The Measure of Katie Calloway,: A Novel (10 page)

She had come up with a plan to make herself wake up in the middle of the night. Before leaving the kitchen, she had drunk two large glasses of water, and with any luck at all, that water would start nudging her awake in time to get an early start on breakfast!

9

We have fine girls, I own ’tis true.

But, alas, poor things, what can they do?

For if they want an honest man

he can’t be found in Michigan.

“Don’t Come to Michigan”
—1800s shanty song

October 9, 1867

Katie dreamed she was floating in a boat and fell into the water. As she thrashed around, she awoke and realized that she needed to go. Bad. Perhaps her plan to drink two glasses of water before bed was going to work after all!

She put on her shoes and checked the little pocket watch her father had given her a lifetime ago. Midnight. It was only midnight. Disappointed her plan hadn’t worked, she used the chamber pot and got back into bed. How in the world was she going to make herself get up in two more hours?

At first, her sleep was fitful, with many glances at her watch by the light of the candle. Then she once again tumbled into a deep sleep.

Suddenly, there was a loud pounding on her door, and Jigger’s voice broke through her consciousness.

“Hey! Yer sleepin’ in again. Way past time to start breakfast!”

She sat bolt upright. “Coming!” she yelled. “I’ll be right there.” She checked her watch. Three o’clock. She should have been up an hour ago. But at least this morning she was already dressed. Fearful this sort of thing might happen again, she had slept on top of the covers, fully clothed.

She splashed water on her face from the basin she had filled the night before and smoothed her hair down with her damp hands. She had deliberately not taken it out of its bun before she lay down. She blew out the candle and bolted into the darkness.

Jigger had already started the fire in the stove. She set her largest pot on top and dumped half a bucket of lard in to melt for the doughnuts she had told him she was making this morning.

A half pound of bacon for each man, she figured, so the eight pounds of bacon she had thick-sliced the night before should be enough. She threw two huge cast-iron skillets on the range and began layering the bacon in the bottoms. While that began to sizzle, she mixed up the flapjack batter Jigger told her the men would expect every morning. She checked, and the lard was beginning to get warm, but it wasn’t yet hot enough for doughnuts. There was time to get the flapjacks finished first. About six per man, from what she had seen yesterday morning.

“Is the sorghum and butter on the table?” she asked without turning around. It took all her concentration to keep the flapjacks from burning while frying the bacon.

“Already did it,” Jigger said. “While you was still a-snoozin’.”

“Take over the bacon, please.” She ignored his comment. “I’ll cut out the doughnuts.”

Even with only one hand, Jigger was capable of frying bacon. It could be worse, she thought. She could be left alone with no help at all.

“Can I help?” Ned wandered in, rubbing his eyes. She had not wanted to awaken the little fellow so early, but now that he was up, at least Robert couldn’t complain.

“Bring more firewood from outside,” she said. “The stove needs to be extra hot for the doughnuts.”

“Doughnuts?” Ned’s eyes widened. “We’re having doughnuts?”

“Just as soon as I can make them.”

Ned trotted happily off to do his chore.

“The men like ’em extra sweet,” Jigger said. “And I like to put vaniller in mine.”

“Me too.” She reached for the sack of sugar and dumped in several cupfuls. She had often helped her mother make doughnuts, and she automatically doubled the recipe.

“The vaniller’s over yonder on the shelf.”

“Thank you.” As she reached for it, she congratulated herself on the fact that they seemed to be finally getting along. If only she could figure out a way to wake up without Jigger’s help.

She dropped a smidgen of doughnut batter into the oil and watched it sizzle to a golden brown. One by one, she slipped raw doughnuts into the hot lard and watched them puff up. The men would enjoy these
so
much.

She felt good about today. She was getting the hang of things, learning her way around the supplies and tools of the kitchen. Even though she had gotten up later than she wanted, thanks to her preparations the night before, she wasn’t nearly as frazzled. Jigger was acting decent to her, so she hoped his pique was over. The comfort and warmth of the early morning kitchen washed over her, and she experienced a feeling of deep contentment as she presided over the vat of doughnuts.

A half hour later, Jigger went to awaken the men. Soon, they came tramping through the door. By that time, she had placed stacks of flapjacks, heaps of bacon, and mounds of doughnuts onto the table. It was a pretty sight, and she knew the dining room was redolent with good smells. She had even heated the sorghum this morning.

“Looks good,” Robert said as he and the other men took their seats.

Jigger stood near the head of the table, ready to chastise anyone who spoke while eating. He, too, seemed to be in a good mood. She had even caught him smiling a couple times this morning. Maybe he was beginning to thaw toward her after all.

The men dug into the food, and she waited, looking forward to seeing the enjoyment on their faces. She was especially proud of how well the doughnuts had turned out.

Ernie was the first to help himself to the pile in front of him. But instead of groaning with ecstasy, he grimaced at the first bite and swallowed hard. Then he stared at the doughnut as though he couldn’t believe what he had just put in his mouth. To her horror, she saw the same action being repeated up and down the table. Robert was the last to bite into a doughnut, and he couldn’t spit it out fast enough. His eyes sought hers.

“What did you
do
?” he asked.

Puzzled, she reached for a doughnut, took a nibble, and understood what had happened. She had put salt in the batter instead of sugar. Four cups of it!

Jigger didn’t reach for a doughnut. Instead, he stood at the head of the table, grinning from ear to ear—as though he had been expecting this all along.

The old goat had sabotaged her cooking!

Without saying a word, she went over to the sack of “sugar” and tasted a few grains. It was salt. She pulled the box of salt off the shelf and tasted. It was filled with sugar.

“You switched them!” she accused.

“I don’t know what yer talking about.” Jigger acted as innocent as a newborn babe. “You must’ve gotten things mixed up, getting up so late and all. It’s easy to make a mistake when you’re only half awake.”

Robert rose, took the tray of doughnuts over to the garbage pail, and dumped them in.

“Come here.” He motioned Jigger and Katie to follow him to a far corner of the kitchen.

“She won’t get up in time to do her work properly,” Jigger complained. “Never saw such a lazy woman. Even got the salt and sugar mixed up.”

Katie opened her mouth to defend herself, but Robert put up a hand to stop her. “I have a lumber camp to run, hungry men to feed, and limited supplies and resources to do it with. If the two of you can’t figure a way to work things out, you’re
both
fired.”

He looked back and forth between them. “Do I make myself clear?”

Katie nodded, her face aflame.

“Do you understand?” he asked Jigger.

“Yeah.” Jigger was the picture of penitence as he stared at the ground.

“Good.”

Robert went back to his meal. Silence once again descended as the men finished filling their bellies with nothing more than bacon and flapjacks.

A lump grew in Katie’s throat and tears threatened at the injustice of it all. She had done nothing wrong, and yet Robert had judged her anyway. Determined not to cry in front of the men, she fled out of the back door to her borrowed cabin.

The moment she entered, she slid the bolt shut on Blackie’s fancy lock so no one could come in. Then she lay facedown on the bed and burst into tears.

It was a cry that was long, long overdue. She had not cried when Harlan had mistreated her. She had not cried the day Ned and she had made that terrifying flight into the unknown. She had not cried yesterday when her feet and back had ached so bad she could hardly stand up.

She had worked as hard as she knew how, and all she had gotten for it was being chastised by a man she had thought might actually become a friend.

Years of frustration and anger poured out into the straw-tick mattress. The privations of war. The burning of her home by Northern soldiers. She cried over having to sell the valiant Rebel’s Pride. She even cried over how much she missed her two good cows.

Never in her life had she cried so much or so hard. Part of it was because of extreme fatigue. She had slept but a handful of hours in the past week. And part of it was because it was overdue. She had had enough. It was hard to cook for all those men, let alone with Jigger sabotaging her efforts and Robert standing ready to scold her just because of Jigger’s meanness.

It felt as though everything had come crashing down on her at once, and she cried until she was sick.

Then, as her sobs slowed, she hiccupped a few times, wiped her tears away with the edge of a pillowcase, and forced herself to think about what to do next. One thing she knew—self-pity wasn’t going to fix anything.

She went over to the basin of water and washed her face again. She lit the kerosene lamp and took a good, hard look in the mirror. What she saw was a woman with a red nose, blotchy face, and swollen eyes. She was a mess, and it was well past time to head back into the kitchen to clean up and prepare for lunch. It felt as though she had already put in a full day’s work and it was only five o’clock in the morning.

She didn’t relish facing Jigger after his prank, especially with the aftermath of her tears still written all over her face, but she had to do something that would stop this nonsense. If she didn’t get the upper hand, and soon, she would lose her job. Robert hadn’t been joking when he’d threatened to fire both of them. After this morning’s fiasco, she didn’t blame him.

As she stared at her mottled reflection in the mirror, she decided that she was tired of being the victim. Sick to death of being some man’s punching bag. A raw fury stronger than anything she had ever felt before washed over her. She’d tried being nice. She’d tried being polite. She’d even made excuses to herself for Jigger’s bad behavior. But no more. That old bully wasn’t going to cause her to lose her job without a fight!

If there was one thing she knew she could do well—it was cook. Jigger wasn’t going to take this well-paying job away from her. If it came down to a contest of wills between her and the old man, he was going to lose.

Robert saw the look on Katie’s face as he scolded her and Jigger. He saw the tears threatening to spill over from her big blue eyes, and he saw her leave the cook shanty the minute she could escape.

All of this pain, just because of a stupid prank Jigger had played and his own overreaction to it. He knew she had not made a mistake. Jigger had deliberately engineered it. Practical jokes were common in a lumber camp. Many of them were pretty rough. He had seen half-frozen raccoons put into bedrolls and tins of lice poured down the back of an unsuspecting greenhorn’s shirt. He’d seen grown men, bored with camp, make a game out of whacking a blindfolded logger on the backside with a stick and then challenging him to guess who had hit him. In a lumber camp, exchanging salt for sugar was pretty mild stuff.