Etta: A Novel Page 5

  This preoccupation with dignity and order sometimes seemed laughably out of place in the roughness of Grand Junction. And while travelers from the East might feel somewhat at home within the civilized cocoon of the Harvey House, the local miners and cowboys and rustlers were more than a little amused by such pretensions to decorum. With such a coarse coterie of regulars, there were many days when the women wished, first to themselves and later out loud, that some enterprising go-getter would take some of the heat off them by opening a grand saloon overflowing with prostitutes. In the street, Etta and the other women were whistled at, remarked upon, and otherwise humiliated by the catcalls and unwelcome propositions of sprinkle-toothed louts. Instructed to ignore such ignorant taunts, many soldiered on while others gave as good as they got. Some even eventually succumbed to a particularly handsome blacksmith or traveling dry-goods drummer, against all the rules of their employ.

  Such a case was Laura Bullion, although it would be hard to say that she had succumbed.

  Late in February, a tall man had appeared in the restaurant between trains and was quickly seated. Except for his enormous height, Etta took no notice of him as Blanche, a sweet and shy girl from a Baltimore blacking house, arrived to take his order. When Etta turned back from the salver she was polishing, she saw that Laura Bullion had dismissed Blanche and was now serving the giant herself. She made no small talk with him, betrayed nothing that was contrary to Harvey regulations, but Etta thought she sensed something passing between them. If she were to have chosen a man for Laura, she thought, he would probably be like this one: dangerous, with matching revolvers strapped to the hips of his gabardines, and handsome, with heavy-lidded blue eyes and a luxurious mustache.

  “Miss,” the giant said to Laura, “I believe you may be the prettiest girl I have ever seen in this old town.”

  Laura Bullion stared at him for a moment and then pointed toward Etta. “No,” she said. “Her.”

  “She's all right if you like that type,” the man said, grinning, “but contrary to what might be believed, I don't prefer no ginger Amazon but someone more petite and dainty-like, what represents the meekness of the fair sex. Someone small and dark such as yourself, I believe, would suit me to the ground.”

  Etta thought she saw the beginnings of a smile cross her friend's face.

  “Food?” Laura Bullion said.

  As the weeks went by and the tall man appeared every day, Laura Bullion could not easily hide the fact that she and Ben Kilpatrick, as the man was called, had been previously aquainted. At each luncheon, Laura remained the girl of few words. The nights, however, soon confirmed Etta's suspicions.

  When bed assignments had been given out, Etta and Laura had drawn what was called the Leftover, a tiny cell off the main dormitory directly above the kitchen. It was, like most things here, mixed in its blessings. Unlike the other girls, Etta and Laura Bullion had a certain measure of privacy, but the room's outer wall faced north. When the winter temperatures dropped deeper than anything Philadelphia had ever known, they could see their breath by a bright moon.

  Beginning almost as soon as Ben Kilpatrick appeared, Laura Bullion began to disappear from the Leftover in the smallest hours of the morning. Etta suspected how her roommate and the tall man were occupying their time and was soon proven right.

  On the first warm spring night, Etta awoke to the soft sound of a female moan and rose from her bed to peer from the window to the alley below. At first she was confused at the sight. Here was Laura Bullion, her hands pressed hard against a hitching post with her black skirt draped around her waist and the tall man moving like a pendulum behind her, his hands gripping her slender hips. Was this base, violent, beautiful? Etta knew only that she was unable to leave the window, her throat constricting slightly as she watched her roommate back into Ben Kilpatrick, caress his face, and twist around to kiss him. As they met and parted, his movements threatened to drive her into the rough wood of the post or even onto the ground. What passion is this? thought Etta. Surely, they had had their time in his hotel. And to still be unsatisfied? To want yet more of him here in the grime and dust of an alley?

  As Etta filled the window, Ben Kilpatrick seemed to stiffen and Laura Bullion rose once again to meet him, her back flat with his chest. She looked now to Etta like a goddess, her two hands reaching up behind his neck, stretching her trunk like the Winged Victory, her face a mixture of submission and triumph that only another woman could understand. Not base, not violent, but beautiful.

  As spring wore on, Laura Bullion never bothered to swear Etta to secrecy, never asked to be covered for, never searched her roommate's face for an open eye in the middle of the night. Somehow she had known that Etta would never report these flauntings of every rule of both employer and society.

  Indeed, Laura Bullion had chosen her companion well. Over the course of three hundred years, the polite classes of Philadelphia had made an art of minding their own business.

  From the

  JOURNAL OF ETTA PLACE

  12 March 1899

  Harvey House, Grand Junction, Colorado

  Diary,

  I might never have thought so, but in many ways I seem suited to this work. With some highly notable exceptions (Mr. Earl Dixon's attentions become more and more alarming by the day), our clientele is mannerly and considerate, and they are appreciative of all we do to meet their needs. Often, though it is not permitted, they will leave a small gratuity behind as a token of that appreciation. Miss Hortense kindly looks the other way at this contraband largesse. She was one of us once and knows well that a little tip can often spell the difference between wearing a coarse hair ribbon or a fine one on one's day off. And how we look walking amid our fellow citizens is as important to the Fred Harvey Company as serving the correct beverage or a meat done precisely as ordered.

  If nothing else, having this job has confirmed that I am not quite as coddled as I might have been. I suppose I can thank Father for that. He never allowed the servants to do what I could do for myself. Though I complained, he forced me to muck the stables, feed and water and curry the horses, clean my own rifles, and patch my own wounds. “Being rich can be a curse, Picky,” he would say. “It can make you into something softer than horse's shit and twice as stinking. The Jamesons have lasted this long because when the soldiers came or the slaves deserted, we could do for ourselves.”

  In any case, it is fortunate for me that I have found some solace and distraction in my role here, as the news from home seems all bad. Our friend Rodman Larabee informs me that two weeks ago the very last of our belongings went to an estate auction house. A little man in a grimy coat carted off the kitchen utensils and the last of the hay and oats from the stables, although these were rotted and filled with worms.

  But worse, it seems that the Hand has struck once again, and this time at another young woman. Last week, Uncle Rodman writes, the papers were full of another horrific incident involving a young woman in their employ. The girl, a Miss Roseanne Maria Simonetti, age eighteen, was the daughter of a local ice and coal jobber. She was the product of a local convent school and by all accounts respectable. The Public Ledger surmised that she had begun keeping company with a young man named Dante Gabriel Cichetti, a known associate of the Hand. The constables believe that the vehemence with which the crime was committed points to its being somehow romantic in origin. The poor girl was found in the empty back garden of her parents' house. Her throat had been sliced neatly, she was nearly decapitated, the word “puttana” inscribed in her forehead with a knife. Apparently, it is the Italian word for “whore.”

  This is not the first time Uncle Rodman has mailed me such ghastly news. I surmise that he believes me to be headstrong, capable of throwing all caution to the wind and making my way back to Philadelphia at any moment, the Black Hand be damned. With every warning and dire clipping, he implores me to stay put and assures me that, in time, arrangements will be made for my safe return. It is true that I am bold and always have been. Fath
er would have allowed for no less. But as near as I can tell, my good friend thinks I am ignorant of the difference between bravery and folly.

  Rodman Larabee need not worry. As of this moment, I believe I would do well to save my neck for something better than the blade of a mad Sicilian. Of course, I yearn to see my beloved Philadelphia once more, but not badly enough to be killed for it. After all, homesickness is a disease from which one might recover.

  Murder is not.

  o one who knew Earl Charmichael Dixon was surprised that his behavior would one day lead to a gunfight.

  Earl's father had struck a rich vein of silver in 1875 and had sent the boy back east to be refined, rather like a piece of rough ore in search of a good polish. Earl Dixon hadn't done particularly well in any of the eastern schools to which he had been shipped. Some said the damage had been done before he had even left; that the boy had been coddled so much, by the time he reached Boston he was as spoiled as a six-week-old mackerel. But although calculus had flown over his head and he had simply not attended his lectures in business and finance, he had absorbed most of the attitudes of the wealthy young men with whom he associated. And the cardinal tenet of privilege he learned, was that whatever was the finest, the most well made, the most beautiful or expensive, by rights belonged to him.

  No one in Grand Junction at that time could doubt that the most well-made young woman in town was one Etta Place, the Harvey Girl. The male diners she served in the restaurant invariably remarked on her beauty.

  The compliments varied in their content according to the diner's degree of sophistication. A Christian gentleman from Hartford might remark to his wife, “Mother, it seems we're to be served here by the prettiest girl in the county, present company excepted.” A lout might proclaim, “Darlin, there's only one thing I see around here sweeter than this puddin and I'd like a lick o' that too.” Both in and out of the dining room, Etta was the subject of considerable discussion and even more jealousy among the mothers of young women of marriageable age, the kind of parents who considered the Dixon boy Grand Junction's prize bull.

  Earl Dixon had begun his campaign by merely annoying her. At first, it had been enough for Etta to simply put him off with a wan smile and the short speech that the company had trained each girl to repeat whenever accosted. “I am sorry, sir. Although your offer is flattering, we Harvey Girls are not allowed to keep company with any gentlemen diners during our employ here. But thank you once again.”

  With persistence, though, Dixon had risen from the merely irritating to the openly offensive. His position of prominence in the town allowed him to request Etta's table and be assured of receiving it every time. As her robotic refusals continued, Dixon's frustration turned to open attempts at humiliation. It had begun as “Miss Etta, we would make a great match, you and I. For in this town only you are good enough for me. Intelligent enough. Elegant enough. Beautiful enough. I hope you will take all this as a compliment.” But over time such politeness had metastasized into “You think you're made of gold? You think you can do better around here? I once thought to keep you in luxury or perhaps even marry you. Now I'll just have you, mark my words. Remember who I am. And who you are.”

  Etta knew that no one would dare take the beady-eyed swine by his collar and waistband and fling him to the street. As the bile of anger rose in her throat she again repeated the company mantra as she poured his coffee. “I am sorry, sir. Although your offer is flattering, we Harvey Girls are not allowed….”

  On the day Earl Dixon threw down his napkin and stormed from the table, Etta hoped he had at last absorbed her message. She discovered otherwise early the next morning, just before serving the 5:53 A.M. from Los Angeles.

  The location of the staff quarters above the Harvey House forced the girls to make their way down an open-air iron staircase that ended at the exterior door to the kitchen. This design was intentional. Fred Harvey believed that his waitresses, as domestic staff, should never be seen using the same halls or stairways as paying customers. Besides, it appealed to the romantic in him to have his girls appear seemingly from nowhere as if they were sweet, attentive apparitions, servile ghosts floating over hardwood floors.

  Etta rubbed the sleep from her eyes as the late May dawn broke over the last step. Two months before she had been made Leading Girl, a sort of assistant to the manager. As such, she was always the first to brave the morning chill of those metal stairs, the first to prepare the dining area and confer with the chef while the others pinned and brilliantined their hair or tied their aprons. Earl Dixon knew this, as he knew everything concerning her movements; knew that for a few moments she would be alone behind the building. It would be all the time he would need.

  Etta heard not so much as a footfall as he took hold of her from behind.

  “I told you I would have you,” he hissed in her ear. “If you're a virgin, I'll ruin you.” His right arm was pressed against her neck, half crushing her windpipe, while his left held her tightly about the waist so that when he pulled her away and under the stairs, her heels nearly left the ground.

  His plan was not so much to force himself upon her but to degrade her so that her will would be sapped of any future resistance. He would also make certain that word of the incident was soon spread but in a different form from the truth. Over their washbasins the town matrons would tell the story of how the whore from the East had rutted with him in the dust of an alley. It was a method Earl Dixon had employed before.

  With a single pull, he managed to tear the white apron and black blouse from collar to waist, but he had seriously unestimated the physical strength of a girl who had grown to womanhood battling angry colts and recalcitrant stallions. As his hand rose from her belly to her breasts, she caught it between her teeth and bit down, even as her left hand reached for his face and tore four fine slices from his cheek. With another lunge of her nails, she turned the side of his face into red latticework as he bellowed and was forced to release her. Whirling, she brought the pointed toe of her boot up even with his ribs and kicked. The blow did not so much pain as enrage him.

  As Etta tried to run, Dixon pushed hard against her shoulders, pinning her to the horizontal slats of the building. Using his chest to hold her fast, her lifted her skirt to her waist and undid his buttons. Amid the blood rushing in her ears, Etta thought she could faintly hear the voice of her father over the click of poker chips. “Never weaken, girl. If he thinks you're his, you will be.”

  For an instant, it passed through Etta's mind how sad it was that the first time she would hold a man it would be not to bring pleasure, but pain. Steeling herself against disgust, she channeled a lifetime of controlling horses into her grip. He bellowed in pain and the pupils of his eyes rolled into his head. Seeking escape, he slapped her hard across the face and then fell moaning to the earth of the alley.

  Attracted by the ruckus, a small group had gathered: a few girls and a Chinese cook from the kitchen; the owner of the dry goods whose back door abutted the alley; some early rising layabouts whose names and faces she did not know.

  Etta did her best to replace her dress and apron in a position sufficient to cover her underclothing. “You saw him!” she cried to the throng. “You saw what he tried to do to me! Call the constable! I want this man arrested for trying to violate me!” No one moved or spoke. Through tears of rage, Etta allowed them all a decent interval of shock, but when still not one soul attempted to aid her or call the law, she recalled where he and his family stood in this town and his arrogant words came back to her.

  Remember who I am. And who you are.

  Now what Earl Charmichael Dixon wanted for the insult was her life. She saw him reach to his side for one of two ivory-handled revolvers and point it at her head. As much as the long black skirt would allow, Etta ran, hoping to create a moving target until she could reach a bay horse tied and saddled hard by the livery just across the dusty yard. The first shot whistled close by her ear, the second was wide of the mark, and by the third she wa
s in the saddle, tugging at the reins.

  But Earl Dixon was not to be denied. At the fourth shot he ran toward her, trying to bring his fire as close as possible. She cursed him through tears and gritted teeth, rearing the animal in his face. The next two loud reports turned her clean white apron crimson, dyed edge to edge by a cascade of blood.

  She felt no pain, saw no wound to herself, but looking down saw the horse's chest and throat laid bare and red to the bone. As her mount began to fall, Dixon aimed one more time. Etta ducked behind the bay's neck and the animal's skull exploded twice just above her head. As the horse fell, her leg only narrowly missed being pinned beneath the big body.

  Etta lay atop the dead bay, her mind seething with hatred. Almost by itself her hand found the stock of the Winchester 73 rifle cradled in the saddle holster. As Dixon pulled the second revolver from beneath his frock coat she shouldered the weapon. And before his finger could bring pressure to the trigger, Etta Place cocked the handle and fired.

  From the

  GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO, CITIZEN'S NEWS

  May 30, 1899

  “HARVEY GIRL” GUNS DOWN PROMINENT CITIZEN!

  Earl C. Dixon Shot in Cold Blood!

  Left to Die in the Street!

  Local Authorities Call for Investigation!

  Miss Place Jailed!

  By Francis Xavier Dixon III

  Early yesterday morning a so-called Harvey Girl took the life of one of Grand Junction's most prominent and important sons, the noted mining heir, Mr. Earl Charmichael Dixon.

  The dastardly and cowardly act was carried out by Etta S. Place, originally of Philadelphia, Pa., who has worked for the past year as a waitress for the Harvey House restaurant at Gold and Main streets, an establishment that up until now has enjoyed no such blemish upon its reputation.