Mission of Hope

by Allie Pleiter

  “Maybe, but sore are the feet of him who brings canned peas.” He shifted the sack again, straining under the weight, cringing when the tins inside the sack clanged against each other despite the careful packing he’d done. “I’m delivering those first. No one had better ask for potatoes this week. Or anvils.” Quinn turned his back to the reverend so he could untie the top of the duffel and tuck the pair of Bibles inside.

  “You’ve still your humor about you,” Bauers said as he retied the bag. “I’m glad of that.” He gave Quinn’s shoulder a quick clasp. “And you have much to be glad of, especially today.”

  “I’m glad of you.” Quinn was pleased to have an ally in the old man, especially in terms of Nora. “Thanks.”

  “The glint in your eyes is thanks enough.” Bauers moved aside the scraps of cloth that had been hung in the mission kitchen as make-do curtains. “It’s good and dark out now. Off with you, and take care. Come back when you need anything else.”

  Quinn settled his hat down over the mask. “That won’t be long, you know.”

  The night was thick with mist, hiding the slip of a moon that had appeared earlier in the evening. It made travel easier in some respects, with more shadows for hiding and bad visibility. The lack of vision, however, seemed to amplify sounds so that Quinn stilled and flinched every time the tins clanked against each other.

  Inside Dolores Park, deliveries were always challenging. Close quarters granted all kinds of nooks in which to hide, but it meant eyes were everywhere. The camp never really went to sleep—someone was always up somewhere—but the lack of lanterns, fires, or street-lamps made concealment easier. Quinn had become so acquainted with Dolores Park’s cracks and corners he could probably find his way blindfolded.

  Saying a prayer of thanks for his gift at memorizing things, Quinn ticked down the list of who got what in his head as he peered down the next aisle. Two tins of peas to the third shelter on the left, one of the Bibles to the last shack on the right. Just before setting the tins down outside the structure, Quinn wet the nub of charcoal he’d found yesterday and used it like a pencil to add his new flourish—a large “MM” on the top of the tins. Not quite the Black Bandit’s calling card of a white ribbon—frankly, he found that a bit overdone—but a mark of his own. Something to let folks know it wasn’t just the United States Army looking out for their welfare. He did the same in the dedication page of the Bibles, and on every other item he’d procured himself rather than from the army stocks.

  It was near three o’clock when Quinn finally folded the dark duffel and the other Messenger items into their new hiding place at Grace House, yawned, and headed for home. Just before turning in, Quinn removed a small square of lavender soap from his pocket, marked its muslin wrapping with the double M sign and hung it with a set of pins to their door for Ma to find.

  Nora came downstairs later that week, still smiling from a bouquet of blue flowers that had once again found their way to the backyard garden fencepost. Even better, attached to the flowers this time was a large lump of sugar—something nearly impossible to get lately, and she had no idea how Quinn had acquired it. How clever he was—it was an ideal token to offer to her parents.

  The packet fell from her hands on to the hall table, however, as she turned into the front room. Mama and Aunt Julia had the most dreadful looks on their faces. She hurried into the room, worried as to what could have made them so upset.

  Until she saw what Aunt Julia clutched to her breast with brittle, shaking hands. She remembered now. She had heard a rustle in the garden last night, and had stolen out of bed to find the flowers and sugar tied to the fencepost as the bouquet had been the last time. It had been nearly impossible to fall back asleep, and instead she had stayed up until nearly dawn, reading.

  Reading Annette’s journal, which had become a treasured companion to all the emotions roiling around inside her. And she had fallen asleep, journal in hand, sleeping late into the morning. She had not realized, until just this horrid moment, that while the flowers and sugar were still on her coverlet, the diary was gone when she awoke.

  Of course it was gone. It was now in Aunt Julia’s hands. They must have found it when her mother came in to wake her. Nora squeezed her eyes shut against the wall of remorse that stole every drop of the joy she’d felt only seconds before.

  “Yes,” came Aunt Julia’s tight, sharp voice, “I found it. Or rather, your mother did.”

  “Nora.” Her mother’s voice was laced with disappointment. “Why did you not bring this to us earlier? How could you have kept all this from us when we might have prevented…” Nora was glad Mama thought it too cruel to finish the sentence.

  “I only just found it,” Nora admitted, “I didn’t know…before. I had no idea.”

  “You two shared everything.” Aunt Julia jabbed the words at her. It was a fair accusation.

  “I thought we did.”

  “You thought.” Aunt Julia seemed to be a coarser, angrier version of the gray ghost she had become on the day of the earthquake when Annette’s body could not be found. Annette had been sleeping at Nora’s house the night of the earthquake. No one could ever understand why she had wandered off in the melee. It had been assumed, for comfort’s sake Nora supposed, that she’d made her way home more quickly than the others in a desire to see her mother and father safe. As she stood there, watching her aunt’s spirit seemingly die right in front of her, Nora realized that it was more likely Annette went looking for Eric. Which, according to the hints in the diary, was right into the heart of the destruction. It seemed so terribly, inexcusably cruel for Aunt Julia to know this now, when it did no good at all.

  “Heedless child!” Aunt Julia hissed, her fingers nearly scraping at the bindings. “My own flesh and blood, capable of such…such wanton behavior.” It was as if the very words left a foul taste in her mouth. Her face pinched tighter as tears reddened her eyes. Mama reached for her hand but Aunt Julia knocked it away. “And they’ve paid for their sins, her and that…shiftless cad. What snake of a man lures a young woman like that into plans to abandon us? It’s this city, I tell you. This vile, sinful place…”

  “Now, Julia.” Mama reached out again, to no avail.

  “Reverend Mansfield is right. We shouldn’t be surprised. How much longer did we expect God to endure such blatant, sinful ways?” The pastor from the church Aunt Julia and all of Nora’s family attended had been vocal in his condemnation of the city’s sin. He was one of those people who saw the earthquake as God’s judgment sent down upon an evil city. Nora could never see his viewpoint, especially now.

  “God struck down the city,” Aunt Julia continued. “And now I have to live with the fact that he struck down my own daughter with it.”

  Reverend Mansfield would surely see it that way, too. Nora’s heart burned with regret for letting the secret slip when only pain would come of it. There was too much pain already.

  “You’ve had a terrible shock, Julia,” Papa said, coming into the room behind Nora. Land sakes, did everyone in the house know it all by now? “We all have.”

  “I want to leave. I want to leave this horrible place and never look back. There isn’t a thing left here to want.”

  “That’s not true,” Nora said before she thought better of it.

  “What do you know, you silly thing!” Aunt Julia snapped, making even Mama and Papa flinch. “You didn’t even know enough to stop your cousin from walking into her own doom. We’ve taught you nothing about what’s right, nothing!” With that, she threw the book on the divan next to her and left the room, her sobs wafting through the house until they all heard her door slam shut upstairs.

  Nora went to pick up the journal. Awful as it was, she couldn’t bear to think what Aunt Julia might do to it, and it was her last piece of Annette. On her knees in front of the divan, Nora slid the book to her lap and looked up at her mother. “I didn’t know, honest. And once I found it, I only thought it would hurt Aunt Julia worse to know.”

 
Papa came up and sat on the other side of the divan, so that Nora kneeled between her parents. “You really had no idea what this man was planning? You knew nothing of Annette’s…” She could tell Papa was trying to think of a delicate term, “indiscretions?”

  “I suppose I suspected something. She told me she fancied some man Aunt Julia and Uncle Lawrence wouldn’t like. But running off with him? I never dreamed she’d keep something like this from me.”

  Mama laid her hand on Nora’s arm as it stretched across the divan’s thick brocade cushions. A color Annette had helped to choose, Nora suddenly remembered. She was so fond of burgundy. They’d planned to have a portrait of her painted this summer, sitting on this very spot. With a sad twinge, Nora realized it would never have been painted either way. For either way, Annette would have been gone.

  But gone was not the same as dead, even if Aunt Julia would disagree right now.

  “It is one of life’s great tragedies, the things that have been done to innocent young ladies who do not guard their way. You see, now, why your father and I have been so very careful with you. So much can be lost.”

  Nora’s heart shuddered.

  “It is a horrible thing to think, but I can’t help wondering if God has been kind in taking Annette when He did.”

  “Papa!” Nora said, pulling back.

  “I know it seems harsh,” Papa said, “but do you have any idea what kind of life awaited your cousin if she’d have gone through with this mad plan? A man from the docks? It’s a terrible squalor of a life, Nora. Why do you think I’m so worried about you at Dolores Park? These are coarse, desperate people. Full of violence, drink and disease.”

  She’d never heard her father talk so. “But they aren’t all bad. You help them. Papa, you spend every day helping in the official camps.”

  “It’s my duty to serve those camps.” He said it as if his mercies were an unpleasant but necessary task, like swallowing castor oil. “It’s the duty of every good Christian to help those in need.” The words didn’t seem to include those in need in Dolores Park.

  Nora ran her hand along the book. “Annette loved him.” It was an odd thing to say, but she felt that someone ought to at least make it clear that Annette was not duped or kidnapped or stolen in the night. “He loved her—or she believed he loved her.”

  Mama reached out and smoothed Nora’s hair, much as she had done when she was a small child. On the floor, at their feet, it did feel as if she’d become small again. “It isn’t a fairy story, Nora. This would never have ended well. Only pain and heartache and much worse would have come to Annette. She must have known how dreadful it was to keep it even from you.” Mama’s eyes looked from the book to Nora. “You can’t keep it, you know. And you must never speak of it.” The warning in Mama’s eyes made Nora clutch at the diary involuntarily. “I suppose it’s up to Julia and Lawrence, but I wouldn’t fault her if she chose to burn it.”

  “Burn it?”

  “It’s far better if no one else knows.” Papa seemed to actually agree with Mama on this terrible suggestion. He looked at Nora. “Reverend Mansfield might make an example of Annette if he learned of it, and how could you put your aunt and uncle through something like that? Haven’t they been through enough without adding such disgrace to their pain?”

  A startling panic grabbed at Nora. “No one will know. I’ll hide it. I can’t bear to lose another piece of her.”

  Mama looked at her as if she were a petulant child. “I think you meant to hide it now, and we all see what has happened. Surely you won’t put your needs before Annette’s own mother and father’s?”

  Papa reached down and took the book gently from Nora. It took an enormous amount of willpower not to snatch it back out of his hands and run from the room. Everything seemed to be crumbling around her, and just at the time when things seemed to be springing to life. Any chance of Mama and Papa’s ever approving of Quinn slipped through her fingers as she knelt on the parlor floor. “Perhaps,” Papa said in a quiet, managerial tone, “this is best decided in a while. Everyone has a lot to think about.”

  Nora leaned back against the divan, feeling drained. If only you knew how much there is to think about, Papa.

  “What was that you were holding when you came down this morning?” Mama’s voice held a forced brightness, as if she were packing up all this unpleasantness to stuff away in a closet and wanted something nice to take its place.

  “Sugar,” Nora said, still too stunned to evade the truth.

  “Oh, my. Received a trinket from our dashing major, have you?”

  Of course Mama would think the flowers and sugar came from Major Simon. He’d made a spectacle of himself bringing sugar when he came to dinner—Mama was beside herself at having a “true cup of tea” after dinner. Nora didn’t answer. She had no idea what to say, especially in light of all that happened.

  “Now, don’t make Nora blush,” Papa said, smiling. It was clear from the look that passed between him and Mama how pleased they were at the major’s attentions. And yet how was she acting any different than Annette, sneaking around, whispering affections behind closed doors? “Perhaps you should come on the mail run with me this afternoon after all. I’m sure I could send word to Major Simon to meet us, and I’m equally sure he’d prefer to hear your gratitude in person.”

  Any chance at seeing Quinn—however small—was a treasure. She needed his help to figure out what to do next.

  Or did she? Was she simply letting some insipid passion pull her off the sensible course? She had never been one to second-guess things, had always thought of her decisiveness as a quality, not a fault. She’d loved it when Annette called her bold.

  And where had Annette’s even greater boldness—which Nora had always admired—gotten her? The urge to see Quinn now vied with an equally strong mistrust of her instincts. The result was a frustrating paralysis.

  Papa laid his hand on her shoulder. “Come now, you mustn’t let Annette’s misfortune weigh down your own future.” It was the oddest thing to feel his offer of comfort, knowing he had no idea of the true reason for her upset. Like having two conversations at once. Now Papa was encouraging her to visit the camp?

  Not the camp. The major.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dolores Park buzzed with talk of the latest Midnight Messenger visit. One sack of goods—well, actually two, for Quinn had to make a second run with all those cumbersome tins of vegetables—had launched a fast and ever-exaggerating chain of gossip. As he stood in a bread line for unofficial camp residents after several hours’ work cleaning bricks this morning (gratefully, a seated task; his feet throbbed), Quinn heard the pair of men behind him boast that the Midnight Messenger had brought an entire ham to a shack in Dolores Park. The truth had been slightly less heroic—a can of some sort of luncheon meat—but it made Quinn smile just the same. He smiled for a good half an hour, until it came to him that perhaps he ought to worry about what kinds of requests would turn up today. Someone had even come from another unofficial camp several blocks away, pinning a handful of requests to the Dolores Park message posts.

  Major Simon had advised Quinn to only pull a handful of requests on an irregular schedule, but he’d long since begun augmenting his army-supplied runs with Messenger deliveries of his own procurement. There was just so much need.

  “Beware expectations,” the major had warned. “When unmet, they can be dangerous things.”

  “Kind of odd when you think of it,” the man behind Quinn said. “We got us a whole army what’s supposed to be lookin’ out for our needs, and turns out one fella in a dark suit bests ’em all.”

  That made Quinn raise an eyebrow and listen harder.

  “How do you know the Midnight Messenger wears a dark suit?” the other asked suspiciously. Evidently, he suspected his partner knew more than he was letting on.

  “I hear tell. Besides, what do you expect someone called the Midnight Messenger to wear? Pink?” He lowered his voice. “I heard he’s a big fel
la. Over six feet.”

  Quinn hunched.

  “With long, flowing dark hair, like one of those pirate types.”

  Quinn straightened up again, laughing at his own prideful caution.

  “I reckon he works for the army,” the second man suggested. “So’s they can cut corners and all.”

  “Or spy on us,” the other countered. “He’s got to be a sneaky one if no one’s caught up with him yet.” Quinn bent down, pretending to have something wrong with his shoe, so that he could angle his face just enough to catch a glimpse of the pair. He thought he recognized the voices, but the faces were unfamiliar. Never mind, he knew which aisle they lived in by the can of meat he’d delivered there.

  “Of course, if he works for the army, no one’s gonna catch up with him, are they?”

  “I hope they don’t. My wife needs a tin of powder for her stomach troubles, and I don’t hardly think an army that won’t give us flour will give us medicine for my Laura.” The man grunted. “I’m fixing to put a message up on the post. I figure it’s the postmaster who’s got something to do with it. He don’t ever cross to our side of the street, but his pretty daughter does. I seen her write things down once.”

  “I heard someone tell that Major Simon fella to expect the postmaster and his daughter at today’s mail run. Could be you’re right, Mack.”

  Only sheer strength of will squelched Quinn’s urge to turn and look at the pair. Who was sending word to Simon that Nora was coming? And why? Had her father suddenly decided to encourage Nora’s visits to Dolores Park? Or had Major Simon stepped up his efforts regarding Nora?

  Nothing, not the longest bread line in history, not even the throbbing of his tired feet, would keep Quinn from today’s mail run. He forced patience into his fidgety body as the line inched along by reciting, “Mack and Laura, stomach powder, same row as the ham.”