Dear reader:
All the characters in this story are over 18 at the time of any naughty behavior.
This tidbit is the background to the period piece of the early twentieth-century story created by PixieHoff,
Meet Me In St. Louis
. It fills the backstory for some of our characters in her lovely story.
Thank you, Pixie, for allowing me to contribute.
Please note that given the period in which this is set, it contains language and attitudes that may offend modern readers. I have thought long and hard about this point; to adjust the characters or to change the wording would only denigrate those characters or deny the progress that all parties have made in the century since. Therefore, out of respect for the characters, I chose to neither ignore their ethnicity nor alter what I consider to be the natural dialogue between them.
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Things Change
Emily was fatigued but also strangely rejuvenated. It was an odd mix. She was weary with her homeward journeys and long rail delays. Of course, she felt rejuvenated by her recent rest, but her new temporary charge, now softly cooing in her arms, gave her the renewed thrill of life again.
She could not help but smile down at the infant as she sat on the bench holding him. Margaret, who was also on the bench leaning onto her, head lolling while softly snoring as they sat quietly, waiting for the journey to resume.
Baby Robby was cooing the way young infants do; his big eyes gazed up at her in wonder and joy at being noticed while he suckled Emily's finger dipped in sweet cream.
The train was very late, much later than it should be for a respectable railroad. Emily only hoped that Charlotte would not be too cross with her, as she had sent a telegram before they got underway in Arkansas, but heaven knows if the missive got to her protégé in time.
Unconsciously Emily shrugged, 'Nothing to be done.'
Days earlier, Emily had insisted on taking Margaret with her to take the cure at the resort in Hot Springs, Arkansas; poor Margaret's rheumatism was worsening, and with winter coming on, Emily had hoped it would give her some comfort, at least for a few months.
Hot Springs seemed like a possible location for another of their unique establishments. Charlotte, ever the pragmatist, had
suggested
that Emily travel as much as she wished but that it would not hurt if, as she traveled, she considered potential sites to expand the Club.
The sound of a burp, small by adult standards but huge for a tiny infant, was followed by an equally tiny laugh.
Emily smiled and quietly laughed with the baby holding him up to rub noses before kissing his forehead. She glanced around the car to see where the babe's siblings were. Circumstances had made her an impromptu caregiver, as fatigue had overcome the parents.
She held the baby as the poor exhausted mother slept. Emily could not imagine how the woman kept up. A husband, three older children, and now another infant? She could not recall any of the older siblings' names; however, she quickly fell in love with the baby in her arms. He was Robert something. What the something was, she would ask again later.
Her smile simply would not dim, even if she would have wanted it to; the baby smiled back as she dipped her finger into the saucer of cream again.
She had wanted children, but when James passed, there seemed to be so many things to do, and there were enough orphans in need of aid; especially after the flu, there were so many more in desperate need.
The world before the flu seemed like heaven. Her mind rolled over the time since the end of the war and the blessing of Charlotte coming into her life. She smiled again as Margaret snorted in her sleep, sounding like a pig, which caused Emily to snicker herself.
'The woman is convinced she does not snore,' Emily chuckled, shaking her head; the first night in Hot Springs, she had been forced to get a separate room. Charlotte had allowed her 'Pig' to gain a few extra pounds, which had not harmed the women's figure but seemed to have made her more pig-like in some respects.
"Children, if you look out the windows, do you see the river below us? See any ducks or geese? How about jumping fish?" Emily directed their attention away from each other; the boys seemed to delight in annoying their older sister, who, at seven, was trying desperately to be a grown woman.
"If you can quietly count ten fishes, I will give you each a penny," Emily was willing to buy silence and happy that the boys were still young enough to be honest in their counting.
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The years had passed quickly since Charlotte's party, Margaret and Charlotte were thick as thieves now, and Charlotte had taken to running the Club with the relish of a newlywed to the marital bed.
The pandemic devastated the Club; some urged Emily to throw the girls onto the street. However, she could not do that to them with the flu raging. Although Emily and Charlotte had insisted on keeping the girls safe by isolating the house, the nurses in training could not help but bring it back with them. The result was that everyone in the Soulard house became ill. With twenty girls in residence, they were fortunate to lose only two, but both were loved; their loss had devastated the survivors' spirits.
Tragedy was becoming all too common.
A good deal of capital had been spent to keep up with expenses, but fortunately, the flu ran its course, and the Club was given a lifeline - Prohibition.
The 18th Amendment had passed in early 1919, at the height of the pandemic; whether that had anything to do with it was debatable.
Luckily, being a pragmatic sort, Charlotte had foreseen the implications and started preparing.
Emily could not help but flush with pride at the luck of her finding that girl.
To keep the girls busy, Charlotte had insisted they thoroughly clean out the basement of the Soulard house. Emily remembered seeing Charlotte pouring over maps of the city; one day, Charlotte seemed particularly interested in the maze of natural and artificial tunnels beneath the city streets.
"Do you know that there is a veritable rabbit warren under our feet?" Charlotte asked as she passed through Emily's office with paper rolls under each arm and a large sheet flowing behind her like a flag. "This might work, this might damn well work...."
The Soulard house was within rock-throwing distance of half a dozen breweries of various sizes, including the Anheuser-Busch and Lemp breweries. Both establishments took full advantage of the extensive network of natural caverns beneath the city for easy transportation and free refrigeration.
The scandalous truth was that Saint Louis was born of river pirates who used the natural caves near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi to spring on unwary travelers and then stashed their ill-gotten gains deep in a labyrinth of caves only they knew.
Those tunnels served other purposes with Prohibition and the threatened closure of the breweries.
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Their train, Local #32, was stopped to take on water; the engine had stopped at the water tank near the station just beyond the bridge, thus leaving the rear cars and caboose sitting high above the swirling rain-swollen stream below.
Margaret had complained about the noise and smoke of the engine, and they moved further away. However, Emily suspected that her traveling companion became uncomfortable with the company in first class and the smells of the associated dining car. In addition, poor Margaret seemed to find the motion of the train to unsettle her stomach.
Once Emily found the infant in his exhausted mother's arms, she was more than happy with the move if nothing else but to hold the child.
Now with the older siblings suitably distracted, Emily walked the baby up and down the aisle of the seats in hopes of easing it to sleep.
There is no knowing what caused her to glance through the car's rear door and the windows of the empty caboose beyond it. The conductor manning the caboose had gone forward to help with the new passengers boarding at Sulfur Springs. So, there was no one behind to notice before she did.
It took a moment for Emily's mind to understand the import of the sight. She glanced to either side of the train.
"The trestle is too high and narrow -- nowhere to go," Emily's heart began pounding. Glancing beyond that to the milky brown swirling waters of whatever river they were over, it was swollen with late July rains and clogged with debris from some flood upstream.
No chance there.
"Children, run to the front of the train," She took the older girl and pushed her toward the front.
"I am sorry, miss, what?" The girl looked confused; the boys, more intent on their penny than her instructions, could not understand.
"Listen to me, all of you; run to the engine now!" Emily was trying not to sound as panicked as she felt; panic would not help her with the children; however, the intensity of her voice got them moving.
"But what of Mama and Papa?" The girl pled while pulling her brothers behind her.
"I will get them; now run!" Emily's voice was shrill as she shook Margaret awake. "Margaret, there is a train; you must run now!"
Emily did the same with the parents, who were so dozy they did not understand, but she had a baby and no time. So, she left the addled adults and screamed as she ran, "Run, there is a train on the tracks! Run!"
She continued to scream for them to run until her scream blended into that of the steam whistle as metal met metal.
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