Dollybird (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

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I arrived in Moose Jaw
to a dry heat that compressed my lungs and left my throat parched. Sweaty new arrivals from across the country crowded the station. I made my way to the platform, where billboards announced jobs for everyone. A late fall, a big crop. Anyone willing to help get the harvest off before winter could make two dollars a day stooking, two seventy-five on the threshing crew. Farming words, foreign to men of the sea, yet it seemed the words had drawn hundreds with their pledge of prosperity. I caught a glimpse of the father carrying his son just beyond the platform. He spoke briefly to a constable on horseback who nodded as they hurried off, and I wondered, for an instant, where he might be headed.

Fred showed up at my elbow. Despite his injuries he was his ever-confident self. His bowler hat was perched on his head again, his long black coat and grey silk scarf in stark contrast to the work pants and boots of the boys milling around us. He'd never worked a day in his life. He stood silent
in the mayhem.

“Just wire your father, Moira.” He gestured into the distance. “He'll send you money.”

It was true. But if Mother found out, there would be no end to what Father would endure.

“I will not give my mother the satisfaction.”

“Do you hear yourself Moira? You've got nothing and you're knocked up.” Others were turning to listen. “How the hell will you survive?”

Suddenly I pictured Evan's father, his scorn, and a rage flooded through me.

“This is obscene,” I hissed. “You've no right to be angry or tell me what to do. You lost the money, and now I have to find a way out of this.”

“Well, then,” Fred blustered. “Well then, suit yourself.” In a few long strides he left the platform and disappeared into the crowded street.

Moose Jaw was clearly a hub to the flat prairie stretching beyond it; the air seemed to quiver with the potential of new arrivals and new beginnings. But with little money, and fewer prospects, I was left out of the excitement and settled for a cheap room in a hotel near the station. The cash Fred had managed to hang on to would pay for only two nights.

I dragged my things through the door and fell into a chair, patting the side of the trunk to ensure my stitching was still intact. Despite Mother's searching, she hadn't managed to discover it. Before leaving home, I'd cut a hole in the trunk wall, lined it with quilt stuffing and hidden two cups and saucers, blue Coalport china, in the space I'd created. They were the last remaining pieces of a set brought from Scotland by my grandmother on my father's side. I suppose they were, on the face of it, stolen goods, but for me they were a reminder, a connection. I left them where they were. They'd be safer hidden for now.

I'd unpacked only a few things when there was a commo
tion outside my window. A wagon, with a small wood structure
perched on top, was pulled into the crowd rushing to gather round. I got downstairs and outside just as a hush descended and the side doors of the wagon opened to reveal an array of large and small stoppered bottles, tiny leather bags tied with twine and strange-coloured concoctions in test tubes. Suddenly Fred appeared behind the counter of this instant apothecary, dressed in a stovetop hat and cutaway coat.

“Oh my Lord.”

Other men began to shout slogans about the cures they could offer. Some had made a poor attempt to dress as Native medicine men, their feathered headdresses incongruent with their white skin and whiter lab coats, worn, presumably, to seduce the more conservative minded of Moose Jaw.

A young woman standing on the fringe of the eager crowd smiled at me, a small, pale child coughing weakly at her side. “Been waiting for the medicine show all summer,” she said. “I plan to get some elixir for my boy's cough.”

“But they're not physicians.” The faces around me shone with excitement. “They're just a theatre troupe.” People next to me backed away a step, raising their eyebrows at one another as though it was I who was deluded. “You're wasting your money.”

The young mother glanced at me fearfully and pushed past to rush into the fray. Through the waving arms ahead, I saw Fred in the wagon dispensing remedies as fast as the others could convince the crowd of their efficacy. Trust Fred to sell himself as a salesman. Beside the wagon a sign proclaimed the group as PURVEYORS OF THE ONLY GENUINE SECRET INDIAN HERBAL REMEDY.

A young Native girl sat on a three-legged stool nearby. Dressed
in deerskin from her beaded dress to the tattered moccasins on her feet, she wore a headband with a single feather and her dark
hair hung in a braid to her waist. She gave me a bored smile.

“It's all a ruse,” I told her softly. “They're using you to attract business.”

She shrugged, like she didn't care, like she was quite aware she was selling the dignity of her ancestors for a few cents a day. I turned in despair to see Fred looking at me through the crowd. When I glared at him, he motioned for us to meet behind the wagon.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice a harsh whisper.

He looked around nervously and then put his hand in his vest pocket and struck a confident pose. “We're selling genuine Indian remedies, Moira. That's what we do here.”

“We? You've been here less than a day.”

“Stan says I can make a lot of money if I go on the road with him. Figured this is as good a job as any.” He looked slightly apologetic. “We'll go south when it gets cold. I'll get to see some country. And I'll send money when I can.”

“Fred, you're lying to these people. These things you're selling,
they're not medicine. They're just some voodoo concoctions.”

“There's a lot of money to be made selling hope to the hopeless.”

I gaped at him. “And what of those who aren't cured and don't have money left for the real doctors?”

“What? Like you and your father? Doesn't seem you can do a whole lot more for these folks than we can.” He flourished his hat. “So you see – hope is worth a lot.”

I wanted out of the crowd, shrank under the press of animated, expectant faces. It was an exciting diversion, the people accomplices to the lie. They wanted to be duped. Maybe Fred was right. Maybe hope was all they had left. I backed away from him.

“See you in the spring, then.” Behind me, Fred's voice was tinged with regret. “Good luck.”

I wanted, despite his obvious failings, to go with him, to be free of burdens, lost on the prairie where no one knew me and no one cared to. But the baby would grow and my belly accordingly. I wouldn't fool anyone. Fred's gaze was direct. Shaking my head, I shoved my way to the edge of the crowd, and ran.

Past the Station Hotel, Joyner's Department Store and the livery, I ran until I was outside town and a stich burned my side. Just into the field, I came to a huge boulder and climbed onto it to survey the few streets that made up the town, turned to take in the countryside beyond. Where was I? It seemed my life had been spinning by with little attention to me, like I was outside my body watching. Within only a few days, my pregnancy
had turned into banishment and, worse, destitution. And I ached
everywhere with exhaustion. My shoulders slumped. I ran my hand over the smooth side of the rock, its flat, perfect surface like the pebbles worn to a polish in the creekbed at home.

How to explain my sitting here in a hellish-hot place while Evan was at medical school, where I should have been as well? He wouldn't want this for me. He was one of few medical men who'd shown me any respect. It was Evan who had saved me from the hostility of my father's colleagues.

My face had nearly burned with embarrassment, wading through them in the crowded men's club, their black suits pressing in and making it nearly impossible to reach Father, who was deeply immersed in conversation. Their mutterings trailed behind me.

“Women in medicine, ha...Wouldn't let her touch the instruments in my hospital...What if it's her time of the month? Contaminate everything...Her father should know better...Reputation at stake...”

Their glaring eyes burned into my back. I was twenty, most of them over forty. Mother had insisted I wear a straight black dress, barely tucked at the waist with a high neckline. She'd gone to great pains, mostly mine, to bind my breasts tightly in an attempt to disguise any shape I might have. Hair in a matronly bun, no powder or lipstick. But the camouflage fell away under their stares. Finally I was at Father's side. Oblivious to the stir I'd caused, he beamed. “An old friend of the family,” he said, introducing his friend. “No one can suture better in the whole of Newfoundland.”

I hoped one day he'd say the same of me. But with the disapproval of the others thick around me, I just wanted to go home. Father was annoyed, but suddenly Evan had been there offering to escort me.

“I could tell by your face,” he whispered. “Besides, if you don't leave soon, these old men may just tar and feather you.”

“I don't think Father will allow it.”

“The tarring or the walking you home?”

I tried to smile, and blushed instead. I'd sat next to Evan a few times in class. He was handsome enough, sharp features and dark hair that hung just slightly into his eyes so that he constantly brushed it aside. He was brilliant, answering questions with a clarity none of the rest could match. Mostly quiet, he listened to everyone with respect, just as he did walking me home that night.

“They make me so angry...‘women can't practice'.... ‘women are too helpless'.... ‘women bleed.
'
” It was too bold. I stopped walking.

Evan had laughed. “They are archaic, I'll admit,” he said. “But as far as I know, women still bleed, do they not?”

My neck was hot. “Of course, but it doesn't make us conta
gious, or hysterical. I am none of those things at any time and am quite capable of doctoring through any part of my...cycle.” Again the torrent of words poured out of my mouth. He was only trying to be kind.

He laughed again, more quietly, and took my hand. His level gaze challenged my defiance. His lips brushed my cheek as he whispered into my ear. “I'd like to see you again.”

i i i

His father was a bastard. The word slipped into my mind and I liked the feel of it on my lips, the angry sound of it. Bastard, bastard, bastard. I sat on the rock and loudly whispered it out to the prairie, where it mixed with the rustling of the grass in the wind. Evan would come back for me. He would defy his father. As soon as the baby was adopted out, I'd go home and we'd be together.

I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked. It's not so bad, I thought. That never-ending sky offered comfort in its own way; there had to be possibilities in something so big. Running my hands over tender breasts and slightly distended belly, I ignored the skeptical voices in my head reminding me that I had no money, that I'd have to take the first job I could find in order to survive, that I had every reason to be terrified.

A lone rider approached at a slow trot from the east, growing up and out of the landscape, details of the man coming together: dark cowboy hat, green shirt, spectacles. Instead of passing by as I'd hoped, he stopped a few feet from the rock.

“Hello there.” His voice was soft, yet clearly audible over the growing wind.

“Hello,” I murmured, not looking directly at him, afraid it might be taken as an invitation.

“You're sitting on a buffalo rubbing stone,” he said, as though I'd asked. “The buffalo rubbed against it to scratch themselves. Wore it smooth like that.”

I glanced at my hand on the rock. “They must be huge.”

“They were.”

I looked at him more closely then. He was older, maybe thirty, his face sun-baked to deep brown, his blue eyes distorted by the thick spectacles he wore low on his nose. A misshapen cowboy hat was pushed back on his head and his boots, in their stirrups, were badly worn. His roan horse stuck its nose out and I couldn't help but touch it, laughing as the animal snorted, spraying my hands and face.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he said. Then, more carefully, “Say, do you need a ride into town? I'm going through on my way back to Ibsen.”

“I'm fine.” I wiped my face with the hem of my skirt. “I'll walk.”

He gave a slight nod. It was vaguely disappointing, his giving up so easily, though heaven knows what I would say to him. “I'm Silas Fenwick,” he said and turned to go.

“Moira Burns,” I said with a small wave. Jumping down from the rock I had a moment of fear. “Sir?” I called. He turned his horse back. “Are there any buffalo around here?”

He laughed a short, amused snort. “Not any more.” He rode away toward town.

I returned to Moose Jaw exhausted and hungry, impatient with the rampant changes of my body. Before sending me off, Father had explained what might be expected throughout the pregnancy, what was normal and what was not. I'd have been better off had he prepared me for men – how a man could run off at first mention of the baby he'd helped create, how another could encourage such abandonment and, mostly, how a father justified sending away the daughter who loved him most.