Under Ground, page 5
“It’s a girl. Trust me. If it isn’t, I’m leaving.”
Anton carried Katka’s trunk up the two flights of stairs and to the end of the hall. Then he pulled the rope that released the passageway to the attic. He lumbered up, struggling with the trunk. She followed him and looked around at her sleeping quarters. A pine bed, a small writing desk with a vase full of lilacs, and a lantern.
“Will this do?” Anton asked.
“It is good,” Katka said. Her room was almost as big as her cottage in Slovenia. It smelled nothing like the ship, nothing like death. She breathed in the sweet aroma of the flowers and smiled. She did not know her aunt, but she loved her at once for putting lilacs in her room. “More than good.”
“If you like, you can remove your things from the trunk now, and I will take it somewhere so I can repair the lock. And I have a good place to store it, if you do not mind.”
Katka knew her lock was not broken. Another one of Paul’s mysteries. She opened the cedar chest and removed the contents. She had her father’s Bible. There were two dresses and some undergarments, a tin cup, silverware, and a plate she had needed on the voyage. The photograph of her with her brothers and parents when she was a baby, the coffin photos, a few letters, and a rock she had impulsively stashed in the trunk. The picture of her and Paul was carefully hidden in her coat pocket. She had one more possession.
Katka removed the typewriter from Father Leo, which she had wrapped in a wool blanket. It was heavy, but she had grown used to carrying it, and she placed it easily on the desk.
“You are a writer?”
“No,” Katka said. “But perhaps one day.”
Anton smiled. “I don’t like to think about one day,” he said. “If it is possible one day, it is possible today. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose,” Katka said. She liked this man. He had her father’s same sunken coal-black eyes. But unlike her father, Anton’s eyes were alive. Her father’s eyes had always looked dull and weathered, even when he was laughing.
“I’ll leave you to explore. Lily will come get you when your bath is ready.”
She sat at the edge of the pine bed. The mattress was soft and covered by fresh linen and two quilts stuffed with goose feathers. “I’ll just test the pillow,” she thought. Within minutes she was dreaming of Paul.
CHAPTER 6
At 5 a.m. the next day, men’s voices woke Katka. It was still dark outside. She put on her clothes and crept quietly partway down the stairs. In the dining room, she could see Uncle Anton and eight men dressed in coveralls seated at the long table eating a breakfast of hardrolls and jam, hard-boiled eggs, and bacon.
“Teta Lily!” one of the miners called, using the Slovenian term for “aunt” to show respect to Lily. “More kave, prosim.”
The boarder was young, only seventeen years old, tall and thin. Lily appeared with a carafe. “Milo Blatnik. You meathead. How many times do I have to tell you? English only at this table. We are in America.”
“Where I come from, Teta,” Milo said, choosing his English words carefully, “contempt for the mother tongue is same as contempt for your mother.”
Lily smacked him lightly on the head. “What is it with you? Every morning, a different proverb! Didn’t your parents ever teach you anything useful?”
“Poetry. Would you like to hear some poetry from the old country?”
“I got a poem,” another miner said. “I hear it at work, I did. From a real cousin jack American. It go, ‘I once knew a man from Nantucket—’” The men hooted.
“No proverbs,” Lily said, putting her hands up like stop signs. “No poems. Just eat. You men are going to be the death of me.”
As Lily topped off young Milo’s cup, she saw Katka on the stairs and called to her. All of the miners stood. Anton introduced her as his niece, and the men told her their names, one by one. Old Joe, who sat at the head of the table opposite Anton, had a long gray beard and a slightly crooked back after nearly ten years of working stooped over underground. Most of the miners, however, were in their early twenties.
“A pleasure it is to meet you, Miss Kovich,” Milo said, bowing slightly.
Katka responded in Slovenian.
“No, my love,” Old Joe quickly corrected Katka. “Nice-to-meet-you-too,” he said loudly and slowly, deliberately contaminating his own nearly perfect English. “We-English-only-here.” Everyone laughed, including Lily.
“One day you will all thank me,” she said. “What day? I can’t say. Katka. Come with me. I could use some good companionship for a change.” Lily beckoned, and Katka followed her into the kitchen.
The kitchen was the largest Katka had ever seen. Unlike at home, the cook stove was inside, not outside. There was a washbasin full of soapy water. A good-size icebox stood next to the door. A long table was pushed against one wall. On it were eight lunch boxes, each stuffed with a towel.
“We must get the pasties packed,” she said. “Give me a hand?”
Lily removed crescent-shaped pies filled with meat, carrot, onion, rutabaga, and potato from the oven. Following Lily’s lead, Katka wrapped them tightly to help them retain their heat. Lily explained that all miners ate pasties for lunch. They filled a belly good, and men could eat them with one hand. They closed the tin boxes, and each woman carried four, Lily balancing her load on her belly. “Follow me,” she said. She led Katka through the dining room, past the boarders who were finishing breakfast. When he saw them coming, Anton opened the strong oak doors that led to the tavern.
It used to be the front porch of the house, Lily explained, until Anton persuaded her they should renovate. “It will be like the pubs from back home, I tell you,” he had said. “Who will want to come to a tavern with no gambling? No women? Good, decent men who want nothing more than to share a pint with some folks who speak his language, that’s who, I tell you.” Anton kept a running tab for the lodgers, and when they paid their rent, they also settled the bar tab. If a boarder could not pay, there was always a new immigrant worker waiting to take his place.
Katka and Lily lined up the lunch boxes on the bar. The boarders soon entered and laced their mud-caked work boots, which were arranged neatly along one wall. They donned their grimy coats and hats, which were on hooks above the boots, and grabbed their lunches. They left for the St. James mine, which was a little less than three miles away.
Once the men had gone, Katka and Lily washed the dishes. Then they sat down. Lily rolled a hard-boiled egg on the table, and when it was cracked, she offered it to Katka. Lily spoke to her in Slovenian, the language of her childhood. “You missed your bath. I went up to get you, but you were fast asleep.”
“Yes,” Katka said, peeling the egg. “I’m sorry. I smell worse than this egg, I know. But my eyes, they were so heavy.”
“It’s nothing,” Lily said. “I took it. It was lovely. We will run you a new bath today. I noticed something, though, when I went to get you. I noticed you have a typewriter.”
“My old priest gave it to me.”
“Can you use it?”
“Yes.”
“Will you teach me to use it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I will teach you to improve your English. You will teach me to type. It is agreed?”
Katka nodded.
“I’ve been wanting a typewriter for a long time,” Lily said. “I begged my father for one, but he laughed. He said women can’t write.”
After breakfast, they went upstairs, passing Lily and Anton’s bedroom and the two bedrooms that housed the boarders. There were four beds in each boarding room, double bunked. All were made up, sloppily. Down the hallway, they pulled the rope that opened the attic door.
“You first,” Lily said. “I’m not as quick as I once was. This belly makes me all catawampus. Feel like a drunk circus performer, swinging on this rope ladder.”
Once inside, Lily glanced at the keys of the typewriter. The Slovenian alphabet had no Q, no W, X, or Y.
“Oh, Katka,” she said. “I’m pleased as a pup with two tails. We can’t work here, though. It’s too blasted hot.”
“I’ll carry it,” Katka said.
She followed Lily back down to the pantry on the first floor, where Lily kept a few sacks of dried peas and carrots and her canned goods. Dried onions and garlic hung from a rope on the ceiling and emitted a pleasantly pungent odor. Gingerly, Lily rolled a rug to one side. A large, square space had been cut out of the wood under it—the opening to a hidden cellar. On her knees, Lily felt around for the indentation that opened the trap door. She found it and opened it. A sturdy oak ladder rested on some hooks, and Lily secured it.
“Don’t breathe a word about this place,” she said, crawling down. “It’s where we store the liquor.”
Katka followed, carrying the typewriter under one arm. In the cellar, Lily lit a lantern and pulled a cord attached to the rug above. If anyone entered the hallway overhead, they would see only the rug.
The cellar was much larger than Katka had expected. In fact, it was almost as big as the kitchen. On one side, Anton had stacked bottles of whiskey for the bar. Another side was covered with shelves that stored more provisions and some unmarked crates. The third wall also contained shelves, but these were filled with books. About a dozen Winchester rifles leaned against the bookshelves.
“A lot many guns,” Katka said in English.
“Anton and I collect them.” Lily smiled.
A small writing table with three chairs sat in the middle of the cellar. A large lamp, ink, quills, paper, and matches were neatly arranged at the edge of the table. A tin miner’s cup was there too. A Slovenian dictionary served as a paperweight for some letters that had recently been written. Lily lit the lamp. “Place the typewriter there,” she said, pointing to the table. The lantern’s light gave everything in the cellar a slight red glow.
“You will teach me to type before the week is done. I have been working on a project for quite some time, but I have been doing it all in longhand. Your typewriter will be a godsend.”
“What kind of project?”
Lily sat at the table and gestured for Katka to sit as well. “A women’s paper,” she said confidentially. “It will be the first here on the Iron Range. And it will change everything! You have no idea! You can help me write it. Surely you will! You can write the Slovenian version, and I’ll write the English one.
“I barely recognize my own skin, Teta Lily. Everything is...I don’t think...”
“You will make a positively grand reporter. I just know it. So? You are a new American. You will learn. And,” Lily began, clapping her hands, unable to contain her excitement, “I already found someone who has agreed to print it and distribute it without saying a word about my identity.”
Katka raised her eyebrows. Why the need for secrecy? America was a free country. “What do you plan to write about?”
“Recipes. Fashion. But mostly gossip.”
“Sounds...dangerous?”
“Go ahead and laugh,” Lily said. “But who will tell me secrets if they know I might print what they’ve said? Would you? You would not. We are positively desperate for this journal. Women hunger for distractions.”
“Are you certain, Teta,” Katka said, “you are not planning to write about something more?” There was a look in Lily’s eyes. A look that said there was more.
“I knew you were smart. I am too. I finished the eighth grade, first in my class.” Lily paused. Then she grabbed the water pitcher, poured a small amount into the miner’s cup, and took a swig. “Life is so hard here for us. You have no idea. Outnumbered by men almost ten to one. And the work. You will see about the work.”
“’Women hold up three corners of the house,” Katka said. “That’s what my mother used to say.”
“My mother used to say that! And she didn’t do a lick of work her whole life, unless you consider giving instructions to the maids work. It is true everywhere, though, to some extent. But some places are worse than others. I’d like to write about the women’s struggles here. Let them know they are not alone. In time, I’ll have a bigger readership than The Company Chronicle, I guarantee it.”
“What is The Company Chronicle?”
“A newspaper. Owned by the Oliver Mining Company. They own nearly everything within seventy-five miles of Biwabik. After purchasing the land and the houses in the town, the Oliver bought the newspapers.
“Try as they might,” Lily continued, “there are some papers the Oliver can’t touch. The Finnish papers. A few South Slav rags. And, of course, the Industrial Workers of the World and socialist papers get smuggled in. But none of the papers are for women.”
Katka’s head was spinning. Lily kept lapsing from Slovenian into English, and although she tried to keep pace, Katka found herself feeling more and more lost. Her aunt spoke so quickly. She had been in this town for less than twenty-four hours and knew nothing about it. Yet somehow, by the end of the conversation, Katka had agreed to become a reporter for Lily’s newspaper.
***
Katka slowly assimilated to life at the Kovich boardinghouse. She worked harder than she had ever worked in her life, but she was grateful for it. It kept her mind off of Paul. She and Lily woke early, built the fires, gathered eggs, and milked the cows. They prepared the pasties for the miners’ lunch boxes. They set the table, served breakfast, cleaned up. They kept the fires going all day so they would have hot water. At eleven, Anton came home from the forest for a light lunch. They prepared it and cleaned up. Some days the two women walked to town to buy goods from Cerkvenik’s Mercantile or Gornik’s General Store. They washed the men’s sheets and clothing. They tended the garden, picked flowers, and put them in vases.
After serving the evening meal, they often sat in the dining room and darned socks and knit sweaters for the upcoming winter. Katka loved the quiet of those evenings. She loved the sound of the needles. The rhythm of the clacking would transport her from this very real and tangible world to another place. She would float back to Slovenia and her parents, back to the boat, back to Paul. Paul, the only man who had ever called her beautiful.
Paul. Where was he? Every night after dinner, she asked Anton if he had heard from Paul. And every night Anton shook his head no.
“Do you think he is dead?” Katka asked Lily one night. “Paul Schmidt?”
“No, I do not,” she replied. “That man’s too stubborn to die. And he can talk his way out of most anything. He has a habit of disappearing and turning up. Don’t worry, Matchka. One day, when you least expect it, he will come knocking on the door, asking me to make him a walnut potica.”
They never discussed the women’s paper at night when Anton and the boarders were within earshot. “I’d like to write about the sporting girls,” Lily said one morning while rolling out the dough for a pasty.
“What is ‘sporting girl’?”
Lily explained that they were women who did wifely things for money. “I know some personally. It’s not what you think. Most of them, they didn’t know what they were getting into. One day I’ll take you down to the Mesabi Station, we’ll watch the girls get off the train. Always there’s a throng of men whose shift hasn’t started yet. They watch the new girls, wondering who’s going to the saloons, hoping to get a go at them. They yell and scream the crudest things. That’s why Anton sent you to Duluth instead of sending you on a train directly here. He knew there was a chance you would be making the journey alone, and he did not want that for you.”
“He knew that Paul would not make it?”
“He knew that it was possible. Paul knew too.”
“Teta, why is Paul such a mystery? Why would they stop him at Ellis Island? Isn’t Anton worried about Paul?”
Lily shrugged. “Worry early, worry twice. We have no facts.”
“Will you tell me when you acquire some?”
“The very moment. Now about the sporting girls. We have plenty of facts where they are concerned. Women like me, we should help them, right? An injury to one is an injury to all. But we don’t. The men help them more than we do. Sometimes the miners fall in love with the prostitutes. They buy them from the brothel owners and marry them.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Often. Ain’t that many of us here, remember? A used horse is better than none at all.”
As Lily talked and talked and talked, Katka’s thoughts drifted. Why did she come to this strange country? She would go back, back to Slovenia where she would marry the baker’s homely son. He was a humorless boy who used to make fun of her skinny arms. He wasn’t handsome like Paul. He didn’t make up stories or drop fruit in her lap. But. The baker’s son would not make her heart hurt. The baker’s son would not make her miss him when he was gone.
A few times each week, Katka typed while Lily talked. “This article is called: The Plight of Location Women.” She rambled on. “Women in the locations. Imagine: No running water in the shacks. Typhoid. Pneumonia. Women worked to death trying to keep the shacks warm.”
Katka wondered if there was cholera.
“Tell me, Katka, how can a company that made over two million dollars in profit last year not be able to put running water in the houses?”
“Do you want me to type that?”
“Why not? When the revolution comes, we ladies have to be ready. My paper will mobilize us.”
There it was again. That word. Paul had used it on the ship.
“The worker’s time is coming. Every woman on the Range is a worker. When the revolution arrives, I’m going to make sure we ladies get a piece of the pie. The accident whistle blows at least once a month, and someone loses an arm or, worse, their life. When that happens, what happens to the women? How do they feed their children?”
Katka stopped typing. She longed for her mother’s stories of fairies and magic. All Lily thought about was injustice. “You think a newspaper will make a difference? Maybe we should bring some rolls and jam to the locations, instead of writing about hunger.”
