Compromise with Sin Read online

  But after a time, fear overrode pain. What if Lars returns? Don’t be a fool. The man is miles away by now. In an effort to still her pounding heart, she took deep breaths and in time fell off to sleep, only to dream of Lars looking up from cleaning his fingernails and lunging at her with his pocketknife. Only it wasn’t Lars, it was Pa.

  She sat bolt upright and called out, “Yonder!” She awakened, searching for her friend’s protection. But of course he wasn’t there. Her trembling hand went to the nightstand where the cold metal of the gun’s barrel assured her that she could defend herself against Lars. Her mind willed her to rest, and she lay back on the pillow, but her body was still on high alert. Suddenly she was struck with another fear: what would be her defense if she called out Yonder’s name with Frank lying next to her?

  20

  July 1905

  From Valentine, the Chautauqua traveled one hundred sixty miles to Alliance, Nebraska. After the opening night’s show there, Frank took Marie for ice cream, then after tucking her in bed in the hotel room went to the saloon to meet Bernard.

  Frank spied Bernard, caught the barkeep’s eye, and held up two fingers. He sat down, and the barkeep brought two beers.

  Frank took a long drink, smacked his lips, and exhaled. “I couldn’t get away with that at home. Louise frowns on a man enjoying his beer too much—says it’s behavior unbecoming a gentleman.” He raised his mug. “Here’s to good drinking buddies forever.”

  Bernard raised his mug. “To good drinking buddies.”

  The men clinked mugs and drank.

  “But not forever,” Bernard said. “At least not on the Chautauqua circuit.”

  “What do you mean? Don’t tell me they’re putting you out to pasture.”

  “I told you it was my last season. The wife wants me at home, and I vowed I’d quit while I’m on top and the Chautauqua is on top. “

  Frank’s stomach felt hollow. He shook his head. “You never told me.”

  “Did, too. You were too drunk to remember. The motion picture will be the end of the traveling Chautauqua. You watch, pretty soon every town in America will have a Nickleodeon, and the next thing you know they’ll have talking motion pictures. Then who will come to see the likes of us? I’m going into business with my little brother—Feldman Brothers Enterprises.”

  Frank could not imagine the Chautauqua without Bernard. “What kind of business?”

  “Manufacturing. Ceiling fans to start, then we’ll diversify.”

  “In Omaha?”

  Bernard nodded.

  Frank shook his head. “Labor costs will kill you. Hope your baby brother knows something about manufacturing. I’ll wager you don’t.”

  “What he knows is an untapped market when he sees one. Summers are brutal, and folks want comfort. They go to the mercantile and feel that cool air from the circulating fans and they want that same luxurious feeling at home. Not to mention the salutary effects on their health from getting rid of stale air. We’ll hire a fellow to run the manufacturing side.”

  Frank eyed his empty mug. “Think you can win us a round?”

  Bernard motioned the barkeep to the table. He took a coin from his pocket and drew around it on a piece of paper. Then he carefully tore out the hole, took a larger coin from his pocket, and challenged the barkeep to put that coin through the hole without tearing the paper.

  The befuddled man turned the coin every which way but could not fit it through the hole. He threw up his hands.

  Bernard folded and creased the paper so the hole made a half circle, unfolded the paper partway, and slipped the coin through. The flummoxed barkeep shook his head and produced the drinks.

  Frank gave the barkeep a sympathetic look. “He never ceases to amaze me with his bag of tricks. He does this every night.”

  Bernard said, “It’s survival. When I was a boy, Mama would give me money to buy a soup bone, I’d go to the butcher shop, make a wager like that with the butcher, and bring home a pot roast.”

  “The funny thing is,” Frank said after the barkeep left, “you don’t take advantage of it. You tip like you’re the Prince of Siam even though tomorrow night that fellow will rake in the dough making bets he can pass a coin through a little hole in a piece of paper.”

  Bernard said, “Spread the wealth, I say.” He took a deep breath as he always did when he was about to wax philosophical. “I’m getting to be an old man, on the brink of ‘second childishness and mere oblivion,’ as Shakespeare put it. It’s the oblivion that we mortals fear most.”

  Frank interrupted. “A kindred spirit. You, me, Ozymandias.”

  Bernard went on. “I spend many an hour contemplating my legacy. The wife and I have everything we need or want, we’ve invested wisely, and I expect to make a fortune in manufacturing. Philanthropy, that’s my ultimate calling, especially children’s charities. ‘The Feldman Brothers Foundation.’ Mark my words, one day the Feldman name will be synonymous with good works.”

  “So you’re really going to do it, you’re not coming back,” Frank said. “Guess I’ll have to pay my own bar bill.”

  “Don’t count your chickens ‘til they’re hatched,” Bernard said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Bernard leaned forward, speaking in a confidential tone. “You see Durfee hanging around the show tonight?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He owns the show. I’d expect him to check on how it’s doing.”

  Bernard looked dead serious. “Rumor has it Durfee wants his granddaughter to be child elocutionist for one of his circuits, and it could be ours.”

  Arriving in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, early in the afternoon a week later, Frank and Marie stopped at the newspaper office before going to the hotel. While the staff gushed over Marie, Frank looked at the paper’s front-page announcement of the Chautauqua, gratified to find The Chautauqua Darling prominently featured. He always bought up extra newspapers to pass around to presenters and ordered copies of the next week’s paper, which would carry Chautauqua reviews, to be sent to him at the tour’s next stop.

  Once settled in the hotel room, Frank sat on a bed and opened the cardboard box filled with newspapers, trinkets people gave to Marie, a scrapbook, and a cigar box containing scissors, paste, pencils, pens, ink, and crayons. He carefully clipped the article from The Scottsbluff Standard and glued it on a blank page in the scrapbook.

  “Read to me.” Marie sat down beside him.

  “It says, ‘Acclaimed Blind Child Elocutionist Marie Alouette Morrissey will delight Chautauqua audiences with her gifted recitations.’” He flipped back a few pages in the scrapbook. “Here’s our favorite review: ‘Marie Alouette Morrissey is a tour de force. This little charmer declaims with such eloquence that she drives the audience to the depths of despair then lifts them to giddy heights of laughter.’”

  Marie squealed her delight.

  Whenever Marie became homesick and melancholy, Frank comforted her with the scrapbook and trinkets. He took out her favorite gifts and mementos from the box and described them in detail, and they reminisced about their odyssey.

  Frank’s collection of reviews had more than sentimental value. It was part of his calculation to win Marie a contract for another year.

  Looking in the mirror Louise coaxed curls into a becoming frame of her face under her straw sunbonnet. Then she put on her gardening gloves, picked up her weeding tool, and went to the tulip bed. It wasn’t in dire need of weeding, but Yonder would be working nearby on this beautiful summer morning. Lately something was on her mind, a discussion she hoped would satisfy a yearning for a deeper connection with her good friend. But would it be appropriate, given that she was a married woman and he was betrothed? And how obvious would it be, this pretext to be near him?

  From the tulip bed, she watched unseen as Yonder carried the new wooden trellis Frank had bought but never gotten around to installing. Her eyes lingered on the graceful movement of his lean body as he gently placed the purple flowering clematis on the ground and
dismantled the old flimsy trellis.

  He wrestled with the new trellis, and she realized he was trying to set it in wet concrete without trampling the vine it would support. The job required two people, exactly the excuse she needed. She stood and walked toward him, stepping around the scraps of wood he’d tossed aside. “Would you like some help?”

  “Thanks. If you’ll hold it steady until I get it anchored.” He knelt and planted the trellis legs in the wet concrete.

  Holding the trellis while he smoothed the concrete, she looked down at his back and drank in his familiar Ivory soap fragrance. She didn’t notice that he’d finished anchoring the legs to the last support until she heard, “Louise, you can let go.”

  He stood.

  Trying to hide her embarrassment at getting caught in reverie, she bent down to pull a lone dandelion. Yonder reached for it at the same time. They bumped heads, which set them laughing with the abandon of school children.

  “That dandelion deserves to live.” Yonder reached up and adjusted her sunbonnet.

  The gesture, so casual yet so intimate, made her giddy. “My sentiments exactly.” The look they held felt like souls touching, but was the feeling shared? Could she truly talk with him about anything?

  She pointed to the wheelbarrow as he tossed in scraps of wood. “This may sound silly, but looking at that old trellis with most of its paint flaked off, it seems something of a metaphor.”

  Yonder’s brow wrinkled. “A metaphor?”

  “What I mean is, it was once raw wood before it was made into a trellis and painted.”

  “And before that it was a tree.”

  Putting her thoughts into words wasn’t working. They wanted to lodge in her throat. “Yes. Well it made me think─in fact, it’s something I’ve thought about for years but I didn’t know who else would understand.” She took off her gloves and regarded her manicured hands. “I worry about not being authentic. And I wonder,” she looked at him, “do you remember where you were and how old you were when you began practicing to be someone you weren’t?”

  She didn’t know what to make of his furrowed brow. At least he wasn’t laughing at her. She went on. “For me it was after I started school.” Recalling the ragamuffin taunts and Pa’s lecherous hands, she crossed her arms and held herself as though against a cold wind. “If I were ever to escape, I had to imitate my teacher—the way she talked and walked and never chewed her fingernails. What about you?”

  “It was the same for me. A teacher took me under her wing. That’s when I first heard my name pronounced ‘Yonder’ instead of ‘Yon-dare.’”

  “I often worry about where the real Louise ends and the artificial, made-up one begins.”

  “I still grapple with that. I’ve almost completely given up being Indian.”

  “Considering what I’ve learned from you about assimilation, isn’t that a matter of survival?”

  He turned and tossed his work gloves into the wheelbarrow. When he looked back at her there was resignation in his unsmiling eyes. “As I get older and perhaps wiser, I’ve come to regret my role in the white man’s myth. The boarding schools are just another way to oppress the Indian. Like reservations. What’s lacking is a meaningful, systematic path to acceptance by white society. That’s what I’ve been advocating for too many years without success.”

  “Oh, Yonder.” She placed a hand on his arm. “But look at you.” Concerned that her hand lingering on his arm could be construed as a caress, she withdrew it. “You’re a respected policymaker. Your fiancée’s family accepts you. It may take time, but—”

  He shook his head. “I’m the token Indian that people like to show off. I’ve assimilated, and my children’s children won’t even know their Santee Sioux heritage.”

  Yonder, a father and grandfather? Whether he was speaking rhetorically or hopefully, she stiffened with envy that Giovanna might bear his child and know the joy of motherhood without the cloud of an illicit union over her head. If she didn’t squelch these thoughts, she feared she might break down. “Frank always says to be an American means letting go of our roots. Tradition is for people who would stop progress. We’re a melting pot.”

  “Not everyone is welcome in that pot,” Yonder said. “I should have recognized the goal of assimilation was subjugation of the Indian. Take children far from their homes to boarding schools, punish them if they dare to speak their native language. Mock their pagan spirits and teach them to sing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ and so they forget the comforting ‘Song of the Bear.’ And to what end?”

  His jaw tensed. “Take Sammy Beddow. Navaho, an excellent student, wanted to be a bookkeeper. He tried to get on at a dozen or more places. Finally the railroad hired him. Not to keep their books. No, an Indian’s place is doing back-breaking work for low wages. So he’s a gandy dancer.”

  “I had no idea. It’s so unfair. I don’t know what to say.”

  Yonder shook his head as though to absolve her of guilt and placed his tools in the wheelbarrow. He nodded toward the trellis and grinned. “Frank will be pleased that you’re no longer nagging him to replace that broken trellis.”

  Louise was grateful for the change of subject. “He telephoned last night. He says when they return Marie will talk your head off about all she’s learned from Mr. Science.”

  Yonder gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow, which tipped a bit from the uneven load. He set it down and shifted the bag of concrete to the center. “I shall be leaving in September, soon after they return from the Chatauqua tour.”

  Louise scowled. So soon? “Where will you go?”

  “San Diego. I’ll start working with Giovanna’s father.”

  She looked at the clematis lying heaped on the ground. It would be Yonder who would pick it up and restore it to the trellis where it would thrive. That’s what he was to her, a nurturing friend. Without him there was a part of her that could not thrive. She forced a smile. “Do you have a wedding date?”

  He nodded. “March twenty-fourth. She still has this sentimental notion we should get married on her parents’ anniversary.”

  “I’m happy for you, Yonder.” She hoped her voice didn’t betray her selfish longing to hold onto his comforting presence. “You deserve to have more of a life than is possible here.”

  In the heat of the late morning sun, she was beginning to perspire. She wiped her forehead with a glove. “I can’t bring myself to tell Frank and Marie about your leaving just yet. It will break Marie’s heart.”

  When another letter arrived from Marie, Louise held the envelope and traced its letters with her finger before opening it. She smiled, picturing Marie as she labored to make each letter.

  Dear Mother,

  Today we went to a park and I climbed on six statues of pioneers and horses and a covered wagon.

  Guess what? A boy likes me and I like him. His name is Dan. He sings in the Children’s Chorus. I miss you.

  Your loving daughter,

  Marie

  Louise wanted to reach out and hold her daughter and never let go. She knows nothing about boys. If only I were there. Frank must put a stop to this.

  21

  July 1905

  It had been a hard day’s drive to Broken Bow, Nebraska. Rain pelted the truck all day, and the cab’s side curtains couldn’t begin to keep Frank and Marie dry. He fought to keep the car on the road where a ten-mile stretch had turned the surface to gumbo. On that same stretch he stopped and spent the better part of an hour helping a motorist get his car out of a ditch.

  Even so, after arriving in Broken Bow and donning dry clothes, Frank mustered enough enthusiasm to make a sales pitch to the owner of Atlas Hardware that resulted in orders for two Whirlwind Maids. With that sale he had now exceeded his revised projections, which was cause for celebration.

  He sat in the Wayfarer Hotel’s saloon and quaffed more beers than he could remember, picking at the flaking sunburn on his arm and only half-listening to Bernard gripe about July in Nebraska.

 
; Noticing Marie had fallen asleep in a corner, Frank scooped her up along with her cane. As he carried her through the dingy hotel lobby, two old-timers who were hunched over a game of dominoes turned to watch. Frank took her to the hotel room, awakened her long enough to get her into her nightgown, and tucked her in for the night.

  He rejoined Bernard, who was entertaining the barkeep and several of the dozen or so men in the saloon with yet another trick. This time, Bernard had attached the bowl of a spoon to the tines of a fork, then stuck a toothpick into the joined silverware and rested the toothpick on the rim of a glass. When he let go of the toothpick, the silverware remained suspended.

  “There.” Bernard grinned.

  The barkeep shook his head. “Confound it all.”

  But Bernard had just begun. With a flourish, he struck a match and lit one end of the toothpick, then the other. The ends burned until they met the glass and the silverware. The fork and spoon stayed suspended. The barkeep’s eyes opened wide.

  Being Mr. Science, Bernard started to explain away the miracle and educate the barkeep about principles of the center of gravity and torque.

  Frank interrupted him. “Two boilermakers.”

  The barkeep brought the glasses of whiskey and mugs of beer.

  Frank patted the table where he wanted them placed. “Thank you, sir. You are a gentleman and a scholar.” Then he chuckled over the next thought taking shape. “Just an expression, but take my friend Bernard, here. He really is a scholar. Studied science and medicine in England. Has more degrees than a thermometer.”

  Frank tossed down the whiskey. He let out an “aah,” partly to relieve the fire in his throat and partly from satisfaction at the anticipation of alcohol rushing to his brain. “Talked to Ryder today. You were right about Durfee’s granddaughter.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. She signed with his other circuit. I got Marie a new contract.”