River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  Nora had been too polite to ask why, if he thought so little of Butte, he was bound there, too. She started to ask then, but the conductor balanced his way toward them, touching the wood frames of seatbacks as he announced the stop just ahead.

  The engine, spraying sparks, chuffed into the station. Nora leaned out the door. Through sooty clouds she made out an ample female form appearing and vanishing. She recognized the plump outline of Rose Murphy holding her infant daughter on one commodious hip while speaking to a stout little girl clinging to her skirt.

  Nora stepped off into the circle of Rose’s free arm. She laughed in physical pleasure at escaping the train, even though smoky air and blasting heat from it gusted against her wool coat.

  “Sure and I’m that sorry about Paddy.” Rose stepped back, obviously noting her friend’s clothes.

  “Thank you, Rose.” Nora spoke with tears in her voice. “It was hard.” She squinted at figures hurrying along the platform, apparitions in the murky air. “Meeting Tade has proved a blessing. Where is the man?”

  “He’s at work in the Neversweat, one of the best mines to sign on for. By some trick of the air, the miners don’t find it as hot as the others. He’s joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians, too. Tade’s a good man like my Patrick, and the brothers took him right in.” Rose shifted the fidgeting infant in her arms and soothed the shy little girl pushing her face against her mother’s leg. “The men will fetch your trunk when they finish their shift.”

  The curly-haired baby emitted enthusiastic raspberries that made Nora laugh in spite of her fatigue. They set off on foot, passing a lumber company, outbuildings, feed stores, the occasional log cabin, and taller buildings along a dirt roadway. Rose pointed out the imposing Star livery on the corner of Galena and Main. Rose’s little Annie began to insist they should go in there. Rose objected, but the child stamped her foot. “I promised Tade. I promised to make you.”

  “But it’s all but in the middle of Chinatown.” Rose frowned. “What on earth? Well, all right.”

  They passed into a neighborhood where a few Chinese men moved about. Nora tried not to stare at their dress of loose baggy trousers, shirts of silk or cotton buttoned from neck to hem, and floppy, heelless slippers. They covered their heads with high binder hats or tight silk skullcaps, the hair beneath in braided queues. The stores were log cabins with picture-like writing on the fronts. Pungent odors wafted into the street, reminding Nora of her hunger gnawing to near nausea.

  Rose sniffed. “Noodle parlors, herb shops, laundries. They’re all right, but not the gambling and opium dens. And what do you think? They keep women as slaves. They sell them.” Rose nodded toward the only two-story structure. “That’s the Joss house. They practice their heathen religion upstairs. Their political gangs, the tongs, meet on the main floor. Pay them no mind.”

  At the livery, they learned to their delight that Tade had paid for a wagon to carry them all the way to Dublin Gulch. Nora looked back at the Chinese neighborhood. She’d expected none but Irish in Butte. Rose explained there were also Cornish, Finns, and Welsh come to be miners.

  When the road ran out, they walked up the hill. Hard-packed dirt surrounded scattered, one-story houses gray from smoke. But Rose said she and Patrick paid timely on their little mortgaged home, filling it with noisy daughters.

  Rose glowed with pride as she showed her friend through the dark entryway-kitchen, small parlor, and two bedrooms. A privy stood in back. No trees grew in Dublin Gulch. Exhausted, starving, and overtaken with longing for the green of Ireland, Nora blinked against unexpected tears.

  “Nora, what is it?” Rose touched her arm.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. You’ve a sweet home, Rose. I just need a bite to eat.”

  “Heaven forgive me,” Rose stated. “You must be famished!”

  “I just lost myself for a moment with missing the old life.” Rose nodded as she warmed some stew. “We all feel it sometimes. We’re a long way from Erin. But the picnic’s in June. They’ll shut the mines down. We’ll go into the forests and flowers of the foothills for a lovely time.” She set a bowl of stew on the table.

  Nora wiped her eyes and ate. When she finished, she said, “Sure and I’m weary. Is there a chance I might bathe away the dirt of my journey before Tade comes?”

  Rose put on water to heat and filled a galvanized tub. Even with three brown-haired little Murphy girls watching, Nora closed her eyes and luxuriated in her first bath since Boston.

  Afterward, she put on a flannel nightgown of Rose’s, softened by countless washings, and rested on Rose and Patrick’s bed. The house existed in half-light. Although Rose’s home was scrubbed on the inside, Nora had noted grit on the outer windowsill before they entered. Plainly, housekeeping would be a challenge in Butte.

  A chorus of whistles woke Nora from a dream crammed with the hum of train wheels. Rose had warned her that whistles ordering the men to various mines blew at a different pitch for each shift. Nora heard heavy footfalls outside, then at last, Tade and Patrick’s voices.

  Half awake, she panicked. Glorious omen of Shoshone Falls or none, she’d come all this way after one meeting and a few letters. What if Tade Larkin wasn’t as she remembered? He couldn’t write, after all. What if she disappointed him this second time? What if . . .

  Rose backed into the bedroom, pulling the round-topped trunk. Nora jumped up and opened it, taking pleasure in spite of her anxiety in clean clothes, even ones mashed with packing wrinkles. She picked out a green walking suit that made her eyes emerald, dressed, brushed her hair, and pinched color into her cheeks.

  Then erect as a queen on coronation day, Nora walked to the tiny kitchen. Rose introduced Patrick, while the grinning, bony-faced man swung Annie into his arms.

  Nora turned to Tade. He’d washed, but dust of the mines clung to his jacket. Still, the unruly black hair and kind blue eyes were as she remembered. Nora held out both hands.

  Tade grasped them. “You’re as lovely as I remembered, Nora. My god, but I’ve missed you. It’s glad I am to see you.”

  “I’m glad as well.” His look and words soothed her. It truly would be all right.

  They walked outside, and Tade gestured toward the Never-sweat. “That’s where I work. I have no complaints, although the name is wrong. We go deeper now than when they named it. We sweat rivers. It’s not so bad in summer, but Patrick says wait until winter. He tells me coming up out of that furnace into the cold makes a man’s damp clothes freeze stiff in minutes.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Bat Moriarty’s warnings haunted Nora.

  Tade shrugged. “Show me a miner’s work that doesn’t have risks. That’s why the bosses love us boys from Cork. We know what we’re about, so we come up with the goods, safe and sound.”

  He patted her hand, and she relaxed, more than ready to dismiss Moriarty’s dire remarks. “Rose says there’s work for me. I’m going to try the Centennial Hotel tomorrow.”

  “Ah, Nora. It’s nothing so fine as your Boston hotel. I stay at a boardinghouse nearby. It’s small and cheap, but I’m putting aside all I can for the future.”

  “Do you miss Ireland? The green of it?”

  “Like I would me right arm. But a man can make a living here. The gold came and went, the silver’s running out, but Marcus Daly has his plans coming along for mining copper.”

  His confidence bolstered her. Tade Larkin wouldn’t be caught crying into his beer for the lost past. With such a man as her strong foundation, a girl might build as good a life as she could imagine. And his nature so sweet and steady. And his maleness so close, overpowering, heady. Nora tipped her face toward Tade and murmured, “That’s grand.”

  They compared journeys from Boston, and then fell into an abrupt silence. Tade’s hand hovered over hers, finally settling there. “Nora? I’m so glad you’re here, so happy I’m sitting beside you.” Tade stroked her cheek, kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and finally her mouth. She joined in the kiss. In her mind a fine breeze
played over green hills when Tade Larkin held her. She rested her cheek against his shirt with the heart pumping so fast underneath. For the first time since leaving Ireland, in this dirtiest of sprawling towns, she had a real home.

  One of the girls stepped out to announce dinner. She giggled in mortification seeing she’d interrupted their embrace. Nora cast a smile up at Tade, who grinned in frank delight. She did what she’d wanted to do since meeting him, and ran her fingers through the tangle of his black hair.

  At the table Patrick told dramatic and funny stories about Butte life. After Tade’s reluctant departure, all hurried to bed. Nora lay awake on the lumpy couch, unable to shake the sensation of train wheels rolling under her. She stretched, releasing the ache of travel in her hips, playing the evening over and over, a song with an escalating tempo. Tade was poor yet, and she poorer still. Too soon to think of marriage. And this Butte, just a rung up from a mining camp. She turned over, unyielding bumps pressing into her shoulder. She must find work.

  Later in the hushed house, she heard the rhythmic creak of bedsprings supporting Rose and Patrick’s lovemaking. She’d learned that sound as a hotel maid. Making another baby, Nora thought. Wasn’t their little shotgun house so cramped already? Dear Rose handled it all with harried grace. The warmth and love of family would make it worthwhile. Nora felt stronger, less bereft, here with people who cared about this tinker’s orphan.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Morning started early. Helping dress the children and tidy up after breakfast, Nora tried not to recoil when Rose threw their slops outside. She’d not seen such disposing of waste since childhood. Dublin Gulch already stank from rotting meat, vegetable scraps, sewage and fumes from nearby smelters. Rose saw her expression and shrugged. “Where else can we put it?”

  Nora remembered losses to illness in unsanitary tenements. She hoped it wouldn’t happen here.

  Later that morning, Nora started on foot to the Centennial Hotel on the corner of Main and Granite. She first saw the false front identifying it. A terrace ran across the second story. She sighed. No chandelier would grace this place. She stepped inside a lobby filled with men smoking cigars and reading the Butte Miner. Through an adjoining door to the left, she noted a high-ceilinged dining room. Nora approached a man in a gray silk vest, manning the desk with an alert, proprietary air. He studied her through thick, round glasses.

  Why, Nora asked herself, do these desk-minding boys always resemble each other? Like dogs guarding their masters’ gates.

  “May I help you, miss?”

  “I would like to speak to the manager about employment. Is he in?” Nora felt her confidence slump under the clerk’s stare. He gestured with a knobby wrist for her to follow.

  Frank Flynn stood as they made introductions. Behind his desk, rocks sat from floor to ceiling in glass cases, a mineral collection Nora would learn was the manager’s passion. Perusing Nora’s references, he said, “We just lost a girl to matrimony, so we can benefit each other.”

  “I’m used to working in a good hotel.” Nora tried to convey faith in her own competence without sounding smug. She needed this job, a rung up that slippery ladder.

  “But you’re not used to working in one where all the help is Irish and many speak Gaelic.” Flynn had a boyish smile.

  “Oh, I understand Irish,” Nora said, “although I don’t speak it except for a little.”

  “You’ll be paid twenty-five cents a day. I believe we’ll assign you to housekeeping and kitchen work. Will that suit?”

  With a flash of joy, Nora let her tension melt. “Indeed, sir. I’m happy for the job.”

  He spoke to the clerk. In moments a young blonde woman in a maid’s uniform appeared.

  “Bridget, this is Nora Flanagan come to work with us,” the manager announced. “Nora, meet Bridget Kennedy. Help Nora find a uniform. She’s on straightaway, the lucky girl.”

  They started in the lobby, a room of pine and horsehair furniture. After the dining room and kitchen the two looked into the attached saloon, its burnished oak bar lined with glittering bottles, a mirror above it. A few men with creased faces nursed beer or whiskey even in the morning. Nora noticed a poker game in progress and chuckled. Bat Moriarty sat at the table, the mystery of his soft hands solved.

  Bridget’s blue eyes widened. “Why are you staring at Bat Moriarty? Don’t tell me the man has managed to turn your head when you only just arrived yesterday.”

  “I met him on the train. Now I see why he made fun of miners. The rascal’s a gambler.” He sat half-turned from her, cards in his hands. It was a quiet game, but something one of the other players said amused him. His laugh sounded smooth and deep, like a stone under water. She judged it a poor second to Tade’s open and frequent shout of cloudless delight.

  “He’s a black-hearted charmer with the ladies so,” Bridget whispered.

  “Is that something you’d be knowing from experience?” Nora teased.

  Bridget shook her head. “Not I. I keep company with a steady man from the mines, but another girl left here with her heart broken in little pieces right along with her reputation. Bat Moriarty had been giving her attention at the same time he kept Cat Posey busy.”

  “Who’s Cat Posey?”

  “No one for us or any other decent woman to speak of. She’s one of the girls at Erin’s Joys. It’s the only bawdy house in Butte with Gaelic-speaking girls. Bat Moriarty gambles there, and they say he’s thick as honey with Cat Posey.”

  Nora shuddered. “What a way for the Irish to show themselves. As if we didn’t have a hard enough time making ourselves respectable.”

  “Aye, true enough. Let me show you a room or two.” Bridget leading, they climbed the staircase to a shadowed corridor. Nora had an impression of men crowded into close quarters, not too clean by the sour smell of the hall.

  They ended with the basement where a changing room sat next to the laundry. Nora noted the baths and toilets, all dark and stuffy, and made a face. “It’s none too fresh down here, is it?”

  “It’s what we have. There’s an icehouse and storage buildings out back. The best air and cleanest rooms are in the saloons, but you wouldn’t want to work in one of them, Nora.”

  In her new uniform, a black dress and white apron like Bridget’s, Nora started in changing bedding and setting out clean towels. The sheets and linens, along with the clothes of some of the men, gave off smoky puffs.

  “It’s silicate dust,” Tade explained that night. “It’s not good for us. Seems like all the men get ‘rocks on the chest’ sooner or later, some of the women as well. There’s many buried from the consumption, but we need the steady work, don’t we?”

  Nora shuddered. Why were the lower classes always exposed to the horrors that await those who shovel, remove, and inhale the worst the earth can give? Anger flashed through her. “Oh, yes. We from Erin always need steady work. That we do.” Consumption had claimed her mother. They could make a living in Butte, but the mines held menace seen and unseen.

  And steady work it turned out to be. Nora reported to the kitchen before daylight, her hands red and damp by noon when she started on rooms. The work tired her, but camaraderie among the maids brought fun to cleaning even the messes hard-living miners left behind.

  Bat Moriarty became a subject of discussions. Two maids claimed he repulsed them, while one confessed she dreamed of him in ways that made her blush. One afternoon Nora opened a door believing the room unoccupied. She stooped to smooth a wrinkle in the carpet. When she raised her eyes, she returned Bat Moriarty’s bemused gaze.

  The gambler poured water from a pitcher to a bowl. His shirt lay on the bed along with his vest, shoulder holster, and pistol. Water glistened on his bare chest as he turned back to her. “Sweet Jesus, girl. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. It’s only a man with his shirt off.”

  “I mistook the room to be empty—I’ll just leave these towels.” Nora averted her eyes.

  “Wait. It’s Nora Flanagan from the train,
isn’t it? Don’t run off. I’ll put my shirt on so we’ll be quite beyond reproach.”

  “I’ve work to do. I mustn’t lollygag.” Nora felt like an idiot.

  “Work can wait. I didn’t know you hired on here. How are you finding Butte, America?” He smiled, white teeth startling under the slope of his dark mustache.

  Nora tried to keep from glancing at his chest, smooth and hairless, but lean and powerful, too. She’d never seen Tade so. She needed to escape this impropriety. What the girls giggled over in the kitchen about Bat and the notorious Cat Posey rose to mind. “I find it a dirty city as you said, but it seems a fine start for the Irish in America.” She hated her voice for shaking.

  He stepped toward her. “You’re a lovely addition to the place, Nora. Don’t be thinking it more than it is, though. I told you the Irish have paved these streets with their bones. An Irishman knows how to dig, and that’s what he does here. But look about you at the blind and those missing limbs.” He buttoned his shirt. “Don’t you have a sweetheart? A man from Cork, was it?”

  “Aye, a good, careful worker. He takes pride in what he does, and I take pride in it as well.”

  Bat laughed that melodious, insinuating sound. “As opposed to being a gambler. You’re too good for the likes of me. I can see that. Your man is lucky in his woman, at least.” Without warning, he stepped forward, took one of her hands, and touched it to his lips.

  His lips felt soft below the fringe of mustache. Nora caught the scent of musky pomade. She pulled away, lips parted in surprise, then whisked out the door. She felt mortified—an awareness that brought its own chagrin—because her hand was rough, and her fingers smelled of onions.

  Even worse, Mr. Flynn strode toward her. He frowned, unusual for his pleasant countenance. “What’s wrong, Nora? You look pale. Has anyone bothered you?” He kept strict rules about guests observing propriety with the maids.