Page 54 of The Harvey Girls
Forty-One
The first half of July had been very dry, but the weather gods made up for it in the back half. It poured almost every afternoon, and tourists shied away from tours in the rain. For this, Charlotte was very glad.
It was nice to have some small thing to be glad about, because mostly she felt miserable.
The few excursions she did have with Will were polite, and they exchanged small pleasantries while they waited for passengers in between.
She never went to his cabin anymore. Instead she distracted herself with books, specifically those oriented toward the history of the Southwest. She wanted to be prepared when Patrillo secured her spot with the Detours in New Mexico.
She and Ruth had continued their occasional tutoring sessions, but she hadn’t told Ruth about becoming a guide for the Detours.
If she did go, she felt it was important that Billie, who was her dearest friend and what Charlotte had come to think of as an “honorary sister,” be the first to know.
And though she knew Ruth wouldn’t tell a soul, if word ever got to Billie before Charlotte had told her personally, it would hurt her terribly.
Having read most of what there was in the women’s dorm, Charlotte occasionally snuck into the Ladies’ Lounging Room in El Tovar to pilfer and then quickly return what she found.
There wasn’t much to choose from. She avoided novels, which often had some romantic thread, no matter how informative they might be.
She decided to take a chance with the immensely popular novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, and every page nearly tore the breath from her chest. Set in California in the mid-1800s, it follows the titular character, a half-Scottish, half-Indian orphan.
She falls in love with another Indian, and they are constantly abused by whites as they try to find a place to settle.
Their only daughter dies because a white doctor won’t treat her.
Charlotte found herself crying through most of it.
Billie was relieved (though not exactly happy) now that she’d dispensed with that lout in a Stetson, Robert. They had discussed it with Mae and Henny, and three out of four of them had agreed that it was best to put a little time between beaus.
“You don’t want to take right up with some new guy and then give him the boot, too,” counseled Henny. “You’ll get a reputation as a heartbreaker.”
Mae had shrugged. “It’s not the worst thing in the world. Getting right back in the saddle and all that.”
“I think Billie should be the arbiter of what’s best for her,” Charlotte had said. “And she should take all the time she needs to determine what exactly that is.”
Billie had given her a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she’d murmured.
Why had it taken so long for Charlotte to remember that young people approaching adulthood were practically allergic to being told what to do? She had been just the same at that age. In all honesty, she still was.
Gossip being what it was in any small town, word of the breakup spread quickly.
Charlotte had seen Billie and Leif talking a little when they were on shift together, though that seemed to be all it was.
They never saw each other outside of work, and with Charlotte no longer seeing Will socially, the two women spent more time together and with the other Harvey Girls.
Angry Alva stuck her head in their door one late July evening. “Are you two coming or not?”
Billie was leafing through an old copy of Photoplay magazine. Clara Bow graced the cover with the glaring headline WHAT IS IT ? DO YOU HAVE IT ? Billie was pretty sure she didn’t have it.
She looked at Charlotte. “I’m not much in the mood, are you?”
Charlotte peeked over the top of a book that was making her eyes leak, though she tried to pass it off as an allergy of some kind. “I’m very happy here reading.” She did not look the least bit happy.
Alva gave her foot a little stomp. “You know we can’t do the tournament without you!”
Billie shrugged. “Oh, all right.” She turned to Charlotte. “Come on now, sniffles.”
“I am not sniffling! I have allergies—”
“The only thing you’re allergic to is that book.”
The sewing room was much larger than the one in Topeka, with five square tables set up for a variety of hobbies and activities.
The knitters sat at one table, the crocheters at another, though they did make room for one girl doing needlepoint.
There were two tables at the back for card playing, and woe to the girl who tried to sit at one of them and darn a sock!
Euchre, the partners card game Henny had taught them, had become a bit of an obsession this season, and some games went well into the wee hours.
(Mae Parnell was never strict about eleven o’clock lights out, as she often wasn’t in the building to enforce it.) Head waitress Nora was one of the nocturnal players, yet she brooked no subpar performances at breakfast the next morning.
“If you can’t get by on only a few hours of sleep, then don’t play the damn game all night!
” she’d chastise the bleary-eyed. She and Henny had become partners (the other girls secretly grumbled about Nora having the advantage of the best player, and Henny currying favor with the head girl), and they’d been unbeatable…
until Charlotte and Billie suddenly had plenty of time on their hands to practice.
Tonight they played their first round against Alva and the only person who could stand her: a German girl named Ursula. Billie and Charlotte suspected Ursula suffered from a bit of deafness, which she played off as learning English as a second language.
They made short work of Alva and Ursula, euchering them twice.
“You shouldn’t have played that jack so soon!” Alva railed at her partner.
“Thank you!” said Ursula.
Henny and Nora were simultaneously wiping the other table with their opponents. Soon enough, it was time for the showdown everyone had been waiting for.
To no one’s surprise, Nora was the most competitive.
She never missed an opportunity to call the trump suit even if she didn’t have enough of a hand to back it up.
Henny, the best player of the four, was more strategic, often holding back cards that others would’ve wasted early in the game.
But she was remarkably patient with Nora, even when the older girl’s impetuousness got them euchred.
Charlotte was the card counter of the group.
At any given moment, she knew what had been played, what was still in somebody’s hands, and the statistical likelihood of getting trumped.
Billie was all enthusiasm; she played erratically but with gusto and left the others scratching their heads at how often she won with so little strategy.
Nora and Henny were one point away from winning, and Charlotte and Billie were three points behind, when Billie called a “loner.” She would play her hand with Charlotte sitting out, and if she took the round, they would get four points and win the game.
Charlotte looked at her own hand and saw cards that Billie would likely need to win. She raised her eyebrows at the girl.
“That’s cheating, right there!” Nora barked.
“I didn’t say a thing!”
“Don’t give me that, ye little sleeveen. You gave her the eye!”
Henny’s sweet face went serious. “Did you?” she asked Charlotte.
“I only…” Charlotte trailed off.
“She did,” said Billie. “She gave me the eye.” She turned to Nora. “What’s a sleeveen?”
“A cunning one.” Nora smiled imperiously. “And now you don’t get your loner.”
Henny, ever the strategist, said, “Maybe she should have to take the loner, seeing as she already called it. I like our chances if her partner doesn’t think she can win.”
“Let’s just redeal,” insisted Billie. “Charlotte promises not to be a sleeveen.”
Henny and Nora looked at each other.
“You’re playing that hand,” Nora told Billie, “and you’re going alone.”
When Billie won the hand, and thus the game, the other three sat there with their mouths agape. Even Henny was stumped. “How did you… why did you want to…?”
“I wasn’t sure if I could make it, but I figured we had to try. When Charlotte gave me that look, I knew she had good cards, meaning you two probably didn’t. So I decided to say we should redeal, knowing that Nora would then make me play.”
A roar of approval went up. Even the knitters dropped their needles and clapped. Nora went red-faced. And Billie and Charlotte went to sleep with smiles on their faces for the first time in weeks.
One afternoon near the end of July, Billie and Leif both came out of the service entrance at the back of the hotel at the same time. Leif was just tugging off his white brimless kitchen cap and Billie saw his sandy curls tumble down to his shoulders.
“You need a haircut,” she said.
“I keep meaning to go down to Williams and find a barber, but when I get a day off, I just want to sleep in and relax.”
“I can cut your hair.”
Leif didn’t respond for a moment, which was just long enough for Billie’s insides to curdle with embarrassment. “I used to cut my brothers’ hair,” she said quickly, “but you’d probably rather see a real barber.”
“Actually, I… I’d like that, if you don’t mind taking the time.”
“I’ll see if I can borrow some haircutting scissors.”
He chuckled. “Once my papa did it with a pair of sheep shears because that was all he could find.”
“That must have been an awful cut!”
He shook his head so the curls bounced around. “Who could tell?”
She smiled at him; he smiled back; they kept walking.
A while later, they found themselves passing Will’s cabin and its lone resident sitting on the porch with a bottle of Bevo and the newspaper. As Billie called out a hello, the heavens opened, and arrows of rain began to torpedo them.
“Come up where it’s dry!” said Will, and the two white-clad adolescents scurried up the steps to the cover of the porch. “And who’ve we got here?” he asked.
“This is my friend Leif. We met when I was in training back in Topeka.”