Chapter 10

In Which I Explain the Pickled Onion

November 2, 1859

Dear Jemma,

It might sound harsh to describe my kin as such, but Pickled Onion best sums up her character. She is strong and bracing, and she occasionally brings tears to my eyes. Like just the other day, when we came across another tenant’s castoffs. She held open her bag and had me scoop them up like we were at a fashion emporium! I protested, but she just saw that trash as treasure.

Sometimes I believe she needs spectacles.

“I can use the pheasant feathers off that hat to dress up an old bonnet of mine,” she told me. Then she said with such a tone, “Frugality is a virtue. It says so in the Bible.”

Well, you know we owned one book back at our house in Chemung County—the Holy Bible written by Mr. King James himself. You read it as much as I did. So I told the Pickled Onion it says no such thing about the Good Lord smiling on the cheap.

Well that got her back up. “I am not cheap,” she declared. “I am frugal. There is a difference.” I told her she was talking like some churchgoing know-it-all when she ain’t one. Well, what do you think she said back to me?

“Aren’t. Mind your grammar.”

Then she went on telling me I couldn’t convince her that my whiskey-loving, poker-playing, so-and-so of a father took me to Sunday school each week. That cut me to the bone. So I warned her that she ought not to bring up my daddy anymore. I think she understood.

When we disagree like that, I worry that she’ll pack my bag and drop me off at the nearest orphan asylum. She don’t trust me, and I don’t trust her, so I guess in that sense we are even. One good thing about the Pickled Onion is her employment, which I cannot tell you about.

I will share this, though I know better about such things. I believe she has a special power! It is very possible the Pickled Onion is able to 18 5 1 4 / 20 8 5 / 19 20 1 18 19!

I hope you can figure that out. In the meantime, I must learn more about the night her husband died. I was so young, I don’t recall the particulars of it. And I fear that I remind the Pickled Onion of his passing. When she looks at my face, she sees my daddy’s. And all she thinks about is the part he played in that tragedy. She seems to believe I share my daddy’s same vices—that I might take up with the gambling, whiskey, and general rapscallionism.

I am sorry the Maple Tree’s job as a conductor takes him so far away. I know he must miss you and the others something awful. When did he start working for the railroads? Here’s something I can tell to you straight. I read a story that they’re testing a new railroad car fit for sleeping in, called a Pullman. They’re making them here in Chicago. Perhaps the Maple Tree will get to ride in one of those!

Could you give me a cipher and let me know how to reach him?

Very truly your friend,

Cornie (but I go by Nell now)