by June Hutton
I left a stack of papers behind the bar of The Bombay Room, as arranged. It was empty. Next, the opera tent. I left a bundle on the dressing table.
I dropped several copies through the mail slot of the bank’s double doors.
We had fulfilled our part of the deal, the bank, at least, would be pleased. But with September over, now, what next? I came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street. I had never thought beyond this deadline. The money from Morris had paid supplies and wages and reimbursed the bank, leaving but a few dollars. Had I simply earned the right to keep the business and borrow yet more money?
Up ahead I saw Meena, and I ran, calling to her.
Lila! she said, turning to greet me. Thank goodness you must help me.
What’s going on? Where is everyone?
I don’t know, she said, but I need your help.
I’ve got just a few more copies to deliver.
It can wait, she said. I’ll explain.
She hooked my arm in hers and yanked me off Zero and down two rows of metal shacks that were the miners’ quarters. Three shacks in, she took my canvas sacks and handed me the bucket.
Fill it. The cleanest water you can find. And hurry!
She ducked into the doorway. The very foul-looking sludge of a stream that I’d written about slid past the shacks. Just ahead was a tap coming out the back of either The Saloon or the shop next to it, the taxi garage. It would be the same grey water that flowed into my bathtub, but it would have to do. I filled the bucket and counted the doors back to the third shack.
Inside, dark as you would expect a tin shack to be. Against the far wall, that same girl from the mine who had fought with the women from The Saloon. She was on her back on a cot, that same gaping dress yanked up, a gruesome view of a sea creature opening up between her legs.
I felt the horror inch across my face as Meena watched me.
She isn’t due for another three months, she said. I’m the closest we have to a midwife, here. Not much call for it. Put the bucket on the stove, over there. We need it hot.
What about Doctor? Can he help?
Her eyes smiled until I remembered.
Perhaps later, if any stitching is needed.
My scar twitched where he’d pulled the thread out. And then I recalled the dress he had helped to sew, and had then delivered, and how he made that curious comment about my uncle not liking the general attitude about Lousetowners: For obvious reasons.
He knew my uncle, I told her. Did you?
She didn’t answer. Her slender hand and then her arm up to her elbow had disappeared inside the girl. I lost my footing for a moment.
The look on Meena’s face said something was terribly wrong but she told the girl, Easy now, breathe, I’m just turning the baby around. Head down.
To me she said, I need you to go see Deirdre.
You mean Dee?
I need to borrow back a bottle of medicine. I got it from Mr. Bones—Doctor—and gave it to her. She’ll know what you mean. Hurry.
You mean above The Saloon?
Oh, yes, the matinee is still in progress. Go the back way. No one will see you. Hurry, she repeated. See if she’ll come back with you.
*
I ran across the alley and up the wooden backstairs and knocked at the door, winded, considering as I did that the town and neighbouring Lousetown were too small for a library or a school, yet managed to support a bank and three drinking establishments, one with a whorehouse.
When no one answered the door I grabbed the handle and pushed, sticking only my foot and head into the opening. My eyes were met with a room that pulsed with red wallpaper, lush, burgundy sofas, cream-coloured lampshades on crystal stands, a large carpet with roses on a black background. I was so busy staring I didn’t see a girl approach.
Hello, she said.
It was the one whose shoes were too large, and her eyes were round and sad.
I explained why I was there.
Just a minute, she said. Have a seat.
Before you go, I said, If you don’t mind me asking, are you happy here?
What do you mean?
I mean is this where you want to be, to stay?
Where else could I stay?
No, I said, never mind. Thank you.
The problem was me. I wasn’t putting the question right. I sat on a large sofa, then considered how many liaisons might have occurred there. Swiftly I stood, and moved to a single chair next to a side table, with a vase filled with pale pink roses. Indeed the boudoir stench was everywhere. I sighed deeply. I hadn’t come to terms with those feelings, after all.
Miss?
The girl had returned.
She’ll see you.
And she indicated the second door on her left. I crossed the floor and entered a room as lush as the sitting room, only in copper tones not unlike the dress I never got to wear.
Dee was lying back against cushions on her bed, her legs akimbo beneath a gold satin quilt that climbed to her bare shoulders, sucking on a plum, juice dribbling onto her skin.
Hand me that cloth, she said.
Hello, I replied.
I didn’t want to touch the folded cotton. It swam in a basin of water beside the bed and alluded to other purposes. She had been entertaining a client, and I had interrupted. And most disconcerting of all was another vase of pale pink blooms next to the bowl.
I pinched the edge of the cloth between two ragged fingernails and passed it to her. I’m here on an emergency, I said. Meena sent me.
Meena? She sat upright, cotton in one hand, satin in the other, barely covering her bosom.
She said she gave you a bottle of medicine, and she needs it now.
She looked at me quizzically.
The girl from the mine, she’s giving birth.
Is she! The little tart. Well, I still need it, too. Did Meena tell you that?
I shook my head.
Then let me tell you because it was that deputy from the mine you warned me about. I wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for that—girl. But that was the deal to settle the strike.
I know, I said.
Yes and that filthy scum of a deputy was—well, in an unsatisfied state. He blamed Lousetowners for it. Said they had contaminated us and there was only one thing to do with fish.
She dropped the satin quilt to expose a breast, its nipple bruised the colour of blackberries where it had been pierced with a fish hook.
I felt my stomach rise, my womb throb.
He got his satisfaction, then, she said. I’d never seen a man so quickly satisfied as when he stuck that thing in me. I screamed, God, I screamed, and Suzie, she finally pulled him off me. But we couldn’t pull out the hook. It’s got those things.
Barbs, I said thickly.
She’d closed her robe, but I was still seeing it.
He’s left town, I told her.
I know.
She then reached under the nightstand and brought out a long, silver bottle.
Here. Pour some out into that teacup over there. You can have the rest. Bring it over here, will you?
Encouraged by this sign of generosity, I added, Meena also thought you might come back with me.
Her grip tightened on the bottle and she called the girl a worse term than a sluice box. I had hoped she would show more grace, but it seemed she had grown coarser since we first met in the dress shop. It was the deputy’s doing, though I had a role in creating that strike, in bringing about the confrontation with the girl. I worried she might even change her mind about sharing the medicine.
This, I said to her, taking the bottle by the neck, tugging it gently, this alone is generous of you, considering.
And I nodded toward her bruised nipple.
Yes, it is, she agreed, and let go.
I poured some of the cloudy liquid into the cup, pushed it towards her
, and dropped the bottle into my pocket. I asked her then what I had been anxious to ask since I saw the pale blossoms.
Who, from Lousetown? And I pointed my chin at the vase.
Her eyes narrowed for a minute.
I heard there was a fuss about your printer, she said. I can’t speak for the other girls, but he ain’t one of mine.
I breathed out, not aware until then that I had been holding my breath.
I’m sorry about that, and I nodded again at her breast.
I’m stuck with it, I guess. But it’s healing over. Some of the gents even ask for me because of it. I’m in demand, now.
Her pride in her new notoriety saddened me. Still, I left her boudoir satisfied that at least one man wasn’t asking.
*
I crossed the alley and pushed through the door of the metal hut. Dead silence. And a peculiar smell of meat.
Hello, I called.
In the gloom I finally made out the form of Meena, in the corner, and I crossed the floor to her, silver bottle in my outstretched hand.
Here you are, I said.
She had tipped her chair back and, looking up at the metal ceiling, said, I knew your uncle, yes.
I had forgotten I’d even asked her.
Oh?
Before Marcel, she explained, letting the chair fall forward.
She looked at me until I understood.
The same place I live in, now, she said. Near the café.
I tried to control my face. For obvious reasons. That was what Mr. Bones had meant. To Uncle, Lousetown was Meena. No wonder his room above the press looked so empty. He didn’t live there. I thought of the brass plate on the press. “B” for Bluebell.
He said to me once, It isn’t easy, loving someone from another world. He was thinking of himself as much as me. He was married to his business because he couldn’t bring a woman like Meena home, not to our family, not to Black Mountain. I fumbled for the right response. If Meena thought I was shocked, she was correct. I had always thought I was my uncle’s niece and here was proof: We had both looked for love in Lousetown. Yet it hurt to know that he had not only looked for it but had found it, and I hadn’t. And I wanted to ask her how she could love another man so quickly, a man who was younger, more handsome. Darker. Was that the reason? Would I be replaced as quickly? And I was also thinking, wasn’t it greedy of her to have two when I had none.
The medicine, I said at last, and dropped the bottle into her lap.
Not necessary now. But thank you.
She slipped it into her apron pocket.
Thank goodness she has lost consciousness again, she said. I’ve never seen anything like this. Barely a pound. Put it by the door. Mr. Bones will see to burying it.
She slid a box across the floor. I took it up, and forced myself to look inside. Small, glistening, grey-green.
Malformed, Meena said, like a fish.
Where she saw fins I saw wings, but bug or not, the tiny creature was not a human shape.
Poor child, I said.
Meena nodded sympathetically at the wooden box.
I mean her, I said, and looked at the bed. It’s just as well, I added. She’s in no position to be a mother.
I was seeing that wretched miner, and her with him.
Meena shook her head. She is a mother, already. A little girl and a little boy. Why do you think she does what she does? To feed them.
Where are they now?
Being looked after by others.
I haven’t seen any children here, I said. Just in Lousetown.
They were born somewhere else. But it is curious, you know. I have delivered only a few babies here, and all of them on the Lousetown side. Nothing like this.
I set the box by the door. Already, I was composing headlines: Giving birth/To death
No, it was more than death. Somehow, its natural development had been corrupted. Silver should hear about this. He was the law, and I felt that a law of some sort was being broken.
For the first time since I began working on the paper I realized we needed photographs. I could have used a camera for the airship crash, but I relied instead on my words. This was different. This required more than description. This required proof. I didn’t even know how to begin. How to take photographs, how to make images and how those in turn would be printed onto the newspaper page. I’ve read enough about them to know there is a process, and that big city papers use them, such as that photograph of Shanghai that looked like Lousetown. We needed photographs here. We needed evidence.
Vincent would know.
Parker said Uncle liked things the way they were. But am I not the one who said she was eager for change, who’d otherwise be happy to hand-crank newssheets and let that beast of a press fossilize in front of me? Change would mean a modern press, cameras, darkroom equipment.
The thought of crates of fragile equipment being dropped onto the wharf, though. I’d have to accompany them, safeguard them from being broken. Vincent could join me. A trip out of town. Together. A break from here, I could say. I’d proved my point. I could produce a newspaper.
I could put up a notice just as Uncle might have: Closed for the fall.
I took up my newspaper sacks and left Meena with the girl. Outside, I stood for a moment, frozen, wondering whether to return to the shop or go looking for Silver. Night had fallen. I decided on the sheriff. If Vincent had a camera I’d have seen it by now, and I needed to plan my wording carefully. I needed time for that.
Ten Minutes Past Seven O’Clock
I was walking past the front of The Saloon when I saw Silver inside. The matinée was over, and it seemed a town meeting had been called. He was surrounded by citizens, many of them talking heatedly. I pushed through the swinging doors, dropped the sacks with the rest of my papers onto a table behind me, pulled out my watch to check the time, and sat, taking notes.
I paused to glance up at the staircase and railing that ran above, across the length of the room. Behind that railing was a waiting room in luscious reds, another room in copper-golden satin, and Dee, with that fish hook. I should have taken a few copies of the newspaper to her. I wouldn’t be going back, now.
Chairs had been arranged in rows for the meeting. The tables we had dined upon at the opera last night were shoved to the side. The air rustled with the opening, folding and closing of newspapers. A drone of voices, too, commenting. While no one had been around when I was delivering the papers, these citizens had returned, in the time that I had been with Meena, to pick them up and read them, and bring them here.
One voice rose above the others. Something about diamonds found in the old tunnels.
Another voice shouted, That’s exactly what he told me!
I leaned over to Bugle Boy. What’s going on?
Ha, he quipped and turned so I couldn’t read his notes. You missed it all, he said. It’s almost over.
And with that, still hugging his notes to his chest, he gathered himself up and scuffled out, taking the reek of booze with him.
Someone two rows up cried out, For one hundred dollars you get a piece of the Black Diamond Mines. That’s what he told us. The evidence is everywhere!
I sat up high to see who it was. Ed. He turned and pointed at me. There you are! he said. You wrote all about it in your paper.
Me? I reached back for a paper but I didn’t need to read it. I knew what I’d written and that item was in the last newssheet.
That was in South Africa, I countered, and rose to my feet to defend myself.
In the far corner stood that damn Mr. Mooney, arms folded as he listened.
I was quoting the travel experiences of someone else, I said.
And then I realized my mistake. I hadn’t sought corroboration. I had taken one man’s word for it, and what a wretch of a man. It was an error Uncle never would have made. He would have been very unhappy with me. There was no co
rroborating a story about South Africa, not unless I could track down someone else who had been there. That was unlikely. It was equally unlikely Two-Gun had even been there. The fact is I shouldn’t have run the story at all. I was too eager to fill pages.
My eyes scanned the turned faces, all angry, and tried again. You’re saying diamonds were found here?
That’s what your partner said.
I wished I could deny our connection, but they were reading the very newspaper that announced:
2-Gun Backs Bullet
which meant not only were we partners, but partners because of his money.
Fakes! another added. Courtesy of Two-Gun.
I recalled his great white rump as he rooted around in the dirt. You dropped something, I told him. Yes, and he had been planting it until I came along. A piece of glass, most likely, and not a diamond.
The Saloon had grown hot. The air itself seemed to glow with the rows and rows of reddened faces. Then, one by one, the angry citizens stood, and their faces loomed higher, their voices shouting at once: You owe us! We want our money back! We’ll have you thrown in jail!
And they rushed at me, shaking my own newspaper at me, mouths still open and moving, their words now incomprehensible as each accusation gobbled up the one before.
Surely they were not saying that because of what I wrote—and what they found—what he planted—that I…
And then I realized what they meant and how he had earned the money he gave me. One hundred dollars for a full share. It was their money he gave me. How many of them had bought a share or gone in on one together? How many people in this saloon had been duped into putting their money into his scheme, money that he, in turn, put into my paper? That’s how he backed the Bullet. I should have asked him, but I was too busy planning how to spend it. So busy I never wondered why he wanted to invest in a paper that was struggling. To hide money, why else?
That conniving, corrupting two-faced—he had used me. He used my paper to pull a scam, even used my copy of The Edmonton Journal to hide what he was handing me, an envelope fat with their money. In no time he’d be trying to steal it back. Why else give it to me?
And not a single sign of him since the opera.