Mission of Hope

by Allie Pleiter

  Nora looked upset. She smiled pleasantly, casting her eyes out over the crowd with every piece of mail, but Quinn held back, suddenly unsure if her quick, searching glances sought him or Major Simon. He’d thought she’d be beaming after the flowers and sugar. After their declarations in Bauers’s study. He’d felt like nothing would come between them after they’d spent that time together. Himself, he’d been walking on air for the hours since she kissed his hands. Now, he felt sore, exhausted, and naggingly uncertain. What he wanted, what he needed, was to speak with her. He thought of the pirates, the buccaneers the men in the bread line had likened to the Midnight Messenger. If I were a pirate, I would steal her away, he thought. Take her to some foreign shore where no one cared what cut of coat a man wore or who his parents were. Or weren’t.

  When Simon came to the mail cart, it only got worse. Mr. Longstreet beamed over the major, offering jovial smiles and knowing glances that lodged in Quinn’s gut and simmered there. The only thing that made the whole scene bearable was the sure sense that Nora wasn’t really happy to see Major Simon. Oh, she feigned it well, all smiles and downward glances, but the way she held her head and the way she flailed her hands gave it all away. When Nora was happy, her hands were calm and graceful. When she was upset, they traveled about like bees, flitting from her neck to her waist to her skirts. And he, he knew that about her like he knew a thousand other little details his heart had memorized. Because he knew her—the true Nora, the Nora inside what other people saw.

  He lingered on his side of the street until she’d finished her pleasantries with the major. Then, as Simon and the postmaster exchanged confident looks—he disliked the sense of negotiation their glances gave him, as if Nora were a spoil of war—Nora went back to taking in the mail. Watching how she served those in line, his resolve grew stronger. She was in his life for a reason, and he in hers. All the conventions in the world couldn’t alter that truth.

  She looked his way, finally, catching his eye. For a moment, there was the unchecked affection he’d seen in Bauers’s study. Her eyes glowed, her lips parted just the slightest bit and he could almost hear her suck in a breath. For the tiniest moment the world fell away around them.

  Then, as if a drape came down, he watched caution come over her. While she still held his gaze, it was with doubt rather than joy. Her eyes told him a sort of war was going on inside her—the possible fighting the probable. Affection and longing and fear and sadness all stuffed themselves into those few seconds.

  Something had happened. He didn’t know what, but he did know he couldn’t let her alone. He pleaded to her with his eyes, hoping he could tell her to hang on, to give him just a moment to work something out. He held up a finger, arching his eyebrows and mouthing “wait,” then ducked around the corner to find Sam.

  It took all of ten minutes to contrive a reason for Sam to bring Nora to the teeter-totter, but Quinn was pacing madly by the end of it. His imagination had come up with a dozen scenarios—each more catastrophic than the last—as to what had happened to make Nora look at him with such worry.

  “What’s wrong?” His effort at a conversational tone failed miserably.

  “Nothing.”

  Already she was lying to him. “That’s not true. Something’s wrong. I can see it.”

  She looked up at him. “This can’t work. Quinn, surely you know that. We’re foolish to think it can.”

  “You didn’t feel that way earlier. You’ve never felt that way. What’s happened?”

  She glanced around nervously. “Annette. She kept a journal, and I found it. She was…involved…with someone and they were going to run away together just as the earthquake…” Her hand went to the locket again. “Everyone is so upset. Her parents are furious, they’re saying she’s better off dead.”

  “We’re not them, Nora. I’ll go to your parents.” The conviction roared up inside him. “I’ll make them see. And if they don’t…well, I won’t be without you. We belong together and they’ll just have to see that.”

  “They won’t,” she nearly wailed. “You should have heard them, Quinn. They said the most horrible, judgmental things.”

  “Do you believe that? What they said?” Suddenly, he needed to know that more than anything. Needed to know if she could defy them and their thinking.

  Nora looked at him with stormy, sad eyes. “It’s not just them. What kind of future could we possibly expect?”

  “The same future anyone’s got a right to expect. To be happy. To be with someone you care about. Nora, we’ll never be running off in the night, I’ll tell you that right now.” He wanted to grab her hand and shake her, knock this new layer of fear off her spirit and bring her back to the courage he’d seen before. Instead, he gripped his hat and tried to hold her with his eyes. “I’m sorry about your cousin. But your parents are wrong. And we’re right. I don’t know how I’ll convince them—how we’ll convince them, but we will.”

  “I can’t see how. Not now.”

  He reined in his frustration. “Not yet. Maybe you’re right, and now’s not the time, but soon enough we will. Do you trust me to work it out? Do you trust us to work it out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do.” He held her eyes, wanting desperately to hold her to his chest but knowing this wasn’t the time for it. “I do know. Sure as anything. We’ll find a way, Nora, you hang on to that.” He locked her in his gaze until she straightened and nodded.

  Hold her in Your palm, Father, Quinn prayed as he motioned for Sam to come walk her back. She’s my whole world now.

  Nora walked back across the street clutching Sam’s hand. It was the mirror image of the first time they’d walked together. That first trip, Sam had grasped her hand tightly, all his fear clenching his fingertips as he led her to his father’s shack. Now, she felt as if Sam led her through her fear back to her father’s cart. She was grateful for the tiny escort—her mind was in such a tumble she didn’t know how she’d have found her way alone.

  She had fooled herself that it would sort itself out. That she would see Quinn and suddenly know her course. Instead, her heart tottered like the toy Quinn had built—one second thinking the safety of Major Simon and her parents’ approval was so wise, the other second falling into a rush of emotion when she looked into Quinn’s eyes. When he looked at her so fiercely, with such a command to trust him, she felt what surely must be passion. An overwhelming, powerful sense of need and “rightness” that let her believe they had a future. That the two of them had been uniquely paired in all the world, uniquely completing each life to the betterment of the other.

  And a life with Major Simon? The most she could say was that it felt stiflingly arranged.

  Why did life suddenly have such urgency anyway? Why, if she had gone on unpaired for this many years, did her heart and her parents suddenly demand upheaval?

  The ground has shaken things up enough, Lord, she prayed as she gave Sam a hug goodbye and walked up to the mail cart. Must You shake up my whole soul in the process?

  “Major Simon left something for you while you were gone,” Papa said, as he offered his hand to let his daughter up onto the mail cart. He smiled with undiluted pleasure as he pointed to a small package on the bench of the cart. It opened to reveal a stack of cloth in various bright colors, small samples of yarn, a few bits of lace and a handful of buttons. Along with a small package of lemon drops. She read the accompanying note:

  Reverend Bauers told me you needed more supplies to make dolls. I hope these will help. The lemon drops are for the dollmaker, from her admiring major.—A

  “Why are we meeting here?” Quinn looked at the desolate corner of the scrapyard where Major Simon had asked him to meet. Even for their unusually discreet relationship, this seemed a bit much.

  Simon picked up a tangled piece of steel and spun it to catch the orange sunset. “Because I have an important question to ask you. A sort of unofficial question on a rather unconventional matter. Not exactly army protocol.”r />
  Quinn didn’t think anything he and Major Simon did fit within army protocol. “And what’s that?”

  “Are you ready for things to get complicated?”

  Sitting down on a barrel, Quinn had to laugh. “They already are.”

  “True.” The major stuck the shaft of steel upright in the dusty ground and sat down on a second barrel. “I suppose I mean, are you ready for things to get quite complicated?”

  “Why?” Quinn replied. “What is going on?”

  “I don’t have to tell you,” Simon began, “that a whole lot of people are watching how relief efforts get handled around here. If things go well, it could not only mean help for many people, but things could go well for me, personally. And,” he added, looking straight at Quinn, “you as well. If we go about it in the right way.”

  “Our way isn’t perfect, but it works.”

  “It could work better, I think. But like most good things in life, it’s going to be a bit risky and I daresay unconventional.” He shifted his weight on the barrel and gazed at the sun as it began to dip into the water. “Do you know how the great fire was eventually put out? Why we used all that dynamite?”

  Quinn knew the basic concepts. “To burn things ahead of the fire so it didn’t have enough fuel to move on. Starved it rather than drown it, I heard one man say.”

  “Exactly. We fought fire with fire. I’m proposing, Freeman, that we do the same here. Only the fire I’m fighting now is grift. Corruption. People abusing the relief system for their own good. It’s making my job harder and your job more necessary. I wouldn’t need the Messenger if things got where they were supposed to when they were supposed to. I’d like for the army to be out of the relief business, but not if it means the marketeers are all that’s left. Despite my best efforts, relief is ending up in greedy hands.”

  Quinn thought Simon didn’t need the Messenger as much as the people in the tent cities needed the Messenger, but he got the major’s idea. “I don’t want the marketeers to win either, Major. It’s not right. All the generosity we’ve seen shouldn’t be ending up in the places it is.”

  “I’m glad you agree. And I think your unique talents put us in a place to do something about it. A real something that gets results. But we’re going to have to bend the rules a bit to get what we need.”

  Quinn smiled. “I’m no stranger to that.”

  The major laughed. “That much I knew. But for what I’m about to ask, you need to come out on top of this as much as I.”

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t think I can stop the thieves in any conventional way. But they’ll stop each other in the name of greed. That’s what I mean by fighting fire with fire. I’ve got a pool of money—gold, to be exact—at my disposal. We’re going to offer gold for information on how supplies are slipping out of army hands. Pay these grifters to turn each other in. Or, rather, turn their information in to the Midnight Messenger. Then you use the information, get the goods and deliver them to the people who needed them in the first place. You know parts of this city I don’t. You can go places I can’t, can do things that…well, let’s just say fall well outside of army protocol. I supply you the gold to pay the informants, with any extra means you need to get and deliver the relief supplies and everybody wins.”

  Quinn took off his hat. “Except me, when I get shot for playing both ends against each other.”

  “There is that. It’d be far riskier than what you’re doing now. But eventually, you’ll make it unprofitable to steal from the army while still getting help to the unofficial camps I’m not really allowed to service. Think of it, Freeman. You could be the single most beneficial man in San Francisco.”

  “Only no one will know. They’ll just know the Midnight Messenger did it.”

  “I’ve considered that,” Major Simon said with a wry grin, “and I’ve a plan for that, too. I think that once the tension has died down and we’ve gained the upper hand, that we should reveal you as the Midnight Messenger. With, of course, a whole lot of army gratitude, a public commendation and a commission in the Corps of Engineers for you to get a draftsman’s education and apprenticeship. It’s never been done, but then again I don’t think a lot of what I have in mind for you has any kind of precedent at all. You’ll be a hero.”

  Quinn pulled in a surprised breath. The Army Corps of Engineers would have a huge hand in rebuilding San Francisco. He’d be building, fulfilling that dream of studying architecture if what Simon said was true. He’d never considered signing up, fearing they’d never grant a real education to a man of his status. Why haul bricks for the army when a civilian firm paid just as well and no one shot at you? He could never reveal his role as the Messenger on his own—it’d be far too dangerous—but with the army at his back, he could take real credit without risking harm. If he lived through double-crossing half of San Francisco’s underbelly. “It’s a big risk.”

  “It’s a big reward. I’m offering you an entire new standard of living, Freeman. For you and your mother. You’d be able to provide—very nicely—for all the people you care about. Isn’t that what all this is about, anyway? Providing for them?”

  Most of the people in Quinn’s life who had power had gotten it by dark means. Influence that was more about fear than respect. The docks were a system of predators, a jungle that had finally consumed his pa and lots of other people he knew. Wasn’t it worth any risk to escape that? To count for something in the world, be educated and have a real hand in rebuilding this city? It called to the deepest part of him, answered a need so basic he hadn’t even named it until now.

  And then there was Nora. What price wouldn’t he pay to be able to be seen as “a man of prospects” by her family? To lay aside all the secrecy?

  It was the opportunity he’d survived for. The reason God had spared him, had given him the talents he had and the past that now made him so useful.

  “I’m in,” Quinn said, without a shred of doubt.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Were these with the other supplies?” Quinn watched carefully to ensure his conversation went unobserved, and made his voice husky so that Leo, a man who most people knew as the butcher but was known to Quinn to have many other well-connected occupations, wouldn’t guess his identity.

  “No. Finding those’ll take some asking around,” Leo replied. His current target was a shipment of hospital supplies that had gone missing from Fort Mason yesterday. Personally, Quinn was in search of crutches for a young woman from the northern part of Dolores Park. The army hospital had a storehouse of crutches, but Quinn wanted to see if he could secure a pair on his own, outside of army influence, as long as he was casting about for information on the missing supplies. He’d been successful. The young lady would find the pair of crutches, with a MM carved into one side, lying outside her shack when she woke tomorrow morning.

  “I’ve heard of a man with tents for sale,” Leo said. “Army tents. Along with some ether. I think he might be who you’re looking for. An awful lot of things seem to wander off the official camps when he’s around, seems to me.”

  That’s exactly the information Quinn was after. “Like I said, I can pay well for information like that,” Quinn said quietly. “And do something about it besides.”

  Leo was the first man who dared take the Midnight Messenger up on his offer. The offer had been out on the dock’s unofficial grapevine of gossip for a handful of days with no results. Folks were right to hesitate. Men who hoarded supplies for the black market weren’t the kind of people to take kindly to exposure. Quinn had been forced to offer a whole lot more gold than he’d originally planned before Leo finally came forth. “Ain’t cooperation a profitable thing?” Leo said, keeping his back to the Midnight Messenger as instructed. “Tomorrow, two o’clock. You bring the money, I’ll bring a little map showing you where you can find ’im. But I’ll need twice what you offered.”

  Quinn winced. Until folks realized they could deal with the Midnight Messenger and not get shot the
mselves, it was going to take a whole lot of convincing—the shiny metal kind—to gain conspirators. Success was getting very expensive. “Done.” Quinn tossed a single gold coin at the butcher’s feet. “For your time.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Messenger.” Leo picked up the gold and tucked it in his pocket. He walked slowly away, whistling into the night.

  It’s started, Quinn thought to himself. Let’s hope I’m alive to see it finished.

  It had been an insufferable week. The unspoken tension in the house choked the sunlight out of the air. Nora did not see how Annette’s unfortunate romance altered the sorrow of her death. In fact, Nora took some solace in knowing Annette had been so happy before her life was cut short. No one—most especially Aunt Julia—shared her point of view. Everyone clipped all mentions of Annette or romance or secrecy from their words, lest Aunt Julia fall into another of her crying spells upstairs in her room.

  Her own parents took all the regret as fuel to watch her with excruciating caution. One more not-very-well hidden sermon on the values of propriety and familial respect, and Nora thought she’d burst. It was odd to have one’s life boxed up like a curated museum piece when one had just survived one of the most devastating disasters in history. She couldn’t persuade her mother or father that she was not a fragile lily on the verge of being crushed by the slightest misstep. Did Mama and Papa think that all her sense and intelligence had fled at Annette’s words?

  She knew better. Her chafing came from the inescapable fact that her parents had good reason to worry. She would close her eyes and try to imagine Major Simon kissing her hand in the tender way Quinn had. But she could not recall the color of Major Simon’s eyes. And she saw the particular gold of Quinn’s eyes in all sorts of things: sunsets, leaves, this color silk or that painting.

  Albert Simon was a respected man, and a foundation for a solid marital future. Quinn, for all his impossibility, was a storm she could not escape or contain. He had character but few prospects, passion but earned little respect—at least from those who did not know him, for she knew him to be highly respected and loved throughout Dolores Park. At best, Simon had a space he held open for faith, whereas Quinn had a faith that seeped into every part of his life.