The next morning, upon arrival at City Cemetery, I glanced around at the nearby homes. They were nothing short of mansions, each larger and more elaborate than the next, positioned like well-trimmed rosebushes along the cemetery’s perimeter. No surprise that well-heeled homeowners were loath to gaze upon an unsightly public space.
The crew that assembled that day numbered approximately thirty, each stronger than the next. It was a warm spring morning — the type of day that, upon other circumstances, might inspire hope within the soul. In outlying cottonwood trees, sparrows chirped. Closer by, robins pecked for worms, and sunlight-seeking wildflowers broke through the dry earth. Along the boundary of the cemetery, curious onlookers gathered, arranged in a muddle that reminded me of the disorganized shelves at the unkempt country store back home.
The laborer next to me grinned. “What sport,” he said, striking the blade of his shovel into the scrub grass, where it met, clanging, against a rock. “What d’ya think we’ll find under there, lad?” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Nothing but thieves and degenerates, I hear. Bastards gettin’ what they deserve.”
Not entirely convinced of this, but disinclined to engage in argument within my first few moments on the job, I dipped my head just enough for my gesture to be recognizable as a nod.
In some areas of the soon-to-be-erstwhile City Cemetery, graves had already been exhumed. Long before undertaker McGovern was hired to finish the job, city officials had put out notices that any Denverite who had relatives at City Cemetery would be wise to have them removed to Riverside. The Jewish graves on the hill were relocated, every one of them, carefully and with respect, by families and synagogues. The Catholics negotiated a deal with the city to purchase their parcel of the graveyard, leaving those who had worshipped both God and the pope to continue peacefully resting in their current locale.
The remaining section of City Cemetery — “the Boneyard,” as I learned it was called — was where paupers, thieves, and unclaimed, disease-ridden bodies were buried. No surprise, then, that most of these bodies were unspoken for. Who’d speak for them?
Wagonful after wagonful of rudimentary caskets were brought forth and unloaded. “Dig,” the foreman — a bulky, weather-beaten fellow named Rudiman — instructed us. He told us not to attempt salvaging any containers we encountered; most, he said, would be cheap construction, not worth the cut-rate lumber comprising them. Instead, we were told to put the bodies in the delivered caskets, mark them with the identifying tags provided, and keep going.
“There are thousands of bodies in this soil!” Rudiman shouted to the assemblage. “You’ll be paid for each one you tag. The faster you dig, the more money you make. Have at it, men!”
Someone let out a holler: “Let’s do this, boys!” Enthusiastic spades were raised, and piles of dirt and rubble soon began to dot the landscape. Less inclined to revelry but nevertheless eager to demonstrate my strong work ethic, I grasped my shovel and began to dig.
“Respect them.”
I looked up. An elderly woman, threadbare shawl over her head and shoulders, had quit the onlookers and was making her way among the workingmen.
“Respect them, I say,” she told the laborers. “Say a prayer for each man’s soul as you raise him. Treat his body with tenderness — for tomorrow, it will be your own.”
They brushed her off. “Go away, old woman,” one man growled, raising his shovel in a half threat toward her. “Leave us to our toil.”
Across the clumps of earth, the woman’s eyes met mine. She hobbled over, gripping my shoulder, pulling my head toward hers.
“These men are unwise. But you possess prudence,” she whispered in my ear. “Do right by them, girl.”
She knew. How did she know? I’d hidden it so well — or so I’d believed.
Before I left Iowa, Uncle August had been the one who’d shorn my hair, handfuls of my rich dark locks stuffed into a bag for me to tote on my journey, in hopes of selling it at some future date. August loaned me britches, a belt, and two work shirts, one to wear and one for a spare. He handed me a long cotton cloth and told me to bind my — providentially small, anyway — breasts.
“You’re safer this way, Samantha,” he said.
I eyed him. How could I — whether dressed as woman or disguised as man — feel more threatened elsewhere than I was in my own home?
Three nights earlier, August had discovered my father at me. August did his best to haul Father away while I lay helplessly, my eyes filled with terror. August cursed and yelled and took the blows that blackened both eyes.
Only a few weeks prior, Uncle August and I had mourned the loss of my mother, who’d contracted influenza in early February. Before then, she’d done all she could to keep Father from me. So did August, once he knew. But like his sister and like me, August had no power over that man, who dwarfed him. Father had Uncle August by close to a foot and more than seventy pounds.
I’d inherited my father’s coarse facial features and his height, but not his girth. I was gawky and thin-limbed, my strength stringy at best. I could not fight off my father.
A disguise, on the other hand, I could manage.
And so it was Uncle August who helped me prepare for my journey — my mother dead and my father drunk and snoring in the barn. Harmless then, but he wouldn’t stay that way; we both knew it.
“Join me,” I said to August.
He shook his head. “You know I can’t, Sam. Not with what I owe him. He’d come after me — and where would that leave us?”
Father had paid for August’s passage from England — and paid, as well, the hefty gambling debt that caught August in Chicago, before he made his way west to our homestead. “I’ll keep working, pay off my debt. Then I’ll come to Denver, if I can,” August assured me. Gently, he touched my cheek. “I can pay your train fare and put a few dollars in your pocket. After that, you’re on your own. I’m sorry, Samantha. I’d do more, if I were able.”
“I know you would.” I nodded. “Thank you, Uncle.”
He reached into the pack beside his cot, the canvas knapsack he’d toted across the Atlantic, in which he kept all his worldly possessions. “I did set aside a small sum for this.”
Into my hands Uncle August pressed a slim volume — Poems: Second Series by Emily Dickinson.
I opened to the title page: Robert Brothers, Boston, 1892.
“Hot off the press, just last year,” Uncle August said. “I know you love your words, Sam.” In the lamplight, his eyes dimmed. “I wish things were different. You should’ve had the opportunity to continue your education. You should...” He drifted off, turning away from me.
I laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. This gift means everything to me.”
I thumbed through the beginning of the volume. Several pages in, I stopped. Over my shoulder, Uncle August read, as well.