Two in the Field (15 page)

The woman who answered my knock was very slight, with washed-out flaxen hair and pale eyes that looked puffed, as if
she’d been crying. At first I thought she was middle-aged; then I realized that she was probably only my age. Life had been hard, that was clear. She looked at me silently.

“You take travelers?” I said finally.

“Oh, t’was my thought you were …” Her voice was heavy with brogue and she didn’t finish, but looked at me warily. Did she think I was a cop?

“May I rent a room?”

“My last boarder left a month back,” she said after a bit. “The strike, you know. They can’t hold out.”

I waited for more; then, “That means you have a room?”

“Surely.” She looked dubiously at my Hartford clothes. “Grand it’s not.”

“What’s the rate?”

“Dollar-fifty the week, room and board.” She reflected. “But less now, I suppose, with the lack of food.…”

“I’ll take it for the night,” I said, handing her a dollar. “Don’t worry about meals. I’ll fend for myself. Or maybe pay extra for provisions?”

A tear spilled down her cheek, and she dabbed at it quickly. A pinched face emerged from behind her faded dress, and I saw a little girl peering up at me.

“Hi,” I said.

She vanished, then peeked again. Her color was as lackluster as her mother’s, her pale hair lacking sheen. Malnutrition? She looked about the age of Susy Clemens, but similarity ended there. Pauper and princess. My heart went out to this waif.

“What’s your name?”

“Catriona,” she said, the syllables barely audible.

“I’m Mrs. Sullivan.” The woman extended her hand awkwardly. The skin felt stretched tight over the bones. “Fionnuala Sullivan.” It came out “fin-OOL-ah.”

“A pleasure,” I said, and introduced myself. “I’ll go get some food. How many are here?”

“We two.” Her voice was shaky. “I’m a widow.” She wiped at her eyes. “Mr. Fowler, did the Association send you?”

I shook my head.

“They helped for a time, God love ’em, but with the Long Strike …”

I asked where I could buy groceries.

“The prices are dear,” she warned, and gave me directions to the colliery store.

They were worse than dear. For bread, potatoes, leeks, bacon, eggs, and coffee I paid roughly half a worker’s weekly wage. The gimlet-eyed proprietor ignored my accusing stare. Pay or leave. The store, like almost everything in the vicinity, belonged to the Reading’s coal and iron company, which, strike or no, had this wretched town by the balls.

Spread out in Fionnuala Sullivan’s kitchen, the provisions looked pretty modest to me. But not to them.

“Holy Mary,” she breathed, “store-bought bread! It’s too costly a luxury, Mr. Fowler. You should have brought flour. I’d have baked.”

“It’s a special occasion, Mrs. Sullivan.” I felt sheepish about the bread but also pleased. The girl was looking as if Christmas had come.

“Most people call me Noola,” she said.

“I’ll help you cook, Noola.” I started to take off my jacket but stopped when I saw her incredulous expression. Even in this desperately poor household I’d violated convention.

She sat me in a parlor that smelled as if it had been long closed and brought me a cup of liquid poured carefully from a larger vessel.

“We operated a wee
shebeen
here.” She explained that it was
a sort of unlicensed tavern. “Jack helped when he was off from the colliery; mostly I did the work of it.”

I took a sip. Fire erupted in my throat. I hiccupped and tried to clear my tearing eyes. This stuff carried ten times the potency of the watered rotgut at McHay’s.

Noola giggled, an unexpected, musical sound that seemed to surprise her as much as me; it revealed, I thought, the Irish girl she had been. She told me to stay put, but I followed her to the kitchen, and while she prepared the meal I told little Catriona stories involving airships and horseless carriages. The girl stared at me, either enraptured or thinking me mad.

“ ’Tis a sweet thing …” Noola began, turning the sizzling bacon in her skillet. She didn’t finish, but I had a hunch that the rest went something like,
to have a man around the house
.

We sat on the only chairs in the place—the others had been burned for warmth the previous winter—and ate from tin plates with horn-handled iron forks. About to take my first bite, I was stopped by Noola, who lowered her head and prayed. “Blessings to God and Holy Mary for delivering this food, and for making Mr. Fowler so kind a man.” She nudged Catriona, who added in piping tones, “Thank you, dear Brigid.”

Seeing my questioning look, Noola explained that St. Brigid had lived in Kildare, where she was from. With a tiny smile she added, “Brigid’s known for her generosity to the poor.”

“Tell about the butter,” Catriona said.

“The tale goes,” said Noola, “that as a girl Brigid once gave away all of her mother’s butter to poor worthies.”

“She got in trouble for it,” Catriona interjected.

“But her prayers were answered by the Lord, who miraculously replaced it.”

I realized that I’d neglected to buy butter for the potatoes.
Was the child being subtle? As if reading my thoughts, Noola sprinkled vinegar over hers.

“Jack flavored his praties with seaweed as a boy,” she said. “It’s a common practice in the old country.”

Appreciating her graceful courtesy, I felt a sudden warmth at being there with them instead of in some dismal railway flophouse. It felt easy and natural, like the early times with Stephanie and the girls had been.

“What brought you to Minersville?” I asked.

“I met Jack in Philadelphia just when the recruiters for the anthracite mines were coming around. I was fresh off the boat and looking for a domestic’s position. Jack had been on the docks for a year or more, but he hated life in the city. As a boy he’d worked in the mines near Ballinacally, in County Clare, where they produce a poor grade of coal for lime-burning. He expected to make his mark here easily.” She shook her head. “ ’Twas anything but easy.”

“Daddy went to Heaven,” Catriona said.

I didn’t pursue the subject.

While Noola rinsed the dishes, Catriona asked for another story. I delivered “Cinderella,” which she’d never heard, and afterward she brought out a battered shoe and had me try it on her little foot.

“You’re good with her,” Noola remarked, and added wistfully, “better than her father was.” She led Catriona off to bed, and through the thin wall I heard them praying:

And then Noola’s crooning voice:

I was touched by the thin beauty and vulnerability of her voice. In this world these two had each other and not much else. I wondered if the little girl had any idea what the sea was. I wondered if she’d ever seen anything outside of this wretched place. And finally I wondered where my own daughters were just then.

In the parlor I gazed at a faded chromo of the Virgin. Below it on the mantle sat a tiny silver crucifix, a first communion missal and a small framed wedding picture that showed Noola’s head draped in white lace beside that of a fair-haired man with sideburns.

“That’s my Jack.” I hadn’t heard her behind me. “A fine, handsome man.” Her mouth pulled down into a bitter arc. “Before this hellish patch destroyed him.”

I sensed that she wanted to talk. “You said he expected to make his mark here?”

“The recruiters turned his head, telling him he’d make foreman in no time,” she said bitterly, “when all along they knew that those jobs went to the Welsh.” She poured more whiskey for me and seated herself on a worn horsehair divan. “It was
desperate hard even before the Panic. It broke my heart to see Jack the days he brought home bob-tailed checks.”

“Which are?”

“It’s when the company’s various charges for rent, repairs, supplies and groceries came to more than the worth of the coal Jack mined.”

“So you got nothing?”

“Worse,” she said. “Owed to the company.”

I knew of such things only from history courses. Encountering the bleak reality of it was heartbreaking.

I waved my cup. “Will you have a bit with me?”

“Oh, I’d take a drop when the shebeen was in its glory and full of men.” She tried for a lighthearted tone, but couldn’t sustain it. “Without Jack here, they don’t come any more, their wives won’t allow it. Anyway, too many have left the nearby patches.”

I got up and poured a finger for her. She sipped, scarcely seeming to wet her lips.

“The mines gave Jack the black lung,” she said sharply. “He couldn’t go down anymore. I listened to his coughing day and night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But it wasn’t that which proved the death of him.” She took a larger sip. “The operators didn’t want to do anything, of course, but the Association took up for Jack and saw that he got a job outside, away from the damp, sooty shafts. Hard work, but easier than being a shoveler and working ten hours to lift a ton or more of coal each day.”

“What did his new job involve?”

“You’ve seen the black hillocks everywhere? It’s coal and slate refuse, called
culm
. It falls from the breaker into rail cars, which mules draw up the hillocks and dump at the top.” She swallowed more whiskey and her eyes looked brighter. “Jack supervised
those cars until one rolled back on him and crushed his body. He was gone before I could even say goodbye.”

“Jesus,” I breathed.

“An accident, the operators said.” She drank again and poured more. “Some in the Association claimed the brakes were jimmied and Jack had been set up as an example.”

“Example of what?”

“Of what happens to those the Association helps against the operators.”

She drank again, then sighed and lowered her head to her hands. I started to talk, but she mumbled something about giving her a moment.

I found my way out to the privy and emptied my bladder. When I returned she was slumped over on the divan, one cheek pressing hard against the rough armrest. Her breathing was deep and regular, her face peaceful.

“Noola?” I tapped her shoulder. “Mrs. Sullivan?” She was out. Slipping an arm beneath her legs, I lifted her easily—she couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds—and carried her to where Catriona lay on a narrow pallet. Seeing no other bed, I lowered her beside her daughter.

“Jack,” she murmured. Her arms, which had been crossed on her chest, came up around my neck, a gentle, almost caressing envelopment. Then, gradually, she pulled me down on top of her. “Jack.”

With gentle movements I tried to disengage. A low sigh came from her, and I felt her breath on my cheek. “I know you’re not Jack,” she whispered. “Please … stay just a moment.…” The words faded. “Please …”

Eventually her breathing deepened again and I felt her arms grow slack around my neck. I pulled away slowly and looked at her, my knees and elbows aching from the strain of not crushing
her. She slept with a smile, knees tucked together. The dim light washed away her wrinkles and lines. She looked like a girl.

My room was up beneath the eaves. The bed consisted of two thin mattresses that felt like they’d been stuffed with peach pits. The pillow was nearly as hard. Calico sheets and a thin woolen blanket completed the affair. The room was cold, the blanket not enough.

Rats scurried in the walls. A cat screamed somewhere in the darkness outside. Despite the whiskey I’d drunk, despite my travel weariness, I lay awake far into the night thinking about Cait and my daughters and wondering if I’d taken the wrong road.

 TEN 

“Where’s she going?” I asked as Catriona, bundled in every piece of clothing she owned, marched out into the cold.

“To seek useful things.” Noola was brewing more coffee after we’d had a breakfast of bacon and eggs and potatoes. She explained that the girl would bring back scraps of cloth to be used as patches or deconstructed into thread; also bits of metal and burnable wood or coal.