More lungers?” Virgil asks.
“Don’t be vulgar, Virgil.” Ruby says.
“But you said …”
“Doesn’t mean you can. But yes, you’re right, I won’t use that term again.”
Ruby folds another set of white sheets, crisp from drying in the summer sun. “All I know is that this disease isn’t something that quack Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound claims it can cure. I hear doctors try everything, purging, vomiting, bleeding.” She needs to see Doc Swendsen soon. She’s starting to cough up blood. Not every day, but often enough.
Ruby adds the folded sheets to a growing pile. “Help me here, Virge.” She tosses a stack of towels toward him.
Virgil folds towels with precision. “I didn’t mean to say it isn’t serious, Ma.”
“These folks don’t have much to look forward to, Virge. The Miracle is a respite, a balm, sunshine and hearty meals and exercise, if they’re able. Make them think they’re getting better.” Will I get better? Ever?
“Trouble is, you don’t know when your time’s up,” Virgil says. “I can’t stop thinking about San Francisco.”
Perce, where are you, Perce?
“Which is why we need to make hay while the sun shines, as the old saying goes, Virge. And, while we’re at it, build a couple of tent houses out back and charge the hell for them.”
BY OCTOBER, RUBY FIGURES the hotel will turn a handsome profit. She pays careful attention to her ledgers and does the figures. Especially if she adds those tent houses.
Every Monday, another group of guests is off. There’s more stained sheets than ever before, but the money’s good. Tuberculosis is lucrative. People come out by train now to take in the dry desert air. Some stay for two weeks, or three. Ruby’s had guests from points north and east who looked five minutes from death. After a stay in the desert air, they leave a sight hardier, swearing they’ll be back for a longer visit next year. The Miracle is living up to its name.
Not to be outdone by The Mountain View in Oracle, The Shangri-La in Globe, or The Catalina in Tucson, The Miracle is a bargain by comparison. That’s the secret, lure guests in with lower prices and then add to the tab. Booze is now charged by the glass, with receipts adding up nightly. Virgil tends bar at night, regaling guests with stories of bygone lodgers, especially Teddy Roosevelt.
“And this once, we had a couple of traveling nuns …” Virgil says.
Ears perk up.
“Nuns?” one of the lodgers asks.
“… and I got taken along with the rest of Jericho!” Ruby laughs along with her guests as Virgil recounts the story. “You should have seen them,” Ruby adds. “Hustling patrons at all the saloons. ‘For the orphanage,’ they said. Took off with nearly two grand.”
Thanks to Dog Webber, Tucsonans are beating down the doors: territorial legislators, university professors, wealthy businessmen. It’s ten degrees cooler here in Jericho in the summers, and Ruby lowers her rates for Arizonans. Word is out in high circles that Ruby’s got a plum address. And the best pie.
Tucson councilman John Winston is on the register tonight (he signed his full name with his signature flourish, the “J” and “W” twice the size of the other letters). Accompanying him is a woman. Ruby calls her Mrs. Winston. Last month the councilman brought a different companion. Ruby called her Mrs. Winston, too. One of them could be. Or the next one. You never know, she tells herself. When you’ve been fooled by a pair of counterfeit nuns, of all things, you learn things aren’t always what they seem.
Tucson botanist Dr. William Austin Cannon and his painter wife are also here, registered for a full week. Cannon takes to the desert at dawn with a knapsack and isn’t back until supper. He ranges the foothills of Mount Lemmon, rising to more than nine thousand feet in the distance. Lemmon’s wide tabletop is unremarkable at first glance, like the desert. Cannon’s wife sets her easel up in the early afternoon under an umbrella and takes her time with brushes and oils as she paints landscapes. Ruby offers tea and sweets. The woman, stout and severe, declines as she paints.
After supper, Ruby serves another round of coffee. “Tell me, Dr. Cannon, what exactly it is you do there at your scientific research station?”
“In a nutshell?” Cannon wipes his trim moustache with a napkin. “We study deserts and catalogue their species. The Carnegie Foundation funds my research, here and in North Africa and in Australia.” He goes on, using words Ruby has never heard of: “transpiration” and “morphology.” To Ruby, cacti are spiky and a nuisance, except in spring, when they’re briefly splendid.
“Good luck with that!” Winston says. “I cannot imagine why anyone would bother cataloguing desert plants.”
“You underestimate the desert, sir,” Cannon says. “This is absolutely the finest place to work that could be possibly found. So many species, as you move up the mountain.”
“Lemmon?” Ruby asks.
Cannon nods. “Did you know, sir”—he looks directly at Winston now—“that from desert floor to mountain top there may be more species of plants here in this little slice of the desert than in all the southwest?”
That shuts Winston up.
“And you, Mrs. Cannon. You sell your paintings, I presume?” Ruby asks. “I might be in the market.”
“A woman painter?” Winston shakes his head. “Next you’ll be wanting to run for the territorial legislature.”
“And a damn sight better we’ll all be when that happens,” Mrs. Cannon replies.
That shuts Winston up again.
It’s guests like this who swell Ruby’s coffers. If she’s going to run the most lucrative resort in all the territory, she has to put up with the Winstons of the world.
“WILLA!” RUBY AND MARGARET turn when Willa walks by, covering her blackened eye. Ruby and Margaret have been standing in front of the post office long past time that Ruby should be back to fix supper for guests. “What the devil happened?” Ruby asks.
At that moment, Mae Burton arrives at the post office, her hands full of envelopes. The women gather around Willa, whose eye freshly oozes.
“It’s nothing,” Willa says.
“Hogwash,” Ruby says. “You can’t fool anyone in this town. Not us, anyway.”
“How long are you going to put up with Judd’s nonsense?” Mae asks. “Come stay with me, Willa. I’ve got the lodgings and I can use help at the store.”
“I don’t know if I can …”
“Of course you can,” Ruby says. “Or stay with me. God knows I could use help, too.”
“Or me,” Margaret says. “You could keep house, cook, clean.”
“Seems we’ve got a bidding war going on here,” Ruby says.
“Why would you do this for me?” Willa asks.
“Because we’ve been in your shoes, one way or the other, all of us,” Ruby says. “Take Margaret here, heart broken to pieces years ago.” She turns to Margaret. “Hope I’m not spilling secrets out of school.” She points to Mae. “And Mae, here, husband left her high and dry.” Ruby takes Willa’s arm. “And me, well, I’ve had both those things happen to me, and worse. We women have to stick together in this town. Don’t you agree, Mae?”
Mae nods.
With that exchange, Ruby decides not to finger Mae Burton for the fire so Mae’s accusatory story about Ruby taking up with Perce won’t see the pages of the Jericho Courier-Journal. A truce they’ve sealed, without words.
“Come with me right now, Willa, as soon as I drop these letters off,” Mae says. “You won’t go back to Judd tonight.”
“My offer still holds,” Ruby says.
“Mine, too,” Margaret adds.
Before bed, Ruby takes the mandolin from its place on her bureau and strums it. If you’re going to play the mandolin, you’ve got to pick it up. Start from somewhere. Note by note. That’s how she learned to talk, word by word, like her pop used to say, feeding her lumps of sugar. An hour later, Ruby’s fingers are plumb sore, but she’s picked out a simple tune, nothing like Slovo, but no one is there to listen, so there are no snickers about her expertise, or lack of it.
Ruby puts the mandolin away, dreaming of Perce. Damn, do I miss you.
Ruby will visit San Francisco once the city is up and running again, which it will be, like Jerome and Bisbee and Jericho, and every town that’s met ruin and rises from the ashes, only better. Divina has left her a hefty inheritance and she owes Divina far more than she ever could repay. That ocean is waiting.
And maybe Perce.