Читать книгу The Bucket Flower - Donald R. Wilson - Страница 11

Boarding the riverboat tomorrow morning didn’t seem like such a good idea now that she knew what Kissimmee was like. From her hotel bed, the shouting through the open window from the dirt street one story below sounded as if the men were in her room. The cowmen were drunk and wild, their language vulgar. Evidently the saloons stayed open all night. Kissimmee was like the Western cow towns described in the dime novels about Indians, gunfighters, and pioneers that she had occasionally borrowed from Grace. Just then three shots rang out from the street below. She stuffed her fist in her mouth to avoid crying out in fear. Mr. Gallagher’s room was next to hers. All she had to do was pound on the wall, but there was little he could do about the noise in the street.

As it was, she had clung to him all evening. They had arrived in Kissimmee in a downpour. Few women were about, and those she saw appeared to be rough and common. The men were loud and coarse, and she was relieved to be escorted by the gentlemanly Mr. Gallagher. The staff at the hotel were rude, the restaurant smelled of stale cigar smoke, spittoons were everywhere, and the food had been barely edible. Her room was a bare box with a lumpy bed. The worst part was the stained chamber pot and the bathroom at the end of the hall. If Kissimmee was like this, what must Fort Myers be like? Everyone had tried to warn her. South Florida was no place for her to be traipsing about.

The one bright spot had been Mr. Gallagher. He guided her around the tough men on the street, and thoughtfully suggested she rest in her hotel room while he promoted his case of Dr. Corey’s Cosmic Compound. During that horrible dinner he had told her about his wife and seven children. At the hotel desk he had shown the photograph to the clerk and had asked if the man had been in the hotel. He asked the same question of the waiter as well. “That’s my other job,” he reminded her. “This man” he said, waving the photograph, “is from Philadelphia, and I’ve been hired to find him and bring him back. The Everglades are notorious for being a hiding place for men running from the law.” After dinner he started making the rounds of the other patrons in the dining room as she left for her room.

She tossed about on the uncomfortable mattress. The heat, even in the middle of the night, was oppressive. Her nightgown stuck to her body like wet bathing attire. The fear of someone bursting into her room kept her from lying there naked. Never in the hottest months of the summer had she ever experienced weather this uncomfortable, and this was only May. As if Mother Nature wished to prove herself, lightning flashed through the window, and distant thunder rolled around the sky.

Their home in Back Bay didn’t seem so formidable now. Mama’s subservient life was far better than this uncivilized extreme in Kissimmee. Perhaps her mother’s preoccupation with social standing was a diversion from what she knew about Papa’s escapades. Mr. Flagler had Mary Lily Keenan. Did Mama guess that Papa had a mistress who was young enough to be his daughter? Papa was always at his office, at the Tavern Club, or away on business. Mama must have known the truth and immersed herself in her silly calling cards. Men were beasts, Mama had always said, but she had never dreamed her mother had been talking about Papa.

She indistinctly remembered Papa moving the family from Providence to Boston when she was four. His purpose was to expand his father’s shipping company. Her memories of their lives in Providence were like looking at a stereopticon in flickering candlelight. But recollections of Mama from the time they had moved to Dartmouth Street were of unending social events: teas, visits, visitors, dinner parties, and the ever-present calling cards for every occasion and non-occasion. She deplored Mama’s preoccupation with the cards. Mama insisted they were obligatory for every situation, including luncheons, weddings, dinners, card parties, evening entertainments, afternoon teas, and sick friends. Then another card was required in return; the cycle was never ending. And then there were the bent corners, each conveying a special meaning she had refused to memorize.

Papa had arranged for a tutor to teach his daughter to read, write, and cipher, and Mama placed herself in the role of social instructor. She taught her daughter the etiquette a lady should follow at dinner parties, teas, on meeting a gentleman on the street, and of course, the rules of those infernal calling cards and the language of the fan. Those subtle messages directed at gentlemen seemed ridiculous to her, and she had never used or remembered them. Then there were the customs of courtship, which Beth had never taken seriously, and which were horribly disregarded by Mr. Cushing with Papa’s help and Mama’s silent acquiescence.

Every step she took with Mr. Gallagher removed her farther from civilization. For the first time she had to admit to herself that she yearned to be back in her own bed in Boston. The Boston waterfront, not far from Papa’s office, was like Sunday school compared with this wild town. Seeing these men act in the manner they did explained a lot about Mama’s “beasts.” Papa’s puritanical ways might be just a thin veneer over his true self, but surely he didn’t act like these cowmen when he was away from Mama.

Going back home meant defeat. Suffering Papa’s harangue was not a pleasant prospect. But this uncivilized world was not for her. There must be a better life, if not in Boston, then perhaps in another Northern city. In the morning she would board the first train for Jacksonville and home.