The following is an installment from a novel-in-progress. You can read the most up-to-date version here.

The dining room is packed with men. At first, I think they’re speaking a dozen languages, like the people on the railway platform. Gradually, though, as Mrs. Nowak sends me through the door with platter after platter of potatoes, stewed meat in cabbage leaves, hunks of dark bread, and slabs of butter, I realize they’re speaking English.

It’s their accents that make them all sound different. At the end of the table sit two clerkish-looking men, thinner and paler than the rest, who lean together and whisper only to each other. In the middle are some boisterous younger types, shovelling in their food like starved beasts and spewing some of it back on the table as they call across to one another with full mouths. At the other side, farthest from the kitchen, are several larger men, slightly older but almost as loud.

When they finish the meal, which takes less time than any sane person might expect, I clear away the plates. So far, my presence in the room has been largely ignored. But now, as I lean across the table to retrive an empty serving paltter, a hand grasps my bottom. Firmly. This is no accident.

“Is there any coffee comin’ through, darling?”

I suppose I should have ignored that hand. It’s not much worse than the way Mr. Frank McLeod and his friends used to torment Edwina. The real Edwina.

Maybe it’s the thought of her that makes me react the way I do. I slap the hand away with all the force I can muster.

“Not for the likes of you,” I answer.

The table erupts in laughter.

“You tell him straight up, sweetheart,” grins the man to my right.

“She shown you,” roars another.

Then the hand is back on my bottom, more firmly now, fingers where fingers shouldn’t go.

“I said, is there coffee comin’?”

I don’t know what I would have done if Mrs. Nowak hadn’t shoved open the door with an ample hip, right at that very moment.

“Treat my staff like that, and you’ll likely get your coffee in your lap, Mr. Johnston,” she says. She must have heard it all from the other side of the door. I feel my face turn a shade brighter, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

The table erupts again, and I flee the room, cheeks burning and tears stinging the corners of my eyes. When Mrs. Nowak returns to the kitchen, I’m dripping snot and tears into the dishwater.

“Don’t you let those men see tears,” she says. “Don’t you give them the satisfaction.”

If you are new to The Crowsnest, you should probably get out now while you still can. Should you choose to stay, you can read the latest version of my novel-in-progress here.

Thursday. Three days until the minister arrives in town.

I spend the day working, and it’s wonderful. I mean, the work itself is the usual drugery — sitting room to be dusted, rugs to be beaten from the back stoop until my arms ache, onions to be chopped until my sinuses are wrung out. But I’m more than happy to lose myself in these tasks, put my mind to the slicing of the knife and only the slicing, so there’s no room to wonder what I’m doing here on the far edge of the known world, and no one who knows my or my real name within five hundred miles. No one on earth who really knows me, not on the God’s whole earth.

Better to work.

“You’re worth your keep,” Mrs. Nowak nods approvingly as dark nears.

“Thank you, ma’am.” I’ve barely seen her today. That’s a blessing, in terms of employers. You don’t want someone who sniffs along behind you for the dust particles you may have missed.

“It’s a good house,” I venture.

“My husband built it. Wanted it to be an inn. Not a fancy hotel like the railway’s gone and built, he said, but one that would serve good and common travellers.”

“He did well.”

“He would have.” There’s a sharp note in that last sentence, one that doesn’t invite further questions.

Now, Mrs. Nowak places a platter of biscuits in my hands. “May as well take those out to the dining room, before the men start clamoring,” she says.

This is a rough addition to a novel-in-progress. You can read the complete draft here.

Mr. Baeker rings the boarding house bell and shifts from one foot to the other on the wooden stoop, like a small boy who needs to use the toilet. One hand jingles the coins in his pocket.

I’m standing a step down from Mr. Baeker, so the woman who swings open the door looks even bigger than she actually is. Wearing a work apron over a pink-sprigged dress the size of a tent, she’s quite possibly both the tallest and the largest woman I’ve ever seen.

She greets Mr. Baeker with a sigh and a slight look toward heaven.

“Mrs. Nowak, may I introduce my…” he stumbles a little and I can hardly blame him. What’s the man supposed to call me? His latest shipment? An Eaton’s catalogue order, just arrived?

“I’m Edwina Southerland,” I say. The name’s coming easier to me.

She looks me up and down the same way Mr. Baeker did when I stepped off the train. Then she offers her hand. “You can call me Janina. We’re not so formal here. Come in.”

It’s good you’ve arrived,” she continues, as we trail after her on a tour of the sitting room, then a massive dining room where the chairs sit crammed against each other, not quite managing to squeeze themselves around the long wooden table. “This one’s incapable of caring for himself.”

She says it with a head jerk toward my future husband, who blushes, turning his hat in his hands.

We’re led upstairs next, past a second floor hallway filled with doorways, and onto the third floor. Janina climbs the stairs easily, her bulk getting no concessions. Her long, grey-brown hair is neatly braided and coiled at the back of her head. There’s a quick swipe of the back of her hand against her forehead as we reach the third floor landing, and then we’re off again, to peer inside a neatly made-up bedroom, complete with single bed, bureau, and washstand.

After we’ve given our approval, she sets her hands on her hips.

“My help’s gone and run off, and I could use a pair of hands in the kitchen come dinner. You look like the capable sort. If you prove useful, I’ll cut the rate in half for your stay.”

“Oh, I don’t think…” Mr. Baeker is turning his hat again. Suddenly, the idea of not spending every minute with this man seems appealing.

“I’d be happy to earn my keep, if it’s agreeable to Mr. Baeker,” I say.

Janina nods approvingly.

“Sixty percent off, then.” My husband-to-be has apparently found his voice. I can’t help grimacing a little. I know I offered myself to work, but it’s not pleasant to be bargained about like a bushel of apples.

“Fifty is all I can offer,” Janina says flatly.

He pauses a moment, nods, and then we’re all three herding down the staircase again. I follow my new employer, thinking that Janina Nowak may be as fat as the mountains are wide, but she’s also as competent as the peaks are tall. And that bedroom, even if it is on the third floor, seems a far cry from the maid’s quarters I shared with Edwina.

You may notice that the title of my little serial novel project has changed. You may also notice there is now a link to complete and updated chapters at the top of my home page.

This week, we’re again in flashback mode. Three cheers for backstory.

“He sent the ticket,” Edwina whispers.

As we slide into bed, my body stiffens at the news more than the cold. Edwina is unperturbed – or too distracted to notice, more likely – and she scrunches close to my back so we can share our body warmth. I can feel the place under the sheets where her abdomen used to be soft and now is ever so slightly rounded, distended, as if she’s eaten too many apples.

“You’re going?” I can’t keep the distress from my voice. We talked about this plan, of course. We whispered about it endlessly on nights just as cold as this one, but it seemed so strange, so outlandish, that I never believed it would work.

“Tomorrow,” she says. I can feel the smile in her voice, as if all her problems have vanished in a puff of steam engine smoke.

Tomorrow.

***

When I wake, Edwina is crying. She’s crying not like a girl who’s about to set off across the country, but like a wounded animal.

“What is it?” I whisper, sitting up. I scrabbled my hands across the table, searching for the candle stub.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she moans.

The flare of the candle makes me wince and blink and at first, I think the red is the searing of the light on my eyes. I blink again. And again. It’s all over me. All over my nightgown… red. Turning back toward Edwina, I pull down the covers. Everything’s blood. Her nightdress, the sheets, everything.

“God Almighty,” she says, her eyes wild, her arms wrapped around her stomach. I can see that her jaw is clenched tight, that she can barely speak.

Strangely, I hear my mother’s voice inside my head. “There’s no sense panicking the girl. Pull those covers up, child.” I do as instructed. I hide the blood.

“I’ll get Mrs. McLeod. We’ll call the doctor,” I say.

An arm snakes out from the blanket to clutch my wrist. “Are you insane?” Edwina says.

“You need a doctor.”

“She’ll kill me.”

I can still feel my mother with me. I can feel her calm. The way every emergency settled itself under her gaze.

“Okay,” I tell Edwina. “We need some towels, though, and we need to get you cleaned up. Maybe we can get you out of the house to the doctor.”

There’s no way she’s getting up on her own steam. I can tell just by looking at her.

“Stay here. Stay as quiet as you can. I’ll be right back,” I whisper, smoothing her hair behind her ears.

The grip on my arm loosens and I tuck her hand back under the blanket, patting her back as I pull on my robe. Then I’m racing down the stairs, already calculating whether it will be minutes or hours between the time Mrs. McLeod calls the doctor and the time help arrives.

Freewrite fiction, continued from here.

The station at Frank is not much bigger than the MacLeans’ garden shed, but there are fifteen or twenty people crowded onto the platform. Some of them are disembarking. They holler hellos or head straight into the building. Others are saying long goodbyes and inching closer to the passenger cars. As they all shout to be heard above the clang of the engines, it sounds as if the Tower of Babel just came tumbling down, right here in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. I hear the gruff gutturals of German, or something like it. There’s a tall, blonde couple with two small children at their feet, speaking a language so strange that they might be making it up on the spot. And there’s a group of dark-skinned, bearded men in white turbans. They’re wearing robes instead of trousers. I find myself staring rather rudely and I force my eyes away.

Even amidst the chaos, I have spotted Mr. Bailey. He stands to the side of the crowd, one hand in his pocket. The corner of his jacket is askew, revealing a plaid work shirt and a stripe of suspenders. In his free hand, he holds a bowler hat, bumping it against his thigh as he scans the platform.

It’s not his clean jacket nor his hat that betrays his identity. Many here are dressed in their traveling best. It’s the way he chews on his lip, the anxious way his gaze flicks from face to face. The white-wrapped men are between us, half concealing me, or he would have found me by now. I’m the only woman on the platform as far as I can see, with the exception of one plump and full-skirted matron. Mattie has disappeared, probably through the building already.

I know I should step forward and give him something upon which to fasten his gaze, but I linger one more minute, assessing him. My husband. My soon-to-be husband. He’s young still but a little portly, round-faced and red-headed. His thick neck looks pinched by his shirt collar. The hand holding the bowler hat is thick as well, big-boned. I suppose that could mean clumsy, or it could mean strong.

I blush. All this way, for days on the train, I’ve kept the thought of an actual marriage — to a husband I don’t know from Adam — tamped down in the back of my head like a candle flame under the snuffer. Now the snuffer slips off and the candle flame turns out to be burning still. My whole body flushes and I feel my stomach roil in hot panic while my cheeks flame red.

At that moment, while I’m sweating like the locomotive and trying to fight the urge to race from the platform, the group of white-wrapped men shifts to board the passenger car and I’m exposed. Mr. Bailey’s eyes lock on mine. For the briefest of moments, I see the expression on my own face mirrored on his. It’s as if our nervousness arcs between us in a quivering, electrical line. Then I look away, look at my feet, fight to catch my breath.

I almost succeed before he slides across the platform and offers his hand.




If you’d like to read the whole story:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4