Open Country (55 page)

He had a wedding to attend, and a letter to deliver from a long-lost brother. No need ruining a pretty day with ugly news.

 

“DESIRE ETHERIDGE.” MR. MARKHAM FROWNED AT THE paper atop his desk in the tiny manager’s office behind the stage. “That’s an odd name. Desire.”

“Desiree,” Daisy corrected, pronouncing it
Dez-a-ray.
She pointed to the paper. “If you’ll notice, there are two ‘e’s on the end.”

He squinted up at her, rolling an unlit, well-chewed cigar stub from one corner of his mouth to the other. “You French or something?”

“I try not to be,” she quipped.

His teeth clamped down, snapping the cigar stub to attention. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“N-nothing,” she stammered, taken aback by his challenging tone.

“My mamma was French.”

No wonder he was cranky. “I didn’t know that.”
Poor man.

“If you got something against the French, Missy, then you can just get your skinny ass out of here right now.”

Mortified by the reprimand, yet pleased that he thought her backside skinny, she forced a smile. “It was just a joke, Mr. Markham. I like the French. Really.”

“All right then.” The stub relaxed, rolled to the left side of his mouth and settled between his gum and cheek like a damp little rodent sliding back into its burrow. He returned to his perusal of her application. “Says here you been singing at the Silver Spur. That in the red-light district?”

“No.” But it was near enough to open the eyes of a farm girl from Quebec who had to walk past those busy doorways every night after work.

“Still, it’s a saloon,” Markham went on without looking up.

Since it wasn’t a question, Daisy didn’t respond. Besides, it seemed every time she opened her mouth lately it got her into trouble. How was she to know that that drunken lout who tried to stick his hand down her dress during last night’s chorus of
Bridget’s Lament
was the mayor’s wife’s second cousin’s son?
The nitwit.

She studied the man before her, wondering if he was any better.

He was old, at least double her twenty years, judging by the gray in his whiskers and in the curly sideburns showing beneath his bowler hat. He seemed fit enough, but there was a weary slump to his shoulders. He reminded her of a sour old draft horse that kept plugging along, no longer caring where he was headed or where he had been, just getting through the day.

His head came up, a challenging thrust to his chin, the cigar stub battle ready. She watched his gaze slide over her, coming to rest on the bosom that always seemed to draw attention no matter how tightly she corseted. “You’re not a whore, are you?”

“Of course not,” Daisy sputtered, addled that he would say such a thing. Nervously she pressed a hand to her chest, wondering if a button had come undone and a breast had escaped, but both dress and breast were securely corralled.

“ ’Cause this is a legitimate theater company, Missy. We don’t take on whores.”

“I am not a whore,” she said with stringent emphasis. An unwed mother, perhaps, but not a whore. There was a big difference.

An oddly disappointed look came into his dark eyes. “You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”
What a crab.

The stub drooped. “Oh. Well.” He turned back to her application.

As Daisy waited, her gaze was drawn to the old playbills pinned to the wall behind the desk. Some of the names she recognized from earlier times when her mother, a frustrated singer herself, would declare a holiday from farm chores and take her to nearby Quebec City to see the latest theatrical productions passing through.

“Someday it will be you up on that stage,
ma petite
,” her mother would say. “It will be the name Desiree Etheridge on the posters out front.”

Daisy smiled, filling her mind with the lovely images her mother had painted so many years ago—the flickering light and oily smoke from the lamps along the front of the stage, the rapt faces of the audience staring up at her, the musicians poised, instruments ready, that hush of expectancy as she opened her mouth and the first glorious notes—

“Says here you got a kid.”

Daisy blinked. The images dissolved. Reality pressed like a weight against her throat. “Yes, a daughter.”

“Where’s her Pa?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“West.”

That narrow-eyed look again. “We
are
west, Missy. It don’t get any more west than San Francisco.”

Reminding herself how much she wanted—
needed—
this chance, Daisy hid her irritation behind a smile. “Australia.” At least that was where the bounder had been headed when he left over two-and-a-half years ago. Afraid her patience would stretch to the point of snapping if these useless questions didn’t end soon, she said forcefully, “I’m a vocalist, Mr. Markham. A good one. I can read music, I play the piano fairly well, and I also have a four-octave range and—”

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Never mind all that. Can you
sing,
girl, and loud enough to reach the back row of the balcony?”

Daisy let out a deep breath. “Yes, Mr. Markham. I can sing.” And she showed him—right there in his tiny office, without music, accompaniment, or proper acoustics—just how powerful her voice was.

She got the role.

A
role, anyway. She wouldn’t know which until she returned tomorrow to audition for the director and the owner of the theater. But it was a start. And hopefully it would pay well enough to support her and her daughter and cover the raise in pay Maude Tidwell demanded to watch Kate while Daisy was working. If it came up short, Mr. Markham said she could make extra money by helping with the sewing chores in wardrobe.

He turned out to be a nice man after all, in a middle-aged, cranky sort of way. And he seemed to like her voice. Daisy smiled, remembering the astonished look on his face when she hit her high notes. The stub almost fell from his mouth. He had been most insistent that she return the next day, making her promise twice before he let her leave. It would feel good to be singing real music again. Saloon songs had been no challenge at all.

It’s really happening,
she thought as she turned off Broadway onto Powell Street, taking the long way back to the boardinghouse to avoid the dangerous waterfront area.
I’ll be singing on a real stage!

She giggled then laughed out loud, startling a drunk dozing behind a refuse bin outside a garment maker’s shop. “I’m going to be a star,” she called gaily to him as she hurried by.

She had dreamed of it, prayed for it every day since she had seen her first musical puppet show at a traveling fair fifteen years ago. To be able to sing arias rather than lewd ditties or maudlin ballads, to fill a hall with her own voice, singing music composed by the masters . . . she still couldn’t believe it.

At Commercial Street, she turned left, hoping it was still too early in the day to bring out the worst of the criminals that prowled the shadowed alleys like rats hunting fresh meat. A few blocks farther, and she breathed easier. Here on the fringes of the red-light district, the saloons and gambling dens catered to a richer, cleaner clientele, and the brothels were a little more discreet. Dirt and mud gave way to cobblestones, and the row houses were less shabby, although each year more of them boasted the red-painted doors and lamps that identified them as houses of ill repute. Perhaps if she did well in the theater company she could get a bigger role that would bring in enough money to move Kate to a safer neighborhood, maybe one with parks and other children to play with.

“Miss Daisy,” a woman’s voice called.

Looking over, she saw Lucy Frisk waving from the front stoop of a narrow four-story building that rented rooms by the hour—a bordello, although a clean one, run by a nattily dressed Southern gentleman named Stump Heffington who had lost everything in the Rebellion, including the greater portion of his left leg. As procurers went, he was benign. Having learned the value of contented workers during his slave-owning years, he treated his girls passably well. They considered themselves lucky to be in his employ, and by and large, were a clean, friendly lot. Lucy, in her early twenties and nearest in age to Daisy, always had a kind word for Baby Kate whenever they passed by.

“Hello, Lucy,” Daisy called back, angling across the street, delighted to have someone with whom to share her wonderful news.

Five years ago, when she had first arrived in San Francisco with her parents, she would have been shocked to find herself on such friendly terms with a harlot. But since then she had lost both parents to a mudslide, fallen in love, had her heart broken, and borne a child. In other words, she had grown up. And although she might still be a farm girl from Quebec, she had learned to value friends whenever and wherever she found them.

“You hear about Red Amy?” Lucy asked as Daisy neared the steps. Daisy could see she’d been crying. “No. What?”

“The Indian got her,” Lucy said in a quavering voice. “Took all that pretty red hair clean off her head then stabbed her twice through the neck. Damn bastard scalp-snatching son of a bitch.”

Daisy pressed a hand to her throat. “She . . . she’s . . . ?”

Lucy nodded and swiped at a tear. “Deader ’n a carp. Third this month.”

Daisy stood in stunned silence. Red Amy was the youngest in the house and one of her favorites . . . mainly because Daisy often saw a shadow of herself in the trusting, hopeful look behind the girl’s lovely brown eyes.

“I’m thinking of dyeing mine.” Lucy fingered the flowing, straw-colored tresses that were her best feature. “He don’t seem to like dark hair as much as blond or red. The Indian in him, I guess. Yours isn’t as light as mine, but I’d keep an eye out anyway, since he seems partial to young, pretty ones like you. Watch out for Kate, too, with those blond curls of hers.”

“But she’s just a baby,” Daisy protested, fear coiling in her chest.

“Why would he go after a baby?”

“Probably wouldn’t,” Lucy said quickly, giving Daisy’s shoulder a reassuring pat. “I’m just saying keep her close, is all. And keep an eye on that Widow Tidwell while you’re at it. There’s something about that woman . . . something that ain’t right.”

Daisy needed no warning on that score. When she had first taken a room in Maude Tidwell’s boardinghouse, the woman had seemed kindly enough. Having lost her own daughter to smallpox, she had been almost heartbreakingly grateful to have an infant to take care of again. But over the last months as Kate neared her second birthday, which was the same age as Maude’s daughter when she died, the woman had started acting strange . . . almost angry that Kate had survived while her own child hadn’t. She’d upped her price several times, even though her care of Kate had grown sloppier and sloppier. Daisy suspected she might be drinking. Plus, Maude had started keeping company with a man Daisy didn’t altogether trust. Bill Johnson seemed friendly enough, but there was a coldness about him . . .

“Does Maude know you’re looking for someone else to watch Baby Kate?” Lucy asked, breaking into Daisy’s troubling thoughts.

“I’m afraid to tell her until I find someone,” Daisy admitted. “If she learns of it beforehand, she’s liable to toss us into the street. Then what’ll I do?”

Like most big cities, San Francisco was overrun with war widows and lost children trying to escape the terrible excesses of the Reconstruction. The fortunate ones hired on as servants in rich neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Nob Hill. The unlucky ones sank to a new level of depravity in the brothels and opium dens along the Barbary Coast. Many died of despair or disease.

Daisy was one of the fortunate ones. The small amount of money left after her parents’ deaths carried her through her pregnancy. But within a week of Kate’s birth it was gone, and she was frantically searching for a way to support them. Considering the other options open to a young woman with a child and no husband, Daisy considered herself lucky to have found a job as a saloon singer.

And after today, luckier still.

“You can always work here, if you get tired of the Silver Spur,” Lucy offered. “Stump likes big titties.”

Daisy snorted. “I wish I could give him mine. They’re a lot more trouble than they’re worth.” Hopefully after tomorrow’s audition, she would be valued for more than the size of her bosom. “Besides I don’t work at the Spur anymore.”

“You don’t?”

Grinning at Lucy’s look of surprise, Daisy told her about her audition. “I am now working at the Elysium Theater on Broadway.”

“Doing what?”

“I’ll know tomorrow.” Glancing up at the gray sky, Daisy realized it was growing dark. “I better go. You know how cranky Maude gets when I’m late.”