Hattie Ever After (17 page)

The latest from Ruby sounded like she would be back in town in a few weeks and Pearl would arrive in October, which would make a wonderful early birthday present for me. But it also meant I needed to hurry up and finish Pearl’s quilt. I took it to work to stitch on during my lunch hour.

“What’s that you’re working on?” Spot asked. “It’s so cheery.”

“It’s for Ruby’s daughter, Pearl.” I spread the quilt top out so Spot could see the whole thing. “But I’ve got to get busy. Sounds like she’ll be here soon.”

“Grandmother’s Fan,” Bernice observed, looking at the pattern. “Have you extra needles?”

And that was the beginning of our wee-hours quilting bee. Spot was enthusiastic but a bit uneven. For someone so solid, Bernice took the tiniest stitches. With a needle in hand, she became another person and nearly talked circles around Spot each night as we sewed.

Because of the quilting project, the only time spent in
the morgue was for other people’s projects. Though Ned had helped as much as he could, I was still straddling two worlds—that of charwoman and reporter hopeful. I was weary of my late-night sweeping and scouring and ready to take on the mantle of cub reporter. But my aerial story had not been enough to convince Mr. Monson; I needed something even more dramatic or I would never be able to plant my feet firmly under a newsroom desk. I must be as bold as an eagle or be resigned to the life of a crow, hopping after the bits and crumbs left by others. One night, I decided to forgo a few hours’ sleep and head straight to the morgue instead of home to my bed after work.

Fighting against scratchy eyelids, I pulled down yet another bound journal of back issues and began to read. The columns of newsprint blurred together. I found myself nodding off. This would not do! I pinched my cheeks to wake myself up and marched back and forth along the floor, swinging my arms vigorously to get the blood flowing. After several minutes of these gymnastics, I took my seat again and picked up where I left off.

Another hour passed. Another round of marching and arm-swinging. I was generally a hopeful person, but it seemed to me I had taken on a task that made setting fence posts in the frozen prairie seem simple. These pages and pages and pages of newsprint were filled with names and dates and events. Here was a report about Harry Houdini’s famous escape from a straitjacket; there an article recounting the progress made so far on the new Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C; the sinking of the
Lusitania;
Babe Ruth’s
first home run. Why did I think that in this enormous tangle of human doings, I would find out anything else about Uncle Chester, let alone anything newsworthy?

I slammed the big volume shut and lugged it over to the bookcase. As I began to slide it back in its proper spot, I noticed I’d accidentally folded in a corner of a section of pages. Balancing the heavy book on my left hand, I flipped it open to smooth out the bent sheets. My fingers passed over a headline in the right-hand column, near the bottom of the page: “Bank Is Victim of $4,550 Forgery.” From under the headline, Uncle Chester’s name leaped out. “Chester Hubert Wright is accused of attempting to cash a forged bank draft, drawn on the National Park Bank of New York and in the amount of $4,550. Wright claimed the check was given him by a friend.”

My arms could no longer hold the book. I set it on the library table, reading the horrible article through several more times. When Uncle Chester had called himself a scoundrel in his only letter to me, I’d believed it a bit of poetic license. My throat tightened to think that the same person who had given me a chance at a life of my own was nothing more than a thief. And not a very good one, either, or he would not have gotten caught.

I returned the heavy leather volume to the shelf, then sat in the dark for a good long while, batting at my discovery as a cat might a ball of yarn. Like me, Uncle Chester had been orphaned at a young age, out on his own before most boys are out of short pants. It wasn’t impossible to imagine him falling in with the wrong crowd and embracing a life outside
of respectable society. But that seemed something out of a Horatio Alger novel, too pat to be true. My uncle had filled his claim shack with books—was that the action of a thief? And he was held in such high regard back in Vida! Perilee, who had no tolerance for the slick and sinful, had nothing but good to say about him. How could he have fooled her? Or Leafie? Or Rooster Jim?

Speaking of fools, I had proved myself one, once again, with a silly idea that a story about my uncle might be my ticket to a press card. I hadn’t thought it through, hadn’t thought about the consequences should I learn, as I had, that Uncle Chester deserved that scoundrel label. My investigating had provided a powerful lesson: truth can both lift up and knock down. With one blow, the truth about my uncle had destroyed two dreams. I had no stomach for learning anything more about his life. I would close up Pandora’s box as tightly as I could, even if that meant I might never find the story that would admit me to the rank of reporter. Why did I keep hitching myself to dreams as big as that Montana sky? I was like Rooster Jim’s chickens, with no way to fly that high.

I trudged up to the lobby. Ned was coming in as I was going out; he called a greeting to me but I walked on as if I hadn’t heard. I feared that if I opened my mouth, even to say hello to someone, Uncle Chester’s story would come spilling out. I needed some time alone to mull over what to think, what to feel.

There had been someone I could confide in, someone who would understand. Charlie. But by staying here, I’d built a fence between us that might never find its gate. As I walked,
the pain of that choice throbbed like a sore tooth. Every few steps, I’d poke at it to see if it still hurt. It did.

Uncle Chester had set me off balance inside, but something was off balance outside, too. It wasn’t until I came upon a feather that I realized what was wrong, and scanned the sky. Generally, the gulls could make themselves heard over any traffic noises. But I heard no
maaw-maaw-maaws
. Odder yet, I didn’t see any gulls above. Still, I picked up the feather for my growing collection. Maude had teased that soon I’d have enough for wings of my own.

Admiring a pyramid of oranges on display at the corner grocer, I missed my step and stumbled. I fought to keep my feet under me, realizing I hadn’t stumbled—the sidewalk was bucking like a cranky range horse.

Juggling oranges as they bounced wildly around on his display, the shopkeeper shouted, “Earthquake!”

The drugstore sign above us swung wildly. A horse whinnied. Someone screamed. Was it me? I held tight to a lamppost while the earth went mad. Buildings groaned. Windows rattled. Cable cars came to a screeching halt. Finally, the shaking stopped, as abruptly as it had started.

I relaxed my grip on the post. “Is it over?” I looked at Mother’s watch, pinned to my bodice: 1:16.

The shopkeeper scrambled to recover his escaped fruit. A street urchin helped himself to a pair of oranges and took off running. For some reason, I began to laugh so hard that tears flowed down my cheeks.

“You all right, miss?” The shopkeeper paused in his cleanup efforts to look me over. “First time?”

I wiped the tears from my cheeks, nodding.

“Well, that was a pretty good one.” He looked around. “Don’t see much damage. Looks like it’s nothing to worry about.”

Within minutes, the sidewalk and street were full of people comparing notes. The china shop lost three teapots. “Spode,” said the manager with a sigh.

“I’ve lost my spectacles.” A frail older woman wandered in my direction, her hat askew and a bump on her nose. “Something fell off the building there.” She made a brushing gesture across her face. “Knocked them clean off.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“I don’t think so.” But her hands trembled as she attempted to right her hat. I helped her inside the drugstore whose sign still creaked and moaned overhead. The store was a clatter of loud voices and frenetic activity. I stepped over a broken bottle of Vinol cod liver oil and stooped to pick up a few boxes of Rexall Cold Tablets, spilled from the shelf. “May I have a glass of water for my friend?”

The man behind the soda fountain set a glass on the countertop while I helped the woman onto a stool.

“Here.” I held the glass as she took a sip. “Drink it up.”

“All quiet now,” said the counterman. “Just a jolt to get the juices going. Doesn’t look like anything too serious.”

The lady smiled weakly. “I’d rather get my jolt from coffee.” She rummaged in her pocketbook, found an embroidered handkerchief, and blew her nose. “Thank you, my dear. I’ll be all right now.”

“Are you sure? Without your spectacles?”

“Oh, it’s a bit of a blur, but I can manage.” She patted my hand. “Don’t you worry.”

I helped her off the stool, then went back out on the street. Everyone had a story to tell. And I was there to listen, notepad in hand. The young man in the paisley bow tie said he’d been thrown right off the cable car by the jolt. A little girl’s best Mary Janes shook right off her feet. The banker in a pin-striped suit had been on the seventh floor of his building when the earthquake hit. He kept repeating, “It was as if I were swinging in a hammock, back and forth, back and forth.” I collected twenty or thirty stories; then I did what any good reporter would do. I called them in.

When I finished reading off my notes to him, Mr. Monson said, “Well done, young lady. Well done.”

The next morning, I found mention of the earthquake on page four. Someone, maybe the copy reader, had compiled notes from different reporters into one measly column inch of text:

I would never get credit, but it felt good to know that I—and the pin-striped banker—had contributed in some small way to the news.

Still, I couldn’t help but think that while the city of San Francisco had experienced one earthquake on September 4, 1919, I had experienced two. The earth’s rumbling and reeling had done no real damage. But the other earthquake, the truth about Uncle Chester, had left marks that might never be repaired.

War of Words

Rereading what I’d written, I felt a tiny twinge of guilt for holding back what I’d learned about Uncle Chester. Though I might feel less unburdened in the telling, what I knew would only hurt Perilee, or whichever of his old friends I might choose to confide in. Thank goodness Ruby was still out of town! I would need time before I could face her without wearing such bad news on my face. Aunt Ivy used to say if something’s big enough to worry about, it’s big enough
to pray about. So that was what I did as I crawled into bed. “Lord, you can’t change my uncle’s past,” I prayed, “but could you please help me forgive him?”

A few short hours later, I rousted myself from bed. My work schedule had turned me into a night owl; I was rarely up before two or three in the afternoon. But I was eager to give each of the girls I’d interviewed a copy of
Female 49ers: San Francisco Women Who Find Gold in Their Work
. The copies never would have gotten typed if it hadn’t been for Ned. One night when there had been no research assignments for me, he’d patiently demonstrated the Rational Typewriting Method. Once I mastered a feel for the home keys, it was a snap to get the rest of the Rational Method. Typing up copies of each
Female 49ers
article provided the perfect means for transforming me from hunt-and-pecker to confident master of the keyboard. It took only a few evenings—and one wastepaper basket full of failed efforts—to accomplish my objective. And now I was eager to gift each interview subject with a copy of her own story.