Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas Page A

hurt.”
    Silver Heels had worked in Buckskin Joe a year or two when the smallpox came, and the men began dying like fish in mine runoff, Hennie continued. The girls left town so they wouldn’t catch it, but Silver Heels stayed to nurse the miners. She cooked for them and washed their faces with cold creek water when they were out of their minds with fever, and she wrote letters to their folks back home after the boys died, claiming she was a minister’s wife, and saying they’d died in the bosom of the Lord.
    “Oh my,” Nit said, but Hennie held up a finger to show she wasn’t finished with the story.
    “Silver Heels herself caught the pox, and the boys feared for her life, but she came out of it. Her pretty face was gone, however, all poxed up and ruined. So she left out. No one knew where she went. A few years later, a woman wearing a heavy veil showed up at the burial ground to put flowers on the graves of the miners who’d died in the epidemic. Youcouldn’t say for sure who she was, because her face was covered, but the Buckskin miners knew. They said she was Silver Heels, and they named a mountain for that hooker,” Hennie finished.
    “But you said she was a dance hall girl, not a sorry girl,” Nit said.
    “One and the same,” Hennie told her, getting up to add a few sticks to the fire to take off the chill. She left the stove door open, because a blaze, even one in an old gasoline drum that had been turned into a stove, cheered her. Hennie sat down, moving around a little to get comfortable and thinking Roy Pinto ought to get some decent chairs instead of Monalisa’s worn-out kitchen chairs. Then she chuckled to herself as she realized Roy didn’t want to make it too comfortable for the leather bellies. Settling down, she said, “Most of the hookhouses in Middle Swan are on the other side of the river, and when a girl turns out, it’s said she’s gone ‘over the Swan.’ Now, I’ll tell you about them.”
     

     
    Hennie knew about prostitution before she moved to Middle Swan, of course. As a girl before the war, she’d been warned to stay away from Mrs. Buckle’s house in White Pigeon. The house was a frame shanty with the paint worn off, set back in a grove of dark trees. A boy once dared Hennie to run up and knock on Mrs. Buckle’s door, and she’d done it, for you had to take a dare. Hennie’d expected Mrs. Buckle to throw a rock at her or, worse, snatch her up and drag her inside for some evil purpose. But nothing happened. Later, when she understood what the house was about, Hennie realizedit had been morning when she knocked, and everybody was asleep.
    Besides, there was nothing to fear, since Mrs. Buckle and the girls were careful not to offend the women and children of White Pigeon. When they went to town, they spent their time in the dance hall and saloon. Hennie had seen Abram Fletcher come out of a bar with a prostitute, both of them drunk. Watching him with the girl made Hennie feel dirty, for Abram was trying to court her then.
    After the war ended, more than one widow of her acquaintance began entertaining, trading an evening for a small coin or a sack of flour, or even a handful of potatoes. Hennie was disdainful and asked, “What will your little ones think?”
    “I expect they like to eat,” came the reply, and Hennie felt put in her place.
    She realized then that morality was for folks with full bellies, and she came to realize that if things had been different, if Sarah had lived and they had been destitute, Hennie herself might have “entertained.” She’d have done anything to keep that precious baby from starving. So when she moved to Middle Swan and learned that some of her neighbors were soiled doves, as they were called then, Hennie wasn’t shocked, wasn’t even surprised.
    Women in mining camps weren’t much better off than the war widows. If a woman in Middle Swan lost her husband to death or he had taken off, she couldn’t do much besides set up a