But I needed the work. Afraid to try my luck at a boardinghouse, fearful my secret would be revealed, I’d been spending my nights in a bedroll, curled up in an alley off Colfax Avenue, all night slapping my palm against the dry dirt to ward off the rats who scurried and sniffed nearby.
My plan was to save up sufficient funds to take off my mantle of maleness. Using what I earned from this repugnant job, combined with what I could get for the mounds of hair stuffed in my knapsack, I’d buy myself a frock or two. Then I’d figure out what, in this new life of mine, came next.
And so I hoisted my shovel and commenced exhuming the next grave in my path. Trying, as best I could, to disassemble the corpse slowly and carefully — and then fit it like puzzle pieces into a juvenile casket.
I left the jobsite at dusk that evening, walking north on Franklin Street and turning west onto Colfax. My pack over my shoulder, I focused my eyes ahead, taking in the tableau of the under-construction Colorado State Capitol building and the setting sun dropping behind the Rocky Mountains.
Despite the ghastliness of my first job here, my sense of Denver was that it was a city of opportunity. In such an environment, one might achieve success — or better yet, happiness. Provided, of course, that one was able to find one’s footing.
As I breathed in the combined scent of horse droppings in the road, refuse in the alleys, and frying meat in the boardinghouses, I heard the clomping of boots behind me. Prickly, I forced myself not to turn my head, hoping that in refusing to acknowledge whoever trailed me, I might will them away.
The footfalls came closer, and hands grabbed both my arms. I twisted my neck, coming face-to-face with Rudiman and McGovern.
“You, boy,” McGovern sneered. “You work for me, don’t you?”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Please, sirs,” I said, in my practiced gruff voice, “take your hands off me.”
“We will not,” the undertaker replied. “Not until you explain yourself.”
I shook my head, feigning ignorance. “Sir?”
Placing a hand on the small of my back, McGovern thrust me into the closest alleyway, shoving me behind a wooden barrel beside a brick wall. My pack tumbled from my shoulder and rolled across the dirt.
McGovern nodded at Rudiman, who pressed on my shoulders until I sank to the ground. “You work too slowly,” Rudiman said. “You’re not man enough to be on this crew.” He pushed me backward, and my head snapped against the bricks. My eyes closed, then opened again, trying to focus on Rudiman’s jeering face. “But then again, you’re not man enough for anything — are you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I croaked.
“You know exactly what I mean.” Rudiman took one hand off my shoulder and gripped my chin, tilting it toward the twilit sky. “Such smooth skin,” he said, and his voice bore nearly the softness one might use when addressing a lover.
“Please,” I begged.
He shook my jaw from side to side.
Arms akimbo, McGovern eyed me. “You’re fired, boy.”
Jerking my head, attempting to release myself from Rudiman’s grasp, I said, “You owe me for two days’ work.”
“Such cheek,” McGovern snapped. “I owe you nothing. You deceived us — and liars deserve no wages.”
I stared him down. “Please tell your henchman to unhand me, sir.”
Rudiman chuckled. Grinning up at McGovern, he said, “Whad’ya think, boss? Let’s have some fun, eh?”
I opened my mouth to scream, but Rudiman clamped his hand over it.
McGovern shrugged. “I don’t get into any of that business.” He turned on his heel. “I’ve said all I have to say on the matter. What happens from here is of no concern to me.” He exited the alley.
Rudiman watched him go, then turned back to me. “Try to make fools of us,” he said. “I’ll show you a fool.”
He tightened his hand over my mouth. Forearm pressed to my collarbone, he snaked my belt from around my waist and tore at my britches until my body lay bare and exposed beneath him.
Afterward — after he buttoned his pants and left me lying in the dirt — I tried to catch my breath, half-naked and crumpled on my side.
In my mind, I played the prior moments back, wishing I’d had a knife or a gun. Or even a stick to poke in his eye.
Anything. Any object to make me feel less vulnerable than this.
Fumbling in the dark, I pulled on my tattered clothing and reached for my pack. I patted it, assuring myself that its humble contents — my bedroll, a flannel cloth to wipe my laborer’s brow, a shirt that had at one time been my uncle’s and at one time had been clean, and most importantly, my hair and my poems were safe and intact.
I doubted Rudiman would come back, but just in case, I made my way to a different alley. Was one safer than another? Likely not, but I had to take my chances.
There would be no sleep for me that night. Once the moon rose, I read by its faint glow.
Determined, I looked up at the sky.
I would be no such martyr.
The offices of the Denver Republican were two stories tall, composed of brick, with heavy cornerstones and a wide oak door. They’d be imposing to one who had fear.
But I no longer had fear.
Upon that morning, and every day of my life thereafter, this is what I stored in my heart: when we are filled with fear, no others fear us. But when the chin a man grasps becomes the chin tilted high and proud, above a neck long, upon shoulders squared, fear dissipates like a blown-over cloud.
“I wish to speak to the editor in chief, please.” Before the clerk seated at his desk could respond, I went on, “I have a scoop for him. I believe he will be most interested.”
Seventeen years later, on a warm day in the spring of 1910, I stood pencil and pad in hand amongst the crowd at the newly christened Cheesman Park. As each speaker took the podium, I scribbled notes for my story about the dedication of the park’s neoclassical marble pavilion. A thing of glory, the pavilion stood in the east portion of the park and oversaw the lush green lawns that last century’s city elders had envisioned — those green lawns that the Tammany politicians, now long gone, were unwilling to lay over paupers’ graves.
And yet, exactly that happened. After the Denver Republican broke the story — “The Work of Ghouls!” ran the headline — the city immediately shut down McGovern’s horrific operation. For a time, nothing else happened; the graves remained opened, pieces of everyone everywhere. Eventually, Denver’s first bipartisan mayor was elected, and a different company was hired to set the skeletal fragments into the earth from whence they came. At that point, properly reassembling corpses was impossible. Bones were transported as they were into the exhumed graves, covered and tamped down. Folks say the poor, restless souls still wander the park, especially by cover of night. I don’t doubt it.
After they followed my lead and scooped the story before any of the other papers got wind of it, I talked my way into a job as the Republican’s first female cub reporter. My initial stories were trivial, many of them relating to ladies’ charitable activities. Eventually, Ellis Meredith, suffragist and reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, took note of my work, finding in my stories the lyricism and authenticity I pursued regardless of subject matter. Ellis took me under her wing and helped me get hired on at the News as a beat reporter covering civic issues — a position I hold to this day.