Wednesday dawned as perfect a day as one would ever want. Not too hot, not too cold—soaked in sunshine. Jemmy scarcely noticed.
She pretended to sleep until Aunt Tilly left. Jemmy heard her pad off to perform her morning ablutions down the hall. Jemmy yanked on her clothes and was still buttoning her shoes when she heard the trolley bell. She had very nearly pulled herself together without help, despite the fact that she had quite a ferocious tussle to fasten her corset hooks.
Thank heavens in a handbag the trolley line ends at the park entrance. The driver had to unhitch the horse from the west end of the car and re-hitch it to the east end of the car. She needed every one of those precious minutes to grab her hat and gloves and race out to meet the bright yellow streetcar.
Rewritten story in hand, she boarded the Third Street trolley and asked which evening newspaper office might be nearest. The conductor let her off at Lamine Street and pointed in the direction of the Evening Sentinel.
After a brisk two-block walk, she opened the door. A bell announced her presence to the only person in the front room of the establishment. A man in felt sleeve protectors, which had once been green but were now nearly black with printers’ ink, rose from his desk.
He walked to the counter hitching up his sleeve protectors. “We have a special offer this month for new subscribers.” Buzzing, whangs and clanks announced the presence of a printing press in the room beyond.
He pointed to a banner over the door to a back room. The banner read, “All the news you want to know.”
“May I speak to the news editor, please?”
His smile faded in a snivel of disappointment. “I have the misfortune to merit said title. How may I help you?”
She handed him her sheaf of papers. “I have a most stimulating story to sell. The foiled robbery on yesterday afternoon’s train from St. Louis.”
“Too late. I already have the story.”
“Is your story an eyewitness account written by a participant who happens to be a professional journalist?”
“Professional? Yes. I wrote it myself.”
“Might I inquire as to your source of information?”
“I interviewed the conductor.”
“Then you had no eyewitness account.”
“The conductor was on the train, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but the conductor didn’t see what happened. He wasn’t present in the car.”
“But this professional journalist was there at the time?”
Jemmy nodded.
“What’s his name—this professional journalist who saw the attempted robbery?”
“Foiled robbery.” Jemmy braced herself. Telling people her pen name made Jemmy tremble. Her nom de plume had become a pretend brick she carried in an imaginary gunny sack weighting down her neck. She took a deep breath and stood up as tall as she was able. “The byline name is ‘Ann O’Nimity.’ ”
The editor snorted. “So who put you up to this little joke? Dave over at the Bazoo—am I right?”
A second imaginary brick added its choking weight to the first. “This is no joke. If you read good newspapers—any papers other than your own rag—any decent papers—like the St. Louis Illuminator, you would certainly remember the byline, ‘Ann O’Nimity.’ I know for a fact because it’s mine. You will see ‘Ann O’Nimity’ below the headline of some of the most stirring news stories you’ve ever read.”
He laughed out loud. “Not a chance. Those stories are written by a fellow who’s afraid to get beat up, so he hides behind a woman’s name—an obviously made-up woman’s name.”
Jemmy snatched back her story and flounced out the door—at least as fast as anyone could flounce with a gunny sack of three imaginary bricks around her neck.
Still chuckling, the Sentinel editor called after her. “You tell old Dave he can’t fool me. Tell him I said Ann O’Nimity is a man. I know him personally. I call him ‘Nimwit’ for short.”
Jemmy’s dander rose higher every time she remembered Hamm’s deceit. Her boss had tricked her into signing herself as “Ann O’Nimity.” She raged inside over the way she had acquired that farcical moniker. Her original plan was to follow in her idol Nelly Bly’s footsteps—to use a name from a popular song, like “Annie Rooney” or “Rosie O’Grady.” Hamm said she shouldn’t be a copycat.
Besides, those names didn’t do what a pen name was supposed to do—intrigue the reader. But “Ann O’Nimity”—now that had mystery to it.
Jemmy recalled Hamm embraced this particular pseudonym with unusual alacrity. In fact, he was the one who thought up “Ann O’Nimity” in the first place. That should have set her wise. How foolish she’d been not to put two and two together and come up with the startling word “anonymity.”
When she got back to the city, she would have it out with Hamm and get that horrid pen name changed.
Once she managed to choke down her anger at Hamm for putting one over on her, she chafed at being dismissed like a trinket by the Sentinel editor. Jemmy regretted her fit of temper. If he had only read the story, he would have liked it.
But no—I had to go and grab it out of his hands before he had time to read a single word. She vowed to be a better saleslady at her next stop and her last hope, the offices of the Sedalia Bazoo.
In a coffee shop she fortified herself with toast, cocoa, and directions to the newspaper. Over wild plum preserves, she planned the exact words to use. She resolved to stay calm regardless of all provocation—and never, ever, to let her temper get the better of her. Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of mice and men offer equal opportunity for “ganging agley” to lady mice and women.
At the Bazoo another newsman in ink-smudged sleeve protectors stood to serve her. Jemmy had gained wisdom through her earlier trial. This time she asked for the main man himself. “May I speak to the managing editor, please?”
“Our managing editor is too busy to see anyone,” the clerk replied. “May I help you?”
She handed him her story. “Surely your editor would not mind being interrupted for a story which would sell papers—a piece both exciting and timely. The foiled robbery on yesterday afternoon’s train from St. Louis. A professional journalist saw everything and indeed participated in thwarting the robbers’ intentions.”
The clerk nodded. “For a humdinger of a story, I’ll risk interrupting him. If he recognizes the newsman’s name, he might be willing to read the story. Who wrote it?”
Jemmy braced herself for the reaction she had come to dread. “Ann O’Nimity.”
The man chortled and slapped his knee. “Ann O’Nimity. That’s a slick one. Dave at the Sentinel—am I right? You go back and tell that other good old Dave this good old Dave has no time for his practical jokes.” The man shook his head and chuckled.
A fourth brick plopped into her gunny-sack necklace. The fact that it was imaginary did nothing to reduce its weight, or its power to strangle Jemmy.
Her luck had gone south. A second wiseacre named Dave had popped up to bedevil her. “I assure you, Dave did not send me and this is no joke. I report the news for the St. Louis Illuminator. The byline ‘Ann O’Nimity’ follows the headline of some of the most compelling news stories coming out of St. Louis today—the Ripper story—the madhouse series.”
He laughed out loud. “You’re good. I’ll give Dave credit. Where did he get you? Are you an actress?”
“You have no call to insult me by calling me an actress.”
The clerk ignored Jemmy’s wounded feelings. “I bet you’re in the new melodrama over at the Liberty The-ate-r. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Jemmy reined in her temper. “Please, please, if you’ll read the story, you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
“Fine, fine. I’m sure Dave has cooked up something clever. I’ll read it right after supper tonight. Then I’ll think of some suitable answer for good old Sentinel Dave. But right now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Jemmy’s temper turned to anguished plea. “But tonight will be too late. You have to run the story in today’s paper while it’s still news.”
He backed up as he said, “I’d love to spend all morning gabbing with a lovely young lady like you, but you’ll have to excuse me. I have a pile of work on my desk.”
Jemmy all but wailed, “Please, I beg you. Just read it.”
“You’re an excellent actress. You’ve convinced me to see the play this weekend.”
The dam on Jemmy’s temper burst. “Read today’s Illuminator. You’ll see that story—on the front page—my story. Only the version you have in your hand is better because I had time to rewrite.”
“You can tell Dave for me he isn’t paying you enough. If it weren’t so far-fetched—a woman journalist—I’d believe every word you said. You sound powerful sincere.”
Jemmy’s vow to herself not to lose her temper washed out in a flood of clipped words. “Don’t you dare print my story without paying for it. I’ll sue your socks and spectacles off.”
Fighting back tears of frustration, she flounced out the door. “How did I get to be so unlucky? Two newspaperman named Dave in the same town who make a hobby of playing jokes on each other.”
One good thing did happen. Her anger vanquished her pen name dread and made those imaginary bricks disappear. As she calmed, she mulled over the real cause of the problem. What do I have to do to get men to take me seriously? Those two newspaper Daves are typical—too pigheaded even to read my story. First thing I do when I am back in St. Louis is give Suetonius Hamm an earful. I will shoot him dead if he doesn’t agree to change that hideous name!
On the Third Street trolley, Jemmy tried to put the morning behind her. She was a guest in the Koock home. She had already behaved in a most unbecoming way by sneaking out of the house without a word to anyone. Well, she had left a note under Dorothea’s door saying she would not be present at breakfast. She hoped Dorothea would understand.
Back at the house, Jemmy half expected Aunt Tilly to send her to her room without lunch, but Aunt Tilly was far too preoccupied with the little girls to chastise Jemmy for her bad manners. In fact, Auntie didn’t make an appearance. She took her noon meal with Fanny and Sissy in the nursery.
When she saw the hurt in Dorothea’s eyes, Jemmy tried to apologize. “I beg you to forgive my sneaking out this morning. It was frightfully rude. The only excuse I have is my desperation to sell my story to the local papers. I am a horrid guest who doesn’t deserve a tenth of your generosity.”
Dorothea patted Jemmy’s shoulder and offered a feeble smile. “I understand wanting something so badly nothing else can claim even a small piece of your mind.”
Dorothea’s eyes said she meant what she said. Jemmy felt so relieved she gave her hostess an awkward hug. “Thank you for giving me much more understanding than I deserve or can ever repay.”
Dorothea changed the subject. “I have no reason for complaint this morning. The house has been blissfully quiet. Only twice did the girls scream and throw things—and not even one item smashed to smithereens.”
Before lunch, Jemmy asked after Hal’s whereabouts. The maid said he had borrowed Mr. Lilburn’s bicycle and set off with his camera.
Only three sat at table for luncheon—Jemmy, Dorothea, and moony-eyed Burnie. He was even more Macassar-oiled and bay-rummed than the day before. He and Jean Max had spent the whole morning cleaning and oiling guns and loading shotgun shells with birdshot. He announced his blueprint for the afternoon.
The boy could barely keep his enthusiasm under control as he invited the ladies. “I have made plans which I very much hope will bring you pleasure, Miss McBustle.” As an afterthought, he added, “And of course, for you too, Mrs. Koock—Mother—Mother Koock. You must accompany us, naturally.”
The possibility that Dorothea might refuse to go along flashed across the boy’s face in alarm. Dorothea had to come. Without her, all three knew Jemmy would not be able to be seen in public with a young male acquaintance alone—not even in the daytime.
For her part, Dorothea beamed over the boy’s suddenly civilized behavior. Since Aunt Tilly had things more than under control in the nursery, the lady of the house said, “I would relish an outing to the country on this superb day.”
Jemmy would do whatever her hostess suggested as a matter of course. In this case, she was genuinely happy to agree for reasons of her own. She wanted to learn how to defend herself.
She aimed to land a dangerous assignment when she returned to St. Louis. Hamm had given her fair warning. The power behind everything in the city, “the Combine,” forced its will on St. Louis with every trick in the book and every weapon in the arsenal.
The Combine used lethal force like a scalpel to lance boils that now and then cropped up in the guise of civic betterment. Fewer than fifty men decided the fate for the half-million souls who lived in the fourth-largest city in the United States. Hamm said the Combine wouldn’t hesitate to slay her if she crossed them—even though she was female, and therefore not considered much of a threat.
Firearms were great equalizers—the best hope for people too small for fisticuffs and too squeamish for knife-fighting. However, St. Louis officials frowned against shooting inside city limits. How could Jemmy learn to shoot? Li’l Lil dropped the perfect opportunity right in the lap of her gray linen skirt.
Jean Max had the pony cart waiting with guns in gun cases under the front seat. A bulging burlap bag rolled and rattled in the middle of the cart. The clinks told Jemmy the bag held empty bottles and cans. Pélagie tucked a covered basket under Jemmy’s feet and waved as the trio set off at a sprightly trot.
Just outside of town, they stopped to admire a hoarding, a tall billboard fence with a mammoth poster in garish colors advertising Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World.
Jemmy was quite touched when Burnie handed her a nosegay made of a pale pink roses surrounded by dusty miller and tied with a pink ribbon. She was even more touched because he gave one to Dorothea as well. She soon learned the flower gift was more practical than romantic.
On the Georgetown Road, Dorothea motioned for Jemmy to plunge her nose into the roses. “I think the city fathers put the stench of the sanitary system along this road expressly to annoy the folks out Georgetown way north of town. You know General Smith snatched the county seat from Georgetown when he built the railroad several miles to the south. That little trick stirred up considerable resentment on both sides. Of course that was before the Civil War, but folks around here have long memories.”
Burnie rushed to change the subject, “Father owns a farm a few miles out—far beyond the smell. We provide the land and the seed. Our sharecroppers provide the machinery and labor. They grow corn, wheat, hay, and the like. They sell milk and cream in town, butter and eggs, too. And they make cheese.”
Dorothea added, “The cream for last night’s dessert came from Mr. Koock’s farm.”
At the farmstead, Burnie rounded up the lady of the house to welcome Jemmy and Dorothea. The farmer’s wife said something in German that Jemmy couldn’t quite follow. Jemmy was no linguist; but she had learned Guten Tag from Gerta, the boardinghouse cook back home.
Hearing “good day” in her native language put a smile on the hausfrau’s lips. The woman looked enough like Gerta to be her sister—right down to florid complexion and dark braids wrapped around her head.
The farmer’s wife said “Ja, ja,” to Burnie’s attempts to explain what he wanted to do. She gave him half a peck of grain to put in the empty burlap bag. She even lent him a retriever, a spotted mutt with a tail permanently a-point. But she did waggle her finger at Burnie while she said something about Milchkine.
Burnie turned the pony cart back to the main road and down a hill to the bottom land at Muddy Creek. He watered the pony, then tied him to a wild plum tree.
He took the bag of cracked corn well out into the corn stubble and split it open. Back at the cart, he removed guns from their cases and began giving Jemmy lessons.
She concluded that putting his arms around her was his primary reason for engineering this little trip. He took much too much time turning her left and right to line up the sights.
Jemmy considered training those gun sights on him, but she held steady and shut her nose to the bay rum. She needed to learn to shoot.
Burnie buckled a piece of thick tanned leather over her right shoulder. “So the recoil of the shotgun won’t break your shoulder.”
Jemmy knew guns were dangerous on the barrel end, but it had never occurred to her they might be dangerous to the shooter as well. Burnie must have seen her alarm, and misunderstood it. “Don’t worry. The gun won’t blow up. Jean Max and I packed the shells this morning. And every gun is whistle-clean. I promise.”
Burnie edged behind Jemmy to brace her right arm with his. He stood so close his hot breath on her neck sent shivers down her back. “Line up the piece of metal sticking up from the far end of the barrel so it sits exactly in the V right up here.”
As she gazed down the barrel, Jemmy noticed the crows, dozens of them, flying down to peck at the corn. Burnie said, “Aim low. The gun will kick up. When the gun kicks up, you’ll shoot high. Aim about two feet in front of the crows.”
“I thought we were shooting bottles.” Jemmy had never personally killed anything—well, nothing bigger than a wasp. She knew people eat animals, which necessitates mass murder of certain creatures. Nearly every week she helped Gerta pluck chickens after Gerta had wrung their necks. The boardinghouse cook grabbed them by the head and twirled them until the heavy bodies parted from the necks. The headless poultry flopped around the backyard until the creatures were truly dead.
Once the corpses stopped trying to fly, Jemmy and her sisters held the birds by their feet and dunked them in scalding water to loosen the feathers. The girls learned to shut their nostrils to the vile smell, but that odor was fresh-baked cookies compared to the stench produced by the next step.
Over open gas flames at the stove, Gerta singed off pinfeathers that were too short to pick by hand. The kitchen smelled like a mixture of hot tar and burning hair. They did their best to rid the kitchen of the fumes. No matter how cold the weather, Gerta stationed one of the girls at the back door to flap the stench away with an apron. Sometimes Mother dumped used coffee grounds on a shovel and lighted them. Burnt coffee smelled heavenly compared to singeing feathers.
Jemmy had never before supposed anyone would kill an animal without intending to eat it. On the scale of un-eatableness, crows were in the same category as porcupines.
Burnie answered Jemmy’s startled look: “We will shoot bottles—later on, with rifles. For now we’re going to do local farmers a favor. Kill some crows for them.”
Dorothea nodded in agreement as she stood ready to shoot. “This time of year crows steal bushels of corn. A farmer needs his crops so he can pay his mortgage. We’re performing a service.”
Jemmy straightened her back. She might have to kill something sometime. She might as well begin by doing a good deed.
Burnie instructed, “Aim low, take a breath, and hold it. Then squeeze the trigger.”
Jemmy followed every order to the letter. The shotgun blast exploded. The gun butt slammed into her leather protector. Jemmy lurched against Burnie, and both of them tumbled backward onto the old army blanket he had most conveniently spread behind them—to catch spent shells as he said. Later, Jemmy took care to notice where shell casings ended up. They landed to the side and in front of the shooters—not behind them.
Dorothea looked annoyed at Burnie’s shenanigans, but said nothing. Jemmy tried to regain her feet without putting her hands on the boy.
Burnie apologized profusely as he scrambled to help her off him and on her feet. He batted at her skirt to dust it off. “Miss McBustle, I’m terribly sorry. I clean forgot to show you the proper stance—leaning forward with your right foot advanced. Here, let me show you now.”
Dorothea said, “Perhaps I should take over Miss McBustle’s lessons.”
Jemmy said through clenched teeth, “Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Koock. I think I know what I did wrong.”
Jemmy lifted the shotgun, twisted her shoulders to free them from Burnie, aimed, and fired. The recoil mule-kicked her shoulder, but she held her stance rock solid.
Burnie praised her. “Excellent job, Miss McBustle.”
Dorothea reproached her, “Next time you might wait until the crows have returned. You very nearly killed the dog.”
The mutt raced back to the trio with a crow in its mouth. He dropped the flapping bird at her feet and awaited approval. Burnie scratched behind the dog’s ears before he grabbed the bird by its feet. He ended the crow’s misery by stepping on its head and pulling off its body.
Jemmy was beginning to feel queasy, but she kept on firing deafening blast after deafening blast. The three continued shooting until they had killed four or five dozen crows and exhausted their supply of shotgun shells. Sulfur fumes burned Jemmy’s nose and stung her eyes until they watered.
After a snack of limeade and oatmeal cookies, Burnie set up bottles on a log. The shooting party took turns with rifles. First Jemmy, then Burnie, then Dorothea, who was clearly the best shot of the three. Whatever the other two missed, she unfailingly destroyed.
After a time, Jemmy became skillful enough or lucky enough to hit her target a time or two. She decided rifles were more to her liking than shotguns—and they sure didn’t hurt the shoulder as much.
When all the bottles had been broken, Dorothea asked Burnie to toss up tin cans. When she missed just one out of twenty, the corners of her mouth turned down in disappointment; but Jemmy was impressed. “Where did you learn to shoot so well?”
Dorothea smiled a wistful smile. “Mr. Koock taught me—on the Midway Plaisance at the World’s Fair.”
On the trip back to Sedalia, the three ignored popular songs of the day in favor of old-fashioned tunes like “Oh Susanna” and “Polly Wolly Doodle.” Jemmy rated her afternoon as somewhat better than her morning. She felt confident the evening would be better still. But in a new town and in unfamiliar surroundings, it’s best not to be overconfident.