by Amy Stewart
“You’re free,” I said, “and you look . . . wonderful.” She did. Her eyes were bright and her tendency to frown had reversed itself, so the corners of her mouth lifted up even when she didn’t mean to smile. Her hair had gone completely white, but it suited her. Strands of it poked out from under her scarf and shone like spun sugar. Even under the weight of her winter coat, she seemed buoyant.
“You can’t know what it’s like to have your liberty taken away, and then to have it restored,” she said.
“I believe I can,” I said. “When I was made a deputy, it was just like that. My liberty had been restored. Or . . . granted, I suppose, for the first time.”
“And now?”
I shrugged. “Look at me.”
“You look the same.”
I don’t know what compelled me to speak to her so forthrightly. The strangeness of coming across her in the snow, so like a dream, made it seem entirely natural for me to say, “I’m back where I was. Three years ago, I was a spinster living on a farm with her two sisters and no prospects. I’m that woman again, only now I’m forty.”
Anna laughed at that. “Forty! What I wouldn’t give to go back to forty and live it again! But I’m free now, and that’s enough. I have my little house and my daughter. The older ones come to visit and soon one of them will be bringing a grandchild. I do as I please. No one ever asks why I’m taking so long in the bath. Charlotte and I can eat nothing but hothouse cucumbers for dinner and no one complains.”
“That’s a fine life,” I said. I meant it. I envied her such contentment.
“You gave me that life,” she said. “But—what are you doing with yours? I read the papers every day and don’t see a word about what New Jersey’s lady deputy is getting up to next.”
All that dazzling whiteness turned to gray around me. “If they print something about it, please tell me. I’d like to know, too.”
Anna slipped one gloved hand into mine. Her touch recalled the day, not too long ago, when I’d put her wrists in handcuffs.
“You’re free, too,” she said. “That’s what I came to tell you, because I suspect you don’t know it. You’re as free as I am.”
“But—”
“That new sheriff didn’t want you at his jail, did he? But he doesn’t decide what you do next. He has nothing to do with the rest of your life. If he did—what a mess you’d have on your hands!”
I had to laugh at that. Imagine: John Courter in charge of my life! He’d ruin everything.
“Don’t sit around and suffer on his account,” she said. “He won’t appreciate it. He won’t even know you’re doing it. You might as well go off and find something grand to do next.”
I felt lighter, all at once, but still I said, “I haven’t any idea what that might be.”
“You will, once you start to look,” she said, and turned to go.
I should’ve invited her back to the house, or offered her a buggy ride to the train station, but as the whole meeting had seemed a mirage, I just watched her drift away, disappearing into the snowy landscape, treading in the same footprints she’d laid down before.
41
i won’t pretend that I rushed right out and found a new occupation for myself, nor, for that matter, did I tell Norma or Fleurette what had occurred, thinking they might not believe me if I informed them that a woman I’d freed from a lunatic asylum appeared mysteriously before me in the snow. But I took Anna’s words to heart, and remembered that it was useless to persist in suffering over what John Courter had done to me. For whom had I been carrying that burden? It wasn’t any use to me: I might as well cast it off.
So I rose a little earlier each day, and tried to make myself useful, and to keep an eye on the papers in hopes that an opportunity would advertise itself. We were still ice-bound, but the light lasted longer in the evenings and the buds were lifting out of the bare tree branches, all of which suggested to me a renewed sense of purpose, even if I could not yet put a name to it.
And then, all at once, I could. The “something grand” that I might do with my life arrived a few weeks later, just as the snow thawed. It came not from an apparition in white at the end of our lane, but in the far more corporeal form of Norma Kopp.
She marched into my bedroom on a morning in early March and flung open the curtains. Fleurette followed on her heels, still in her nightgown, looking wild-eyed and desperate with her hair down around her shoulders. I thought there might’ve been a fire in the barn, so terrified was she.
But there was no fire, only Norma issuing orders.
“Get up,” Norma said. “Pack your things.”
I sank back into bed and squinted at the clock. It was only seven and scarcely daylight outside. “Are you sending me away? Have I been evicted?”
“It’s worse than that,” Fleurette said, hopping into bed with me and sliding her cold feet under the covers. “Tell her we’re not going.”
“Going where?”
Norma never wanted to go anywhere. I couldn’t help but be intrigued.
Norma stood over us, hands on hips, a letter crumpled in her fist. We had no mail delivery that early, but Carolyn had paid a visit late the night before. She must’ve brought the letter. The two of them had sat up until midnight in the kitchen, talking of camps and carts and birds and soldiers, but there was nothing unusual about that, so I hadn’t thought anything of it.
Norma looked like she’d been up for hours. She was dressed in a traveling suit and coat, and had an air about her of a woman with business to attend to.
“There’s to be a Plattsburg camp for women in Chevy Chase. They’ve agreed to let me show my pigeon cart.”
“An Army camp for women? Are you sure?” Suddenly I was wide awake and sitting bolt upright.
Norma snorted. “It’s not an official Army camp. They want nothing to do with it, and neither does the Navy, but the officers’ wives wouldn’t be refused. They organized it themselves, so that women might be prepared to join in the effort. All three of us are going.”
“We are?” The notion of women training for war was something I could hardly believe. I pushed a protesting Fleurette away and slid out of bed.
“Of course,” Norma said, as if it were the only natural course of action for us. “I applied last month, and they accepted all three of us. We’re going for six weeks, to train for war. We leave on Wednesday, and there’s a hundred things to do before we go. Fleurette’s to make our uniforms.”
Fleurette was still quaking under my bed-covers. “I’m not going to camp!” she cried.
Norma turned and glowered at her. She could be quite fierce.
“Of course you are. You may put on one of your little shows if you must, and sew frivolous costumes, but you’re going. Our places are paid for, and we’re expected by the end of the week.”
With that, Norma bustled out. She reminded me of myself, the previous year, when I’d been a woman of purpose. I wrapped a duster around my nightgown and went to follow her.
“But it’s still so cold out!” Fleurette cried. “Couldn’t we go this summer, when there will be fireflies and parties along the river?”
Norma didn’t have to turn around and answer that, because I did.
“We can’t wait until summer,” I said. “Europe is at war and it’s time to do our part. Take my uniforms and see if they can be made over for camp. Did they send Norma a pattern?”
“They did,” Fleurette said gloomily. “They want us in the most dull and unflattering costumes imaginable.”
“That sounds just right,” I said. “Do mine first.”
Historical Notes and Sources
constance, norma, and fleurette kopp were real people. I have tried to depict their lives as accurately as possible in these pages. To do that, I’ve relied on newspaper stories, interviews with family members, and public documents such as census records, birth certificates, property deeds, wills, and so on. To find out more about the real lives of many of these characters, please do visi
t my website (amystewart.com) and read the historical notes in the previous novels in the series, particularly the first one, Girl Waits with Gun.
Tony Hajnacka’s story is true, although it actually happened in April, not September, of 1916. Tony really did try to commit suicide with a broken spoon while in jail, and was sentenced the next day to Morris Plains. The events of that evening, including the dive into the river, all happened as I described them. Sheriff Heath really did try to have a medal awarded to Constance for her bravery, but instead was chastised and had the responsibility for transporting inmates taken away from him. He clearly paid a price for standing by Constance, but his support for her was unwavering.
I know less about Anna Kayser’s case. Constance was sent to pick her up and take her to Morris Plains along with Tony Hajnacka. The newspaper accounts said only that there was “some difficulty encountered” at the Kayser home that delayed them and forced them to return to the jail that night, but I don’t know specifically what those difficulties might have been or what became of Anna Kayser. The names and ages of Mr. and Mrs. Kayser, and their daughter Charlotte, are correct, but everything else about them is fiction.
However, I based the fictional parts of Anna’s story on a real-life account of a woman who was sent to institutions around that time so that her husband could be with other women. It’s also true that postpartum depression and symptoms of menopause were poorly understood at the time and were common reasons for putting a woman in an institution.
Mrs. Pattengill is fictitious, but her story is also based on a similar crime that took place around the same time. Another minor character, Harry Core, was a real jewel thief who actually did try to break out of the Hackensack Jail with a metal file. The other women in jail and on probation are all based on real women who were arrested around that time for the crimes described. The unionists—and the working conditions they described—are a composite based on several striking workers arrested at the time.
The dynamics of the election, and the outcome, are based on newspaper reports during the campaign season. John Courter did attack Constance and Sheriff Heath with brutal insults, and Constance really was labeled a “demon deputy” and “troublesome lady policeman” in leaflets posted around town. After the election, Constance was fired because Sheriff Courter said that he had no use for a lady deputy. She fought for her job under the civil service rules but lost. Most of the other deputies were allowed to keep their jobs. (And if readers are wondering about the partisanship implicit in this story line, Sheriff Heath was in fact a Democrat, John Courter was a Republican, and all the election results were, in real life, exactly as I described them.)
As in previous books, I know less about what Fleurette and Norma were up to at the time. Fleurette really did perform a concert at the jail with Helen Stewart for Captain Anderson’s “Brighter Day League” Salvation Army program. The songs performed, and the oath the inmates took, all come directly from that program. However, I shifted the timeframe around: this concert actually took place in the fall of 1915, not 1916. Another factual bit of Fleurette’s story is that May Ward really was making movies at that time, although she might have been in Pennsylvania and not in Fort Lee. However, there was a booming film industry in Fort Lee, and there would have been plenty of work for a seamstress like Fleurette. Another detail that’s rooted in fact is that Freeman Bernstein was booking entertainment acts at the Plattsburg camps.
About those Plattsburg camps: First, “Plattsburg” is spelled “Plattsburgh” today, but was more commonly spelled without the “h” at that time. These camps weren’t always located in Plattsburgh, New York, but they were generally called “Plattsburg camps” after the location of the first one. These were military-style training camps for men who wanted to be prepared to go to war before the United States was officially involved. My descriptions of camp life and activities are based on newspaper accounts at the time.
Maude Miner, charged with overseeing the girls who hung around the camp, did in real life play a similar role. She founded the New York Girls’ Protective League, whose aims were to both protect and police young women. She took on an official role with the War Department as the United States made ready to join the war. I wish I could recommend a good biography of Maude Miner, as she is a fascinating character, but it hasn’t been written. I might have to do it myself. Meanwhile, many of her books are in the public domain and easy to find in ebook format.
Norma’s interest in pigeons is, as in previous books, entirely fictional. However, it is true that pigeons were used in wartime communications, and American pigeon fanciers were eager to participate in the war effort. The Imperial War Museum in London does, in fact, own a collection of tiny horse-drawn mobile pigeon loft models, made during the lead-up to World War I. My description of Norma’s models are based on those.
I quoted directly from these sources:
The Hackensack Republican’s gleefully mocking coverage of Constance’s dive into the Hackensack River appeared on April 13, 1916, under the headline “Thrilling Movie Stunts by Sheriff Heath’s Woman Deputy—Press Agents Tell How She Dived After a Crazy Man, Rescued Him, Fainted, Slept—Will County Buy Her a New Dress?”
The story Fleurette read about Red Cross hospitals in Paris appeared in the New York Times on November 13, 1915, under the headline “To Restore Faces Ruined in the War—American Organization Is Being Formed for the Establishment of a Hospital in Paris.”
Sheriff Heath’s speech at the jail comes from his own speeches, as quoted in the Bergen County Democrat on September 22, 1916, under the headline “Hot Shot from Candidate Heath.” Some lines also came from a speech he gave to the New Jersey Conference of Charity and Corrections, which took place April 25–27, 1915.
“No Medal for Miss Kopp” ran in the New York Times on April 21, 1916.
“Miss Kopp, Ousted by New Sheriff, Just Won’t Quit” was the actual headline in the Evening Telegram on November 16, 1916. The text quoted is a combination of that story and one the same paper ran two days earlier.
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About the Author
Amy Stewart is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Kopp Sisters series, which began with Girl Waits with Gun. Her six nonfiction books include The Drunken Botanist and Wicked Plants. She and her husband own a bookstore called Eureka Books. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
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