Chapter 16 Frannie
Frannie stuck out her thumb.
A truck with a towering load of hay bales came toward her. The brakes screeched as it passed by and she watched it slow down and stop twenty feet ahead.
Boy howdy, a ride on her first try.
She’d woken up to find Claire and Red gone and a note on the kitchen table that read Back soon, help yourself to breakfast. “Don’t mind if I do,” she said to the empty house.
She ate the last of the Jell-O salad, threw on her wrinkled capri pants and a blouse, packed her suitcase, and walked out the door.
It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to see that things were wonky between Claire and Red, and she knew why. They’d gone down to the river last night after dinner, and when Claire came back her eyes were all weepy.
They’d been fighting about her, obviously.
Red didn’t want her around. She could take a hint. She ran to the passenger door of the hay truck and pulled it open.
“Where you headin’?” an old cowboy with a lip of chew and a stained straw hat asked as she scrambled up the running board and into the passenger seat.
“Canyon Lodge,” she said, shoving her suitcase under her feet.
“I can get you as far as Madison Junction.” He put the truck in gear and spit gravel behind them.
She’d heard about the job at Canyon Lodge on the train while Bridget was reading her dumb old book.
“Canyon is looking for help,” a kid who looked like Pat Boone had told her.
He was sitting in the last car with a gang of outdoorsy-looking teenagers.
They passed her a flask and she’d started cooking up a plan to get back at Dad and Bridget.
The ranger at the West Entrance waved the hay truck through, and she watched the flash of the river along the road.
By now, Claire would know she was gone, and she’d call Bridget right away.
Then Bridget would call Dad. Holy smokes, what she’d give to be a fly on the wall when Dad got wind of what she’d done.
She laughed out loud and the old guy gave her a funny look.
Her next ride was with a businessman type who asked a lot of questions and tried to put his hand on her knee. Then she crammed in with a family of six in a loaded station wagon. “This is the place,” the dorky dad said as he came to a stop. “Canyon Lodge.”
She grabbed her suitcase, and watched the station wagon disappear in a cloud of dust. The place looked like something out of Gunsmoke or The Rifleman.
Tall pines surrounded the rustic building and a sign over the door said Cabins.
A sudden rush of doubt made her swallow hard.
What if the redheaded kid was wrong and she didn’t get a job?
She’d die before she went back to Claire’s with her hands in her pockets.
Frannie hefted her suitcase and squared her shoulders. “Here goes nothing.”
Ten minutes later, Frannie sat in a hot-as-a-frying-pan office with a middle-aged beatnik named Twig.
He asked her name, address, and age, and wrote them on a yellow card.
She didn’t give him her real address—she wasn’t stupid—in case he decided to call and talk to her dad.
“We don’t usually hire in the middle of the summer,” Twig said, “but Sherry got sent home with an appendicitis.” Twig plodded to the door and called out, “Jerrylynn!” A girl a couple years older than Frannie bounced into the office in a skirt and sneakers, a blonde ponytail, and cat-eye glasses with little rhinestones on the corners.
“Tell Frannie about working at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River Lodge.”
Jerrylynn gave a theatrical bow and put her hands together as if reciting a poem. “The hours are long, the pay stinks, the beds are hard and the mosquitoes are mean, but it’s the best darn job you’ve ever seen.”
Twig raised his bushy brows at her. “Still interested?”
Frannie’s earlier attack of doubt went the way of the dodo. This was so much cooler than taking care of a baby in the middle of nowhere. “Abso-poso-lutely.”
“Then you’re officially a savage.” Twig nodded to Jerrylynn. “Take her around, show her the bunkhouse and then start your shift.”
Frannie followed the bobbing ponytail out of the office.
Man-oh-man, this was neat. She was a grown-up now, with no party-pooper sisters or her dad to tell her what to do.
Maybe she’d be escorting guests to their rooms, or working as a waitress or even telling tourists about the sights on one of the buses.
Wouldn’t Jonny and her friends back in Willmar be green when she told them about her job in Yellowstone National Park?
They walked by the front desk where three boys were goofing off.
Two had crew cuts and looked college age, the other had a side part and glasses.
“This is Frannie.” Jerrylynn didn’t slow down as she flicked a hand at the boys.
“This is Ernie, Sam, and that kid there is Paul.” Frannie gave what she hoped was an uninterested wave.
Next, Jerrylynn brought her through a spacious room with tree-trunk pillars and antler chandeliers. “Where is everybody?” Frannie took in the almost-empty room.
“Out seeing the sights,” Jerrylynn said. “They’ll be back at dinnertime, and they’ll be hungry. Through there is the cafeteria.” Jerrylynn motioned to closed double doors. “We don’t have our own eating area, so meals for savages are served here before it opens to the dudes.”
“Dudes?” Frannie asked.
Jerrylynn flashed a cute dimple. “You’re a savage, the guests are dudes.”
“Cool,” Frannie said, eyeing the cafeteria and thinking that she could use something to eat.
That Jell-O had been hours ago. But Jerrylynn was already heading to the great outdoors.
Frannie skipped to keep up with her guide as they went down a hill to a ramshackle cabin.
A clothesline stretched alongside it draped with shirts, pants, and girls’ underwear.
“This,” Jerrylynn said with a flourish of her hand, “is the rat trap.” Frannie’s face must have looked funny, because Jerrylynn laughed. “The boys’ dorm is called the dungeon, and it’s even worse.”
Inside the screen door a row of cots lined one wall and open storage shelves the other, messy with piles of bright clothing. Jerrylynn showed Frannie to a bed in the corner and pushed aside a pile of clothes to make an open spot on the shelves.
Frannie dropped her suitcase and lay down on the bed. A nap would be divine.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Jerrylynn poked her. “We have work to do.”
“What’s my job?” she asked, pushing herself up to stand again.
“You’re a pillow puncher like me,” Jerrylynn said. “That’s what we call cabin maids.”
Pillow puncher didn’t sound so bad. Frannie followed Jerrylynn down a dusty trail to a line of log cabins. There were dozens—maybe hundreds—of them. Towels were draped over the railings, lawn chairs, ice chests, and children’s toys were strewn all over.
“This is the low rent district,” Jerrylynn explained as she stopped in front of a wheeled cart stacked with buckets, bottles, and the kind of cleaning brushes Frannie had seen Flo use. “Not fancy like the big hotel on the other side of the river, but not as rough as the sagebrushers have it.”
“Sagebrushers?” Frannie didn’t know that word either.
“The tenters over in the auto camp.” Jerrylynn pushed open the screen door of the first cabin. “We need to get through all these, and then help out on the south side.”
There were more? Frannie’s high spirits took a nosedive. How long was she supposed to work? When did they get to relax and do all the fun things Claire had talked about? What about lunch?
The cabin wasn’t big—just one room about the size of Frannie’s bedroom at home—but it looked like the atom bomb had gone off in it.
Sheets and blankets were tangled on two sets of bunk beds.
Clothes and suitcases littered the plank floor.
Beside an iron stove was a small table with a water pitcher and crumpled towels and on a shelf below, a white clay pot.
Frannie took it in. “People pay money to stay here?”
“And we clean up after them.” Jerrylynn grabbed a broom. “We have a lot of traditions around here,” she explained. “You’ll get to know them. But one of them is the newbies get to empty the ducks.”
“What’s a duck?”
Jerrylynn pointed to the clay pot. Frannie lifted the lid and almost retched right there. She slammed the lid back down. “It’s . . .” She couldn’t even say it.
“Yep.” Jerrylynn nodded. “Dudes don’t want to walk to the outhouse in the middle of the night, you know, because of the bears.” She started sweeping. “You have to take it to the outhouse, dump it, and rinse it good with that garden hose out there.”
Frannie stared at the bucket. She’d never done anything so . . . disgusting. She wouldn’t touch it. It was too icky.
“Get a move on,” Jerrylynn prompted.
Frannie took a step back toward the door.
Maybe she could go to Twig, ask for a different job.
But that was a no-go. She’d been lucky to get this one.
She could bug out and look like a dummy.
A wimp. Go back to Claire and take her lumps.
Get a lecture from Bridget, and Dad would hear how she’d come back with her tail between her legs.
No. Nope. No way.
She took a deep breath, held it, and did what she had to do.