We Five

by Mark Dunn

  “Please take the last slice of mocha cake, Ruth,” responded Jane with tearful affection.

  “Are you insisting?”

  “We’re all insisting,” said Carrie.

  It was Jane and Carrie who went into Lyle’s bedroom to tell him the coast was clear. Jane tapped the ceiling above his bed. A panel slid back and Lyle dropped down. Jane told him what the police officer had said. Meanwhile, Carrie’s eyes were drawn to Lyle’s sketchpad on the table.

  She opened it and turned its leaves, each bearing a pastel drawing of a scenic landscape.

  “Did you do all these?” she asked.

  Lyle interrupted his conversation with his sister to answer, “Yes. Yes I did.”

  “They’re really quite wonderful,” said Carrie, who could not keep her eyes from them. “I’d like to have one to keep.”

  “Where will you keep it, Carrie?” said Jane, brusquely. “You don’t have anywhere to live.”

  “You keep it for me then, Lyle. This one.” She turned to a sketch of a seaside village. “That’s Tiburon, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Put my name on it. It’s mine.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you both quite finished?” asked Jane. “We can’t stay here. It isn’t safe. The police will pay a return visit as soon as Holborne is made to tell them everything he knows. They’ll want to ask me a thousand questions. I can’t answer a single one. I’ll fall to pieces.”

  Carrie nodded. “And I don’t like it that Holborne’s still out there—that he may want to come after us. Look at what he did to Ruth’s face.” Carrie had put her statement in the present tense because Ruth at that moment was coming into the bedroom, along with Maggie and Molly.

  Ruth, having already taken charge of matters, was in medias res with the other two: “The next ferry to Oakland isn’t until early tomorrow morning. Molly, you and Jane and Lyle will need a place that isn’t far from the Ferry Building where you can spend the night. If you hide yourselves well enough, you stand a good chance of getting Lyle on the boat without being seen and followed.”

  “You might as well come with us, Ruth,” said Maggie. “You’re already packed and you already have your ticket for New York.”

  “That leaves Carrie,” said Jane. “What are you going to do with yourself, Carrie?”

  “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. There’s a music school I’ve been looking into. It’s in New York.”

  Ruth corrugated her brows with interest. “Are you saying you’d like to come with me, Carrie?”

  “There’s nothing keeping me here in San Francisco. Especially with all of you leaving. Yes, I’d like to come with you, Ruth. I have money in the bank. I didn’t put it in my mattress like some do. I put it in a savings account. I’ll just withdraw it all tomorrow morning and then you and I can be on our way. If, that is, you’ll have me.”

  “Why shouldn’t I have you, Carrie? You seldom get under my skin the way our three sisters do.”

  Ruth’s attempt at dry levity went unacknowledged.

  Carrie looked at Lyle. “I think, then, I will take that picture from you, Lyle. Because I don’t know when I’m ever to see you again.”

  Lyle tore the sketch from the book. There was a shyness, an awkwardness about him that seemed out of character. But then again, there was very little Lyle Higgins had said or done over the course of the last two or three days that seemed in character. He handed the sketch to Carrie.

  She looked at it with the loving eyes that her present discomfiture would not permit her to raise up. “I always wanted to live in this little village. I’ll look at it and think of you, Lyle.”

  Lyle swallowed nervously. He glanced up at the ceiling as if he might wish to climb right back up into the crawlspace to escape his present unwonted unease.

  Ruth looked back and forth between the two of them, half smiling with curiosity. “How did I happen to miss the first act of this little play?”

  “You didn’t miss anything at all,” chuckled Jane. “It feels to me as if the curtain has just begun to rise.”

  What was also rising at that moment was the color in both Lyle and Carrie’s cheeks.

  “So just where will we be staying tonight?” asked Maggie, returning the discussion to more practical matters. “Holborne knows where each of us lives. Miss Colthurst gave all our personal information to the Katz Agency.”

  “I’d like to make a suggestion,” said Ruth. “You may not like it, but then again, it’s not a place Holborne or any officer of the San Francisco Police Department would be likely to go. Cain took me there. It’s in Chinatown. We can sleep there. They have little rooms.”

  Carrie frowned and then ventured nervously, “This place, Ruth: it isn’t an opium den, is it?”

  “As a matter of fact it is an opium den. Among other things. But you needn’t worry. The opium eaters will be far too torpid to give us much trouble. And as for any lurking white slavers, we’ll have Lyle to protect us.”

  In spite of the reactive gapes and shudders which followed Ruth’s proposal, not a single one of its recipients spoke up in opposition to it. It was, after all, the most reasonable choice from a menu of severely limited options. And the tearoom on Dupont Street was very convenient to their purposes; it was only eight short blocks from the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero.

  They would spend the night tucked away in the heart, or, if one wishes a less benign description, the viscera, of Chinatown, and then Molly and Maggie and Lyle and Jane would rise early and catch the first morning ferry to cross the bay.

  And if Ruth were lucky, the tearoom’s kitchen would remain open late into the night. Because upon her previous visit to this place with Cain, she’d discovered that she had quite a taste for authentic Chinese cuisine.

  ___________

  All of We Six had been to Chinatown before, but excepting Ruth’s luncheon there with Cain, there hadn’t been a visit since the Plague. Now, as they climbed Dupont with halting steps and wide-eyed gazes, each appearing equally exotic to the neighborhood’s denizens due to their unfamiliar Caucasian countenances and their strange Occidental garb, they felt as if they’d just disembarked into a place out of time and ken. The street was chockablock with crowded structures whose original architectural purpose had been shanghaied by the necessity of reduction and compartmentalization into smaller and smaller spaces. The side streets were dark narrow alleys with opened doors that afforded smoke-clouded glimpses into rooms congested with men crouched over fantan tables. There were staircases that went up and those that went down, and every block was overhung with a plethora of balconies and logia, which to the squinted eye might remind one of a street in Venice.

  The fully dilated eye was confronted by colors of every shade and hue: in the bright iridescence of the clothing; the green and yellow and sky-blue and vermilion of the richly painted walls; the gold which outlined the cornices and eaves and window trimmings; and the variegation of intense color to be found in the signs bearing bold but inscrutable Chinese logograms. There were red and gold lanterns hanging from every ceiling and assemblages of fat cobalt-blue pots of red saffron and pink tulips. Some of the buildings were dilapidated and crumbling beneath their decorative ornamentation, like old women with youthful souls.

  Molly nudged Maggie to note a little pigtailed man in an orange Mandarin jacket. She wanted to say that this was the same jacket she’d seen their friend Mirabella Prowse wear a couple of weeks earlier. But Molly wouldn’t even attempt to voice the observation, for she knew she wouldn’t have been heard. The air was too full of the clamor and clatter of too many people in too small a place, all hailing and railing and singsonging and wheeling and trundling their carted wares, seemingly oblivious to the inconvenience of their crowded circumstances.

  Maggie, who had a sensitive nose, pinched both nostrils. There were pungent wafts in the air of fresh-caught Pacific crayfish and squid and flounders and sole, the rank odor of fast-ripening produce, the stro
ng aromas of sandalwood and smoldering punk and exotic dishes being prepared in upper rooms and vented out into the street.

  “Here we are,” announced Ruth. “Up these stairs.”

  “Has it a name?” shouted Jane over the din.

  “Places like this don’t have a name.”

  “Oh God,” said Maggie and Molly at the very same time. Yet Carrie, for once, didn’t seem worried at all. Lyle was holding her hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Zenith, Winnemac, July 1923

  Sister Abigail Dowell looked her five newly appeared choir members up and down disapprovingly. She reserved her frostiest glare for the male interloper who stood among them. “Sister Lydia isn’t going to like this.”

  “Isn’t going to like what?” asked that very referent, stepping out of her private office accompanied by her choir director, Sister Vivian.

  “Well, everything,” replied Sister Vivian’s assistant. “They’ve missed the last two choir rehearsals and we’ve got full dress at six o’clock.”

  Sister Lydia rolled her eyes. “I know we’ve got full dress at six, Abigail. I’m the one who scheduled it.”

  “And who is this person?” said Abigail, pointing at Lyle indignantly. “He can’t be here.”

  “He’s my brother,” said Jane.

  Sister Lydia turned to Vivian. “Fix this, Vivian.” And then to We Five: “So nice to have you all back, even though by the looks of all that luggage, one or more of my sweet young songbirds may be getting ready to fly the coop.”

  “I’ll find out what’s going on,” said Vivian. “Abigail, please go and prepare the rehearsal room. We’ve got to familiarize these girls with the two new hymns before the dress rehearsal. Run along now, and let me handle this.”

  A brief moment later, both Sister Lydia DeLash Comfort and Sister Vivian’s officious assistant had departed the outer office, leaving Vivian alone with We Five Plus One.

  “Just tell me,” said Vivian, “that if one or more of you is leaving, you’ll wait and do it after tomorrow morning’s celebration.”

  “We’re all leaving, Vivian,” said Ruth. “But not until after the service.”

  “So you aren’t the only one thinking about enrolling in the University of Winnemac. Your sisters have decided to join you.”

  “It’s far more complicated than that, Vivian,” said Jane. “We’re all leaving—you’re right—but for different reasons.”

  “Tell me that this has nothing to do with the rumors.”

  “What rumors?” asked Maggie.

  “That Sister Lydia’s Square Deal Ministries is in financial trouble. Because let me just say this at the outset: the organization may be floundering, but it certainly isn’t foundering. Sister Lydia—I love her bushels—but she doesn’t have much of a head for business, and sometimes she doesn’t plan for things very well. We aren’t nearly ready for the celebration tomorrow. The varnish on some of the pews isn’t even dry. We’re still waiting for five pipes for the organ. They’ve apparently gotten lost on their way from Cincinnati. And there seem to be problems with the new wiring; lights keep flickering on and off. On the other hand, the Sister’s done all this advance publicity and everybody who is anybody in the state of Winnemac is going to be here tomorrow, and she’s convinced it will be an utter disaster if we don’t go through with it. And just when you think she’s got enough to worry about already, this is when you’ve decided to turn in your choir robes!”

  It was decided that Vivian could be trusted. We Five knew how fond their choir director was of Sister Lydia’s Quintet of Songful Seraphim, and especially how fond she was of one of the singers in particular: Ruth. And so it was explained to Vivian that, yes, Ruth would be enrolling in the University of Winnemac in the fall, and that Carrie planned to do the same. She was going to study music. Jane and Maggie and Molly and Jane’s brother Lyle would be going somewhere entirely different: to the northern woods of Minnesota.

  “Why Minnesota?” asked Vivian.

  Ruth placed a hand on her friend Vivian’s shoulder. “Sit down, sweetheart. Lyle, go shut that door. Vivian, we’re going to tell you what’s really going on.”

  Vivian eased warily into the nearest chair. “It’s about those awful college boys, isn’t it? And the two sad ones who died.”

  “Three are dead now,” put in Maggie.

  Vivian choked.

  Jane looked over at her brother. Her eyes solicited corroboration for the incomplete truth she was about to dispose: “The young man was murdered. And the police think it was my brother who did it. We have to get him out of Zenith as soon as possible.”

  “You have to get him out? And Maggie and Molly as well?”

  “There are other parts to it,” said Jane. “I’m sure that Ruth will explain it all to you in time. All we can do right now is apologize to you and Sister Lydia for leaving like this, and hope you won’t hold this decision against us. Oh, and one other thing. We have a small side favor to ask of you.”

  “Yes?”

  “That we be allowed to spend the night here.”

  “Right here? In Sister Lydia’s tabernacle?”

  Jane and Ruth nodded. Ruth picked things up from here: “This is a church. And a church should be a place of sanctuary. We need that refuge tonight. All six of us. I know there are resting cots in the storeroom downstairs—the ones you’ll be using for healing services. We can sleep on them—down in the storeroom. No one needs to make any fuss over us.”

  Vivian thought about this. “It’s very irregular. But then again, what is regular in a world that seems these days to be spinning right off its axis? And I fear, my dear girls, that we are a long way from having peace and sanity restored.”

  Vivian got up from her chair and walked over to where Lyle was leaning against a wall: silent, pondering.

  “I have to know,” she said. “Did you kill the boy? Did you do it?”

  Lyle traded a look with Jane. Jane nodded that he should answer, and he should answer truthfully.

  He tipped his head.

  “Why?”

  Jane sat down. Her eyes began to well up. Molly went to her and wrapped her arms around her neck in a gesture that was both loving and protecting.

  “I think I know,” said Vivian Colthurst, looking painfully at Jane. “And I also know that the church has offered sanctuary to the accused for centuries—both the falsely accused and the rightfully accused who seek divine forgiveness. And why should Sister Lydia’s Tabernacle of the Sanctified Spirit be any different?”

  Vivian spent most of the next two hours working with her five favorite choir members to teach them the songs that in their several-day absence the other members had already learned. In the meantime Lyle was down in the storeroom making ready the room he and We Five would share that night. It was decided that rather than have Lyle wait until the end of the morning service to leave—and thereby run the risk of being spotted by the police—he’d depart alone just before daybreak. He would drive his 1919 model Oldsmobile “Economy” delivery truck up to St. Agatha. He’d wait there at the depot for the arrival of the Middle West Limited from Zenith. Then he and Maggie and Molly and his sister Jane would continue their journey to Maggie’s uncle’s cabin by back roads.

  Vivian had pointed out to Lyle that if he wished, he need only come close to the heating vent in the basement storeroom to hear his sister and the other choir members singing during the full rehearsal in the auditorium upstairs. “Sister Lydia is quite the showwoman, so you’ll miss all the eye-pomp that generally characterizes her theatrical services, but at least you’ll be able to hear things, if you’re so inclined: her sermon—riveting as always—and the music. Such divinely gorgeous music.”

  At five minutes to six, a robed Molly and Maggie and Jane and Ruth climbed the stairs to the north anteroom off the auditorium. Carrie did not. Carrie took a detour; she went to the storeroom to see Lyle. For a moment Carrie and Lyle looked at one another without speaking. Then Lyle said, “Maybe I’l
l tell you goodbye now, because you’ll probably be sleeping when I leave in the morning.”

  Carrie nodded. She took Lyle’s hand and held it up to her cheek. “You’ve been very nice to me. Jane said you never used to be nice to anyone, so I consider this as a big improvement in your character.”

  “I’m still not a very good person, Carrie. I killed a man.”

  “According to Jane you’ve killed several men. During the war. In the Battle of the Argonne Forest. She showed me your Distinguished Service Cross.”

  “How could she? I threw it out.”

  “Well, it didn’t stay thrown out. She said she found it in the trash and kept it. Why did you throw it out, Lyle?”

  Lyle took a moment to answer. He did so without looking at Carrie. “I stopped believing what they told me about the war. And then I stopped believing I could ever have been a hero. You can’t be a true hero in a war that should never have been fought. And when I stopped believing that, why, I stopped believing in anything.”

  Lyle took Carrie by the shoulders and turned her so they’d have to look at one another now. He kept his hands on those shoulders as he spoke. “Listen to me, Carrie. I know what I did was wrong—killing Catts was wrong in ten different ways. I wanted to hurt him for what he did to Jane. No, I didn’t just want to hurt him. I wanted to kill him. You’re right. I’ve killed men before. The army taught us how to do this—how to flip the switch, and then suddenly it’s okay to kill, because you’re in a war and it comes down to either you or the Boche. And even though the war’s been over for five years, it doesn’t look like I’ve lost the knack for flipping that switch when I can find a reason to justify it. That makes me the opposite of a nice person, Carrie, a good person. That makes me a dangerous person. You’re looking at me and seeing somebody who isn’t there. I don’t think he’s ever going to be there.”

  “You don’t know that, Lyle.”