“And I’m sorry if I spoke sharply,” says Easter. “But Mrs Eriksson has no one to look out for her but me.”
“So her husband…?”
“He can’t abide her. He married himself a pretty young thing and is now embarrassed at her being poorly,” Easter says with a despairing roll of her eyes.
“You know, when you caught me staring in the window, I was just surprised – I did not expect to catch sight of your mistress,” I try to explain as we step on to the rucked and frozen road. “I imagined her to be asleep upstairs. You said she usually is in her bed during daylight?”
“Yes, but Mrs Eriksson didn’t take her sleeping draught with her breakfast that morning since she knew the stamp mill would be quiet for Christmas,” says Easter. “And she was enjoying hearing the music coming from the camp.”
I am suddenly cheered to think of that lonely young woman taking some pleasure in the jigs and reels she heard played by Father and the others. Last time I suggested it, Easter had been very certain that her mistress would see no one. But maybe Mrs Eriksson is thawing a little…?
But that thought fades as I see Easter staring at me, as she has done before.
“What?” I say, as we take the uneven steps up to Nat’s Store. “Why do you look at me so strangely?”
Why have you always looked at me so strangely when we have talked before, I should have said.
“You … you have eyes like the Indian’s dog!” Easter exclaims, breaking out into a smile. “I’ve never seen eyes your colour in a person.”
“Well, what a compliment – to be compared to a dog!” I joke in return.
And now Easter and I are both grinning broadly, delighted, I think, to find some unexpected fun in each other. In this moment she is not a respectful servant, and I am not a respectable teacher-in-training. We are young girls, and to be silly is as delicious as a lump of maple sugar melting on the tongue.
“But if my sisters were here, you would know three people with eyes this colour,” I tell her. “We look nothing alike except for our eyes.”
I think of the framed pencil drawing on the shelf in the parlour of Gillespie’s store – of me sitting on the rock at the top of the towering Glas Crags, staring off to the horizon, to the west. Of course you cannot see the light grey of my eyes in that, but the colour of them was clear in the large oil-on-canvas version our artist friend Samuel painted in his studio at his and Caroline’s apartments back in Glasgow. I wonder what has become of that painting of me now? Is it still with Samuel and Caroline and Ishbel, in London, where they planned to go soon after we parted at the docks in Scotland?
“And where are these sisters of yours?” asks Easter, pausing on the stoop outside the door of the store.
“I don’t know,” I tell her truthfully. “They didn’t want to come to America. But I have quite lost touch with them. And you…? Do you have family back in Chicago?”
“I have the pastor and his wife – they brought me up. They take in orphans,” says Easter. “But once any of the children are grown, the pastor finds them positions and they move on, so—”
We both suddenly hold still at the sound of harsh, raised voices coming from inside the shop. I step towards the closest window and peer into the gloom.
“It’s Mr Nathaniel and the mine manager… I can just see them in the back room,” I whisper as I watch the two red-faced men raging at each other.
“Can you make out what they’re saying?” Easter whispers back.
“Hold on,” I say, then hover, putting my ear close to the glass, and catching a snippet or two. “Mr Eriksson is saying he shouldn’t have listened to Mr Nathaniel… And now – now Mr Nathaniel is saying how dare Mr Eriksson say that when his plan is the best one for the mine and the town!”
“I bet Mr Nathaniel’s plan will be best for him, whatever it is,” murmurs Easter.
“True,” I agree, before something strikes me and I turn to her. “Easter, won’t you get into trouble from your master if he sees you here? Will he not insist you should be at home?”
“It’s all right, he knows I’m attending school today,” says Easter. “His wife told him she wanted me to learn to read and write so I can be of more use to her.”
I can’t help notice a smile twitch at the corner of Easter’s mouth.
“What?” I hiss at her.
“She just said so because she knows I wanted to attend school and learn more. I can read and write fine – Pastor Jacob ran a school for the children of black folk at the back of the church. And I read books in the evening to Mrs Eriksson all the time, only he doesn’t know that since he drinks so much wine he’s always snoring in his armchair after dinner.”
Ha! The mine manager must think himself the most important man in town, yet he is being fooled in his very own home. And I love to think Easter and her mistress are in cahoots. In their isolation and loneliness, it seems as if Mrs Eriksson and Easter have found more in common than the older husband and his young wife.
“If we go in quietly, they might not notice us, and we can find out what this mysterious plan is!” I say with a lift of my eyebrows as I gently push open the roughly planed wooden door.
But our high spirits are snuffed out as soon as we enter Nat’s Store.
For the barrel of a shotgun is pointed straight at us.
“What’re you two cackling about?” asks Charlie, his elbows on the desk, taking the weight of the gun.
“Put that away, you little fool!” roars Mr Nathaniel, storming out of the back room now he sees what his son is up to.
Behind him, a nervous-looking Mr Eriksson disappears further into the shadows of the back room, as if he hopes – foolishly – that Easter and I might not notice him.
“Ow!” yelps Charlie, wincing as his father slaps him around the head. “I was just protecting us! It could have been anyone … a bear!”
“A bear? What kind of fool have I raised?” the storekeeper growls, grabbing the gun and placing it on a high shelf. “Now then, what is it you’re wanting, missy?”
“I’ve heard you have here some packages of school slates and pencils,” I say as confidently as I can.
“Well, you heard right,” he replies, making no move to fetch the parcels from wherever they are stored, and making no move to recognise Easter’s very existence.
As Mr Nathaniel talks, I study him. I see the scars of burns, the puckered folds of skin around his eye socket. They are pulled tight, sewn quickly and poorly. They must cause him constant pain. Father said we should be kind and thoughtful to all, in spite of their rank or demeanour. And I am thoughtful now, wondering if Mr Nathaniel once worked in the mines himself, before he traded a dark, dangerous life – one that possibly maimed him – for that of a storekeeper. And the pain he suffers must surely have helped make him the bitter man he is. That and the worry of being a merchant in a failing town with a failing copper mine. In fact, now that I remember, was it the uncertain future of the mine that Mr Nathaniel and Mr Eriksson were arguing about on Christmas Day? Might that be what they were heatedly talking of now? How to save the mine, the town and their livelihoods! Though quite how they mean to do it I cannot guess…
“Well, then,” he says briskly, rousing me from my reverie. “Where is your money, missy!”
“Money?” I reply with a frown.
“Your doctor friend who is playing at schools – doesn’t she realise that slates and pencils cost a pretty penny?”
Now I see red again and my sympathy fades away quicker than butter in a hot pan.
“Sir, I was told the mining company already bought and paid for those things!” I tell him sharply.
The storekeeper snorts, holding his arms up as if he has been caught.
“Ah, forgive me, my little vixen – I forgot.”
And with that lie he wanders into the back room and returns with two large brown-paper parcels tied with twine. He thuds them on the counter in front of us, causing a layer of dust to puff up from it. Just as I go
to take the top parcel, Mr Nathaniel pulls both swiftly away.
“Now then, there is the matter of a fee for storage all these months,” he says, curling his mouth in a wicked smile.
In that moment, something snaps inside me. Back on Tornish, I was a scared girl, frightened by the terrible power the new Laird and his family had over us all. And in Glasgow, I was petrified for my brother when the roguish older lads he thought friends threatened him into stealing for them. But I refuse to be scared any more. The Laird, his vindictive daughter Miss Kitty, the scoundrels Lachlan knew – we have left them behind in Scotland. We are as far, far away from them as can be. And I’ll not let anyone bully me a minute longer.
“I’ll thank you to give me that parcel, Mr Nathaniel, or I’ll—”
BOOM!
A deep, bone-rattling sound.
An explosion that should not have happened, not so soon after the last one, not by a long way.
An explosion that makes the ground shake underfoot more than any other since we have been here.
We all pause, as the whole town does in the seconds after a planned underground explosion in the mine tunnels. Always the pause is followed by a reassuring silence, and folk can quickly get back on with their work or cooking or mending, secure in the knowledge that all is well.
But this time, for the first time since I have been here, there is no minute of quiet calm. Shouts of panic are bellowed from the direction of the mine works.
And now a heavy brass bell clangs and clangs and clangs a mournful alarm.
“Lord, no… NO!” Mr Eriksson roars, appearing in the doorway to the back room, his hand clamped to his forehead.
As for Mr Nathaniel, he stands motionless, his jaw slack.
In this moment, what thoughts cross the minds of these grown men I cannot say. But even though I do not have their knowledge of a mining community, I can guess – be quite sure in fact – that some disaster has befallen the men below ground. A disaster that is not helped by standing still and gawping, as the storekeeper and mine manager are currently doing.
Throwing the door open, I bolt out of Nat’s Store – Easter at my heels – at the same time as Dr Spicer bursts out of the Gillespie building across the street, Jean following right behind.
“Bridie, fetch my bag from my room and get Lachlan and one of the boys to bring my trunk from my bedside to the mine head!” she orders.
Bunching her skirts up high, the doctor runs, as fast and with as much abandon as any man, in the direction all the townsfolk are now headed, just as a long, low screaming starts up…
The crowd ahead is a blur, partly because it is a restlessly moving shape in the softly, steadily falling snow – more folk joining it, swelling it with every second.
And partly it is blurred because my hair has unravelled entirely as I run and it half blinds me. But with both my hands clutching Dr Spicer’s heavy bag to my chest I can do little about it.
“Here, I’ll take a handle,” Easter offers, reaching towards the heavy bag I’ve been struggling to hold and run with, my weaker hand straining painfully with the weight of it.
Thankful for her help, I let her share the burden, and now with a handle each we quickly fall into a run together, footstep matching footstep.
“Bridie, Easter, over here!” Dr Spicer calls out to us, waving above the heads of the waiting and wailing women and children.
We both hurry all the more, breathless and hearts racing. I’m trusting that my brother and some other strong boy are somewhere behind us with the trunk containing the rest of Dr Spicer’s medical things, but I’m more set on looking toward the doctor than looking over my shoulder.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” I say, twisting this way and that through the crush, hearing Easter’s voice right behind me, dovetailing my words with her own “Thank you, ma’am, thank you, sir…”
And now we are close to the entrance to the mine. The men from below ground have begun to emerge – coughing, dirt-covered, blood-streaked – to be greeted with gasps and a shrouding of snowflakes.
Those who were working up here on firm ground – rather than down in the dangerous depths – are quick to pull the unfortunate miners from the tunnel mouth, passing them back to a procession of waiting arms and the cold air their lungs must be gasping for. It is hard to tell one miner from the other in their strange uniform of disaster, but as Henni has thrown herself at a skinny young man, I guess it must be her brother Oskar, alive but clutching his hands to his chest, where a bloom of red spreads.
At the end of the procession of helpers I see my Father and Jean taking the weight of a badly injured lad. His leg hangs twisted and clearly broken, his jagged yells confirming the pain he feels.
They look to the newly arrived Mr Eriksson to see where they might take the lad, but the mine manager stands rubbing his hands back and forth through his white-blond hair, as if he cannot comprehend what he is seeing, as if he cannot bear the load of a disaster on top of the worry of his failing business.
“Mr Eriksson, where shall we take the wounded? Mr Eriksson!” Dr Spicer shouts over to him, to no avail.
“This shouldn’t have happened!” a florid-faced Mr Nathaniel calls out, lumbering to Mr Eriksson’s side. “Was it her, d’you think? It has to be the Chippewa woman’s curse come true, surely!”
“Käften!” Mr Eriksson snaps at him in Swedish, his face a matching red of panic. “You said nothing could go wrong! Does this seem like nothing to you?”
Realising that the mine manager seems too distracted – and about as much use as a swaddled babe to his men at the moment – I hurriedly make a suggestion to the doctor.
“Perhaps we could take them to the canteen?” I say, pointing over to the long, low wooden building close by.
“Yes … and the men could be lain out on the tables,” says Dr Spicer, already on the move.
“And we can help,” one of the waiting wives calls after her.
“Good,” replies Dr Spicer, nodding vaguely in the women’s direction as she quickly sizes up the cuts on the next man stumbling forth. “There are medical supplies in a cupboard in the building by the stamp mill. Can some of you go fetch what’s there? Bandages and linseed oil for burns is what we need. And the rest of you, please find or tear up as many clean rags as you can spare in case we run out of bandages!”
The sound of distress ebbs as those watching and waiting find a sudden purpose.
“Now, Bridie,” says Dr Spicer, talking to me over her shoulder as she waves those supporting the wounded to follow her. “I will assess the injured as they come into the canteen and ask some of the women to clean up the less badly hurt. But can you assist me? I’ll need the strength of your father and Jean to hold down the lad with the broken leg while I put it back in place, but I’ll need someone to pass me instruments or whatever I might require. Can you do that?”
All the difficult times in my life so far – they flicker quickly through my mind like flashes of lightning on a distant horizon. I have borne them all and I have borne them well. And as Dr Spicer herself told me, I can set my mind to anything I want to.
“Yes, I can,” I tell her surely.
“And what can I do, ma’am?” asks Easter as Dr Spicer sets off towards the canteen and we hurry alongside her, our booted feet slipping in the ruts of frozen earth as we still hold tight to her medical bag.
“I suspect you are a decent needleworker, Easter,” she says briskly, barely looking at the girl. “Is that correct?”
“Oh, yes, I am, ma’am,” Easter answers. “And I sewed animal hide too, as the pastor let me try apprenticing with a shoemaker before I settled on maid’s work. And I stitched a gash in the pastor’s head once when he was roughed up by some white fellows that came by our church one time.”
I shoot a look at Easter, wanting to know why such a shocking event should have happened – but there is no time to ask.
“Then I’ll set you to stitching some of the wounds, Easter,” Dr Spicer says plainly, as i
f she were asking the girl something as ordinary as darning a stocking.
The doctor suddenly stops for a second, as if it occurs to her what she’s asking of girls as young as ourselves.
“I hope you both understand that it’s not fair of me to ask these things of the miners’ wives here – they might see their own husbands brought out broken, or dead, even. I need assistants who will hold themselves steady. Is that clear?” she says giving us both a steely stare.
Easter and I look at each other, then back at the doctor, nodding as hard as we can.
“Yes,” we mutter, not quite in unison, but certainly as adamant as each other.
“Then, ladies, let us get to work…”
Several long hours later, Mr Nathaniel mutters a low oath as he walks into the canteen building.
He has come to collect the Irishman Seamus, the very last patient, and one of his lodgers at the store. Perhaps the storekeeper has sworn at the sorrowful sight of this bruised-faced fellow as he sits swaying on a bench, his head swaddled roughly in cloth that covers the newly stitched cut in his head.
Or perhaps Mr Nathaniel’s foul-mouthed swear word was due to the sight of the long canteen table that Lachlan is trying his best to clean. Instead of crumbs and grease from the miners’ meals, it is sweat and blood that my brother wipes away with any wretched rags he can lay his hands on.
Then again, perhaps the man is taken aback by the sight of Dr Spicer, Easter and myself standing dirtied and wild-eyed at our posts as if we have staggered from a battlefield. I suspect we might look a little mad, but the truth of it is, our eyes sparkle with relief, with happiness.
For no one died today. By some miracle, no wife was widowed and no child ended up fatherless. The explosion-gone-wrong in the mine tunnel… The worst of it was the young Cornishman with the badly broken leg, an older German fellow with a terrible, deep gash to his stomach, and Henni’s big brother Oskar who lost all the fingers of one hand, blown clean off in the blast. As for the rest, there were countless burns, grazes and wounds that needed cleaning and treating and stitching, and men with chests that were tight and sore from their panicked time in the smoke-choked tunnels below.
Little Bird Lands Page 7