Chapter 21
Maggie barely slept all night. After leaving the Browns’, she hurried back to the nurses’ residence and began to pack. It was past ten o’clock, and Wilhemina knocked on her door as Maggie continued to throw things in her case.
“Maggie… Maggie, what are you doing?” She was already in her nightgown, her hair neatly braided as she looked at the half-packed suitcase, aghast. “Why are you packing?”
“I’m leaving,” Maggie replied numbly. “I’m going to Alaska with my family.”
“You’re going?—”
“I know.” Maggie let out a trembling laugh.
“I have to,” she said simply. “If I let them leave, I know I’ll never see them again.
” She turned to Wilhemina, her voice fierce.
“I know I won’t. I can’t let it happen, even if it means…
” She shrugged helplessly as she glanced around at her once-neat room, clothes and books tossed here and there.
Wilhemina stared at her silently for a moment, her brow furrowed. Then she gave one slow, accepting nod. “I understand about family,” she said simply. “When do you go?”
Maggie swallowed hard, still hardly able to believe she was actually doing this. “Tomorrow morning.”
Wilhemina smiled sadly. “Then I’d better help you pack, so you can get some sleep.”
Maggie didn’t sleep. After she’d finished packing, she lay on her bed, fully dressed, her suitcase by the door, wondering just how unbelievably reckless she’d been. To throw away a promising career as a nurse right as it was about to start—and yet, would it really have been that promising?
A position at the hospital had been no more than a hope, and Charlotte Brown had revealed her true view of the matter when she’d said Maggie wasn’t the usual kind of training nurse the hospital accepted.
Would she have ever escaped the stigma of being lower born, of being seen as someone deserving of charity rather than achieving what she had on her own merit?
Maybe in Alaska…
And yet she knew nothing—nothing—about Alaska, save that it was big and wild and cold. Would she be able to work there? Right then, it didn’t even matter.
At dawn, Maggie rose, brushed her teeth and fixed her hair, and then slipped out of the boarding house. She’d already said all her goodbyes last night, and so she took her single case and started out for the Washington-Jackson line that went all the way to the Ferry Building.
A massive wooden structure on the busy Embarcadero, it was bustling with crowds even this early in the morning.
Maggie headed for the ticket office, realizing only as she stood in line that she might not be able to buy passage on City of Pueblo.
What if all the berths were already taken? What would she do then?
“City Of Pueblo?” The man behind the iron grille sucked his teeth as he scanned the passenger lists. “All the cabins are spoken for, but you can have an open berth in steerage for five dollars.”
Maggie passed a five-dollar bill through the window—half of her monthly stipend—and he gave her the ticket.
The last time she’d traveled on a ship had been from Ireland to New York, nearly three years ago.
She and Danny had gone in steerage then, too.
At least this trip was shorter, Maggie told herself.
The ticket seller told her it would take three and a half days to reach Port Townsend, if the weather held, and then she would travel on another ship to Fort Wrangell, and finally on to Juneau.
“If the weather doesn’t hold…” The clerk shrugged. “The fog and wind can slow a steamer down by a day or even two. Good luck, miss!”
As Maggie left the Ferry Building, she scanned the bustling waterfront crowded with steamers and sailboats and trawlers of all sizes with some dismay.
The quayside was heaving with passengers, as well as sailors and stevedores, gulls cawing and circling high above.
She’d never find Brendan amidst all this, she realized, and her father and brother were most likely already on City of Pueblo, as Brendan had said they had planned to board at dawn.
Well, at least she’d be able to find them on board the steamer once they were out to sea and safe from both the gangs and the police.
Still, Maggie felt her aloneness as she walked down the crowded quay, searching for City of Pueblo.
It took her half an hour of venturing along the quayside, dodging stevedores hauling crates or pulling ropes, before she found the steamship.
A long line of passengers was already snaking down the dock and Maggie joined them, clutching her case to her as she looked around for Brendan.
She didn’t see him anywhere, and panic started to claw at her insides.
What if she really was making the most dreadful mistake?
What if something had happened, and Danny and her da hadn’t even made it onto the ship?
What if they’d all decided to sail on another ship, and she was wrecking her nursing prospects to sail to Alaska alone?
Maybe they’d changed their minds, and they were going to stay in San Francisco, and this was all for naught…
If she’d been at all sensible, Maggie reflected, feeling as if she were teetering on the edge of full-blown hysteria, she would have waited until they’d gone to Alaska, and then joined them there after she’d received her certificate and they’d gotten themselves settled.
Instead, in her loneliness and her fear, she’d panicked, and now she’d abandoned her nursing career and was about to board a steamer to heaven only knew where, and maybe all by herself, and with nothing to show for nearly two years of training!
What on earth had she been thinking? Why, in a reckless instant, had she been willing to throw away everything she’d been working toward, and for what? She had no idea what kind of life waited for her in Alaska, if any did.
“Maggie?”
Maggie spun around as a hand came hard down on her shoulder. Brendan stood there, dressed in his suit of brown wool, a suitcase in his hand.
“Brendan—” She sagged with relief, his hand still on her shoulder as he stared at her incredulously.
“What are you doing here?”
He didn’t, Maggie realize numbly, sound all that pleased.
“I’m coming with you. With all of you,” she explained hurriedly. “I… I couldn’t be left behind. I’m coming with you to Alaska.”
Brendan’s incredulous expression softened briefly into sympathy, and he dropped his hand from her shoulder. “Oh, Maggie.” He shook his head. “What about your nursing?”
“I can be a nurse in Alaska,” Maggie replied, although she had no idea if that were true.
“But your certificate?—”
She shrugged. “I still have the knowledge.”
He kept staring at her, as if he wanted to say something more, and then he just shook his head, sighing in what she feared was resignation. “You bought your passage this morning?”
She nodded. “In steerage.”
“I’m in steerage, too. Your da and Danny bought a cabin. They’re trying to lie low.”
Maggie nodded. “They’re on board?”
“As far as I know.” He stared at her, still seeming disbelieving. “Why did you—” he began and then shook his head as the line of passengers waiting to board moved forward. “I’ll see you on deck after we’ve boarded,” he told her, and then headed down the dock to take his place in the line.
Maggie clutched her suitcase tightly as she inched forward with the others, toward City of Pueblo. Brendan hadn’t seemed very pleased to learn she was joining them, she reflected numbly. He’d seemed displeased, even, as if he’d have rather she didn’t go.
Maybe she should have expected it, considering the distance in their friendship.
Maybe he was reluctant to feel responsible for her yet again, look out for her the way he always did.
She would be at pains to be independent, Maggie resolved, even though she recognized she was woefully unprepared for whatever was ahead.
She didn’t even have a proper winter coat.
Half an hour later, Maggie was on board the ship, being herded down the narrow steps to the steerage hold, in the bow.
Her accommodation was one large room, bunks lining the walls, and a wooden trestle table flanked by benches that were nailed to the floor running down the middle.
The floor was covered with sheets of iron that were already damp and dirty, and Maggie lifted her skirt as she watched where she stepped.
Women crowded the space, unpacking their suitcases, storing their trunks, and claiming as much space in the cramped hold as they could.
Children called out, excited or fretful, babies cried, and arguments were already breaking out over bunks and who put their things where.
One solid-looking woman, her hands planted on her ample hips, insisted she could not keep her three suitcases all on her berth, as everyone else was doing, but needed the floor space around her bunk, as well.
Maggie walked the length of the room before she found a lower bunk in the corner and put her one small suitcase on it. Already, the hold smelled of sweat and stale humanity, and she feared it would be a long three and a half days.
She took her turn at the basin to tidy her hair and wash her hands and then went up to the deck to look for Brendan—and say goodbye to the city she’d called home for nearly two years.
The deck was crowded with passengers eager to enjoy the fresh air while they could; Maggie had overheard that the passage up to Washington was notoriously rough, and often many were forced to stay in their berth for nearly the whole voyage.
She squeezed into a spot by the railing to gaze out at the city, taking in the jumble of warehouses and tenements that lined the crowded waterfront, the steep streets rising to the hills above, the morning mist evaporating to reveal a spring sky of pale blue.