River With No Bridge

by Karen Wills

  Refreshed, she meandered back to where Top Hat waited. The city below appeared benevolent as early-evening lights glimmered. Tade, Rose, and Patrick lived in Butte. Their children would all be born and baptized there. She and Tade would grow old within that space they’d found.

  Home.

  Ready to become a respectable, proper wife, she grinned behind Top Hat. No more bathing naked in front of Chinamen.

  On her August wedding day, Nora awakened on the horsehair couch, stretched, flung her arms out and thought how she’d never awaken alone again, or in someone else’s parlor. The shrill blasts wouldn’t summon Tade Larkin this day. This day belonged to the two of them. Mrs. Tade Larkin. The tinker’s child come up in the world.

  Nora Larkin. Future proud mother to a brood of Larkin sons and daughters. The thought of the change that would take place this night brought only a little fear. Guests of Boston’s grand Parker House often emerged from their rooms looking downright smug, altogether pleased with whatever had gone on before they dressed to go out. Tade, gentle loving man. She flung the covers off and put her virginal feet on the floor. After tonight she would wake every morning to Tade’s blue eyes gazing into hers.

  She spent the morning bathing and putting up her hair. In late afternoon she dressed in the navy and lace wedding gown. She joined Rose and the girls who hushed, for once shy and impressed. Rose would tell her later that her daughters played “Nora’s Wedding” for months afterward.

  At St. Patrick’s church, the Irish community turned out in its finery. Tade, his expression solemn, wore a black suit. He’d slicked back his unruly hair. Nora wore hers upswept with little tendrils falling to the lace collar.

  As she stood poised on Patrick’s arm, inhaling the scent of flowers and candle flame, for one terrible moment the packed church felt indifferent, empty. Smiling faces craned toward her, but all day she’d been trying not to pine for family gone before or left behind. To steady herself, Nora used an old ploy from childhood and imagined her mother, whom she missed most of all, smiling down to sooth and reassure her.

  The organist commenced. Nora nodded to Patrick to begin their walk toward the altar. Tade Larkin held out his hand for hers long before she could reach him. At the aisle’s end, she detached herself from Patrick and placed her hand in Tade’s. He was her family now.

  Kneeling before the priest, they recited their vows. Nora heard Rose sniffle and wondered why people cry at weddings. All she felt as Tade slipped the ring on her finger was joy. They kissed with the priest’s permission and turned to face the room filled with smiling faces.

  The wedding dance in Hibernia Hall became a raucous celebration. Shuffles, slides, and stomps vibrated the floor. The blind fiddler who’d announced their engagement led the band with even the crinkled lids around his milky eyes joined in his smile. A tenor sang. Rose and Patrick managed a sedate waltz or two despite Rose’s pregnant condition, which gave her the appearance of a frigate, its sails billowing.

  Nora grew giddy as Tade swung her in looping circles. Men cut in, and all but once Tade relinquished his bride without hesitation. On that occasion they turned and looked into the fathomless dark pools of Bat Moriarty’s eyes.

  “Moriarty. Are you daft?” Tade bristled. “What man would let his wife dance with the likes of you?”

  Bat’s eyes glittered, narrowed, then widened again so quickly Nora almost missed the shift. For the first time she wondered if he might truly be dangerous. “This is America, Larkin. Why don’t you let your wife speak for herself?”

  “I’m the husband. I speak for us both.”

  Nora giggled at hearing the word wife applied to herself and Tade calling himself the husband. Did he imagine she couldn’t make her own decisions? Still a bit light-headed, she gave his arm a gentle prod. “Dear, don’t be silly. What would Mr. Moriarty do to me? Sure and he told me all about this country on the train coming out, and I still arrived in one piece.”

  Tade’s fierce look softened. “All right, but it will be this once and not again.”

  Bat’s white teeth gleamed as he gave Tade a wolfish smile. The long deft fingers of his left hand nearly encircled Nora’s waist. It already felt unnatural to be touched by hands not rough enough to catch on the soft material there.

  “You are beautiful, Mrs. Larkin. This blue becomes you much more than black.”

  “Well, I’ve Tade to thank for making all this happen. We bought ourselves a house, you know.” Nora didn’t care if that sounded proud.

  “And soon you’ll have it full to the rafters with little red-and black-haired Larkins.”

  “And have you never wished to fill a house with babies, Mr. Moriarty?”

  “If they could have been with the right woman, Nora, if they could have been . . .” For one instant he dropped the customary mocking smile. Was that self-pity, or was he teasing her?

  “Mr. Moriarty, I would bore a man like you, and well you know it. Sure and you’re only flirting because I’m unavailable. I didn’t fascinate you one little bit on the train.”

  “You did fascinate me,” he protested, the devilish smile returning. “Every minute.”

  The music stopped. Tade appeared, reclaiming Nora. They danced again until without warning he lifted Nora into his arms and whirled her around and around.

  “Say good night to the Larkins,” he cried. “We’re off to our own home.” With that he carried Nora out the door, all the way to their house, over the threshold, and into their bedroom.

  The coverlet had been turned down. Soon, the blue wedding dress settled on a chair, as did the corset, pantaloons, shoes, and stockings. Tade undressed as Nora lay warm and watching. When he approached in the flickering light of one candle, she reached for him. He brushed her with his body, so massive yet seeming weightless as he took such care not to hurt her. She tightened her hold, pulling him down to lie full length on her, this man who had called to her all her life. He touched, kissed, caressed her until she felt surrounded, as if water flowed around her and she were floating in his protective, possessing arms. Then mists over green hills swirled and hovered over a sea—such a sea as she had never known. Nora’s cries were muffled against her husband’s shoulder until the sea quieted and the mists dissolved.

  Her voyage had been long, but she’d found her safe harbor. The candle sputtered and went out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nora and Tade developed the endearments and games of contented lovers. Nora’s life became a routine of housework, never quite giving in to the smoke and grime, going to the market, and taking part in church matters with other married women. She didn’t miss the Centennial, but did miss Bridget and the other maids’ irreverent joking. Butte’s single and married women moved in separate circles.

  They created a space in their lives each evening that she’d never forget. Tade seldom stopped for a pint with the others and took loud ribbing for it, but he tromped straight from the Neversweat to his Nora. She prepared his bath every night. It took a long time to heat water and fill the tub, but she loved his enjoyment of it. Tade would come in, kiss her, and take off clothes filthy from the mine. She poured the last kettle of steaming water into the galvanized tub and rolled up her sleeves to scrub her husband’s back, bringing a ruddy glow to the pale skin over his hard muscles as he groaned in pleasure.

  She doted on the male smell of him and his big body, sculpted by labor and powerful from good health. As she dribbled soapy water along his shoulders, he told stories of Cork. More than once her stroking and their laughter ended in whoops and a great thrashing of water, most spilled on the floor, and Nora carried into bed, clothes dampened by her husband’s chest and thighs.

  At stores she mingled with German, Italian, and Cornish miners’ wives. The differences intrigued her, but conversations never lasted long. There were Cornish mines and Irish mines and the groups kept their distance. One exception was the Cornish and Irish wives’ exchange of recipes. Tade expressed delight over his first taste of a Cornish pasty from
his lunch pail.

  “We’re all just Butte Hill folks, after all,” Nora replied. “We all just want the same in the end, don’t we? To prosper in America. I don’t see such great differences among us.”

  A year after her wedding, Nora went to the market one day with Rose. Chinese sold tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, and potatoes, some in baskets hung from yokes across the sellers’ shoulders.

  “Sure and I thought their kind only chopped wood,” Nora said.

  “French Canadians chased them out of that business. The Canucks took their axes to them. Patrick says some wound up minus their heads. But the clever devils found something new. Growing vegetables. Well, anything that keeps them out of the mines.”

  Nora approached a stall. Something about the tall vendor made her peer up at him. She saw recognition in his eyes and dropped the plump tomato she’d chosen, hating herself for blushing.

  Rose gaped, casting a sharp look at the seller who busied himself rearranging produce. “Nora, what in blazes? Did that Celestial say something to you?”

  “No, not a thing. I just felt strange for a moment.” Nora bent to pick up the tomato.

  “You’d not be expecting a little one without telling your closest friend?”

  Nora rolled her eyes to halt Rose’s questioning. Such things weren’t to be spoken of in public.

  But a few days later the dizziness returned as she lifted water from the stove for Tade’s bath. Then a second monthly failed to arrive. The nausea that replaced it convinced her. She told Tade first, then broke the news to a gleeful Rose. The Larkins would become parents in April 1884.

  The Ancient Order of Hibernians planned their New Year’s Eve Ball as usual. Nora, too bulky by then to dance, but still not showing so much that a loose jacket and ample shawl couldn’t camouflage her condition, sat alone observing the unencumbered and nimble. Tade had gone out to have a cigar and a whiskey with Patrick. Rose remained at home, hostage to a colicky baby.

  The sound of breaking glass outside pierced the hum of voices. Roused from dreamy thoughts of changes the little one would bring, Nora turned toward the door to see boys and men kicking a curled form on the ground. Tade and Patrick stood beyond the circle, watching, wincing in physical sympathy at each thud of a boot on the man’s body. A pistol’s discharge echoed off clapboard buildings. The men froze in its reverberation.

  Nora, hands at her midsection as if to protect the child, heard the sheriff’s voice.

  “All right, you boys don’t want to murder this Chinee. Let his friend take him home. They’ve learned the lesson.”

  The sole Chinese person Nora could recognize stepped into the circle of red-faced men to lift the crumpled figure. By the fan of light from the doorway, Nora saw the tall man eye each of the attackers, holding the look just short of the length of time they’d consider a challenge. At last he turned, carrying his friend who bled from one ear. The men muttered as he strode away with the wounded fellow in his arms as if he were weightless.

  “The Chinaman has a hard life in the American West, but he stays.” Bat Moriarty appeared at Nora’s side. “Think what it must be like where he came from.” He offered her a punch cup. His nails looked very clean.

  “Yes.” Nora accepted the cup. “I’ve seen that man. He pops up everywhere. He’s taller than the others, isn’t he? He’s . . . different.” Nora shuddered at the violence she’d witnessed. Her mouth had gone dry, and the cup shook in her hand.

  “His father was a Scot missionary. Jim Li speaks English, but stays with his own kind. He grew up in China. Poor Devil, he’s an educated man with nothing to do but smoke opium and raise vegetables.” Bat sat down beside her.

  “Do they really smoke opium?”

  “They do. They gamble as well and still work like mules. Quite an interesting people.”

  “What might you be doing here?” The baby kicked. “Isn’t there something more interesting for you on New Year’s Eve?”

  “Nothing interests me more than conversing with a beautiful lady, Mrs. Larkin. And how are you finding life as a married woman?”

  “Altogether to my liking. We’re going to have a family, you know.” Nora shifted again. Indelicate, she knew. A real lady wouldn’t have alluded to her condition.

  “Tade’s got luck on his side. Pity he doesn’t gamble,” Bat said, obviously not bothered by Nora’s frank revelation.

  Nora shot him an angry glance. “Tade is the sort of man who raises the Irish in others’ eyes. He’s no fancy man.”

  Bat grinned. “A fancy man, am I? Mrs. Larkin, I’m as simple as you’ll ever see. I like my freedom, beautiful women, a good poker game, fine food, and drink. Where’s the harm in such a life? Do you know how many Irish have been killed or maimed slaving in the mines for three dollars and fifty cents a day? There are different ways to be simple.”

  Nora rose. “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Moriarty. Something has just given me the worst headache. I’ll be finding Tade. I’m overcome with the wish to be in his company.”

  “Don’t let me run you off. I’m only here until the game starts at Erin’s Joys at 11:00, so I’ll steal my New Year’s kiss now.”

  He stood and his mustache brushed her cheek as he kissed the corner of her mouth. Nora drew an outraged breath, but before she could scold he bowed and left. In the doorway, Tade and Bat bumped shoulders, neither acknowledging the other.

  Whiskey and the violence he’d seen outside left Tade flushed. “What a donnybrook. You should have seen Mick and Damien light into that Chinee. Some of the boys were having a little mischief throwing snowballs at the Celestials and one yellow devil took a shot at them, brazen as you please. The boys jumped him and disarmed the man. They just had to teach him a lesson.”

  “His friend seemed brave.” Nora glanced around. In the excitement, no one had witnessed Bat’s outrageous conduct.

  “Aye, with the sheriff backing him up. Don’t go soft on the Chinamen. They’d be taking our jobs in an instant.”

  “I suppose, but they have a hard life, all the same. We’ve known a bit of that, haven’t we?” She frowned into her cup. Tade had never lived the tinkers’ life. His father had been a hardworking, respected miner rooted in County Cork.

  “Aye, but no more, sweetheart. Our child will be educated as we were not. He’ll have a chance to do something more than dig.”

  At midnight, the crowd sang “Auld Lang Syne” as Tade and Nora kissed. His hand brushed her rounded belly. “What a New Year we’ll have,” he whispered into her glinting hair.

  Lying awake that night, Nora listened to frozen snow creak under the thick-soled boots of passersby. She shuddered to think of such boots shattering the Chinaman’s bones. She wondered whether Jim Li had taken the man to a healer. They had their own medicines, she knew.

  She’d seen Jim Li three times now: scaring her at the river, embarrassing her at the market, and carrying his fallen friend only hours ago.

  Tonight he appeared brave, staring down those who scorned him. How often she’d felt a desire to do that. It was almost as though she had some odd connection to this exotic man. But no, he was the outsider here, and her days of being excluded, pushed to the far edge of things, were over. The baby moved. Forgetting the problems of those beyond their door, Nora curled against Tade as she imagined their child curled within her, and fell asleep.

  In April, Helen Larkin unfurled from the exhausted cocoon of Nora’s body. While enduring the pangs of childbirth, Nora didn’t picture a butterfly, but an otter slipping through a length of pipe. She’d watched one as a little girl, wondering how it could fit in and slip back out into daylight, but it did. Fighting the agony, Nora imagined herself as the pipe and her baby an otter determined to pop out into the world. Through the brilliance of her pain, she willed the new arrival to emerge whole and well.

  And Helen did. Nora touched the eyelids, fine as down, of the wondrous infant she held in her arms. “We’ll name her Helen Rose Larkin. She’s as beautiful as Helen who started t
hose Trojan wars Father taught us about in school.”

  By Helen’s first birthday, everyday life had become as Nora imagined when she married, pleasantly busy with stable progress. By the time their daughter’s cake held two candles, Tade had moved up in the mines. By the time she turned three, he told Nora he heard himself being considered for a foreman’s position. And he surprised her with a request. Nora often read borrowed books when she had them. At times she read to Tade from the newspaper. She sometimes pointed out letters to Helen.

  “I can’t have that little darlin’ thinking her da is ignorant,” Tade said one night. “You can teach me. I want to be ready for any opportunities. Teach me this reading and writing.”

  And so the lessons began. Each spare hour, often with Helen on one of their laps, Nora helped him find and sound out letters, Helen pointing at them, too. Next Tade read words, sentences, and finally whole articles from the Butte Miner. With Nora’s teaching, Tade learned to write more than his signature. He read to Helen, and Helen read to him by picking out short words as he pointed to them. “Cat! Dog! Cow!” Then it was Tade reading to Nora as she mended or sat with her eyes closed, a smile hovering at his progress—another rung up the ladder.

  Tade doted on Helen. When he arrived home each night, he hoisted the little girl so high her pale hair brushed the ceiling as she shrieked in joy. After his bath and supper, the three played games or picked out letters and words until Helen’s eyelids drooped. Her parents tucked her in together, then turned to each other, eager to caress in the hush before sleep.

  Surely, Nora told herself, Tade and she could not be stricken by the dangers that drove some of the wives half-insane with worry. Tade and Patrick were so sure of themselves, miners from County Cork.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Butte, 1887

  One commonplace day in early summer, Nora hung clothes to dry, starting with Tade’s big shirts and working down to Helen’s little drawers. Helen spun a yellow top in the packed dirt, sending it spinning, then chasing its crazy progress as it toppled. The mine whistles shrieked well ahead of their hours. Nora recoiled, dropping her clothespins.