Authors: Bruce Coville
Walter had come lumbering up beside them. He grimaced at the mention of the play. “When are we going to do some good shows again, Fortune?” he asked, staring mournfully down at her. “You know, the kind of thing your fatherâ” He caught himself and started again. “The kind of thing we started out to produce.”
“There's nothing wrong with
The Widow's Daughter
,” snapped Mr. Patchett. “The problem is with you, Walter. You're as stuck up as a kite in a tree.”
Fortune sighed. The argument was as familiar, and as boring, as her worn blue dress. “We'll get back to those plays, Walter,” she said, resting her hand on his arm. “I promise. Right now I've got one thing in mind, and that is to get us to California as Papa intended.”
She turned and headed for the general store Mr. Patchett had indicated.
“You must be Miss Plunkett,” said the heavyset man standing behind the counter.
“Guilty as charged,” replied Fortune. “Are you Mr. MacKenzie? If so, then thank you for renting us your loft.”
The man made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt. “It'll be good to have some entertainment around here,” he said, straightening a row of tin containers that stood on the counter. “You folks find a place to stay yet?”
Fortune nodded. “We're at Mrs. Halleck's boardinghouse.”
MacKenzie laughed. “I bet things are a little edgy around
there
about now.”
“Why would that be?” asked Fortune innocently.
“The Widow Halleck doesn't much care for any kind of frivolity. In fact, I'd say the only thing she hates worse than actors is missing out on a chance to make a penny. So she's going to be feeling kind of funny about having you folks in the house; sort of like letting the devil through the front door, if you know what I mean.”
Fortune nodded. She knew all too well how some people felt about actorsâand actresses. She turned the conversation to the kind of fabric she was looking for. Mr. MacKenzie showed her where he stored the bolts of material, and soon Fortune was lost in daydreaming. The homely goodsâpots and pans, bolts of fabric, even the mop bucketsâgave her a sharp stab of longing.
She wanted a home of her own!
She cut the thought off ruthlessly. For now, the wagon was her home. Besides, thoughts of home brought with them pictures of her parents. The wounds their deaths had sliced into her heart had not yet healed enough for Fortune to deal with them.
Forcing herself to look around, she spotted a bolt of calico cloth. It would make a lovely dress. Maybe if the take was good tomorrow nightâ¦
That was silly and she knew it. Even if the take
was
good, any extra money had to be reserved for the trip west. Even so, she ran her fingers along the fabric, planning out the lines of a dress. Turning the bolt over a few times to let out the cloth, she lifted a length of the fabric to her throat, then turned to the window, hoping to catch her reflection so she could see what the dress might look like played against her blue eyes and blond hair.
To her surprise, she saw someone watching her.
The face looking in at the window was young and pleasant, its owner lean and deeply tanned. He had a crooked smile, high cheekbones, and large brown eyes that would have come dangerously close to making him pretty if it had not been for a slight scar that cut through his right eyebrow. His unruly mop of chestnut brown hair appeared to resist any attempts to hold it in place.
When the boy realized Fortune was looking back at him, a blush fought its way through his tan. Averting his eyes, he stepped away from the window.
Fortune looked down at the calico. But from the corner of her eye she tried to keep track of her admirer. After a moment of indecision he stepped into the store.
He was taller than Fortune had realized, easily more than six feet. His shapeless cotton shirt did nothing to hide his broad shoulders and narrow hips. A slight curl of brown hair at the neck of the shirt completed the picture. Fortune realized with a start that he had what the ladies in Charleston had called “boyish charm”âand lots of it.
“Afternoon, Jamie,” said Mr. MacKenzie with a slight nod. “What can I do for you?”
“I need fifty pounds of flour,” said Jamie. He was looking sideways at Fortune, trying hard to pretend he didn't notice her.
“You must be planning on a lot of baking,” said Fortune with a laugh. She realized she was in one of her teasing moods, something her father had always claimed was a bad thing for any innocent bystanders. She looked Jamie over, feeling very sophisticated. He was handsome, but such a bumpkin he probably had hayseeds in his hair.
Jamie was blushing again. “My mother feeds a lot of people.”
“I imagine you must help her,” said Fortune slyly. “You should make someone a wonderful husband.”
Even the tips of Jamie's ears were crimson now. But instead of retreating, he clenched his jaw and looked directly into her eyes.
“I suppose I would,” he said. “Are you interested?”
At once the color drained from his face. Tossing the sack of flour over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing, he rushed from the store in embarrassment.
“What's the matter with the lad?” asked Mr. Patchett, storking his way through the door. “He almost ran me down. And he looked paler than Walter when he's made up to be the ghost of Hamlet's father!”
Fortune began to laugh. MacKenzie looked at her and lifted an eyebrow.
“I know, I know,” she said. “That was cruel, and I shouldn't have done it. But he was just soâ¦so⦔
It was the storekeeper's turn to chuckle. “You can explain when you see him again,” he said.
Fortune looked startled. “What do you mean?”
MacKenzie's smile grew broader. “That was Jamie Halleck. You're staying at his mother's house.”
Fortune groaned. She had done it again!
Chapter Two
Jamie Halleck placed a huge platter of fried chicken on the table. Casting a sidelong look at Fortune, he left the room.
Fortune felt herself flush.
Edmund laughed raucously, his dark eyes flashing. “Looks like you have an admirer, little Fortune.”
Fortune's blush deepened. “My name is Fortune,” she said tersely. “Plain Fortune.”
Edmund smiled.
“He
doesn't think you're plain.”
“Now, Edmund,” clucked Mrs. Watson. “Leave the girl alone. Of course she has admirers. Why, when I was her age, the boys were flocking around me.”
“Mrs. Watson!” said Aaron admiringly. “What a memory you have!”
The actress flared. “I remember that in my day young men had manners,” she said imperiously. “You'd better tend to them, Master Aaron, or young Fortune might start looking at that Jamie the way she looks at you.”
Walter covered his laugh with a snort and tried to pretend it was a sneeze.
I'd like to crawl under the table and die,
thought Fortune as her blush continued to deepen. She was deeply grateful when Mr. Patchett cleared his throat and loudly asked if everyone was ready for a rehearsal later that evening.
At once the troupe launched into a vigorous argument over the merits of
The Widow's Daughter,
the quality of their parts, and the stupidity of the anticipated audience. Fortune silently thanked Mr. Patchett for changing the subject.
Except for the fact that she was in an agony of embarrassment, the dinner was better than Fortune had expected. The Widow Halleck was such a fierce hawk of a woman it had seemed unlikely anything pleasant could come out of her kitchen Yet the chicken was tasty, the biscuits light and fluffy, the gravy smooth and savory.
She wondered if Jamie had really helped make them. She was also bothered by the knowledge that she herself could not do it half so well.
Jamie returned from the kitchen with another platter. The hungry group around the table fell upon it like vultures.
Fortune averted her eyes. When she had teased Jamie in the store, it had seemed unlikely she would have any close contact with him again. Except for the time the men spent in the saloons, Plunkett's Players lived pretty much to themselves when they were on the road. It hadn't occurred to her that the awkward young man would be their host here in Busted Heights. Mr. Patchett had been quite upset with her, too; he was anticipating enough trouble with their landlady as it was.
Indeed, even as Jamie disappeared back into the kitchen, they could hear the shrill voice of Mrs. Halleck complaining to the hired girl. “I don't know why I let those people in here. Actors? Tools of the devil is more like it. Frivolators, I call 'emâ”
Then the door was closed and they could hear no more. Yet it almost seemed it had been left open longer than necessary. Fortune wondered if Jamie had hesitated on purpose, just to make sure the troupe could hear his mother's opinion of them.
She shrugged. What difference did it make? She certainly didn't care what Jamie Halleck or his mother thought of them.
She bit her lip. The problem was, she did care, and she knew it. Try as she might, she could never convince herself that the people who looked down on actors didn't matter.
Fortune swatted the thought away. She had no time for such nonsense. They were going to rehearse after dinner, and she had to go over her lines. Muttering an “Excuse me,” she pulled away from the table and headed upstairs for the room she shared with Mrs. Watson.
Closing the door to her room behind her, Fortune looked around and wondered again why her father had started them on this westward trek.
When she was honest with herself, she knew why. John Plunkett had always been a restless man. When the discovery of gold in California had been announced in 1849, he had ached to head for the goldfieldsânot to mine ore, but to mine the audiences he knew were gathering there.
Unfortunately for his wandering soul, Fortune's mother, Laura, would have nothing of it. But in June of 1851 Laura Plunkett had been struck down swiftly and silently by one of the thousand diseases that made life in the mid-1800s chancy at best.
With the loss of his wife John Plunkett had gone a little bit crazy. A year later, no longer tied down by Laura's need for a regular home, he had packed up his daughter and the rest of his acting troupe to join the westward trek.
Fortune had not argued; at the time she had been more than willing to leave Charleston, to flee the memories, happy and sad, that seemed to haunt her on those streets.
Thus the troupe had become Plunkett's
Traveling
Players, and Fortune Plunkett had become a virtual gypsy. And as they traveled from town to town, moving ever westward, she had discovered that despite the hardships her father was right about one thing: Wherever there were people, there was a need for entertainment.
“The whole country is growing westward,” he would tell Fortune. “And the ones who get there first are going to do the best.”
These remarks were usually prompted by his reading some article about how San Francisco had become a booming city, eager for new experiences, for “culture” to come to its western wildness. When he read that the Chapman Family's performances were sometimes rewarded by miners flinging bags of gold dust onto the stage, their course was fixed. The city beckoned to him like a distant dream.
Fortune sighed. In the past her dreams and her father's had been in conflict. But with his death she had had to make his dreams her own.
She shook her head and forced herself out of her reverie. San Francisco might be a booming city, but right now she was in Busted Heights. She looked around again. The small room was clean enough, but that was about all that could be said for it. The walls were bare except for a cracked mirror hanging above a small stand that held a basin and pitcher for washing up. The lone bed, sagging in the middle, was scarcely wide enough for two. Sharing it with Mrs. Watson, who not only tossed and turned but tended to snore, was going to be an ordeal. A single, spindly chair provided the only other resting place. The one spot of brightness in the room was a beautiful handmade quilt that covered the bed. Fortune wondered if Mrs. Halleck had made it.
She picked up the quilt and examined it. The stitches were tiny and even. The pattern, one she did not recognize, was lively and intricate. It was hard to think of that harsh, angry woman doing such lovely work. But if Fortune had learned anything from her years in the theater, it was that people often had many sides.
Mrs. Watson, for example: She liked to present herself as a woman of the worldâstrong, independent, and sophisticated. Yet sometimes at night, when she thought Fortune was sleeping, she would cry quietly for hours at a time. And once Fortune had seen her throw a vase of flowers through a plate-glass window in reaction to a bad review.
Fortune put down the quilt and wandered to the window.
In the street below she saw Aaron leaning against a fence post, talking to a pretty young girl. Fortune felt her hands tighten on the sill. Why did he look so interested in the stranger? And why did he persist in treating her, Fortune, like nothing but a kid sister?
“Men!” she said in disgust and turned back to the room. Opening the carpetbag that sat next to the door, she drew out the worn script she shared with Mrs. Watson and sat on the bed to review her lines for
The Widow's Daughter.
After a moment she threw the script to the floor. She knew her lines perfectly well; they had done the play more times than she cared to remember, and she hated it more every time they performed it. It was a ridiculous story about a poor widow who was being hounded by two men who wanted to marry her daughter. One was rich and rotten, naturally; the other, poor but honest and upright.
Fortune played the daughter. Mrs. Watson had been playing her mother for the last year and a half, and to Fortune's dismay, she seemed to be taking the role to heart. Lately she had been trying to provide Fortune with more offstage mothering than she could stand.