Mother Lode (29 page)

“I want to, Ma.”

“You
want
to?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever for?”

How could he put it? “I
need to be
doing
something.”

Thomas came down and started talking about
the job, sparing Jorie further argument and his mother’s injured
looks.

The first few days took Jorie more by
surprise than he’d expected. He’d never heard so much foul language
in his life, and wasn’t quite sure what some of it meant. The
filthy spittoon was used as a target, and sometimes Jorie had to
dodge the bullets. Soon he was goaded into trying this manly custom
by the others. After getting sick on his first wad, much to the
amusement of the three men in the office, he gave up trying. In
addition, the room was so filled with smoke, he had to go outside
to get air every hour or so.

He received a new kind of education from the
stories they told. The man named Jim told the best. One day after
Lars Jensen came by to ask about his paycheck Jim started in.

“You heard what happened to Lars and his
fiancée?”

“No, tell it, Jim.”

“Well, one Sunday
afternoon a few years back, he was takin’ his sweetheart out for a
ride in his buggy, up around the lake, toward Laurium. He started
pitchin’ her a little woo, spoonin’, and meanwhile ignoring the
reins. Anyway, his horse, doing what it always did on that
particular road, turns into the circular drive of
The Luce Women of Laurium
, and stops at the front entrance!”

“No!” Loud guffaws from the men.

Jorie could feel his face color, and
pretended to be so deep in his work he didn’t hear.

“Now Lars looks up to see why the horse had
stopped and saw they were at the Pleasure Palace. ‘Wonder why the
horse turned in here,’ he says, all innocent. His sweetheart didn’t
know either, never having been there. He turned the horse around
fast just as the Madam Luce come out to greet him, calling him by
name. But Lars continues up the road, keeping a tight rein on the
old gelding now. For awhile it looked like he was going to get away
with it, until the girl up and tells the story at the dinner table
that night in front of both her parents and Lars.”

There were guffaws and chortles from the men
in the office.

“Fuck, Jim. You’re not fibbin’?” the other
man choked.

Jim continued his tale. “’You won’t believe
what happened this afternoon,’ she says to her family.” He raised
his voice to imitate the girl and the men laughed again.

“For no reason at all Thor, that’s Lars’s
horse, turns in to the drive of this beautiful Southern style
mansion, with big white pillars and beautiful red velvet curtains.
I think you’d call it an ante-bellum house, Daddy, but I’m not sure
about the architecture. The prettiest woman comes out — she’s all
in red velvet too, and says ‘good-afternoon, Lars.’ Didn’t she,
Honey? But he didn’t even know her, so he just drove off real fast.
Now isn’t that the strangest thing?”

The boys couldn’t stop laughing and Jim
enjoyed how well his little story had come off.

When he could get his laughter under
control, the one called Ben asked, “Did you make this up, Jim?”

“Not a word. Whole town knows the
story.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, poor Lars had
planned to marry this girl, but that was the end of the romance.
Her pa knew all about
The Luce Women of
Laurium
, having had a few pokes there
himself, no doubt.

Jorie wondered if his father had ever been
at a bawdy house.

The work presented no challenge. The only
difficult part was the many errors he discovered in the books; he
wasn’t sure whether he should point them out or not.

“Better not,” Pa said, looking up from his
newspaper. “They’d just think you were a fresh kid, and if you
think they’re having sport with you now, just imagine what they’d
do if you bested them.”

Jorie was glad for his Pa’s advice, but
whenever he could do it without causing a chain reaction, he
corrected the figures in the ledger.

Thomas looked at his son, now becoming a
young man. “How do you like it there? Different from school,
eh?”

“Oh, yes.” Jorie nodded his head
vigorously.

“Tell me about it.”

“They chew a lot, spit a lot, and tell dirty
stories.”

“You’re growing up, son.” He returned to his
newspaper, then looked up again. “What kind of stories? You got
one?”

Jorie colored. “You want me to tell
you?”

“Yeah, I could use a good tale.”

Jorie started telling him the one about the
Pleasure Palace, all the time asking himself why he was doing this.
Would Pa get mad at him, or pull him off the job? But he’d started,
and he couldn’t stop now.

When he finished, he held his breath, but Pa
rolled with laughter, and clapped him on the knee.

“Good one, son. That’s a good one!”

For a moment Jorie froze, then their eyes
met. He started laughing, self-consciously at first, then in full
voice with Pa.

Jorie realized that with his pa he had
passed some sort of initiation.

After a few weeks with his new teacher in
the fall, Jorie decided Mr. Smythe was neither friend nor foe. He
was a hard taskmaster, but for once this gave Jorie an edge.
Studying helped to push certain scenes, real and imagined, out of
his mind. Besides, he hoped to go to the University, and he knew
he’d have to excel if that was to happen.

He had two poems published
in a nature magazine, and an article in
The Copper Country Evening News.

One evening his father sat with him in the
parlor smoking the pipe Jorie had given him. He tamped the tobacco
down.

“I finally got it broke in, son. Fine
pipe.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re becoming quite a writer, aren’t
you?”

Jorie tried to swallow the immense pleasure
he felt.

“Have you thought of what you’ll want to do
when school’s out?”

“I have another year to go.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know, Pa.” Why had he said that?
“What I mean is —” Oh, God, he wasn’t ready for this pitch. “I’d
like to go to college.” He took a deep breath. “I mean the
University.”

“In Ann Arbor. That would cost a great deal
of money. Room and board on top of tuition.”

“Yes, sir.”

Just then his mother came into the room.
“Eliza’s calling for you, Jorie. I can’t get her to settle
down.”

Jorie looked at his father.

“You’d better go.”

Damn! What awful timing. Now Pa would tell
Ma what they were talking about, and that would be the end of
it.

When he came downstairs his mother said,
“It’s much too soon to be talking about college. That can wait
another year.”

He looked to his father, but Pa was
engrossed in the paper.

No more was said that year about
college.

The fall term of his last
year went quickly. By spring everyone was already talking about the
millennium, even though it was still months away. Grammar school
children's visions of what the coming century would bring were
drawn on huge pieces of butcher paper and posted in the stores and
banks. Adults were publishing stories and articles which prophesied
such unbelievable exploits as outer space exploration with the aid
of strange new rockets; and expeditions deep into the crust of the
Earth where communities of beings lived without need of air, water
or light. Some of the best-written pieces and some of the most
fanciful were published in
The Copper
Country Evening News.

One was Jorie's. He didn't write anything
about exploring outer regions. Rather it was about taking care of
what we had, preserving it for generations to come. He had read
John Muir’s essays about preserving more land in the west to be set
aside and declared as national parks. Jorie wanted to go on record
as being in favor of establishing a national park in the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan, at Brockway Mountain.

The piece he wrote was well received, and
folks told Thomas Radcliff they thought his boy had a real knack
for writing. Thomas passed the compliments along to Jorie.
Catherine was proud too, and told him so.

"Now aren't you glad I helped you edit it?”
she said. “That part about saving the wolves would have just
annoyed people, and then they wouldn't have even read the
rest."

He nodded.

"There's a fine line, you know, between
putting forward fresh ideas, and being so radical you offend
people. You can only move the public a little at a time, and you
tend to be rather outspoken."

Catherine chopped up the vegetables and meat
with a vengeance. It wasn't that she minded making pasties; she
could do that in her sleep. She had been sending out her packet of
poems for the past year to various publishers, and today had
received yet another rejection notice. The poems were beginning to
look shabby, worn around the edges, and she would have to
painstakingly copy every single one of them again before
resubmitting them.

"We find your material unsuitable for our
publication," she mimicked as she diced the turnips.

Why was it so hard to be a woman? She was
sure that's what it was. In the one way she could have expressed
herself as an individual she was thwarted. She could have sent them
out with a man's name as George Eliot and George Sands had done,
but her poems were obviously written by a woman and she would not
betray them by editing, removing the very pearl from the
oyster.

What did anyone here actually know about
her? Did they have any idea of the yearnings, disappointments,
fantasies held in her breast? She knew other women had lost
children and husbands, but she could find no passion behind their
paste-like faces. Perhaps it was just that their masks were so
thick she could not see beyond them. Catherine knew she wore a mask
too, but if she ever met a like soul, she was sure they would lock
eyes and know instantly.

There was no way she could
share her work locally. The
Ladies
Oratorical and Dramatic Society
would be
shocked, outraged at her pieces. Some had been scandalized when she
read poems by Walt Whitman.

She finished cutting up the turnips, tossed
them in with the other vegetables and beef, and flipped the mixture
onto the awaiting crusts. One for Thomas and one for Jorie to take
to school the next day. In the morning she would heat them on the
stove and wrap them in newspaper to keep them warm for
lunchtime.

Well, if she couldn't make a name for
herself in writing, surely Jorie could. It was his last year of
school. She could put her energies into his career. He would have
her as a mentor and agent, something she had never had. And besides
Jorie was a male. That made all the difference. He would just have
to stop writing ode-to-an-onion kind of pieces and focus on serious
work.

Essays. Yes, that would be it. Suitably
masculine. They were very popular these days, and their authors
often traveled a circuit, frequently stopping in Houghton and Red
Jacket to give talks on their subjects. People like James William
Bryant. Even the amusing Mark Twain.

Her son could be a purveyor of ideas; she
liked the sound of that. She folded the dough over and pinched the
edges of each pasty. With her tutelage there would be no telling
how far he would go. Of course he'd attend college. The school of
mining across the lake wasn't ideal for his talents, and Catherine
winced a bit as she thought about that. But it would give him
credentials, and if he had to, he could supplement his writing
career as a mining engineer. He'd spoken of the University of
Michigan, but she had no intention of losing him to some distant
arena. No, the college across the lake would suffice, and he could
live at home.

Chapter 23

The pots on the stove were boiling, ready
for her bath. Helena was home with a toothache, and Catherine was
tired from doing her work and preparing supper. A nice hot bath
would soothe her aching legs.

She went upstairs and changed into her
dressing gown and brought down the towels. When Jorie got home he’d
bring the copper tub from the shed and pour the steaming kettles
for her bath.

As he walked in the kitchen door, Catherine
noticed that at sixteen he was good-looking with an amazing
resemblance to her father. It's not that he always reminded her of
him — she could have gotten used to that. It was just when she
looked long into his deep blue eyes or he turned his head a certain
way that she was taken by surprise; and each time the experience
caused a quick intake of her breath.

"Frederick’s going to the University next
fall. He just got his acceptance letter.” Jorie’s face was
flushed.

"You haven't kissed your Mummy."

He gave her a perfunctory peck on the
cheek.

“I’m going to have my bath now,” she said.
“I’m only waiting for you to get it ready for me.”

He fetched the copper tub, and set it on the
kitchen floor near the stove.

"I want to go to the University, Ma."

“I think it needs wiping out.”

“What does?”

“The tub, Jorie. Focus.”

He grabbed a rag and ran it around the
inside of the tub.

She said, “The water’s ready on the stove,
you can pour it for me now, if you will.”

“Could you just listen to me first, Ma?”

“It won’t stay hot forever.”

She picked up a kettle and poured it
herself. He carried the second and the third, emptying them in her
bath.

“Will you get the cold bucket now from the
rain barrel?”

“I’d like to apply for admission.”