The Shadow Catcher

by Marianne Wiggins

  The docks, striving for a state of operability after the destruction of the fire, were a labyrinth of stacked raw timber and improvised sawmills, coils of rope as thick as trees and stoves of steaming tar. Mud was everywhere underfoot—mud mixed with ash and charcoal soot—the broad planks serving as pedestrian walkways slick with muck the color and consistency of wet tobacco. Her dress boots, soles worn thin from years of walking St. Paul’s cobbled streets, offered no protection from the viscous slime and she could feel damp starting in her heels and rising to her ankles. She slipped and fell against a barrel-chested man with an iron cudgel hammering an anchor chain, whose breath, when he turned to catch her, reeked of ale and onions. The air, less dense with fog than on the water, filtered light as if through muslin and was thick with unfamiliar smells, acrid, metal and marine, laced with the pungent spice of charring fagots that the Chinamen were burning to fry meat and nests of noodles in hammered bowl-shaped pans the size of carriage wheels.

  This was not the city she expected.

  Everything about it was rough and go, not civilized so much as being civilized and as she pushed through the clotted knot of people to catch up with Edward she felt comforted that he was there with her and wondered how she ever could have dreamed of managing this frontier alone.

  As the city rose—and it rose in steppes, hill after hill—it became more tamed.

  She followed him onto an esplanade, then up a paved incline into a street that began to prompt her memory of what a proper city had to offer. There were trolley tracks and sidewalks—a bakery, a tea shop, a stationer. The late summer sky was still a dismal gray but the rawness of the dockside blocks gave way to the patina of a better neighborhood as Edward finally came to a full stop and peered around a corner. This is it, he said.

  “—it’s an alley,” Clara couldn’t help but noting.

  “It’s that building, there,” he said and pointed to a shop at the head of the dim cul-de-sac with a sign that read, PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS.

  The alley, though short, was wide enough for two carriages and must have originally been built as a mews to stable carts and horses, because midway down the short block there were distinctive stable doors and the remnants of tackle designed for lifting bales of hay. The little street was paved with cobblestones and was not the bleak dead-end that she first thought—on one corner there was a ladies’ milliner next to a gentleman’s cane-and-umbrella shop. On the other corner, a goldsmith and jeweler.

  Carriage trade, she rightly assessed. “On second thought,” she said to Edward, “this could be a good location.”

  They proceeded to the entrance, Clara conscious of the rising mudline on her skirt, as if it were a shore, and were surprised to find a neatly printed notice—CLOSED—hanging on the inside of the door. Edward rang the bell and a faint instruction inside informed them that the door was open, and they entered. “Is that you, Mr. Curtis?” the faint voice inquired.

  A man emerged toward them—thin as a rail, lost in a brown suit of clothes several sizes too large, his head balancing on his emaciated neck, glowing yellow like a golden orb inside a gaslight globe.

  “I am Rasmus Rothi,” he announced and extended a frail jaundiced hand but Clara took an immediate step backward, pressing Edward back as well, while covering her mouth and nose with her linen handkerchief.

  “Do not worry, I am not contagious,” the jaundiced man informed them. “It’s my liver, as you see, but it’s specific to my person. And the reason I can no longer entertain the public trade myself.”

  Edward took the gentleman’s hand and introduced himself, while Clara still held back.

  “Would you like to see my photographs, Mr. Rothi?” Edward asked, proffering his monogrammed portfolio.

  “I would rather see your money,” Mr. Rothi said.

  “In that case I will have to see the darkroom.”

  “In the back. Studio is up these stairs,” he pointed, “where there’s light. Skylight on the upper floor,” he started to explain but Edward had already disappeared behind the counter through a door toward where the photographs were printed.

  “I’m sorry you are ill, Mr. Rothi,” Clara said, still keeping her distance, but before she had even breathed another breath Edward had returned, racing up the stairs. She could hear his footsteps on the floor above and then, within an instant, he was back. How much? he asked.

  Clara took a small step toward him.

  “—perhaps Mr. Rothi would like to show you his accounting, Edward,” she said, but he waved her off.

  “One hundred and fifty,” Rothi said. “For half share of the business.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred.”

  “And I’ll give you the door.”

  Clara watched the two men stand off with each other.

  She wondered how Edward had acquired so much money, or if he even had it, but noted that nothing in his posturing before the older man suggested otherwise.

  “I’ll work the difference off—work without a share in profits until the balance’s paid,” Edward offered.

  “One hundred and fifty. Cash in hand. That’s my final,” Rothi told him.

  Edward tendered their farewell and turned and left and Clara followed and once outside he grasped her wrists and said, “This is what I want—I could learn so much from him! What a tough old character, a man like him could teach me all I’d need to know about how to operate a business—”

  “Edward,” Clara had to ask: “Do you have a hundred dollars?”

  “—why, of course. Salary from all those years, odd jobs, and from the sawmill. I can raise the extra fifty, I suppose—I could sell the homestead, Father paid three dollars an acre for it—fifteen acres—plus, now, there’s the house and barn…”

  “—but, Edward, if you do that…where would your mother and sister live?”

  “—here. Seattle. They could live with us.”

  Clara held her breath.

  “—but, dear,” she argued: “Where would that be?”

  “—we’ll find the rooms to rent…”

  “—rooms for six? The city’s overrun with boarders from the fire. How would they pay? Where would the rent come from?”

  “Asahel has work. Asahel has money saved. I could borrow—”

  “Do you really want this, Edward?”

  “So much, Scout. So very, very much…”

  “—then here.” She reached into her bodice for the money she had left from Lodz.

  Edward looked at the money then took it without speaking, nursing it from her fingers without touching her, though his eyes spoke an emotion she interpreted as ratified devotion.

  She waited outside the building, watching the sun slide above the rooflines, pushing the shadows to one side of the street, while Edward went inside to deal with Mr. Rothi. She could hear a church bell clanging on the hill above her and detect a buttery aroma from the bakery nearby and she began to reinhabit the delights of city living, that sense of feeling others close at hand who share one’s cultural language and experience. She watched a carriage arrest at the corner where a well-turned-out gentleman descended, top hat and cane, and helped a lady in a fashionable dress dismount onto the pavement, as he took her arm and nuzzled his head close to hers before they sauntered, slowly, out of sight. I will have this life again, Clara thought. She felt her heart quicken—with a surge of pride she thought, I have paid to have this life again. She smiled, and told herself: with Edward.

  He emerged from Rothi’s shop, his face more radiant than she had ever seen, and announced, “It’s done.” He took her arm and backed her up into the middle of the mews facing the building and swept his hand across its bland façade. “‘Rothi and Curtis,’” he pronounced. “‘Photographers.’ Thank you, Scout.”

  She felt that she might cry from joy.

  “Now let’s go see about these wedding rings,” he said and started toward the jeweler on the corner at the trot she was learning was his natural speed.

  “Where did you get
this, sir?” the jeweler, assaying the gold nugget, asked from behind his loupe.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I already know,” the jeweler said. He assessed Edward and Clara more carefully. “I want to know if you know.”

  Edward held his gaze without answering.

  It had been forty years since gold was found at Sutter’s Mill but superstitions and suspicions still swirled around the protocols of discovery, as if the gold, itself, were the product of alchemy, not nature, and it was unnatural to give away details of its provenance because of the vestigial fear of being claim-jumped.

  “I would wager California on the Nevada line,” the jeweler said. “There are traces of BORON in the fasciae.”

  Edward didn’t blink. “Are you saying that the nugget isn’t pure?”

  “It is very pure. Outstanding carat. And for that very reason I am loath to melt it down. But I will tell you what I think it’s worth and you can use the trade to purchase rings from my selection of hand-crafted wedding bands.”

  Clara watched him write a figure on a piece of paper and pass it to Edward—she saw Edward’s color rise—then the jeweler passed a wooden tray to them, lined in purple velvet and gold wedding bands.

  “What will you do with the nugget?” Edward asked.

  “I will preserve it. Make a tie pin of it. Very elegant.”

  Sir, Edward said and reached to stay the jeweler’s hand.

  Edward explained who he was and that he had just entered into an agreement with Mr. Rothi, the jeweler’s neighbor, and that he and the jeweler were going to be commercial residents on the same street and that if the jeweler would consider holding the nugget as surety against the cost of the two wedding bands Edward would like to reserve the right to come back in three months’ time and pay him for the two rings as well as paying for the jeweler’s craftsmanship to convert the nugget to a tie pin.

  Clara watched without a word—watched Edward wield persuasion as an enticing snare of conversation, charming the jeweler with that same unyielding focus that could sometimes distance but that never failed to win her over.

  They chose two beveled bands, identical except for size, Clara feeling, again, that she would weep, when she tried hers on.

  “And what sentiment would you like engraved inside?” the jeweler asked.

  Edward shook his head, explaining, “None…we need to take them with us, right away.”

  “I can do it while you wait,” the jeweler offered, and Edward’s face went blank.

  “I would like,” Clara piped up: “I would like, inside of mine, the single word—Edward.”

  “—and you?” the jeweler asked, turning to Edward.

  Edward held the ring and stared at it then looked at Clara, seeking her permission.

  “Scout,” she told the jeweler: “Etch in the word ‘Scout.’”

  They waited while the jeweler took the rings to his engraving desk beneath a window, Clara passing the time by looking at the jewelry in the cases—filigreed necklaces and ladies’ watch fobs, earrings strung with freshwater pearls, pink and green with iridescence.

  “—let me know if something takes your fancy,” the jeweler told her and she blushed, feeling she should turn away for lack of justification, from such opulence.

  Meanwhile Edward surveyed the shop, judging the way it was assembled, how the inventory was presented to the public. He particularly took notice of the nearly empty walls—the lithographs hung as meager decoration to make the customer feel at ease among the products.

  “I see you are a ‘connoisseur’ of Mt. Rainier,” he told the jeweler, pointing to the framed art.

  Clara kept her head down to suppress a smile. Connoisseur. She had taught him the word. His pronunciation was a perfect duplicate of hers.

  “It is my own ‘mountain of mountains,’” he added conversationally. “Perhaps I can interest you in purchasing my photographs of it to enliven your emporium.”

  Clara smiled again at Edward’s language.

  “Are you a mountaineer, Mr. Curtis?” the jeweler asked.

  “I have ascended to Pinnacle Peak. Twice,” he answered. “Carrying my dry-plate camera. Fourteen thousand feet.”

  The jeweler stopped and looked at him.

  “You have photographs taken from the peak?”

  Edward nodded.

  “Then perhaps I can interest you in showing them to our Mazamas Club. Have you heard of us?”

  Edward shook his head.

  “We are the premier mountaineering group of the Pacific Northwest. Do you mountaineer, as well?” he asked of Clara.

  “No, I’m sorry. My pursuits are more interior…”

  The jeweler turned his attention back to Edward: “I’ll put you in touch with the Club leader, we make several expeditions a year into the Cascades and Olympics…”

  As the men talked Clara began to see into a world of symbiotically connected links, a society like the one she had known her parents to have had in the art world when she was growing up in St. Paul, formed of men and women whose interests overlapped. But then the jeweler said, “It will help your business,” and Clara realized there was another aspect to the world of mutual pursuit that she had yet to learn.

  The bell on the door chimed and what appeared to Clara to be a beggar woman entered with a damp smell accompanying her, rising from the crude reed basket that she carried covered with a cloth. She was all of four feet tall, almost equally as wide around her hips, with a faded blue bandanna tied around her weathered face from which tiny crescent eyes peered at Clara without expression over thin down-turning lips.

  “Good morning, Princess,” the jeweler greeted her with what Clara thought sounded like mockery. “What have you got for me today?”

  The woman opened her fist, palm up, in front of Clara in a gesture Clara assumed was meant to ask for money until she noticed tiny ivory pearls the size of apple seeds scattered on the incised map across her palm.

  “Pearls,” the woman said.

  “Let’s have a look,” the jeweler told her.

  She crossed to him and showed him what she had while Edward watched her closely. The jeweler counted out the tiny pearls across the counter, then handed her some coins.

  “Clams?” she asked, exposing the fresh shellfish in her basket. “Mussels?”

  “Not today, Princess,” the jeweler said.

  She looked at Edward, and Clara could see that he was studying her every feature.

  Then, without a word, she left.

  “That was Princess Angeline,” the jeweler told them. “Quite the fixture around here.”

  “That’s somewhat cruel, don’t you think?” Clara braved. “To call someone like her a ‘princess’?”

  “—but she is a princess. The daughter of Chief Sealth. The Suquamish head man from whom Seattle takes its name. She and her ilk dig clams and mussels on the reed flats down by Eliot Bay…”

  He showed the finished rings to them for their approval and asked, “Anything else I can help you with this morning?”

  “Yes,” Edward said. “Tell us where we need to go to find a judge so we can marry.”

  It was the courthouse and within two hours, and without ceremony, they were man and wife. They had stood next to each other without touching but when the moment came they had turned to face each other, and had smiled.

  When it was over Edward led Clara to a nearby restaurant and held her hand across the table as the waiter brought them glasses of ice water in leaded tumblers with real ice. It was thrilling, Clara thought.

  “To ‘Rothi and Curtis,’” Edward toasted.

  “Yes,” Clara concurred. She raised her glass. “And to us.”

  She looked around the room and began to anticipate the excitement of their life together in this invigorating place. She squeezed his hand. “I have a single favor I must beg.”

  He waited.

  “Hercules,” Clara said. “I trust you will allow—”

  “—of course,” E
dward affirmed. “I already think of him as my own brother.” He pressed her fingers. “—even as my son.”

  Thank you, she breathed.

  She could not imagine greater happiness. At a nearby table a woman laughed and Clara turned in time to see the woman’s escort bring her fingers to his lips and kiss them and then press her hand against his heart. She felt Edward lift his hand from hers and by the time she turned back to him he had tucked a napkin in his collar and was lost behind the menu.

  Through the meal he sought her advice on designing stationery and his business card and asked her help composing the notice he would place about his partnership with Rothi in the newspapers. He had determined he would stay on a few days and begin to work, begin to look for rooms for them to rent and when they reached the top of the entrance to the dock he asked if she needed him to walk her all the way down to the ferry.

  “I can make it on my own,” she said.

  “That’s my Scout.”

  He took her by the shoulders then and kissed her on the check and when she turned to wave to him after several steps he was already gone.

  The sun had still to set on her wedding day when she brought the mares to a halt before the house and Hercules came running from the barn.

  “I shod my first horse—!” he cried. “All by myself! The farrier let me shoe her!”

  Clara waved her finger with the wedding band in front of him. “I guess we both got shod today,” she joked.

  He embraced her and she walked beside him as he led the horses.

  “Edward bought a business.”

  “—what kinda business?”

  “Pictures.”

  “—oh that’s nice. Like father’s?”

  “Photographs.”

  “—oh I’ve seen him do that in the barn.”

  “Yes but now he’s going to do it in Seattle.”

  Hercules stood still.

  “No,” he said.

  “Hercules, it’s a wonderful city—like St. Paul. You’ll meet lots of boys your age—”

  “You were supposed to marry him so we could stay,” he said. “—so you would stay.”