Measure of Katie Calloway, The: A Novel

by Serena B. Miller

  “What’s wrong?” Ned asked.

  “It’s Harlan.” Her finger at her lips, she motioned for him to be quiet. Her heart thudded against her chest so hard she could hear it drumming in her ears. She nodded toward the man she knew to be her husband—the husband from whom she had stolen money.

  The man stopped to look at something in a display window. His profile was strong and pronounced.

  Except it wasn’t Harlan.

  Harlan’s nose had been chiseled and perfectly formed. This man’s nose was hooked and bulbous. Where Harlan’s jaw had been strong, this man’s was ordinary.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” she whispered.

  “That’s not Harlan,” Ned pointed out, “if that’s who you were thinking.”

  “I know.” Her knees felt weak. “It did look like him, though, didn’t it?” She had to ask: “Didn’t you think it looked like him?”

  She feared the stress of the past two years had made her start seeing things. Was she going to mistake every other man she saw for her husband?

  “Maybe a little.” Ned didn’t sound convinced.

  A high-pitched wail split the air. The eerie sound, following so closely upon the heels of seeing “Harlan,” startled her. The wail was followed by another and then another.

  “What is that?” Ned grasped her hand. “It sounds like someone screaming.”

  “I believe it’s a sawmill. While he was making out our shopping list, Mr. Foster informed me that there are over a hundred operating near here.”

  “Oh,” Ned said as they began to walk again. “It smells different here too, don’t you think?”

  Katie breathed in a lungful of the lake-fresh air. The air did smell different here. Spicy, clean, invigorating. So different from the humid, heavy scent of rotting vegetation that had hung over her decaying home in Georgia.

  “That’s newly cut pine,” she said. “You’re too young to remember, but Father once had some pine trees cut off our farm. I recognize the smell.”

  Ned’s upturned nose sniffed the air with appreciation. “I like it.”

  “I do too.” She had noticed that the same clean, piney scent had also clung to Robert.

  “Is this one of the stores we’re supposed to go in?” Ned asked.

  She stopped and stood back a few feet to read the lettering on the giant building. “Jennison Mercantile. Yes, I believe it is.”

  As they entered the store, she once again checked the long list Robert had given her. It was quite overwhelming. Woolen gloves, boots, woolen stockings, three woolen blankets apiece, woolen underwear, heavy woolen coat . . . heavens! How cold did it get in Michigan, anyway? It appeared that she was going to be spending the next seven months swathed in wool. Her skin itched at the mere thought.

  “Can I help you?” The pretty clerk appeared to be about Katie’s age and had a smile that immediately put her at ease.

  “Yes. I will be cooking for a lumber camp this winter.” Katie felt a measure of pride just saying the words. “It will take me a while to gather everything together.”

  “I’m in no hurry.” The girl gestured toward the well-stocked shelves. “I’ll help you with anything I can.”

  It had been years since Katie had seen so much merchandise in one place. In the front of the store there were bolts of lovely calico in several different patterns. She checked the price—three cents per yard. Very reasonable. It had been so long since she had owned a new dress that she was tempted to buy yards and yards of each color. Outing flannel in many different colors sat beside a wealth of percales. She fingered the material, loving the feel and smell of new cloth.

  This riot of colors after the grayness of the past few years was a salve to her soul.

  Embroidery threads, different kinds of laces, multicolored silk and taffeta ribbons, all displayed like jewels on wooden spools. She stared at them, in awe that there were still so many colors in the world.

  “Were you looking for embroidery supplies?” the clerk asked. “We have some new designs in the back.”

  “No, no,” Katie said. “I was just admiring your stock. I’m afraid I won’t have time for embroidery.”

  She noticed heavy black hosiery for only ten cents a pair. It would be wise, she decided, to purchase several. She could double up for warmth.

  “We have children’s shoes with copper toes to keep them from wearing out,” the clerk said. “And we have a nice selection of handkerchiefs—only five cents each, not to mention these lovely calf-skin women’s gloves.”

  Katie ran a finger over the gloves. They were as soft as butter. But perhaps not practical for someone who would be cooking for a lumber camp.

  There were ready-made flannel nightgowns for sale as well as underwear in red and white flannel. Fleece-lined men’s coats, suspenders, and hats. Trunks of different sizes and shapes.

  The choices dazzled Katie. She was looking through some woolen blankets when Ned tugged on her sleeve.

  “Can I look at the knives now?”

  Katie motioned to the clerk. “My brother would like to see your pocketknife selection. Do you mind?”

  The girl brought out a display case, which captured Ned’s rapt attention.

  As Katie sorted through the blankets, the bell over the door rang. She looked up to see Delia entering. The clerk glanced in Delia’s direction, frowned, turned her back, and began discussing the knife display with Ned with much more interest than she had previously shown.

  Delia sauntered over to Katie. “Are you really going out to the pineries?”

  Katie had hoped never to see this woman again, but her mother had taught her to be polite under all circumstances, regardless of people’s occupations. She supposed her mother’s training still applied—even with someone like Delia.

  “I am.”

  The fancy woman winked. “Not going to take me up on my offer, then?”

  “Th-thanks.” Katie didn’t want to have this conversation with Delia. “But no.”

  “I understand.” Delia shrugged and then ran a hand over the woolen blankets. “Would you mind some advice?”

  “What kind?” It came out sounding more suspicious than she intended.

  “Oh, honey. Don’t worry. I know lots of things that won’t offend your delicate ears. For instance, all this wool will itch a tender-skinned redhead like you half to death. You’d better purchase some thick cotton long johns to protect your skin, or you’ll never make it through the winter.”

  That made sense.

  “And don’t forget to take plenty of flannel . . .” Delia glanced at Ned and lowered her voice. “Red might be your best choice. You know . . . for pads.”

  “Pads?”

  “There’s no privacy in a camp. The men will be seeing your most private laundry. If you take enough cloth, you can just burn it in your stove each month. Or if you need, you can hang it on the line with the rest of the laundry without announcing to the camp that it’s your time of the month. I’d take enough to last for all winter, if I were you.”

  “I will.” Katie was struck by the sheer common sense of Delia’s suggestion. “Thank you so much.”

  Katie glanced over at Ned. He appeared to have narrowed his choices down to two favorites and was now chewing his lower lip trying to decide.

  “And don’t forget a chamber pot,” Delia said. “As cold as it gets, you’ll definitely need that.”

  “Mr. Foster said I would have my own private privy.”

  “That’s nice of him,” Delia purred. “But you’ll freeze your tail off going to the outhouse at night in the middle of January.”

  “Of course.” Katie was again grateful for Delia’s suggestion. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “You really are a lamb, aren’t you?” Delia looked at her with pity. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “Not really.” Katie was already intimidated enough by the need to outfit Ned and herself on such short notice. She didn’t need someone pointing out her ignorance.
She lifted her chin in defiance. “But I do know how to cook.”

  “Oh, you’ll cook, all right.” Delia laughed. “You’ll cook until you can’t stand up. You’ll cook until you wish you had never seen a skillet or a stove.” She glanced over her shoulder at the salesclerk. “Won’t she, Julia?”

  The clerk turned away without speaking and began to vigorously dust shelves. Delia glanced at the clerk’s rigid back. Her smile faltered, and her face fell into world-weary creases. In spite of the expensive jewelry glinting at her ears and throat, Katie caught a glimpse of the desperate life the older woman had lived.

  “Julia here used to work for me, you know,” Delia said, a little too loudly. “I took her in when she was sick. Nursed her back to health.” She straightened her spine, as though sloughing off the deliberate slight. “Now she acts like she don’t know me.”

  “I appreciate your help.” Katie was uncomfortable with the animosity filling the room. “Thank you.”

  “Robert Foster is one of the better operators to work for.” Delia turned her attention back to Katie. “He runs a clean camp. But if you find out that you can’t make it out in the woods, come to my place on Water Street and I’ll give you a job. There’s another girl at my place who looks a lot like you. Same coloring. She does real well for herself.”

  “I won’t be working for you, Delia.”

  “There’s not many options for a woman who’s alone.” Delia patted her on the cheek. “You might be real glad to know old Delia before it’s all over.”

  She shot a venomous glance at the salesclerk before swishing out. The door jangled, and then a strained silence descended upon the store.

  “I wish we could keep her from coming in here,” the salesclerk said. “I don’t care how desperate you get, take my advice and don’t you go near that place of hers.”

  Katie cast a glance at Ned, who was looking at some small axes over in a corner of the hardware section. She hoped the little boy hadn’t picked up on their conversation.

  “Is it true you worked for her?”

  “Not like she means.” The salesclerk blushed. “I helped out by cooking and cleaning until I could get on my feet. That section of Water Street is called ‘Hell’s Half Mile’ and with good reason—sometimes loggers go in there and they don’t come out alive. They have secret tunnels beneath the place where Delia and her girls work. It’s called the Catacombs, and those tunnels lead down to the lake.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “For one thing—the better to dispose of a body.”

  “You’re not serious!”

  “Those loggers come in from the woods with a nice fat payroll in their pocket. Sometimes the bartender will put something in a shanty boy’s drink to make him pass out. Then the girls steal his money and he wakes up back out on the street—if he’s lucky.”

  “Delia does this?”

  “She’s not as bad as the others, but she’s definitely no saint.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone do anything about it?”

  “I can’t prove it”—the girl looked over her shoulder—“but I think even the sheriff is in on it. No one is ever arrested for anything that goes on in the Catacombs.”

  Katie shook her head in dismay. There was nothing she could do about the situation, and time was rushing by. She still had much shopping to do, or she would be going into the woods even more unprepared than she already was.

  “I guess I’ll be needing a bolt of red flannel,” Katie said, “and a chamber pot. And some cotton blankets and long johns.” She paused for a moment, considering the display of items. “I’d better go ahead and buy one of those trunks too.”

  “Of course.” The girl was suddenly all business, as though nothing of importance had been said between them. “I’ll start writing things up.”

  Ned had been so preoccupied with his pocketknife that he had missed the entire conversation, for which Katie was grateful. He clicked the selected knife open and shut. “See?” he asked. “It’s like the one Papa used to have.”

  “Yes, it is. Good choice.”

  She hoped that her own choice in coming to this wild town was as good.

  5

  We have big swamps covered with brakes

  and they’re alive with rattlesnakes.

  They lie awake, do all they can

  to bite the folks of Michigan.

  “Don’t Come to Michigan”

  —1800s shanty song

  October 7, 1867

  The wagon lurched over the rough road, nearly unseating Robert’s new cook. She held onto the seat with one hand and grasped her brother’s shirt with the other as though to protect Ned from falling overboard.

  But she didn’t complain.

  In fact, she hadn’t complained about anything—not the rough road, nor the beans and hardtack from which they had made their few meals. She hadn’t even complained about the fact that all Jigger had done so far was scowl, stare at her, and spit tobacco juice.

  Robert had half a mind to fire the old man, except Jigger had been feeding shanty boys ever since the Maine woods—when all the camps consisted of were a primitive shanty in which the men slept, cooked, and ate. Jigger’s only “stove” for most of his working life had been nothing more than a huge fire pit of sand placed in the middle of the sleeping shanty upon which he had roasted meat on spits and baked everything from biscuits to pies to gallons of baked beans in giant cast-iron Dutch ovens that he buried in the hot sand.

  Things were much more modern now. Jigger complained that younger camp cooks had gone soft because of all the modern conveniences. He mourned the fact that no one knew how to “cook in the sand” anymore. But it was 1867, the Civil War was over, and times were changing. The country—at least the North—was experiencing some prosperity. With amusement, Robert noticed that Jigger didn’t refuse to use the wood cookstove they had lugged into camp last spring. In fact, it seemed to have become Jigger’s pride and joy.

  Unfortunately, Jigger had gotten to an age when Robert doubted the man’s arm would ever heal enough to be a force in the cookhouse. And he feared that Jigger was getting slack in the cleanliness department too. It would take only one partially chewed wad of tobacco discovered in a pot of stew to send some of the men scurrying off to a better camp. Of course, there were others who would probably dredge it out and not care.

  A woman cook would be a nice change. She would bring her own standards to the cook shanty and keep Jigger on his toes. The fact that she was pleasant to look at didn’t hurt one bit.

  The shanty boys were a breed all to themselves and they had their own strict code of ethics. Hellions when they descended upon a town after the river drive was over, they managed to be gentlemen to the women whom they deemed respectable. He predicted that they would treat Katie Smith like a lady, and if the rest of her cooking was as tasty as the pie he had sampled, she would be downright revered.

  If they didn’t treat her with respect, they wouldn’t have a job.

  It had been a rough trip, but nothing Robert hadn’t expected. He made a mental note to have a few swampers, men with axes and grub hoes, level some of the worst places on the tote road. With all the food the men put down, he would need several more wagonloads of supplies before winter.

  His lumberman’s eye expertly surveyed the forest through which they were traveling. Old growth oak and hickory lifted lofty branches high above their heads. Most of the multicolored leaves had fallen, providing a damp, variegated carpet over which the hooves of Robert’s horse trampled.

  The hardwood forests were beautiful but useless except as firewood for the camps. The gold that he and other lumbermen craved was pine—the ancient white pine that soared as high as two hundred feet and were often as thick as six feet in diameter at the base. The finest pine the world had ever seen had been recently discovered right here in Saginaw Valley.

  It was only the white pine logs that floated down the rivers as buoyant as corks. It was only the beautiful, knotless white pine t
hat cut like butter when fed to the hungry saws waiting at the mouth of the Saginaw River. It was white pine that was rebuilding the nation as Civil War veterans returned to jobs and homes and reconstructed their lives.

  With limitless white pine forests spreading across hundreds of thousands of acres of Michigan—no one wanted to take the time to cut and drag out the hardwoods. The oaks, maples, and hickory trees were too heavy to float down the rivers. The dense logs dragged along the bottom, created logjams, and caused problems at the mills.

  White pine was king.

  The 680-acre section he owned would keep his camp occupied for the rest of this winter if he could keep the men fed, healthy, and content enough to stay with him. Hopefully, he would have enough profit left at the end of this coming spring’s log drive to purchase logging rights to another section or two. The government charged $1.25 per acre for the land upon which the magnificent pines stood. It was hard to lose money at rates like that—but when you were a small operator with a lot of overhead, it was more of a struggle.

  Again he glanced at Katie. Her back was rigid as she rode on the hard bench beside the teamster. He hoped she wouldn’t take one look at his primitive camp and demand to be taken straight back to town. He didn’t think she would. That rod-straight spine impressed him. Had she been a soldier under his command, he would have judged her to be one upon whom he could depend.

  His plan when they reached camp was to have Jigger stay in the bunkhouse with the men and give up his room at the back of the cook’s shanty to Katie and her brother. Robert had been waiting for the right moment to break this news. It would not sit well with the old cook.

  “I’m sorry,” Katie called out. “But could we please stop for a moment?”

  They were the first words she had spoken for the past three hours.

  “Stop the mules,” Robert commanded as he reined back his horse.

  Sam, the teamster, silently managed to make his mules come to a full stop, but Robert knew it was a struggle for the man. Like most teamsters, Sam could cuss out a team for a solid half hour without using the same four-letter word twice.