River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  Nora had never been to the restaurant she chose, but always imagined it would be lovely, with candlelit tables and all. She’d never imagined herself there with a man as handsome as the one she sat across from now. As often happened in a port city, the restaurant stayed open all night, its dinner menu changing to breakfast offerings once dawn came round. Patrons took their time.

  They ordered seafood stew served with crusty bread. Nora wondered if Tade was as hungry as she, but both kept their manners, paying much more attention to each other than to the savory food. Over the scent of fresh bread, Nora told Tade how she came to Boston, crossing the ocean alone at fourteen to join her father, her life as a maid in the grand hotel, the prejudice that sometimes met her and those like her.

  “I always loved books, even to hold them in my hands. They mean other worlds, ways to learn what a person needs to get on in life. I tried to get work in a bookshop. I dressed up in my finest and went to offer myself for the job. I was that nervous I didn’t notice the sign in the window, ‘No Irish Need Apply.’ The toffee-nosed owner nearly pushed me out of the place. I’ll never forget it.” She felt her pale skin redden. Had telling that story been a mistake? He mustn’t think her bitter or resentful.

  “In Butte, it’s ‘Irish Should Apply.’ ” Tade tapped the tablecloth beside his plate for emphasis, making the candle’s bright flame wobble.

  “Well, this Butte, I hear the money’s good, but it’s a dirty town.” Now why had she said that?

  “Show me a miners’ town that isn’t. At least the Irish earn a living there.”

  “The men do well enough to buy their own houses, the hard workers at any rate. They send money back to their families, too.” Nora struggled to remember everything she knew of the Montana city. She’d never suspected knowledge of it would be crucial. She had to keep Tade Larkin’s interest. His earnest blue eyes interested her. “Would you believe my da told me the mines shut down on St. Patrick’s Day?”

  “I’m told they have churches as well, with Irish priests,” Tade said. “Not like our troubles in Erin with the Fathers hiding in ditches and teaching school behind hedges, always in fear.”

  He changed the subject. “Do you live with your da?”

  “You mean Paddy Flanagan that was.” Sensitive to the slights of those who’d scorned her tinker family, Nora decided being honest was worth risking the truth. “I might as well tell you he loved his whiskey, and it killed him.” She took a sip of tea that tasted bitter. “Da slipped and fell in the street outside our flat. He got run over by a rich man’s speeding carriage. The wheels broke his neck. Whoever drove over him just kept going, leaving him in the gutter, broken so. As though he were not even a man, just trash.”

  “Ah, poor girl. I’m so sorry.” Tade leaned toward her. “You miss him.”

  Nora nodded. “He was a tinker in Ireland, the best at mending pots and kettles. We thought it a grand life going from village to village in our little wagon. Of course, you know many looked down on us like we were gypsies. They believed we’d steal.” Had she spoiled things by saying that? She rushed on. “When Mama died, Paddy took us to Connemara. She’d run off from her da’s farm there to marry him.”

  “A brave act.”

  Nora nodded. “Paddy honored her last wish for my brother and me to know our grandfather and get some education.”

  “That was good of the man.” Tade set his cup aside.

  “Yes, if only Grandfather had been welcoming instead of refusing us as what he called tinker git. If only Paddy had been steady, but he got mixed up in making poteen. He nipped off to America just ahead of the peelers and left Seamus and me on our own.” Nora avoided Tade’s tight, angry look of disapproval by smoothing her uniform. She’d seen that expression all her Irish tinker’s life.

  “What did you do? Go to the poorhouse?”

  “No. A farmer took us in and near worked us to death scrubbing and hauling, cooking, running errands. But after a year Grandfather changed heart. We loved living with the fierce old man on his little farm. People respected Grandfather for how he cared for his land, though some thought him hard. We learned what it means to live on family property. To work it, feel its moods and see it in all weathers. I mostly stopped missing our old tinker’s life with the roaming and all. Then Da sent passage for one. Seamus wouldn’t leave Grandfather or his farm by then, so I came on alone.”

  “Brave as your mam.”

  “Oh,” Nora smiled. “For all his shiftless ways, I missed my fun-loving da, and how I wanted to see America. I’d dreamed of making a respectable new life with the help of God and the saints. Even when we lived with Grandfather, there were those wouldn’t forget we’d been tinkers—and worse—our own da ran off on us. I was enough of a tinker’s child to make me want to see the new place, and inherited enough of my grandfather to make me want respect. I don’t know if adventure and security ever come as a pair, though.

  “Then, too, Grandfather’s farm was small, really only enough for Seamus. I’d seen those spinster sisters keeping house for their brothers in little cabins. How could they even breathe? I felt there must be something better for me in America. Of course, living in a stacked-up box with hallways always smelling of cabbage cooking isn’t quite what I had in mind.”

  As she spoke of her life, Nora found herself finally able to smile at her father’s scrapes. A small measure of resentment toward the man who placed drink above his children would never vanish altogether. She hadn’t let anyone see that dark emotion before. The words spilled out of her as though she wanted Tade Larkin to know everything no matter what. Was she falling in love? Could this be what it meant?

  Tade only responded that drink had ruined many, and at least her father sent for her when he could. He went on to describe his boyhood, coming from a family of nine strong brothers.

  After a silence, he spoke in a low voice. “I confess I’ve no education except how to work in the mines.” He released his next words in a torrent. “Nora Flanagan, I don’t want to be too forward, and I don’t know how to write, but I’ll find someone who can, and get word back to you. It’s hoping I am that you might consider coming to Butte.” He took her hand. “I wish you’d come west. You already have friends there. I can see too much has happened for me to ask much right now, but there’s little enough keeping you in Boston as I see it. There’s opportunity comes with the mines and maybe happiness. A man can provide his wife with her own little home.”

  Nora’s heart turned a cartwheel. Relief and gratitude tumbled along with it. “I do have my married friend there. Rose Murphy. She lives in the Irish section called Dublin Gulch. I’ll send a letter introducing you. She’ll help you write back and, I’ll be thinking about it, Tade Larkin.” Then she added, “But I’m an Irish maid and I’d better be getting home. I have to report for work at 5:00 a.m. There are plenty waiting to take my place if I slip up.”

  Tade escorted her through the slushy streets. He cupped her elbow, and she liked the feeling, liked the notion that with this big, decent man a girl would be safe anywhere. Could she truly find such shelter? Or was this evening only an oasis in the endless desert of relentless isolation?

  At her porch steps Tade held out both hands to say goodnight. She placed hers in his warm, enveloping ones.

  His hopefulness felt like a lifeline cast to her as she fought for breath in a storm-roiled sea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As winter dawdled into spring, Nora not only grieved for her rapscallion father, but obsessed over Tade Larkin. Could he be all he seemed? He still wanted her to come, didn’t he? For six weeks she heard nothing. Had something happened to him? Had he forgotten her? Met another girl? She sifted through memories of their conversation. Had she told too much? Not every respectable man, even one with little education, would look twice at a tinker’s brat. Why had she let raw hope slip back into her life?

  She’d all but given up when his letter arrived. Nora recognized Rose Murphy’s round handwriting, but the words were Tad
e’s. Riveted, she read that he had a job. He assured her that maid positions awaited young women at Butte establishments like the Hotel de Mineral and the Centennial, boardinghouses, and the few lace-curtained Irish homes.

  Nora grimaced. It seemed there would always be people who wanted the likes of Nora Flanagan to clean up after them. Would it just be more of the same, only in the rough frontier?

  Was her attraction to Tade Larkin drawing her into something even worse than the North End?

  But Rose ended with a few lines of her own. “He’s a fine fellow, Nora. A blind man could see how high he places you. Respectful and smitten, for certain. Patrick and I would love for you to come and stay with us and our four girls. What a grand time we could have. Come on. Join us here in Butte. Oh, it’s so very sorry we are about Paddy. He was a sweet man.”

  Nora wrote back that she’d love to see Rose, and praised Tade for his hard work. She was so pleased for him. She asked questions about the journey, and admitted trying to save for the fare.

  In his next letter, Tade sent money. “I don’t go to the pub with the boys so much,” he wrote. “There’s more for a man to aim at than draining his glass. I want a house and a family in it. We’re both alone, Nora. I don’t mean to rush you. I just wish you’d come see the place for yourself. See me again, too, before you forget my ugly mug. I’ll never forget your green eyes. If you find the place and me to your liking, perhaps we could consider marriage.” Yes, she thought, this man who lit up her heart might also enable her to break poverty’s shackles and achieve her dreams.

  Nora fingered the money, sitting up late, analyzing her life. If he’d lied about the pub, Rose would have warned her. Drudgery at the hotel for slave wages paled against vivid images of traveling west to be with this handsome, decent man. In these weeks since she met Tade Larkin, two more children had died in her tenement. She’d also been aware of the defeated faces of unmarried maids ten years her senior still eking out an existence toiling at the Parker House.

  And hadn’t she already taken one great risk in sailing to America? If Boston wasn’t the destiny she’d dreamed of, perhaps in Butte she could find freedom from want and prejudice. Tade appeared like the brass ring on the merry-go-round at the park. You only got to go around so many times. His blue, honest eyes, his warm smile, his hopes for her. A house of their own. She answered in a firm hand. She would start her journey in May, a good time to travel.

  She’d nearly stopped dreaming of bettering herself. It hurt to start again, but the pain reminded her she still lived, still had a life before her. This differed from the heart-stopping moments when she missed her father.

  Perhaps the name of this pain was love.

  Nora wore her mourning coat from the moment she boarded the first of several confusing spur lines in Boston. Seated in the hot passenger car, she perspired in misery, suspicious that she even “glowed” not so much like a genteel lady as a lantern. Her waist itched from sweat caught under her belt, drying, dampening again. She squirmed against the tufted wool upholstery. One loose button had poked her in the back since she changed to the Union Pacific in Chicago.

  Her round-topped trunk swayed in the baggage compartment. Her worn satchel slumped against her feet. When Nora sailed from Ireland, missing those left behind battered her like cold Atlantic waves. Despite grimy rigors of travel, fusty, jostling crowds in depots, and shaky moments over this reckless thrust into America’s West, Nora told herself she’d made the right decision. There were Irish in Butte, America. Tade Larkin with his gentle voice and big sheltering frame wanted her to come. But she’d started the trip with little money, and that went so fast. She would be penniless by Butte.

  She adjusted her window shade. Through dust-specked glass, she gazed at forested foothills seamed by tumbling rivers. Scenery had become mountainous, its mystery both compelling and frightening as the train surged north. She’d only eaten in the dining cars twice. She could feel her stomach rumble. Thank heavens the noise of wheels on tracks drowned out others hearing it.

  At Shoshone, Idaho, passengers disembarked and rode carriages to view Shoshone Falls, the Niagara of the West. Nora drank in breaths of air that almost fizzed like champagne. She heard the water’s thunder before she alighted to walk toward the falls, captivated at once by its savage beauty. She stopped, transfixed, taken aback by a sense of intimacy that she couldn’t distinguish as strictly physical or spiritual. If nature were a goddess, like in the Greek stories the priest had taught them, then this would surely be her very pounding heart.

  Foam rose into spray and then mist that chilled surrounding air. A rainbow arced above all that relentless roar. Nora had never been anywhere so pure, elemental, and untouchable. The great falls and the airy, light-filled prism rising from its base became a glorious sign for her journey, lifting her out of weariness and gnawing hunger.

  Comforted, staring wide-eyed into the tumult, she offered a quick prayer of relief and thanks, crossing herself discretely with a travel-smudged glove.

  After her train switched back east toward Butte, man-made structures announced civilization at longer intervals until they became rare sights against the darkening backdrop of wilderness.

  How vast America was, how various her people. All sorts boarded and disembarked. Nora made a solitary game of pegging fellow passengers by occupation. She judged one man with an expensive suit and elegant silver-flecked sideburns, fixated on a small black book, to be a banker. Another in a thick wool jacket, trousers tucked into boots, had to be a railroad worker heading home, a miner like Tade, or maybe a logger. A pockmarked young fellow in an ill-fitting suit and thick glasses, she judged a schoolteacher. A blowsy woman who’d struck up a noisy conversation with a cowboy wouldn’t be respectable, saloon work or worse her lot.

  Nora avoided eye contact with any. Late-afternoon sun sagged behind the summit of an unknown mountain. Another friendless end to another friendless day. She nibbled on a bun purchased at one of the water stops. It would be her last food before Butte. Finishing it, drumming her fingers on the armrest, she dared peek at the dapper neighbor across from her as he rattled his newspaper. Its masthead read, The Butte Miner, May 14, 1882.

  He’d boarded at Shoshone. This one’s long, tapered fingers had never gripped pick or shovel. Besides, he sported a meticulously etched mustache. Odd.

  Catching her glance, he smiled and offered his paper. She sat forward, flustered.

  He spoke anyway. “Fate has seen fit to throw us together as strangers in a strange land. Let’s not stay that way. I’m Bat Moriarty, late of Boise, Coeur d’Alene, and Shoshone. I do travel.”

  “Nora Flanagan.” Nora managed a prim smile, then turned her profile to him to discourage conversation. She’d had the full impact of his dark good looks, though. An Irish name, dark hair, brown eyes. Some Spanish blood, she guessed. Sailors in his family history.

  “Nora Flanagan? Let me guess.” Bat ran one hand through hair that brushed the back of his starched collar. “You started from Erin, your speech makes that clear. And you came west—hmm—not from New York. You’re not self-assured or hard-eyed enough. You’ve spent your first stage of American life in Boston. A maid in a rich family’s house?”

  Nora laughed in spite of herself. “You came close, for certain. I lived in Boston for a time. Now I’m joining a friend—friends—in Butte, America. Have you been there?”

  “Many, many times.”

  “Then the place must be to your liking?”

  For the second time in her life a man described Butte to her. Like the speakers, their descriptions differed until she could have been hearing about two separate cities.

  “It’s lined with the bones of Irishmen, Miss Flanagan. There are accidents in the mines. Explosions. Butte’s a dirty, raw place. You should think again about leaving the civilized, green world of Boston. Many’s the Butte widow who wishes she’d been left a softer setting to grieve.”

  The conversation slowed, and Bat resumed reading. Nora sorted through
his words. Could Butte be as bad as all that? Could something happen to Tade? No, it couldn’t. She twisted her neck to ease its stiffness and brushed at the mourning coat’s lapel. She’d worn it like a stifling suit of armor. She was no coward. She undid the buttons and yanked the coat from her shoulders, shrugging out of it and sighing with the release. Her high-necked black dress should be armor enough. Why be so fearful?

  Why should she cling to society’s rules when they made her hot and miserable? Wearing black couldn’t help Paddy Flanagan who hadn’t cared much for social niceties himself. A thrill of freedom fluttered against her breastbone. Young and filled with hope, she reminded herself that she’d survived what crushed others. She had a future, and her future had begun.

  Adventure’s enchantment washed over her with all its reckless promise.

  Next morning Nora felt groggy from nights of disturbed sleep in a high-backed passenger seat. Longing to bathe prickled like persistent hunger. She worried others might smell her, unwashed by necessity. She wiped her forehead with a kerchief and frowned at the gray smudge left on the cloth. Trim, long-legged Bat Moriarty looked as fresh as when he boarded. How did he do it? His smooth manners and impeccable attire could put a tired person off. Nora adjusted her hat, a straw boater, and waited. Not long now.

  She raised her hand to her throat when she finally saw the city of Butte and muttered, “God in heaven. What have I come to?”

  A wasteland. From forests and transparent streams, the earth turned to dust and cinders. Sulfurous, arsenic-laden, smoky fumes and ashes poured from smelter stacks. Day darkened to premature twilight. Nothing grew, not wildflowers, not even a blade of grass.

  Her neighbor stirred. “I hate to say I told you so, Nora Flanagan, but welcome to Butte.” He winked. “Don’t look so dismayed. You don’t see it, but those streets you’re staring at with such disapproval are paved with silver and copper. Maybe you’ll find the place to your heart after all.”