A Flickering Light (14 page)

“I’ll do my part with the retouching. You do your part, FJ, by not being so disparaging of them that they up and quit. Otherwise you might have to call Herman Reinke and tell him that the partnership of the ranch is done for and just sell that…place.”

This discussion had made him weak. He wondered if perhaps he wasn’t also dealing with the mercury effects, the numbing of his fingers, the overall weakness. Add that to his raspy breathing. She was probably right about the cigars. But wrong about selling the ranch.

“As long as we’re paying them, we may as well get the work out of them we can,” Mrs. Bauer insisted.

A coughing seizure took him over. “All right,” he said finally. She held a cup of water up to his mouth for him to drink. “Let the girl take the sittings. But I want…to see the prints. Before the clients. And you’ll retouch.”

“Agreed,” Mrs. Bauer said.

At least he’d gotten his wife to participate again. He’d have to deal with Miss Gaebele’s bold moves later.

“What’s she like to deal with?” Lilly asked.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Bauer. She’s been your boss these last few months.”

“She’s all right,” Jessie told her. They were dressing for the Christmas program, in which Selma and Irene Fleischer would be singing a duet. Selma had been prepared and bundled up and had left with her father an hour earlier to rehearse yet one more time at Immanuel Evangelical. Selma didn’t need it, but Irene insisted. “Mrs. Bauer is a little snippy at times and reminds me of Mama with her directions, but she doesn’t stay at the studio for very long. Since the colder weather, I carry the prints to their house. I worried about her sending Russell back and forth to do it. He’s such a somber boy. Takes his work seriously.”

“She came into Stott’s today and bought several pairs of gloves. Christmas presents, I imagine. It would be nice to just go into some store and buy whatever you wanted, wouldn’t it? I noticed that Gillespie’s and McMahon’s had all their shoes on sale. I’d sure like to have gotten some high-button shoes.”

“I’d like a pair of their warm boots,” Jessie said. “The snow’s already up to my knees, and when I shovel the walk, I can barely toss the snow over the top of the bank. Bunches keep falling back down onto my shoe tops, and then I have to dry them out. But I can’t keep them off because it wouldn’t be seemly to take someone’s portrait in stocking feet.”

“You’re shoveling the walk there? That man has you doing everything. At least you’re finally getting paid.” She stuck a long hatpin into the felt, fluffing the ostrich feathers with her hands. “They must really like you.”

“Aren’t you going to wear your fur hat?” Jessie asked. “It’s cold out there.”

Lilly looked at Jessie in the mirror. “I suppose you’re right about that,” she said and removed the long hatpin. She put it in the porcelain holder on their shared dresser, fluffed the feathers once more, then lifted the hat from her head and put it back into its cardboard box. “I miss spring.” Lilly sighed. “You’ll have to take my portrait one time. When the weather warms.”

Jessie nodded. She decided not to tell Lilly about Mr. Bauer’s less-than-enthusiastic response to her portrait work. She couldn’t understand it, really. She’d taken the test and passed it fine. She’d been able to convince nearly all of the scheduled portrait appointments to allow her to do the work, and no one, not a single person, had decided not to take at least one finished and framed print. Several clients had purchased four and five. She’d gotten new customers that way, when satisfied people told others about the studio.

A younger clientele expressed willingness to spend for portraits, and she’d even scheduled a couple of Norwegian loggers for a sitting next week. They were spending the holidays with family in Winona. Lumbermen, Mr. Steffes told her, had lots of money to spend and usually spent it on “women and liquor.” Mr. Steffes had relatives in Wisconsin’s Chippewa woods. He claimed to know all there was to know about loggers and immigrants. When she’d told him of her new appointment, Mr. Steffes said, “Get ready for the strong scent of toe jam because those Norwegian loggers don’t like to wash their feet in the cold weather. Even if they don’t take their boots off, you’ll be introduced to their toes. It’s why they have those big smorgasbords with all the rich smells. To cover up their own.” He’d grinned, showing off a hole where a tooth should have been.

Jessie smiled with him. “I think it’s the Swedish who have smorgasbords,” she’d told him.

Now, standing at the bedroom mirror, Jessie said, “Yes, I’m finally getting paid. It’s a good wage and good working conditions.”

“Except for shoveling snow. Well, at least you have your camera back.”

Jessie didn’t correct her sister. She hadn’t wanted to tell her of that snag and have to listen to her lecture about how Mr. Bauer took advantage of her. She hurried out the door, shouting over her shoulder, “I’ll see about helping Mama get Roy going. Uncle August and Grandpa and Grandma will be here any minute. We don’t want to be late for Selma’s concert.”

Jessie did wonder what sort of argument might have gone on with the Bauers when she broached the subject of their payment and getting her camera back. Mrs. Bauer looked this way and that, as though she hadn’t known about the details of either.

But when Jessie brought the photographs to the Bauer home for Mr. Bauer to assess, Mrs. Bauer had met her in the foyer and handed her paychecks for her and Voe, their first in six months. She told Jessie that Mr. Bauer expected her to take the test and that he would discuss the camera issue with her later.

“Later?” Jessie had said. “But it’s my camera.”

“He says you did not keep your agreement with him.”

“But I’ve run the studio for him. For you. Why would he object to my having my little camera back? I’ve taken no photographs on my own. That’s what I agreed to. They’ve all been for the studio.”

“Mr. Bauer has his ways,” Mrs. Bauer told her. “That’s all I know. You’ll have to work it out with him.”

The Bauer foyer was a place she’d gone to twice a week since then. Jessie would sit on the hat bench and wait for Mrs. Bauer to confer with Mr. Bauer. Sometimes Winifred joined her, and the time would go faster then as the child chatted about her bear or told her stories of imaginary friends. At least, Jessie assumed they were imaginary with names like Hestia (whom Jessie knew was the Greek goddess of hearth and home) and Hera (known to be jealous but also the protector of marriage). Mr. Bauer was likely reading the classics to Winifred, as these were things he spoke about sometimes at the studio when they worked in the darkroom or waited for clients. He probably had a few leather-bound books in the case that told such stories too.

Mostly Jessie sat alone in the Bauer foyer, where a fire warmed the open room. She could hear muffled conversations between the two. After a time, Mrs. Bauer would come down the stairs and convey Mr. Bauer’s concerns about her work. There were always complaints, and a part of Jessie wondered if she ought to continue the portrait appointments since Mr. Bauer was apparently so upset with her skill. But Mrs. Bauer insisted she proceed, and the clients liked the results. Jessie had made the commitment to run the studio, and she’d keep it, at least until he was well, even if he hadn’t kept his word to return her camera.

She’d looked for her Kodak, wondering where he might have put it. It wasn’t in the operating area. Well, of course, he wouldn’t want his customers seeing something so amateurish. It wasn’t upstairs in the attic portion, or downstairs. It wasn’t anywhere in the studio that she could find. She even had Voe looking for it on the high shelves that Jessie couldn’t reach without standing on a ladder, and even then there were cubbyholes she never could see far enough back into. Her shortness was an annoyance. So was not getting that camera back.

She had to put those thoughts aside now as she hustled Roy along so they could attend the Christmas concert. She arrived in the kitchen just as her uncle August stomped the snow from his boots. “How’s my little camera girl?” he said as he swung Jessie around the room.

“Neatly dressed and ready to go…until you came along,” she teased. He set her down and she straightened her hat, held her muff with one hand.

“Well, pickle my fingers then,” he said. “Here.” He handed her a small box not much larger than her palm. “For my favorite niece. An early Christmas present. To go with your camera.”

“You spoil the child,” her mother said, but her tone was kind. Jessie suspected that her mother’s next-to-youngest brother was a favorite of her own. His ears stuck out from his head and looked like loose flaps on a man’s winter cap.

“May I open it now?” she asked.

“We really should be going,” Lilly said, joining them.

“Are Grandma and Grandpa out there waiting?”

August nodded his head.

“I’d better hold off then. It’s cold, and they don’t need to be in it longer on my account.”

“Oh, go ahead,” August urged. “They’ve got hot bricks under their feet and a buffalo robe to wrap them.”

Jessie removed her gloves, tore off the string, but carefully folded the paper for later use. Inside the box were two little silver spoons embossed with
St. Louis World’s Fair
. “These are just precious,” Jessie said. “Little salt spoons.” She showed them around.

“I’ve saved a few trinkets from St. Louis. I’ll dribble them to you now and then,” he said. “For your trousseau.” He winked at her.

“If my girls ever marry,” their mother said. She pointed her finger at Lilly, who scowled.

“I do wonder what boy would want a scamp like Jessie,” August said.

“One with good sense,” Jessie said. “I could support him better than your suspenders.”

He faked pain.

She helped settle Roy down as he put his coat on. “Boys are silly and thoughtless. Not you, Roy. I’ll wait for a gentleman.”

“You have to be wary of older men,” August teased.

“I don’t think years necessarily add wisdom. They could just count up years of dementia. You’re seventeen years older than I am. Are you demented?” She grinned as she said it, as his face again showed mock pain.

“L-l-let’s go!” Roy ran out the door, followed by the rest of the family.

Within minutes they were driving through the night on a sleigh pulled by her grandparents’ big team, the
ping pingle ping
of the bells jangling in rhythm to the horses’ hoofs. Later, the older people and August would spend the night, the girls giving up their bed for their grandparents and August bunking in with Roy. Jessie and her sisters would curl up in quilts on the parlor floor before the little stove, and there’d be a huge breakfast in the morning with bacon from the farm and eggs and the cinnamon rolls her grandmother Schoepp had spent days making. Jessie loved her grandparents, and it always pleased her to be able to say that she’d grown up “just down the road” from their farm. Jessie’d even been born in their home.

At the other end of the valley lived her other set of grandparents, as slender and small as her Schoepp parents were large and looming. Her mother’s parents had settled early in the Cream valley, claiming the flat, rich farmland fed by a year-round stream. They’d come into Winona the following morning after attending a service at the Herold Church up on the bluff. She couldn’t imagine a better life than to have so many relatives so close, and getting along with one another too. Family was what mattered. She looked at Roy as they sped along the wintry streets, and tears threatened to freeze on her cheeks.

Inside the newly rebuilt church on the corner of King and South Baker, Jessie was hit with the smell of kerosene lamps swinging from overhead wires. At the two stoves, people had placed their bricks to reheat them. They’d be bundled in blankets later to keep everyone’s feet warm on the ride home. Evergreens and red bunting decorated the sanctuary. Dozens of tiny candles lit the branches of a tree that rose to the ceiling. Men stood next to the evergreen ready to replace any candles that burned too close to the greenery, but Jessie always imagined they guarded the presents that would be given out to all the children. She was too old for those gifts now, but she remembered the joy of receiving treasures at the Herold Church when she was little. A china-faced doll with leather arms still sat on the dresser. The Gem Roller Organ, ten years old now, had been a Christmas gift. Putting the rolls in and listening to the hymns play was still a special feature of the Gaebeles’ Christmas morning.

Selma and Irene sang like angels in the concert, her sister’s alto voice melting over them like pure maple syrup. The choir followed, then a piano solo that made Jessie wish she could play such music. She could plink out tunes so long as she remembered the melody. Something happened to her hands, which seemed to move without her when she sat on that round stool in front of the keys. If she looked at her hands while she played, she’d get stumped, but if she just let the music flow through her, she could sometimes play trills and chords and sound like someone who had practiced for years.

This experience was somewhat like faith, she decided: if you tried to think about it too much, you’d stumble, but if you just trusted and kept going, there’d always be the next note to come. Sometimes Jessie went with Selma to the sanctuary for her rehearsals and she’d play after the real accompanist left. But she’d never dream of playing in public. Besides, she had another life now, one she’d always dreamed of having—capturing beauty through photographic art.