I nodded, happily expecting to be given many mini-lessons as we went.
Behind us, the Worthingtons’ cottage—gambrel roof, wraparound screen porch, and its carefully planted tulip garden and hedges of lilacs—gradually shrank away. I wanted to feel the cottage was mine, too—but it wasn’t. Still, it was the closest thing to home I had. I vowed to return soon, so as to not disgrace the Worthingtons. I owed them that much.
A slip of the paddle sent droplets of water along the back of my neck and blouse, and I laughed out loud. A laugh, such a simple thing, and yet this was new for me. I smiled at the sound of it.
“So you can laugh, but you don’t speak . . . ,” Victor said.
I almost told him about my recent discovery, but I didn’t yet have it in me to try to explain or to talk freely. I shrugged again, letting his words hang in the air, unanswered.
He paddled on under the lift bridge as the Duluth, Winnipeg, & Pacific train creaked and rumbled overhead. The DW&P was the pride of Mr. Worthington and E. W. Ennis. It started running in 1909, the same year the Worthingtons had taken me in. I’d looked on when they’d cut the red ribbon at the lift bridge and cracked a bottle of champagne on the tracks. I recalled the smell of lavender from Mrs. Worthington’s perfume. “You and I are more alike than you know,” she’d said. “We wait for things to turn our way.”
If I just waited for things to turn my way, then what? She’d shown me that path, and it left her life in her husband’s hands. Mrs. Worthington claimed she wanted to adopt me, but he was against it, and so . . . I was stuck between worlds. Limbo. I had grown accustomed to an educated life, to music and culture, and yet if I wasn’t adopted, I had no hope of continuing my schooling. And what kind of work could I expect—a mute from a questionable background? But now . . . now that I could speak . . .
Water droplets occasionally struck me, but they dried quickly in the warm air. As Victor whistled, he kept beat with his paddle in the water. I glanced back and watched. The flat of the paddle cut through the air, parallel to the water, then with a turn—sharp as a blade—it sliced into the water and, with Victor’s force, pulled back, creating its own frothy wake, until he lifted the paddle again, cutting, slicing, pulling us forward.
We rounded the fishing docks where commercial fishermen—who netted by day for walleye, northern, sturgeon, burbot, and whitefish—tied up their boats at night to return to their simple homes and shacks, often crammed with lots of children. Now the docks were empty, save the Betty Jean.
“She landed on a rock shoal in last week’s thunderstorm,” Victor explained, pointing at the trawler with his paddle. “She needs repair, but she’s a beautiful boat.”
Sitting in Victor’s canoe, I sensed a warm breeze shifting.
Already the world looked different.
The houses and boathouses beside the water, even the Betty Jean, appeared like toys—miniatures. The canoe became the world, and everything beyond seemed small and insignificant.
Chapter 8
I could just as well have taken the train from Ranier to New York City, my actions felt that daring.
And delicious.
But the farther we traveled, the more doubts slid in beside me, sharing my caned seat in the canoe. What had come over me? I was riding in a canoe with a shoeless man—though one glance at my own feet reminded me I was no better. Mrs. Worthington would call such actions “scandalous” and “brazen” and warn me that I’d become “the shame of the town.”
I held the slate board in my lap and wondered what to write. I should write something sensible like, “I have changed my mind. Please deliver me home,” or some such. Instead, I pushed the slate board under my bum and sat on it, tilted my head back, and gazed up.
Clouds sprang like enormous popcorn puffs above the lake.
“Lake clouds,” Victor said. “They form above the vast water. The lakes up here form a chain that flows eventually to Hudson Bay. That’s the way it should remain, too—flowing—not dammed up at every opportunity. Itasca State Park was established in 1891—two decades ago. Why shouldn’t we be protecting what we have here in the same way?”
I pivoted to meet his eyes, but he was studying the shoreline as he paddled, not me.
“You’d think,” he started, “operating the biggest, most profitable paper mill in the world might be enough. That building two dams, one at International Falls and another at Kettle Falls, would be more than adequate, but not for a man like Ennis.” Victor stretched out his hand toward the northern shore, the southern shore, and the islands beyond. “See all this? If he gets his way, this will all be underwater about twenty-five feet, or even more. Means we’d be floating in a giant claw-foot tub. No islands, bays, or inlets.”
I tried to picture such change, but it seemed impossible.
“If he gets his proposal passed. He’s not one to back down. That’s why ordinary folks need to rally together and stand up to him.”
Telling E. W. Ennis “no” was not something people did. He controlled the water—maybe even the skies. It was said he’d left St. Paul and his accounting job at a lumberyard to tromp the wilds of northern Minnesota with a guide. Snowshoed the whole way, which I doubted. More likely he took a train as far as he could, then hired dogsled teams to get him to the region. He dreamed of the world’s largest paper mill and set about making it happen by sending timber cruisers to survey each and every square mile. He laid claim to virgin towering pine and logged it before anyone else knew of his discovery.
I thought of Mr. Worthington and the way he ducked around Mr. Ennis, carefully choosing his words.
“Call me a fool,” Victor said, “but this is a battle that must be won. My island is wide open for people of all sorts to visit—artists, poets, journalists, scientists—anyone I can interest in coming up here to appreciate the wilderness we have.” He orated on. “Can you believe, Sadie Rose, that with the already unregulated lake levels, those who own lakeshore find their cabins flooded year after year? And with the constant fluctuations in water levels, birds and animals . . . ”
I had heard so much of Mr. Worthington’s political arguments over the years that, frankly, I’d learned to tune out most political talk. But Victor was different.
As he paddled and practiced his arguments, I let my mind drift along with the water and words. The shoreline whispered its own message through the treetops, from bough to bough, sending it through the soft feathery needles of white pines to the stubby-needled, wind-bent jack pine, whose hard cones would only open up and reseed through intense fire. We passed logged shoreline where only stumps remained, leaving the forest floor unprotected and powdery dry from harsh sunlight.
On the lake before, I had watched shore and islands drift by from the passenger boat, but traveling by canoe was completely different. Everything was close up. We passed log cabins, shacks made of mismatched boards, and an occasional two-story home or cottage. It was as if I were seeing Rainy Lake for the first time, breathing in its every scent, observing every curve and line, alerting Victor to any rocks or deadheads in our watery path.
“That’s Baird’s Island,” Victor said with a nod. Stands of Norway pine towered on two islands, like either end of an hourglass, joined by a narrow beach. He paddled along its southern point, where a tiny log cabin with flower boxes of red petunias perched at the water’s edge.
“And there’s Trinity’s studio. She’s a painter.”
Trinity was more complex than I’d thought. An artist, with a space of her own. I couldn’t imagine such luxury. What would it be like to have a studio? If I had one, mine would hold a well-tuned piano, stacks of sheet music, and countless books. Someday, I vowed, I would visit her at her studio.
A few islands later, we rounded a peninsula, then headed northeast toward a cluster of islands. In the distance and across the bay I spotted Red Stone Island and Ennis’s lodge. But it vanished as Vict
or maneuvered the canoe around the cabin on the point and into the shelter of a horseshoe bay, a natural port with high granite walls between two islands—and the island the dock boy had pointed out from the steamer.
“Falcon Island,” he said. “I wanted to show it to you.”
A mix of dread and delight flooded through me. I couldn’t possibly step foot on his island. Alone with him.
With far less fanfare—no porters or waiters or dockhands—Victor paddled his canoe to his dock as dragonflies silently hovered above. He jumped out of the canoe, tied it up to iron rings, then shook out his arms, and stretched.
Perched on the harbor’s outcropping of rock, a small slab building looked down on the dock. His cabin, I assumed. A wave of guilty tension passed over me. If the Worthingtons found out I’d stepped foot on a man’s island, unchaperoned, they would certainly ship me off.
“The library,” Victor said proudly, tilting his head toward the small building and offering me his hand. A library? Say no. Stay in the canoe, my training told me. But I climbed out, without spilling into the water.
“I keep ordering books,” he said, palms up, as if apologizing. “I know, you’re thinking—a library, out here in the middle of nowhere.” He smiled, then looked away boyishly. “People have no idea what wilderness means. They haven’t experienced it. Therefore, they don’t know how deeply they need it, and I don’t mean just for physical health.” He thumped the side of his head with his forefinger. “This kind, especially.”
I left the slate board in the canoe and stepped across the plank that connected the floating dock to the shore. Lichen clung to the rocky shore in pale yellows, greens, and blues. A white-throated sparrow seemed to sing—I’m somebody, somebody, somebody—from overhanging branches, its song promising yet melancholy.
Victor cleared his throat, ran his hand back through his sandy curls. “I was diagnosed with scarlet fever and a bad heart several years back,” he said. “I was starting at Harvard—only sixteen—admittedly, one of the younger students,” he added. “The doctors said that I’d benefit from summers in the wilderness. When I finished my degree in landscape architecture, Mother and I ended up here.”
I glanced around and breathed out a sigh in relief. If his mother was here, then there was no scandal. If Aasta and Hans or the Worthingtons questioned me, I would have to bend the truth and say I would only have gone to Falcon Island under such circumstances.
“She’s in Red Wing now,” he said. “Visiting friends.”
“Oh.” A tremble tiptoed down the small of my lower back.
He stepped onto a rocky path, and at a distance I followed. “I’ve ordered thousands of books and had them shipped here. I have all the reading and learning here that I could ever hope for. And just like a goose in the fall that doesn’t know to leave when the first freeze strikes, I just stay on and on.” He nodded toward a shed filled with neatly stacked and split wood. Embedded in a stump, an ax took a temporary rest. “Only, I didn’t freeze in the ice.” His eyes twinkled like sunlight on water.
Ahead through birch and pine trees stood a two-story cabin with countless paned windows. A screen porch wrapped around one side. Two wicker rocking chairs sat on the other side’s veranda. A stone chimney clung to one side of the structure. The doorframes, steps, and window frames were painted spruce green and rusty orange.
But I stopped. I couldn’t follow him into his home—alone. All at once I knew that I was risking too much. And though everything about Victor put me at ease, I’d heard stories of what could happen. I lifted my skirts, turned briskly in the path, and cleared my throat in an Elizabeth Worthington sort of way to let him know that I was heading back.
But before reaching the dock, I turned to the library. I had to take a quick glance inside. So many books in such an unlikely place as this. The squat building sat on my left, astride the rocky ledge above the inlet.
“Sadie?” Victor called from a distance, as if surprised I hadn’t followed him.
I pushed open the library’s heavy wooden door, and then the screen door, and was met with the papery smell of hundreds of books. From floor to ceiling, books lined the walls. A table in the middle held one large book with gilded edges: Leaves of Grass. I turned its pages, turned to the illustration of a nude man and woman. . . .
The door yawned on its hinges. Silhouetted against the western sun, Victor pressed one hand against the doorframe, potentially trapping me. “Ah, Whitman. One of my favorites,” he said.
I felt my face burn. Embarrassment crept like a cat up my neck, licked my ears, and settled across my shoulders. “Yes,” I whispered. My lips on fire with that single word, my throat scalded with self-awareness.
Victor dropped his arms to his sides, tilting his head in bewilderment. Then he crossed his arms and studied me. “You have me confused. Perplexed.” He pointed to the canoe just yards below the library and tied up to the dock. He didn’t look at me as he talked. “You carry a slate board. You pretend that you can’t speak. I’ve played along with you, and now you start talking.” He drew a sharp breath.
I wanted to explain. I wasn’t playing games. I wanted to tell him—but tell him what? Why I’d said my first words in the past two days in more than a decade? I didn’t know why! But I knew it must have something to do with finding the photographs and stirring up the past. My stomach danced and twisted, tumbled and twirled until I feared I would throw up on Whitman’s lovely book.
I forced my way past him out of the library and into the safety of the sunlight. But a thin, sour liquid spilled into my mouth, and my stomach ratcheted upward in my chest. I barely made it to the edge of the dock before I lost my composure.
After kneeling on the edge of the dock and rinsing my mouth with lake water, I sat back, arms wrapped around my knees. I stared at the water.
“Time to go,” Victor said. He untied the canoe and I climbed into the bow. I held the slate board in my hands, wanting to write an essay to clearly explain my inexplicable behavior. But how could I explain anything? The past few days had turned me inside out. I was like a garter snake, working off an old, dry skin, unrolling it like a sock as I slithered forward, temporarily blinded, but moving toward what, I had no idea.
My throat was burning with emotion as I sat in his canoe. Victor kept up a steady, determined pace, and I felt stupid and vulnerable and completely confused. I would return, head to my room, and hide for the rest of my life. I was a freak and should be a feature act in a circus show. How could I possibly go my whole life—or since I was five—and not speak? How could I then, in only two days, start spilling words? I squeezed back tears. And here I’d been given a chance at friendship, a chance to escape my world, and I’d ruined it—with one word.
When the canoe touched the Worthington’s dock, I yanked my skirts above my knees—Oh, bother with ladylike behavior!—and scrambled onto the dock. Without so much as turning to wave good-bye, I ran up the steps and concrete sidewalk and disappeared inside, hoping Victor Guttenberg would never have to set eyes on me again.
Chapter 9
“Sadie Rose!” Aasta said, jumping up from Mrs. Worthington’s wicker rocker. She blinked awake from an obvious nap.
“Where have you been? And what’s wrong?” she asked, tucking loose hairs back into her crisscrossed braids. “I was just cooling down here, then you come crying. Did he—did he harm you?”
She pointed to the canoe setting off into the bay, then shook her finger at me. “Mr. Worthington is not one to stand by and do nothing. If you were harmed in any way, he will do something about it. You can be sure. And you bet my Hans, he will be mighty angry, too.” She smacked her fist into her hand. “He’ll do that, he will.”
Tears spilled. “No, Aasta. He didn’t hurt me!” I pressed past her and headed straight upstairs for a rib-racking cry.
“With your head pains again,” Aasta called up the s
tairs after me, “you should be staying in the bed—not running around! I let you go to creamery, but that doesn’t mean I open the gates wide. You best rest now, then.”
The cage walls of my bedroom closed in around me. I wanted to make my own decisions, not be ordered around. I ached to be free and have a life of my own. It was as if I was always bowing down with gratitude for being allowed to breathe, bowing down in deference that someone had given me food and clothing.
And alongside those feelings, I felt like a child learning to walk. Learning to speak.
All night, I was awake. I spent hours studying the photographs of my real mother. I sat with them at the vanity, then put them in the drawer only to take them out again a short time later. I stretched across my four-poster bed and spread the images out on the quilt. If Mama hadn’t died, where would my life be now? I wondered if I, too, would be working as one of “the girls.” A madam. A lady of the street. A red skirt or clipper—terms that had faded. But one term would never change.
Prostitute.
I undressed before my mirror.
I wondered as I studied my full breasts and pink nipples, the dimples above my backside, the navel. This body was mine, and I appreciated the way it had changed from a girl to a woman in just the past few years. Though I didn’t at all enjoy monthly menses—rubber belts, cotton pads, and the deep, aching cramps—it was still my body. What if I had no other choice but to rent it out for use? To make money by allowing anyone who had the right coins or bills to do with me as they wished?
I looked at the photographs. My mother had been a beautiful woman. Surely she must have had other options.
“Why, Mama?” I whispered.
Why did you accept this as work? Why didn’t you find a different way? She must not have thought she had other options. And did I? Didn’t I have to stay under the roof of the Worthingtons, doing as they requested, acting like their pretend-daughter, waiting for the day when they would tell me to leave? Did I have options? I didn’t have money of my own. I didn’t have skills, other than playing the piano, reading, and occasionally painting. Who would pay me for these abilities? If I were kicked out, within days I would have to consider whatever employment I could find to put food in my belly.
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