Push the Button, Jennis
A girl in early 1900s Utah is torn between her brother's grand invention and her family's tragic history
The population of Joseph, Utah, peaked at six hundred people in 1900, the year my father died. By the time I had turned ten in 1907, it had dwindled to just over a hundred, making us a small town to beat all small towns. We have our own church, this being Zion and all, but for school or the general store, we have to go to Elsinore, the next town, over six miles away. The nearest town of any consequence is Richfield. Most go there to earn money working in the mines, like my brother Albert, or cooking for the miners, like my sister Ora.
My mother had seven children, but now I’m the only one left. So I need hardly tell you how surprised we were when my oldest brother Perry came back.
I was sitting on a rickety wooden chair in the living room darning my third-best pair of stockings when I heard it—a distant grinding, squeaking, groaning noise. At first I thought it was the train, but the clock on the mantelpiece said the train wasn’t due for hours. And anyway, this noise seemed to be getting much closer.
Mother stood frozen in the act of sweeping the floor, her face pale.
“What’s that sound?” I asked, as it grew ever louder.
“I don’t know, Jennis.” The noise grew to a great cacophony until I could hear it right outside our house—and then it stopped.
“Stay here, Jennis,” Mother ordered. “I’m going to—”
Someone knocked on the door, and we both jumped in surprise. Mother opened it cautiously.
A stranger stood framed in the doorway, wearing leather breeches embossed with intricate floral designs and a hat adorned with metal studs. A small flask filled with orange liquid dangled from a chain at his waist. He also wore leather gauntlets that reached his elbows and knee-high boots of scaly hide like a crocodile’s. His face was mostly obscured by thick goggles and a scarf.
“What brings you to this corner of Zion, stranger?” Mother asked. My heart pounded. People often came and went on our door, on account of Mother being the best midwife in Sevier County, but never strange men in crocodile-hide boots.
“Mother,” said the stranger. “Don’t you recognize your own son?”
“Perry!” Mother threw her arms around him and held him tight.
Now I knew, I wondered how I could have failed to recognize him. Who else would stand with his hand on his hip, shoulders squared, in the way that only Perry could? Now he sported a debonair mustache, waxed and turned up at the ends.
I longed to throw my arms about his waist but felt shy and dowdy. I had inherited my mother’s dark and wildly curly hair, which was always coming out of my braids. My blue calico dress was too short in the hem and sleeves, and I was sure the threadbare fabric at my elbows would burst at any moment. Despite Mother’s hard work as a midwife, most of the mothers she nursed couldn’t afford her midwifery fees. Often we’d get paid in potatoes instead of money, but just as often Mother would be paid nothing at all. So I’d have to make do with the dress I had.
“It’s good to be home, Mother,” Perry said.
“Two years is such a long time,” Mother agreed. She looked out the front window over Perry’s shoulder and stiffened. She drew back, her hands on his shoulders, and glared at him.
“Perry VanRansler Miller,” Mother said, her voice shot through with anger. “What is that infernal contraption outside my house?”
“It’s a steam-powered automatic road-defrosting, snow-melting perambulator for rural use, Mother,” he said with purposeful casualness.
“I want to see,” I said, trying to push past them to get a good look. At first glance, the machine looked like a glossy, six-wheeled black box. It boasted an enclosed cabin with a thick pane of glass in the front, and a number of large light bulbs attached to either side. A series of pointed copper tubes protruded from the front of the machine.
“That’s quite enough, Jennis,” said Mother as she tried to block the machine from my view. She pursed her lips and turned back to Perry. “You misunderstand me, son. I know what it is. I want to know why you brought that blasphemous, noisy, dirty, invention of Lucifer himself home to this town full of God-fearing people.”
