Girl Waits with Gun (29 page)

He reminded us that Mr. Kaufman would be free until the trial. “He's been warned that if anyone comes near your house, sends you a letter, or threatens you in any way, we will arrest him again and hold him this time. His lawyer is advising him to do as we say, and so is his sister. I don't think you need us patrolling at night anymore. But we'll drive by as often as we can.”

We followed the men to the door, and I opened it, letting in a blast of freezing wind. “Thank you, Sheriff. I'm sure we'll be fine. But what about Lucy Blake? Haven't you turned up anything? Hasn't anyone reported her missing?”

“We've made inquiries, but I suspect she's just run off. There's not much we can do about that.”

Fleurette clung to my arm and bounced up and down on her toes. “But what about the child?” she said. “We're quite convinced Mr. Kaufman was involved.”

“You don't know that,” Norma said.

Sheriff Heath pulled his collar around his neck. “He claims not to know a thing about it. I'm sorry, ladies, but we've just got nothing to go on.”

Norma said, “I suppose the trial will be postponed until after Christmas?”

“Christmas? Oh, no. The trial won't commence for several months. The courts are terribly behind, and Mr. Kaufman's attorney will do everything he can to delay. He has no chance of winning, so his only hope is to put it off and send his client a nice high bill every month.”

“You mean he'll be free for months before he goes to jail?” I said. I couldn't imagine living in a state of uncertainty for that long.

Sheriff Heath looked at his deputies and reached around us to close the door again. In a careful, somber voice, he said, “I beg your forgiveness if I've given you the wrong impression. We don't expect him to be sentenced to any time in prison. He'll get a good steep fine, but I believe his sister will pay it. And if she does, he'll stay out of jail unless he bothers you again. That's how these cases go.”

Norma put her hands on her hips, jabbing me with her elbow as she did. “Why on earth wouldn't he go to jail? Are men in this country at liberty to shoot at windows and traipse through houses starting fires with no fear of punishment?”

The sheriff started to answer. “Miss Kopp, I—”

But I cut him off. “Do you mean that you're not ever going to lock him up? He'll just be out there, doing as he pleases? Forever? And what are we to do?” I looked down at Fleurette and tried to imagine letting her go to town by herself while Henry Kaufman remained free. How would I possibly keep her safe?

“You may feel that we can go about without any sort of protection,” I said, “but I don't see how. I intend to keep my revolver, and don't be surprised if I have reason to use it.”

The sheriff gave me a long and steady look. “That's fine. Keep the gun.”

Was he really leaving this to me? “I'd rather put Henry Kaufman in prison and go back to sleeping through the night,” I said.

“Miss Kopp. You're asking for something I can't give you. I'd hold him under my roof for the rest of his days if I could. But the truth is that I can't prove anything except threats and intimidation, misuse of the mail, and a few shots that did nothing more than break a window and scare everybody.”

“And that's not enough to put him in jail?”

“He'll pay for what he did. His name will be dragged through the papers. Between the fines and the fees his attorney will charge, this will hit his family in the pocketbook. And he'll go straight to jail if he so much as looks at the three of you ever again. That's the best I can do.”

There was nothing else to say. We mumbled our thanks to the men and they pushed the door open and ran against the wind to their automobile.

THE NEXT FEW WEEKS
brought one of the worst ice storms in New Jersey's history. A motor car slid off an icy bridge and tumbled into the Hackensack River, sending a newly married couple to their death. A wagon taking children to a church concert got stuck in a drift of snow, and two of the boys walked five miles to get help. Their feet froze along the way. One of them lost two toes and the other lost three. The schools in Paterson closed and so did the courthouse, because so few people could get to work.

Only the mills kept going, fueled by enormous boilers and the sweat of workers who could not afford to miss a day's pay at Christmas. The sky was perpetually gray above them from the steam and smoke belched into the air at all hours. This was the busiest season, when New York demanded all the ribbon and tassels and brightly colored fabric for party dresses that the mills could produce. Even when every road in Paterson was impassable, one route from the mills to the train station remained open. They didn't miss a single shipment.

The dyers and their helpers suffered more than any other silk worker in the winter. At least the weavers could stay dry. In the unheated dye shops, the steam and drippings from the tubs froze, making the floors slick with ice. Even the workers' clothes, soaked through with dye, would freeze on the way home. That used to be Lucy, running through the icy streets after sundown, her clammy apron stuck to her skin.

If we never found her, what would become of her and her child? Sometimes at night I stood at my window and looked out at the ice on the meadow and the barn roof and thought not just of Henry Kaufman and the torment he'd brought upon us, and Lucy, and who knows how many others, but of all the madness and malfeasance in the world beyond our rutted road. I understood the haunted look Sheriff Heath so often wore. To take a stand against it—to try to save one wronged girl or put one thief or murderer behind bars—would have been like trying to stop a locomotive with a patent leather bridle. I wondered what made the sheriff think he should even try. Most men would leave it to someone else and pursue a more comfortable occupation. But Sheriff Heath sought out his office. He campaigned for it. I understood why Mrs. Heath seemed so unhappy. It could not have been an easy life.

We saw very little of him or his deputies as the year drew to an end. It was too difficult for them to get down our road. We took comfort in the fact that if the sheriff couldn't get to us, neither could any other automobile. Even the milk wagon came only twice a week. The boy driving it seemed lonely, too. He stopped to talk to us every time he went by and always accepted our invitation to come inside and get warm.

Norma and I took up our own sort of patrol, circling our house and grounds with our revolvers plainly drawn every few hours. We went even in the hail and the snow. It was probably an unnecessary exercise, but we both needed something to do. Life was very dull without the deputies around. We had a resolution of sorts to our case, but not the satisfaction of catching Henry Kaufman in the act of any crime. I did wish he would turn up once more so I could take a shot at him.

Still, we felt freer than we had in months. I read books in bed and slept late. We played cards and took on little projects around the house. Fleurette made a new set of curtains for the kitchen, and I began to scrape off the wallpaper in Mother's bedroom.

Then another letter arrived. The envelope was typed this time, not written out by hand, so I assumed it was a bill. I didn't even open it until I sat down at my desk that night. When I saw the first line I gasped. Norma and Fleurette ran across the room to read it over my shoulder.

December 21, 1914

George Ewing

78 Albion St.

Paterson, NJ

Dear Miss Kopp,

I overheard a deep laid conspiracy to abduct Florette. You have in some way been able to obtain the abhorrence of a dirty gang of Italians. For the time being all is O.K. Tell your girl not to answer any fake wire or phone calls to hospitals or other places. This can be settled, and you and I and the gang the only ones to know it. Keep your head. Don't go and publish anything in the newspapers, or it will spoil our plans.

Write to me at this address if you are in agreement. Do not send the authorities because they will not find me. After I get word from you I will arrange a meeting place.

Remember! We will settle this ourselves.

Sincerely,

George Ewing

“Who is George Ewing?” Norma asked.

I shook my head. “I've never heard of him. And this is the first typewritten letter we've received. I believe we're dealing with a new criminal.”

Fleurette took the letter and read it again. “Not one of these crooks can spell my name.”

“The less they know about you, the better,” I said. “And this isn't an invitation to a dance, so stop complaining.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don't know. I'll talk to Sheriff Heath tomorrow.”

“Are we to have deputies in the barn for another year?”

EVERY TIME
I closed my eyes that night, I dreamed of Fleurette as a little girl, sitting alone on our parlor floor with a box of buttons. The room was dark save a lamp that cast a pool of light across her. A knock came at the door and somehow I knew, in the way one knows things in dreams that one shouldn't know, that she was being summoned to a hospital. She jumped up, spilling her buttons across the floor. I tried to call out to her, but my mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton and I choked on the words. I reached for her, but my arms were so heavy I couldn't move them. She opened the door and disappeared into an explosion of light, blazing as bright as a house on fire.

I awoke choking and coughing in my dark room, a slick of sweat down my chest. I mopped it up with a sheet and untangled my legs from the covers, the heat pulsing off my skin into the frigid night air. I wanted to go check on Fleurette and Norma in their beds, but before I could move, the nightmares rose up and pulled me down again.

I remember little about the days that followed. A fever had come over me, and it seemed to rest on top of me like an enormous slumbering animal, something wild and menacing and unmoving. In my delirious state I knew that as long as I didn't wake the animal, it wouldn't hurt me. Once or twice Norma came into my room and tried to lift the blankets off to cool my skin. She told me later that I clutched at them and begged her not to disturb it, it being the creature I had imagined. She wasn't feeling well herself and lacked the strength to fight me.

Fleurette was the last to succumb. She had been nursing us both. She cooked the thinnest possible broth, nothing but hot water and salt and a chicken bone. I remember her forcing a spoon between my lips, but it made me cough and sputter, and I pushed her away.

She took to her bed before either of us were up again. There is a day or two that I cannot account for. The whole house was still and dark, the three of us each wrestling against our own fever-creatures.

Mine was the first to break. I awoke one morning with a ferocious appetite. I craved the most outlandish, impossible breakfast: a plate of fresh yellow eggs the likes of which we hadn't seen since the hens stopped laying in November, Mother's light, buttery rolls, the cherry preserves we'd not gotten around to canning last summer, and a sweet warm melon from the garden. My throat was so sore I could hardly swallow, and when I coughed I spat blood in the linen. But in spite of the pain, I would have devoured a meal like that without hesitation.

Instead I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and made my way downstairs, keeping one shaky hand on the wall. The house must have been entirely unheated since Fleurette had taken to her bed. Even the stair rail was too cold to touch. I reached the kitchen and found that we were down to twigs and bark in the kindling basket, but I lit a fire in the stove anyway.

I found little to eat except tea and toast and the last jar of applesauce. I didn't know toast could taste that good. I thought surely the smell would wake Norma and Fleurette and lure them downstairs, but their appetites had not yet returned. I took them each a cup of tea. Norma was able to sit up and drink a little of it. But Fleurette's fever was working at her furiously. I'd never felt a face as hot as hers. I forced her covers down, but she fought for them just as I had done.

On the way downstairs a wave of dizziness came over me. I sat on the steps to steady myself. I knew I shouldn't be up yet, but I needed to get out to the barn to check on the animals and see if there was anything to eat in our root cellar. I wrapped a coat around my nightgown and pushed my bare feet into the rubber boots I'd left standing in the washing room.

But when I tried the kitchen door it wouldn't move. A drift of snow had blown against the house and frozen there, forming a wedge of ice.

I tried the front door and found it unyielding as well. Only the back door was clear of snow, though it too was frozen shut. I leaned into it and pushed it and kicked it until the stars of the nighttime sky swum around before me. It opened with a great crack and I stood panting in the thin, icy air.

Before I lost my nerve, I marched around the house to the barn. As I'd feared, Dolley and the chickens had been without water, as had Norma's pigeons. I put all my weight against the cistern pump and by some miracle got it moving. Dolley bent her enormous head to the water trough as I filled it, blinking at me through one coal-colored eye. The chickens cawed and moaned and flapped their wings until they got a drink, too. The pigeons cooed and warbled and showed no gratitude at all.

By this time, any residual warmth from my fever had dissipated and I felt distressingly light, as if I might float away or melt into the snow. I took hold of the handle to the cellar door but couldn't muster the effort to pull it open. I don't remember getting back to the house, except that there remained in my mind a picture of two bottles of cream the boy from the dairy must have just left on our porch, each of them buried in snow until only their red paper caps showed.