Emmy Jane woke with chattering teeth and shudders that tangled the bedclothes around her chilled body. She sat up, gasping for breath. Through the curtains, there was the pale light of pre-dawn beginning to show shadows of the tree limbs between the glass and the sky.
The door to the bedroom opened and a figure entered, ghost-white in a billowing nightgown. Warm hands grasped her own.
“It’s all right,” Elodie said. “You’re at home. You’re safe.” She put a hand on Emmy Jane’s shoulder. “Goodness, you’re soaking.”
Emmy Jane pushed sweaty hair from her face and tried to focus on her sister in the half-light. “Cold.”
“No surprises there.” There was a wry twist to mouth, just barely visible. “Let’s get you up.” She tugged Emmy Jane’s hands, pulling her out of the bed and towards the wardrobe.
Her nightgown was wet. It clung to her skin, clammy as the river weeds which clutched your legs when you swam in shallow eddies. But something had pulled her out of the river, back into the warmth of damp summer air. “The saint.” A halo of white hair around a gentle, dark-skinned face.
“The saint saved you.” Elodie agreed. She had undone the buttons of the nightgown while Emmy Jane swam through the murky memories and now she lifted the damp cloth over her sister’s head. Outside, the rooster let out a sleepy crow, three warm up notes and a fourth that still sounded rusty.
“Yes.” Emmy Jane accepted the small clothes Elodie handed her. “I was very ill. It was so cold, and everything was white. But the saint healed me.” She knew she had told her sister this many times before, but the words repeated themselves anyway.
“And then Russ brought you home,” Elodie said. She had bundled the nightgown into the laundry bin. “It’s practically morning. Shall I make us some coffee?”
“Hot coffee?”
“Of course hot coffee, silly.”
Emmy Jane pulled a thick sweater on over her dress. “Russ,” she said suddenly. The chill of the dream, or memory, was fading away as warmth returned. “He’s coming home today.”
“Then you’d better get yourself together, or he’ll be worrying about you.”
In the yard the rooster made another try at announcing the morning. The sound sent another shiver over Emmy Jane’s skin and she rubbed her arms through the sweater. The cable pattern slid around under her palms. “Coffee,” she said. Somewhere there were slippers. She found them and followed Elodie out into the hall. The wooden bones of the farmhouse creaked and sighed as they padded along the hallway and down the stairs.
The kitchen was nearly as white as the room in the dream. No, not a dream. A memory. Emmy Jane ran one hand along the edge of the table as she passed, remembering the table on which she had woken. And the saint, standing over her with a deep soothing voice. ‘Drink this.’ Elodie was already fussing with the stove. The kettle was half full from the night before when they’d stayed up late, drinking tea and rereading the last letter from Luessa. Maybe Russ would be bringing a new one.
The kettle was singing. Elodie poured the water into the percolator. The steady drip began as the familiar earthy smell filled the kitchen. Emmy Jane breathed it in. Outside, she could see the chickens scratching around the yard. Emmy Jane got up to fetch the cups from the shelf before Elodie could do it.
“Don’t tell Russ, please,” she said, setting them on the counter.
Elodie filled the cups and set the coffee pot down before she answered. “He already knows, Em. He wakes up with you when he’s home.”
“But he doesn’t need to know how often.” Emmy Jane stirred a heavy spoonful of sugar into her cup. “He already worries about leaving. Don’t make it worse.”
They sat at the long table and sipped the coffee while a soft spill of light worked its way through the trees and onto the grass. There were a few high clouds, pink and pearled, slowly shifting their forms as the sun rose.
“Anyway,” said Emmy Jane, “it’s not as often as it was.”
They ate breakfast and walked down the hill to town, fifteen minutes through the early morning light. As a child, she’d never wanted to be up so early in the morning, for all it meant was an early start to the day’s chores. In Delta Mouth she had relished the opportunity to stay up half the night and sleep through the dawn, but now it was one of her favorite times of the day. Everything was still dew-kissed, magical and innocent.
There was the savory smell of butter and flour in the street when they were still a block away from the bakery. “I should write to Helen next time Russ goes down the river.”
“It’s only her and Luessa that you write to?”
“Yes.” The other chorus girls were long scattered. When she had woken from her illness, it was to find that everything that had defined her life in Delta Mouth had disappeared. Minnie’s was no more; shuttered after a final evening show that had somehow served as a funeral wake for Cal. For Cal was gone, and Jimmy Primrose, and even Dapper Jack had disappeared while icy dreams kept Emmy Jane frozen in a sleep on the edge of death. After the saint, Luessa had been the first familiar face she had recognized bending over her bedside.
They arrived at the store. Elodie unlocked the door while Emmy Jane walked slowly up and down in front of the wide windows, considering the display. The hats, each one on its own pedestal, reminded her of colorful mushrooms popping after an autumn rain. “We need to move the cream cloche away from the window,” she said as she followed Elodie inside, “before the sun fades those flowers and we have to replace them.”
Elodie fetched the cloche in question and traded it with a wide-brimmed straw hat from the collection on the long shelves above the counter. “The warm weather is coming,” she said. “We need more of these out front, anyway. It’s past time for the wool and felt hats.”
“I know, I know.” Emmy Jane set the empty till on the counter and began to count the day’s starting change out from her purse. “Russ should be bringing more sun hats.” She broke open a roll of coins and had to pick up several which escaped to the floor and rolled under the counter, but when that was sorted out she found that she was humming a playful tune. The morning sun lit up the lace curtains in the windows and the first cars were beginning to rumble by out on the street. Elodie was at the back table, sorting through ribbons and Russ was coming home today.
She found the words and began to sing.
Stubble on his chin again,
Don’t ask where he’s been—
What trouble he’s in again.
There will be no confession
Don’t bother asking
About the mess he’s in.
“What’s that?” Elodie asked. “Is that one of Lu’s?”
Was it one of the songs that Luessa had written for the shows at Minnie’s? Emmy Jane continued humming, waiting for the next verse to surface from the half-memory. “I can’t remember. It’s always in my head after the dreams.”
“Not a very saintly song.”
“No,” Emmy Jane said. “But I like it all the same.”
YOU ARE READING
I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)
General FictionA story about Emmy Jane, a girl who has come to make a name and a place for herself in the big city of Delta Mouth, about Cal, a nightclub owner haunted by the ghost of his dead lover, and about a killer for the mob named Dapper Jack. It's a tale of...
