Grabbing on to the post until he could regain his balance, Gavin felt something like gravel hit the back of his neck. Turning around, ready to yell at some hooligan, he saw no one behind him at all, but when he reached up to touch his neck, he felt hard little pebbles of ice. He gaped in surprise as the buildings he’d just passed were swallowed up by a furious wall of snow, now mixed with the dirt of town so that it was streaked with brown and grey and black.
Gavin swore; he felt fear despite the fact that he was a mere few feet from shelter. And then, all he could think of was her. That young woman, the one he’d just tipped his hat to, what was it—God, only half an hour ago, it must have been. Dear God.
She’d be back out on the prairie now, she and her family; rubes they were, Swedes probably, maybe Germans; they all had that open, exposed expression of someone new to this land. Like baby chicks, needing to be taught everything. The family must have come into town for supplies; he’d spotted them out near the Catholic cemetery, at a little dry goods store that nobody who lived in town ever went to because the prices were too high. But the place did a splendid business jacking up the prices for homesteaders who were too overwhelmed to venture farther into town.
Hitched to a post in front of the store had been a wagon, the wheels replaced with crude sleigh runners; in the bed of the wagon were two small boys pummeling each other and jabbering in their native tongue. Next to them, sitting so that her back was against the driver seat of the wagon, was their older sister, Gavin supposed.
A young woman, maybe seventeen, who could tell? Gavin certainly couldn’t. But she was wearing long skirts, her reddish blond hair braided into a crown atop her head. She was sitting so still, oblivious to the two hooligans fighting at her feet, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her face turned west, a longing kind of look in her eyes, a half smile playing at her lips. Her clothes were plain, homespun, her cloak a faded dark green. He couldn’t see her feet, but he imagined she was wearing dirty men’s boots, too big for her. Every material thing on her looked made for someone else.
It was her throat that made Gavin stop, look, feel. To his consternation and horror, tears sprang to his eyes. But her throat was so young, unlined, somehow tender and hopeful, if a throat could be that, but here it was, this womanly throat not yet weighed down by care and death and worry and fear. It held her delicate head aloft as she blinked her eyes dreamily, still looking out toward the prairie, like a stem holds a bud; it yearned.
Throats do not yearn, Gavin scolded himself. You are giving emotions to things, and that is not what a journalist does. You are imbuing a rather ordinary part of the anatomy with poetry. This is ridiculous.
Yet there it was. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, she looked so detached from the plainness of her surroundings: the dirty snow, the weathered wagon. Her face belonged to another time and place. The girl must have sensed him staring, for she turned and met his gaze without fear or confusion or even wonder.
He tipped his hat to her, and she nodded regally. As if she had been expecting him.
Then the parents bustled up, handing packages to her, and suddenly she was just another young immigrant woman helping her mother and father, pulling apart her squabbling siblings. Gavin found himself, foolishly, hoping one of those brown paper–wrapped packages contained something sweet, something girlishly frivolous—a ribbon or a bottle of scent, a hair comb, a spool of pink thread, maybe. Something for her very own, to place under her pillow at night or maybe keep in a secret drawer.
But Gavin knew there was no such gift; he knew these people better than they knew themselves, he sometimes thought. There was no money set aside for an object designed to make a pretty girl feel even prettier—to make her aware of herself in a way that had nothing to do with hard labor, disappointment, suffering, sacrifice. And a future just like her mother’s, who looked older, by twenty years, than she probably was.
Gavin turned and walked back toward town, brushing away the ridiculous tears, laughing at himself. Godforsaken Omaha was turning him into a fool. An old, sentimental goat of a fool. It was long past time for a drink; he headed toward the Lily.
But when the wind hit, all he could think of was the girl. Out there. In this storm that had roared up so quickly. No one today was dressed for it; she’d been wearing only a tattered cape, her brothers had only jackets patched at the elbows. Now they were out there in the midst of it, most likely a long way from home.
He wished he’d asked her name.
Hugging the post, Gavin righted himself and threw himself up to the left, against the buildings, so that he could make his way the three blocks to the Lily. Where the buildings ended, at the intersection of streets, was already hazardous; when he stepped into the void, he could simply pray no horse or wagon or trolley car was bearing down on him, and it seemed only by the grace of somebody’s god that he regained the buildings on the other side of the street, continuing in this way—like a drunk sailor trying to navigate a pitching, wave-washed deck—until he smelled the cigar smoke and clove and beer aroma of the Lily. Pushing open the door was easy as the wind was blowing against it, and he tumbled into the blessedly warm room, slipped on a puddle of melted snow, and fell flat on his ass.
A few fellows guffawed at him, but most were pressing their dirty noses against the filthy windows, looking outside.
“Woodson, you all right?”
Dan Forsythe reached down to haul him up from the floor. Gavin brushed off the ice and snow from his coat, shaking his head.
“I am now. But God Almighty, that’s a helluva storm out there.”
“Blew up real quick, it did.” Forsythe followed him to the bar, where Ol’ Lieutenant, the Lily’s owner, was already shoving a shot of whiskey at Gavin, who swallowed it greedily.
“It’ll pass over just as quickly,” someone staring out the window said. “Wasn’t no cold wave issued for today, was there?”
Everyone then turned toward a man in a dark blue military uniform sitting at the end of the bar, nursing a beer. The man looked up, surprised. Just a touch guilty.
Corporal Findlay he was, one of the new “indicators” from the Army Signal Corps, whose job it was to take readings of the weather and send them to the new office in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Gavin had done a piece on them; how they had a division of these indicators, stationed all along the country at forts and railroad stations, who relayed wind direction and intensity, barometric pressure readings, temperature, sun or cloud coverage, via telegraph. These readings were collected in Saint Paul—previously, they had been gathered in Washington—and from these readings the officer in charge up there, a Lieutenant Woodruff, telegrammed his indication for the part of the country lying west of the Mississippi at various intervals throughout the day. The main prediction was the one transmitted just after midnight to the newspapers, post offices, and railroad stations.
It was a fairly new responsibility for the Army Signal Corps, and there were civilians—those claiming more scientific experience—who disagreed bitterly with the way the information was gathered and relayed. There was also some corruption—when wasn’t there, when it came to the Grand Army of the Republic? Reports of soldiers who would fabricate an entire week’s worth of data in advance and pay someone to relay it for them while they went off to hunt or fish or drink. The telegraph lines were often blown down by the very weather they were supposed to try to indicate, delaying readings until they were of no use.