Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  “What did you do?”

  A guilty weight pressed down upon Nora’s shoulders. “I don’t know. Nothing. She just flipped out.”

  “Yeah, sometimes they can do that.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of cases like Loxley’s?”

  “All the time. You see them starving in the gutter every winter, no idea they need to get shelter and warmth.”

  “She worries me. I think she’s going to hurt herself one of these days. I don’t like the ghost thing.”

  “Tell me about it. I had to hold her hand all morning, just to get her across the damned market.”

  I’d give anything to be holding her hand right now. “I’m sure she appreciated your understanding and hard work.”

  “Could’ve fooled me, but I did it anyway. If I was in it for the gratitude, I wouldn’t be a cop.”

  He looked off into the distance, almost as though he was posing, and Nora took the opportunity to roll her eyes. “I could come back later and pick up the rest of Lox’s stuff this afternoon, if you want. I live near her apartment.”

  Burt winked. “No need. I’ll take it to her, myself. Wouldn’t be seemly for me to let a lady do all that hard work.”

  Loxley was smaller than either of them, and she pulled that cart every day. It would be heavy, made even more so by the weight of Loxley’s goods, and the cash box would be a valuable thing for an unarmed woman to carry around the seventh ring. The box bulged at its edges with bills like an overstuffed sandwich. Nora had jammed them in there without much thought, but now she realized she didn’t have a key to correct her mistake.

  The Consortium book lay open on the pavement where Loxley had left it, and Nora reached down to pick it up.

  “What’s that?” asked Burt.

  Nora closed it, looking at its worn cover. “Something very important to Loxley. Hopefully, she won’t run away again if she sees me holding it.”

  Chapter Five

  My Shepherd

  “MISTER FOWLER?” NORA held the pay phone receiver to her ear. It had been beaten up pretty badly the week prior, but it still worked. It was, in fact, the only fully operational piece of technology in her apartment building’s lobby. Lights flickered overhead, and the building’s elevators mainly served as outhouses for drunken vagrants.

  “This is he. Can I help you, Madame?”

  She clutched the handset tightly, its housing creaking. “Is Loxley Fiddleback at work today?”

  “Yes. She seems a bit out of sorts.” A static-riddled sigh. “I’m guessing she’s gotten up to some trouble, then?”

  “No. No trouble. I’m a friend of hers from the Bazaar, and I was just checking to make sure she made it to you.”

  “I see. So no problems with her, then?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She’s busy, but I can put her on the phone if you’d like,” he said, though it was clear he didn’t want to do so.

  “No, thanks.”

  “To whom am I speaking? Should I give her a message?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, all right,” he said, terminating the call.

  Nora hung up and trudged upstairs. It was a long, tiring walk, but one that she made every day, so she’d gotten used to it. She unlocked her apartment and took in the sweet, caramel smell of old cigarette smoke.

  The room before her lay in perfect order. She’d cleaned it last Saturday, in case Jack wanted to come by. The first time he’d seen it, he’d made a crack about the rent being cheaper because she split it with all the rats. She’d felt humiliated, like some dumb slut he’d scraped off the bottom of the Hole, so she’d cleaned it up, and he never made the crack again. But now, she felt even more ashamed, because she’d changed the way she lived for that garbage.

  A messy room was full of spirit: cramped, with few defined edges, like a warren. Her clean apartment had served her needs, but now it felt like someone else’s place. Jack’s place, to be precise.

  She kicked the door closed behind her and flopped onto her couch. She absentmindedly fingered the edge of Loxley’s book, feeling the cottony softness of weathered paper. She rolled onto her back and held the volume high. It looked unfriendly, and when she opened it, she found it full of ridiculous charts and data sheets. Row after row of bland numbers lined its pages, an impenetrable mass of information. She rifled through it like a flipbook, watching one esoteric topic shift to the next.

  A picture flashed by, and she turned back to it. Cotton rows stretched over the earth as far as the eye could see, punctuated by a tiny farmhouse in the distance. She tried to imagine what that would look like if she spun in all directions – green earth, unobstructed by any obstacles, no other humans... just her and God under the pale blue sky. The more she dug into the thought, the more she felt the nervous heartbeat one gets looking down from a great height. She’d grown up in the Hole, always looking up, never looking out. She felt comfortable when embraced by civilization.

  She shut the book and tossed it onto her coffee table. Loxley was never going to get out of the Hole, and even if she did, Nora wasn’t going with her. Loxley was the kind of woman who could forget the rest of humanity at a moment’s notice and disappear completely. Nora needed everyone, the pounding of the city’s Foundry in her ears like a mother’s heartbeat to an unborn baby. She hated herself for it.

  After her parents died, she’d built a life for herself. She couldn’t just leave that.

  She looked over her shelves. She didn’t have much, but she had a few nice pictures and a fine china teapot that had been in her family for three generations. Her Bible’s leather spine caught her eye, and she sat up. Most folks in the Hole had Bibles, and unlike her, other people read them. A missionary had given it to her when she was younger, telling her God loved everyone. She’d had trouble buying that story at the time, but she kept the book because it was more beautiful than most of her possessions.

  She walked over to the shelf and picked the tome up. It wasn’t real leather, and some of the gold lettering had flaked off the cover. The pages were also gold-edged, and she let it fall open in her hands. The page stock was thin, like cigarette paper, and one desperate night, she’d torn out a leaf to roll a joint. It worked exceptionally well, but the guilt had eaten her for days afterward.

  Its words were arcane, and she had trouble following its meaning, but they had a soothing cadence and authority to them. Plenty of people in the Hole turned to the Good Book for guidance, but it wasn’t the sort of volume a person could just pick up on their own for a bit of light reading. Then again, Darius and Geraldine down the hall couldn’t read at all, and they loved their Bibles.

  Prideful people turn to themselves when they should turn to God and his Word, a preacher had once told her. When you can’t carry on, you’d be a fool to seek your own help. God loves you, and he wants to be there for you. Jack, the factory, the Hole, her dead family and all the thugs who made her life a living hell exhausted her. Could this heavy book really give her rest? If God loved her, he was most definitely alone in that.

  She turned to the missing page, its ragged edge jutting out like an open wound. She ran her finger down the middle, regretting what she’d done to it. She stopped to read a verse.

  5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

  She swallowed, and her hands fell to her sides, overcome. Numbness traveled across her skin like passing clouds. She felt so tired of being alone in a crowded city, but the preacher would have told her she wasn’t alone.

  “Fuck it,” she said, shutting the Bible and grabbing Loxley’s volume from the coffee table. “We’ll try this your way, big guy.”

  Nora folded the two books under her arm, locked up her apartment, and headed downstairs. This Sunday she was going to go to church, and she’d ask the preacher what to do. Go home and get your Bible. Read it. Those were Jack’s words. He was a spoiled sack of shit, but he’d been tryi
ng to help her. She’d been crazy to make such a scene on the factory floor, but she couldn’t help that she had a temper. Preachers claimed to be able to help with that, too.

  It was a lot easier to trek downstairs than upstairs, and she felt a little peppier on top of it all. She was going to be a better person. She was going to do things right, and in turn, she’d be rewarded for it. She’d make it to her meeting with Duke. Maybe he’d want to help her, and maybe he’d already heard about how things went down at the factory. Either way, it was out of her control. A lightness fluttered in her heart at that idea.

  She burst from the lobby doors, her feet striking the ground like lightning bolts. No one was asking her to be clever, only to be good. She could do this.

  The Preacher

  NORA HAD JUST finished her climb up the ramp to the fourth ring, when a boxy, black limousine came rumbling up alongside her on the street. Chrome gleamed along its body lines. Polished, tinted windows perfectly reflected the sun, blotting out everything inside. Atop the front grill was a statue of an angel ascendant, her arms outstretched to embrace the infinite.

  Not a speck of ash or dust rested upon the car’s waxed body. That, alone, told Nora of the importance of the man inside the vehicle. It had to be Duke. Incredibly, the car came to a stop next to her. As the window rolled down, she reminded herself not to gawk, and to smile as pleasantly as she could.

  To say the man on the other side of the window looked friendly would be an understatement. When people spoke about their departed grandfathers in saintly terms, whitewashing every nasty detail, they were speaking about men who looked like him. He had a bushy brow, overflowing with snowy hairs that curled upward toward a white coiffeur. His lips were made for smiling, as though he felt proud of everything he looked upon. His cheeks had inflated with weight and age, and a pinkish blush graced them.

  His eyes, slate gray and clearer than glass, told her he’d once been beautiful, too.

  “Are you Nora Vickers?” he asked with a tenor’s voice.

  She’d never spoken to a man in a limousine before. “I am.”

  “You’re prettier than your picture.” He held up an old factory photo that had been taken of her two years prior. She wasn’t quite scowling in the picture, but it was clear she didn’t want to be there.

  “Anyone would be prettier than that, sir. Those pictures make mugshots look downright artistic.”

  “I see,” he chuckled. “Miss Vickers, my name is Duke Wallace, and I’ve been informed of your situation. You seem like you could use some help.”

  “Mister Wallace –”

  “Duke.”

  A vice president of the all-powerful Consortium wanted her to call him by his first name. She added that to the list of weird shit for the day. “... Duke, call me Nora, and that would be an understatement. What have you heard?”

  “Not much, except that your employment was untenable in your current position.”

  She crossed her arms. “That’s right. I was fired. They said it was in some part because you bought the factory, and that you wouldn’t appreciate the kind of relationship I had with my manager.”

  He scratched his chin. “They’re right. I don’t approve, but I also don’t blame you for it. Young women are prone to mistakes and all men are prone to... sin against their own bodies.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I also heard you attacked one of the other workers. Is that true?”

  She felt shame well inside her. “Yes, sir. I wasn’t thinking straight. That job was all I had, and I knew Bettie was the one who reported me. I lost my temper.”

  He nodded, his smile returning. “You and Mister Grady are the reason you were fired. Not Bettie.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.” He opened the door, and she saw plush carpet and wood paneling accenting a leather interior. “Would you care to come to my house this evening to share a hot meal with me and my family? It’s up in Edgewood, so we’ll provide sleeping accommodations.”

  Nora looked up at Fowler Brothers’ Apothecary in the distance. She clutched Loxley’s book tightly in her hand, and she wondered if she ought to tell Duke she needed to return it. But what if Duke became annoyed? He might drive away, and she’d never get the chance to find out what he was after. She had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to dine in the richest house with the most powerful man in the Hole.

  She needed time to explain to Loxley what had happened. She couldn’t simply run in and hand the poor girl her book before dashing back to the car. Loxley would think her angry. Nora needed to be forgiven. Perhaps Duke would understand if she told him she needed time to explain herself. Then again, he was a busy man.

  Perhaps Nora didn’t deserve forgiveness yet. Maybe she needed to wait. Duke was a sign from God.

  “Miss Vickers?” he prodded, scooting to the other side of the car to make way for her.

  “Sure, I’ll come with you,” she replied, climbing inside.

  She climbed out of the rotten, moist cold of a southern winter, and into another world. The interior of the limo smelled of fine whiskey and linseed oil. When she slammed the door, the sounds of the city vanished, even the rhythmic pounding of the Foundry. She rubbed the seat with her fingertips – creamy cowhide with gold stitching. A sparkling cross had been embroidered into each headrest.

  Her fellow passenger wore a stark, white suit – usually a terrible decision in the Hole. Nothing beautiful could last in this place, and the smart folks wore gray, to cover up the sweat stains and occasional ash. His green cravat lay tucked into his collar, a sapphire glimmering in its folds. Rings encrusted his fingertips, and he held a cane that had been polished to a mirror shine.

  “This is some car,” said Nora.

  “That it is. I had it specially made in Liverpool and upholstered in Milan. The thread comes from Jordan, and the acacia panels come from the Sinai Desert.”

  “This thing came from all those places?”

  “My dear, before it even drove a mile, this car had seen more of the world than I ever will,” said Duke. “I’ve rarely ventured out of the southeast.”

  “Can’t you afford to go? You know, see the world?”

  “Aside from the sweet hereafter, the south is the closest thing to paradise.” He crossed to the other side of the cabin, sitting opposite Nora with his back to the chauffeur’s window.

  Nora actually snorted. She covered her mouth, trying not to laugh, but Duke seemed to take it all in stride. She smiled, trying to regain her composure. “I’ve never met anyone who’d call the Hole ‘paradise.’”

  “Then you’ve never been to Bellebrook.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My home.” He knocked on the window behind him, and it rolled down.

  His driver was a young black woman, her hair tucked up under a cap. When she turned to ask where to, Nora noticed a hare lip in her profile.

  “Marie, why didn’t you get out and help Miss Vickers into the car?”

  “I apologize, Mister Wallace,” she replied. “It won’t happen again.”

  He smiled and shrugged. “Don’t apologize to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Vickers.”

  Nora blushed and waved her off. “No, it’s fine. I don’t think anyone has ever held the door for me.”

  Duke’s eyes twinkled. “Is that right? You’re in for a treat this evening, then. Nora, we can go to your apartment and fetch one thing. What would you like to get?”

  “One thing?”

  “Yes. What kind of person are you?”

  Nora thought about a change of clothes, or maybe a toothbrush, or even a condom. She’d only just met Duke, but she had no way of knowing his intentions. He might’ve only broken her up with Jack so he could have her for himself.

  But that was nuts. With cash like his, Duke could have any woman he wanted in the Hole. He didn’t need some fancy tricks to get into anyone’s pants when he could just buy their pants. He watched her intently, never breaking eye contact as she contemplated her answer. She c
ouldn’t help but feel like this was a test. As she tightened her grip around her books, it came to her – the reason why Jack had told her to go get her Bible and read it.

  “I have everything I need right here,” she said, turning over her stack of books to reveal the Scriptures.

  His smile faded, not to a look of disapproval, but one of contemplation. “You carry it with you?”

  She nodded. This was the first time she’d held it in over a year, and she felt disingenuous.

  “Do you read it often?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. If Duke really was sent to her by some greater power, she couldn’t lie. “Almost never.”

  He folded his hands over his cane and rested his chin on his fingers. “And what changed your mind?”

  “As you might have guessed, I lost my job today... and I hurt my only friend. I had to turn somewhere for help.”

  “You made the right decision, Nora. Marie, take us up to Bellebrook.”

  “Yes, Mister Wallace.”

  The Gardens of Babylon

  THE GRADUATIONS TO luxury astonished Nora with each ascending ring. She’d been up to Edgewood a few times, but only as a curious party. The restaurants made her stomach ache for their fare, and the dresses in the windows of shops depressed her. Women walked the streets with a breezy, casual stride, never huddling to themselves, and folks stopped to talk on the corners. When someone from down below came to Edgewood, the locals would stare.

  The car glided silently over the freshly-paved streets, smoother than a marble on a piece of glass. She stared out the window, and as they got to Duke’s neighborhood, she saw something she hadn’t seen before: grassy medians.

  Much of it had gone blond for the winter, but she still longed to get out there and walk, barefoot, over the soft leaves. She couldn’t imagine how wonderful it must be in the summer, and she decided that, when spring came, she’d come back to this place.

  “Those are flowering cherries,” said Duke, pointing to some unappealing, dead trees lining the road. “In April, they grow pale, pink blossoms that fall like snow, but only for a week. The pear trees about a mile up shower white blossoms for a little while longer, but I think they smell like rot, so I don’t plant them on my land.”