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A Flickering Light

By Jane Ann Kirkpatrick

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Subjects

In my favorite portrait of myself I am wearing an opaque eyelet dress, layered, with the scallop edges of the hemline barely whispering across the carpeted studio floor. It could have been worn for a christening though its lavish detail would have stolen something from an event where the child ought to be the focus. The child, wearing a long flowing white dress that could be handed down to brother and sister for each successive important day, that’s what matters at a christening. The child is what people should gaze upon at such an event, not a mother or aunt or friend wearing a too-elegant eyelet dress.
It could be a wedding dress but of course, it wasn’t.
I find so few photographs of myself that I wish to share with others but in this one, I appear taller than my five feet, two inches as I’ve chosen a hat with ostrich plumes swept up in the back and high over my head. The plumes shade my eyes with dried berries that flow out onto the hat’s white brim in a cornucopia of fruit. My hair, the color of oiled leather, is coiled up beneath the brim. (My little brother, Roy, says I have hair the color of cow pies dotting the pasture on our grandparent’s farm, but that’s the nature of little brothers born in the new century, or at least was Roy’s creative nature before the accident.) The milliner did splendid work and the white of the felted hat brim brings the eye to the dress which is what I wanted. The beauty of the dress is the real subject of the photograph.
My mother called it my “kept woman dress.” It was no such thing and it pained me to hear her say it. But there are always misunderstandings in families; always sacrifices worthy of making, too, no matter how strained they may seem at the time.
I’d seen the dress in Choates’ window as I walked bundled up against Minnesota’s blistering river winds. The dress spoke of spring and newness and I vowed to buy it. And so I did, saving twenty-five cents a week for six months before I brought it home one fine summer day. Of course I’d asked the clerk to set it aside for me and put fifty cents down so they knew I was serious.
In this photograph, I posed myself at the edge of a bench made to look like marble with molding that can’t be identified as something specific but which suggests lush relief and gives interest to the eye though not enough to take away from the true subject. Morning light radiates through the studio windows. Knowing the source of light is so critical in a photograph -- as in life.
I’d painted a white board and set it just beyond the arc of the exposure so that the morning rays reflected against it and poured soft beams back onto the dress, keeping the area to my right in shadow. It seemed fitting with so much of my life a chase of shadow and light. Behind me I used the scenic drop that features dark woods reflecting against a full moon shining. My face seems almost backlit by that sphere, a feature I hadn’t anticipated; nor were the single dots of light on my size three shoe tips. It fascinates me that I can set up a subject, think I have everything perfectly arranged and then only afterwards do I see things I had not noticed before, little things, like spots of light that highlight the tips of my black high-button boots or a moon giving unexpected brightness. It seems that after the fact is when I turn reflective, surprised by what was always there that I failed to see.
What I wanted was the soft, natural light to raise the detail of the eyelet dress and the overskirt and emphasize the hours of work that must have gone in to making it; to shade gently on my shoulders and maybe, just maybe, to bring into focus – something one might notice after prolonged viewing – the rings I’m wearing or the necklace. The necklace is another story. I wasn’t sure I ought to wear it, but in the end, I did hoping it did not take away from the dress.
I leaned slightly forward, no easy task given the whale bone corset that fits as close to me as soap to skin. I clasped my hands at my knees. At the last minute, I also decided not to look at the camera but to gaze away, toward something I couldn’t quite name but knew I wanted. I did not smile. There are times to smile and times to cry and times to be serene.
Voe opened the shutter, exposed the film then closed it using my 3-A Graflex. I developed the photograph myself.
I never intended to show the image to him.
But he noticed it one day. He saw it there among the other exposures of funeral flowers and family portraits made on New Year’s Day. A child had jiggled on her father’s lap so that photograph was wasted but I hated throwing the picture out because I did appreciate the light on that family subject. The prints laid on the table outside the developing room, some of the edges beginning to curl as I’d wanted to save costs so didn’t use the more expensive paper.
He wasn’t supposed to be there, recovering from his illnesses and everything else.
His mustache twitched as his long fingers moved the photographs aside then stalled at the one of me. He lifted it, adjusted his glasses, then lowered the print to catch my eyes. I couldn’t tell if his smile was wistful or shared a certain sense of pride….for his part in my having produced such a precious photograph; or in my having chosen myself as the subject. I didn’t ask. Instead, I pulled the picture from his fingers, careful not to touch him; and directed his attention elsewhere.
I could do that and discovered nearly too late that I often had to.


CHAPTER ONE
A Hesitating Heart

Against the morning darkness, Jessie Ann Gaebele quietly lit the stubby candle. Its feeble light flickered at the mirror while she dressed. She pulled her stockings on, donned her chemise, debated about a corset, decided against it. She’d make too much noise getting it hooked. No one was likely to see her this morning anyway and she’d be back before her mother even knew she’d left the house without it. She could move faster without the “Grecian Bend” as the stays were called, forcing an s curve onto any girl who wore it. She guessed some thought it an attractive look for a girl in 1907, emphasizing small waists and a rounded derrière. Jessie claimed both but had little time for either that morning; and timing mattered if she was to succeed. If Jessie didn’t catch the moment this morning, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
She spilled the dark linen skirt over her petticoat letting it settle at her slender frame inhaling the lavender that her sister Selma insisted be added when they made their own soap, something they did more now since they’d moved to Winona, Minnesota. Selma was prone to sensuous scents; sensuous songs, too, her husky voice holding people hostage when she sang.
Jessie looked at her sleeping sisters; the candlelight casting shadows on the tasseled hair of Selma, her younger sister, and the night cap that Lilly, her older sister, always wore. (“It will keep you from catching vapors in the night,” Lilly claimed). Jessie smiled as she pulled on the white shirtwaist. Even in their sleep they reflected who they were when awake: Selma, dreamy and romantic; Lilly, organized and right. Always right. Jessie slept somewhere in between them, literally. In life she guessed she had a bit of both of those girls’ practices in her, too. Selma would approve of Jessie’s morning goal for its dreamy adventure; Lilly wouldn’t. But Jessie’d organized it as though Lilly had, leaving little to chance. She’d walked the route, knew the obstacles. She anticipated what she’d find when she got there. If she could make it on time.
Luckily there were only five buttons down the back of her blouse, close to the high neck. She considered waking Selma to help her button them but decided against it. Selma would want the details and wake up Lilly who would question her judgment. Jessie would not lie. Lilly would point out how ridiculous she was being, rising early and setting out for such foolishness when she had an important appointment in the day ahead, too. “That should be your emphasis,” Lilly would say. She spoke as though she was Jessie’s mother, too. Oh, she meant well; older sisters did, that’s what her mother told her. But still, Jessie was tired of having every person in the family older than she was considered wiser and worldlier, too.
So Jessie reached back and buttoned the blouse herself then pulled a belt with beads forming the round buckle, centering it in the middle of her fifteen year old waist. Hat or no hat? Going out in public without her hat in 1907 would be too casual and someone just might question what she was doing or worse, remember and tell her mother. She could get by without the corset but she’d best wear the hat.
She tossed a shawl around her shoulders, grabbed her shoes and tiptoed past Roy’s room with special quietness as he had hearing like their mother’s. That woman could tell when any of them squabbled in the bedroom over a hair piece even when the woman was outside, in the yard, hanging up clothes on the far side of the house and the wind blew! Jessie made it past his door, her parents’ door, out onto the porch with the swing and sighed relief.
Outside, Jessie inhaled the morning. Late March. Not long before flowers would poke their heads up through the crusty Minnesota ground. Breezes from the Mississippi River felt cool on her face. She heard a steamship whistle bawling its presence at Winona’s docks. The shawl would be enough to ward off the cold once she started walking and the promised sun would warm her up when she stood still. Within an hour, dawn would offer up the perfect gift but would wait for only a few seconds for Jessie to receive it. After that, that same light would begin to change the shapes she wanted to capture and soon, the snow would be gone, they’d stop the burning and she’d have to wait another year. She had little time to spare. She couldn’t be late today, neither for the sunlight nor for that later appointment.
On the porch steps, she pulled on her high buttoned shoes, grabbed the heavy leather bag from behind the porch lattice work where she’d placed it the night before. Her Uncle August Schoepp had given her the bag and its precious cargo just last year, in memory of their time at the St. Louis World’s fair. It was her treasure. She drew the strap over her shoulder, centered the weight on her right hip then set off, holding the bag out to avoid the bruises it often left behind. The corset might have been a help to support her back against the bag but it was too late now to think of that.
She set a fast pace on Broadway, liking the feel of the new concrete solidness pounding up through her slender legs. Pigeons flew from the rooftop of the Winona Hotel. Pancakes of dirty snow exposed themselves in the shaded window wells. The clank of railroad cars connecting and departing at the repair yards broke the morning calm. Against the gas street lights, fingers of elm and maple branches rose before her. There’d be buds on them before long and the maple sap would drip like dark honey down the side of the trees making a rich contrast of brown on black.
She turned the corner, walked several more blocks then at the lamp light flickering in the bicycle shop’s window, Jessie grinned. Mr. Bunnell was “not of the fur trading Bunnell’s who founded Winona no matter what that steamboat captain claims” but he’d been here for years running his bicycle and machine repair shop. And he had remembered.
A bicycle leaned against the framed wall. Maybe he meant for her to just take it. It would certainly save time. But he might have left it for someone else. She’d better go in and check.
Jessie stepped inside, the small bell above the door announcing her arrival. She scanned the room. “Mr. Bunnell? I’m here. Is the bicycle outside the one you meant for me to take?” The silence felt heavy. The shop smelled of sawdust, the kind brushed onto the wooden floors to soak up grease and oil. It was awfully cluttered. And still. “Mr. Bunnell?” Jessie swallowed, a prickle of indecision in her mind: Just take the bicycle she’d paid to use or be polite and make sure the cycle was intended for her. “Remember? I left you the nickel for the use of the bicycle this morning. I said I’d come early.” She stumbled over a bucket filled with rags. Maybe she could earn the five cents back by offering to clean up this place, Jessie thought.
That thought made her cringe. Her mother would not be pleased to know she’d spent a nickel of her own hard earned dollars from the book bindery on something frivolous like a bicycle rental. But the bindery had let her go though she’d worked there two years, since she was thirteen. There was little money to spare with her father’s illness that the doctor’s couldn’t name or fix. He’d had so much pain that they’d had to leave their Wisconsin dairy farm near Cream and move across the Mississippi into Winona where the girls could find work and they could be closer to the doctors. Her father eventually opened a dray business and drove a team to make deliveries but they all worried over him, her mother and brother and sisters, fearing he might have one of his “episodes” and suffer excruciating stomach aches that couldn’t be stopped without laudanum and rest.
Prickles of uncertainty clustered at her temples. This morning’s ride was important, too, important for Jessie. If somehow her mother found out she’d spent money she’d just have to convince her that it was for a worthy cause though how she’d do that she wasn’t sure. When she tried to explain this pull on her, this desire that came over her, the words came out as flat as a knife and not nearly as sharp.
She’d deal with that complication later. Jessie pushed her shoulders back and took a forward step, moving past the shadow ghosts of bicycles and what appeared to be ringer washers in need of repair. Her skirt caught on a bicycle seat. When she straightened, she saw a sliver of light, a thin string that marked the bottom of a back room door. Had it just come on? “Mr. Bunnell, I don’t mean to bother you but it’s Jessie Gaebele and I was hoping I could just –“
She heard a groan, then what sounded like scuffling followed by a thump.
This wasn’t good. She readied herself for someone to come charging out through the door. When that didn’t happen, she listened to her hesitating heart, then pushed the door open to face this complication of her day.
&&&

F. J. Bauer yanked at the heavy drapes, the purple velveteen loosening splinters of dust that danced in the sunlight. He preferred white, lace-hemmed sheer covers for the windows but Mrs. Bauer suffered from headaches and the light, well, the light could touch them off. She wasn’t in the room now, though, so he relished the dawn washing in. He placed the ties to hold back the drapes. As he turned his eyes scanned the latest books he’d purchased encased behind glass. He’d treat himself to reading when he returned home that evening, if he wasn’t too tired. A sound down the hall moved him toward the nursery in their house at 420 Baker Street. He’d built a new photographic studio on the corner of Fifth and Johnson in 1895 and it was one of the finest. Everyone told him that. A two-story, white clapboard structure with a studio room that captured natural light. He’d wanted to build family quarters into the studio but Mrs. Bauer had objected. Work should be separate from family, she’d said, though how a man was to do that he didn’t really understand. He did this work for his family. The home they lived in was comfortable but nothing as fancy as what his friend Watkins had built but then F.J. lacked that man’s resources to both solicit and promote. He shook his head. No sense going there.
F.J.’s wife, Jessie Anzina Otis Bauer, whom he called Mrs. Bauer at her insistence, sometimes worked with him in the studio, mostly retouching photographs. He’d thought she’d be good with the customers. She was a comely woman with intense dark eyes that gave her a nearly Romanesque beauty though her slender frame belied anything robust. He’d hoped she’d help with developing photographs, too. But the chemicals “frightened her.” And the flash lights she pronounced “dangerous.” She preferred the quiet isolation of the dark retouching room, erasing the wrinkles of an autocrat who wished to look younger than his years or using a brush stroke to add sparkle to a mother’s tired eyes. She urged him to set up a retouching room in the house so she never had to come to the studio at all but so far he’d resisted that. After all, wasn’t she the one who wanted work separated from family?
What he liked best about his old studio had been its closeness to his children. He could hear the boys in their laughter and their petty arguments as Russell and Donald, made noises with their wooden horses. A pang of memory shot through him at the thought of “his boys” but he set it aside. Instead, he focused on the comforting gurgling sounds that came from two year old Winifred. She’d be suckling at her mother’s breast there in the nursery.
He would have gone into the room, would have run his hand over his only daughter’s silky hair, tied a bow into her curls himself, exchanged a few words as Winnie had begun talking a streak. But Mrs. Bauer preferred such intimacies as nursing or diaper-changing or even dressing the child to be accomplished without his presence. Mrs. Bauer also wished to wean the girl but it was F. J. who convinced her to wait a bit longer. “What could be better for a child’s health than her mother’s milk,” he’d told her. He recalled the conversation.
Mrs. Bauer raised her eyebrow in warning. “Russell,” she’d said. They were at the table and Russell ate his egg while they spoke.
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“She was speaking of you not to you, son,” F.J. told him then persisted. “Cow’s milk will do when they’re older, but if you can give the child life’s fluid from your own body, you ought to. At least until she’s three. Bitte.” Russell had giggled, his wife had blushed, then turned to him with narrowed eyes, his pleading in German falling on deaf ears, or so he’d thought.
He was all for scientific advancements and there’d been pasteurized milk developed by Halsey nearly twelve years previous that would probably add to the nutrition of the liquid. At least that’s what some proposed. But it wasn’t in wide use and there could be problems. Chemicals did cause problems. He was well aware of that having endured his first attack of Mercury poisoning the year that Donald was born.
Brought back to the present by that terrible pang, that deep crevice of yearning as though breath had been sucked and he gasped, still, seeking to fill the loss. He wondered if Mrs. Bauer thought of Donald while she suckled Winnie. Maybe that was why she wished to stop. He shook his head. It would be three years this October.
He walked on down the carpeted stairs to the kitchen, turned on the gas light and fixed himself hot coffee and toast with marmalade. While he ate, he scanned the Republican-Herald for his ad, wiped up the crumbs from the oil cloth and cupped them in his palm and dumped them into the waste basket. He surveyed the plate rail, each item tidy in its place. No clutter in this kitchen. He donned his bowler, buttoned his coat and stepped outside. His morning had begun.
As he walked, he could smell smoke from the fires set at the base of the bluffs, burning shrubs away. The flames moved up in a kind of dance, back and forth. If he was closer, he’d hear the licking and spitting as they hit patches of snow. They flickered upward and then were put out by the foot of snow still at the top of the ridge. It was a rite of spring to see the fires light up the night, a tradition on the bluffs that rose nearly 600 feet beside the Mississippi.
He reviewed his day ahead. Several portrait sittings were scheduled. He thought of the clients as he walked toward his studio. He enjoyed that part of his work most, the staging and cajoling people into a level of comfort so they could be captured on film. People read his Republican-Herald ads, saved their money, got the family “attired”, arrived and then turned all shy or nervous about having scheduled themselves for something they suddenly defined as frivolous or self-indulgent. The Germans, his own people, were the worst, not wanting to “waste” money and yet loving the results, once he got them past their frugality and focused them on family.
It was up to him to give them reasons to sit before a stranger, staring at a lens that would capture this moment in time. He wondered if they thought the photograph would somehow hold them hostage that they wouldn’t later be able to be different than what the photograph revealed. He assured them they could be and would tell them stories of how photographs are just a slice of their life meant to stir the memory, not to carve the image into unmovable stone. “Years from now, when the children are grown, you’ll be so pleased you took this time. The same money put into your house or into your horse won’t have nearly the fond memories as this photograph will bring. And this return comes with a fine wooden frame and nothing you have to clean up after.” They’d laugh then and settle down.
They didn’t know about the creativity needed for how to use light or posing them or how long he exposed the film. Even the backdrop he chose all put their marks on the photograph. Things that might not really be there could be made to seem so. A woman’s hard worn years carved against her face could be softened; a man’s natural scowl could be lessoned with the right angle. Every child had beauty, with the right light, the right pose. These were tricks of the trade, the use of sunlight and setting, the mix and timing. But the photographs could also reveal qualities in people, in relationships that he wouldn’t even notice sometimes until after the film was developed. The way a father’s hand reached out to a child with a bit of grime still beneath his fingernails. Or the times he’d photographed a toddler barely able to stand and so the mother had squatted behind the studio chair, seeming to hide while stabilizing the child for the duration of the exposure. When he pulled the photograph from the developing solutions, he’d seen her shadow, just a hint of her being there behind the girl. She might not even notice it but it said so much about a parent’s wish to give protection and strength to a child without always being seen as having done so.
Protection. The German poet, Rilke, had described love as bringing together two solitudes who would then protect, border and salute each other. He’d loved Donald that way, he had. He’d bordered him, saluted his son’s efforts. He just hadn’t protected him.
F.J. shook his head of the memories.
At Fifth Street he walked up the steps, turned the key to his studio door, coming in the front, the way his clients did. He paused for a moment to look at the photographic display in the bay window. The Gold medal he’d won for his portrait work had been stolen, right out of the lobby the year that Donald was born. The police had never found it and they’d made him think it was his own fault for posting such a valuable piece right where others could see it. If he’d had it in the window….His other awards – announced on paper and framed -- helped adorn some of the portrait work, the eyes of the subjects gazing out at him. It was good work he did. He could be proud of it even if his judgment resulted in the Gold medal’s loss.
Inside, he hung his hat on the oak rack at the end of the mirrored bench, straightened his tie then walked to the appointment ledger on the desk in the reception room.
He hoped the first appointment, set for 9:00 AM, would be on time. The light made all the difference.
He checked his schedule book and frowned. At ten, he had appointments with two women who could become camera assistants. A flash of annoyance crossed over his face. Mrs. Bauer had made those arrangements. She ought to have known it wasn’t the best time of day for an interview, not when the sunlight was so necessary for his work. Interviews should be late afternoon. He tapped with his pencil. He’d have to pull the heavy drape up against the glare and then lower it for the portrait sitting at eleven. He had another scheduled at one, another at two then planned to work in the operating room until closing. Well, perhaps Mrs. Bauer felt the harsh light of late morning wouldn’t be good for a sitting; but would work fine to decide if two girls ought to be hired to assist him.
He hadn’t wanted to hire any assistants. He’d lost Risser who had once bought the Bauer Studio; then that arrangement soured. F.J. had returned from North Dakota to find things deteriorated. A fire had damaged the reception room and destroyed the valuable Grove collection of glass plates that he’d purchased and had numerous requests for prints from. It was a terrible loss. F.J. had bought back the studio and his former assistant, Risser, had gone on to become competition, opening his own studio just blocks away. Trained the man for four years – though he’d say he’d come with skills. The man’s brother had sold a photographic business in St. Louis to help his brother out but F.J. always wondered if he hadn’t just been some itinerant tramp photographer anyway. Risser had left him faster than a grease splat could ruin a man’s good shirt. Perhaps Mrs. Bauer thought young women would be less likely to leave once trained. But young girls who might have starry eyes for photography would be more annoying than helpful. Hopefully they were simply washer girls wanting jobs with a little less scrubbing involved.
He still bristled remembering the Republican-Herald’s story of “Social Booklets” urging “young women possessed of a well-ordered and dependable camera, an artistic taste, a deft hand, and a wide acquaintance” to turn such things into a way to increase their dress allowances by creating ‘society booklets’ for their friends. They offered no competition to him. It was the idea that the mere possession of a camera could turn someone into a professional, a creative artist. Disgusting. The photographic business was about so much more than that.
What’d he’d asked for, what he wanted, was someone he could train who could take over the studio when the poisoning hit. Someone reliable, someone who could learn to develop, to take some pictures, yes, schedule portraits perhaps, but mostly to work the chemicals. He intended to photograph as he could. It was just the chemicals that destroyed. Mrs. Bauer could have done it, if she chose to; she’d had minimal exposure through the years and wouldn’t be at risk the way he was. The children could have been here through the day. It would be a family affair. He supposed that was the other reason the interviews annoyed him. Mrs. Bauer could but wouldn’t. Mrs. Bauer had her ways.
Mrs. Bauer’s father had been a traveling photographer and she “knew the business” as she often told him. Or she’d poke at him with “If Papa was here he’d say” or “If Papa was still alive, he’d want you to” a not so subtle reminder that it was Mrs. Bauer’s father who had gotten F.J. started in the business and that at his death in 1895, it was her father’s estate that had allowed the studio to be built.
Now that he thought of it, it was probably a marvel that she’d listened to him about not weaning Winifred. She so seldom did follow his advice.
He looked for one of his cigars. Mrs. Bauer didn’t like him to smoke and he didn’t. He chewed them, instead. He opened the small tobacco box, pulled a cigar from it and bit into the end letting the thin paper caress his tongue, the tart taste of the tobacco soothing. He looked at the ledger again. Mrs. Bauer had written in her fine hand: Jessie Gaebele, Voe Kopp on the ledger sheet. He chewed the tiny flavorful flecks. Good German names. Jessie Gaebele. He ought to be able to remember that one at least, it being his wife’s first name too.
He heard the bell in the reception room. His clients were here. He inhaled, put aside the cigar. He hoped the young women he’d be interviewing later would be on time. Photographers often weren’t timely, always stopping to shoot a bird or some lake scene. But he was a studio portrait maker and he prided himself on punctuality and professionalism.
Studio work and an artist’s eye required discipline and timing and paying attention to the light. Always, one must pay attention to the light.
&&&
Mr. Bunnell had a gash on his head as wide as Jessie’s eyeglass lens which she pushed back on her nose as she bent to him, perspiration working against her. “Mr. Bunnell, what’s happened? Please wake up, please!” Her heart pounded. His eyes were closed and she looked around for a clean rag to wipe his forehead of the blood, keep it from settling in the pool of his eyes. Head wounds bled fiercely. Her father had fallen once and struck his head. But there’d only been a tiny gash when the bleeding stopped though a bucket of blood had spilled around him making them all rush and worry. She wouldn’t assume the worse.
No clean rags, anywhere. She lifted her skirt and tore a section from her petticoat and pressed the cloth against his head, wiping gently but hoping to keep his eye clear. He lay on his side and she wished he’d moan again, or say something, anything. She’d have to leave him to go get help. The other businesses wouldn’t be open yet but she could ride the bicycle to the hospital and tell them that Mr. Bunnell had fallen and let them rush to him while she rode off to finish her task. She looked through the dirty window. There was still the right light, the dawn just now opening its eyes over the city. That moment between the darkness and when morning pulled itself up into the face of the sky made for the finest exposures.
She looked at Mr. Bunnell and silenced the dawn of her desire. There’d be no photography this morning. The right light would pass her by. Levee Park would shake itself of night without her setting up her camera to capture the flames flickering and dancing their way up the slopes of the bluffs, burning out in a puff of snowmelt at the top There’d be another day. Next year, she supposed. The annual bluff burn was nearly finished. She sighed. She knew the right thing to do here and she would do it.
She scanned the room looking for someway to put pressure on the wound, to halt the bleeding while she went for help. She already had blood on her white shirtwaist sleeves but that didn’t matter. She stood up, hands on her narrow waist and felt her belt. She removed it, lifted his head and hooked the buckle over the cloth and buckled it. It would have to do. She pushed against her knees, stood, rushing toward the door.
A groan and then, “Miss…Gaebele?”
She turned back. “Oh, Mr. Bunnell, I’m so glad you’re awake. You’ve hit your head.”
“Someone hit it for me,” he said. He pushed to get himself to sitting with her assistance. He reached to feel his face, then held the cloth himself against his head, fingered the beads on the buckle.
“I didn’t see anyone here,” Jessie said. “Nor see anyone leave. I think…that is, I think you fell.”
“Then the floor tripped me up?” he questioned. He tried to turn his head, moaned again. “There’s the culprits,” he said. He pointed to an anvil that he must have stumbled over and a sharp corner of a bench that broke his fall. “That’s what did it.” He nodded toward the bench, an act that caused him to gasp again. “Came up behind me, I’d say.” He tried to smile at her then.
“Are you well enough for me to leave you, to go get help?”
He started to nod, stopped himself. “Take the bicycle – oh, you needed it this morning.” He looked up at her with tears in his eyes. “I’ve ruined your adventure. I have no phone. What will your mother say about your clothes all spackled with blood? Oh, me.”
His words were flying like bats, dipping and diving.
“Oh, they’ll find words,” Jessie told him as she straightened her hat. “Don’t you worry about that. Just sit still, promise?”
She hated to leave him but she had to. She noted the camera bag left where she’d set it when she made her way through the cluttered shop, then stepped onto the bicycle wishing she had a pair of those special women’s trousers lady bicyclists in the magazines wore.
The doctor’s residence was closer than the hospital so she went there, told him what had happened and he said he’d join her shortly as he pulled his breakfast napkin from beneath his chin. Jessie returned and kept up a steady stream of conversation with Mr. Bunnell whose one eye seemed to float away from the center and he looked like he might doze. She buttressed him with pillows from his narrow cot, kept him sitting upright. His Thompson clock struck nine just as the doctor arrived. She waited for instructions but when none came, she retrieved her belt, told the doctor what she knew, described what ministrations she’d performed.
The doctor said she’d done the right things as she backed her way toward the door. But Mr. Bunnell kept saying how grateful he was and how fortunate that she had been coming so early and how he might not have lived without her, a fact he exaggerated. Later Jessie figured he’d realize that he wouldn’t have been there so early and stumbled in the dim light if she hadn’t wanted to rent the bicycle at that hour. She waited for what she thought to be a proper time then asked if it would be all right if she left.
“Do you want me to call your parents?” The doctor asked. “About the blood on your blouse?”
She looked down. “No, that’s all right. Is there anything more I can do here?” He’d told her no. “Do what the doctor tells you,” she told the bicycle shop owner. And with that she reached for her shawl, grabbed her camera bag and slipped out the door.
The sun felt warm now and the big clock on the courthouse clanged the three quarter hour. She turned backwards, holding her hand to her hat to stare at the clock. Nine forty-five? Where had the time gone? She’d have to prepare a double explanation now because she didn’t have time to make it home before her interview and she’d barely make Mr. Bauer’s studio. She’d have to do the interview without her corset and with blood stains on her blouse. What business man would hire someone so disheveled?
She walked her fast-pace toward Johnson Street where she was to meet her friend, Voe Kopp, all the while wondering if she didn’t need a little bit more of Lilly’s organization if she was to accomplish her dreams; and a bit more of Selma’s capacity to adapt – especially as she prepared an explanation she hoped would meet her mother’s muster later – and the critical eyes of F.J. Bauer, the photographer within the hour.

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