Whiter Than Snow Read online

  “I guess when you’re head of this family, you’ll have a say.”

  “Papa, I won’t go to college if she has to wait tables at the Prospector.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The two walked along in silence until Gus said, “Doll thinks you might not come back if you go below to school.”

  Lucy didn’t reply.

  “I don’t reckon we could let you do that.”

  “I don’t reckon you could stop me.”

  “Oh, I guess I could.”

  Lucy slowed down a little as she mulled over her father’s words. She knew then what he was after.

  “Wages aren’t going up at the mine. I need you to help carry us in these scarce times.”

  “I could send you money. I’d do it every month.”

  Gus stopped and put his foot up on a rock to tie his shoe. The leather was scuffed and worn, the toe capped with metal. Lucy stared down at the top of his head, where the hair was thin and the scalp scaly from the mountain dryness. He was asking her to help support the family, maybe carry it all herself if he lost his job. He’d barter that for college. She thought it over before she replied. If she didn’t go to college, she’d work at the mine and hand over her paycheck to her father. If she got an education, she’d do the same thing, but at least she’d have been away for four years, and she would be getting a better job. “What if I promise to come back? Will you let Doll finish high school?”

  Her father pretended to think it over, but his head hurt too much for him to put much effort into it. “Well, I expect so. If you’ll promise, promise no matter what, you’ll come back.”

  “Oh, I will,” Lucy said.

  Gus sighed. “Then I reckon I could spare you.”

  It was only later that Lucy thought she had been bought too cheaply. Both Gus and Dolly had gotten what they wanted. Lucy would be bonded to Swandyke, where she’d supplement her father’s salary and be a companion to Dolly for the rest of her life. Still, she told herself, she’d have those four years.

  And so in the fall of 1905, Lucy registered at the University of Denver. At first, school wasn’t easy for her, what with classes, working as a counter girl at a drugstore on Colfax Avenue, and cleaning and cooking for her aunt Alice, who wasn’t so bad once Lucy got to know her. Still, in later years when she looked out at the yellow waste dumps on the mountains or the waist-deep snow that covered Swandyke six months of the year and heard the screeching of the gold dredge on the Swan River, she remembered those years at the University of Denver as the happiest ones of her life.

  She did not major in math, which had been her intent, because the school directed girls to more feminine subjects. So she took courses in bookkeeping and business on the side and studied to become a teacher. She was surprised that she had not thought of teaching on her own, because teachers rarely lasted long in the Swandyke schools, and there was a great demand for them. The ones who came from the outside were tired out by the long winters and the harsh landscape and the noise of the mines and the gold dredge that dug up the Swan River high above town. Only half of the new teachers returned the next year.

  She studied hard—on the streetcar, during respites at the drugstore, at night, after her aunt went to bed. Aunt Alice insisted that the lamps were to be blown out at 9:00 p.m. to save on kerosene, so Lucy waited until she heard her aunt’s snores, and then she relit the lamp in her room and worked on her lessons until midnight. Only later did she realize her aunt had known all the time what she was doing, had gone to bed precisely at nine so that Lucy could get to her books.

  With most hours occupied by work or study, and living with her relative, Lucy had no time for social activities. She hadn’t the money to join a sorority and didn’t care, because the sorority girls she met seemed less interested in education than in clothes and parties and getting married. She was not jealous of them, because she thought them meek as sheep and dumb as burros. Nor did she feel sorry for herself, although she was careful not to mention her family or the circumstances of her young life. At that time, when so few women attended college, the girlfriends Lucy made on campus simply assumed that Lucy’s family was no different from their own and that her reason for living with a relative was not due to lack of money but to her parents’ insistence that she not be exposed to the temptations of school life. Hers would not have been the only parents who disapproved of dormitories.

  With the demands on her time, Lucy took part in only a few of the social activities on campus. But she cherished the discussions after class in a coffee shop off campus, where she spent some of her hard-earned nickel tips. Such gatherings included both boys and girls, but Lucy was not interested in boys, because, as she’d told Dolly, she did not care to marry. Besides, her father had forbidden her to date, telling her aunt, “There’ll be Old Nick to pay if some boy fools with her and she comes home with an armful.”

  Lucy’s dedication paid off, and at the end of her first college year, she was awarded a scholarship. The girl did not tell her family about her good fortune. She was afraid that her father would insist she send him part of her wages. It was not that Lucy wanted to keep the money for herself, but she hoped to cut back on her hours at the drugstore once school began in the fall, so that she could enjoy herself a little. After all, she thought with some sense of sorrow, a quarter of her college years was already spent.

  That summer, she stayed in Denver, still living with her aunt Alice, who had softened a little. The old woman had come to depend on Lucy, not just to clean and cook but to provide a bit of company. And on her part, Lucy had become fond of the old woman. That summer, the two sat on the porch of the little house, shaded by trumpet vines, and listened to the evening sounds of children playing hide-and-seek or to that of the trolley as it rumbled along the next street. In the evenings, while the light was still good, Aunt Alice mended while Lucy read aloud from a poetry book. Sometimes the two popped corn or made divinity candy and shared it with their neighbors. Or they walked to the creamery, where Lucy spent her tips on ice cream for the two of them. Once, as they walked home in the darkness, stopping to smell the honeysuckle next door, Aunt Alice said, “I expect you miss your sister. I wouldn’t complain if she came for a visit.”

  Lucy was so tickled that she wrote a letter to her sister that night, enclosing twenty dollars for the train fare. A week later, Dolly wired that she’d be arriving the next day. Lucy met her at the depot, met three trains that day, in fact, because Dolly had not told her which one she’d chosen. Although Lucy was exasperated, she had to admit that one of her muddled sister’s endearing qualities was that she assumed everything would turn out all right. And for Dolly, it always did.

  The two girls had not been together in ten months—the price of a ticket to go home at Christmas had been too dear—so now they were overjoyed at seeing each other. Dolly said college made Lucy look smarter than ever, and Lucy observed that her sister was as plump as a ptarmigan and even prettier than she had been when Lucy had bid her good-bye in the fall.

  “I thought you’d be spoken for by now,” Lucy said.

  “Oh, there’s plenty that’s spoke to Papa about me, but they don’t do to suit me. However, I ever remain hopeful I will meet a management man, even though they are mostly married. Of course, that wouldn’t stop them from foolery, but I won’t have it. If I slept on my rights and had an illegal baby, Mama would cry her eyes out, and Papa would bust out my brains.”

  Both girls laughed, because each knew that while Gus himself had led a corruptible life, he did not intend to let his daughters stray.

  “I refuse to marry a man who will give me the life I’m accustomed to, and a hoistman or a cager won’t do,” Dolly continued. “I want someone who has more than two pair of britches to his name.”

  “Do you have your eye on anybody?”

  “Mr. Bibb, who is the second-level boss at the Fourth of July.”

  “You mean Henry Bibb, the one who’s bald and straddly-legged? He must be more than thirty.�
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  Doll shrugged. “Mr. Bibb’s not so bad. He’s solid as granite, although I can’t follow him when he talks about books and learning. There’s not so many to choose from as you’d think, and I can’t wait around too long. I’m in my eighteenth year, and there’s wrinkles starting around my eyes. Mama says it’s time enough I was married.”

  Lucy looked but could see nothing but perfection. “Don’t sell yourself too cheap, Doll.”

  “I won’t. I don’t expect a man as rich as cream, but he’s got to earn more than a mucker does. Besides Mr. Bibb, there’s a couple of men who work the gold boats I’ve got my eye on. They come into the Prospector and leave me twenty-five-cent tips, sometimes fifty, even though they order only a five-cent cup of coffee. Imagine that! One of them’s a bounder, I expect, but there’s another—he said he’s been to college—and he thinks I’m swell. I have hopes.” She turned to Lucy suddenly. “What about you, Lucia?” she asked, using the childhood name. “You have any sharp luck meeting boys? You won’t find anybody in Swandyke smart enough for you.”

  Lucy shook her head. “There’s nobody—not that I’m looking. You know I made that promise to Papa to go back to Swandyke when I’m done here, and where am I going to find somebody who’ll move up there with me? I never knew of a person to live in Swandyke by choice.” In fact, Lucy had given the subject a certain amount of thought. It wasn’t that she didn’t care to marry one day. She did, but, like Dolly, she didn’t want a penniless miner for a husband, a man who stank of dynamite and mine mud and who’d grab at her at night with hands that would never wash clean of grease and black grit. Nor did she care to live in a cabin that smelled of cabbage and dirty diapers. No, she, too, hoped to marry a management man who’d build her a house with an indoor bathroom and a dining room so that they wouldn’t have to eat in the kitchen. But if Dolly hadn’t found such a man in Swandyke, how could she? And it was sure she wasn’t about to meet a boy in school who’d agree to live at the top of the world. “I don’t think I’ll ever marry.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you awful bad?”

  Lucy shrugged. “I’ll be just frank. I’m not like you, Doll. There’s things worse to me than not having a husband. And I’ll have you. I think I can stand Swandyke if you’re living there.”

  “Well, where place else would I live?” Dolly replied.

  The girls had taken the trolley to the university so that Lucy could show her sister the campus. Dolly had never ridden in such a conveyance, and she slid on the hard seat each time the streetcar came to a stop. When they reached the school, Lucy reached up to pull the cord, but Dolly said she wanted to do it and yanked on the cord until the big yellow car came to a stop, its steel wheels screeching against the steel rails.

  Holding on to her skirts, Dolly stepped off the car. “Imagine that, paved streets and a cement walk. I wonder wherever does the water go when the snow melts if there isn’t any dirt for it to go into.” She stood on the sidewalk a moment and looked around, her mouth open, a little like Lucy had been just ten months before.

  But Lucy was used to the city now and felt herself worldly next to her countrified sister. “It goes into the sewer,” Lucy replied, about to explain how the storm-sewer system worked, but Dolly wasn’t listening.

  “Will you look at that.” Dolly pointed at a woman whose dress was inches above her ankles. “Is she a slut?”

  The woman heard the remark and gave Dolly a hard look, while Lucy shushed her sister.

  “Well, she’s dressed naked,” Dolly said. “You could put all the clothes she has on into your pocket.”

  “There’s lots that dress like that here.”

  Dolly watched the woman walk away. “I might could try it. I’ve got good legs, but nobody knows it. Of course, Papa would be killing mad and slap me down for a hooker.” She thought for a moment. “Do you dress like that?”

  “Living with Aunt Alice? What do you think?” Lucy laughed.

  “You have to admit it would be nice not to wear long skirts that drag through the snow and dirt. I get awful tired of sewing strips of material around the bottom of my hems to keep the muck from ruining them.”

  Lucy led the way across the campus, and Dolly forgot her hems when the sisters passed a trio of boys. Eyeing Dolly, the young men stepped off the sidewalk to let the two girls pass. One bowed as he took a pretend cape from his shoulders and threw it across the muddy walk in front of the girls. Dolly was confused, although Lucy understood the gesture and smiled.

  “Are they fresh?” Dolly whispered, and when Lucy shook her head, Dolly gave the boys a brilliant smile.

  “You a freshman?” one asked.

  “What?” Dolly replied.

  “She’s visiting,” Lucy said.

  “Just our luck.” The boy pretended to pick up the cape and put it back over his shoulders.

  The two girls walked along silently, Lucy thinking nobody had ever done a Sir Walter Raleigh impression for her. “Doll, why don’t you go to college, too?” she asked.

  Dolly looked up at her sister, startled. “Why would I do that? I never even liked high school.”

  Lucy didn’t hear the reply, because the thought, which had come upon her suddenly, now took hold. It was a splendid idea. “In three more years, I’ll be finished. You could enroll then. Despite what Pa says, Aunt Alice is a dear, and I know she’d let you live with her. You could study anything you wanted, maybe home economics, and you’d have your pick of boys here. You wouldn’t ever have to go back to Swandyke.” For Lucy, the idea was perfect. Because of the promise made to her father, she herself was tied to the mountains, but her sister would get away, and such was Lucy’s nature and the affection the girls had for each other that instead of being jealous, she was glad for Dolly. One of them would have a chance.

  “But I’d want to go back to Swandyke. I wouldn’t live anywhere else on God’s earth.”

  Lucy stared at her sister.

  “I wouldn’t be happy where there weren’t mountains. You think they’re a cage, but they make me feel safe, like they’re putting their arms around me. If I lived out here where it’s flat, I’d be afraid I’d blow away.”

  “But Doll, you don’t know that. You’ve been here hardly two days. You’d grow to like it.”

  “That’s a thing you know in your bones.”

  “You could try it, sign up for just one quarter of college. I know you’d change your mind about Swandyke.”

  Dolly shook her head. “I don’t care about learning, and besides, I’d never be happy anyplace but home. It’s a thing I know about myself.”

  And then Lucy understood. She hated Swandyke, but to her sister, the town was home. Dolly had never been ambitious, never wanted to leave, and where Lucy did indeed think of the high mountains as prison walls, Dolly took comfort in them. While Lucy thought of Swandyke as endless mountain winters and the cold and the mud, Dolly saw the town for its short, sharp summers, so hot that you could get sunburned walking to the privy. Dolly reveled in the wildflowers, like bright jewels, and the wind in the jack pines, which sounded like running water. “You could meet dozens of boys here,” Lucy said in a last attempt to change Dolly’s mind.

  “But like you said, what one of them’s ever going to live in Swandyke? No, I’ll find a husband at home.”

  Dolly went back to Swandyke after a week, saying she had had a fine time, but as they got off the trolley at the depot, Lucy saw her sister turn a moment to the far range of mountains, just a thin ridge of blue, still dotted in spots with white snow, and Doll’s eyes lit up. Lucy knew her sister’s heart was glad to be returning there.

  Doll promised to visit again, and Lucy promised to go home at Christmas, and the two girls separated, Dolly boarding the coach, then waving from a window as the train pulled out, waving until Lucy could no longer see her.

  That night when Lucy went to bed, she found a note on her pillow. “Here’s your $20 back. I make my own money now.” But there were twenty-five one-dollar bills in the e
nvelope. “Papa doesn’t know how much I make in tips. I’d be glad for you to spend it on books—gladder than if Papa gave it away.”

  After that, whenever Dolly wrote to Lucy, she enclosed a dollar or two. She never returned to Denver.

  Lucy went home at Christmas, as she had promised, happy to see her family. She loved Dolly, as well as her father and mother and all the little ones. But she was happier yet to return to school. The cold and the ugliness of the mountains affected her, made her gloomy. She would get used to all that again when she had to. She might even be happy there, since her childhood had not been an especially harsh one by mountain standards and she could force herself to look at the bright side of things. But she didn’t want to think about Swandyke until she had to, and she concentrated on her studies, making top grades, and once again, she was awarded a scholarship. When she began her third year at DU, she realized that she was half-finished with college. She was on the downhill side of her education.

  In the fall of that third year, Lucy met Ted Turpin. They did not get acquainted on campus, and in fact, Ted was not even a student at the university. He attended the Colorado School of Mines in nearby Golden, and he came into the drugstore to buy a bottle of Mercurochrome. Then he sat down on a stool at the soda fountain and ordered a Coca-Cola.

  Ted reached for the glass that Lucy set down in front of him, and she saw an angry cut on the back of his hand and said, “I can get you some cotton if you want to swab that thing with the Mercurochrome.”

  “Pretty ugly, isn’t it?”

  Lucy shrugged. She’d seen worse.

  “I got it on a gold dredge. I’ll bet you a dollar you don’t know what a gold dredge is.”

  Lucy put the tip of her tongue on her upper lip and cocked her head, narrowing her eyes at Ted. She’d never cared for boys who assumed they knew more than she did, and she thought to show up this one. He was tall and thin, with a lean face and sandy hair, and appeared so sure of himself. “And I’ll bet you two dollars I can name the dredge. It was the Liberty, wasn’t it? The other two are shut down for repairs, and there’s not but three gold dredges in Colorado.”