Seattle
1924
They stayed near the Pike Place Market, in lodgings that Papa insisted were “worker housing” but that his fisherman friends identified as flophouses. For Papa it was a good place because he could keep in touch with his friends in the movement, many of whom worked on the waterfront. For Dawn it was good because there was no place on Earth better suited than the Pike Place Market for running away from truant officers. She came to know its passages and bolt-holes well while avoiding the statutory requirement that a girl her age should be in school. Once she found herself hiding under a counter where some workers were butchering a cow-sized halibut. Two women were talking to each other in Russian. This led to a conversation, which led to her locket being noticed. Before she knew it she had escaped from school only to find herself in church: a neat little Russian Orthodox church, complete with onion domes, tucked up against the base of a steep hill. The offering plate was passed. A man fumbled for change and dropped a penny on the floor. After the service, Dawn requisitioned this surplus property in the name of the Red International and took it to the post office, where she bought a postcard and borrowed a pencil. She addressed it to her mother in Montana and covered it with a rambling childish update.
Some weeks later, Papa and Dawn boarded the train for Chicago. This took them north along the edge of the sea to Everett, where Papa pointed out the site where the five revolutionary martyrs—a Frenchman, a Swede, an Irishman, a German, and a Jew—had been gunned down by the police and their goons. There the train cut inland, climbing up over a great range of snowy mountains into the night. Sunrise greeted them on the steppe, which in time gave way to more mountains.
The passengers were mostly bourgeois. Dawn found that fascinating, like visiting a zoo, but Papa kept sighing and reminiscing about the old days riding freight trains around the west, organizing the workers. Whenever they passed a freight train on a siding he would gaze into the deeply shaded apertures on the box cars, speculating as to how many soldiers of labor might be concealed therein, cooking beans over Sterno and singing songs about Joe Hill. But Comrade Zinoviev had not sent him all this way and entrusted him with so much money so that he could take his daughter on a hobo adventure.
A few passengers, at least, had more of a rough, country way about them. One of these, a big, sunburned fellow wearing jeans and smelling of horse, seemed restless upon boarding and walked the whole length of the train two or three times before finally settling into a place at the end of their car. In his hands was a giant hat and over his shoulder was a half-ruined saddlebag. He made a stab at reading a discarded paper, then tossed it down and took to gazing out the window and twiddling the ends of his huge brown mustache. They were descending the eastern slope of the Rockies and there was plenty to look at.
Papa got up and went to the lavatory at the end of the car. The man with the mustache got up, ambled back, tried the lavatory door and, finding it locked, took up a vigil. When Papa emerged, the two of them struck up a conversation, which moved to the space between the cars and went on for a bit. Dawn guessed that Papa must be pleased to have been thrown in with an actual proletarian. But when he finally re-entered the car, he looked far from happy. The cowboy—for it had finally dawned on her that this was what the big man was—followed Papa down the aisle and sat right next to him, across from Dawn.
“Sweetheart, gather your things,” Papa said. He had to say it loudly over the sudden strenuous blowing of the train’s whistle. Something, probably cattle, must be on the tracks ahead; they were out in the middle of nowhere.
“I will see you again,” Papa added in Russian.
“Now, what did I tell you about that?” the big man said mildly.
“Everything is fine,” Papa said in English.
The train’s brakes came on hard, disarranging people and goods throughout the car. Out the window was open country, broken here and there with outcroppings of rock and expanses of dark-green forest. The cowboy lurched to his feet and put the hat on. He stepped between Dawn and Papa so that he could lower the window sash. The air that came in smelled of sage. Dawn had forgotten that she had forgotten this smell, but now she remembered that she remembered it. Horses could be heard a-gallop. Papa maneuvered his head sideways so that he could see Dawn’s eyes and said “I love you” in Russian. The cowboy reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a revolver. “Beg pardon,” he muttered, cocking it. Papa’s eyes went wide, thinking he was about to be executed for speaking in Russian but the cowboy thrust the weapon out the window and fired one shot into the air. The smell of gunpowder drifted in. The pounding of the hooves converged.
Dawn looked out to see—cowboys! Four of them, plus two saddled horses.
No, it was three cowboys and one cowgirl.
The cowgirl spun down off her mount, long orange hair flying around her like a cape, and stormed up the steps onto the carriage.
“For reasons having to do with the constabulary,” said the cowboy, “it is desirable that you address her, loud enough for all of these witnesses to hear, as—”
“Mama!” Dawn shrieked, pounding down the aisle with arms outstretched, her vision already shattered by tears.
“That’ll do,” said the cowboy.
“Welcome home, Dawn Rae,” said her mother into her ear.