To Sail Beyond the Sunset

  So we did, although it didn’t work that time—I didn’t catch again until early in 1901. But it was always delirious fun to try, and try we did, again and again. As Mammy Della once told me, “Lawsy a mercy, chile, jes hunnuds an’ hunnuds a times ain’t nuffin happen a tall.”

  How did Mammy Della get in here? Brian found her, that’s how, when I started being too big to do a washing easily. Our first house, a tiny one on Twenty-sixth Street, was only a short distance from darktown; Della lived within walking distance, and she would work all day for a dollar and carfare. That she didn’t use the streetcar was irrelevant; that dime was part of the bargain. Della had been born a slave and could not read or write…but she was as fine a lady as I have ever known, with a heart full of love for all who would accept her love.

  Her husband was a roustabout with Ringling Brothers; I never laid eyes on him. She continued to come to see me—or to see Nancy, “her” baby—after I no longer needed help, sometimes bringing along her latest grandchild…then she would drop her grandchild in with Nancy and insist on doing my work. Sometimes I could nail her down with a cup of tea. Not often. Later she went back to work for me with Carol. Then with each baby, up to 1911, when “the Lord took her in His arms.” If there is a heaven, Della is there.

  Can it be that Heaven is as real as Kansas City to those who believe in Heaven? This would fit, it seems to me, the World-as-Myth cosmology. I must ask Jubal about this, when I get out of this jail and back to Boondock.

  In gourmet restaurants in Boondock “Potatoes à la Della” are highly esteemed, as are some others of her recipes. Della taught me a great deal. I don’t think that I was able to teach her anything, as she was far more sophisticated and knowledgeable than I in the subjects we had in common.

  These were my first five “cash register” babies:

  Nancy Irene, December 1, 1899 or January 5, 1900

  Carol (Santa Carolita) (named for my Aunt Carole) January 1, 1902

  Brian, Jr., March 12, 1905

  George Edward, February 14, 1907

  Marie Agnes, April 5, 1909

  After Marie I did not catch again until the spring of 1912. That one was my spoiled brat and favorite child, Woodrow Wilson…who was later my lover, Theodore Bronson…and much later, my husband Lazarus Long. I don’t know why I didn’t catch sooner, but it was not from lack of trying; Briney and I tried to ring the cash register at every opportunity. We did not care whether I caught or not; we did it for fun…and if we missed, that simply postponed those several weeks when we would have to refrain before and after each birth. Oh, not refrain from everything; I became quite skilled with hands and mouth and so did Briney. But for solid day in and day out happy fun, we both preferred the old-fashioned sport, whether it was missionary style or eighteen other ways.

  Perhaps I could account for all the times I failed to catch if I had a calendar of the Mauve Decade, with a record of my menstrual periods. The calendar would be no problem, but a record of my menses, while I did keep one at that time, is long gone and irretrievable—or nearly so; it would take a Time Corps operation to retrieve it. But here is my theory: Briney was often away on business; he was “ringing the cash register” his own way, as an analyst and planner for corporate mining ventures, one whose exceptional talents were increasingly in demand.

  Neither of us had heard of the simple fourteen-day rule for ovulation, or the thermometer check, much less the more subtle and more reliable techniques developed in the latter half of the twentieth century. Dr. Rumsey was as good a family doctor as you could find at that time and he was not constrained by the taboos of the time—he had been sent to us by the Howard Foundation—but Dr. Rumsey knew no more about this than we did.

  If it were possible to prepare a calendar showing my menses 1900-1912, then mark on it by the fourteen-day rule my probable dates of ovulation, then mark the dates that Briney was away from Kansas City, it is long odds that such a chart would show that those little wigglers never had a target to shoot at on those occasions that I failed to catch. This seems certain, as Briney was a prize stallion and I was Myrtle the Fertile Turtle.

  But I am glad that I did not know the rules of ovulation at that time, because there is nothing that beats the tingling excitement of lying back, legs open and eyes closed and bare to the possibility of impregnation. And I know that this is not just one of Maureen’s many eccentricities; I have checked this with endless other women: the knowledge that it can happen adds to the zest.

  I am not running down contraception; it’s the greatest boon to women in all history, as efficient contraception frees women from that automatic enslavement to men that has been the norm through all histories. But the ancient structure of our female nervous systems is not tuned to contraception; it is tuned to getting pregnant.

  So it was grand for Maureen that, once I ceased being a bawdy schoolgirl, I almost never needed to use contraception.

  One unusually balmy February day in 1912 Briney nailed me to the ground on a bank of the Blue River, almost exactly duplicating an earlier occasion, March fourth, 1899, on a bank of the Marais des Cygnes. We both delighted in making love outdoors, especially with a spice of danger. On the occasion of that 1912 prank I was wearing opera-length silk hose and green round garters, and my husband photographed me so, standing, naked in the sunlight, facing the camera and smiling—and that picture played a major part in my life six years later, and seventy years later, and over two thousand years later.

  That picture, I am told, changed the entire history of the human race in several time lines.

  Maybe so, maybe not. I’m not fully sold on World-as-Myth even though I am a Time Corps field agent, even though the smartest people I know tell me it’s the real McCoy. Father always required me to think for myself, and Mr. Clemens urged me to, also. I was taught that the one Unforgivable Sin, the offense against one’s own integrity, was to accept anything at all simply on authority.

  Nancy has two birthdays: the day I bore her, which was registered with the Foundation, and the date we handed out to the world, the day that matched more properly the date of my marriage to Brian Smith. That was easy to do at the end of the nineteenth century, as in Missouri vital statistics were just beginning to be taken. Most records were still of the family-Bible sort. The county clerk of Jackson County recorded births and deaths and marriages if offered to him, but nothing happened if such milestones were not reported.

  Nancy’s birth was reported correctly to the Foundation, a report signed by me and by Brian, and certified by Dr. Rumsey, then a month later Dr. Rumsey filed a birth certificate with the county clerk, with the false date.

  Easy to do—Nancy was born at home; all my babies were born at home until the middle thirties. So there were no hospital records to confuse the issue. On January eighth I wrote the happy news (false date) to several people in Thebes and sent an announcement to the Lyle County Leader.

  Why such a silly hooraw to fuzz the date of birth of a baby? Because the customs of those times were cruel, cruel, harshly cruel. Mrs. Grundy would have counted on her fingers and whispered that we had to get married to give our sinful bastard a name she shouldn’t bear. Yes. It was all a part of the nastiness of the grim age of Bowdler, Comstock, and Grundy, the vultures that corrupted what could have been a civilization.

  Near the end of that century single women openly gave birth to babies whose fathers might or might not be around. But this was not the behavior of a truly free culture; it was the other swing of the pendulum and not easy for mother or child. The old rules were being broken but no workable new code had as yet evolved.

  Our expedient kept everyone in Thebes County from knowing that sweet little Nancy was a “bastard.” Of course Mother knew the date was false…but Mother was not in Thebes; she was in St. Louis with Grandpa and Grandma Pfeiffer. And Father had gone back into the Army.

  I still don’t know how to look at this. A girl should not pass judgment on her parents…and I shan’t.

  The Span
ish-American War had brought me closer to Mother. Her worry and grief made me decide that she really did love Father; they just kept it private from the children.

  Then, on the day of my wedding, while Mother was dressing me, she gave me that motherly advice that traditionally the bride’s mother gives the bride to insure matrimonial tranquility.

  Can you guess what she told me? Better sit down to hear this:

  She told me that I must be prepared to endure without resentment submission to my husband for “family duties.” It was the Lord’s plan, explained in Genesis, and was the price that women must pay for the privilege of having children…and if I would just look at it that way, I could submit cheerfully. But I must realize also that men have needs different from ours; you must expect to meet his needs. Don’t think of it as animal, or ugly—just remember your dear children.

  I said, “Yes, Mother. I will remember.”

  So what happened? Did Mother cut Father off? Whereupon he went back into the Army? Or did he tell her that he wanted to get out of that little town, so deep in the gumbo mud, and try a second career in the Army?

  I don’t know. I don’t need to know; it’s not my business. Father did go back into the Army, so quickly after my wedding that I feel sure he had it planned before then. His letters showed that he was in Tampa for a while, then Guantánamo in Cuba…then clear out in the Philippines, in Mindanao, where the Moslem Moros were killing more of our soldiers than the Spaniards had ever managed…and then he was in China.

  After the Boxer Rebellion I thought my father was dead, for I did not hear for a long time. Then at last he was at the Presidio in San Francisco and his letter from there referred to other letters I had never received.

  He left the Army in 1912. He was sixty that year—was he retired on age? I don’t know. Father always told you what he wanted you to know; if you crowded him, he might treat you to some creative fiction…or he might tell you to go straight to hell.

  He came to Kansas City. Brian invited him to come live with us, but Father had already found himself a flat and settled into it before he let us know that he was in town, indeed before we knew that he had left the Army.

  Five years later he did move in with us because we needed him.

  In the 1900’S Kansas City was an exciting place. Despite three months in Chicago ten years earlier I was not used to a big city. When I went there as a bride, Kansas City had 150,000 people in it. There were electric streetcars, almost as many automobiles as horse-drawn vehicles, trolley wires and telephone wires and power wires everywhere. All of the main streets were paved and more of the side streets were being paved each year; the park system was already famous worldwide and still not finished. The public library had (unbelievable!) nearly half a million volumes.

  Kansas City’s Convention Hall was so big that the Democratic party was scheduled to hold its 1900 presidential nominating convention in it—then it burned down overnight and its reconstruction was under way before the ashes were cold and the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan in that hall just ninety days after it burned down.

  Meanwhile the Republicans renominated President McKinley and, with him, Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, hero of San Juan Hill. I don’t know for whom my husband voted…but it never seemed to displease him when someone would notice a resemblance between him and Teddy Roosevelt.

  I think Briney would have told me, had I asked—but in 1900 politics was not a woman’s business, and I was doing my utter best to simulate publicly the perfect modest housewife, interested only in kirk, kitchen, and kids, as the kaiser put it. (“Kirche, Küche, und Kinder.”)

  Then in September 1901? only six months into his second term, our president was murdered most vilely…and the dashing young war hero was precipitated into the highest office.

  There are time lines in which Mr. McKinley was not assassinated and Colonel Roosevelt was never president, and his distant cousin was not nominated in 1932, which utterly changes the patterns of wars, both in 1917 and 1941. Our Time Corps mathematicians deal with these matters, but the structural simulations are large even for the new computer complex combining Mycroft Holmes IV with Pallas Athene, and are quite beyond me. I’m a baby factory, a good cook, and I aim to be a panic in bed. It seems to me that the secret of happiness in life is to know what you are and then be content to be that, in style, head up and proud, and not yearn to be something else. Ambition can never change a sparrow into a hawk, or a wren into a bird of paradise. I’m a Jenny Wren; it suits me.

  ▣

  Pixel is a fine example of being what he is in style. His tail is always up and he is always sure of himself. Today he brought me still another mouse, so I praised him and petted him, and kept the mouse until he left, then flushed it away.

  A midnight thought finally surfaced. These mice are the first proof anyone has had (I’m almost sure) that Pixel can take anything with him when he grasps a probability and walks through walls (if that describes what he does) (well, at least it labels it).

  What message can I send, and to whom, and how can I fasten it to him?

  ▣

  In shifting from schoolgirl to housewife I had to add to Maureen’s private decalogue. One was: Thou shalt always live within thy household allowance. Another I formulated earlier: Thou shalt not let thy children see thee cry—and when it became clear that Brian would have to be away frequently, I added him in. Never let him see me cry and be sure to offer him a smiling face when he returns…don’t, Don’t, DON’T sour his return with fiddling details about how a pipe froze, or the grocer boy was rude, or see what that dad-ratted dog did to my pansy bed. Make him happy to come home, sorry to have to leave.

  Do let children welcome him; don’t let them smother him. He wants a mother for his children…but he wants a willing and available concubine, too. If you are not she, he will find one elsewhere.

  Another commandment—Promises must be kept—especially ones made to children. So think three times before making one. In case of tiniest doubt, don’t promise.

  Above all, don’t save up punishments “until your father comes home.”

  Many of these rules did not yet apply when I had only one baby and that one still in diapers. But I did think out most of my rules ahead of time and then wrote them down in my private journal. Father had warned me that I had no moral sense; therefore it would be necessary to anticipate decisions I would have to make. I could not depend on that little voice of conscience to guide me on an ad hoc basis; I did not have that little voice. Therefore I would have to reason things out instead, ahead of time, forming rules of conduct somewhat like the Ten Commandments, only more so, and without the glaring defects of an ancient tribal code intended only for barbaric herdsmen.

  But none of my rules were really difficult and I had a wonderfully good time!

  I never tried to find out how much Briney was paid whenever I had a baby; I did not want to know. It was more fun to believe that it was a million dollars each time, paid in red-gold ingots the color of my hair, each golden ingot too heavy for one man to lift. A king’s favorite, lavished with jewels, is proud of her “fallen” state; it is the poor drab on the street, renting her body for pennies, who is ashamed of her trade. She is a failure and she knows it. In my daydream I was a king’s mistress, not a sad-faced mattress-back.

  But the Foundation must have paid fairly well. Attend me—Our first house in Kansas City was close to minimum for respectable middle class. It was near the colored district; in 1899 this made it a cheap neighborhood even though it was segregated for whites. Besides, it was on an east-west street and faced north, two more points against it. It was on a high terrace with a long flight of steps to climb. It was a one-story frame house, built in 1880 with its plumbing added as an afterthought—the bath opened directly off the kitchen. It had no dining room, no hallway, just one bedroom. It had no proper basement, just a dirt-floor cellar for the furnace and coal bin. It had no attic, just a low, unfinished space.

  But houses for rent th
at we could afford were scarce; Briney had been lucky to find it. I had thought for a while that I was going to have my first baby in a boarding house.

  Briney took me to see it before he closed the deal, a courtesy I appreciated as married women could not sign contracts in those days; he did not have to consult me. “Think you could live here?”

  Could I! Running water, a flush toilet, a bathtub, a gas range, gas lamp fixtures, a furnace—“Briney, it’s lovely! But can we afford it?”

  “That’s my problem, Mrs. S., not yours. The rent will be paid. In fact you will pay it for me, as my agent, the first of every month. Our landlord, a gentleman named Ebenezer Scrooge—”

  “‘Ebenezer Scrooge’ indeed!”

  “I think that was the name. But there was a streetcar going by; I may have misunderstood. Mr. Scrooge will collect in person, the first of every month, except Sundays, in which case he will collect on the Saturday preceding, not the Monday following; he was firm about that. And he wants cash; no checks. He was firm about that, too. Real cash, silver cartwheels, not banknotes.”

  Despite the house’s many shortcomings its rent was high. I gasped when Briney told me: Twelve dollars a month. “Oh, Briney!”

  “Get your feathers down, freckled one. We’re going to be in it just one year. If you think you can stand it that long, you won’t have to deal with dear Mr. Scrooge—his name is O’Hennessy—as I can tie it down for twelve months with a discount of four points. Does that mean anything to you?”

  I thought about it. “Mortgage money is six percent today…so three points represents the average cost of hiring the money, since you are paying in advance and they don’t own the money until they have earned it, month by month. One point must be because Mr. O’Hennessy Scrooge won’t have to make twelve trips here to collect his rent. So that comes to a hundred and thirty-eight dollars and twenty-four cents.”

  “Flame Top, you continue to amaze me.”