The Rich Shall Inherit (25 page)

Poppy eyed her warily as she slid off the prickly seat and edged past her. “Papa is not drunk,” she retorted from the safety of the door, “and he hasn’t left me! He’s the very best papa in the whole world!” And then she fled down the corridor, away from the woman’s sharp tongue and her wrath at the impertinent retort.

She stopped to ask directions from a gray-haired man, who laughed loudly when she asked him for the bar, then she hurried on down the corridor, swaying from side to side and ricocheting off the walls as the train swung unexpectedly around a curve in the tracks. But when she finally found the bar, she understood why Papa liked it so much.

It was much jollier than the gloomy carriage and the disapproving woman in black. Pretty lamps in engraved glass globes shed a cozy glow over red flock walls, shiny wooden panels, and glittering shelves of bottles and glasses. Poppy stood just inside the door searching for her father among the line of pink-faced men at the mahogany bar, sniffing the familiar malt and mash smells of whiskey and bourbon and the bitter hops smell of beer. She spotted him at last, sitting at a table with four other men, shuffling a deck of cards.

Unconscious of the amused glances of the customers, she elbowed her way through the crowd to his table. “Papa!” she cried as silence fell. “There you are! I thought you’d left me again!”

Jeb’s card partners raised their eyebrows, grinning as he threw her a cold glance. Laying down his cards, he said quietly, “Of course I haven’t left you, Poppy. The nice lady in the carriage said she would keep an eye on you.”

“I didn’t like her,” Poppy declared loudly as he took her hand and led her from the bar. “She said you had no right to get drunk and leave me all alone.”

Guffaws of masculine laughter followed them down the swaying corridor and Jeb’s hand suddenly gripped hers too tightly for comfort.

“Owww,” she squealed, “you’re hurting me, Papa!”

“You are just lucky I don’t put you over my knee, me girl,” he snapped angrily. Crouching until his eyes were level with hers, he said quietly but with an undertone of force that made her tremble,
“Don’t ever come looking for me again, Poppy. You understand
that?”
His voice shook as he added,
“You are never to come after me again! Never!”
Grabbing her hand, he dragged her silent and shaking back to the carriage, and giving her an apple and her doll, he told her to go back to sleep or to amuse herself looking out of the window, he would
“be right back.”
But Poppy knew enough now to understand what
be right back
meant … it meant he would come for her whenever he had finished whatever it was that was so important to him—more important than her—and not before. And that might take days or weeks or even months … or forever.

As the train pulled into Chicago, Poppy thought Papa’s mood had improved. He took her straight downtown to a smart hotel and she ran around happily inspecting everything, immediately at home in the velvet and brocade surroundings of the grand suite. She didn’t get to see much of Chicago, though, because Papa ordered a card table sent up and he and some other men sat up all night playing poker and drinking whiskey, while she slept cozily in the very center of an enormous brass bed.

While Papa slept the day away Poppy amused herself wandering around the grand hotel chatting to chambermaids and waiters and especially the hall porter, who told her they often had important people staying there—stars of the opera and theater. “But I know them!” she cried excitedly as he reeled off a string of starry names, remembering how they used to fill the house on Russian Hill night after night.

“Sure you do,” he chuckled, patting her head and ordering a passing pageboy to fetch a doughnut for the “cute little redheaded girl”

Poppy soon became quite well known in some of the smarter hotels in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, and New York, as well as in Chicago. But that was only when Jeb was winning. When he was losing, they stayed in seedy rooming houses in rundown areas where Jeb hurried her through the grimy streets, his collar turned up, avoiding the angry stares of the hoodlums and bums and drunks on the sidewalks. She became used to silent, greasy breakfasts eaten alongside brawny red-faced construction workers and dockers smelling of sweat, and she soon learned how to hold her tongue when sharp-eyed landladies questioned her about when her papa was gonna pay their rent.

Soon she began to understand the pattern. When Papa was winning, he was jolly and pleasant and she could order whatever
she wanted from room service, and when their fortunes dwindled again and they were reduced to a chilly room in some boarding-house near the railway station or the docks, with cold brown linoleum on the floors and not even a rug for her bare feet when she stepped from the sagging bed in the morning, she would be lucky to get a sandwich. She wandered freely in the hotels, but in the boardinghouse Papa forbade her to leave her room when he was out. When she got bored, she’d sneak out onto the landing, listening to the sound of voices, often raised in anger, coming from the other rooms, and sniffing the strange odor of boiled cabbage lingering in the stairwell. And then somehow she knew she would never see her beloved pony, Spider, again.

They had been staying for a couple of weeks in a small midtown hotel in a city new to her, St. Louis; and as usual Jeb had gone out in search of a game, leaving Poppy sitting up in bed munching a slab of cake. Her eyes followed anxiously as the door closed behind him. She didn’t like this hotel. Papa had said it was filled with traveling salesmen with cardboard suitcases, and the corridors smelled of disinfectant. The man at the reception desk had a bad cold and sniffed disapprovingly every time she wandered into the front hall in search of amusement, sending her scurrying back to her chilly room.

Still, tonight her bed was warm and she had her old rag doll to cuddle, and dreaming her now faded dream of being Angel Konstant amid her loving family in her beautiful home, Poppy was soon asleep.

The next morning she got up early and washed and dressed herself, hoping that Papa might have had a lucky night and when he returned he would take her to a coffee shop for her favorite breakfast of blueberry pancakes and maple syrup. She sat on the edge of the bed swinging her legs and singing a little jingle she’d heard the organ-grinder playing in the street when she’d fed peanuts to his sweet red-jacketed monkey. She waited for what seemed like ages, but still Papa didn’t come. Disappointed, Poppy stared from the grimy window at the gray rain-slicked streets of the gray anonymous city.

As morning slid slowly into afternoon the rain changed to snow and her tummy began to rumble hungrily. She leaned despondently on the windowsill breathing on the panes now and again to clear the thin layer of frost. When it became too dark to see outside, she huddled in bed to keep warm, trying desperately not to cry. “Papa said never to go after him,” she repeated out
loud, jumping at the sound of her own voice in the cold, silent room. She repeated it over and over again throughout the long, sleepless freezing-cold night.
“Be right back,”
Papa had cried as usual when he left, and Poppy was sure he would.

Her stomach was knotted with fear and hunger by the second afternoon and putting on her coat, she crept down the creaking shabbily carpeted stairs, hurrying past the reception desk praying the clerk wouldn’t notice her.

“Hey you!” he called sharply. “Where’s you father? Just tell him that he owes two weeks rent and if I don’t have it in my hand by the morning—you’re out!”

Poppy shrank against the wall, horrified. If Papa didn’t come home tonight, they would just throw her out into the street—and then Papa would never be able to find her again!

“What’s the matter, then?” the cherk asked, eyeing her more kindly. “It’s not your fault, kid. It’s tough luck on you having a father like him, that’s what.”

“No, it isn’t,” flared Poppy, shaking her red hair until it sprang from its braids and flew about her head and stamping her feet in a rage. “My papa is the best papa in the whole world, the very best!” And then she burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably as doors flew open on landings all the way up the stairwell and guests peered curiously at the scene.

“Whatever’s the matter with that child?” demanded a stout woman in severe black bombazine with a large cameo brooch pinned at her neck. “Why is she behaving so badly?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, ma’am,” replied the desk clerk worriedly, “but I haven’t seen her father around for a couple of days and he owes more than two weeks rent. Looks to me like he might have abandoned her.”

“Abandoned her? Why, the poor child. We must do something about it immediately.” Sweeping authoritatively down the wooden stairs, she peered at Poppy, tearstained and bedraggled and still sobbing. “I’ll telephone the city welfare officer,” she decided, “there are homes for abandoned children and I’ll see they find room for her, even if I have to take her there myself!”

Poppy kicked and scratched and fought as they thrust her into the carriage with the official-looking man from the welfare. “Don’t,” she screamed, “don’t! Papa will never find me.”

“Find you?” he retorted exasperatedly. “Of course he won’t find you! He won’t even be looking!”

The children’s home was a granite-gray building set squarely in the middle of a snow-covered patch of shrubbery and lawn. Gloomy laurel hedges crowded against the uncurtained downstairs windows and Poppy thought it looked darker and grayer than any other place she’d ever seen in her life. Groups of drably clothed children shrank against the institution-green walls, staring at her, their pinched white faces looking shocked by her outburst of screaming as the man handed her over to a matron in a dark blue dress and white apron, saying, “She’s hysterical. Father’s a drunk and a gambler. He’s run off owing the hotel bill—and he left her behind too.”

“Nooooo …” screamed Poppy. “No, it’s not true. He’s not any of those things and he loves me … Papa would never leave me, never, never, never …” But she knew that he had before.

“Come, child,” the matron said briskly, “you must take a bath and be inspected for lice, and then we’ll give you some clean clothes and you can have supper.”

Poppy had no idea what lice were, but she didn’t want any supper, all she wanted was for Papa to find her. Her tears seemed to have run out, but her slight body still heaved with dry choking sobs as the matron dragged her reluctantly up the uncarpeted stairs.

She kicked and spat as a nurse inspected her hair and body and dunked her into a bath of lukewarm water that smelled of disinfectant. Then she was dressed in the same gray serge as the other children and her unruly red hair was braided so tightly, it hurt her scalp. With the fight gone out of her she was led exhausted back down the stairs to a room where rows of children sat on benches eating their supper. The woman placed her at the end of a table and a bowl of greasy brown stew was put in front of her. Poppy looked down at the stew and then up at the dozens of curious staring eyes. And then she vomited.

For the next two days she was confined to bed with a raging fever. On the third day as it subsided they fed her small bowls of hot gruel. She was sitting up in her narrow bed, clutching the unwanted bowl wearily when she heard a commotion in the hall.

“Where is she?” Jeb bellowed angrily. “Where is my daughter? How dare you take her away and put her in this godforsaken place?”

Flinging her bowl of gruel to the ground, Poppy leapt from the bed and threw open the door. “Papa, oh, Papa,” she screamed
joyously, “I told them you hadn’t abandoned me … I told them you’d come … I told them I was Papa’s girl and you’d never never leave me!”

“Sure and it was all a terrible mistake,” he cried as her arms gripped his neck tightly. “I was a little
indisposed
myself for a few days or I would have been here right away. It’s all over now, Papa’s girl.” He glared at the matron and her assistants and the curious children peering from behind classroom doors. “Don’t you dare make a mistake like this again!” he roared as he carried Poppy out of the door and into a waiting cab. “I should take you to the courts for causing a child so much distress, and depriving her father of his daughter!” But of course he never would because he’d only just left the jurisdiction of the courts himself, after spending several uncomfortable nights there for being drunk and disorderly and causing an affray. But Poppy couldn’t know that.

Jeb and Poppy crisscrossed the country staying in small towns as well as large ones, but they never again went back to St. Louis. Grimy industrial suburbs and railway sidings became a familiar sight from carriage windows as the trains steamed to their various destinations, and two surprise new words were added to her vocabulary:
Moonlight flit.

The first time Jeb woke her in the middle of the night and told her to get dressed, Poppy thought it was an exciting new game. He told her to see how quietly she could steal down the stairs, across the hallway, and out of the door, and stifling her giggles she managed it as soundlessly as a mouse. They laughed out loud as they walked through the quiet nighttime streets together, swinging their bags, and Jeb told her she would make a good cat burglar, whatever that was—it certainly sounded like something she’d like to be.

The times they spent in smart hotels grew fewer and fewer and there were no more new dolls and pretty dresses, and after a while Poppy began to wish they didn’t have to play the Moonlighting game so often. The bitter winter weather was too cold and bleak to be dragged from a warm bed and made to trudge through the streets in the middle of the night. Papa told her not to worry, maybe next week they’d make it to Monte Carlo and the sunshine and the villa in the hills.

The next time Papa failed to return, Poppy was too frightened even to cry, she just stared bleakly at the landlady of the Pittsburgh rooming house as she told her she’d sent for the welfare
officer. And this time when they took her away, she submitted silently to the humiliating search and the scratchy serge dress and droopy woolen stockings. But she refused to speak a single word, turning away her head when they questioned her and gritting her teeth together stubbornly until it hurt. This time Papa was gone for two weeks and she had almost given up hope when he finally came.