“Amazing,” Nellie offered. “Breathtaking. Spectacular, magnificent, superb, splendid, glorious, dazzling, heart-rending?”
“Yes, all of those!” Katie was incredulous. As a girl, she’d seen some of the teen boys come back to Gasthof Village stumbling and laughing after their Rumspringa. “Drunk,” her mother whispered when she caught Katie staring. “Their world is fuzzy now, but it will wear off by morning when the whiskey drink of the English wears off.”
That was how Katie felt now. Fuzzy, stumbling, laughing, warm inside. Drunk—not on their whiskey—but drunk on the ways of the English. She couldn’t imagine this emotion fading with the dawn’s coming light. “Where did you learn all of those words?”
“School, Katie Knepp.” Nellie took off walking down the dirt road, lit with sizzling gas lamp lights that scattered the shadows, pulling Katie along with her. “And you, too, can learn words like those. And so much more!”
“Oh no,” Katie began. “I’m finished with schooling. We only go until the eighth grade.”
“You’re not on the farm any more, Katie Knepp. Just look at you! You look the part of a fine English lady. Now, all we need to do is get you some schooling. After you return from seeing the world with me, that is!”
Katie puzzled over her cryptic words. “Where would I get schooling? Surely not alongside English men?” A sneaky sensation crept out of the scattered shadows and crept down her backbone with an icy shiver.
“Goodness no. Barnard College. A college, a place of higher education, that only accepts women. No men allowed!” Nellie quickened her step as they turned down another road. At once, she wrinkled her nose. “Pew! Surely they have someone to clean up after the horses that pull the carriages around here.”
The smell of horse dung in the streets was somewhat refreshing to Katie, at least it was something she understood and was used to. She was about to say so, but bit her lip instead. Since it disgusted Nellie, horse apples must be disgusting to the English. And if she wanted to be English...
“The first thing you must do once we return from our trip around the world, Katie Knepp, is buy up every Sherlock Holmes book we can find and get you to reading them.”
“What is a Sherlock Holmes book?” Katie’s feet ached in the English boots as she struggled to keep up with Nellie’s quick steps. If she were in her plain shoes, she could have kept up, or even set the pace. In these boots though, her feet screamed and her legs ached, begging for a moment of respite.
“Sherlock Holmes is an English detective. He and his sidekick, Watson, solve mysteries. Hey!” Nellie stopped. Her eyes twinkled. “That’s what you are. I am Sherlock Holmes, and you are Watson, my sidekick. Elementary, my dear,” she cried.
Katie furrowed her brows and puzzled over her words as Nellie took off at a trot once again, yanking Katie along behind her.
“Diners in New York City are open all night long, which is great for the likes of us,” Nellie explained loudly. “So we shall stop in one and take a meal before sunrise. See what all you’ve been missing all your life, Katie Knepp?” Nellie charged forward, oblivious to her aching Amish charge. “Thank Heavens for Rumspringa that led you away from the Plain people and into the light!”
What a strange choice of words, Katie thought as she stumbled along behind Nellie. To talk about coming into the light as I’m quite literally stumbling into the unknown, cloaked in darkness.
***
“Tell me Katie Knepp, was that apple pie at Joe’s All Night Diner just the best you’ve ever had?” Nellie leaned on her forearms against the metal railing that separated them from the ocean and the docks. The mild rays of the pre-dawn sun were just beginning to peek up over the horizon as the world around them, which never really went to sleep, continued to buzz to life with even more fervor.
Katie thought a moment. Back in Gasthof Village, she was the witty one, the outspoken one. The one who always had a smart quip, an answer, or a mischievous comeback. But here, in the world of the English, she found herself mostly overlooked, and when she was given the opportunity to speak, she often stumbled over her nonsensical words or didn’t take the opportunity at all.
Below them, dubious men with stringy hair and bulging muscles got off the boats in a cloud of profanities. Angry faces and their sharp movements unloading wooden crates gave her pause.
“Honestly?”
“Of course, Katie Knepp. Always be honest.”
“The crust was much too thick and weighty. You could tell right off they didn’t cut the butter in cold, it was probably already melted to make it easier to blend. Goodness knows I used to use the same trick to save time, but unfortunately got the same results as the pie at Joe’s.” Katie sucked in a breath and continued. “The apple pie I make now though is light and fluffy, and it is because of the crust. You see, you have to fetch your butter from the cellar after your dry ingredients are already mix…”
Nellie’s sideways look killed her sentence. “What else, besides the crust, failed to meet your expectations, Little Miss Apple Pie?”
The stinging quip was akin to one that she herself would have flung all over Gasthof Village with reckless abandon. Flinging hurt at anyone within listening distance. Rebekah Stoll’s face popped into her mind without warning. No doubt her quips over the years had found their hurtful mark on Rebekah’s tender heart.
Rebekah. She was probably there in Gasthof Village, living her perfect, simple life, preparing her blue wedding dress to marry Joseph Graber...
Nellie cleared her throat. “You were saying, Katie Knepp?”
“Well, honestly, the apples themselves. They were too chunky and hadn’t been boiled near long enough. And the cinnamon tasted as though it had something else mixed with it, something bitter and strange.” Orange peel maybe? Or lemon? Katie screwed up her face. Rebekah would know, if she were here.
Nellie shrugged. For once, the worldly woman was at a loss for words. Perhaps it was exhaustion, or maybe it was something more. Regardless of the reason, Katie was glad for the break. “Well, Katie Knepp. That’s something.”
“What is?”
“If elite schooling doesn’t work out for you, after our trip circumnavigating the globe, rest assured you can always find work somewhere, cooking in some derelict kitchen, making scrumptious apple pie, the likes of which the lowly English obviously know nothing of. Despite having invented coin operated telephones and indoor restrooms.”
Nellie’s salty remark, peppered with big words she no doubt knew Katie couldn’t understand, stung. But their meaning stood out stark clear as the sun rose over the water and the men below them cursed louder still, something about the hot sun heating up the already humid air.
Katie turned and faced Nellie, eyes wide. “Nellie Bly, do you mean to tell me that you believe in your heart of hearts that cooking good food doesn’t require an education?”
Nellie returned her stare without emotion.
“I have been learning to cook at my mother’s elbow since I could toddle. I’d say that’s quite a lot of education. Hard earned too.” Katie paused, a strange heat welling up from within her. “And a dang sight better than Joe’s or anyone else’s.”
Nellie’s stoic face broke into a beaming grin, but before she could say anything, a shrill whistle cut through the early morning air. Both Nellie and Katie turned toward the unappealing sound, which came from the tar-paper shanties that lined the docks behind them.
A slight, blond woman, with bobbed hair, probably no older than Katie, stood in an open doorway wearing nothing more than a dirty, torn slip.
“Would you look at that,” Katie whispered. “Why, she’s standing outside calling attention to herself in her undergarments!”
“Open for business when the loadin’s done, boys,” the woman called.
Katie glanced down at the docks where several men appeared from seemingly nowhere, and joined the burly man with the stringy black hair.
At once, the muscular sailor stuck two fingers in his mouth and returned the woman’s catcall.
Nellie grabbed Katie’s arm and started down the street to the tune of crying gulls and slapping waves. She didn’t offer any explanation for their sudden departure from the docks, or the man and woman’s strange display.
“What was all that?”
Nellie didn’t answer, but only walked faster.
“Where are we, Nellie?” She fought her whipping hair to look around. Tar-paper shacks lined the street and more and more women, some with bruised faces and torn underclothes, appeared at their doors. If they could be called doors. Some were no more than tattered blankets tacked over the entryway of their shack.
Nellie stopped sprinting so quickly that Katie plowed square into her. Annoyance tinged her words and colored her porcelain cheeks. “There are dregs of society everywhere, Katie Knepp, and can be found in every society, probably even among the Amish.”
With her arm still firmly in Nellie’s grasp, Katie felt little more than a spoiled child being admonished by a too-tired mother. “What is this dreg?”
“The ones you do not want to end up like. The prostitutes, the drunks, the wretches. The losers, Katie Knepp.”
Katie narrowed her eyes at Nellie, the woman she thought would be her friend in the English world. “Did God not create us all in His image?”
Nellie rolled her eyes with a huff and turned away, leaving the answer to hang in the air unanswered.
Katie’s arm began to throb as Nellie pulled her down the street much like a horse might pull a plow. Her mind drifted to Indiana. And try as she might to prove Nellie Bly, the woman who spent ten days in a madhouse and was now set to break a world record, Katie couldn’t think of even one person who could be labeled a dreg back in Gasthof Village.
