The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  This is what Seattle will be like with them in it. With us in it.

  “Nell’s told us about you,” Ida says warmly. “Flora, too. It’s a shame you’re stuck minding your brother all the time. Come sit by me and I’ll deal you in.”

  Ida and Flora and Julia Hood arrange themselves on the floor on the other edges of the blanket. Flora hands me a steaming mug of watered-down tea from a little paraffin burner on a table near a fire bucket sloshing with seawater. I lay my carpetbag aside to take it.

  “Say, your stepmother’s the snippy one, right?” Julia asks.

  “The one with her nose in the air all the time, with the fancy ideas about marrying a banker?” asks Sarah Robinson.

  “Ohhhh, her.” Mary Anne Gifford rolls her eyes. “The one who’s dead set on joining us everywhere we go. As if we wouldn’t notice. As if the officers don’t notice.”

  I sigh. “That’s her.”

  Sarah puts a hand on mine. “Please tell her she’s not like us and she’s not fooling anyone. I don’t like hearing the officers poke fun at her. It’s beastly.”

  Mr. Vane and the rest are unfailingly polite to Mrs. D. At least, they are to her face.

  People in Lowell were always nice to my face.

  “Can we talk about something else?” I ask.

  “Absolutely.” Ida smiles and deals the cards. “Since you’ve come to discuss teaching, we’d best have a demonstration. Pay attention, Jane.” She winks. “I just might ask you to recite.”

  They teach me how to hold cards. They teach me the different suits. They teach me the rules of whist. They are patient and cheerful, and no one mocks me when I mistake spades for clubs or play out of turn.

  If this were school, I’d swear my mind was getting broader.

  In whist, you win by matching suits and taking tricks. You have to be sneaky sometimes and play a lower card to fool your opponent into thinking it’s your highest one. You have to make a plan that doesn’t seem to go anywhere when you’re making it, but by the end of the hand, things turn out just the way you wanted.

  Whist is mostly about being patient, especially when you don’t see anything good come of what you’re doing right away. Especially when you lose a lot at the beginning. When you lose at the beginning, mostly you’re setting up to win at the end.

  9

  A WEEK AFTER WE ROUND Cape Horn, the ship awakens to a sky that’s blue and glorious. Instead of playing whist, we all go out on the promenade deck to soak up some sun. Mr. Conant is already there, sketching the shoreline. We’re nearing Lota, a little town in Chile where we’ll take on coal and spend a few days like we did in Rio.

  One of the deckhands starts shouting, and sure enough, there are sails in the distance.

  “Maybe she’ll be an American man-o’-war,” Nell muses. “I wouldn’t mind another shipful of officers.”

  “Her flag is yellow and red,” I reply. “Not ours. Why is there smoke coming from her?”

  Mr. Conant barely glances over his reporter pad. “She’s flying Spanish colors, my dear, and what you’re seeing is a smoke signal.”

  “It’s like a pillar. Are they all right?”

  “What the devil?” He fumbles the pad as he whips a hand to his eyes. “Damnation. Her gunports are all open!”

  There’s a faint, faraway crack, then a rush-whistle that gets louder by the moment until something big and hard hits the water just off the bow and sends up a menacing spray.

  I gape at Mr. Conant. “Are they firing on us? Was that a cannonball?”

  “Mama,” Flora whispers, and she’s off like a rabbit toward the starboard ladder.

  “You girls should go below too.” Mr. Conant starts scribbling on his reporter pad.

  Ida grabs Julia and Sarah, and they rush after the others. Nell holds the rail with one hand and my forearm with the other, and she grips hard. There’s no way I’m leaving her here alone.

  Another faraway crack, then a different sound—shink-shink-shink—and two cannonballs chained together come rattling along the port side right under me.

  “W-why are the Spanish firing on us?” I manage. “We’re not at war with them.”

  “No,” Mr. Conant replies, still writing furiously, “but they are at war with Chile. They must think we’re trying to run the blockade and bring supplies through to the Chileans.”

  There was a blockade during the secession war. Federal ships stopped rebel ships from getting any cotton or messages out, and anyone from getting food and medicine to the rebels. Plenty of vessels got sunk trying to sneak past, often with all hands lost.

  The Spanish man-o’-war is closer now, and our deckhands are reefing the sails. We’re slowing down, but at least there are no more cannonballs.

  Mr. Conant curses. “Stay close, girls. We’re about to be boarded.”

  Nell turns to me and holds up a fist. “If you have to hit a sailor, use your knuckles and aim for his windpipe. Like this. My brother showed me. Guess he was useful for something.”

  I make a fist like Nell’s. I’m not sorry I didn’t hide belowdecks with the others. If something bad is going to happen, I want to see it coming.

  Spanish sailors swarm the Continental. They are nothing like our deckhands. They’re a hard lot, all pistols and gap-teeth and raggedy trousers, and they shove and manhandle anyone foolhardy enough to get in their way.

  Half a dozen widows, led by Mrs. D, start shrieking from where they’ve barricaded themselves in the ladies’ cabin. She has a voice like a cat with a bellyache and I would know it anywhere.

  Mr. Conant shoves his reporter pad into his coat pocket and holds his hands up in surrender. I do the same, and several Spanish sailors laugh at me. Nell presses her shoulder against mine, her fist at her side. She looks fierce and sturdy, like I wish I felt.

  The older girls are openly weeping near the foremast. They don’t ever come to whist, so I know them only by name, but the way they’re carrying on, you’d think the Spanish are roasting them alive. Mr. Mercer is trying to comfort them, since our captain told him to hush his mouth and say nothing to the Spanish commander if he knew what was good for him.

  A Spanish officer spends a long time talking to our captain and reviewing the ship’s papers. The captain even has Nell and Ida and Libbie meet the officer to prove we’re a passenger ship full of seamstresses and schoolteachers.

  The officer finally accepts that we ran the blockade purely by mischance and really aren’t helping the Chileans. Then he gives us leave to go to Lota to get coal and water, but he follows us all the way with his gunports open.

  Mr. Vane is given the task of accounting for every person on the Continental and assuring them we are not prisoners of the Spanish Crown. Lots of people hid in their staterooms, and the Wakeman boys were down in the boiler room with the three engineers, ready with big, oily wrenches to club any Spaniards who tried to seize it.

  By suppertime, the girls are all making jokes and laughing about the misunderstanding. They’re saying things like The newspapers will refuse to print a tale this tall and Does this mean we’re combat veterans? Ida tells the others how Nell was the picture of brass—chin up, eyes steady, even though the Spanish officer was hulking over them like an ogre.

  Nell, happily squeezed between Libbie and Julia, tells everyone she’d never have had such brass without me there at her shoulder. The card-room girls all lift their glasses of ship’s beer and toast me from their table across the saloon.

  I toast them in return with my tea, then I make a fist under the table. I don’t ever want to hit anyone, but I like knowing that I could if I have to.

  Every other Saturday, Miss Gower hands Mrs. D a two-dollar bill for my wages. She always does it in the saloon just before a meal so I can see her do it.

  Each time, I hold my breath. Each time, Mrs. D smiles that pointy smile and holds her hand out, and Miss Gower makes a show of letting the money flutter onto her palm.

  Neither of them ever says a word.

  The gir
ls have all sworn themselves to secrecy. They’re even helping me make socks; whoever is sitting out a hand knits a few rows or binds off or turns a heel.

  Nell swears I could make my fortune in a San Francisco card room, because she can never tell when I’m bluffing. Must be all those years of saying yes, ma’am to Mrs. D when I had Opinions I knew better than to share.

  Ida invents terms like rational schoolroom and curriculum learning for me to repeat back to Mrs. D each night at supper.

  While we’re on the Galápagos Islands, Flora and I catch Mr. Conant, the reporter, spying on the older girls as they splash in an inlet without their shoes and stockings. He swears he was merely collecting shells and happened upon them by accident, but he gives us each a thumb-sized glass bead from Rio after we promise not to tell. Flora stitches hers onto her reticule, but I slip mine in my pocket alongside my lucky hopscotch stone.

  In less than a month we’ll arrive in Washington Territory, and I’m about as far from Lowell as a girl like me can get.

  I’m finally ready to arrive.

  The whole ship’s company cheers when the captain announces we’ve reached San Francisco, but it takes us half a day to even get near the city. The strait leading into the bay is perilous to navigate, so the Continental must follow a pilot. Mr. Vane spends a whole day in a rowboat finding a pilot who charges a rate that isn’t completely ruinous.

  San Francisco itself is unsightly, like a smear of mud you’d scrape off your shoe. Mr. Conant explains there was an earthquake here not a year ago and people are still rebuilding from it. To say nothing of the fires that keep leveling a town made mostly of shacks and canvas.

  I’m glad we’re not staying long.

  We anchor late, so no one goes into town. Mr. Mercer and the captain are both absent from supper. The widows all have Opinions on what might be going on, but I just eat two helpings of beans and work out how to ask Mrs. D if I might join Flora and Nell and Mrs. Pearson on the first rowboat trip into San Francisco tomorrow.

  At breakfast the captain rises from his place at the front table. “Your attention, please! By eight bells of the forenoon watch—that’s twelve noon to you landsmen—all passengers are to gather with their belongings on the promenade deck. You will be taken to Folsom Wharf by rowboat and deposited there along with your baggage.”

  “We’re not disembarking here,” Mrs. Pearson says, and several others loudly agree. “We’re bound for Washington Territory. We’ve all paid our passage.”

  The captain’s eyes narrow. “You’ve paid your passage to San Francisco. This ship goes no further. I’ve had it with Asa Mercer and his endless parade of folly.”

  I suck in a harsh, sudden breath that makes Jer turn worried eyes up at me, porridge all over his face and front.

  “Now, wait just a blessed minute!” Mrs. Grinold rises with her fists tight, as if she took lessons from Nell. “Mr. Mercer would never allow this. He made us a promise.”

  Mr. Mercer stands up. He’s not sitting at the captain’s table anymore, and he looks like he hasn’t slept since Rio. “Everything is in hand. Please do as the captain says, and when you land, proceed to either the Fremont House Hotel or the International Hotel. It might be a few days, but I will arrange the necessary transportation to Seattle. If you’re not in one of those hotels, I can’t promise I’ll be able to find you with particulars.”

  All around me, grown-ups are muttering, and some are using bad words.

  “I never believed the papers when they said those awful things about him. Guess I should have.”

  “I’m not going another step. At least San Francisco has some semblance of civilization. If we keep following this madman, who knows where we might end up.”

  “Those girls. Poor dears.”

  No. He promised. Mr. Mercer said there’d be particulars. He might be a fuss-and-feathers dandy who folds his drawers, but he’s not a scoundrel.

  “Jane, finish your breakfast and then go pack our trunk,” Mrs. D says quietly. “Take Jer with you. Miss Gower won’t expect you today.”

  Mrs. D doesn’t even wait for a yes, ma’am. She stands up and straightens her hat and plows toward the crowd of women surrounding Mr. Mercer and stabbing angry fingers at him.

  I kind of want to join her.

  Jer starts crying. He’s usually good-natured, but he can tell something’s wrong. I have to carry him flailing all the way down to the stateroom and leave him sobbing on the bottom bunk while I pack.

  I kind of want to join him, too.

  Once the trunk’s all ready, I climb up to my top bunk and collect my own carpetbag. I know I should comfort Jer, but I pull out Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet with all my improvements and press it to my cheek for a long, long moment before I do.

  10

  FOLSOM WHARF IS CROWDED WITH men. Not gentlemen, either. These men are tattered and dirty, like the beggars back in Lowell who’d come around in what was left of their army uniforms, barefoot, bareheaded, and smelling like a privy in July. They are yelling things that actually make Mrs. D put her hands over my ears.

  I hold Jer tight so he doesn’t fall out of the rowboat trying to get the seagulls that are winging everywhere. Miss Gower mutters that the whole scene is sordid while holding her reticule like a club.

  There are also policemen with cudgels on the wharf. They beat and menace the crowd enough that the sailor at the oars can guide our boat to the dock. Mr. Vane steps out of the rowboat, takes one look at the blur of ruffians and flashing cudgels, and says he’ll accompany us to the hotel.

  The way is uphill, and we have to walk every step of it—no carriages or cabmen here—over roads more mud than dirt and littered with horse apples. There’s a crowd of men the whole way as if we’re some sort of parade, and there are mutters of schoolma’ams and tender maidens and something about a cargo of petticoats that makes me scowl.

  My friends are not cargo. They are more than their undergarments.

  The International Hotel is a white-painted building set into a hillside. There are more men spread in two wide aprons on either side of the hotel door, pushing and jostling. They’re bushy and uncombed, and they wear blue work trousers and clodhopper boots like it’s a uniform.

  “Walk past them,” Mr. Vane says through his teeth. “They won’t hurt you.”

  They don’t seem to mean us harm, though. They keep shouting things like Marry me! and I’m worth a thousand in gold!

  As if that will tempt us when we’re bound for the Queen City of King County.

  Girls arrive in twos and threes, escorted by officers from the ship, and we all wait in the parlor for Mr. Mercer’s particulars. Nell arrives with Ida and Sarah, and we crowd into a window seat while Ida breathlessly relates the latest rumors about Mr. Mercer, and Jer strings up Hoss with Nell’s ribbons.

  Washington Territory is a dismal place where it does nothing but rain! Beardy faces crowd the windows, and big, square hands wave frantically for our attention. Stay here in California where you’ll see the sun every day!

  It’s a low trick, making up stories to try to get us to stay. It’s a good thing I’ve read Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet back to front, so I can see through their pitiful lies.

  An anxious week later Mr. Mercer comes by the hotel and gives us particulars. Two sailing vessels will be leaving for Washington Territory over the next several days. Each of them will take half the passengers to Port Townsend, and from there, lumber schooners will take us in dozens to Seattle.

  The captains of the Scotland and the Huntsville have been well compensated to assist all passengers in reaching Seattle without incident, regardless of whether Mr. Mercer is present on board to direct them. We are to do as the captains bid us and absolutely not worry about a thing.

  Nell harrumphs at that part, but she is not one of the three dozen of the ship’s company who have decided to stay in San Francisco. Bad enough that Flora will soon be away to her lighthouse. Losing Nell to San Francisco would have been like Lowell all over again.


  On the day before the first vessel departs, Nell and Flora arrange a social in the parlor of the International Hotel. Mrs. D says I might go, and Mrs. Pollard is happy for Jer to play with Jimmie Lincoln all afternoon.

  The girls gather around Annie Miller’s piano, which was painstakingly hauled by long-suffering deckhands all the way to the hotel. Nell and Flora are sipping lemonade near the window. They’re both leaving tomorrow on the Scotland, and even though I’ll see Nell again in Seattle, Flora will be going to her lighthouse straight from Port Townsend.

  I’ll probably never see her again.

  “. . . Georgie tells me Whidbey Island is nothing like Seattle,” Flora is saying, “except for the Indians, and—”

  “Indians?” I repeat.

  Back in Lowell, and New York, too, newspapers were full of stories of the wars with Indians out on the plains where the covered wagons were trying to cross.

  “Well, yes,” Flora replies, like I’m missing something obvious. “Indians live around Seattle, lots of them, even though they’re supposed to be on reservations. That’s what the big treaty was about. But on the reservations there’s nothing for them to do, and they go hungry. There’s more than enough work to go around in Seattle for white people and Indians both. Not everyone is happy about it, but that’s the way it is.”

  Flora goes on about what Indians near Puget Sound are like, how they fish and gather berries and paddle canoes, and how I shouldn’t be afraid.

  It hadn’t occurred to me to be afraid. Mostly, I’m curious, because there’s not a word about Indians in Mr. Mercer’s pamphlet.

  The social lasts till suppertime. No one wants to be the first to leave the parlor. It’s only when the hotelkeeper stands in the doorway and repeatedly clears his throat that we hug and weep and straggle out in ones and twos.