The burn in his chest cooled some. He held up his hand, the way Quincy had earlier, with his fingers all spread apart, and he slowly drew them together until they fit so tight a drop of water wouldn’t slip between them. Maybe part of the reason him and Quincy both got hired on at the exposition was so they could set the example. And he knew just how to start.
Laurel
“Oh, my…” Laurel looked down the row of tables stretched all the way from the edge of the stage to the corner along the north side of the Auditorium’s back wall. The electric wall sconces spaced every three feet illuminated the sea of photographs. “There must be a hundred people represented here.”
“At least.” Mama held Papa’s daguerreotype against the bodice of her best dress. “Where should I put Leland’s? I don’t want to lose track of it.”
Eugene placed his hand on Mama’s spine and guided her to the spot where the two tables closest to the stage had been pushed together. He traced his finger along the line formed by the tablecloths. “Put it here on the seam. Remember it’s where the red and blue tablecloths come together, and we’ll easily find it again at the end of the day.”
Laurel found Eugene’s suggestion very sensible, but Mama still hesitated. Laurel leaned in and whispered into her mother’s ear, “If you don’t want to display it, you don’t have to.”
Mama blinked several times, her fingers convulsing on the little frame, but then she lowered her hands and laid Papa’s picture on the table as gently as a mother might lay her baby in a cradle. She touched the edge of the frame with her fingertip. “He deserves the recognition, the same as all these others. So he should be here.” She aimed a wobbly smile at Laurel, which Laurel returned with one of her own.
Eugene cleared his throat. “We’d better get to the seats Ethel is holding. The place is filling up. People might not be patient enough to leave those seats open for us.” He guided Mama along the tables toward the side aisle. Laurel followed them, excusing herself when she bumped into others trying to get close to the tables.
A man’s irritable utterance—“What? Who put this here?”—brought her to a stop. Curious, she peeked over her shoulder. A scowling man held up a picture of a black soldier to another man, who stood with downturned lips and lowered brows. “That was right here in the middle of our men.”
“Put it on their table.” The second man waved his arm toward the corner.
The man holding the image gave a stern nod. The image clenched in his fist, he brushed past Laurel without a word of apology. Then a third man, a young one in a security guard uniform, hurried over and stepped directly into the man’s pathway.
“What’re you doin’ with that picture?”
Laurel’s pulse sped at the authority in Officer Sharp’s voice. The man holding the picture was at least twice his age. The man’s clothes identified him as one of Atlanta’s wealthy, and his thunderous expression made Laurel want to shrink away. Yet Officer Sharp stood tall and unflinching.
The man jabbed the photograph inches from Officer Sharp’s face. “Are you blind? The man in this picture is black. It belongs on the other table.”
Officer Sharp held out his hand. “Can I have it, please?”
With his lip curled into a sneer, the man slapped the photograph into the younger man’s palm. “Put it where it belongs.”
“Yes, sir. I intend to.” Officer Sharp stepped around the man and placed the photograph on the table in the middle of several pictures of white veterans.
The man grabbed Officer Sharp’s arm and yanked, forcing the younger man to face him. “That photograph doesn’t belong here. This table’s for the white veterans.”
Officer Sharp removed his arm from the man’s grasp and pointed to two pictures side by side on the table. “The one you picked up is Ruger Tate. The one right next to him is Otto Sharp. They became friends the last few months of the war when Otto came down with a bad fever and Ruger helped take care of him at the infirmary. They’re still friends. So don’t you think they oughta be able to be here together on the table?”
“The black veterans go over there.” The man pointed, his movement stiff. “If you want to keep them together, you can take the white one, too, and put it on the blacks’ table, but that soldier’s picture is not going to stay here with any of my kin. It’s not seemly.”
“What’s unseemly, sir, is honorin’ some more than others when the sacrifice was the same.”
Officer Sharp spoke with such respect and kindness in the face of condemnation that tears stung Laurel’s eyes. He’d called a black man his best friend—something she’d never heard another white man say about a black man—and now he was proving it by defending the relationship between the two men, who must be his and his friend’s fathers.
“What is your name, young man?” The older man nearly growled the question.
Officer Sharp squared his shoulders. “Willie Sharp, sir.”
The man poked his finger in the center of the guard’s chest. “I’ll be talking to your supervisor about your insolent behavior. You’ll be lucky to still have employment by the end of this ceremony.” He stormed off, arms swinging, face as red as ripe tomatoes. The second man followed him, giving Officer Sharp a withering glare as he passed.
Officer Sharp stood for a moment beside the table, unmoving. Then he smiled down at the pictures. Finally he moved to the far end of the tables and took a position in the corner, his attentive gaze scanning the crowded room.
Laurel couldn’t resist inching forward and peeking at the photograph that had caused the verbal altercation. Nothing more than a young man, unsmiling, attired in the uniform worn by the Confederate soldiers. The same as many others on the table except for his dark skin. Yet to the two men who’d tried to move it, the skin color made all the difference.
She slid her finger around the periphery of the soldier Tate’s image. If her father were alive, would he agree with the angry man or with Officer Sharp?
“Laurel.” Eugene strode up to her and took hold of her elbow. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking.” Eugene had been eighteen when Papa died—the same age Laurel was now. He would be able to tell her how Papa would feel about leaving Ruger Tate’s photo there with the white soldiers. The question hovered on her lips.
“The speech is going to begin. Come, sit.” Eugene herded her to the rear of the Auditorium, where Mama, Ethel, Laurel’s nieces Mary and Anna, and her nephew Little Gene sat in a row. The other chairs had been filled, though, so she and Eugene stood along the back wall with many others who hadn’t been able to find a seat.
The exposition master of ceremonies, Mr. Rufus Bullock, a former governor of Georgia, introduced the current governor, and then Governor McKinley of Ohio took the stage. Although Laurel tried hard to listen to the speech—after all, Miss Warner had dismissed the girls to hear him—her attention was stolen by a harsh reality that raised a rush of guilt she didn’t completely understand.
The seats on the entire right-hand side of the Auditorium and those on the front half of the left side were filled with white attendees. Black attendees sat in the back rows on the left. There’d been no ushers directing people to seats. They’d chosen their own places, and look at how they’d positioned themselves. Whites together. Blacks together. No whites and blacks sharing a row. Clearly this was the common pattern.
Why had she never paid attention to the dissociation before today? And why was she now noticing it with such startling clarity? She rose up on tiptoes and gazed across the room to Officer Sharp, who stood sentry in the corner next to the tables holding all the black war veterans’ photographs, save one. He was responsible for opening her sheltered eyes to the truth that a separation existed. Her heart pinched. He might very well have lost his position here at the exposition because of it.
The speech ended with rousing applause, and Laurel automatically clapped, too. People rose and filed toward the doors
or crossed the Auditorium and began perusing the tables. Eugene said, “Let’s come back later and look at all the pictures when it isn’t so crowded.” He led the members of Laurel’s family outside, and they stepped off the pathway onto the grass. He smiled at Mama. “What would you like to do now?”
Laurel caught his arm. “Come to the Silk Room. I want to show Mary, Anna, and Little Gene the cocoons and moths, and you can watch me weave.”
Eight-year-old Mary crinkled her face. “We’ve seen you and Granny weave lots of times.”
Laurel tapped Mary on the end of her freckled nose. “Yes, but this is a different loom, strung with threads that come straight from a worm’s cocoon. Besides, you’ve never seen a Bombyx mori moth. It’s like a tiny bunny with fuzzy wings.”
The child’s eyes widened, and her younger sister bounced in place. Anna pulled at Eugene’s jacket tail. “Let’s go see the tiny bunny, Papa!”
Eugene chuckled. “All right, to the Silk Room we go.” He scooped three-year-old Little Gene onto his arm. “Lead the way, Laurel.”
Thursday and Friday had been fairly quiet, but today’s crowd was as great or greater than the opening day’s. It took a little time to weave their way across the park to the Women’s Building, in part because of the groups of other attendees slowing their progress, and in part by the children wanting to stop and examine the fountains or walk tightrope style on the short brick wall surrounding the square.
Miss Warner, Berta, and Felicia were already in the Silk Room when Laurel and her family arrived, and Laurel introduced each of them by turn to Mama, Eugene, and the others. Miss Warner told Mama what a good worker Laurel was, and Laurel’s face flamed with both embarrassment and pleasure. She wouldn’t have thought her supervisor held such an opinion, based on her stoic treatment. The praise encouraged her and gave her the courage to make a special request.
Laurel put her hands on her nieces’ narrow shoulders and offered Miss Warner a hopeful look. “I’d like to show the girls how the loom works. May I take them behind the counter for a close-up examination?”
Miss Warner’s lips pursed, and she seemed to study each child’s upturned face. Then she leaned down slightly. “Can you be trusted not to touch the loom or any of the threads?”
Mary and Anna both nodded solemnly, and Anna said, “We can’t touch Granny’s loom, either, ’cause it might pinch our fingers.”
Miss Warner straightened, and the closest thing to a warm smile Laurel had seen on the woman’s face appeared. “Then you may take a close look.” She shifted her gaze to Laurel, and her expression turned stern. “If other visitors come in, you’ll need to end your examination. I don’t want others thinking the area behind the counter is open for exploration.”
Laurel hurried the little girls to the loom, and Mama, Eugene, and Ethel stood on the other side of the counter and watched while Laurel slowly showed the girls the steps needed to add another row to the length of shimmery yellow silk fabric. Twice Anna’s fingers stretched toward the cloth, and both times Mary pushed her sister’s hand down, hissing, “Don’t touch!” Laurel understood Anna’s temptation. The beautiful cloth begged to be stroked.
Laurel turned on the stool and smiled at the girls. “By the end of the exposition, I should have a piece of cloth as long or longer than the pretty blue one in the case. Long enough to make a pair of dresses just the right size for the two of you.”
Anna’s eyes shone. “I like the pretty yellow. When you’re all done, will you take the cloth home and make us dresses, Aunt Laurel?”
Mary rolled her eyes. “It’s not Aunt Laurel’s cloth, silly. She can’t take it.” Then she turned a longing look at the fabric. “Wish she could, though. It is awful pretty.”
Eugene tweaked his fingers. “Come over here now, girls, and let Aunt Laurel work.”
Laurel walked the girls around the counter to their parents. She wanted to show them the glass jars and tell them all about the Bombyx mori moth and the worms, but Berta had been given that duty for the day. So she left her family in Berta’s care with the promise to meet them on the porch of the Women’s Building at noon for lunch, and she returned to the loom.
She’d learned over the past few days to focus on her task regardless of distractions in the other part of the room. Dividing her attention could mean missing a step in the process, and she didn’t want to ruin an entire length of fabric by creating a flaw in one row. Setting aside her internal pondering about the verbal altercation she’d witnessed earlier proved more difficult than blocking out the quiet conversations and activity of her coworkers and the exposition attendees. But eventually she became so absorbed in weaving she was startled by Berta’s interruption.
“Why are you still sitting there? Felicia told you five minutes ago to take your lunch break.”
Laurel glanced at the round clock and gasped. Her family would think she’d changed her mind about meeting them. She locked the beater in place and scurried out to the front porch. To her relief, Eugene was waiting on a bench set in the shade at the back corner of the large covered area. A second man sat on the opposite end of the bench. They both rose when she approached.
“Laurel,” Eugene said.
“Miss Millard,” the man said at the same time.
The two men looked at each other with identical quizzical expressions. Laurel released a soft giggle. They both stared at her. She covered her mouth lest a second trickle of laughter escape. Their perfectly choreographed speech and actions reminded her of a puppet play she’d seen when she was a little girl.
She turned her puzzled gaze on the second man. “May I help you with something?”
He removed his bowler and placed it against his chest. The motion more than anything else stirred her memory to life, and she stated his name—“Langdon Rochester”—as he stated it at the same time. Perhaps they were all participants in the puppet show.
He chuckled. “Please forgive my intrusion. I didn’t realize you’d made lunch plans.” He glanced at Eugene, who was frowning at Mr. Rochester. “I thought I might treat you to the jambalaya I prevented you from enjoying earlier this week.”
Eugene’s frown deepened. He curled his hand around Laurel’s elbow. “Yes, she has made plans, so excuse us.” He guided Laurel toward the steps.
Laurel wriggled. “Eugene! Aren’t we being rude?”
Eugene didn’t slow his pace. When they reached the bottom of the steps, he shifted his hand to the small of her back and propelled her forward. “Mama and the others went to the Hotel Aragon’s restaurant atop the Minerals and Forestry Building. I thought it best for them to place an order since your break time is short. As it is, you might not have time to eat.” He glanced over his shoulder, as if to ascertain they weren’t being followed, and set his lips in a grim line. “What was that all about—you being kept from enjoying jambalaya?”
Laurel explained the events of last Wednesday, and by the time they reached the stairway leading to the rooftop restaurant, a sheepish look replaced Eugene’s scowl.
“He must be a gentleman after all, then. I’m sorry if I overreacted.” He cupped his hand over her shoulder. “I was struck with a sense of protectiveness when a man I’d never met addressed you by name.”
Laurel smiled. “It’s all right. I don’t mind you being protective.” She’d witnessed similar behavior toward her friends by their fathers. She’d never know the protection of a father, but at least she had one older brother who cared enough to look out for her. “But you needn’t worry about Langdon Rochester. His father owns the Rochester Steam-Powered Engines factory, so he comes from a very respectable family.” She hoped she would encounter him again. She still hadn’t thanked him for the sandwich he’d sent with Felicia.
They climbed the steps and found Mama, Ethel, and the children already sharing a plate of chicken sandwiches and bowls of fruit salad. She and Eugene sat and partook as well. The others visited about the build
ings and displays they’d viewed during their morning, but Laurel used her few minutes of time to eat. After missing lunch one day, she didn’t care to spend another day with a growling stomach.
When they’d finished eating, Eugene offered to walk her back to the Women’s Building, which warmed Laurel, but she shook her head. “A marching band will perform in the square at one. You’ll want to get there early to be in front or the children won’t be able to see. I’ll be fine. Thank you for lunch.” She kissed Mama, hugged Eugene and Ethel, and waved to the children. Then she darted past the Mexican Village and followed the path between Clara Meer and the square, the shortest route to the Women’s Building.
As she passed the small structure housing Colonial relics, the midway point between the restaurant and the Women’s Building, Officer Sharp and his partner ambled up the rise from the lake. She released a happy gasp. Apparently the unpleasant gentleman who’d threatened to have Officer Sharp discharged for not moving the black soldier’s photograph had been unsuccessful, because there the young man came, attired in his uniform.
A smile grew on her face without effort, and she raised her hand in a wild wave. “Officer Sharp! Oh, Officer Sharp, I’m so relieved to see you.”
Willie
Willie stopped so fast his feet slid on the grass. Dunning stopped, too, and snickered real quiet. Willie wanted to elbow the man, but Miss Millard was hurrying toward them with a big smile on her face. The last time she’d said she was glad to see him, she’d scolded him about sharing her name with Mr. Rochester’s son. But her smile…He swallowed. He didn’t expect her to fuss at him about something this time.
She stopped a few feet in front of him and beamed at him the way his ma used to when he’d taken a bath without prompting. “You’re wearing your uniform.”
Dunning’s eyebrows rose. He looked Willie up and down and shrugged.
A Silken Thread Page 13
