Quiet Dell: A Novel (41 page)

The boy half stood, clearly frightened.

“Sit down, Mason, it’s all right.” She went to the door, and opened it to Coley Woods. “Mr. Woods,” she said, and stepped into the hallway.

“Is everything all right, Miss Thornhill?” The porter looked down at her, his dark eyes soft and inquiring.

Of course, he had seen her come into the lobby with a ragged-looking person in a bulky coat. Woods was concerned for her. “Yes, Mr. Woods, quite all right, but thank you for asking. My nephew will be assisting me for the duration of the trial. There’s surely an extra charge, since the second bedroom is now occupied. Could I settle all this tomorrow? He’s had a long journey.”

“You can arrange it with the desk. How old is your nephew?”

“He’s nearly twelve. We’ve organized time off from school. He wants to become a journalist someday.”

“The charge for minor children is adjusted.”

“Thank you, Mr. Woods. I’ll put the tray out, as soon as we finish dinner. Good night, then.” She stepped inside and latched the door. Tomorrow, she must buy the boy a suit and introduce him to the hotel staff. Best to limit their observations until he was a bit more practiced in certain social graces. “Mason?”

“Miss?” He spoke from the corner of the room. “Do I have to leave?”

“No. Come and sit down.” She moved to the couch and indicated the chair opposite. “Why would you need to leave?” She waited for him to sit. “You must be honest with me. Is someone looking for you, Mason? Your uncle, perhaps? Or the police?”

“The police ain’t—”

“The police aren’t.”

“The police aren’t looking for me.”

She watched his face carefully. “Is your uncle looking for you?”

He frowned and blinked his eyes. The thatch of dark hair, fallen forward, moved on his lashes. Again, the slight wince. “I don’t have no, I mean, any uncle, miss.”

“So, who ran you off, Mason, as you put it?” Clearly, she thought, someone had.

“My father did, a lot of times. He hit me but I always came back, because my mother, she was sick. He wouldn’t help her.” The boy looked away, and nearly whispered. “She told me he drank more after he got hurt in the mines. He would go away, leave us be, but then he would come back.”

And terrorize them, Emily thought. “Mason,” she said gently, “when did your mother . . . pass?” She did not like the expression, but thought people here probably used it.

“Beginning of October. I walked up the hill to get the neighbors, and we said some words over her. I didn’t have any way to pay the undertaker, or a minister. We made a funeral for her in the garden. It’s the way we do.”

“I see.” She realized that the old coat he was wearing, now hanging in the closet, must be his mother’s. “Your father wasn’t there, for the funeral.”

“No, miss, but he come back that night, drinking, and I hid in the woods until he was asleep. Then I come back for her coat and some things. She had told me to leave, that I shouldn’t stay—” He faltered a moment. “I walked to Coalton and got a ride to Clarksburg with a farmer.”

“And how did you come to be staying near the Gore?”

“They was always people, and—”

“You stole from them, picked their pockets?”

“Sometimes, miss. But I swept the alley, too, and he—that man”—he nodded at the door—“put food out for me. And he let me shine shoes, and paid me a few cents.”

“What man? Do you mean Mr. Woods? The porter?”

“I didn’t know ’twer him knocking, miss.”

“Of course you didn’t. But he is a good man. He listened to my story and didn’t give you up, or embarrass me. Look, Mason. From now on, we’ll say you’re my nephew, just as I told Mr. Woods. I think he will allow us that fabrication. And you’ll call me, I suppose, Aunt Emily.”

“Do I have to, miss?”

“In general, I do not advocate lying, but people will not believe we’re related if you call me miss.”

“All right, miss. I mean, all right.”

“I’m sure you’re tired. You’ll have a bath, and a warm bed. How does that sound?”

“I’m glad to have a job, miss. I mean, I’m glad—” He reached down to lay his hand along Duty’s back, and the dog yawned.

He was certainly a polite boy. His mother had loved him, it seemed, and tried to teach him. “Mason,” she said, “your mother would understand, as I do, that you stole because you were hungry. That is over. I will trust you, Mason, unless you give me reason not to. This must be clear between us.”

He sat up straighter and squared his thin shoulders, and shook her hand when she offered it.

“Very well then, this is my room, and here”—Emily led him through to the smaller room—“is your room, and your bathroom. Let me draw you a bath. Please leave your clothes on the chair here, and I’ll get a bathrobe for you.” She poured some lavender oil into the water, to banish the smell of the alley, and hasten sleep, as well.

On her knees by the tub, she heard the dull thud of Duty’s small rubber ball, and Mason praising him in a low voice. William and Eric would think her rash, but they were not here to judge. She fetched the bathrobe and laid out soap and towels. She called him in, and he came, Duty at his heels.

“Knock on my door when you finish. All right, Mason?”

“Yes. Thank you, miss.”

She lay down on the sofa in her own room. She must have slept, for his knock roused her. She peered through the dim room as at an apparition. His wet dark hair was swept back from his face, so that his pale complexion and fine brow were obvious, and he looked even younger. She walked him back to his room and pulled open the covers on the high spool bed; he stepped on the footstool to get in.

“Good night, then,” she said. He looked back at her, nearly asleep, and she put the dog next to him, where the boy would feel him breathing. “You’ll see,” she said, “Duty is a fine companion.”

In the bath, his clothes, folded so carefully, were nearly rags. She washed them in the sink and hung them to dry. Surely he wouldn’t object to a haircut. She wondered how well he could read. Certainly he was quick, living by his wits, with a mother to mourn if he ever felt safe enough. She turned off the light and walked back through to her room; Mason was asleep, Duty in his arms. The dog raised his head, and moved his stump of a tail.

•   •   •

Duty woke her, barking his ragged
chuff
from the foot of her bed. “There now,” she said, pulling on her robe. She walked through into Mason’s room to find him sitting in the armchair, fully dressed in the clothes she’d left to dry last night. “Good morning, Mason. Did you sleep well?”

“Oh yes, miss. I mean, yes.”

“I hope Duty didn’t wake you.”

“He was wanting to go out awful bad. So I took him on the leash, around the hotel. I hope that was all right. I used the key that was on the table.”

“Yes, fine. That key is yours.” She saw that he had pulled up the covers on the bed. “Let’s order breakfast. You must be hungry.”

He nodded, and watched her call down to order.

Duty jumped into the armchair and settled beside Mason, gazing back at her. “It will help me a great deal if you take responsibility for Duty, walking and feeding him and keeping him company, while we are here. Much of the time, he’s stuck in the room. Luckily he doesn’t bark.”

“Why doesn’t he bark?”

“Well, that’s a story. I told you I am here as a reporter, to cover the trial coming up. Do you know anything about the Powers trial?”

“Everyone knows,” Mason said.

“As for Duty’s bark, or lack of it, I will tell you that Duty was
Hart Eicher’s dog. Having a dog’s good instincts, Duty disliked Powers. Powers demanded the dog be locked up, telling the children they would be back to fetch him, but Duty broke free to race after them. Powers likely kicked him in the throat, and hurt his larynx. That’s here, where the voice resides.” She touched her own throat and paused; Mason was watching her, spellbound. “Duty is fine now. He loves breakfast steak, or hamburger, cut into small pieces. Room service often sends up leftovers, and doesn’t charge.”

“They like Duty here,” Mason said.

“We are fortunate in that.” She heard a knock. “Come. There is our breakfast.” Mason brought in the tray and she cut Duty’s steak, then took up her coffee. How strange that William, in a sense, had brought Mason here, with the gift of his mother’s change purse.

Mason ate eggs and biscuits and put down his bowl of oatmeal, a third full. “Miss, I can’t finish. Can Duty lick the plates?”

Emily shrugged. “Yes, no harm. I’m sure Duty has licked many plates.” She watched the boy set the bowl down against the wall. “Now, Mason, could you read this aloud? It concerns our friend, Mr. Woods, and the Powers case.”

Mason took the newspaper she offered, and read:

“Coley Woods, colored porter, is certain he carried Dorothy Lemke’s baggage into the Gore Hotel at 1:30
A
.
M
. on July 31. She arrived in a car driven by a male companion . . .”

“Good, Mason. How did you learn to read so well?”

“My mother used to teach me, with the Bible. She liked me to read it to her.”

“That was wise of her; the Bible is not easy to read. As to your work, I must have a record of coverage about the crime and the trial, under the correct date. You will save me time by clipping the articles, and picking up newspapers at the kiosk near the police station. You will charge these to my account; you may also charge meals from room service or the hotel tearoom. Always be professional, for you represent me, and the newspaper for which I write.”

Duty sneezed, and jumped into Mason’s lap.

“By ‘professional,’ I mean that you must look well groomed and be generally pleasant. Never dignify rude remarks by responding in kind.”

“What if someone tries to hit me, or chase me?”

“Mason, if you present yourself differently, it’s unlikely anyone will disrespect you. People are so influenced by appearances.” She paused. “That’s why I hope you will let me buy you a suit, and a warm coat, for you must look as though you read as well as you do. It was so good of your mother, to teach you to read the Bible. Do you mind if I ask what else she taught you?”

“I know some poems by Sir Walter Scott,” he said, “and some by Mr. Robert Burns. My mother used to say them, and she liked me to tell them to her. One is about Scotland. My mother’s father come from there, and taught her the words.”

“I’d love to hear it,” Emily said.

He stood and recited:

“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe . . .

My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains high-covered with snow;

Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods . . .”

Emily smiled, but he was not looking at her; his eyes were trained on a middle distance. She heard a faint brogue in his voice. “Why, that’s beautiful, Mason, and you say it well.”

He waited a moment, but he finished:

“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here.”

Emily saw the movement of his head, the near wince, the blink of his eyes, and realized she should not have asked him to recite;
the words could only remind him of his mother, who may have died as he sat helplessly beside her. “These mountains seem like highlands to me.” She hoped to distract him. “I grew up in Chicago, in the winters, but spent summers on my grandparents’ Iowa farm, after my father died. They died as well, but I was grown by then.”

“My mam took sick last winter,” Mason volunteered, “and he never took her to a doctor. He just let her lay there. He said ’twas no use, she had the same as her sisters.”

“And what was that?”

“She just took a’bed and stopped eating, but for the soup she taught me to make. Meat cut small, rabbit or squirrel, some bones for marrow, carrots and spring onion we grew, salt and chicory, ’taters if they wasn’t green. And she had me put up, for winter.”

“Canning, do you mean? Preserving?” Emily encouraged him, for he seemed to want to speak of her.

“Yes, miss. I hid the jars, or he shot them for targets, when he run out of bottles.”

“Did your father teach you to steal, Mason? To pick pockets?”

“Oh, he did, miss. He said it were the one thing I could do.”

“Did he? Well, he is mistaken. You will put your quick mind to far better use. Perhaps one day, you will teach others, as your mother taught you.”

He looked at her, doubtful, until she mentioned his mother, and his eyes lightened. “She said I was like her.” He nodded as though to himself, then cast his eyes down. “My father said, often enough, that I were no son of his.”

“Mason,” Emily said, “you will be your own man.”

He only glanced at her with questioning eyes.

“We must purchase warm clothes. And a haircut. Do you mind?”

“No, miss. I want to look . . . professional.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll dress, and then we’ll go, and give Duty a walk, as well.”

•   •   •

Emily led him down the stairs to the street; she wanted to go directly to the haberdasher’s. “Mason, does anyone else at the hotel, other than Mr. Woods, know you?”

Mason held Duty’s leash. “No. I don’t think he wanted anyone to see he was giving me food, or letting me shine shoes.” He walked head down, his bare hands in the pockets of his mother’s coat, the leash looped around his wrist. The loose coat, like a cloak, flared up in the wind.

“I see,” Emily said. “Let’s go this way, down Pike Street. I believe I saw a sign for a men’s and boys’ shop.” Pine garlands swung above them, between the gas lamps. “They certainly decorate for the holidays,” Emily said, “just as in Chicago.”

“Clarksburg is the biggest town around,” offered Mason.

“It’s a lovely town, and the park is so near our hotel. Here we are.” Emily stepped into the store vestibule, out of the wind. Mason stood back doubtfully. “Come in. You must try things on, to know they fit. Yes?”

He followed her in and stood nervously by, removing his hat, as a clerk wearing a tape measure around her neck approached them.