’s son. Mr. Clarke.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s a relief.” He fanned his face with the hem of his apron, then used it to dab at the sweat that had broken out on his brow.

  I put a hand out once he’d finished. “I’m Charli—es. Charles. I’m Charles Clarke.”

  He brushed his hand off on his apron before extending it to me. “John Gillespie, sir.”

  “Mr. Gillespie, I hear you’re just the man to show me what it takes to be successful in this business.”

  “The business? You mean . . . you want to go down to the factory?”

  “Why not?”

  “The boss won’t mind?” He asked the question of Mr. Mundt.

  Mundt gave Mr. Gillespie the smallest of shrugs.

  Mr. Gillespie sighed. “All right. Fine.” He untied the apron and pulled it off over his head, handing it to me. His sleeves and trousers had gone gray where the apron had not covered them. “Might not help much, but you’ll not want to dirty that fancy suit of yours.”

  I put it on and followed him out the door and down a staircase at the back of the long, dark hall. We went through a maze of halls and up and down stairs before emerging into the sunlight alongside several sets of railroad tracks. He nodded across them to a long bay of doors in the building on the opposite side. “That’s where the supplies come into the factory.”

  “From . . . ?”

  “Just about everywhere. New Orleans, Chicago, Cincinnati.”

  I looked up and down the track. “What railroad is this?”

  “It’s a private spur. Boss had it built. It connects with the main railway back toward Union Station. Once the supplies are taken off, then we load the cars up and ship our crates out.”

  “Where to?”

  “Pretty much everywhere. Royal Taffy’s the bestselling candy in the whole United States.” There was a note of pride and satisfaction in his words.

  I ate Royal Taffy all the time, but I hadn’t realized everyone else in the country did too. “So . . . the supplies come in and then what happens to them?”

  “Well, now, that’s when it starts to get interesting.” We crossed the tracks to the factory building that stood on the other side. He motioned to a loading dock that jutted from the wall. Trying to forget that I’d ever met Mr. Dreffs, I took a step backward and then leaped forward to vault up onto the platform.

  The superintendent climbed a ladder I hadn’t seen on the other side of the dock.

  That would have been handy to know about. “I just thought . . .” Now my hands were dirty, and there was no other place to wipe them than on the apron.

  The superintendent sent a questioning look my way. “Might have thought you’d worked on a dock a time or two yourself—if I hadn’t known you were the boss’s son.”

  I hadn’t really ever worked on a loading dock, though I’d seen my share of them, delivering messages on the South Side. I cleared my throat. “After the supplies are delivered?”

  Gillespie took me across the bay and through a door that opened into an enormous room. It was filled with light and sound and motion. “It depends on what part of the process they’re for,” he shouted over the clatter of machinery.

  I leaned close to him. “Give me a for instance.”

  “Well . . . over here are the melting pots. That’s for the sugars—brown and white, vinegar, and water. Butter gets added later.” He walked toward a raised concrete grid work. Huge kettles hung from metal bars. Beneath the kettles, fires danced, throwing off a scorching heat. Between the kettles, men walked on a precarious treadway peering into the huge pots.

  A trickle of sweat slid past my collar and down between my shoulder blades.

  “For the melting, we use men. Boys aren’t tall enough. And girls can’t take the heat. After a couple hours, once it gets hot enough, we pour the syrup off into those buckets.” He gestured toward a line of wheelbarrows that were filled with pails. As we watched, two men wearing masks and padded mitts tipped a kettle, pouring off some of the contents into the pails in one of the wheelbarrows. A boy wheeled it away, head turned from the steam, as another one came to take his place. “The boys take the pails over there, to the mixer where the flavoring gets added.”

  “Over there” was halfway across the room, where several men on ladders were shaking the contents of jugs into huge vats. At least . . . that’s where the procession of boys steering the wheel barrows was headed. But they had to dodge a parade of carts that were being pushed along some sort of track that had been set into the floor.

  The traffic inside this building was the worst I’d seen since I’d arrived in St. Louis. With the open flames beneath the kettles and the dusty powder that covered the room, the place was a firetrap.

  Gillespie gestured past the mixer to a different machine. “And then, once everything’s been mixed in, the boys bring over trays, and the men pull that plug there at the bottom of the mixer. The taffy pours out, and then it’s wheeled over there to cool.” He was pointing away from the mixer to one of the corners of the room. Trays that had been placed on what looked like tea carts were being pushed in that direction. “It’s got to cool for a while, but not for too long. Then those trays get wheeled over to the pulling machines.”

  He didn’t have to point those out. The mechanical arms were waving like madmen.

  “After it’s been pulled, we throw it back into the wheelbarrows and take it to the tables. Couple of the men size out the ropes, then cutters take over. They dump their pieces back onto the trays, and they get wheeled off to be packed.” He pointed to the fourth corner, where I could see a dozen white-capped women plucking the log-shaped pieces from the trays, folding red waxed wrappers around them, and pushing the rectangular candies farther down the tables. At the end, a small army of girls swept the pieces into boxes, then placed the boxes into crates.

  “From there?”

  “Got some boys who load the crates onto carts.” He nodded in the direction of one of those track-bound carts that rolled past us. “Then they push the crates out to the docks, where I’ve got some fellows who put them onto a pallet.”

  I looked at the far corners of the building where Royal Taffy made its way through a number of steps in its dizzying path around the factory. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the packers near the docks? And the mixer next to the melting pots?”

  He shrugged. “But then where would you put this?” He gestured to an enormous funnel that was pierced with all kinds of pipes that hadn’t had anything at all to do with the process I’d just watched.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a grinder.”

  “What does it have to do with Royal Taffy?”

  “Nothing. It’s for something different. Something new. But the powder has to be pushed out and taken next door.”

  This was one of the largest buildings I’d ever seen, and there was another one next door? “If it has to go next door, then why isn’t this grinder next door too?”

  The superintendent shrugged. “This was the only space available.”

  We parted the procession of children pushing wheelbarrows and walked past packers, out the door, down a few steps, and into the next building. It looked newer than the previous one and just as big. It should have been brighter, too, but a murky haze hung like a cloud over the room.

  The superintendent handed me a gauze mask.

  I tied it on. “Why is it like this?” It wasn’t as noisy in this building, but there was a thumping vibration that seemed to pound my words back into my chest. I had to make an effort to force them out.

  “It’s the pulverizer.”

  I could tell this was the domain of children, though the powder-coated ragamuffins looked more like phantoms. “Are there any other buildings?”

  “No. It all takes place here. And back where we were.” He pointed the way we’d come, and we walked in the direction of that first building. “Let me show you out.”

&n
bsp; With the haze and the strange sight of children marching through the gloom, I might have wandered there for hours before finding the door I’d come in through.

  As we approached the railroad dock, a train puffed up. We pressed ourselves against the wall while men rushed forward to unload it. They swarmed the cars, pulling off boxes and carrying them into the building. Once the train left, I gave the apron back to Mr. Gillespie, walked across the tracks, and eventually found my way to the front of the office building.

  I could do a lot worse for myself than work for my father. But from what I’d just seen, I knew he could do a lot better.

  7

  My aunt and uncle left the day after my second fitting at Vandervoort’s, so I worked the rest of the week on the new candy, soliciting Sam’s help with my efforts.

  He came into the kitchen on Friday afternoon, face glum. “A peck of pistachios costs more than a peck of peanuts and walnuts put together.”

  I felt my hopes plummet to my toes. I had been experimenting with honey-flavored nougat in hopes that I could mix pistachios in with it. “You haven’t told your father what I’m working on, have you?” I didn’t want word getting back to my father, or anyone else, until I had a chance to unveil the candy at the ball.

  “No . . . but it’s been hard, trying to use the telephone down at the confectionery without him knowing. But he’s going to find about all those calls I made when the bill comes in.”

  “I need to keep it a secret.”

  “It will be. For two more weeks. I promise.”

  “No one can know, except for you and me.” I had to stand on my toes in order to whisper the words into his ear, magnifying the impression that he’d grown.

  “No one but you and I and Mrs. Hughes, you mean?” As he whispered back to me, he gestured with his chin toward the cook, who had been watching our work during the course of the week and making suggestions; she was, even now, party to our conversation, leaning just as close to Sam as I was.

  I put a wrist to my forehead to push away the damp tendrils that had escaped from the cap I’d donned for candy making. “Yes, of course.” I didn’t bother to whisper this time, and I really couldn’t think why I had in the first place. The cook knew everything that went on in City Confectionery. She always had. “And Mrs. Hughes.”

  She smiled and carried on with the drying of a pan, turning from us to place it into the cupboard.

  “Do you think . . .” Honey was such a mild flavor. It wasn’t very remarkable. “Could I interest you in something made with violets? A violet cream, maybe?”

  “No!” His eyes were wide with horror.

  “But—”

  “I mean it: No flowers. I’m begging you.” He pantomimed going down on bended knee.

  “But you haven’t—wait!” I’d been hit with an inspiration. “Stir this and just wait here for a minute.” I fled the kitchen for the back stairs.

  “And where else would I go, I’d like to know?” His voice floated up the stairs behind me.

  I went to my room, being careful to avoid the squeaky floorboards in the hall so as not to wake Papa. Once there, I knelt before my chest and gathered a selection of the candies I’d brought back from Europe. I heaped them onto a handkerchief and drew the corners together into a knot. And then I retrieved the gift that I’d bought for Sam in Germany. I’d meant to keep it for Christmas, but he’d been so helpful in the kitchen I couldn’t think of any good reason to save it.

  Back in the kitchen, I offered up my treasures to him.

  He took his gaze from the pot and eyed them. Then he looked over at me. “Are they any good?”

  “They’re the best of all that I tried while I was there.”

  “What’s this one?” He was pointing at a small cube that had been wrapped in waxed paper.

  “A caramel. Want to try it?”

  He glanced down at the pot he was stirring and then at me. “I suppose.”

  I picked it up, unwrapped it and put it in his mouth.

  As he bit down, his face changed.

  “It’s a caramel with pine nuts.”

  He looked as if he were going to spit it out, but then he drew his jaw back together and chewed. A look of something close to relief swept across his face as he swallowed. “It’s not half bad.”

  I handed him a hard candy.

  He took it with his free hand, popped it into his mouth, and sucked on it. Raised his brows. “I like this one. It tastes . . . different.”

  “I know! There’s a pinch of pepper in it. Chile pepper, they called it.”

  He made a face. “In a boiled candy?” He crunched it up and then swallowed.

  “Try this one. Open up your hand.” I took a packet from the handkerchief, tore the flap and poured some of the powder from it into his palm.

  He looked down at me. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Eat it, you ninny!”

  He shook it into his mouth, eyes soon widening with surprise. He opened his mouth just enough to speak. “What is it?”

  “Sherbet powder. It’s—”

  “Fizzy! What do you think of this, Mrs. Hughes?” He turned toward the cook, letting some of it foam from his lips as if he were a rabid dog.

  I pulled him back. “Stop teasing, Sam. This is serious business.” I took the spoon from him and set it down.

  He slurped the foam back and swallowed it. “I don’t think you should make a—what did you call it?”

  “Sherbet. Try that other one.” I nodded toward my handkerchief. “The square one. I don’t want to do a chocolate, it would take too much time, but I want you to try it.”

  He took a block of what the English had called a Scottish tablet.

  “It looks like fudge.”

  I nodded.

  He put it to his mouth and bit off a corner. “It doesn’t feel right. It’s . . .”

  “The sugar’s been crystallized. So it’s crunchy.”

  “Who wants crunchy fudge?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  The glance he gave me was apologetic. “Not much.”

  He didn’t like any of them? Not one of my carefully collected treasures? He’d spurned all of the best candies Europe had to offer. “I don’t suppose you’d want to try a jelly drop flavored with geraniums?”

  “No flowers. I’m serious. If you make me eat flowers again, I’m not helping you anymore.”

  I picked up another hard candy. “How about a sour plum?”

  “Sour plum? Are you trying to poison me? It’s called candy for a reason. It’s supposed to be sweet!”

  I sighed as I popped it into my own mouth. My taste buds tingled with an explosion of saliva. It was followed by a pleasing tightening of the inside of my cheeks and a prickling at the sides of my tongue.

  “Is this all you brought? I mean, they were fine and all, but I was just hoping . . . I was hoping for something new. Something . . . grand.”

  I sighed. I was too. I liked the novel tastes and textures of the candies I had brought back, but there was nothing among them that was truly magnificent.

  “There’s nothing else?”

  “Well . . .” There had been, in fact. “There was a box of hazelnut chews . . . but I ate them all.” I’d devoured the entire box that first night back, alone in my bedroom in the dark as I worried over my father’s health.

  “Were they any good?”

  “Oh! I can’t even tell you! They were like . . . nothing I’ve ever tasted before.”

  “Then that’s what you should make. Forget about all these others. Make the one you’d most want to eat.”

  “Do you think so?”

  He gave me a look at me I recognized from the days when he had decided that boys were superior, in every way, to girls. “You had your choice of all of these and which one did you choose?”

  Hazelnut chews. That’s what I would make. As long as hazelnuts weren’t too expensive and I could make the candies using the equipment the confectionery already had, then
my dream might just be within reach. “Sam? Do you think you could—”

  “Find some hazelnuts?”

  I nodded as I moved to embrace him.

  “Guess I’ll have to make some more telephone calls.”

  “Before you go . . .” I took the present I’d brought back for him from my pocket.

  He undid the string and opened up the box. After lifting the paper, he drew out the gift, cupping it in the palm of his hand. It was a whistle in the shape of a cuckoo bird. I’d thought it was the cleverest thing when I’d seen it in a village in the Black Forest. But now that he was holding it, I realized how silly and childish a toy it was. “I saw it . . . and thought of you. I’m sorry, Sam . . .”

  “This is perfect. I know just what to do with it.”

  “Lucy?” I heard my mother’s footsteps coming down the hall.

  Sam took the packet of sherbet from the handkerchief. “You mind if I use some of this?”

  I didn’t mind at all. He liked my gift! Perhaps I could trust my instincts after all.

  “Lucy—there you are!” Somehow my mother managed to simultaneously frown at Sam and smile at me, while she leaned over to sniff Mrs. Hughes’ apple pie. “Have you forgotten about the Gilbertsons’ tea?”

  I had.

  “Our agreement involved your participation in society.”

  “But I’m not done yet! I need another half an hour.” At least.

  “You don’t have another half an hour. What you have is fifteen minutes to clean yourself up and change before we depart.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t wish to hear any excuses. Candy is not my primary concern. It’s not going to propose marriage to you or ensure we have food to put on our table.”

  Sam wiggled his eyebrows at me.

  I smothered a laugh with my palm. Maybe he hadn’t changed so much after all.

  Mrs. Hughes was untying my apron as Mother spoke. As I pulled it from my head, my cap came off along with it.

  “Upstairs.” Mother preceded me into the hall. “Now!” The word rang out like the slap of a ruler at Mary Institute, where I’d gone to school.