Read Online The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe - Free Book Online Page B

Stoveall ever delivered my clothes, she made sure that was Madge’s chore. Didn’t take me long to learn how Madge loved to talk about her big sister. Worshipped her. I made the most of it. Learned Abner Stoveall had run his tenant farm in Tennessee broke. New start, he said, sold up their stock, borrowed some money from a brother, and took them off in a wagon for St. Louis. Spent the winter there, Madge and Lucy working in a rooming house as chambermaids to pay the room and board while old Abner played cards in the parlour. This spring, they caught the first boat to Benton with the intention to push on down the Mullan Road for Walla Walla, Washington. From a fellow heading downriver, Abner Stoveall bought a wagon cheap, but he got skinned. The reach of the wagon wascracked and right on the edge of town a wheel hit a rock and it snapped like a piece of kindling. It hasn’t moved since. “Here we were,” Madge had said, “stranded in Fort Benton, Abner so deep in the mopes, feeling so hard done by, he couldn’t bring himself to lift a finger and start repairs.” But then all the talk of good money to be made peddling whisky to the Indians in British territory recovered his spirits, and in the blink of an eye he bought a new wagon and a store of whisky with all their Washington stake money, left those two poor women penniless in a broke-back wagon to fend for themselves. And that’s what they’ve been doing, living hand to mouth for six weeks, tub-scrubbing anyone’s clothes who doesn’t want to pay the Chinaman’s price. And no sign of Abner Stoveall in all that time.
    I let Madge use my hairbrushes and sprinkle herself with my bay rum. It seemed to make her forget herself, and say what I reckon she wasn’t supposed to. My heart lifted when she told me outright her sister had no use for her husband. Well, why should she? He’s old enough to be her father. He’s a tyrant and a woman-whipper. She even confided a secret. If Abner Stoveall ever got them to Walla Walla, Madge said she and Lucy were going to skip out on him, do a flit, make for San Francisco, where there was plenty of work. They’d live quiet in the big city, just the two of them, free of old Abner Stoveall and his abominations. Her eyes shone with the thought of it.
    It’s a sorry story. Two young women chained to that blackguard. Many times, taking my wash to them, I thought to have a private word with Lucy Stoveall about her situation, maybe offer a loan. But she’s a proud and wary woman. Always held herself at a distance, so I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
    When I invited them, as my guests, to the entertainment on the riverboat, Lucy Stoveall wouldn’t take my offer. “I’ve got no use for make-believe trumpery, but you take Madge.” I saw it plain in her face, she suspected I had designs of some kind. I was disappointed in her refusal, but it was too late to back away from my invitation to her little sister.
    So on Madge Dray’s last night on earth there I was, shelling out three dollars to buy her the best view she could have of MadameMagique predigistating. Only five chairs on deck and we had two of them, right up front where no one could miss seeing us. We were Fort Benton high society that night. The good doctor Bengough beside us and two strangers behind us, one of them the Englishman who had been posting advertisements for a month, and the other, Dr. Bengough whispered, had newly arrived on the very same boat that had brought the exotic Madame Magique to us. Everybody else standing in a multitude behind the chairs, craning their necks to gawk.
    It pains me to remember the happiness on Madge’s face, how she loved her outing that night. Clapping her hands when Madame Magique made her flash entry in purple tights, a star-spangled corset wrangling those mighty bosoms into a stupendous vision of ivory pulchritude. Twisting around in her seat, gasping when Madame roamed the audience, pulling double-eagles out of dirty ears. Amazed