Froelich's Ladder (8 page)

In the weeks before she’d left for America (indeed, before she’d even devised her plan), she’d grown accustomed to loneliness. Long walks had been a good way to clear her head. Also, she’d been able to peep through people’s windows, and to imagine lives more tolerable than her own.

On one such evening, as she’d been aimlessly wandering, she’d witnessed a circus troupe passing through town, departing from Waverly Station. Elephants, trunk to tail, had lumbered behind Roman gymnasts. A strongman had carried a babe in his arms. This procession of outcasts had looked so much like a parade that Josie had naturally fallen in step.

She hadn’t been the only bystander. Two boys, neither of them old enough to earn a wage, had also kept pace with the performers. They’d been the nasty sort, goading each other and tossing peanuts. Their preferred target had been a trained baboon—not the wisest of choices, given the species’ propensity for violence. Perhaps the hat and leash had made it seem more tame, or that it was accompanied by a clown. Regardless, what right did they have to taunt the poor creature, stamping their feet and clapping their hands?

Josie had half expected a gruesome end. And why not? Should the baboon have elected to maul the boys, so much the better. What she hadn’t been expecting was for the clown to intervene. Wearing a purple wig, prosthetic nose, and oversized shoes, he’d appeared indistinguishable from his coterie—unremarkable, in that he’d looked clownish. Neither he nor the baboon had acknowledged the hecklers. But quite without warning the clown had stopped and had removed all of his clothes. He’d done so quickly and methodically—and for every article of clothing that he’d taken off, the baboon had promptly put one on, from the clown’s polka-dotted blouse to his billowy trousers. Once he’d shed everything but his undergarments (dishwater gray and not the least bit hilarious), they’d passed the leash between them, now looped around the clown’s neck and held by the baboon.

What had it all meant? That man was no better or worse than beast? That roles could be reversed, whether master and subject or tormentor and victim? Regardless, it had stopped the two boys cold. Josie had also been affected. As the clown had trotted to his place in line (not a svelte man, his belly had jiggled and his feet had slapped against the pavement), the procession had continued on either side of her, parting and then seamlessly merging, until she’d been left all alone on the darkened road. Even the two boys had had the wherewithal to go home, while Josie had just stood there, her mouth agape.

Ever since her rift with Mae, she’d felt miserable, undeniably so. Whether at home or at work, she’d suffered from a dull, aching pain, like her body had been bruised on the inside. In order to console herself, she’d tried to pretend that their spat was only temporary—that, sooner or later, Mae was bound to reward Josie’s patience. But now she’d been made to see: if a clown could demonstrate empathy for a monkey, surely
she
deserved better. Moving to America, if not the best or only remedy, had been the most expedient. All it had required was a letter to Uncle Francis, and here she was.

Coming upon another piece of driftwood, she stopped for a brief rest. Ahead, there were two choices available to her. She could continue down the beach until she reached the Coast Reservation, or she could venture inland, in search of the Logging Camp. Neither prospect seemed more appealing than the next. The former was a home to Siletz Indians, without the means or Christian charity to help her; the latter had been described to Josie in the bleakest of terms. Still, if it were a champion she sought, whether a fellow runaway or sympathetic countryman, she was most likely to find him at the camp.

Dangling her shoes from one arm, she kneaded her toes in the sand. The day was advancing; soon the alarm would sound. Taking advantage of the lull, and with guarded optimism, Josie ventured forth, determined to find her own way home.

Riding on the back of the mail jitney, Gak produced a drawstring pouch. She’d picked up smoking while her daddy was away—a sociable habit among the guests, and something to do with her hands. Despite the uneven ride and satchel of letters she was sitting on (which caused her to slide back and forth with the topography), she still managed to pinch a wad of tobacco and roll herself a tidy cigarette. She struck a match against her shoe, took a drag, and flicked the spent red-tip into the road.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “This uncle of yours who lives on a ladder—the ladder so tall, a
person
can fall off it and land in a tree? Where’s he sleep?”

When Gak offered him her cigarette, Gordy took a polite puff, gasp-talking, “Up the rungs, of course.”

“You mean he just holds on? Because I tried sleeping in a tree once. I nearly broke my a—!”

“See?” Gordy said, becoming animated. “You want to learn more, right? You’re intrigued? People hear about a giant ladder, they got questions!”

“Are you kidding me?” Gak guffawed. “I’ve got a million! Like, what’s your uncle eat? What’s he wearing? Is he naked up there? I mean, completely naked? Is the ladder straight up and down, or is it tilted? How much of a tilt? Is it like—”

Holding her wrist steady, Gak moved her hand back and forth, alternating the plane of her palm between vertical and horizontal.

“No,” Gordy corrected her, “it’s more like this—” holding his own hand at a diagonal.

“What’s it leaning against, then—a tree? What if the tree gets hit by lightning? Is it an A-frame? The ladder, I mean. Because, if it’s an A-frame, what if somebody climbed up the other side? What if the ladder got struck by lightning? What if—”

“It’s not an A-frame,” he interrupted, and continued to speak before she could unleash another barrage. “It’s not leaning against a tree, either. My brother, Binx, is holding it up—it’s angled against his back. The ladder’s heavy, like you’d expect, but he’s the size of a baby bear. That’s the story I’d have them write—big ladder, big guy, big heart. Not the family history, I mean. About Froelich, sure, but nothing about how Harald died.”

For a brief interlude, Gak was preoccupied by this information, if not a little confused. Gordy appeared to luxuriate in the silence, closing his eyes against the tobacco smoke and rocking with the wagon.

“But what if he’s not up there?” she finally proposed. “Your uncle?”

“Of course he isn’t there—I told you that already.”

“But what if he never was?”

Opening his eyes, Gordy sat up a little straighter. The vacant look on his face suggested he’d never entertained the question before. “You say he’s been up there your whole lives,” Gak continued, unable to contain her smile. “But how do you kno
w? Has anybody ever seen him? Have you?”

“No,” Gordy sputtered, “I haven’t seen him. Have you seen the Queen of England? Does that mean she ain’t real? Of course he’s up there—sure he is. If he isn’t up there, then why’d we have the ladder?”

“I don’t know—to reach stuff? Lots of people have ladders.”

“Don’t be idiot
ic. Anyway, is your daddy any less real, just
because—”

Immediately, Gak could feel her ears turning a fiery red. In less time than it took to expel the smoke from her lungs, a rash had spread across her entire body, starting south of her collar and spreading to the tips of her ears. Flicking her cigarette past Gordy’s face, she growled, “What’re you trying to say?”

“Nothing! What I meant is—”

“I know what you meant, you horse’s a—. I want to hear you say it.”

When Gordy failed to respond (prudently electing to keep his mouth shut), she stuck her hand into the mail satchel and started digging around. Angrily producing a fistful of letters, Gak discarded one, two, three envelopes, before identifying a missive that suited her needs.

“My daddy’s real,” she sneered. “Believe me, there ain’t nothing pretend about Gaylord. His belt’s real, his hands are real. S—t, even his moods are real, and they can change with the wind. He’s just missing, is all—same as these. Each of these is a person who’s gone away. Here’s one from Colorado. That’s real, ain’t it—the Territory of Colorado? Or is the person who wrote it just a figment of my imagination?”

“Hey!” Gordy exclaimed. “You can’t do that!”

“Can’t do what—read? Why, because I got dirt under my nails?”

“No,” he admonished her, glancing at the driver and lowering his voice. “Can’t touch the mail. It’s private property!”

Gak took another handful of letters and defiantly tossed them in the road. “What, you don’t like it when I do this? I’ll tell you what I don’t like—you saying what I can and can’t think! It’s bad enough I’ve got to find the bastard and bring him home. You act like it’s pretend? Like I want to leave my brother and sister behind? Because, trust me, if I could change my daddy into something he ain’t, the first thing I’d do—”

But she was unable to finish the thought; with a lurch, the mail jitney shuddered to a halt. Failing to anticipate the shift in momentum, Gak was bowled over, dislodging the mail satchel from underneath her and dumping its contents into the road.

“Now you’ve done it,” Gordy hissed.

The driver had already dismounted from the carriage, hopping down and circling to the rear. In his hands, he was throttling his leather-knit whip, his shoulders bunched. Before he even addressed them, Gak had followed his eyes down the length of the road, to where the letters trailed around the bend.

“D—n it,” he cursed. “I told you not to touch ’em. Nobody ever listens.”

As he began to unfurl his whip, Gordy also leapt down from the wagon. It was only with some difficulty that Gak, still sprawled upon a bed of letters, was able to rouse herself and join him.

“Sure you did,” Gordy equivocated. “I remember you saying so—and I couldn’t be more sorry if I tried.”

“Now I’ve got to hurt you.”

“What?” Gak said. “The heck you do!”

But the man only rolled up his sleeves, narrowing his too-close eyes in concentration. “It’s the only way to learn you.”

“Friend, I respectfully disagree.” Licking his lips, Gordy waited for the driver to face him. “If you want to teach us a lesson, then make us fix our mistake. Otherwise, who’s gonna collect all this mail—you? That doesn’t seem right, does it? Make my friend here clean it up. She’s been dropping parcels ever since the Myers & Co. Store—”

“Hey!”

“—and I’m sure she’d like to make amends. After that, we can go by foot the rest of the way. Okay? It’s not a lesson we’ll soon forget. And a lesson learned is—”

“Wait,” the driver scowled, turning to Gak. “You’re saying that’s a
girl
?”

In that moment, everything changed. Gordy’s thoughtless slip of the tongue had skewed the dynamic. It was now altogether less likely that Gak would be whipped, punishment only meted out to a boy. And yet, the potential for harm had become even greater. In revealing her gender, Gordy had also revealed Gak’s weakness.

“Of course I’m a girl!” she snapped, trying to maintain her rugged demeanor. “What, you never seen one before?”

But the driver didn’t answer her. Instead, he was openly leering at her chest.

“All right,” he said. “How about this, then—I get a turn with her, and we can call it even?”

Sneaking a glance at Gak, Gordy cleared his throat. “Say again, friend?”

“We both call it even—no harm done for the mess you made. And I get a minute to rut.”

“The heck you do,” Gak snorted, turning to leave; careful not to stumble or panic, nor waiting to hear Gordy’s response.

Unfortunately, in turning to her left, she walked directly into the driver’s fist. His right hook collided with her cheekbone and rattled her brain inside her skull. The next thing she knew, she was horizontal on the dirt track, pinholes of light flickering in her vision.

“What’s it gonna be?” the driver said to Gordy. “I don’t
need
permission. I’m just being decent, since she’s your freight.”

Gak spat out a surprising amount of blood. She couldn’t run: even if she were able to keep her balance, her thoughts would be too muddy to navigate. She could cause the driver some damage if he came close enough, gouging out an eye or gnawing on an ear, though it might worsen her situation. Gordy stood a chance, she thought, while attempting to raise herself on hands and knees. She doubted he was big enough or strong enough to stop the driver, but he was decent enough to try.

So it pained her when he said, “Me first, then. Like you said, she’s my freight.”

There came a dreadful noise, like an animal suffering under a heavy yoke, which Gak knew to be her doing. She started to crawl, even while a tiny voice urged her to hush now, be still.

“You first?” the driver echoed. She couldn’t bear to listen to their deliberation. She wished she could plug her ears, or turn herself into stone.

“No, you’re right—you. I don’t like to be watched.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you,” Gordy sighed. “You first, then me.”

A foot against her backside tipped her over. Hiding her face in her elbow, Gak attempted to block out the sun.

“Wait—no. Me.”

“Me?” the driver roared, turning halfway around. In silhouette, he was clumsily fumbling with his pants. “Make up your d—ned mind!”

“No, you’re right, you,” Gordy said, bobbing his head and taking a step in retreat. “I’m sorry. You go right ahead. I’ll just pick up some mail, why don’t I?”

“Do or don’t,” the driver growled, “I hardly care. But shut your mouth for a d—ned minute.”

In three brisk strides the brute was towering over her. Gak kicked her feet, but the driver was too strong, catching her by the ankle and giving a tug. As he flopped down on top of her, he buried a punch in her gut. All her breath departed at once—Gak reduced to sobbing and gagging, while the driver maneuvered his pants down around his hips. He snaked his fingers under her waist, their skin touching with an electric jolt.

Suddenly he pitched to his right. Even then, she continued to struggle—digging her fingers into the earth and pawing, as the road lacerated her palms. There was Gordy, holding a stick. Not a stick—a log, big enough to start a fire. He stood astride the driver and continued to bludgeon the man’s head, each blow producing a hollow
thump
. Finally a shudder passed through the driver’s legs and he lay perfectly still.