The River Widow(3)
One summer day at the railyard, she met two brothers, Chester and Henry Nash, and some exciting moments followed as they jumped trains together, but it lasted only until her newfound friends made their way to a town in Virginia, where relatives took them in.
Adah continued hopping trains alone until she reached Kentucky, where the land was green and spongy like the reaching fingers of a massive crawling creature, and she began to see that maybe this was what she’d been looking for. A place grounded and verdant and unending, growing so abundantly that she could reach down, touch it, and pull it up by the roots for examination.
Now the river she also loved was killing her. She was slender but strong—hard work on the farm and housework had given her muscles—but she was no match for this water.
Back in Louisville, Adah had kept company with some carnival types, and a kindly woman named Jessamine made Adah finish her high school education and also taught her how to read the tarot cards, a way to make a living. Jessamine said that a smart young woman with a New York accent, serious eyes, and pleasant looks could glean coins from country yokels looking for work in Louisville, as well as from city people down on their luck and seeking prosperous predictions to keep their spirits afloat. Adah discovered she had a knack for reading people. She took that God-given talent and further developed her observational skills. Everyone had a tell, and she used that more than anything else to survive by fortune-telling. Jessamine had taught her the ropes before she, too, died suddenly, and Adah picked up the practice, going around the city and its outskirts with a band of peddlers and other misfits, setting up gritty little camps in parks, empty lots, and open spaces.
People began to fascinate her, not as scientific objects of study but as vessels of soul and desire and spirit, each as unique as an individual leaf or a sparkling stone. She learned that a person’s emotional needs were as important as physical ones. Never disingenuous, she tried to dole out hope, even a glimpse of it.
In Louisville, she met Lester.
Three and a half years ago, he had pushed aside the flap of canvas that made the door to her fortune-telling tent and stepped in for a reading. Adah’s eyes had traveled from the dungarees up to the leather belt at his waist, to the shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, to his neck, Adam’s apple dominant, to his face, nicely boned. He was approaching thirty, she guessed, not tall, but built compactly like a boxer, with a cinched waist and steel-rail limbs. His hair was thick, black, and curling; it would never thin out, but instead would turn into distinguished silver. One long lock spooled down his forehead. His eyebrows were curly, too, but looked as if they had been combed in one direction, out toward the temples. An attractive man.
For a moment, she remembered herself as the girl who had once wanted to become a teacher or a nurse—someone who might appeal to such a handsome man. She had never intended to make the reading of cards into an occupation. But she was alone, and the Depression had changed everything. One had to make a living any way one could. And during tough times, the demand for fortune-telling was on the rise.
People doing well rarely came to her, and sometimes she stretched hope to its limits for the downtrodden, painting as rosy a picture as possible and even declining payment from a few.
“Sit down,” she said to the handsome man.
He slipped into the chair, clearly comfortable in his own presence. But he kept his hands folded beneath the table, where she couldn’t see them.
“Your hair is unusual,” said Lester. “Right pretty, it is.”
Adah fingered wisps of it on the nape of her neck. Her hair was short because lice from hand-me-down clothes had taken up in her once-long chestnut-brown hair, and she’d had to shave her head a few months back. At first, she’d worn an old flapper hat to cover her baldness, but now her hair was coming back in, fingery about her head, and she’d given up the hat. Her hair was still short enough to set her apart, but Adah didn’t care. It gave her a bit of a spooky look. Good for business.
“Thank you.”
From a person’s eyes and clothing, from their skin and hair, Adah could often come up with revealing details. But the most telling features had always been a person’s hands. Not the palms, as one might guess, but the backs of the hands and fingers. The condition of their skin could tell her a person’s line of work, and the size and cording of the veins was a good indication of age. But more importantly, the way a person held their hands, how they managed them during conversation, how they moved and quieted, gave her clues.
Adah gathered the cards, forming one pile. “You must cut. Use your left hand to cut twice, leaving three stacks.”
“Why the left hand?”
“I assume you’re right-handed.”
He nodded.
“The right hand is the hand of labor, our occupations, our business with the outside world. The left hand is more akin to what goes on in our personal lives and minds.”
“I see,” he said, looking a bit amused.
Lester cut the cards as Adah had requested, and she finally saw a working man’s hands—weathered, chafed, and callused, but clean. Then he settled his hands back below the table and looked at Adah as if he were sitting back in the theater, waiting for a play to begin.
Adah pushed the cards back together to form a single stack and then scooped them silently before her in one fluid movement. Her hands were fast and efficient with the cards, her skin was still young looking and unblemished, but her cuticles were chewed up out of anxiety, ragged and inflamed in spots. Her hands gave her away, too.