Chapter 1: The first Friday in 1930

Anjelica Di Angelo narrating

I shivered as I waited outside the general store at the north end of the Main Street in the bleak city of Conrad, Montana. I felt faint as I pulled my thin jacket tight at the neck as I leaned back on the outside wooden wall of the store.

I would have given anything to have waited inside the warm shop, or bought a coffee and a sweet bread roll but I had no money, not one single penny. I tried to think back to when I last ate anything. It was just before I was beaten up and robbed of what little money and possessions I had, at the back of that truck stop, somewhere back along the road aways, I hadn’t a clue where. I felt in some ways I was lucky. If I hadn’t been nigh on eight months’ heavy with child, the assault on me could have been worse.

Both men had said they’d, “a’raped ya if ya hadn’t been such a fat colored cow”.

The way they curved their cruel lips and their rough vindictive tongues around the ‘colored’ word, so full o’ hate and malice, I’d felt that sentence more deeply than the punches that split my lip and blackened one of my eyes.

The nurse at the free hospital in Conrad who patched me up and checked the health of the baby, was a kindly local Indian woman, who said the baby was fine but added, “You be sure’n come by’n see me nex’ week now, honey.”

I said I couldn’t be sure where I would be next week, I’d been on my way to stay with my cousin Connie, who’d moved to Seattle a year or two earlier, only to find out when I looked for her at her address, that Connie’d lost her job, had no prospects so far from home and left to go back to Chicago but a few days earlier.

Chicago was where I had travelled from two weeks earlier and Connie and I probably crossed each without being aware of the other somewhere on the road.

On the way back to Chicago I had used up most of my reserve cash and taken a train part of the way, but I hadn’t enough money to get very far, then I mostly walked and hitched rides. Then my last ride with a couple of white farm hands, one older and one younger, beat me up and dropped me off behind the next truck stop and robbed me of my last few dollars and my cardboard suitcase containing everything else I owned. They even took the coat off my back.

“In order to stay here, I’d need work, ‘n I cain’t get no work looking like this,” I said to Nurse Annie, trying to keep my chin up and the building tears at bay. “An’ it’ll be worse in a month when the little one’s born.”

“What work you used to do, hon?” she asked.

“Before I was married I worked in a bank as a ledger clerk.”

“Only one bank left open in Conrad now, hon, an’ they ain’t doin’ so well since the crash last year. Can you cook’n’clean, hon?”

“Well, household stuff, yeah, I guess.”

“Tell you what, hon, it’s Friday, the first Friday in January. You go wait by the gen’al store at the north end of this street and look out for a man on a motorcycle an’ sidecar. He’s alookin’ for someone to live in and do chores for a few weeks, mebee even a couple o’ months. His Ma had a fall an’ sprained her ankle las’ week. He always does his main grocery shop for dry and tinned goods on the first Friday of the month.”

So I walked along that snowy main street as directed until I got to the store. The clock inside the store, that I could see from outside, said it was seven minutes past nine. The nurse had said that this Mr Harris, the man with the motor bike and side car, would be along between 9 and 10. I just hoped I hadn’t missed him, either going in or coming out. I didn’t know what I would do if he had already taken someone on or didn’t like the look of me and with the baby’s arrival so close.

I didn’t go into the store to ask about Mr Harris, I knew how frightful I must look, the nurse, Annie Grey Feather had showed me my cut face and bruised eye, which was yellow under my brown skin, in the mirror. I leaned deeper into the wooden wall of the store under a short verandah, trying to shelter from the weather. I folded my arms into my chest above my ‘bump’, with my bare gloveless hands clenched under my armpits, locked my knees and closed my eyes for just a minute.

I awoke on my feet with a start. I heard the noisy motor bike like a muffled hammer banging on metal a while before I actually saw it. The snow was falling even more heavily now, with big and soft flakes, and somehow I felt a little warmer. Either that or I was so cold I couldn’t feel the cold any more.

Even the wind had died and the thick full flakes kissed the ground around the store, settling thick and even on the road. The sky was full of grey cloud, not a patch of blue anywhere. Although it was still the morning, it was almost as dark as night, the snow glistening in the glow from the electric lights from the store windows. The bike slowed, and turned, parking in front of the store, by the steps leading up to the sidewalk.

The rider wore a long leather coat, hat and goggles, his front completely covered in snow. Sudden silence reigned as the noisy engine cut out and he slowly climbed down. Because of the sidecar, he didn’t need to pull the bike onto its stand. Then he carefully made his way over old frozen ruts and fresh snow until he reached the steps and rail up to the wooden sidewalk.

He was tall, I noticed, very thin and walked with a pronounced limp, favoring his right leg. Then he removed his goggles and shook off the snow into the street. He climbed the five steps one at a time, left foot first and dragging his right after, then leading with his left again. When he reached the top, he lifted his face, seeing me for the first time in the shadows, he was lit up with the warm light from the store. He had the clearest, most startling blue eyes I’d ever seen on a man, it was how I imagined a clear mountain pool would look.

I stepped forward, but I was stiff and my legs felt as wobbly as jello, “Mr Harris? Excuse me, but Nurse Annie said...”

Then I felt everything slip away from me and I crumbled to the ground, the last thing I heard was an English accent saying, “Oh, my Lord!”

When I awoke I was in a warm bed, the first I’d slept in for over two weeks. The starched linen sheets felt smooth and smelt fresh and clean. It was dark in the room, other than the flickering glow from a fire grate in the wall to the right of the bed. I was lying on one side of a huge double bed. Feeling the other side with my hand I assured myself I was alone. I lifted my head an inch or two and looked around. All the corners of the room were in shadow, the only light came from the fire, but it was quiet, just the odd crackle from the burning logs.

So, it seemed like I was alone in the room, with no idea at all where I was. I laid my head back into the pillows again, looking up the wall behind me, where I could make out a crucifix was hung above the bed. I couldn’t just lay there, I needed to know where I was, so sat up again stiffly. The first thing I noticed was that my clothing had been removed completely and I was wearing nothing but a cotton nightshirt. A couple of extra pillows were on the bed beside me and I tried to pull one behind me for more comfort sitting up, but my shoulder ached and I winced.

I heard a knock on the door at the end of the room and the tall, thin man with the blue eyes came in, carrying a tray, with a steaming cup on it. I recalled asking him earlier if his name was Mr Harris and, if so, I was supposed to see him about a job for a few weeks, while his mother was incapacitated. Before I could say anything, he spoke first, in that same English accent.