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Mrs. Gamertsfelder sets the tray of lemonade on the small table in the kitchen garden and pauses for a moment. She loves to look at the neat rows of vegetables, thoroughly weeded, and the infant beans, sweet peas, and tomatoes already vining up the twig and twine trellises. They’ve already harvested some of the cool weather vegetables, like broccoli and cabbage. It’s still early in the prime growing season—the tomatoes have only just gone in—but she has great expectations of how it will go: the tomatoes will inflate to bursting in their skins, their appearance on the dinner table followed by their immediate disappearance, devoured by boarders who sorely miss the fresh fruits and vegetables they associate with home. She will even be able to make a few extra dollars by selling the surplus produce at the farm stand on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mr. Schultz always welcomes her selling at his stand, since her produce is top notch and helps to keep the customers coming back. And the best part is that she doesn’t have to do a bit of it. It’s all Charley.
“Can I get you boys anything else?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. G. Your lemonade never needs accompaniment,” Charley tells her.
“Oh, go on with you,” she laughs as he winks at her.
Her boarders are polyglot. She has Swedes, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch; Germans, of course—she especially loves the boys who are fresh off the boat, who bring news and stories in the native tongue, untouched yet by the English they so desperately want to learn, from a homeland she hasn’t seen since girlhood. Every so often, she even rents to an Italian, as long as he is clean and comes with good references from an employer. But none of them are Charley, who immediately adopts her tiny garden as his own, expands it, and keeps it in sharp order. That Germanic instinct for military precision belies his easy-going cheerfulness and willingness to pitch in for her wherever he sees the need.
Mrs. G has taken in boarders since her husband died in the war, and her son in childhood from the whooping cough. So dashing as a young man, Niehls Gamertsfelder comes from a family of successful shipping merchants that builds the family home and business close by the bustling wharves of Georgetown’s port, and makes its money on a succession of high-value products: tobacco, wheat, coal, lumber. But the port of Georgetown gradually loses its shipping channel to silt and flood, and its business to the railroad and the infringing federal city; and the Gamertsfelder family loses its fortune and its sons to war, disease, and bad luck, until Hedda Gamertsfelder, nee Sheckles, a mere in-law, is the last one standing.
She rents every spare room in the big house, two and even three to a room, and only has one hired girl to help out, so it is all she can do to keep up with the cooking and cleaning. But she looks after all her boys with redirected maternal pride, and Charley has never heard her say a cross word, even when Gretchen manages to tip the whole soup pot over on the wood stove, in a single motion not only ruining dinner but ensuring that another cannot be prepared. At the time, though, even Mrs. G has to bite her lip to keep the words back.
Charley pushes back from his knees to his haunches and stands up to stretch. Joe, who has been bending over, stands upright with a groan. “I told you not to do that.”
“You always tell me not to do that.”
“Pig head.”
“Know-it-all.”
Joe pours them each a glass of lemonade, and they drink in companionable silence. Joe knows nothing about gardening, but Charley has taught him to distinguish between the weeds and the emerging vegetables to the point that Charley trusts him with the hoe and the thinning trowel. Joe thinks of it simply as the difference between the good weeds and the bad weeds, but he certainly enjoys the final result. Plus, by helping out, he too gets to share in the profits from the farm stand—a jealously guarded secret, since he certainly doesn’t want a crush of greedy lummoxes horning in on the bounty.
Joe has worked with Charley for a few years now, has been his roommate for only a little less than that. Younger by several years, Joe is happy to learn from his friend’s greater experience in life, and grateful that Charley never lords that seniority over him, or laughs at the young country boy still new to the big city. The job at Engraving is the first he’s ever had that’s more than a mile from his family’s home, and having to move into the federal city is overwhelming and, frankly, scary. Charley is the first person to find Joe the morning he shows up for work, looking pale and lost, and promptly takes him in hand. They are well-matched in temperament, both natural mechanics and self-directed problem solvers. They make a good team.
Charley surveys their work. “Need to finish up soon.”
“Church again?”
“I can’t help it that you’re a heathen.”
“Once a week is salvation enough for most of us...it used to be enough for you.”
Charley gives Joe an exasperated eye-roll. “There’s only so many places that are fit to take a young lady. I can hardly bring her down to McCreary’s for a beer, now can I?”
There’s a pause and Joe looks into the middle distance as he says, “So are you just waiting until the wedding to introduce us?”
He rubs the back of his neck as he considers this. So that’s it: Joe presumes that Charley hadn’t brought them together because he is somehow ashamed of Joe. Of course, that isn’t it at all, but the plain truth of it is that he’s afraid that Joe and Emma just won’t like each other, and then what? Will he have to choose between his best friend and the woman he plans to marry? It’s too painful to consider, and so he has simply side-stepped the issue. But now that Joe has brought it up, there is no sense delaying the inevitable, so it’s just a practical matter of how to bring it about. An idea comes to him and without considering, he exclaims, “Crystal Spring!”
“What?”
“The racetrack up in Brightwood. It’s right near the lot. We can have a picnic this Sunday on the grounds.” Almost as he says it, he feels he should have thought of something less involved. Quicker.
They pick a spot to meet. Charley arranges to have Mrs. G pack a basket for them, and they decide that Joe will bring it, since Charley and Emma will be coming directly from Sunday Mass.
That evening, Charley waits until they are on her doorstep saying goodnight to tell her of the plan. It has taken him all evening to work up the courage, and even now he feels his resolve slipping. Once he finally gets the words out, she simply looks at him for a long moment and then nods. “Good night, then,” is all she says.
And so, on Sunday, Joe sets off from the house, feeling conspicuous as he carries the picnic basket through the streets and onto the various horse trolleys he takes to get to the track. As he greets people along the way, he realizes from their smiles and nods that they assume he is headed off to meet with his own young lady, rather than that of his best friend. This is the part he doesn’t like to consider, what his days will be like without Charley as a roommate. But now that Charley will be settling down and moving out of Mrs. G’s house, perhaps it’s time he thinks about doing the same thing. Perhaps Emma has a friend. That way, he and Charley can still spend off-hours time together.
He is the first one at the appointed spot and considers what he should do. Lay out the tablecloth that Mrs. G has packed? But then what? There aren’t many folks on the grounds yet, so at least there is no one right here to see him fidget. Finally, he lays the cloth so that he can put the basket down. As he straightens up, he sees them walking across the grass toward him.
Joe lets out a startled snort that he covers up by pretending to sneeze. If he’d been describing the scene to their buddies, he would have gotten at least one full-out, thigh-slapping guffaw. Charley and Emma are the same height, and while Emma is not at all fat, she is...solid. Substantial. Next to her, Charley, with his slight, wiry build looks for all the world like a broomstick with a mustache. It is a mighty comical sight. He forces himself to replace amusement with affability, but as they come even closer and he looks again, the smile slides off as he feels his mouth drop open, and he is not fast enough to cover that up. Joe has always imagined that Charley’s