A Flickering Light (34 page)

“My mother exaggerates my talents, Mr. Carleton,” Jessie said. “I had an associate who helped me at the studio while Mr. Bauer, the owner, took the cure for mercury poisoning.”

“She said you were just the person I needed—call me Ralph while we’re here and Reverend Carleton in the correspondence—because what I need is someone who can organize this office and make sure that people get the right information for my tent gatherings. This year I branch out into Chicago, little towns around the outside, give Billy Sunday a run for his money. I’m called to take my message to places Mr. Sunday won’t give the time of day to.”

“The baseball player?” Jessie asked. She’d heard of a Billy Sunday, but he was a Chicago White Stockings player. Her father had mentioned him.

“Indeed. He became saved and changed his ways, left the halls of degradation where he lounged after games drinking hard liquor, chewing tobacco, and wining wild women.” Ralph Carleton appeared to take his own degradation in sweet cookies and cakes, judging from his size and the crumbs that littered the doily beneath a bowl of walnuts on the corner of his massive oak desk. He wore a white suit with the coat open and a bright blue vest stretched down his middle. The coat buttons were so far from the opposite holes he might have been trying to pull Wisconsin across the Mississippi into Minnesota. He had a wide face, black hair that he combed all to one side instead of in the middle as so many men did, and carried in his broad paw a crumpled handkerchief that he used to wipe his forehead of perspiration. Jessie wondered how much he perspired when he stood in the hot, stuffy summer tents and brought people to their knees. “He left the lure of fame and fortune, the hours afterward in the halls of degradation,” Ralph repeated, wiped at his head and face.

“Don’t you mean ‘playing fields of degradation’?” Jessie asked.

He squinted. Jessie wondered if she’d offended him by making a correction or suggestion. Some men did not like women to even respond, let alone shape a thought. “Why, that’s right. It has a better ring to it,” Ralph said. “‘The playing fields of degradation’ could apply to lots of men lost and needing the Lord’s direction. Women too,” he said. “Women need cleansing too, now, don’t they, Miss Gaebele?” She squirmed in her chair. Her corset didn’t fit right. “St. Augustine once claimed that women had no souls, that only men were made in God’s image. Preached that women couldn’t be saved from the pits of hell, without souls, you know. Or did you know that, Miss Gaebele? Or may I call you Jessie? Just here, of course. Yes, yes, women were believed to be lost except through marriage or the convent.” He shook his head. “Times have changed.” Jessie couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of sadness for a lost way or one of hopefulness, for it doubled his potential to redeem the population.

Ralph wiped a drop of sweat sliding down his stubbled cheek below his ear, then directed her, “Take that down, Miss Gaebele. Write that down.”

“About women and our lack of souls?”

“No, no, the ‘playing fields of degradation’ line. I’ll put that in my notes. Playing fields of degradation. Good ring to it.”

Jessie did as asked, seeing the inkwell and pen on his desk. She reached across, kept her gloves on, wrote, then put the pen down, grateful she hadn’t spilled ink as she wrote the words. She looked at her penmanship. It wasn’t as lovely as Mr. Bauer’s.

“If you decide you want me, I can start next week. I’m sure that Mr. Bauer is well enough to resume responsibility for his business.”

“I imagine your leaving will be a great loss to him.”

It will be so much a greater loss to me
. “Oh, I don’t know about that.” She looked at the stitching on her gloves, thought of Lilly, who might have made them though they were a gift from him. From the Bauers.

“Now, now, God wants no false humility. It is within Scripture to seek abundance in life and in spirit, for women too. God made you lovely, which we can all see, and made you capable too, Miss Gaebele. So your mother tells me. No cause to deny such based on your performance here.”

Performance?

“We are all of us sinners, Miss Gaebele, and all of us still children in God’s eyes, loved beyond measure. You must remember that. It is not arrogance to recognize gifts God has given. To do otherwise strikes on that.”

Jessie wondered what else her mother might have conveyed to him about her, but the bit of praise, posed as it might be, felt warm against her cheek.

“I only meant that I did my job and Mr. Bauer trained me for it. The experience has enabled me to find something I love, a career in photographic work. I’d like to work for you so that I can earn money to help my family help my brother, but also because one day, I want my own photographic studio.”

He sat back on his wide haunches and stared. “That’s a grand plan, Miss Gaebele. Though I must say the roles in this world are changing quickly, what with women in the labor force as they are. Most women wouldn’t hope to have their own business. They’d be content to be attached to family, help their husbands in their work, allow themselves to be protected from the larger evils of the world.” He hesitated as though another thought had entered his hummingbird mind, flitting here and there. His next sentence assured Jessie he had traveled far from a woman’s hopes for a business of her own. “The state even has laws now to protect women from being transferred across state lines. Mann Act. You’ve heard of it?” Jessie nodded. “For immoral purposes, men take women to other states, and the government had to get involved. Got to protect them, our legislature says. Not capable, most of them, of protecting themselves, but the government isn’t necessary. God is enough. He will protect.

“This is a special year, Miss Gaebele,” Ralph continued. “Halley’s Comet caused a near panic in Chicago last month on a dark day over that city. The comet will be a springboard to my ministries this year, warning people about getting their souls right before the end times come. The end could be near, very near. People will come to my tents to find answers to their fears.”

Jessie hoped he wasn’t the type to create fears and then offer no solutions. There’d been other disasters already that year. Mine explosions across the Atlantic, and in the Cascade Range of Washington State, 118 people had died in a terrible spring avalanche that buried three trains.

“Do you worry about the end, Jessie?” Ralph asked. She lowered her eyes. “You ought to.”

She looked boldly at him then. “But the earth moved through the tail of the comet, and we did not burn up. Doesn’t that mean humans have been given another chance to do right in this world?”

“We have time to confess our sins, but at any moment,
poof.”
He snapped his fingers. “You must think of that, Jessie. Women especially must remember these things and tell them to their children.” He lifted his fist to the air as though announcing a new thought. “I believe I’ll hold a special gathering just for women. Yes, that would be a wonderful thing. If women cleanse their souls, they’ll lead their families to the purity necessary to be at peace, regardless of when the world ends. Write that down, Jessie.” He smiled when she looked back up at him. “You’ll be doing the Lord’s work helping me,” he said. “How fortunate you are.”

Jessie knew she ought to think of her soul and what it needed for purity, because she’d had thoughts, some that, if she didn’t ignore them, would take her to an unforgivable place. Lust in one’s heart was the same as knowing someone in the biblical sense, wasn’t it? Though she had not known Mr. Bauer that way, she had longed for what wasn’t hers to have. And this emptiness she carried with her on her journey made her almost wish the tail of the comet had done what some had predicted and ended it all.

Ralph came around to the side of the desk where Jessie sat, her hands clasped now in her lap. “We can mutually benefit each other, Miss Gaebele. You provide good secretarial skills for my ministry, and I will ensure that you have the best working environment you could ever hope for. Only other women work here. No temptations.”

What had her mother told him? He paused to put down the glob of limp cotton that was his hanky and pulled out a leather book. “Of course, a lot of my singers who travel with me are men. We urge local churches to provide the chorus, but we bring our own director. You’ll have to deal with men but only at a distance. These are my past traveling schedules, contacts in various cities and whatnot; these are my current plans for the year.” He pointed to stacks of folders on a side table. The pile of papers jutted out like the bad teeth of a neglected child. “And this will be our daily schedule. We’ll begin with Bible reading each and every day. Your mother said that would be something you’d particularly want.”

“I’m sure she did,” Jessie said.

She’d have to speak with her mother about what led the reverend to think she couldn’t work around men! But then she remembered how she’d felt the day Mr. Bauer returned to the studio, wishing she were all alone with him and feeling relief that while Voe was there she was protected from her own emotions. It certainly was worth a try to listen to her mother this once.

Ralph Carleton talked so much she wouldn’t have time to daydream. And he promised to pay her more than what she’d been making at the studio.

Ralph stared into her eyes. “You will find your true direction here. We will keep you safe from temptation, Miss Gaebele.”

“Isn’t it the Lord Himself who keeps us from temptation?” Jessie said.

“Indeed,” Ralph said. He sat back then, on the edge of his desk, one leg on the floor, his thick thigh squeezing the linen of his bent pant leg. He crossed one arm over his large chest to hold the opposite elbow. He looked at her through newly approving eyes. “I believe your mother underestimates you.”

“My mother loves me dearly.”
And she fears I’ll say the right thing but not always do it
. Maybe working here would keep her feet from slipping. Jessie reached her hand out to shake Ralph Carleton’s and set the date she’d begin to work for him.

For Jessie, knowing she would tell Mr. Bauer she was leaving made her think of the women who said good-bye to their men before they sent them off to the Philippine-American War. They had to put aside the future, think of how they’d live knowing that their husband or fiancé wouldn’t be there to hold them when they needed it.

Jessie had never been held by the one she was leaving. The days before she told him of her departure were like the songs she never wanted to end, even knowing that when they did the melody would continue in her mind long after the music had stopped. It would never again ring in her ears as it had or be as transforming.

When could she tell him? Her eyes scanned the appointment book. His first appointment arrived. She listened to customers welcome FJ back, commenting that he looked well and that they hoped to see him at their lodge or at church before long. Jessie kept her face from expressing the jab of pain when someone mentioned church.

Jessie witnessed no knowing looks suggesting that she was anything other than a professional assisting him with a request for prints while he and Voe finished up. She kept the lines of professionalism as tightly tuned as a violin string. She answered, “Yes, Mr. Bauer,” when he asked her to get him something, always by calling her Miss Gaebele. She made suggestions discreetly, never acted as though she had authority over his thoughts and actions, though she knew she did. Oh yes, she knew she did, which was the very reason she had to leave, had to work somewhere else. It was the only way.

She waited until the day ended. It was a Thursday. She was nervous. Then Voe said, just before she left, that she and Daniel had set the date for their wedding. “Saturday next,” she told her. “You’ll be my witness, won’t you?”

“Of course. I didn’t realize things had moved along so quickly.”

“I think I’m ready,” Voe said. Her face beamed, and Jessie felt her joy and let it wash over her, if only for a moment.

“Could I speak with you, Mr. Bauer?” Jessie said after Voe left and all the windows had been closed, the drapery drawn. They were in the office area.

“Mr. Bauer. FJ,” she began.

“You sound so serious, Miss Gaebele. Shall I fix us tea?”

“No! Please. Just let me say this.”

He looked suddenly alarmed, adjusted his glasses. “Is something wrong?”

“I’ve taken another position,” she blurted. She’d planned to say how much she had liked working for him, how grateful she was for his instruction and the camera and for his supporting Lilly’s seamstress work and for Selma’s having fine employment. She’d rehearsed it all, but when she sat before him, watched his eyes as he sat behind the desk, the words flew out before she could think to control their exit.

“Are you ill? The mercury.” He stood so quickly his chair nearly fell back. He walked around the desk. “Let me see your hands.”

She let him hold them, knew she ought not to.

“I don’t understand, Jessie,” he said.

“I’m not ill. I… My mother thinks I ought to try another profession.” She was such a coward!

“I have put much responsibility on you these past months, I know that. But you seemed to thrive on it. The studio is doing well. I know you haven’t had time away, that you allowed Voe to have a vacation while you kept the studio open, and I’m grateful. But to leave? Surely I could relieve your mother’s concerns. Unless they are your concerns too.”