109 East Palace Read Online Free PDF Page B

wood heated the city, and she had not realized how much she had missed its smoky perfume. The Indians continued to hawk their wares every day on the sidewalk in the shade of the old Governors’ Palace as they had for centuries. The Woolworth’s was new, and there were more curio shops and dry-goods stores, two drugstores, and innumerable small cafés. In the Plaza, the oldest residents of the region mingled with the new European immigrants, the poorest of people with the wealthiest, the illiterate with the highly educated. The supporting cast consisted of the same oddball mix of artists, writers, consumptives, neurotics, speculators, adventurers, escapists, and dreamers of every description. It was the colorful crossroads she remembered so well, with everyone in his or her own way making a last stand for rugged individualism. Presiding over it all was the dignified bronze statue of Archbishop Lamy in front of St. Francis Cathedral, a dramatic Romanesque structure that always struck her as somewhat incongruous amid all the humble Pueblo architecture.
    Despite its historic position as the terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, the city had stubbornly resisted growth, and even after the admission of New Mexico to the union in 1912, the city had consisted of only 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants. In the 1920s, the tourist trade had brought some development, and by the time she returned in 1932 the population hovered around 11,000. But since the Great Depression, business was down. The rich private collectors had all but disappeared, and many of the roughly one hundred artists living in town were in dire straits. The dry years had only compounded the problems. A sustained drought and particularly brutal winter had driven the local economy even further down, and many homesteaders in the middle Rio Grande area were fighting for survival. There were not a lot of good jobs to be had, but former patients had the advantage over the local residents because they were generally better educated, and Dorothy was no exception. She soon found work as a bookkeeper at the Spanish and Indian Trading Company. Kevin teased that sitting up at that high desk with her pencil and heavy ledger, she “looked like Scrooge.”
    Over time, it became Dorothy’s job to balance the books while the two shop owners, Norman McGee and Jim McMillan, went on buying sprees around the state. They thought nothing of writing $10,000 checks for consignments of art treasures, but could never quite remember to pay the rent. They were far too much in demand to attend to such mundane matters and increasingly relied on Dorothy to keep the business end of the trading company functioning. It was the most noted store of its kind in New Mexico, or for that matter the entire Southwest, and Indians from the surrounding pueblos, Navajo reservations, and Hopi villages brought their finest blankets, pottery, and woven baskets to sell or barter. Spanish traders brought hand-carved furniture and the rarest of old santos (images of saints), bultos (carved wooden sculptures), and retablos (painted wood or tin altarpieces). The store was always busy and lively, and along the way Dorothy was receiving a first-class education in Spanish and Indian arts and crafts and developing an astute collector’s eye. She earned fifty cents an hour keeping “a very complicated set of books with 14 columns,” but the workday was flexible and allowed her time to look after her little boy. She had the small insurance pension her husband had left her, and in a small town like Santa Fe, the little money she earned went a long way. It was enough for them to live on.
    Dorothy’s father, who had never ceased to admire his daughter’s spirit and courage, came out to visit several times. He had lost much of his fortune in the Depression, but he scraped together enough money to buy her a house. Instead of purchasing a home, however, Dorothy was intent on building one. She was inspired in part by her friend Katherine