Two-Gun & Sun (12 page)

Of course you did, she said. You were becoming a woman and you were wearing little girls' frocks.

I studied my shape in the three-sided looking glass. When I was a child there were no full-length glasses in our home, just tiny shaving mirrors nailed up high for our father and Will. Though I had begun to note how my little brothers' boyish bodies, just before they jumped in the water, would take on the shape of men, legs and backsides muscled up like the haunches of a horse, thin undergarments rucked up into their backsides, twin figs tucked between. Occasionally, at the pond near a twisting mountain trail, no trunks at all. A tumble of ruddy flesh that caught my breath. Nothing like my memories of Pete and Pat in the bath with me, pink darts between their legs. The twins had changed before my eyes. I couldn't pass our Italian neighbour's fig tree, its plump fruit dangling, without staring. Perhaps I had focused so much on them I neglected to observe the changes in myself.

The whole time I was brooding over this, Meena was whipping a measuring tape around my waist and then my hips, stopping to record the numbers in a slender notebook.

I was also a swimmer, I told her. I grew these shoulders. And then these.

As I looked down I was seeing that warm afternoon when I stripped and dived into the pond, swimming well beyond them, showing off. Then I rose, water streaming off me, triumphant.

Pat had pointed at me and shouted, Tits!

I had been rubbing across my itchy chest with the backs of my arms and only at his outburst saw plump nipples like ripening plums, angry red. In that instant my world changed, because I had. I was no longer invited on their hikes. Couldn't climb their trees or sleep in the tent with them. I was alone, now. A female. I hated it.

Your bosom? Meena asked. She dropped her voice, A handful each, that is exactly what a woman should have.

I slapped a palm over a breast and sighed. More than a handful.

Meena smiled with her eyes. A man's hand, is what I meant.

I showed just enough surprise that she must have guessed that no man's hand had ventured there. Another woman might have been proud of that. But not me. I flushed from my throat all the way up to my ears, the shame of it, to have been so poorly loved in my twenty-nine years.

She pulled the tape around my chest. Thirty-four, she announced. And what man will you bring to the opera?

I'm not sure. It would be have to be someone with interests in mining.

And why is that?

Why—because I've been invited as the publisher. It's business.

Business, she repeated, and shook her head.

Do you have someone? I asked.

She turned me around to measure me from nape of neck to ankle.

Yes, she said. Fifty-eight.

My side reflection showed I was only slightly taller than the delicate Meena. Not much thicker, either. I cast a sideways glance at her bosom, but her curves were ensconced in a ruffled blouse beneath the scarf.

The lavender-grey had been cleaned and pressed but was, I could see now, still ill-fitting. Meena tugged at the pleats and tisked.

I could never wear such a skirt, either, she said.

Either.

We need something modern, yes?

She continued measuring, height, hips, waist, neck to waist, and called out the numbers, sixty-six, thirty-six, twenty-three, eighteen and one-quarter. At some point during our talk a shop assistant had appeared and taken over the recording of numbers.

Mr. Bones, she said to him, What do you think of blue?

His head was bent, but I saw the flash of his glasses just then as he turned.

I hissed, Is that Doctor?

Her face went soft for a moment. Mr. Bones, she said, is not really a doctor. Are you, dearest? she called out.

I heard him chuckle. He had shuffled to a table against the wall.

Did someone tell you he was?

I thought back, and said, Morris.

He got his name setting a broken bone is all. He's been patching people up ever since.

Myself included, I said. He put a poultice on my eyes. And Morris Cohen, I called out. You put leeches on his.

Her assistant made not even a chuckle this time. Instead, he rooted amongst bolts of cloth stacked on the table.

She smiled.

He can stitch, that one. He's good with needle and thread. That blue one, Mr. Bones, she said, pointing, and he heaved the bolt onto the counter.

I was thinking navy-blue, sleeves straight, a high collar, like a suit jacket, like hers.

This was darker than navy and yet luminescent. She drew out a length and I saw that it was sheer, like the drapes over the walls.

Sleek, she said, with slits all around so you can dance. She had the pencil again and sketched in the notepad a thin city girl in a shift. She held it under my nose. Yes? And underneath it, something to pick up the colours of your hair.

She pointed to another bolt and it landed with a thump. I twisted away from the mirror to look at it. Almost a burnt orange. Not a colour I would choose. Then she draped the sheer midnight blue over it, and showed the effect of a glimpse of orange through it. I felt my chest tighten.

Some flashes of this paprika shade here and here, she said. With her pencil she indicated slits in the skirts. And here, she added, her palm against her own chest. You will turn heads. You will be most
avant-garde
. Come back here in—she rolled her eyes, counting to herself—one week for a fitting.

*

On the counter when I arrived home was a bundle of newspapers. Another gift of a lesson. This, it said, is how a newspaper should look. I yanked the string where I stood. Out spilled old copies of
The South China Morning Post
and
North China Daily News,
both weeks old, and I took them upstairs to devour them over dinner. The South China paper was out of Hong Kong, I discovered, and the North, Shanghai. In one was a photograph of a poor area in Shanghai and I saw a place very much as Vincent had described. It could have been taken in Lousetown, then transported across the Pacific and set down onto the page in place of a likeness of a street corner in Shanghai, they were that similar.

Inspired, I headed downstairs first thing in the morning to hammer out my first news story, the shooting of old Mr. George. I typed slowly, rubbing out errors with a round eraser I had found in another desk drawer. It had a hole in the middle, and I strung it through with cord and tied it to the edge of the typewriter for easier access. I reached for it often, smudges blooming where I pressed too hard. The third paragraph gave me trouble. It was easy to describe the shooting but difficult to describe Silver's reasoning. I struggled with the wording so many times I had to resort to striking through again, or leave holes in the page from repeated rubbing with the eraser.

A man was shot dead in the Black Mountain Hotel dining room Sunday Night. Mr. Lloyd George, formerly of Wales, was seen descending the stairs
naked as a
wearing
absolute
little more than hat and shoes when a shot rang out, leaving him dead.

Sheriff Sylvester (Silver) Evans deemed the man's appearance indecent and his own actions appropriate.
Citing
Insisting on
Calling it
Declaring
Claiming moral defence on behalf of the town …

In the shop the next night I thanked Vincent for the newspapers, and resolved to set a tiny amount aside from the loan to order my own copies from all over Asia, Europe, and North America, to study their methods of news coverage and headline writing.

The mechanics I had to learn from him. He had arrived unexpectedly, which was the purpose of the keys, the cap crammed into a back pocket, a smock in his hands. I excused myself to go upstairs where I'd left my coveralls. I crossed the floor toward my cupboard, my stride catching for a moment when a beam of yellow shot up the hole. Vincent must have just switched on the lights in the pressroom. I stepped into my coveralls, fastened the buttons, wondering what he was doing right then. I knelt by the hole, palms flat, face turned so that my left eye could scan the room below. All I could see was darkness. He might have switched the lights off again. And then I got the fright of my life when the darkness tipped back and his face looked up, directly at me. I scooted backwards to get clear of the hole, and crawled to the tub where I sat up, knees under chin, eyes closed, blood pounding. What if he saw me? I stood, composed myself, and headed downstairs.

*

We worked side by side, heads bent, composing sticks in our left hands, thumbing ingots of lead the size of baby's toes. With our right hands we plucked type from the wooden trays, dropping them in place along the stick, left thumb pressing again.

Vincent's fingers flew as he talked, reading my copy and following each line, dropping the type back to front. I was much slower, being new to this line of work—and taking several opportunities to glance up at the hole, relieved to see nothing from any angle, but wondering if that was because there was no one up there to see.

I was given the task of the larger fonts for the headlines. Even so, I misspelled several, unskilled as I was in the art of reading in reverse.

His hand darted out over mine and tapped on the misplaced letters. He took the composing stick from me, pulled out the incorrect type.

Then he showed me how my miscalculations had created a small hole in the page below what would be the centre fold, once it was printed and folded.

Not a big deal, he said. Insert one of these.

Vincent had already told me that most shops had images the size of postage stamps at the ready for just such instances: a bell at Christmastime, a boat in summer, even a call for advertisements, or an image that represented the newspaper, such as a star or a sun. I had thought at once of a bullet.

Which would you suggest? I asked now.

Surprise me, he said, then slapped the composing stick into my palm and headed for the door and his other job in Lousetown.

I ran a finger along the stick, then my lip. Salt. His. Then I raised the stick and, with the tip of my tongue touching the metal, tasted again.

*

The next day my fingertips stretched across the calendar from 1 to 11. I took up the pencil and struck through the number, flexed my fingers, turned my hand to my face, next, and practised the grip required for the composing stick.

Better. Each day, better.

The key turned in the lock and I greeted my printer brightly. We set to work.

The first newssheet was ready for printing. The metal frame with rows of lead type, all different sizes, all reversed and running right to left, looked like Chinese.

He leaned over the table-top press to drop the frame in place. With fingers and thumb he squared each corner of a sheet of paper over the frame, then gave me the command, Now.

With both hands on the handle of the large wheel I applied all my weight and cranked, until the slab with plate and paper ran under the roller and then out.

Go ahead, he said.

I peeled back the page and the air left my lungs. I was almost sick with joy.

It's beautiful, I said. It's perfect.

No, he said. A couple of spots where the ink is collecting. We'll fix that.

But he was smiling broadly.

I inspected the headline of my single news article:

Man Shot Dead

Sheriff Claims Moral Defence

I couldn't tell the whole story, old Mr. George's sex spread out like a starfish, the vulnerability of a man. That would be more truth than the town could stomach. Uncle would agree. But I admired the headline for what it implied, with words like “claims” and “defence.” Those words said it all, and for now that was plenty.

The page included a piece introducing me to the community, using the very type that Vincent had assembled:

The Bullet's New Publisher Is Lila Sinclair

The announcement was just a formality, though, as everyone must have known of me by now, but it included a call for ads for upcoming issues. The opera company, hoping for a sellout performance, had already sent us that pre-formed metal plate and it, along with the added date, times and location, took up the entire bottom right corner. Immediately above it, a smaller, plain boxed ad from San Francisco, looking to hire help to stake claims. In the other bottom corner, the notice from Morris, and finally, anchoring the upper left side and down to the centre, my article on the shooting.

To fill the hole below the fold that Vincent had noted, I composed a news bulletin too small to count as an article:

Revolution Comes to Black Mtn

It was the first item I had done myself, from writing to setting headline and type, and although it was small with just a few words noting the expected arrival of the famous man, I waited, while Vincent made the adjustments, every part of me electric, for the moment when his attention might move from the flaws on the page to the bulletin. I had written it for him, as a thank you for the book he gave me.

Okay, he said, let's get it rolling.

We took turns cranking the wheel. In less than an hour my newssheets sat in a neat stack.

Most bindery shops use a bone for folding, he said.

He rooted in a drawer and said, Here.

It was long and ivory-coloured, polished from years of use, and looked like it had come from the leg of a deer. He folded a page in half and smacked the bone along the fold, creating a sharp crease. Then he handed it to me and pointed to the stack.

Your turn.

I knew that tomorrow we would take the page form and break up the type, returning each to its slot in the wooden drawer, just as we'd done with the many misspelled and mis-ordered headlines that had comprised my first attempts. There would be more newssheets before the large press was running and we could print the first full-sized newspaper. Keeping the boiler at full steam would be its own problem. The large press had many parts that required constant tinkering until the right tension was reached. The rollers, the ink tray, the type were the few obvious parts that I had become familiar with. The paper was fed from a roll that might break. This would mean the length of paper snapping free from the roll and wrapping around the ink rollers. A web break, Vincent called it. But the intricate inner workings were still a mystery to me. Each stop to reset type for typographical errors or re-print pages for last-minute news, or to clean out breaks or fix mechanical breakdowns, would cost us precious time. Vincent had his other job, or he might have solved all the quirks by now. In the meantime, at least the newssheets would allow me to cover the news.