The Duchess stops at a door at the end of the hall. The room beyond is small, with a shelf along one wall. About half the spaces are taken up with extra sets of clothing, and the Duchess points to the shelves.
“You girls stow your stuff there. You got anything worth a damn, you’re going to want to keep it with you. There’s a bunch of thieving bastards in this place.” She eyes the gown I wear greedily, and I get the sense that she’s including herself in that group. Makes no matter to me, she can have the dress. The only things I want are my lucky penny and the packet of letters secured in my pocket.
And Tom Sawyer, of course. I’ve taken a liking to the little urchin, and I’d like to see where he ends up. It seems the boy is always running afoul of a pack of shamblers in the midst of his Missouri adventures, and the boy’s derring-do reminds me of my own exploits.
I put my extra set of clothing on one of the far shelves, then follow the Duchess down a back staircase. “These are the stairs you’ll use. Don’t come down those front stairs, those are strictly for my girls and their clients. Negroes ain’t allowed to drink in the saloon, anyway—or anywhere in Summerland, strictly speaking.” She leans back and whispers, “You want whiskey, you’ll get your spirits from the kitchen entrance. Woman named Maybelle. Don’t let anyone catch you, though. They’re free with the strap around here. The preacher sees to that.”
“The preacher?” I ask. She can’t possibly mean the old man I saw just a few moments ago. He was too frail to wield anything.
The Duchess nods. “Don’t let that old man fool you, he’s got a vicious streak. The sheriff is his son, and nothing in this town happens without one of them saying so. The preacher thinks it up, but the sheriff makes it happen. Watch yourself around the two of them.”
“Good to know. Anything else of note regarding the sheriff and the preacher?”
The Duchess purses her lips for a moment before telling me in a low voice, “Sheriff lost his wife to the plague going on three years ago, right before the wall was completed. She was a pretty blond thing, as sweet as he is sour. Went out to gather berries by a nearby creek and got surprised, turned right in front of his eyes. Anyway, you want to make your life easy? Don’t question his authority when it comes to the dead. He’s never reasonable when the question of the undead plague is involved.”
I nod and file the information away for later.
The stairs are impossibly narrow and cramped, and we have to walk single file. They empty out into a laundry room, with a glorious copper tub in the middle.
“This is where you’ll wash your clothes. Some of my girls take in laundry, so if you want them to wash your things you can ask. That tub is yours to rent for a nickel, but I’ll let you use it today for free since you . . . just been through an ordeal. You want hot water you have to pump it into the big cistern in the corner, then light that stove right next to it. After that, turn this fancy spigot here. After you’re done, pull that plug in the bottom, and the water will run right out back to the trough I keep for the garden. Understood?”
I nod, and walk over to the contraption. I look at the copper pipes, the hand pump that brings water up out of the ground, the water heater that looks to be pressurized. “You got a way of handling the silt?” I ask, gesturing to the hand pump.
The Duchess shrugs one pale shoulder. “I don’t rightly know. You’d have to ask the professor, he’s the one that rigged up the contraption.”
“The professor?”
“The tinkerer. Gideon. Most of the fancy gadgets you see around town are his creation.” She pulls a pocket watch out of her skirt and sighs. “Dinner is in an hour or so, I need to get the girls fed before fellas start arriving.”
I incline my head. “Thank you, ma’am, for the fine tour of your establishment,” I say before bobbing another curtsy.
She gives me a bemused smile in return and just shakes her head as she slips through a door, off to see about her business.
There’s a shelf of glasses along a wall and I grab one, twisting the handle above the spigot. Water flows out, clean and clear. I fill the glass and drink deeply. The water tastes strange, as strange as anything else in this town, but not lethal.
At least, not yet.
The Bible has been a comfort, and one of the younger girls has even started a school for the little ones. It is such a miracle to listen to them read the Scripture, although I must admit it does make me heartsick for you, darling Jane.
Chapter 21
In Which I Attend Church
After a bath, I head out to find dinner. The town ain’t all that big, and it’s easy to see what the Duchess meant when she said that all the girls ate together. Everyone spills out of a plain, whitewashed building with a cross hammered onto the door. The meeting hall is next to the church but separated from the grander building by a garden of white crosses, memorials to the deceased. In the old days it would’ve been a graveyard, but most sensible folks have taken to burning their dead and mounting a cross in a field or yard, like these. It’s just safer that way.
The meeting house smells of good things, so I push aside my worry that God will strike me down when I walk through the doors. I’m too hungry to worry about my tainted soul.
As I enter, every pair of eyes lands on me. Toward the back of the building are two large tables of boys and girls, all Negroes, hungrily shoveling food off tin plates. The Duchess and her girls sit at their own table near the door, plenty of room around them, some of the girls making lewd gestures to a few rough and ready white fellas sitting at a nearby table. I don’t see Jackson. More important, I don’t see Lily or the Spencers, and I wonder if we made a mistake, if we got ourselves sent out here for nothing.
I get a plate of a thick, hearty stew and a slice of bread from the woman at the window. My serving is about half that of the white man in front of me, my plate hammered tin instead of the stoneware. I open my mouth to complain, but I ain’t given the chance.
“Keep it moving,” says a high voice. Bill stands over me, shotgun propped on his shoulder. Why’s he need a shotgun at dinner? No one else is armed.
The old man from the church glides up to me. He smiles, but there ain’t nothing friendly about it. “Jane, Miss Deveraux will be so happy to hear you’re settling in nicely.”
“I got this, sir,” Bill says, a quaver in his voice. There’s an air of fear about him, and after I spot the large gold cross around the old man’s neck I figure this must be the preacher the Duchess warned me about.
“No, Bill, you have other matters to attend to. It’s Bible study night. Go watch the door. I won’t have the whores sneaking out again.” Bill walks off. The old man still smiles, thin red lips stretched garishly over large front teeth. His eyes are watery, the brown washed out to the color of a penny, his hair completely snow white and thinning. He looks like a walking skeleton, sun bleached and pale, and I involuntarily shrink back from him when he reaches a hand out to guide me toward the back of the building.
“Allow me to formally introduce myself; I am Pastor Snyder. You’ve no doubt already met my son, Sheriff Snyder. While my son enforces the laws here, my purpose is to give Summerland both spiritual and moral direction. It’s a task I do not take lightly, as you will see.”
There’s a feverish gleam to his eyes, and his wide grin hasn’t left his face. I didn’t even know it was possible to smile and lecture someone at the same time, but here I am.
“Miss Deveraux told me that you’re a bit impulsive and she was worried for your welfare. Told me your services were a gift from her now deceased father, and how valuable she finds your companionship.” As we walk, the preacher keeps my right arm in a bruising grip, but I can’t shake him off without dropping my dinner.
“In any case, believe me when I tell you that I understand how to deal with headstrong Negroes. In my youth, I was an overseer in what was formerly South Carolina. Tobacco fields, sometimes cotton. It was there that I came to understand the divine order that the Lord saw fit to bestow
upon we men. I also learned many of your kind fail to understand this order, and I know that you can deal with obstinate Negroes as long as you remember they are, at their heart, children. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ as the Scripture tells us.”
My penny has gone icy under my shirt, and I stop walking as the preacher stops. His eyes haven’t left my face, not once, and I get the feeling I’m being cataloged, like a butterfly in a collection.
“I’m sure you will find that your place is a comfortable one if you make it so, Jane. God can be merciful and kind, as long as you follow His laws. But how you find your life here in Summerland is entirely up to you. Do not disappoint Him and do not disappoint me, and you will prosper. Enjoy your meal.”
Preacher Snyder finally releases my arm as we pull up alongside the tables full of Negro boys and girls. Most of them are about my age, but none of them look familiar, and I wonder where they’re from. I’m glad there ain’t any other girls from Miss Preston’s, as I ain’t in the mood for any kind of heartfelt reunion. Still, I wonder where the girls Miss Preston has been feeding to Mayor Carr have gone off to. Is there more than one town like Summerland?
A dark-skinned girl with tight rows of braids looks up and gives me a guarded smile. “Hi. You want to sit here?” she asks, gesturing to the empty chair next to her.
I sink gratefully into the chair, my hands shaking as I set my tray down. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jane.”
“Likewise. I’m Ida.” Her voice is whispery and low with the deep-throated accent of the Lost States, those places in the Deep South where shamblers outnumber people. Ida keeps casting furtive glances in the vicinity of Bill and his shotgun. “So, I see you met the preacher.”
“I did. Charming fellow.”
“About as charming as the serpent in the garden. Watch yourself around him.”
I nod. Bill is now looking at us a little too intently and I decide to change the subject. “How long have you been here?”
Ida’s expression hardens. “Too long. Most of us came at the same time, shipped up on a train from the Jackson compound.”
“Compound?”
“Yes’m. Ain’t you never heard of the compounds?”
“Once, briefly. It wasn’t exactly an enlightening conversation. Mind telling me more?” Not much is known about life in the Lost States. It’s generally thought of as a place even more desperate than the Western frontier.
Ida talks while I scoop up my food with my fingers, since no one saw fit to give us forks. “Well, at ten you start your initial combat training. We have a test every year. If you fail it, they put you in the fields. But there are a lot of shamblers out there and chances are you’ll get eaten, so that’s no good. At thirteen, you join the patrols. But if you mess up—like if you don’t listen or they think you’re uppity—then they’ll move you to another compound. Or, in our case, they put you on a train.”
“Not in the fields with the others?”
“Only the little ones work in the fields, since they need all the grown folks they can get to keep the dead out. And if they can’t use you, they sell you to someone who can.”
“Slavery is illegal,” I say.
“Not necessarily. They got loopholes in that there Thirteenth Amendment. If you’ve been bitten by a shambler, the amendment says you’re no longer human, even if you haven’t turned yet, which means you don’t have rights as a person anymore. And there’s a reward for capturing bit Negroes, since everyone is convinced we’re immune. I’ve seen folks testify Negroes have been bit and then those Negroes get sold off by the compound. Same if you’re a criminal—and you can guess how that goes, when white folk are the ones who write the laws.” She catches herself, then looks around and lowers her voice. “Lots of different ways to pretty up the same old evils.” Ida looks down at her hands, wringing them something fierce. I can’t tell whether she’s angry or upset. “If I would’ve known they were going to send me here, I would’ve run off a long time ago.”
“Is it worse here?” I ask, not really wanting an answer.
Ida just shrugs, and a girl on the other side of her leans forward. “It ain’t so bad now that they got the whores to take care of the drovers. It was worse before they had something to keep them occupied.”
My stomach turns, unsettling my supper so that I have to swallow hard to keep it down. “Who lives in those houses on the other side of Summerland?” I ask, since she’s being so chatty.
“The good white folks do. They don’t eat with us. Most of the good people in the town are put over there on the southern boundary. It’s safer, and it’s mostly families and such. The only folks here in the town are the Negroes and the trash. The nice white folks don’t even attend church with us, because we might soil their souls.”
I nod. “So I heard.”
There is a loud banging. I look toward the noise to see the preacher standing at a podium that’s been set up next to the serving window. He looks out across the room, smiles his ghastly smile, and says, “Gather round, gather round, children. No need to be shy. There are some new faces in the flock today, and that is a boon. God has blessed us, because a growing flock is a lucky flock. As Summerland grows, as we welcome more souls into our humble town, so does the dream of a new Jerusalem, of our own righteous city on the hill.”
There’s some noise as chairs are moved closer to the podium. No one bothers moving where I sit. The tables full of colored folks are farthest away from the podium, and it feels intentional.
The preacher continues. “Tonight, I want to tell you the story of John, one of the first farmers to settle here in Summerland. John was a flawed man. See, when he came here to our fine town it was the beginning of the war, before the dead walked, and John had strange notions about justice and equality and God’s will. He’d come to us from South Carolina, my own home state, and he came west a man who was missing something, some vital part of the self.
“His father had been an overseer, and rather than follow in that man’s footsteps, he fled. Because John had lost his faith, you see. He couldn’t understand how God could let so many live in suffering and bondage while others profited off that misery. Like the abolitionists who unleashed this Sinner’s Plague of the Dead upon us, John doubted God’s will.”
It takes everything I have to keep my mouth shut, my thoughts to myself.
People in the crowd, mostly the white men at the tables full of roughnecks, are nodding and murmuring in assent. The Negroes just sit there. This ain’t the first time they’ve heard this sort of story.
The preacher closes his eyes and puts his hand over his heart. “And because he questioned, the Sinner’s Plague found him one day as he plowed his field. The problem with John—the problem with all nonbelievers—is they think they understand God’s plan. They think God sent His son to earth to die for our sins because, down past the roots, we are all sprung from the same seed. But that isn’t so! The Lord God Himself desires, above all things, order. An understanding of where we all fit in His church, this earth. The senseless tragedy that was the War between the States disrupted the order God had given to us, by His grace. For failing to understand this law, fundamental to His love, He has unleashed His wrath upon us. It was hubris to think we are all equal in His eyes, friends. Not in this world. But perhaps, later, in the Lord’s kingdom.” At that last bit he turns and gestures at us sitting in the back, as though the meaning in his words wasn’t clear enough. A few of the white folks, both the whores and the drovers, turn to look at us. I sink down a little lower in my chair, feeling very, very exposed.
The preacher smiles, as though he knows exactly the effect of his words, and continues. “But there is hope. You can cast off the sins of your past, and you can cleanse yourself of the Curse of Ham. You can toil and labor for the good of those God has made in His image, and thereby find peace and contentment. Because that is the dream of America, and it is God’s will; to work hard in the role God has provided for us, to be deserving of good fortune, and to p
rosper.”
Most of the white folks in the room are nodding and giving praise. I glance around the Negro tables and realize a few of those folks are as well. That makes me sad and scared.
The preacher clears his throat, and shakes himself a little, as though casting aside the somber feeling in the room. He smiles widely at us, his eyes shining in the low light. The penny around my neck is frigid. That man, that false prophet, might just be the most dangerous man in town.
“Now,” the preacher says, his smile unfaltering, “Let us pray.”
We’ve lost quite a few of our folks over the past few weeks, not just to shambler attacks but also to a group of men calling themselves Survivalists. They’ve been riding through the countryside stirring up no end of trouble. Too many of them are of the rough sort that used to run in the old slave patrols, riding down escapees for a few coins. If you should find yourself in the path of any of these men, run in the opposite direction. There is nothing to be gained from their acquaintance, and I fear for the Negro should these men ever come to any real power.
Chapter 22
In Which I Learn a Tune I Don’t Care For
The next morning, we are woken early, shaken awake by someone’s meaty fist. “Time to go,” the big girl says before walking away.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” I mutter, climbing out of my nest of blankets. I scratch at my arm as I stand. I’m pretty sure that my makeshift bed has fleas, if the creepy-crawly sensation over my skin is any indication. Ida gets up and looks at me as I scratch my arm.
“You’re going to need to launder them blankets,” she says, pointing to my arm.
“Yeah, maybe I can get one of the Duchess’s girls to do it?” I hate doing laundry, and a few pennies seems like a fair price for dealing with flea-infested blankets.
Last night, after nearly two hours of listening to the preacher, I walked back to the sleeping spot with Ida. She helped me find blankets in the pile in the corner, telling me that “when a girl passes we just throw her blankets here for the next one,” before showing me where to sleep. There are no beds, just blankets on the floor, everyone squished in tight as sardines. I thought Miss Preston’s was bad, but now I long for the days of hard cots and meals served with cutlery.
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