Leaden Skies (11 page)
Zelda stopped on East Third Street, just short of the offices of
The Independent
. She sneaked a sidelong glance at the road, muddy ruts and all, then down at her ill-gotten fancy shoes. She’d kept them clean as best she could while picking her way down Chicken Hill. What with the toe-pinching shoes, her Sunday best—threadbare, but decent—and her ma’s Sunday bonnet, Zelda thought she probably looked respectable. Poor, but honest. She moved to face the building and peered at the words painted on the dirt-smudged window.
The Independent
Jedediah Elliston, publisher
—and at the smaller, hand-lettered sign wedged into a dusty corner of the sill:
Typesetter wanted
She took a quick look at the building itself. The offices of
The Independent
occupied a robust log building topped with a tent-like half wall above the door.
She’d thought it’d be grander.
Not that it really mattered.
What mattered was that this Jedediah Elliston take her seriously, that she convince him she could do this job. And she could. She’d lie if she had to, to make him give her a chance.
Well, if I can lie all night long, pitchin’ and moanin’ for Flo, I figure I can get this Mr. Elliston here to give me a listen.
She tied the bow a little tighter below her chin, hoping that Mr. Elliston hadn’t been to Flo’s any time lately. Just in case he had, she’d darkened her hair with walnut water and used a fierce brush with a dab of bear grease to subdue the curls. Her hair, now gleaming sable and smooth, was pulled back in a bun tight enough to make her eyebrows ache.
With a deep breath, she opened the door.
Only one person was inside, standing before a table with his back to her. He swung around at the tinkling noise made by the bell above the door. Zelda was relieved that he didn’t look familiar. He came over, wiping his hands on a rag. “How can I help you, Miss?”
Miss. Well.
She must look proper enough then.
Zelda said, “I’ve come about the sign in your window.”
“The sign?” He frowned, puzzled.
“About the job. For a typesetter.” She held up the page torn from
The Independent
, to remind him of the opening.
His frown deepened.
She kept her expression bland, expectant, thinking he’d be a handsome sort if his mouth wasn’t so twisted up, like he’d eaten a lemon straight.
He pulled the piece of newspaper from her outstretched hand. “I posted this under ‘Men Wanted.’ What makes you think you’d fit the bill?”
She rattled off the short speech she’d practiced on her way down the hill. “I need the job to support my kin up on Chicken Hill. My pa’s blind and can’t work. My ma’s gone, and my brothers, I got twin brothers, they’re no help. Too young.”
At least when it comes to smarts.
“I can work plenty hard. I don’t drink. Don’t spit. I won’t get all moony on you and go chasin’ after a silver claim. You won’t regret hirin’ me. I promise.”
“Have you experience setting type?”
“No, but I learn fast. You show me how to do it once, and I’ll remember what you told me. And I’ll be to work, every day, on time, if you’ll give me a chance.”
“How’s your spelling?”
“I’m real good at words.”
“When you set type, you read letters, words, entire sentences backwards.” He stopped at her dumbfounded expression and shook his head, sourness intensifying. “Bah. Hopeless. I’m wasting my time.”
“Let me try. I’ll work a spell for free. If’n after one day, you don’t think I can do the job, then you don’t pay and I’ll go. You got nothing to lose.”
“Nothing but time on a silly goose of a girl,” he grumbled.
But she’d noticed that on the words “free” and “don’t pay” the prissy old-maid puckered look around his mouth had softened, then disappeared altogether.
“What’s your name, Miss?”
“Th—” She stopped and covered her mouth with a delicate cough to give herself time to think. Should she use her real name? “Thomas. Zel Thomas.”
He cocked his head and gazed at her a moment, eyes narrowed.
Uh-oh. He knows I’m fibbin’.
“Hands, Miss Thomas,” he said abruptly. “Off with those gloves, please.”
Holding her breath she peeled off a glove.
Does he know who I am, where I worked? Hope he doesn’t try to get fast with me, askin’ me to pull his prick t’ get the job.
He seized her freed hand and held it open. “Done much needlework, Miss Thomas? Lace? Embroidery?”
“Some,” she said, startled. “My ma used to say I could maybe earn my way with a needle. Why?”
“Nimble fingers required.” He dropped her hand. “Okay, Miss Thomas. Here’s my decision. If you start now, this very moment, I’ll give you the opportunity to learn the typesetter’s trade. I need help with tomorrow’s issue,
tout suite
. The pressmen are due in tonight, and I’m behind.”
Zelda thought she detected a note of panic in his tone.
He then straightened, pulled his slouched shoulders back. “If you prove out today, I’ll ask you to come back tomorrow. If tomorrow goes well, I’ll pay you at close. Dollar-fifty a day. The first time you’re late, or a mistake gets into print, you’re fired. I can’t afford slip-ups.” He stared, as if daring her to turn tail and run.
Instead, she squared her shoulders to match his. “Thank you, Mr. Elliston. You won’t be sorry.”
A dollar-fifty a day!
She could hardly believe her ears, or her luck.
Not as good as whorin’, but a whole lot better than fixin’ lace.
“I’ve often heard the theory posed that women—some women, in any case—are superior to men in the matter of typesetting. Hard for me to believe that a woman is superior anywhere outside the domestic realm, but I’m an open-minded sort.”
He gestured to a coatrack beside a desk overflowing with stacks and crumpled balls of paper. “For your coat and hat.”
“I’ll keep ’em on, if that’s all right,” she said, not wanting to reveal her face any more than necessary.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He crossed to a row of pegs alongside one of the huge hulking machines and pulled off a canvas apron smeared with ink. “You’ll need this, though. Now, for your first lesson.” He led her over to a tall set of drawers, and pulled one open. “Type cases here. They come in pairs. The upper case holds capitals, small capitals, fractions, braces, and so on. The lower case holds small letters, points, spaces, quadrats, and the like. Over here is a form, ready to go, with case, type, lead, and furniture.”
***
Quoin.
Composing stick.
Leads.
Heel nicks.
Widows and orphans.
The words filled her mind like small fish swimming in a stream. More words, the type sizes, bobbed like so much foam on top: Excelsior. Agate. Long Primer.
Her back ached, her fingertips were inky and tender, her eyes watered from looking at all those little letters, and her head felt like it couldn’t hold another thing. But, as she stared down at the half-page she’d set—with Mr. Elliston barking and pointing and telling her what to do—her heart felt different. Swelled with pride. She’d done it!
What’s more, after fixing a last paragraph so as not to have a lone word sulking by itself on the last line of the page—
a widow-word, that’s what it’s called
—Mr. Elliston had actually said, “Good job, Miss Thomas.” Although he’d uttered the words a touch grumpily, like he didn’t really want to, like someone held a pistol at his back.
Then, he’d added, “You seem to have a natural faculty for this kind of work, Miss Thomas.”
Now, she wasn’t entirely sure about the word “faculty,” but it must’ve meant something good, because he’d actually smiled when he said it.
Pride goeth before a fall.
Her pa’s voice whispered in her head. She stroked her hands down the lap of the rough apron, being gentle on her raw fingertips, and silently addressed her father’s doom-filled prophecy.
Well, Pa, if’n you don’t want for us to starve in this hellhole of a town, you’re gonna have to let me have a little pride in what I can do. It’ll put food on the table, maybe not as much as whorin’ might, but it’s a sight better for the soul.
A strangled clunk of the bell caused her and Jed both to turn toward the door as someone rattled it. An indistinct shadow flitted past the dust-dimmed window, its exact form indistinguishable from other pedestrians.
“What’s this?” Jed strode toward the door.
Zelda realized a white space lay on the dark wood floor, like a displaced square of sunlight coming through a small window.
Jed picked up the oversized envelope and turned it over. “Well, it’s got my name on it in any case.” Pulling out a pocketknife, he slit it open while walking back to the table where he and Zelda had been working side by side. He pulled out several pages, unfolded them, and set them on the table. The top page held a scribbled sentence:
If you think John Quincy Adams Wesley is a friend of the hardworking and voting men of Colorado, read these.
Jed set the note aside to reveal a letter written on fancy paper, thick and creamy. An engraved heading read “Law Offices of Lawton, Lawton, and Crouse, Boston, San Francisco, and Denver.”
The words “personal” and “confidential” were scrawled across the top in a well-versed hand. The salutation—
Dear Mr. Gallagher
—was followed by:
In response to your inquiry, I take it that the question of employees is only a question of private and corporate economy, and individuals or companies have the right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest. We have a treaty with the Chinese government. I am not prepared to say that it should be abrogated, until our great manufacturing and Corporate interests are conserved in the matter of labor—
Apparently a faster reader than she was, Elliston whisked the letter aside with a muttered “Gallagher!”
Zelda thought she heard a note of triumph in his voice. She screwed up her nose, thinking of her brothers. They cursed Gallagher, the absentee owner of the Silver Mountain Mines, daily. She’d never met this man, who was as rich as Horace Tabor, if not more. The old-time girls at Flo’s sometimes talked about him in hushed tones, but he’d not been in town for a long while, according to them.
Elliston picked up a second letter, saying, “Same paper, same handwriting, different salutation.”
Zelda, peeked over his arm, reading—
My dear Mrs. Clatchworthy
,
You needn’t worry. Stand assured that I am fully on your side as regards the women’s vote. Once elected, I shall work assiduously to make woman in Colorado man’s equal partner in all, including property and voting—
Zelda was having trouble reading the rest of the letter because Elliston’s hand trembled so. She glanced up at his face. His eyes looked feverish, softer, his face flushed. The tip of his tongue escaped briefly to touch his lips. It was the sort of look she’d seen on faces of younger men who got a glimpse of tit or on older ones who liked to talk about their stock holdings and bank accounts.
“These—” his hands shook— “I’d not trade these for the Matchless Mine, or any silver strike. It’s the break I’ve been waiting for. My bonanza.” He gazed at a point high on the wall. “I wonder. Who slid these under the door? Should I verify the information? Check with Wesley? Get his comments? He’ll surely deny everything. This is as volatile as giant powder. No, more like nitroglycerine, set to explode in his face, no matter what he says. Who else knows about this, I wonder. Dill at the
Herald
? Robinson at the
Democrat
? Davis at the
Chronicle
? But I have the original letters here. Anything they get would be hearsay. Not that that would stop them.”
His unfocused gaze settled on Zelda and sharpened. “There’s no time to hesitate. It’s either go or no in tonight’s edition. Wesley is from Denver by way of San Francisco and Boston. Thinks he can move into town, throw his charm and money around, and get elected, just like that.” He snapped his fingers dismissively. “He’s just the kind of upstart politician I detest. Slick on the outside, rotten on the inside, and protected by his mother. Oh, she doesn’t let any of us near her precious boy. But I’ve heard him talk from both sides of his mouth, depending on the audience. And I know Mrs. Clatchworthy. This sounds just like her. And Harry Gallagher, after the miners’ strike four months ago, I’ll bet he’s itching to hire cheap labor that won’t cause more trouble and make demands. The Celestials would jump at the chance to make half a white man’s wages and kiss Gallagher’s boots for the opportunity.”
“Are there Chinamen in Leadville?” Zelda asked, since he seemed to be talking to her.
He started—
Guess he was talkin’ to hisself after all—
then said, “Last one left town in a hurry some time ago. Celestials are not welcome here.” He licked his lips again, more nervously this time, then came to a decision. “Well, when Dame Fortune smiles, what can we mortals do but smile back? This will sell a mountain of papers, with all the visitors in town.”
Zelda picked up the envelope to give it the eye, not that there was much to see.
“There’s somethin’ else in here.” She pulled out what felt like an oversized playing card, wrapped in paper. She unwrapped it, and a small photograph fell out.
But not just any photograph.
During Elliston’s horrified gasp, Zelda had time to observe a number of things about the woman in the image.
First, she hardly wore a thing.
If’n you can even call that bitty gauze drape a thing.
Second, she was a Celestial.
Kinda pretty, too, but I don’t see how she kin be smilin’, posed like that. I’d not be smiling, that’s for sure!
Third, and this more of a professional rumination:
How can she bend her legs around like that? Must of been in the circus, maybe.
Before she could examine the photograph further, Jed snatched it away.
Zelda realized that, as a proper young woman, a proper response was expected from her.
She promptly covered her eyes, as if the lewd image had almost stricken her blind. Behind the dark shield, she contemplated whether she maybe ought to pretend to faint dead away, but the floor was filthy and besides, she wanted to see what Mr. Elliston would do. She peeked through her fingers.
