Please Remember This (15 page)

As soon as their coffee was ready, Phil started showing Matt and Carolyn around. Ned had not said a word until he stepped forward to order a plain espresso. He looked tired.

“What are these little books for?” Dr. Matt asked.

“For people to write in. They’re probably mostly for the tourists, but I thought people would enjoying reading what other people said.”

“They’ll love it. And I will go first.” He took a book and started to write. Phil scooted his chair over, obviously planning on reading over his dad’s shoulder. “Go away,” Dr. Matt ordered. “Get your own book. This one is mine.”

Carolyn was at the pie safe. “I am buying both these drawn-work tablecloths, and I want them out of here before anyone sees what I am spending.”

Her husband looked up interestedly.

“Including you,” she told him. “I’m keeping one, I’m giving one to my sister for Christmas, and I don’t want to hear one word about it.”

“Okay,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll just write about it in this little book.”

She made a face at him and brought the tablecloths over to Tess.

Ned was moving silently around the big space, glancing at the books and magazines Tess had set out for people to read. Was he just tired or did he not like the place? When she had finished wrapping the tablecloths, she went over to him. He was in front of a display of crystal necklaces. She couldn’t believe that he was looking at them.

He glanced at her. “Mom was serious about not wanting people to know what she spent. You know that, don’t you?”

“I hadn’t given it any thought. But it’s not other people’s business, is it?”

“That doesn’t stop anyone around here. And do you really think that people are going to sit down and play Scrabble?”

“Not necessarily, but it’s supposed to make you feel like you could. Whether or not it actually happens is beside the point. The important thing is the mood, the atmosphere, how people feel about themselves when they walk in.”

“I’m not sure I get it.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I must be sounding like Mr. Doom and Gloom. I was up until three drying hinges.” He tried to make up for it. “You really have done a great job. This looks like something from a magazine.”

“But you aren’t comfortable.” Tess was surprised at how little his disapproval bothered her. She’d rather have a place that some people loved and some
people hated than one that no one minded. Obviously the notion of relaxing in a public place would be new to many people. “The decor’s too precious.”

“ ‘La-di-da’ is the word we use around here, not precious. The tourists are going to love it, but what about the locals? I paused before coming in.” Then he laughed. “But don’t listen to me. I’m not getting enough sleep. I am pausing before everything.”

“What
did you say to her?” As soon as the big glass door to the Lanier Building swung shut, Carolyn Ravenal turned on Ned. “She’s been open five minutes, and you are in there criticizing. You were not brought up to behave like that, and you know it.”

Ned grimaced. He guessed he had been too critical. Tess was so … he didn’t know exactly what, but he did always seem to be looking for something wrong with her. “You do have to admit that those little blank books are a terrible idea.”

“He has a point there,” Dr. Matt said. “I behaved myself when I wrote, but once the high school kids get their hands on them and start writing about each other, blood will flow in the streets.”

“I loved the place,” Carolyn insisted. “I thought it was beautiful.”

“It is,” Ned agreed. “I guess that’s my problem. It seemed a little too fussed over. I felt like I was supposed to behave myself.”

“Of course you were supposed to behave yourself,” his mother told him. “I would expect that regardless of where you were.”

She was looking at him, expecting an answer. Ned
didn’t think he had one. He felt as if he were five years old.

Phil rescued him. “Did you see other problems, Ned? I may be too close to what she’s done in there.”

“What do I know about businesses?” Ned wanted this conversation over. There had been so much stuff in that barrel yesterday. The nails had to be pried apart one by one, washed, and dried. The wood items had to be rinsed and then reimmersed in water until he could prepare them to be freeze-dried. “I made a mistake. I was rude to Tess. I see that, and I’ll apologize.”

Phil wasn’t going to let him get away with that, and so Ned ended up telling him everything. “It doesn’t seem real. It’s like a movie set. The tourists will love it, but do you really want this to be just a tourist hangout? What’s going to make us ordinary-Joe townfolk comfortable there? Even Dad didn’t know what to order.”

“Good point.” Phil pulled out the little leather note holder in which he kept his innumerable lists. “She had talked about giving lacemaking classes. She probably ought to start right away. She should get the high school kids in—”

“After she gets rid of the blank books,” Dr. Matt interjected.

“—because once they come, it will be real enough for anyone.” Phil was making notes to himself. “If the people in the municipal building would …”

Ned moved toward his truck. Did anyone else ever get sick of Phil? All this endless problem solving? Why couldn’t he just sit around and whine sometimes? Everyone else did. Why couldn’t he?

Chapter 9

 

C
ould Grandfather Ravenal have ever imagined how hard this was going to be? Rather than trying to dig or scoop away the mud and sand that surrounded the paddle wheels and engines, Ned and his crew were using adjustable-pressure hoses to wash the muck away. These heavy fire hoses had a strong back-kick, and you had to lean forward to compensate for the pressure. By the end of the day your back was aching, your arms were stiff from the weight of the hose, and your hands were cramped from gripping the nozzle. Even with rubberized gloves and fisherman’s waders, you got soaked.

The guys in the crew were used to lifting and hauling, but at the end of the day even they were stripping off their gloves and clenching and unclenching their fists and walking with a hand pressed to the small of their backs. This was hard work.

And sometimes it was easy to forget that this was what he had always wanted to do, that this was his dream, the dream his grandfather had given him. But then he would touch something, a hinge that had never been used, a broken cup, and it would all be worth it.

Finally the deck was clear. A week after Tess opened her business, Ned forced a crowbar into the mud-sealed crack around the rear cargo hatch and leaned hard. The cargo hold was where the “human-interest” artifacts should be, and there should be a good number of them. The boat should have been heavily loaded, and the oak hull should have been constructed well enough to protect the cargo in the stern, whatever the damage to the bow.

But people weren’t going to come to a museum to see “should haves.” They weren’t going to come to town and buy ice-cream cones and herbal hand lotion because of a “should have.”

The wood squeaked and then groaned. Ned leaned hard against the crowbar, feeling the muscles along the back of his shoulders strain. Suddenly the hatch popped off, sending him backward into a cushion of cold mud. He struggled to his feet and looked down into the cargo hold.

It was a stew of black, foul-smelling mud. The tightly built hull of the boat had kept the sand and gravel from washing into the hold, so this mud was from the river silt filtering down through the pine decking. It would be denser, more difficult to deal with. Someone behind Ned reached around him with a hose, shooting a high-intensity stream of water onto the blackness, and the mud stirred sluggishly, reluctantly revealing the tops of barrels and wooden boxes—the
Western Settler’s
cargo.

The suction from the underground water table would be holding everything fast in the mud. Each container would have to be dug out.

They could never do it without better access than
the hatch. Ned and Dylan Pierce removed a small section of the pine deck. Dylan was the son of the owner of the air-conditioning/furnace business whose workers Ned had hired. Dylan was becoming as interested in the boat as Ned.

If they left the wood exposed to the air, it would shrivel and crack as it dried. Each board had to be labeled and carried away for storage in a water-filled, plastic-lined trench. Once they had a good-size opening, Ned lowered himself into the cargo hold, trying to find sure footing in the mud. Dylan followed. The two of them grabbed hold of a barrel and rocked it gently. It hardly moved. Someone still on the boat’s deck shot a blast of water from the high-pressure hose at the barrel. Mud splattered across Ned’s face.

The thick black goop lightened into a gray ooze. Ned and Dylan could twist and rock the barrel, but they couldn’t lift it.

“We’re going to have to unpack it here,” Ned said. So much for the plan to unpack all the artifacts at the schoolhouse.

The lid was nailed on. Dylan passed Ned a fifteen-inch pry bar, and he inserted the beveled edge close to one of the nails and eased the lid off.

A heavy, fibrous-looking thing was on top. Dylan helped Ned lift it out. It was a woolen quilt, heavy with mud.

Underneath the quilt were one family’s household possessions. There was a set of white ironstone dishes—six plates, six saucers, five cups. Then came two butcher knives and horn-handled cutlery, followed by a flour scoop and clothespins, a brass lamp and a coffee grinder, a tin bucket, a set of three flatirons.
Dylan adjusted the pressure on a hose and rinsed enough mud off the artifacts so that Ned could look at them. Almost everything showed signs of use. These were the things the family was taking to start their new life in the West.

The woman who had packed these dishes and folded this quilt—did she ever again have white teacups and matching cutlery or did she have to make do with the kind of battered tin that had been in the bedroll of the deck passenger? Did the family prosper? Was the wreck of the
Western Settler
a minor setback in their lives or the ruin of all their hopes? There was no way to know.

Once the family barrel was emptied, he and Dylan were able to dislodge it from the mud. The barrel next to it was full of shoes, brand-new leather shoes clearly intended for a store. No family would ever travel with so many shoes. Ned passed them up to Dylan, who was perched close enough to the deck that he could hand them up to Steve Denmark. Steve piled the shoes into red plastic laundry baskets, and Phil, who had come out when he heard that Ned was in the hold, climbed in and out of the pit, loading the filled baskets into the pickup. They had to be careful. The shoes had been stitched with a cotton thread that had dissolved. They weren’t in pairs; they had been constructed on a single last, not one for the right foot and one for the left.

The interior pump, designed to take away the wash water, was becoming clogged with mud, and Ned and Dylan were standing in ankle-deep muck. Their gloves were growing slippery.

Once the shoe barrel was empty, they eased it free
of the mud and turned it on its side so they could roll it up onto the deck. Someone turned on a hose to rinse off the barrel. As the water washed the curving wood clean, lettering appeared. An “A” and a “V” in sturdy blockface letters, obviously painted on the wood through a stencil.

Ned used his gloved hand to push away the mud.

RAVENAL BROS.
ST. PIERRE
NEBRASKA TERRITORY

“Get Phil,” he shouted and pulled himself out onto the deck, the mud making sucking noises as he dragged his feet free. “Where’s my brother?”

A moment later Phil came slipping and sliding sideward through the excavation mud down to the deck of the boat.

“This is the stuff for the Ravenal brothers’ store,” Ned called out, looking up at his brother. How great that Phil was here today. They might drive each other crazy sometimes, but they were the Ravenal brothers, just like Dr. Matt and their father, just like the two guys on the boat. “This is us.”

Over the next week, container after container came up marked with the Ravenal name. There was hardware, door hinges, doorknobs, cases of nails. There were tools, hammers, levels, axe heads, and chisels. There were even windowpanes so carefully packed in straw that they were still unbroken. The straw was dank and sour, clinging to Ned’s arms like something from the Jaycees’ Halloween Haunted House.

Little bottles held medicine that was still liquid. Blue-tinted glass jars held tightly packed pickles. The pickles were still green, and Dr. Matt later said that they would probably be okay, but no one was adventurous enough to try. There was a barrel full of red wool riverman’s shirts and black wool men’s overcoats, the fabric intact, the threads dissolved.

Dylan had rigged up a winch and pulleys so that the crew didn’t have to unload the barrels while standing in the mud. Volunteers from town came out to the schoolhouse and rinsed, wiped, dried, counted, and folded the contents of the barrels and boxes.

Ned was doing very little permanent preservation of the artifacts so far. His current goal was simply to try to keep them stable until after the dig was completed. Early in the summer he had leased space in an old limestone cave on the south side of town. There had been some small-scale mining inside the cave, leaving a level-floored cavern that was cool and dark. Phil drove to every farm-supply store in three counties, buying stock tanks, the thousand-gallon galvanized containers used for watering horses and cows. Ned filled the tanks with water and immersed all the wood artifacts. Anything made of wood had to be kept wet until it could be soaked in a chemical and then freeze-dried.

The leather and rubber items would have to be temporarily frozen in blocks of ice until they could be treated. Whatever textiles survived would have to be rinsed, drained, individually wrapped, and then frozen. Wyatt and Gabe at The Cypress Princess had changed their menu and cleared out their big walk-in freezer so that the leather and textiles could be stored there.

Metals would have to be cleaned and coated with archival lacquer. Any preserved food items, such as pickles or brandied fruits, would have to be resealed with fresh wax. Dishes and glasses could be washed and put on display immediately. Night after night, Ned was up until midnight dealing with the artifacts, and then he was back at the site by five-thirty the next morning.

When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers
—who said that? Aesop? Shakespeare? Oscar Wilde? Ned was far too tired to know. He had never worked so hard in his life.

Time blurred. He never knew what day it was. He would stumble home at night, shower, and fall into bed. When he would dream, it would be about shoes, mountains of shoes, and nails, kegs of mud-encrusted nails.

For two days following the disaster, the smokestacks of the boat remained visible, and people took wagons out hoping to locate any salvage among the riverbank debris, but little was found.

The two Mr. Ravenals set a marvelous example for all. Nearly a third of the boat’s cargo had been theirs; their losses were far greater than anyone’s, but their hearts were brave and their optimism unflagging.

Mrs. Louis Lanier (Eveline Roget),
The Wreck of the Western Settler,
privately printed, 1879

 

Living alone was all that Tess had dreamed it would be. Everything in the house was always exactly where she left it. She didn’t come home from work to find that the kitchen counters were littered with her roommates’ Diet Coke cans or her grandparents’ prescription bottles. No one borrowed her postage stamps or put uncovered leftovers in the refrigerator. She didn’t have to listen to anyone else’s phone calls. No one turned on the TV too loud.

She wasn’t the least bit lonely. It was fun to be Tess-of-the-Lanier-Building. People liked her. She was pretty enough to be welcoming, not so glossy as to be intimidating, wearing unusual clothes that other women could talk to her about because the garments’ interest came from her own work, not from how much money she had spent.

She had done only an adequate job at Willow Place. She saw that now. She hadn’t had the experience to distinguish between clinical depression and understandable, transient sadness. But serving coffee—she was very good at serving coffee. Her therapist training helped. She knew how to be warm and engaged but without issues of her own, how to let the moment be about the other person. And this manner didn’t feel false, or as if she were denying herself. She was interested in other people; she wanted to hear them talk about themselves.

Sierra, on the other hand, was having difficulties. Her business seemed to be doing well, but Tess overheard people who came into the Lanier Building carrying
green Celandine Gardens shopping bags. They rolled their eyes and mockingly repeated the things Sierra had said. Tess could imagine what was happening. Sierra, too, wanted to be Miss Kitty. She craved acknowledgment; she needed other people to tell her she was unique and special. That was too much of a burden to put on people who just wanted to buy facial scrub.

Both Sierra and Tess were keeping their businesses open until ten on Friday and Saturday nights. Although California-born Tess thought that the evenings were prohibitively cold, the restaurant patrons, encouraged by Wyatt and Gabe, put on their puffy down coats and strolled along Main Street. Those women were interested in Tess’s larger tablecloths and the more intricate laces, items that only a handful of Fleur-de-lis residents could consider buying.

During the day on Saturday and on Sunday afternoon, a more casually dressed crowd came in, buying the lower-priced items—the hats, the earrings, and the bracelets—and incredible amounts of hot chocolate for their children, which, Tess quickly discovered, the children didn’t like. They wanted a sweeter, milkier drink, something more like the packaged product they were used to. So she lowered the price and bought a cheap mix. It took the counter help far less time to prepare, and the little customers were happier.

During the week, mornings were her busiest time. It had taken the high school students two days to discover the Lanier Building Coffee Company, and between 6:30 A.M. and the opening bell at 7:25, the Lanier Building was full of sleepy adolescents with
heavy backpacks, ordering extra large cappuccinos with triple shots and double flavoring.

A few of them were Nina Lane fans. “Biologically, I am her daughter,” Tess would say, always keeping her voice pleasant. “But I might as well have been adopted. I know nothing about her.”

After the high school kids left, Phil Ravenal was invariably her next customer. Sometimes he would lean against the counter and talk to her, but often he would go to a table and work, reading a document and making quick notes in the margin. He would get out his cell phone and listen to his voice mail. He would check his daily list. He kept the list on three-by-five cards that fit into a little leather folder, and he rarely left one place for another without checking that list.

In part because they knew they might find Phil there, the owners of the new businesses on Main Street would stop by before going to their own shops. Around nine-thirty, various groups of young mothers might come in after dropping their kids off at the Methodist church preschool. None of these people ordered as extravagantly as the high school kids did, but with the exception of some of the Saturday night restaurant patrons, no one ordered the way the high school kids did.