The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles

Chapter 18-2

As I started up the stairs, Mrs. McNab said,

“We gave Anna Marie Mallie’s old room. I think she feels her

mother’s presence there.”

I spent most of that first evening providing

my mother and the McNabs a perfunctory account of my life for the

past three years. The glaring exception was Katharina Schreiber. I

didn’t mention her. That would have to wait until I could talk

privately with my mother. However, I spent an hour in conversation

with Mr. McNab, who was surprisingly cordial given the fact that I

had fogged it out of the country, leaving my daughter behind.

“I must say, I found your dispatches from

the Orient enlightening,” he said. “And I know Jim Harris was duly

impressed with your reportorial skills.”

“It was a tremendous education for me to

experience that part of the world,” I said.

“Do you think the French can maintain

control of such a vast area of Asia? As I recall, they have

supremacy over at least three countries, and your reports indicated

there is growing local resistance.”

I was happy that the conversation was

consumed with the politics of the Far East and not my unpopular

decision three years before to leak out of the landscape.

“I think the French will hang on mainly

because the insurgency in Indochina has very little money and no

political backing from any other country,” I said. “But eventually,

I think the insurgency will grow and gain momentum because most of

the people there want to be free of the French.”

McNab considered this and then took out his

pipe and lit it. “What are your plans now? Are you home for good?

Or do you have other journeys to make?”

“I guess it depends on what the Denver

Sun has in store for me.”

“I’m sure you will get your old post back…

Weren’t you an editor before?”

I nodded. In fact, I didn’t know if I wanted

my old job again. Had Mallie not died, it is entirely likely we may

have moved to Chicago, where I had been offered a reporting job

with the Chicago Tribune. The idea of working in one of the

greatest newspaper cities of the world still appealed to me. Even

more enticing, now that I had experienced three years abroad, would

be a posting somewhere as a foreign correspondent. But I wasn’t

about to tell my mother or the McNabs that, at least not just

yet.

The McNabs’ house was large. It had six

bedrooms, and I was in one overlooking the backyard. From my room,

I could see the small gazebo where Mallie and I used to sit in the

evenings during our courting days. Looking at it was difficult. I

made up my mind that if I were to stay in Denver, I would need to

find a house for Anna Marie and me and possibly my mother if she

chose to remain in Denver.

I learned that during the past three years,

my mother had traveled by train every few months between Lawrence,

Kansas, and Denver. She had taken a business partner in her

dressmaking business in Lawrence so the enterprise would be managed

during her long absences. After a while, she sold her part of the

company to her partner and for a while considered starting up again

in Denver.

“I’m too old to start over,” she told me one

day. “Just look at these hands.” She held them out for me to see.

The knuckles were swollen with arthritis, and the fingers were not

as straight as they once were.

“Dressmaking is too intricate for me,” she

continued. “It’s a young person’s occupation. I am already

sixty-one.”

“You could hire people to do the

sewing.”

Mother shook her head. “Dressmaking is not

the same today. It is all done with electric machines. Women don’t

buy made-to-order dresses anymore. They buy ready-to-wear clothes.

It’s the way the women’s fashion business is going.” I am just too

old and stubborn to keep up.”

“Sounds like progress to me.”

“Snakes hooves!” she interrupted. “I didn’t

want to invest in those new-fangled electric sewing contraptions,

and my business partner did. She was rock-ribbed about it. I was

just as hard-shell as she was, but I am too damned old to make the

fur fly over it.”

I nodded. This didn’t sound like the mother

with whom I had grown up. She was never one to back down from

anything and certainly not the march of progress, unrelenting as it

was.

“Let’s not talk any more about it,” she said

finally. “It gives me a headache.”

I spent the next couple of weeks

reacquainting myself with the Denver Sun and its owner, Mr.

Harris. He was more than gracious in welcoming me back, and when I

handed him ten stories I had written on the conditions in the Far

East and French Indochina, he was delighted.

He offered me my old job as assistant

managing editor, and I accepted. The past couple of years, I had

lived the life of the foreign correspondent, and I knew that was

what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, the circulation and revenues of

Denver Sun were not sufficient to support a stable of

foreign correspondents. I was already looking toward Chicago and

perhaps an international posting with the Chicago

Tribune.

For the next several weeks, I spent almost

every nonworking day with Anna Marie and my mother. There were

excursions to the zoo, to various parks, even to a circus. I was

trying to make up for lost time. Of course, I knew that was futile.

There were only a few weeks before Anna Marie would be back in

school, and I wanted as much time with her as I could get. Truth be

known, I was a little afraid that she didn’t know me.

One day she came out onto the front porch

where I was reading my newspaper and announced that she would be in

the third grade in September.

“You didn’t know that, did you?” she

said.

“No, I didn’t… but I do now.”

“You were gone so long, Papa,” she said,

crawling up next to me on the rattan settee.

“Yes, I was… but I’m home now.”

“Why did you go away?”

“It’s difficult to explain… I—”

“Oma said you were sad,” she interjected,

“because mama was in heaven.”

“Yes, that’s one reason.”

“Were you angry with me?”

“No, no… Why would you think that?”

“Because you left me and went far away.”

“No, princess… I would never leave you

because I was angry with you. But someday I might have to leave

again for my work.”

“I don’t want you ever to leave again, Papa…

Promise me.”

“I can’t promise that… but I promise if I do

leave, it will not be for such a long time again.”

“I guess that’s okay,” she said as she

placed her head on my shoulder. Then looking up at me, she said, “I

miss Mama.”

“I do too, sweetheart. I do too.”

After I had been in Denver for about a

month, I began looking for a house to rent. I wasn’t sure I wanted

to buy something because I secretly was thinking about moving to

Chicago and taking Anna Marie and my mother with me. Of course, I

didn’t disclose those plans to anybody. However, one day, my mother

and I were out looking at rental houses when she suddenly

questioned my motives.

“Why are you renting? Why don’t you buy a

place?”

“I don’t know… I thought I would rent first

until I find a place to buy.”

“Bosh… Sounds like to me you’re just beatin’

the devil around the stump by renting rather than buying. Tells me

you aren’t planning on staying put for long.”

As usual, my mother saw right through

me.

That was when I decided to tell her about

the possibility of moving to Chicago and a new post with the

Chicago Tribune. After that, I told her about Katharina.

“Well, now doesn’t that put

things in a state of hugger-mugger.”

I swallowed hard and decided to let what I

had said sink in a bit more. We were standing on the front porch of

a rental house that was about five blocks from the McNabs place. My

mother settled into one of the chairs on the porch.

“I guess you’d better tell me all about this

baroness of yours.”

“First of all, she isn’t mine… We’re just

getting to know each other.”

“You don’t have to gild the lily with me,

William. Just tell me straight why you want to make a mash on this

woman.”

For the next thirty minutes or so, I related

the adventures Katharina, and I had shared on the high seas, in

Honolulu, Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Hong Kong. I told her about my

time in Manila with Katharina and her brother and how they had come

to Saigon on their way to Germany to deal with her so-called German

problem.

She took it all in, never saying a word. She

stood up and walked to a railing opposite where I was standing.

Then she asked the consequential question.

“Where does all of this leave Anna

Marie?”

“She will come with me, naturally.”

“Really? You would snatch the McNabs’ only

grandchild, their only link to their dead daughter, away from them

and take her to Chicago or perhaps to some godforsaken part of the

world?”

It was then that I realized I hadn’t

entirely thought through my plans and the impact they would have on

the McNabs, my mother, and Anna Marie.

“And when do you plan on telling the McNabs

about Baroness Schreiber?”

As usual, my mother had gone right to the

heart of the matter. My plans for Chicago and my relationship with

Katharina, whatever it was to become, would need to be dealt with

more adroitly. We agreed it was best not to mention anything about

Chicago or Katharina to the McNabs for the time being.

“No sense puttin’ a spoke in the wheel with

the McNabs until you know exactly what you are going to do,” Mother

said.

About three weeks later, I received a letter

from Katharina. It was inside of an envelope that belonged to her

father’s business. I wondered if sending me a letter that way was

intentional in an effort to avoid any embarrassing questions.

The letter was long, and it began with

Katharina expressing concern for Manfred in the Philippines. Nine

months before, the Spanish authorities executed the Filipino

nationalist hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. Then, with President William

McKinley’s inauguration in March, the prospect of hostilities

between the United States and Spain over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the

Philippines was becoming more evident.

She had written to Manfred, urging him to

leave Manila because if hostilities between the United States and

Spain did break out, he was sure to be incarcerated.

“He refuses to leave, however,” Katharina

wrote. “So I am asking you, William, if you would write him and see

if you can convince him to leave.”

About halfway through the letter,

Katharina’s language became more personal.

“When are you coming to Chicago? I miss you.

It has been much too long since we were together in Saigon.”

The letter went on, suggesting any number of

Chicago newspapers where I might find employment. “Father knows

several of the publishers, and with your experience, you would have

no problem at all getting a position.”

Of course, that was not the problem. The

problem was how sensitively and tactfully to tell the McNabs of my

Chicago plans. I decided not to tell them about Katharina. There

would be time enough for that if I actually moved to Chicago.

A few weeks later, Anna Marie was back in

school, and I decided to go to Chicago. I had sent letters to

several newspapers seeking interviews. I received replies from

three: the Chicago Post, the Chicago Journal, and the

Chicago Star. I preferred not to use the influence of

Katharina’s father.

The train trip was a difficult one for me.

The last time I took a train to Chicago, Mallie was with me, and we

were headed for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. To avoid feeling

uneasy, I kept telling myself that the main reason I was going to

Chicago was to see about employment. In fact, I knew I was also

going to reestablish my relationship with Katharina, whatever that

may turn out to be.

The trip from Denver on the Chicago, Rock

Island & Pacific Railroad took almost two days. I traveled

first-class in a Pullman car—very different from that first spartan

train trip I took from Lawrence to Dodge City in 1879. The train

pulled into the Grand Central Station on Harrison Street and Fifth

Avenue, and I took a Cabriolet to the Congress Plaza Hotel on South

Michigan Avenue.

Mallie and I had stayed at the 250-room

Tremont Hotel at Lake and Dearborn Streets, but I couldn’t bring

myself to stay there again. There were just too many memories.