Two in the Field (44 page)

“Well in that case,” I said, “I suppose we must look elsewhere.” I leaned closer. “How much fresh fruit do you eat? Would you care to attend one of our meetings?”

It was from Alice Leonard. I hoped her message meant that Tim had decided to go home for good. In any case, Andy, bless his heart, had taken him back. All that the grand family reunion on the Elkhorn lacked was me. I’d been away for over three months, and it seemed much longer.

I intended to be back very soon.

“I can’t keep Rupert home,” Mrs. Bodell said over a clatter of framing hammers.

Rupert?
Slack had never told me that one. We stood before her small house on tree-lined Spring Street, in Rochester, where carpenters were busily adding new rooms.

“Even while fancying things up here with all his new wealth,” she said wistfully, “he still goes out traipsing around the country.”

She appeared apprehensive as she looked down at my cane. On arriving, I’d removed my splints and bought a suit to replace the robe. But I’d kept the beard.

“Rupert said that you two hit lucky on a big lottery.” Her tone made it a question. It also conveyed a healthy skepticism regarding her son’s activities.

“Yes, ma’am, we hit real lucky.”

She sighed. “He’s not in trouble again?”

“None that I know of.”

“He told me, ‘Ma, don’t ask him any questions. Just give ‘Frisco Sam’ this parcel when he shows up.’ ”

“Well, I’m here.”

She went inside and returned with an envelope. Inside was a draft for $20,000 payable to me from a Rochester bank. I wondered how much Slack had gotten. Our deal was that everything in excess of that amount was his. From the amount of remodeling going on, he looked to have made out okay. Was he riding the cushions now, I wondered, instead of the rods? Probably not.

“Thanks, ma’am,” I said, and set out up the street, my leg feeling strong, my spirits at their highest point in weeks. I’d been delayed in my mission, but I’d succeeded. I decided I didn’t need the cane any longer, now that I was heading west.

Noola and Catriona looked considerably different from when I’d last seen them in their drafty house in Minersville, Pennsylvania. Now they were outfitted for travel, warmly but cheaply, in bonnets, overcoats and long plain skirts. Two trunks sat beside them on the busy Scranton platform, their belongings for a new life.

“Oh, Mr. Fowler, it’s you!” Noola smiled nervously and crossed herself. She hadn’t recognized me with my beard.

Catriona, seeming infinitely more alive than before, said, “Will we see great buffalo?”

“Probably be some along the way,” I told her. “Prairie dog villages, too.”

“And real Indians?”

“Definitely Indians.”

That brought giggles as she hid her face in her mother’s skirt.

I purchased sleeping compartment tickets, which shocked Noola. She’d expected to spend the trip on third-class benches. Leaving the station, she cried a bit. “That was for my time with Jack,” she said, drying her eyes, “but not for that horrible valley. It wasn’t until your wire came that it sank in how desperate
I am to put all that sadness behind. God help them, the strikers are turning on each other now. I fear it’s near the end for them.”

The opening days of August had seen explosive violence in the coal region, as the miners lost hope of winning by peaceful means. I couldn’t help wondering if Kehoe, fore-warned, had blown McKenna’s cover this time around. Having read in the newspapers of recent developments, I’d been afraid to go to Minersville, and suggested our meeting in Scranton.

Noola’s one-word reply:
Yes
.

She couldn’t help being depressed over coming away with almost nothing from the sale of her property. Although heavily mortgaged to the coal company, it had at least provided an illusion of stability. Their present rootlessness frightened her.

“In Omaha we’ll pick up whatever you need,” I assured her.

She looked at me quizzically. “You’ve come into the money, is it?”

I laughed and nodded. “It’s for the whole colony, but you’re now part of it and there’s extra for newcomers.” I figured that what I’d gone through entitled me to allot a tiny portion of the money, and I didn’t think John O’Neill would mind. I also guessed that Noola wouldn’t be on her own very long in O’Neill City unless by choice. Too many lonely Irishmen there for that.

In Chicago we stayed at the Briggs House, where I’d lodged with the Stockings. Noola and Catriona were open-mouthed at its opulence. I think Noola never expected to enter such a place, unless as a maid. The desk clerk arched an eyebrow when I asked for separate rooms. We’d taken to calling ourselves the Finnigans, a rough blend of our surnames, and Noola wore her wedding band to further discourage others from thinking her a low woman.

“Why don’t we travel as your servants?” she said.

“No way,” I told her, but was unable to explain my egalitarian feelings very effectively. She was from a century and a society
that viewed class distinctions as part of the natural order. I had a lot of trouble with that.

While shopping for clothes, we saw evidence of the great Chicago fire of four years before. “What caused it?” Catriona asked, gazing wide-eyed at whole neighborhoods of charred bricks and rubble.

“Mrs. O’Leary’s cow,” I told her. “Kicked over a lantern.”

Catriona accepted it. Not so Noola, who said indignantly, “Sure, and they blame it on a poor
Irish
cow.”

Chicago’s sporting press was still gloating over nabbing the four prize Boston ballplayers. Reading that Harry Wright now faced morale problems with his club, I wondered if Andy had been glad to get away for a while.

We arrived in Omaha, fed up with hot, stifling, jolting cars—by now I felt qualified to write a guide book on 19th century rail travel—and while Noola was picking out a washtub and wood-stove for their coming household, I took Catriona on a shopping spree. Her favorite among the new toys and dolls we picked up was a fairy princess that hung from the ceiling and danced when you pulled the cord. For Cait I bought the latest in double-boiler pots and assorted bolts of beautiful fabrics. For Kaija, tins of imported kippered herring. For Linc, wood-working tools that I intended to borrow. For John O’Neill and the colony in general, backgammon and checker boards. And books, lots of books.

At a lumber mill I picked up quantities of planed boards and nails. My furniture-making plans included a bed for Catriona, who could scarcely envision such a thing.

To carry everything I bought a mule-and-wagon rig that had the best springs I could find. Our spirits were soaring by the time we set out for O’Neill City. Catriona didn’t look so bony any
longer, I noticed, and both she and her mother were losing their coal-valley pallor. My leg still hurt occasionally, but nothing like before, and my limp had pretty much disappeared.

That night, in our little camp halfway to the Elkhorn, Noola gathered creekside rushes and showed Catriona how to weave them together and tie off the ends. The girl brought me something hidden in her hands. “It’s a St. Brigid’s cross,” she said. “I made it for you.”

It felt paper light in my hand. “Tell me about this cross.”

With Noola’s help she told how centuries ago in Ireland a pagan chief had fallen mortally ill. Somebody summoned the Christian girl Brigid to convert him before he died, but when she arrived he was already delirious. In those days, rushes were strewn in houses to warm the stone floors and hold down dust. Brigid wove several into a cross. The dying chief miraculously came to his senses and asked what she was doing. Moved by her piety, he asked to be baptized.

“It happened near Kildare, where I was born,” Noola said. “We’ll make many of these to hang from the eaves of our new house.”

Wondering how Cait, who long ago had fallen away from the Church, would react to this Irish woman’s uncomplicated faith, I didn’t tell her that her new house was likely to have no eaves but rather a sod roof.

“This is a lovely country, Mr. Fowler,” she said, gazing at the sunset. “It’s a grand new home we’ll have.”

Things looked anything but grand the next day, however, as we drove into O’Neill City.

“Where are the people?” Catriona said.

“I don’t know.” I felt an unpleasant foreboding on seeing a woman swoop her child inside as we approached.

I hitched the rig at Grand Central and went inside. Only the buzzing of flies greeted me. I walked back to John O’Neill’s quarters and through a gauzy partition saw him in bed, his head heavily bandaged. Cait dozed in a chair beside him. I whispered her name and she glanced up. I was shocked by her haggard look. Her eyes widened and she stood and rushed out to me and I folded her in my arms. It was how I’d dreamed it, except that she shook with muffled sobs.

“I knew you weren’t dead.” She clung to me and her voice held a note of relief. “I
knew
it.”

“Who said I was?” I asked. “And what happened to John?”

She looked up at me with tear-reddened eyes. “McDermott is the answer to both questions.”