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  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  IN JULIA’S WORLD

  First . . .

  PART I

  The Kerry Patch, St. Louis, Missouri

  Fall–Winter, 1911

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  PART II

  Beyond the Bad Lands

  Winter–Spring, 1912

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  . . . And Then

  Julia Delaney, a reel

  Author’s Note

  . . . And Acknowledgments

  About Theresa Nelson

  For Julia Catherine Kraemer Cooney

  and her children, in every generation—

  for Bill and Sheila and David and Mary and Joe—

  and especially for Julia’s youngest son,

  my husband, Kevin Michael,

  who makes me laugh

  and takes me traveling

  The bravest are the tenderest,—The loving are the daring.

  —Bayard Taylor, “The Song of the Camp”

  IN JULIA’S WORLD

  The Living

  DELANEYS

  Julia Catherine herself, age 11*

  Mary Patricia, 13–14

  William Joseph (Bill), 15–16

  BOCKLEBRINKS

  Aunt Gert

  Otto (her son)

  DOYLES

  Officer Timothy

  Mickey (his son, 17)

  AT THE HOUSE OF MERCY (INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL AND GIRLS’ HOME)

  Nuns

  Sister Maclovius

  Sister Gabriel

  Sister Bridget (niece of Officer Doyle, cousin of Mickey Doyle, sister of Harry “Two-Bits” Brickey, and aunt to Betty Brickey)

  Sister Sebastian

  Sister Genevieve

  Girls

  Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Brickey, 9 (daughter of “Two-Bits” Brickey and Maggie Meehan, and niece of Sister Bridget)

  Marcella Duggan

  Winifred O’Rourke

  Hazel Theedy

  Little Hannah Hogan; Agnes Crouse; Geraldine Mulroney with Julia, the Beggars’ Brigade

  Hyacinth (horse with a history)

  Harriet (a doll, at least 10)

  Little Bear “L.B.” (a kitten)

  Dr. McGill

  Dr. Rolla Bracy (St. Louis County Coroner)

  Henry Tyborowski (Henry the Hired Boy)

  AT FATHER DUNNE’S NEWS BOYS HOME

  Father Peter Dunne

  Jimmy Brannigan

  Little Joe Kinsella

  ON THE STREETS OF ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

  Thomas Egan

  (self-styled “businessman” and boss of the Rats)

  Edward “Fat Eddie” Farrell (Egan’s hired thug and bodyguard)

  Assorted Rats, Nixie Fighters,

  firemen, policemen, strangers in storm

  Doc Monaghan of the River Arcade and Pawn Shop

  Mr. Patrizi (greengrocer)

  Father Timothy Dempsey (Pastor of Saint Patrick’s)

  Jelly Donahoo (the milkman)

  OF THE OPTIMA PETAMUS SOCIETY

  Cora Downey

  Daniel Hanratty-Maguire

  Mrs. Horace Merriweather

  The Dead

  DELANEYS

  Cyril (Papa, Pop)

  Catherine “Kitty” (Mama)

  Gran

  Helen

  Larry

  DOYLES

  Mickey’s ma, Officer Doyle’s wife

  BRICKEYS

  Harry “Two-Bits” (father of Betty, brother of Sister Bridget)

  Ma and Pa Brickey (parents of Sister Bridget and all her brothers)

  Dzadzio (Polish grandfather of Sister Bridget and Officer Doyle)

  Irish granny (wife of Dzadzio)

  Maggie Meehan (chorus girl, wife of “Two-Bits”, mother of Betty)

  DOWNEYS

  Cora’s Aunt Lizzie

  Cora’s mother and father

  OTHERS

  Cecilia Forney

  Saint Hyacinth (man, not horse), patron saint of those in danger of drowning

  * While all characters (as portrayed in this story) are fictional, those in boldface type have counterparts in actual history.

  First . . .

  Imagine a door.

  Just that, to begin. You could draw it in four straight strokes on a Big Chief tablet.

  Not much of a door, really. Just the frame, or what’s left of it these days: an empty door frame with busted hinges, standing all alone in an endless sea of prairie grass.

  There are some who’d call it gold, that grass, but that’s not it exactly. It’s too light for gold, not yellow enough for straw. Or for amber, either, never mind what the song says, though the waves are true enough.

  My brother Bill would have claimed it was camel-colored. (He’d been to the Cairo Spectacular at the World’s Fair. Twice.)

  Whatever name you give it, it stretches on for miles, wave after camel-colored wave, stirring ever so softly as the wind breathes through it, and the clouds move over it, casting shadows like dark ships, sailing beneath them.

  There’s a storm coming. Can you smell it? Look there—you can see the rain falling already. Great purple thunderheads away off at the horizon, weeping across the land. Wyoming, maybe? Hard to say. Where you stand right now—three miles from Alzada, Carter County, Montana—you could spit in the air and have it come down in any of three states, if there’s a fair enough breeze. No lines in the earth here to map it out neatly, not even a tree to mark your place or mar the view. Only the land, and the sky, no different than they were a hundred years ago. Only that gently rolling prairie sea, forever and ever . . .

  You shiver, just a little. What was it we used to say? Got a rat runnin’ over your grave.

  The wind’s blowing colder.

  The old cowboys at the Homestead Restaurant & Lounge will be talking snow tonight, shaking their heads over bitter black coffee and coconut pie.

  That’s all it is, probably: a change in the weather. That’s what chilled you just now.

  Most likely.

  Then again—

  That door. The old door.

  Take another look.

  Do you see a little girl with blue eyes, looking back?

  Just a trick of the light, you’re thinking. There’s no one there.

  Is there?

  Look again.

  Look deeper.

  Do you see me now?

  Not as I am, but as I was, when we were all a hundred years youn
ger.

  My name is Julia.

  I’ve waited such a long time.

  I knew you’d come.

  September

  Chapter 1

  I suppose I will go to hell for biting the nun.

  Mary says it’s a mortal sin, for certain.

  Never mind. It was worth it. I would bite her again, if I got the chance.

  Bill says Pop’s down there frying already, so I won’t be lonesome.

  “JULIA CATHERINE DELANEY!”

  It was Aunt Gert who started it, and that’s the God’s truth. I never planned on biting a soul at the time. I was out by the back stoop, shooting marbles and minding my own business, when the back door opened—bang!—and the hollering commenced.

  “Oh, for shame, for shame, Julia! Get up out of that dirt this instant! What do you think you’re doing, you bad girl?”

  And what did it look like? I knuckled down and closed one eye, taking aim at a fat purple immy. I was winning, that was what, shooting straight as an arrow just the way Bill had taught me, and beating the pants off Snotty Otto, Aunt Gert’s scourge of a kid.

  “Julia’s cheatin’ again, Mama!” he went to whining the second he saw her. “She stole my good nickel!” Which was a flat-out lie. And the whole world knew it, too, including his own mother. But you think she’d let on?

  “Dirty little guttersnipe!” she hissed, just like a great nasty cobra. So I figured now was the time to run, but I couldn’t leave my marbles with Otto, and while I was trying to get ’em gathered up safe in the bag, Aunt Gert came charging down the steps and yanked me by the hair. “Saint Chris on a crutch, will you look at you? Wallowing in the filth in your Sunday best, and your poor grandma not two hours in her grave!”

  A lot you care, I wanted to tell her. I tried, but the words stuck in my throat. Aunt Gert didn’t give a hang about Gran. She wasn’t even our aunt, really, only dead Uncle Somebody’s second wife, and the landlady on top of it, and a meddling old sourpuss, to boot.

  “Don’t you growl at me, you dirty girl! Come along, now; there’s someone here to see you.” She gave my hair another jerk and started dragging me inside, stopping long enough at the kitchen pump to grab a wet cabbage-smelling rag and rub my face till it burned. “And don’t be giving me that evil eye, neither, Miss High-and-Mighty. You got something to say, then say it. You think it’s my pleasure, playing nursemaid to the likes of you?”

  I craned my neck toward the door that opened on the parlor, trying to catch a glimpse of the visitors. I could halfway hear murmuring, but I couldn’t make it out. I’d had the fever when I was little, and now one ear didn’t work so well.

  Someone to see me?

  There’d been a pack of freeloaders traipsing through the house for the past two days, crying by the coffin and eating the funeral pies, but so far none of them had looked my way twice. Which suited me fine.

  “Who is it—ow!—that’s here?” I asked.

  “Your betters, that’s who. Stop your scowling. And mind your manners, or I’ll give you something to scowl about.”

  Old bat.

  Bill would show her what’s what, soon as he got back. Bill wouldn’t take that kind of guff off nobody.

  And what was keeping him all this time, anyhow? He’d been standing right by me at the graveyard—him and Mary both; they let you out half a day from the shoe factory when your kinfolk got buried. But once the praying was over, I saw him going off somewhere with Mickey Doyle and that crowd. “Can’t I go with you, Bill?” I ran quick and asked him, but he shook his head and said, “Go home, J.” And then he gave me a wink. “You stick with Mary. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Except it wasn’t any minute. That was ages ago. They’d been ringing the Angelus bell at Saint Pat’s, so it must have been noon. And now the ferry this side of the Eads Bridge was blowing its three o’clock whistle, and Egan’s Saloon would have been open for hours and I didn’t trust that Mickey and—

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Aunt Gert said to somebody, pulling me after her through the parlor door.

  That’s when I saw ’em.

  Not Bill or Mickey or any of the others neither, but a pair of nuns—a big one with a face like George Washington on a dollar bill, and a little-bitty plump one, like a pigeon with spectacles—sitting up prim on Gran’s purple settee, talking to Mary.

  “Ah,” said the first, when she saw me staring. “Here’s the younger girl now. What’s her name again?”

  “Julia,” said Aunt Gert, sweet as syrup, hauling me closer. “Say hello to the Sisters,” she hissed in my good ear, “and stand up straight, for the love of Mike.”

  I’d have been out of there that minute, except the old bat was pinching my arm so tight, I couldn’t exactly move.

  “Oh!” The pigeon’s eyes lit up. Even her dimples had dimples. “Julia Delaney—like the fiddle tune?”

  Aunt Gert sighed. “The father was some sort of a musician.” She might just as well have said he was some sort of a toad fryer, for all the feeling she put into it.

  “Oh my,” said the pigeon. “Julia Delaney . . . isn’t that lovely? I danced to it once in Dublin. And what a lovely little girl!”

  Where? I wondered, looking over my shoulder. There wasn’t any lovely girl behind me. Only that snake Otto, leering at me with his little snake eyes.

  Aunt Gert made a sound halfway between a sniff and a snort. “You’re too kind, Sister Gabriel. You’ll be turning her head. Shake hands with the nice Sister, Julia.” She gave my arm a twist. “Don’t you know a compliment when you hear one? What do you say?”

  But I kept my hands to myself, and I didn’t say a word, because there was something fishy going on around here. I looked at Mary for some sort of a signal—she was nearly fourteen and understood these things—but Mary only looked back with her green eyes round as quarters and gave me the tiniest wag of her head, like a warning. And while Aunt Gert was pulling one way and I was pulling the other, and trying to think where I had seen this brand of nun before, George Washington spoke up:

  “Never mind, Mrs.—”

  “Bocklebrink.”

  “Mrs. Bocklebrink,” the nun repeated. You could hardly say it without laughing, but not a nose hair quivered. “It’s perfectly natural, under the circumstances.” And then she fixed me with a smile that sent shivers down my spine. “Come here, dear,” she said.

  I wouldn’t. I wasn’t budging.

  But Mary was still over there, nodding at me like it mattered, so I took one step.

  “That’s better. Now, then. I’m Sister Maclovius. You’re not afraid of me, are you, Julia?”

  Afraid? Ha! I stuck out my chin. I wasn’t afraid of anybody.

  I’d have said it out loud, too, if only my mouth had been working.

  “Well, of course you’re not. A big girl like you! Eleven years old already—two weeks ago today, isn’t that right?”

  And how would this Sister Mac-Whatsit know a thing like that? I wondered. But then nuns were friends with God, who knew everything. A fine birthday it had been, too, with Gran hardly sick at all that evening and Mary’s famous dumplings for supper and Bill getting home just in time for the cake and candles. I still had the marble he had given me out of his own bag—his moonstone, no less, with magic in it—not mixed in with my others, but hidden away for emergencies, tucked in the secret pocket of my scratchy woolen undershirt. It would bring me good luck and good looks, he had promised, and a husband with pots of money. Which was more than this pair could ever hope for, even if they had a hundred birthdays.

  So why were they looking at me like I was the one to be pitied?

  “It’s a terrible thing to lose a loved one,” said Sister Maclovius. “But your granny isn’t really lost, now is she? Our Blessed Lord has taken her to heaven with himself and his Blessed Mother—and your own dear mother, too, and all your relatives and the holy angels—where you’ll be seeing her by and by, if you’re a good girl.”

  I frowned at my muddy boots. I
wasn’t any good girl. That was Mary; she was the good one. Just ask Aunt Gert. Mary slept with her rosary under her pillow and knew the Apostles’ Creed by heart; they’d let her into heaven for sure. And there’d be Gran, sitting up there waiting by the teakettle, same as always, with her soft lap and tapping foot and crinkled-up twinkly eyes. “Where’s Julia? Late again?” she’d ask. “Three guesses,” Mary would answer. “Ah, well.” Gran would sigh. “God knows she was warned.”

  I hadn’t so much as sniffled this whole day, but now my throat ached all of a sudden. I’d never be good enough, would I? I’d swapped my rosary for a ten-cent ticket to the House of Wax.

  “You believe that, don’t you, Julia Delaney?” the littler Sister asked gently.

  “Well, of course she does,” said the big one, waving away the silly question. “And in the meantime, he hasn’t forgotten you and Mary. Not for a minute. He’s sent us here to be your friends. We have his own word for it: ‘I will not leave ye orphans.’ ”

  My stomach gave a terrible lurch, like I’d come down hard on the wrong side of a see-saw. Ah, sure, what a thickhead I was! They were orphan nuns, weren’t they? From that scurvy neighborhood west of here—the Bad Lands, Bill always called it—that was where I’d seen ’em, marching their charges to church on Sunday mornings. Drab-looking girls in brown-and-white uniforms, each one homelier than the last, trudging down Morgan Street with their eyes straight in front of ’em, past the pool halls and the whiskey bars and the ramshackle floozy houses, tramping along in lockstep, two by two.

  O bless the orphans of the storm;

  Sweet angels send to guide them. . . .

  Saint Chris on a crutch. We’d stepped in it now.

  “Run!” I hollered to Mary, wrenching free from Aunt Gert with one last desperate wriggle. “They’re tryin’ to take us to their damn orphanage! Come on, Mary! Run!”

  But Mary never budged an inch, just stood there gaping like a ninny, while Aunt Gert got all red in the face and came lunging and sputtering after me. “Come back here, you ungrateful . . . Catch her!” she gasped, looking wild-eyed at the startled Sisters. But they were as old and fat as she was, and slower than molasses, and Bill always said I was fast as a fox. I dodged left around the purple couch and right under the table between the wooden lion’s paws and was out the other side in half a heartbeat, while the others were still creaking to their feet and reaching for my skirt tail and closing their claws on air. Ha! I told myself as I scrambled through the front door. They’ll never catch me. Never!