by Fedora Amis
“That would be Frank James.” Hal paused for effect.
“Heavens in a handbag. What about Frank James?”
“Nothing. No change. He’s still in jail and still accused of killing Quisenberry Sproat.”
Jemmy stomped her foot in frustration. “What did you find out about the investigation? What about Loker-Legree and John Folck?”
“Which will it be—good or bad?”
“I don’t care.”
With palms up, Hal hunched his shoulders in a silent question. Jemmy shuddered again. “Oh, all right. Tell me the ‘good.’ ”
“Tom Loker is not a crook.”
“What’s his real name?”
“Don’t be a ninny. All I had to go on was an alias.”
“Then how do you know the actor who plays Tom Loker is not a crook?”
“My uncle never heard of any crook with the alias of ‘Tom Loker.’ If my uncle never heard of him, he can’t be a crook.”
“ ‘Tom Loker’ isn’t a fake name. It’s a role in a play. Not the same thing at all.”
Hal shrugged off her criticism. “Are you ready for the bad?”
“Please.”
“My uncle had plenty to say about John Folck. He’s a small-time thief who’s often been arrested but never convicted. He sometimes works as muscle man for Amos Medley.”
“Harry Benson’s manager?”
“The same. Does that mean anything?”
“I wish I knew.” Jemmy shook her head at the image of Folck as an enforcer. “Folck is tall and skinny. Not my idea of a muscle man.”
“A man looks plenty muscular with a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other.”
“Has Folck been known to use those weapons?”
“Suspected—but the victims won’t talk. Too scared, I guess.”
Miss Turnipseed snatched her gift apple from Jemmy’s desk. “I see you’re not really hungry after all.” She sank her teeth into the apple as she walked away.
Jemmy’s hollow stomach ached, and her bad ear buzzed until she felt giddy. She braced herself on Hal’s arm. “Thanks, Hal. You’ve given me lots to think about.”
“Say, are you all right?”
“Just a little lightheaded. I haven’t eaten all day.”
“I wish I had another nickel to give you, but you already took my last cent.”
“I’ll be all right. Come stand by my typewriter to give me the particulars on the squirrel story while I write it.”
An hour later Hal was off delivering story and cropped picture to Hamm. Jemmy covered her typewriter and made ready to go home. She very nearly collapsed when she tried to stand. In a flash Autley Flinchpaugh was at her side.
“Miss McBustle, are you all right?”
“Just a little dizzy. I haven’t eaten today.”
“You must take better care of yourself, especially now.”
Jemmy was too woozy to grasp his meaning. “It’s my own fault. I spent my lunch money on new boots.”
He fished two nickels from his pocket. “Here. Buy a pretzel, then take the trolley home. You need food and rest.”
“Thank you, Mr. Flinchpaugh. I’ll pay you back tomorrow.”
“I’ll just get my coat to see you to the trolley stop.”
“Don’t trouble yourself. Hal will be back soon. But there is something you can do for me.”
“And that would be?”
“Tell me where the bare-knuckles fight is to be.”
“Why would you take interest in a knock-down-drag-out?”
“A friend wants to know.”
“That fight is not for a person in a delicate state.”
“But truly, the information is not for me.”
When Flinchpaugh said no more, Jemmy became desperate enough for a small ruse. She pretended to swoon in his direction. He caught her and seated her back in her chair. “I’ll be back with a pretzel in a moment.”
“No, please. Just tell me where the fight will be held. I can’t go home until I know.”
“Promise me you don’t plan to see the match.”
“I promise.”
“Uhrig’s Cave.”
“Thank you, Mr. Flinchpaugh. You are a godsend.”
Flinchpaugh helped her into her coat. “Please let me escort you to the trolley stop. I’d be mortified if you fainted on the way.”
“No, you must stay and finish your work. I’ll be fine as soon as I have something to eat.”
Just outside the door of the Illuminator, she gave a nickel to a little Negro pretzel girl of eight or nine. “Thankee kindly, Miss Newspaper Lady.” How sad to see so many children freezing on the streets when they ought to be in school.
Before she could take a bite, another little Negro girl held out an apple. This poor waif wore a threadbare coat and no stockings on her skinny legs. Jemmy parted with her remaining nickel and her father’s muffler. When she wrapped it around the girl’s neck, the girl said, “I never had nothin’ so nice and warm. Thankee, thankee.”
When the girl grabbed her hand and kissed it, Jemmy nearly broke out in tears. What will Mother say when she finds I’ve lost Father’s muffler, the second scarf I’ve lost in less than a week?
Once again, she had not a single cent in her reticule. She’d have to walk home, but at least she had both pretzel and apple to eat. The food and the long walk—her second of the day—lifted her spirits and bolstered her energy.
Racing up the steps to Bricktop, Jemmy arrived breathless and chilled to the bone but jubilant. At last she could thaw her aching fingers and warm her stomach with a hot drink. She could all but taste Gerta’s steaming apple cider with cinnamon.
Alas, it was not to be. When Jemmy entered the hall, Randy came flying out of the kitchen with crushing news. Jemmy’s long day was about to get much longer, her burdens much heavier.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Wednesday Evening, November 23, 1898
Randy’s face flushed crimson through her freckles. “What will we do now? Mother and Gerta are both down with the flu. What are we going to do?”
“Give me a minute to warm up, will you? I had to walk home from the office. I can’t feel my feet.”
Jemmy pulled off her gloves and held her hands over the black metal of the coal adapter in the dining-room fireplace. She tried to sound cheerful. “I see you’ve set the table for supper. Well done. Is the food ready?”
“I suppose so. Early this morning, Gerta put on a big pot of beans with ham hocks.”
“Did she bake bread before . . . ?”
“Yes, I guess we’re lucky she didn’t feel poorly until this afternoon.”
“What about dessert?”
“Apple Betty with cream. And you’re wasting your time trying to warm up. The coal stove is cold.”
“Get Dora in here. Why hasn’t she tended the fires?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
Randy thrust her head forward with mouth ajar. She looked for all the world like an organ-grinder’s monkey waiting for a coin to drop in her cup.
“Just gone. Mother sent her to the market for fresh oysters because the batch Gerta brought home went bad. She never came back.”
“It’s not like Dora to shirk, but we can’t worry about that now. We have to bring up coal and get these fires going. The boarders would kick up a royal fuss if they had to eat beans in their overcoats and mufflers.”
A few trips down cellar and a few pounds of coal soot later, the fires were stoked—even the one in the sickroom. “Let’s clean up and get supper on. We’re a half hour late already. I’m surprised old Mrs. Hendershot isn’t—”
A high voice with a slight quaver asked, “Might we expect sustenance soon? Unless my timepiece has stopped, suppertime was shed-yoold for an hour ago.” The reedy voice pronounced scheduled without a K.
“Mrs. Hendershot, so good to see you with a hearty appetite. I was just about to ring the gong.”
With only two of them to represent the family
, Randy and Jemmy ate ham and beans with the guests. Most seemed well pleased with the savory combination Gerta had concocted, but Mrs. Hendershot was less than impressed.
“Might I assume this repast is a deprivation to give us proper appetite for tomorrow’s feasting?”
“You’ve been to Thanksgiving dinners here at Bricktop, Mrs. Hendershot. I think you will be well pleased. Gerta’s pumpkin pies are heavenly.”
“Quite so, but Gerta doesn’t seem to be about. I hear no sounds of activity from the kitchen.”
“I imagine Gerta went to market for some forgotten delicacy to put the crowning touches on tomorrow’s dinner.”
“Surely the markets have closed by now.”
“I can’t imagine what’s keeping her.”
“And what of the other girl, Dora? Where is she?”
“I remember now, Gerta went to look for Dora because she hadn’t returned from the market.”
Before Mrs. Hendershot could poke another hole in Jemmy’s dike of lies, Jemmy said, “I’m so glad your nephew and his family will be with us tomorrow—all the way from Brussels, Belgium. You must be excited.”
“Indeed. Though I’m not certain he will arrive in time to join us. Trains are so unreliable these days.”
Trains coming and going at Union Station were a marvel of promptness and efficiency—and scheduled to the minute. With a twinge of sadness, Jemmy understood Mrs. Hendershot’s little subterfuge. Thanksgiving Day would fail to produce Mrs. H.’s mythical nephew from Belgium.
And so the supper proceeded without further mishap. As the sisters washed dishes and cleaned the kitchen, Randy asked, “How do you think we can manage a big feast tomorrow—not to mention breakfast and supper?”
“We’ll keep breakfast simple. I checked the pantry. Gerta made cinnamon bread. We’ll toast that and offer soft-boiled eggs. We’ll use two jars of Gerta’s canned peaches as a special treat. Supper will be cold turkey sandwiches.”
Randy chuckled and shook her head. “Since when have you become a magician?”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t have a turkey.”
“How can we not have a turkey? Mother ordered one weeks ago.”
“You just looked in the larder. Did you see a turkey?”
A horrible thought made Jemmy’s head swim. Could the turkey Mother ordered be a living fowl? Since mother opened Bricktop as a boardinghouse, Jemmy had plucked chickens more often than she’d care to admit. To date, she’d never had to actually slaughter one. The idea knotted in the pit of her stomach.
She trotted out the back door with Randy calling after. “Where are you going?”
Half expecting to see a crated turkey in the backyard, Jemmy peered through the gloom. She sighed with relief to discover neither crate nor living bird.
She shuffled back into the house with one sobering thought. How could she and Randy present a Thanksgiving feast without a turkey?
Randy looked expectant. “Well, what are we going to do?”
“One of us will have to go to Soulard Market in the morning and buy a turkey—or a leg of lamb or fine rump roast. Who said we must have turkey anyway?”
Just then the front doorbell rang. On the porch stood an ambulance driver who tipped his cap. “I believe this young lady is in your employment.”
By his side stood Dora, wet and muddy as a ragdoll dropped in a puddle—with her right arm in a sling.
“What happened to you, Dora?” Jemmy called back over her shoulder, “Randy, put the kettle on. Come on in. Some hot tea will warm you right up. Throw that muddy cloak on the porch.” Despite the cold, the wool had a distinct stench of horse manure. “We’ll see to it later.”
The ambulance driver cleared his throat. In her agitated state, Jemmy needed a few seconds to realize what he wanted. “I thank you for bringing Dora home. What is the charge?”
“Eighty cents, ma’am.”
Outraged by such heartless extortion of money from poor women who had no recourse but to pay, Jemmy left the man standing out in the cold. “Stay right there.” She stomped to Mother’s room and returned with Mother’s coin purse. She counted out each coin carefully as she pressed it into his palm.
When the man had gone, she helped Dora to the kitchen and out of her muddy socks and shoes. Dora’s swollen fingers hung like pink sausages over the edge of her sling. With those useless appendages, she couldn’t so much as unbutton her shirtwaist.
At length, Dora sat in her unmentionables with a shawl around her shoulders and her feet in a dishpan of warm water. She put a cup of tea to her lips but burst into tears before she could drink a single drop.
“There, there, Dora. Tell us what happened to your arm.”
Dora blotted her eyes with her good hand. “Beer wagon ran me over.”
Randy laughed out loud. “Don’t be silly, Dora. A beer truck weighs thousands of pounds—not to mention thousands more pounds of draft horses. If a beer wagon ran you over, you’d be dead.”
Dora burst into another round of tears.
“Randy, look what you did. You made her cry. Be quiet and listen, will you?”
Dora wiped her nose on a dishtowel and began her tale. “Like I already said, a beer wagon ran me over. The oysters spoiled, so I was on me way to Soulard Market to buy more and to buy pretty fruit just like you told me. Well, I crossed a street and lost me shoe in the mud. I was diggin’ around to find it when what should I see but a pair of giant horses not three feet away bearing straight for me. So there I was a-standing on one foot about to be run down and kilt for sure.” She burst into another round of tears.
Eyes big as dinner plates, Randy let out an impatient, “What happened then?”
“I hunkered down in the mud and got run over by a beer wagon.”
“And all the damage done was a broken arm?” Randy sounded amazed.
“I was that lucky, doncha know. I stayed right in the middle of horse hooves and wagon wheels. I never thought I’d be grateful for mud, but I do believe mud saved me life this day.”
“So how did you break your arm?”
“That’s the strange part, doncha know. After the beer wagon passed over me, I got up and thought I was fine. The wagon driver stopped and came back to see was I all right. He wanted to know was there anything he could do and said he was mighty sorry, but he was looking at his delivery sheet and didn’t see me standing there in front until it was too late.
“What am I doing standing in the street, he wants to know. I told him I lost me shoe, and he pokes around in the mud until he finds it. He wanted to give me a lift home. I said I had to buy some things at the market. He said he’d like to wait but he had important deliveries to make. So he apologized again, and then he left.”
“You still didn’t tell about the arm.”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. I didn’t know it was broke. I went to put some fancy oranges in me sack. It’s a good thing I brought flour sacks along. The wagon wheels ran right over my basket and smashed it to smithereens, doncha know.”
Randy let out a screech of exasperation. “Dora, what happened to your arm?”
“I’m getting ’round to that. When I tried to pick up an orange, a great ache came on me arm. I saw me hand was all red and swolled up. Well, I knew right away that arm was busted. The lady running the stall sent her boy to find a policeman. He took me across Broadway to a doctor’s office where they set me arm and wrapped it up to keep it in place. They even called the ambulance, though it didn’t come for the longest time. So that’s how I got home. If I’da known the man would make you pay eighty cents, I’da walked.”
Randy sounded weary from asking. “But you still haven’t told us how you broke your arm.”
“That doctor charged me a dollar to set my arm. Took every cent the beer wagon man gave me. I still have the grocery money though. It’s in the pocket of me skirt.” She made a clumsy attempt to stand. “I’ll give you the money, then put the skirt in some water to soak the mud out.”<
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Jemmy shoved her gently back into the chair. “I’ll do it. You stay put.”
Randy stood with her hands on her hips. “For the last time. Dora, how did you break your arm?”
“That’s the thing, doncha know. I have no idea how come me good right arm got broke.”
Randy shook her head. “Why couldn’t you say that in the first place?”
“I didn’t know I didn’t know. Doncha know. I had to work through the whole story to find out.”
After helping Dora divest herself of mud, the trio climbed up two flights of stairs and slept the sleep of the vast, overworked masses.
Jemmy’s first thought when she arose well before dawn on Thursday was not one of thanksgiving. She yanked on working clothes and rousted Dora and Randy before she sprinted downstairs. She stood in the doorway of the room behind the kitchen and called from the door. “Mother, we have no turkey. What should we do?”
“Don’t worry, Jemima dear. I insisted the turkey be brought this morning. I wanted it to be fresh. The poulterer will be here in good time—by five o’clock at the latest. He promised.”
“I’m sorry to have bothered you. Please go back to sleep.”
Had Jemmy waited two minutes longer, she would not have needed to wake Mother. A firm knock on the back door sent Jemmy to find Mother’s purse.
The poulterer tipped his cap as he pocketed the money. “Finest turkey in the state, home grown in Jefferson County and fresh as a just-laid egg.” The man waved his arm in the direction of a crate. A huge bird with brown-red feathers stuck his head through the slats.
“Just look at the color on them wattles—red and manly. That’s the kind of bird we grow in Jefferson County. I’ll just tie up them legs and put him here on the porch so you have no trouble catching him.”
The man made short work of tying the beast’s legs. With another tip of his hat, he picked up his crate and was off down the alley.
A sudden panic hit Jemmy. She ran to the alley and called after him, “Aren’t you going to kill him for us?”
She barely heard his reply as he drove away. “I’ve lots of deliveries to make. I’m sure you’ll manage.”