Chapter 14 continues
The story so far: Milo heals his wounds; Lily continues her lessons.
In the three weeks since Katka's arrival, spring had gone and summer arrived. Apple trees bloomed and tulips blossomed. Wild lupine, which grew on both sides of Blood Red Road, exploded across the landscape in cheerful hues of purple and pink. The women picked the flowers and put them in vases throughout the house, even in the cellar where they worked on the women's paper. They had completed six articles and some sketches of women's swimwear that was now on sale at Cerkvenik's. Lily wrote about the ceremony for the first four graduates of Biwabik High School and what the mayor's wife was wearing. Lily also wrote a detailed article about the ten catalogue girls who had arrived from Finland a week earlier. Although she interviewed no one, she included personal information on each bride. Most of this information came from her bosom buddy, Helen, who worked behind the counter at Cerkvenik's and lived for gossip. Nowhere in the pamphlet was there any reference to anything remotely controversial.
They christened their publication The Iron Range Ladies Journal. Lily tied a ribbon around the typed stack of articles and drawings, and put the manuscript in a small brown egg crate with a handwritten letter on top. She carried it to the chicken coop, put it next to the other crates and covered the top with hay. The next morning, when Katka went to gather eggs, the manuscript was gone, picked up by Lily's secret source, who would typeset it and run off copies.
The following Saturday was hot and humid. Lily got word from Helen that the Ladies Journal had been delivered to both Cerkvenik's and Gornik's General Store, and was selling like hotcakes. Lily and Katka decided to celebrate by doing nothing. "Besides," Lily said, "it's too damn hot to cook." As evening approached, Katka and Lily laid out bread, meat and cheese on the dining room table and let the men make their own sandwiches to eat at their leisure. "It's fend-for-yourself night," Lily proclaimed to all the boarders. "We ladies need a rest."
Katka and Lily set up chairs in the back yard. "Anton always jokes about the weather here," Lily said to Katka. "He calls Minnesota the land with nine months of winter and three months of bad sliding. But wouldn't you know it? Because I'm carrying five pounds of warm coal on my rib cage, the Farmer's Almanac predicts it will stay hot until fall." Lily propped her swollen feet on a milk crate and rested a pint of cool ale on her protruding belly. "My feet hurt like a son-of-a-bitch," she said to Katka.
Uncle Anton was in the Slovenski Dom. Some of the boarders were inside, but most chose to eat their dinner outside in the breeze. Soon after, several of the miners began playing horseshoes. Every now and then, a few miners would look their way and call out a greeting.
"Starved, you know," Lily said. "That's what they are."
