The Color of Dust

by Claire Rooney

  “Lilly, it’s me.”

  “Celia?” Lilly blinked up into sunlight.

  Carrie bent to unlock the manacle. She guessed right on the first key and the cuff fell off Lilly’s ankle with a clank. “Can you stand?” Carrie looked at the red ring of scraped skin that circled just above her foot.

  “I can stand.” Lilly lifted her hands. “If you’ll help me.”

  Carrie grabbed her hands and pulled Lilly to her feet. She stood solidly and looked more stable than Carrie felt, but her face was pale and her hands were shaking. “Can you walk?”

  “I think…yes. I can try, but my feet…” Lilly looked at her feet. “They took away my shoes and all the pins for my hair.”

  She raised a hand to touch her head and then slowly lowered it again.

  Carrie reached out and touched a tangled strand. She tucked it gently behind Lilly’s ear. It wasn’t much but it was a start. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  “No, Celia.” Lilly grabbed at her, clutching her arm, her eyes wide with fear. “Don’t leave me inside here.”

  Carrie squeezed her hand. She wanted to wrap her arms around her, hold her tight, kiss the fear away, but there wasn’t time. She didn’t know how long the jailer would stay unconscious and they had to move. She pulled Lilly out of the shed and led her a little ways into the woods. Lilly stepped gingerly through the brush and then leaned her back against a large tree.

  “Can you wait here?”

  Lilly sank to the ground and hugged her arms around her knees. “Robert thought I was attacking you. Your father…” She looked at Carrie with frightened eyes. “They were going to send me to a crazy house. I don’t want to go to a place like that, Celia. I’m not crazy. We’re not.”

  Carrie bent and touched her face with the tips of her fingers.

  “No one is going to send you anywhere. I won’t let them.” Robert might have thought Lilly was attacking her, but her father sure didn’t. She wondered if Lilly knew that, too. From the fear in her eyes, Carrie guessed that she did. “Wait here. I’ll be just a minute.”

  Lilly shrank down even further, her brown skirts blending with last year’s fallen leaves. Carrie ran back to the jail. The guard was still lying by the side of the building. His head was bleeding, but he was groaning steadily now, his hands twitching. Carrie thought about hitting him again, but she had left the ax by the shed and she couldn’t bring herself to kick him in the head. They would have to trust that it would be a while before he would wake up enough to holler for help. He wouldn’t know which way they had gone, anyway. Carrie stripped his boots off his feet. They were old, the soles worn thin. Their rank smell nearly gagged her as she pulled them off. The man’s feet were wrapped in filthy rags. She didn’t like to think about Lilly putting those on her feet so she left them. The boots were bad, but it would be better than trying to run through the woods in bare feet. She ran back to Lilly who hadn’t moved an inch.

  Carrie handed her the boots. “Put these on.”

  Lilly looked at the boots like Carrie was trying to hand her a slug and made no move to take them. Carrie knelt beside her and held out her hand. Lilly lifted her foot slowly and put it in Carrie’s hand. Carrie slipped the boot onto Lilly’s foot. Lilly looked sick, but she held out her other foot and let Carrie put that one on her too. Carrie stood and pulled Lilly up with her.

  Lilly’s face was still pale and her body was trembling.

  Carrie took her hand and spoke to her gently. “We have to go now.”

  Lilly took a few tentative steps, lifting her feet as if she were wading through muck. “Where? Where is there to go?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. They’ll be expecting you to move east, downstream, toward Richmond, so we should probably follow the river west, upstream.”

  “The river goes south from here and then west.” A thoughtful look came to Lilly’s eyes. A little color flowed back into her cheeks. “The railroad follows the river all the way to Lynchburg mainly on the north bank. We should head for Lynchburg but on the south bank so we don’t have to hide from the trains.”

  “I crossed the river in a rowboat. It’s about two miles downstream from here.”

  Lilly shook her head and her hair fell into her face. She pushed it back with a jerk of her hand. “We should head south now. There’s a bridge at Bremo’s Bluff about ten miles up the river. We should head for that.”

  Carrie studied her closely. She was still very pale and she was breathing too fast. “Are you ready?”

  Lilly gave a short, abrupt nod. “I’m ready to get away from this place.”

  “Let me make sure the road is clear and then we’ll cross it and get to the woods on the other side. I think that if we stay between the railroad and the river, we won’t get lost.”

  Lilly’s chin began to tremble. She shut her eyes and then opened them again. “I don’t care if we get lost. Provided we stay lost.” Carrie squeezed her hand. “You’re a very brave woman, Lilly.”

  Lilly looked at Carrie’s hat and clothes and then at the boots she was wearing. Carrie grinned for the both of them, gave her a little sketch of a bow as she lifted her hand and kissed her fingers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They traveled all day through the woods. They didn’t go very fast or get very far. The cow path they found soon turned in the wrong direction and instead of following it, they kept to the trees. Carrie’s stolen jacket was hot and snagged on brambles and briars but not as bad as Lilly’s skirts. By the end of the day, her skirts were almost in rags. When they got to where they were going, they would both have to buy new clothes. Or steal them.

  Not any part of Carrie’s mind was sure how much the money in her pocket was worth, how far it would go or how long it would last. They walked through the woods until the sun sank low behind the treetops and they were both stumbling tired. Carrie’s feet were on fire and Lilly was leaning on a stick limping badly. They stopped when they crossed a small stream, its light clear water bubbled down from the hills with chirpy giggles as it ran toward the river. They stopped to drink and to bathe the sweat off their faces. Lilly sat on the bank and took off her boots. Her right foot was swollen, red and blistered. Her left foot was bleeding. Carrie took her boots off, too and then her socks. The boots she was wearing were a better make, and while her feet were blistered and sore, they didn’t look as bad as Lilly’s feet. Carrie rolled up her pants and stuck her feet in the stream’s cold water. After a moment, Lilly did the same. Carrie thought it was a shame that the stream wasn’t deep enough for a swim. A bath and then a nap would be a wonderful thing. Or maybe a nap and then a bath.

  Lord, she was tired.

  Carrie leaned back on her elbows as the water swirled around her ankles. “I think we should stop here for a while.”

  Lilly’s feet were in the stream beside hers, her skirts tucked in around her knees. She put her hand through one of the tears and rubbed at the back of her thigh. “I’m not sure I could go much farther.”

  “It’s still pretty warm and the sky looks clear. I doubt it’ll rain on us if we sleep in the woods.”

  Lilly smiled. Thin as it was, it was the first one Carrie had seen all day. “You can’t make predictions like that. A big, bad-tempered storm cloud could be hovering right over the horizon just waiting for someone to say ‘it won’t rain tonight.’ I keep telling you that there’s just no accounting for weather.”

  Carrie chuckled and let it turn into a laugh. It was a good laugh. It lightened her heart and eased her mind. But then she couldn’t stop. She kept laughing even after the funny was gone.

  It shook through her in spastic convulsions and she couldn’t shut it off. The laugh reached down inside her and touched her panic.

  It spread through her brain and rose to the surface in waves of high-pitched giggles and snorts, her face twisting and grimacing, her sides aching.

  Lilly slapped her cheek hard with a palm full of water. Carrie gasped and sat still, her breath ragged and hars
h as the water ran down her face and dripped off her jaw. Her eyes were wide and staring. Something was screaming, pounding on the walls of her mind. A confusion of images swirled and boiled. The fountain in the drive, bright and bubbling, a cherub chipped and pitted with age, missing a wing, the library with a stack of new books, a book in her hand with its pages yellowed and cracking, the mirror, bright, then dull…her face, young, older, thinner, fatter.

  Carrie felt hands on her cheeks. Rough hands. Strong hands.

  Her eyes slowly focused on the bright green of Lilly’s eyes. Lilly was still there, still solid and warm, a vibrant presence even in her exhaustion. Carrie could see the sag of her shoulders, the limp droop of her curls, the purple swelling of the bruise on her chin just starting to yellow at the edges.

  “Lilly.” The name tasted good on her tongue. It always had.

  “Lilly.” Like a sweet-tasting medicine, it calmed her mind. “Lilly, I’m sorry.”

  Lilly breathed in deeply. She let it out and her body sagged even more. “It’s all right. I feel the same way.” Lilly swayed and Carrie rose to catch her.

  She stood, pulling Lilly up with her. “We need to find a place to rest.” Carrie picked up their boots but Lilly shook her head.

  She wouldn’t put hers back on. Carrie tucked both pairs under her arm and put her other arm around Lilly. In the state they both were in, they wouldn’t have gotten very much farther anyway.

  Carrie steered them deeper into the woods. They walked gingerly on their sore feet, stepping carefully until Lilly spotted a tree with thick brush on three sides that could, if they were sitting, hide them from casual eyes.

  Carrie sat with her back against the tree and Lilly rested against her, tucking her head in the hollow of her neck. Carrie put her arm around her shoulders and draped the jacket over them both. She rested her cheek on Lilly’s hair. Lilly tucked the jacket in tighter around them. Loose change jingled in the pocket.

  “Lilly?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Is a hundred dollars a lot of money?”

  Lilly stirred slightly. “It is to me, but it might not be to some.”

  “Why do you think Robert would have a hundred dollars in his pocket? Doesn’t he usually get paid in chickens or something?”

  Lilly lifted her head. “You have a hundred dollars in your pocket right now?”

  Carrie thought about the bills and coins. “Around that. I didn’t count it exactly. There’s a nice pocket watch, too, if you want to know what time it is.”

  Lilly closed her eyes and put her head back on Carrie’s shoulder. “I don’t want to know what time it is, but I wish you had told me about the money sooner. With a hundred dollars, we could have taken the train to Lynchburg. We could have been riding in a first-class carriage, eating a supper of lamb chops and mint jelly, with fresh warm bread dripping with butter and honey and a big bowl of fat red strawberries for dessert.”

  Carrie’s stomach gurgled. “That’s cruel, Lilly.” It made Carrie realize how hungry she was. Hungrier than she’d ever been before in her life. She hadn’t ever missed a meal when she wasn’t sick or sleeping. She never dreamed of missing six. It was a hard feeling, not painful, not yet, but uncomfortable and disturbing. “What do you think Robert had the money for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe your father gave it to him as an advance on your dowry.”

  Carrie had forgotten about the dowry, her purchase price, the money a family paid to have some man take a daughter off their hands. The thought made her angry and the anger cleared the last of the fog from her head. She felt a lot less guilty about smacking Robert with the water jug.

  Damn the patriarchy, she thought with a dim part of her brain, though she didn’t really know what she meant. “Is a hundred dollars enough to rent a room somewhere, not too ugly and not too nice?”

  “Yes. Quite enough, but we’ll both have to get new clothes before we get to where we’re going. Mine are a mess, and you don’t look anything like a real boy. Even if you cut your hair short you wouldn’t.”

  “So, I need a dress and you need a new one.”

  “Yes, but not like the dresses you’re used to. We need working clothes, simple and plain woven.”

  “Do we have enough money to buy clothes and rent a room?”

  “Yes. It’s enough to keep us for about half a year if we’re frugal and if you don’t mind eating porridge and tripe.”

  “I don’t mind eating porridge.” She would have to think hard about the tripe. Carrie tightened her arm around Lilly’s shoulder.

  “Lilly.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t say the right things to begin with. I didn’t know I could do this. I thought it would be too hard.”

  Lilly slipped her hand across Carrie’s stomach and gave her a squeeze. “It still might be too hard. If you want to go back to your father after a while, I won’t try to stop you.”

  Carrie stared at the woods in front of her, at the shadows growing under the trees. “He won’t want me back.”

  Lilly’s body stiffened. “Your father loves you very much. He just wants you to be happy in a way that he can be happy for you. I know he’ll want you back.” She paused and the hard set of her shoulder dug into Carrie’s ribs. “You can go back now if you want to.” Carrie shook her head, rolling it against the rough bark of the tree. “I don’t want to go back if you can’t go with me.”

  Lilly’s shoulders relaxed a little. “If you stay with me, your life is going to be a hard one. We’ll have to do a lot of pretending and then we’ll have to pick up and move when people start asking us the wrong questions.”

  “If we end up living in a hole and scurrying between the walls like little mice, I’ll still want to be with you. I’m only sorry that it had to take all this to make me realize that. If I had known better, we could have planned and spared us both a lot of bother.” Carrie kissed the top of Lilly’s head. “I’m sorry you’re missing out on the lamb chops.”

  Lilly squeezed her waist again and settled against her more comfortably. “When we get to Lynchburg, we can take some of Robert’s money and treat ourselves to a really good meal. I don’t know that we’ll get a chance to eat before then.”

  Carrie frowned at the shadows. “How long will that be?”

  “If we don’t walk any faster than we did today, about seven more days.”

  She didn’t sound very confident about that. Still. If she was right. Seven more days. Twenty-one meals. Carrie’s stomach rumbled. “Can we really take the train?”

  “Is the money you have in small bills or large ones?”

  “A few large ones but mostly small.”

  “That’s good. If we get new clothes and wash up a bit, we could get a third-class seat without attracting too much attention. But if we do get on a train we should go farther than Lynchburg.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  Lilly didn’t answer at first. Her pause seemed hesitant and unsure. Then she shifted a little and touched Carrie’s foot with her own. “I’ve always dreamed of seeing a real city, like New York or Chicago. I want to go somewhere we can get lost in the crowd and no one will care who we are.”

  Chicago. To Carrie, the idea of going to Chicago seemed both comfortingly familiar and frighteningly strange. “What about Lynchburg? Why don’t you want to stay there?”

  “Lynchburg’s pretty, but it’s not a real city. I want to see tall buildings, eighteen, nineteen, twenty stories high. I imagine you could see the whole world from the top of a building like that.”

  “What if the building was a hundred and ten stories tall?”

  “Don’t be silly, Celia. No one will ever build a building that tall. What would be the point? The top would be lost inside the clouds and then you couldn’t see anything.”

  Carrie smiled and rubbed the arm Lilly had draped across her lap. “Chicago.” The word sounded funny the way it came out of her mouth. “It gets really cold there in the winter. Colde
r than anything you’ve ever known before.”

  “And how would you know that, Miss Smarty?”

  “I…read about it somewhere. In a book. Upton Sinclair, I think.”

  “Oh, yes. The Jungle. We just got that one. You’ve read it already?”

  “Enough to know we shouldn’t eat the sausages.” Carrie leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree and settled her cheek against Lilly’s hair. “Let’s do it, Lilly. Let’s go to Chicago.”

  Lilly snuggled in closer to Carrie. “There’s a whistle-stop at Bremo’s Bluff. We’re not that far from it now. If you’re serious, we’ll have to come up with a good story about why we’re traveling so far alone.”

  “I’m sure we can think of something.”

  “You’re serious then,” Lilly said against her shoulder. “You’ll take me to see a real city?”

  Carrie’s arms tightened around her. “Anywhere you want to go, Lilly. I’ll take you there.”

  “It’ll be harder for you to change your mind and come back here if we go that far.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.” Those weren’t all the words she wanted to say, but Lilly had never let her say the words that sat in her heart. She could say them now. They were going to be together forever. She could tell Lilly exactly how she felt. The words fluttered around the back of her throat. Her lips moved but she didn’t say them out loud. She turned her head and kissed Lilly’s hair. “I know it will be hard, but we’ll find a way to make it work.”

  Lilly patted her sleepily on the hip. Carrie sat still and listened to the night sounds, the rustling, the whirring, the croaking and the clicks that seemed almost timed to the rhythmic sound of Lilly’s soft snores before she closed her eyes and fell into an uncomfortable sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They woke in the half-light of dawn to a sudden burst of birdsong. Carrie’s neck was stiff, her back and legs were sore.

  They both groaned as they stood to stretch the kinks out of their muscles and to take the chill from their bones. Lilly’s feet still looked red and swollen but not as bad as the day before. Carrie took her hand and they picked their way out of the woods back to the clearing by the stream.