Dread Nation

by Justina Ireland

  The man behind the counter of the general store, a Mr. Washington, is kind and helpful, and gives me two sets of loose-fitting trousers, two shirts of a rough material, a pair of sturdy boots that appear used, and a single set of underthings.

  “This is all you get for free. Anything else you have to buy. Shopping day for Negroes is Tuesday. Don’t try to come round any other day than that, the sheriff will just have you thrown out. Also, you’ll need to buy winter gear early. Last year I was clean out of coats come November, and I don’t know where you’re from, but January here is no joking matter.”

  “You got anything nicer for Miss Kate?” I say, raising my head defiantly.

  Mr. Washington narrows his eyes at me. “That’s all I got for clothing.”

  Katherine gives Mr. Washington a kind smile. “I apologize, sir. Jane is a good girl but a bit protective, as an Attendant should be. She meant to ask, do you have any clothes suitable for a lady?”

  Mr. Washington’s expression softens and he shakes his head, looking truly saddened. “No, miss. I’m afraid you’ll have to see Mrs. Allen for that.”

  He moves away, and I lean in to Katherine. “At least it ain’t striped,” I say. She scowls at me and I grin wide. “And hey! You stopped arguing about being white.”

  “You’d better be right about this. I dislike lying.”

  “It gets easier the more you do it.”

  Mr. Washington comes back with a ledger and asks us to make our mark. I put an X where he indicates while Katherine signs with a flourish.

  We thank Mr. Washington and carry our bundles out of the store. Bill stands when he sees us and gestures down the street.

  “You’ll share a room with the rest of your kind above the Duchess’s place. Sheriff won’t send you out to the line today, he’s a good Christian and the pastor thinks even animals deserve a day off after the trip out here. You’ll eat with the rest of the girls, patrol with them, what have you. For now you’ll use the weapons out on the line.” Bill spits again. “Try not to get yourselves killed too quickly. I bet Pete you girls would last to All Saints’ Day at least.”

  The door to the sheriff’s office opens, and another of his flunkies walks toward us. “Pastor says the blond one is white. Test checks out. We gotta walk her to the church. Other one can go on patrol, though.”

  Katherine stands up straighter. “I require my Attendant by my side. It isn’t proper to be walking around unprotected.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye on you,” the man says, giving Katherine a grin that makes me feel like I ate something foul.

  “Not likely,” I say, putting myself between Katherine and the man. “It ain’t proper and I’m here to make sure Miss Katherine is cared for like the lady she is.” I spread my feet in a defensive position. Attendants get training in hand-to-hand combat because the dead ain’t the only threat to young ladies of good breeding. Besides, I’d like nothing more than to have a reason to break one of these fella’s faces.

  “Let the girl walk Miss Deveraux to the church. You know how the pastor feels about his ladies,” Bill says, voice low. He leers at Katherine for a moment before he leans in close to me. “I look forward to straightening out that sideways attitude of yours.”

  He and his friend walk off back toward the sheriff’s office, leaving me and Katherine alone for the first time since we arrived in Summerland. She turns toward me, her expression impassive. “Jane, I fear we have landed ourselves in a certifiably terrible place.”

  A bubble of hysterical laughter threatens to well up, and I have to swallow it back down. “What was your first clue?”

  “As I said earlier, I trust your devious brain is working through a way out of this pickle. This town is terrifying.”

  I set off toward the church, Katherine yapping all the while. I ain’t sure what to expect in Summerland’s house of the Lord. Nothing good, though. Even under the best of circumstances me and preachers don’t mix so well. And these circumstances ain’t anywhere near the neighborhood of good. Katherine and I both stink to high heaven, and I can’t expect that a man of God will want to tolerate our stench any more than we do.

  As we walk, Katherine’s voice is getting more and more hysterical. “There’s a separate shopping day for Negroes, I have been called a darkie at least four times today, and I’m pretty sure that Bob called us animals.”

  “Bill.”

  “What?”

  I sigh. “That fella’s name was Bill. Bob was the other one. And you’re a white woman now, so don’t get your knickers in a twist whenever someone says something about Negroes. You’re supposed to enjoy talking down to colored folks.”

  Katherine stops and puts her hands on her hips. I pause as well, half turning toward her. Her lips are pursed with displeasure. “How on earth am I supposed to live a lie, one that will surely end up with me dead if anyone discovers the truth?”

  I don’t say anything, because she’s right. A couple of years ago a Baltimore shopkeeper named Rusty Barnes was discovered to be a Negro who’d been passing as a white man. A mob looted his shop and burned it to the ground. They would’ve killed Rusty as well if Jackson and I hadn’t managed to sneak him out of the county. There’s nothing white folks hate more than realizing they accidentally treated a Negro like a person.

  “Well,” I say after a long pause, “you let me worry about that. We’re in this together, whether you like it or not.” Katherine rolls her eyes, but she keeps up with me when I start walking again. Time to change the subject. “I ever tell you about the garden back at Rose Hill?”

  Katherine shades her eyes as she looks at me. “Jane, what are you going on about?”

  I pull Katherine up into the shade of the boardwalk. The church is just across the street, a white picket fence setting it off from the rest of the town. “Back at Rose Hill, Auntie Aggie—that was the woman that mostly raised me—would plant a huge garden full of okra and carrots and cabbage, green beans, and black-eye peas, everything you needed to feed a plantation full of hungry people. Everyone had to work the garden at least a couple of times a week if they wanted to eat good, and even my momma would put on her big sun hat and go out and pull weeds. It was a necessity in a place where a trip beyond the barrier fence to the market could mean death.

  “One summer, the garden was plagued by a rabbit. This wasn’t no ordinary rabbit, this was a hare of unnatural ability. It would always find a way inside of the fencing, filling itself up on the fruits of our labor. It was, as Momma said, a bastard of a rabbit.”

  Katherine gasps and looks around. “Jane! Such language.”

  “Let me finish my story. Anyway, Auntie Aggie and a few of the boys put out snares and traps galore, everything from crates baited with carrots and bits of lettuce to complicated tie snares I found in an old frontiersman’s book Momma had from her dead daddy. Nothing worked. Every morning we’d go out and see the parsley munched down to nubs, or nibbles in the cabbage. The frustration was enough to put one off of gardening altogether, truth be told.

  “But Auntie Aggie never let it faze her. Every night she would set out the same kind of snare, a simple loop knot that someone had taught her long ago. And every morning, when the rabbit wasn’t caught, she’d retie that snare, same as she did the day before. I asked her once if she was scared the hare was going to eat the whole garden clean before that trap of hers caught him.

  “‘Jane,’ she said, ‘look at this garden. Look at the lettuces and those beans! And those tomatoes? They are especially fine this year, don’t you agree? Trust me on this: it’s just nature for creatures like him to get greedy.’ That was all she said to me.”

  Katherine’s listening now, her eyes narrowed. “So what happened?”

  I grin. “She was right. After nearly two weeks of trying to catch the hare, Aunt Aggie made us a nice rabbit stew from that fat bunny. See, while the rabbit was skinny and hungry, that snare couldn’t catch him, and he was cautious enough to avoid it. But once he got fat, he couldn’
t fit through the same holes he used to. I ain’t lying when I say he was big enough to feed darn near all of Rose Hill that night. And tasty? Well, all of his good eating meant even better eating for us.

  “The point is, sometimes when the rabbit gets too fat, too comfortable, he makes mistakes. But the gardener, she ain’t got nothing but time. Because even the hungriest rabbit can’t eat the entire garden. At some point the good sheriff will make a mistake, some gross miscalculation, reveal some weakness, and that’s when we’ll find our freedom.”

  Katherine is nodding now, her expression thoughtful. “We will be patient gardeners.”

  “Yes. We will be the most patient gardeners, and we will fatten up that bunny like nobody’s business. And when that rabbit is nice and plump, we shall set the snare, and let him run right on through it.”

  Katherine nods. “Thank you, Jane.”

  I smile, because I’m relieved that she didn’t ask the question I’ve been dreading since we got here.

  What if we’re not the gardeners, but the rabbits?

  One of the biggest challenges here at Rose Hill is boredom, and making sure that the people here don’t fall into vice.

  Chapter 20

  In Which I Meet a Questionable Man of God and a Kind Madam

  Summerland’s church is bigger than I expect. I’ve only seen a handful of folks walking around the town, but the church is easily the size of the First Baptist, the second largest church in Baltimore. While the rest of the town looks ragged and tired, the lone house of worship is fresh and clean: the building’s walls are crisp with whitewash and a real stained glass window is set high in the front of the building. The only similarity between the rest of the town and the church is the small windows covered with iron bars, but the shambler proofing is barely noticeable on such an impressive building.

  We walk up the path in silence, and before we can reach for the door it swings open. The whitest white man I ever saw beckons us, his blue-veined hands shaky, his false teeth overly large in his mouth. “Miss Deveraux. Please, join me inside. The sun is frightful fierce today.”

  Katherine gives the man a beatific smile. “Sir, your kindness is greatly appreciated. Oh, I fear what this sun is going to do to my complexion. I can already feel a powerful flush coming upon me.”

  She sweeps inside the church and the cool darkness beyond the threshold. I make to follow her but the old man stops me with a hard look. “I’m sorry, but it’s our way here that those bearing the Curse of Ham don’t enter the church.”

  I scowl. “The Curse of Ham?” I ain’t ever heard of such a thing, and I have a feeling it’s got nothing to do with supper.

  Katherine sighs softly from behind the old man. “It’s a euphemism for the curse Noah put upon Canaan, Ham’s son. It’s the reason the Negro was enslaved,” she says. There’s a tightness in her voice that reveals she doesn’t agree with this particular line of thinking, but the old white man doesn’t notice. He nods in agreement with Katherine’s explanation.

  “In these days of His castigation upon the earth, we must reaffirm the hierarchy of His creation and His will. Your soul will be cleansed in Heaven; in the meantime, your kind are made to serve His image through toil and labor, girl.”

  “What part of the Scripture is that from?” I mutter. The old man either doesn’t hear me or chooses to ignore me.

  “Your mistress won’t have use of you any longer. Here in Summerland we take care of our blossoms the way the Lord has always intended. We have no need for Attendant companions to live alongside our fair blossoms, no matter what Mayor Carr has instituted in those heathen cities of the east. Here, we have worked to reestablish the Lord’s natural order, and peace and safety has been our reward. You’ll serve the patrols. Take yourself to the house of soiled doves. The Duchess will take care of you.”

  With a vacant smile, he closes the door in my face.

  I stand there for a few moments, sweating, arms piled high with boots and clothing. I consider kicking in the door, but then what? I don’t know how anything works around here, and I have nowhere to go.

  So I turn around and go back the way I came, toward the house of ill repute.

  When I reach the end of the boardwalk, I keep walking past the saloon and back toward the rail yard where we entered town. For a moment I think that maybe I could just keep walking, out toward the mystery of the wall, past that to the open prairie, continue moving until I’ve left this whole mess behind. Running away has never been my style, but it doesn’t seem so bad, now.

  The road past the rail yard is lined with poles, and beyond it are houses, which I can get a better look at now. Beautiful houses, whitewashed and large, the kind of house where you could raise a nice family. Screams filter up the road from the houses, and I tense until I see a pack of kids come running around the side of one of them, playing some game of chase and laughing in between their proclamations of mock terror.

  The sight stops me in my tracks. When was the last time I saw kids running and playing, not a care in the world? Even back on Rose Hill we tended to be cautious in our play, the memory of Zeke casting a long shadow for years to follow.

  If kids can run and play and scream in delight, then maybe Summerland ain’t all bad.

  I turn back the way I came and head to the saloon.

  As I walk, I think of what Miss Preston said, that Katherine came from a brothel, and wonder if that’s why she has such pretty manners. Even now, in the midst of a full-fledged crisis, Katherine has managed to retain her deportment. I grew up in the big house on Rose Hill, and even I didn’t have manners as pretty as Katherine’s when I got to Miss Preston’s. I figured she’d grown up someplace where appearances would be important, but not a cathouse.

  Of course, everything I know about brothels I know about from books. I read a novel, The Captain’s Forbidden Woman, that was all about a poor girl named Annabel who ended up as a working girl after her father’s rival ruined her family; she was eventually rescued by a dashing ship’s captain. I think Jackson got it to scandalize me, since the red velvet cover was decidedly lurid, but it ended up being a very good story. Annabel spent many paragraphs relating the extravagant furnishings and decorum of the brothel. It all sounded very glamorous, although the idea of tossing up my skirts for pay struck me as being even more laborious than killing the dead. Especially if being a working girl meant a lot of swooning. Annabel swooned at least once every chapter, sometimes twice.

  Thinking of Jackson and the things he used to smuggle me makes me think of my mother—the silence from the postmaster every time Jackson came calling, or so I thought. I touch the small packet of letters tucked in the pocket of my dress. I’ve been gone from Rose Hill going on three years, but it’s only been a year since the last letter I got from my momma. The packet seems too small to hold a year’s worth of correspondence. What if she gave up on me? What if she is dead?

  I need answers about my momma and the fate of Rose Hill, now more than ever. That is enough of a reason to find a way out of Summerland, fine town or not.

  I draw even with the brothel and find the doorway empty. There’s no door, and the room beyond is so dark that I ain’t sure there’s even anyone inside.

  “Hello?” I call. “Is anyone there?”

  “Come on in, sugar,” says a voice from inside, dark and smoky like whiskey. My penny hasn’t gone cold, and this seems like the place where I’m supposed to be, so I walk on in.

  The room beyond the doorway comes into focus, the haze from a trio of half-dressed ladies sitting around a table smoking cigarillos and playing cards. Along the one wall is a bar, a half-dressed Negro girl perched at the end talking to a rough-looking fellow. Behind the bar, a white man, bald and shiny, leans against the polished wood counter, eagle eye on the coarse fellow and the girl.

  I suspect that every kind of vice an enterprising sort could imagine can be found under this roof. And I am determined that I will not let this place cow me.

  I zero in on the redh
ead I saw earlier and head straight to her. She sits next to an empty hearth in a big tapestried chair, the kind you’d find in a ladies’ sitting room.

  “Ma’am,” I say, bobbing a curtsy. “I reckon you might be the Duchess?”

  She puts down the book she holds, Gulliver’s Travels, and fans herself with a ragged peacock feather fan. Up close, it’s easy to see the layers of face paint she wears. “I am. And who might you be?”

  “My name is Jane McKeene. I’m begging your pardon for disturbing your afternoon repose, ma’am, but I was directed to see you about lodgings, a bath, and the possibility of some sustenance.” The last two are my own additions. I ain’t sure what the standard protocol is, if there is one, but I might as well ask for the sun, moon, and stars while I’m at it.

  The woman laughs, showing a gap in the back of her mouth where she’s lost a few of her teeth. “Look at you, with those pretty manners. Wherever did they find you?”

  “At the junction of hard luck and bad times,” I answer. It’s something that my momma says.

  Used to say?

  Best to just not think about it.

  The Duchess’s expression softens, and she hauls herself to her feet. “I reckon I’ve passed through there a few times myself. Well, follow me, I’ll show you where you can draw your bath and where you can sleep. As for food, you’ve got a couple of hours until we eat, but you’re welcome to join me and my girls if you’d like. Everyone on this side of town eats down at the meeting hall. Only the respectable folks get the luxury of preparing their own food.” There is a tone to her voice, and I wonder what it is that I’m missing.

  She leads the way up a narrow set of stairs and past a room with curtains hung as partitions. The sounds of someone visiting with one of the girls filters out of the room, and I’m very careful to keep my eyes forward lest I see something I ain’t expecting.