The Patchwork Bride

by Sandra Dallas

  In those first months in Denver, Nell enjoyed herself most when she was with Betty. They window-shopped at the downtown stores, rode the trolley to City Park to look at the flowers and feed the ducks, and dined out on Saturday nights, comparing the food and the service to Buck & Betty’s.

  Nell’s boss was twenty years older and skeptical when it came to men. She had arrived in Colorado during the gold rush and lived in Swandyke, a mining town in the mountains. Her husband, Foster, Betty confided one morning as the two sat drinking coffee between the breakfast and lunch rushes, had been a hard man. He’d come west to get rich. Nobody ever came west to get poor, she said with a laugh. But he failed to find pay dirt and had had to work as a common miner. He took out his frustration on Betty, but that was what a wife was for, she had believed.

  They had two children, a boy and a girl, and the father preferred the boy. He treated the girl the way he did Betty. When the little girl was two, she skinned her arm and wouldn’t stop crying. Foster yelled at her, which only made her cry harder. He became enraged and slapped her back and forth, hitting her so hard that she passed out. The child was never the same after that. She had fits and often fell to the ground, her eyes rolling back in her head. Foster blamed Betty for the girl’s condition, told her she was a poor mother and said the child was an idiot. He took to ridiculing both of them.

  The boy was better treated, and he learned that his father liked it when he, too, bullied his mother and sister. So he disobeyed his mother and tormented his sister.

  Betty began holding out money from the little her husband gave her to purchase necessities. When Foster was passed out drunk, Betty stole money from his pockets, and since when he sobered up he couldn’t remember how much he’d spent, he never suspected her. Betty wasn’t sure why she did it—it never occurred to her that she would actually leave her husband—but she thought she might need the money one day.

  The girl was five, and she spoke only gibberish. The family had gone into the mercantile, where the father bought a peppermint stick for his son. The girl pointed to the jar of candy and then to her mouth, muttering excitedly. “Shut up,” Foster told her. When the girl didn’t, Foster turned to Betty. “Shut that dummy’s mouth.”

  A man laughed, and Foster exploded—not at the man but at his daughter. He struck her with his fists, telling her to be quiet. He yelled that she was worthless and he was ashamed of her. Betty tried to stop him, but he flung her aside. He didn’t stop hitting his daughter until she was lying on the floor unconscious. She never came to her senses, and a day later, she was dead.

  If Foster had struck the girl at home, no one would have known. But a crowd had gathered around him when he began beating her, men grabbing his arms to stop the abuse. So word of the incident reached the sheriff, who came to the house to make an arrest the day of the funeral.

  “Let me bury my daughter first,” the father said, and the sheriff, who was a decent man, agreed. No matter how foul a father Foster had been, he was still a man who had lost a child to death. He seemed shaken and mortified at what he had done. Foster sent Betty on ahead to the burying, but he never showed up. Instead, he took their son and got on the train to Denver. Betty never saw either one of them again.

  Except for the money she had hidden from her husband, Betty was destitute. A mining town was no place for a woman alone. The miners took up a collection for Betty, but times were hard, and the collection wasn’t much, only enough to pay for the funeral. Betty set herself up as a laundress, but washing clothes in mountain water made her hands crack and bleed. So with the little she had saved, she bought supplies, rented a shack, and set up a lunchroom for the miners. She cooked breakfast and packed lunch pails. She made enough to leave the mountains, and she moved to Denver, where she opened Buck & Betty’s.

  As she finished the story, Betty had tears in her eyes, and Nell took her hand. She was moved by her friend’s plight. She had been caught up in her own troubles, but now she realized others had had things worse, and one of them was her friend. “You don’t know what happened to your son?” she asked.

  Betty shook her head. “My guess is Foster took him back east, where we came from. I hope he didn’t turn out like his father, but most likely, he did. He was a nice little boy, but toward the end … It worries me.” She smiled, although tears were running down her cheeks. “I don’t talk about this very often,” she said. “It tears me up. My daughter wasn’t right in the head, but she was the sweetest thing you ever saw. She was my sunshine. I’d have taken care of her for the rest of my life and been glad for it.”

  Nell, moved, reached over and squeezed Betty’s hand. “What were their names?” she asked.

  “Tom. That was my boy’s name. He’d be twenty-eight now.” Betty stared down at the table a moment before she looked up and whispered. “The girl … her name was Nellie. My daughter’s name was Nellie.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Before long, Betty trusted Nell as if the two had worked together for years. When business slacked off in the late mornings, Betty often ran errands, leaving Nell in charge.

  One summer morning when Betty was gone and the café was empty, Nell sat at the counter writing a letter to her grandparents. She liked Denver, and she loved her work, she wrote, but she was lonely, and she hadn’t found a man she cared about.

  The screen door banged, startling Nell, and for an instant she thought she was in the kitchen of the Rockin’ A and the slam meant some cowboy had come in. She half expected to look up and see Wendell or Monty, until she came to her senses and realized where she was. She pushed the letter aside and stood up.

  “Looks like I’m your only customer,” a man said. Nell had seen him walk by the café window earlier when the place was filled with people and remembered his sallow face and mustache. Nell had never cared for mustaches. She wished Betty or another customer were there, because she didn’t want to be alone with this man. She didn’t like his looks or the way he clenched and unclenched his hands.

  “Looks like. What can I get you? We’ve still got doughnuts, fresh made this morning. Shall I bring you a couple?” She tried to sound cheerful and hoped he didn’t catch the edge in her voice.

  “Yeah, do that. Coffee, too.” Nell went into the kitchen for the doughnuts and heard the man cross the room to sit down on a stool.

  “You alone?” he asked when Nell set down the doughnuts in front of him. She reached for the coffeepot and held it in front of her for a moment before she poured the coffee into his cup. He glanced up and down the counter but saw no one. “Looks like you’re alone. I guess you don’t get many customers this time of day.”

  Nell frowned a little. She didn’t remember the man coming into the café before. Most likely, he was just being friendly. Nonetheless, she said, “Betty went out. She’ll be back in a minute. And we’ve got customers coming in all the time. It’s hardly ever this quiet. I can fix you ham and eggs or pancakes if you like. I’m a good cook.” The man stared at the coffeepot until she put it down.

  “I just bet you are,” he said.

  “I learned to cook on a ranch,” she said, and then she added, “I learned to shoot there, too.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said that.

  “I don’t see no gun.”

  “Oh, I don’t need one. We have so many customers that I always feel safe.”

  “I don’t see none of them, neither.”

  Nell glanced at the door, as if a customer were about to enter, and saw that the man had shut both the screen and the heavy inner door when he came in. The OPEN sign that hung there had been turned to read CLOSED. He must have done that when she went into the kitchen.

  “I seen Betty go on down the street. I guess she won’t be back for a time. It’s just you and me. Ain’t that nice?”

  Nell felt uneasy and reached for the coffeepot, but the man grabbed it away from her. “Now, don’t go thinking you can pour that on me.” He threw the pot on the floor and took Nell’s wrist.

  “What do you want?
” she asked, her voice high-pitched with fear. She’d never been afraid of a man before, even of Charlie. The cowboys might have teased her, but they had always treated her like a lady. So had the customers.

  “What do you think I want, girlie?” He leaned over and kissed her hard, his teeth black and his mouth reeking of chewing tobacco. When Nell tried to slap him, he grabbed her hand and twisted it. “So, you want it rough,” he said, shoving Nell down onto the counter and pushing at her long skirt. “We can do it that way, or you can be real quiet, and I’ll be nice.” His eyes, which were hard and bleached blue, roamed over her body.

  “Don’t!” she said. Nell’s hands were strong from carrying heavy plates, and she grabbed at the man, but he caught both of her wrists in one hand and held her arms above her head. With his other hand, he reached into her blouse and fondled her breast. His fingernails were ragged and dirty, and he scratched her skin.

  “Stop it!” Nell yelled, hoping someone would hear her. And then, “Help me! Somebody help me!” But with the door closed, nobody on the street heard her. And with the CLOSED sign, no one was likely to come into the café. She knew Betty would be away for a long time. Nell looked around frantically, but there was no one to rescue her. “Let me go. Please,” she begged.

  The man slapped her and told her to shut up or she’d be sorry.

  Nell twisted one hand loose and reached behind her on the counter for something to use as a weapon, but the man had shoved the plates and cutlery onto the floor. She struggled, and he slapped her again and ordered, “Lie still, or I’ll hurt you bad.” Nell was quiet for a moment, and he said, “That’s a good girl. This won’t hurt.” He stared at her with his awful eyes, clawing at her clothes with his gray hands.

  Nell couldn’t let him force himself on her like that, and she struggled. She kicked at him and cried out, until he put his hand over her mouth, and she gasped for breath. She had almost passed out when she heard the door slam open and another man enter the restaurant. For an awful moment, Nell wondered if the two men were partners, if the second man would take her when the first was finished. She struggled, kicking her legs, but it did no good. She was only kicking into the air.

  The man who held her turned his head in surprise, and at that moment, Nell reached over her head and grasped a heavy china coffee cup. She brought it down on his head, shattering the cup. The man made an “oof” sound and slid to the floor, where he lay still.

  Nell sat up, pushing down her skirt, gasping and grasping the broken cup handle like a weapon.

  The second man held up his hands. “I was trying to stop him. Miss, are you all right? I’ll call a copper.”

  Nell went limp and dropped her hand. “He tried … he tried … if you hadn’t come in…” She began to cry.

  “Hey, hey,” the man said. “It’s all right.” Slowly, so as not to startle Nell, he reached out and took the broken coffee cup from her hand. “You’ll be all right. I’ll go to the police box and come right back, so you won’t be alone for more than a minute. I doubt he’ll come to by then. You hit him awful hard.”

  “No! Don’t leave me alone with him,” Nell begged.

  The man nodded. “You use the call box, then. I’ll stay here with him, and if he wakes up, I’ll clobber him over the head again.” He grinned at her, his face so open and friendly that Nell felt better. “My name’s James—James Hamilton,” he said as he helped her to her feet, then opened the door for her, and Nell, wobbling a little, rushed across the street to the police box.

  When Nell returned to the café, her attacker was still passed out on the floor. “You have a mighty strong arm, young lady. You used him up pretty good. I sure wouldn’t like to get on your bad side,” James said, smiling at her until Nell smiled back. He looked around and asked, “How’d you like some of your coffee? You sit right here on the stool and I’ll get you a cup. You got to promise not to smash the cup on my head.”

  Nell nodded and smiled again. The joke wasn’t very funny, but at least the fellow was trying to make light of the incident. Then she glanced down at the man on the floor, who had started to moan and move around a little. She drew back.

  “Don’t you worry about him, miss. The police will be here any minute, and you and I can take care of him till they show up.”

  “He tried to … he…” Nell couldn’t say the word “rape.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?” James said. “You can’t worry about what didn’t happen.” He patted her shoulder, and Nell drew back. But he smiled again, then poured coffee into two cups and handed her one. He stood over the man on the floor for a minute. “I guess I’ll pour this on him when he wakes up.”

  The CLOSED sign still hung on the door, and no one came into the café until a police officer yanked open the door and stepped inside. He looked at Nell, then at James, and finally at the man on the floor. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Nell started to reply, but instead, she began crying, shaking her head back and forth. James held the coffee cup to her lips and told her to drink. Nell grasped it with both hands but then shook so hard that she spilled the coffee on her uniform. James took the cup. “It’s all right, miss. You’re safe.” Then he turned to the officer. “It looks like this man tried to have his way with her. I saw it through the window. The sign on the door said the café was closed, and I thought that was odd, because it’s always open in the morning. So I went to the window to see if somebody’d forgotten to turn around the sign. I saw this man here”—he kicked at the man on the floor with the toe of his shoe—“forcing himself on her. He’d have raped her if he could.”

  Nell bowed her head at the word. “If you hadn’t come in—” she said, but James hushed her.

  “Any man would have helped you. I was just here. All I did was open the door. You’re the one who hit him over the head. You saved yourself.” He grinned at the officer. “He sure did pick the wrong woman to fool with.”

  By then, the man on the floor was awake, and he sat up, rubbing his head.

  “You got anything to say?” the officer asked.

  “Yeah, you arrest her. She tried to murder me.”

  “Too bad she didn’t,” the policeman said. He yanked the man to his feet and reached into his pocket for handcuffs. Then the officer told Nell, “We had reports about a fellow that looks like this. Goes into stores where a woman’s alone. I hadn’t heard he tried it in a café.”

  By that time, several men were standing outside the door, wondering if the café was open, and then suddenly Betty was inside. She looked around and grasped what had happened. “Go home,” she told Nell. “Just go home and take a warm bath and go to bed, and we’ll talk about this later.”

  “I don’t know, Betty. I don’t want to be alone,” Nell said. Her voice was like that of a little girl.

  “You let her stay if she wants to,” James said. “She should keep on working, doing what’s normal. That’s the best way to deal with something unpleasant.”

  “You a doctor?” Betty asked.

  “Just a customer,” he said.

  Betty studied him for a moment.

  “He helped me. The CLOSED sign was on the door, but he came in anyway. He saw what was going on. I was almost passed out,” Nell said. “I want to stay here. I want to pretend it’s just a regular day and that this didn’t happen. Besides, I feel safer now that you’re back.” That wasn’t entirely true. What Nell really wanted was to be in the kitchen on the farm in Kansas, with her grandmother fixing her tea. Then she’d truly be safe.

  Betty studied Nell a moment. Finally she said. “If that’s what you want. Go brush your hair. We got customers.” She turned to James and said, “So you saved her? You like steak, do you? I got a porterhouse back there.”

  “Just coffee,” he said. “Give me a broom, and I’ll sweep up this mess first. You take care of your customers.”

  Nell went to the sink in the kitchen and splashed water on her face. She combed her hair, which had come loose in the scuffle, and tw
isted it back on top of her head. For a long time, she stared into the mirror over the sink, but she didn’t look any different, just tired. She buttoned her blouse where the man had forced it open and found a fresh apron, tied it around herself, and went into the dining area.

  The half-dozen men in the café had been chatting among themselves, gossiping about what they thought had happened, but when Nell appeared, they were silent, and they sent her sympathetic looks. She felt better when she realized that the diners liked her, that they were glad she was all right. They were curious, but they were gentlemen. And they didn’t know what to say.

  Then James put aside the broom and said, “I sure would like a cup of coffee and maybe a doughnut. You got any?”

  “You bet,” Nell said, her voice high. She swallowed and said, “Yes.”

  James grinned at her, as if to encourage her. “How about two, then?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nell told him, her voice better now.

  The men in the café exchanged glances. Then one spoke up. “I’d like coffee, too. Cream.” The others gave their orders, and before long, things did indeed seem like normal. They weren’t, of course, and for a time Nell acted in a daze. But then the lunch crowd came in, and she was able to shove the happenings of the morning to the edge of her mind. When there was a lull, she looked for James, thinking he might like more coffee, but he was gone. She cleared his dishes and found a silver-dollar tip under his saucer. She hadn’t even thanked him.

  She and Betty were about to close the café when James came back. “I went to the police station. That man’s locked up. He won’t bother you again. In fact, the cops were razzing him about being knocked out by a woman.” He grinned, and then he handed Nell a bouquet of violets that he had held behind his back. “I didn’t want the entire day to be a bad memory.”