Fletcher's Woman Read Free

places inside.
    Soon, they would be high on the mountain, these husbands and fathers and sons, cutting and felling timber for Mr. Jonas Wilkes. To Rachel, arriving in the night, by wagon, that mountain had seemed a looming and monstrous thing, set apart somehow from the other mountains of her experience.
    She pulled her blue woolen shawl from the satchel and wrapped it around her head and shoulders. As she stepped outside the tent, into the incessant drizzle and the half light of a struggling dawn, the stench sharpened. Human waste, probably in open trenches dug too near the camp.
    Rachel’s revulsion was like acid in her throat and nostrils; she longed to run back to the tent—as crude as it was, it was the only refuge she had—and hide.
    But there was no hiding from the desperate hunger that gnawed at her even as she tried not to retch. She raised her chin, silently defying the tears that pressed behind her eyes and ached in her throat.
    All around her, other women left other tents, herding listless, silent children toward the center of the odd village. Rachel followed them, her shawl drawn tightly around her slender figure.
    The dining hall was, Rachel soon discovered, just another tent. It was large, though, and adequately lit by kerosene lanterns that flickered and smoked on the long, rough-hewn wood tables. There was sawdust on the floor; it was damp and pungently fragrant and it stuck to Rachel’s scuffed black shoes as she walked.
    The delicious warmth radiating from the big black cookstove at one end of the tent seemed to reach out and caress Rachel’s frozen bones, and the comforting smell of sizzling bacon came to meet her like a welcoming friend. She forgot the hideous odor waiting beyond the tent walls and allowed herself a deep breath.
    Hunger impelled Rachel toward the table where the food was being distributed. She took a blue enamel plate and a tin fork and gave her name to a reedy, wheezing woman who recorded it carefully into a ruled account book.
    A small, chattering Chinaman wrenched Rachel’s plate from her hand, graced it with three slices of bacon, one egg, and a piece of toasted bread, then surrendered it again. She helped herself to a mug and coffee from the large pot sitting at the far end of the serving table.
    Long benches lined the other tables, and Rachel found a place within the radius of the stove’s warmth and sat down.
    Looking at the meal before her, she trembled with mingled guilt and anticipation. Her father hadn’t eaten the day before, nor had she, but now he was on his way up the mountain to work a full day. Would Mr. Wilkes see that his men had food to eat before they began their tasks?
    The splintery benches began to fill with severe, wary-eyed women and fussy children. Rachel forced herself to believe that her father would soon enjoy an even better meal, and then she began to eat. She chewed slowly, savoring the food.
    Now and then, at some other table, a defiant spirited giggle would erupt, dispelling a little of the gloom. Covertly, Rachel scanned the sallow faces of the other women, looking for the person who could live in Tent Town and still laugh like that. She longed to find her and somehow become her friend.
    Involuntarily, Rachel sighed. It had been a long, long time since she’d been in one place long enough to make a friend.
    When Rachel had finished eating, she took her empty plate back to the Chinaman. He snatched it from her and hurled it into a large tin washtub at his feet, obviously outraged by her ignorance of the rules. Then he railed at her in his odd, quick language.
    Rachel blushed with embarrassment, all too aware that the other sounds, those of eating and muted conversation, had ceased. Everyone was probably staring, thinking what a fool the new woman was. She tried to say that she was sorry, that she hadn’t known what to do, but the Chinaman gave her no opportunity. Rather, he raged on, like a tiny, furious