Girl Waits with Gun

by Amy Stewart

  Norma dropped the noodles into the pot, and a cloud of steam rose up around her. The curls at the back of her neck were slick against her skin. Without turning around, she said, “He was not so happy to see you?”

  “No, he was not. I don’t expect we’ll be getting any money out of him.”

  She banged her spoon against the pot and turned around, waving it at me. “It’s just as well that we forget about Henry Kaufman. I’ve got that boy working on the buggy. He brought over an old runabout the dairy isn’t using. We can ride that until ours is finished.”

  I took a breath and tried to summon the nerve to tell her what had happened. But the air sailed right back out of my mouth the way it came in, and no words followed. What was the point in revisiting the entire awful encounter?

  “That’s just fine,” I said at last. “I’d like to forget about it.”

  Through the kitchen window I could see the neighbor’s pigs pacing in their pen. I tossed our kitchen scraps to them, a small service that earned us a flitch of bacon in the fall. The pigs were still some weeks away from slaughter, but already their bellies dragged in the mud as they staggered around, calling out in their guttural pig language.

  I dropped the pitted stalk of the cabbage into a bowl and looked around for something else to feed them.

  “Take the potato peelings,” Norma said, and I did, walking them across the road in the unrelenting heat. The cicadas whined from some distant grove, and the crickets in the tall grass around the dairy pond raised their own chorus, which was not a song at all but just the dull scraping of a hundred blades against each other.

  The pigs grunted and shuffled toward the fence when they saw me coming with my bowl of scraps. With the drone of the countryside all around me, I didn’t notice Henry Kaufman’s motor car until it was nearly on top of me.

  He was driving and there were three men with him. The setting sun kept me from making out their faces, but I thought I could see the young man with the droopy eyes gaping at me, his mouth half open, his front tooth jutting out in a look of perpetual, confounded surprise, and the great hulking figure of the man with the stovepipe arms next to him. The car fired and coughed as if it was about to die, then roared again and swerved right at me. I fell back into the weeds. One of the men leaned out and yelled, “Take your pick, Henry! Which one of these girls do you want?”

  Another one laughed and said something I couldn’t hear.

  “The French girl. What was she—”

  Another mutter, and then he did the most intolerable thing. He shouted her name down our drive, as if he knew her, as if he knew anything about us at all.

  “Fleurette! That’s the one! Here, girly!” and then there was nothing but rough and drunken laughter and the thunder of the engine and dust everywhere. A bottle flew out the back of the car and hit a rock, shattering to pieces as the men disappeared down Sicomac Road.

  The bowl slipped out of my hand. I watched the sand-colored cloud of dust settle back into the road, and then the air was still. Even the crickets had been shocked into silence. I stood and tried to pick the burrs and foxtails out of my skirt, but my fingers trembled and wouldn’t take hold of them.

  Across the way Norma stood in the half-opened front door, Mother’s old kitchen apron tied crookedly over her riding clothes. Fleurette perched on her toes and peered around her to get a better view. They looked like those fuzzy figures in a picture postcard, frozen in place, staring out from some world that no longer existed.

  8

  THE THREE OF US retreated to my bedroom. Our dinner was forgotten and the noodles were a sticky mess in their pot. Fleurette was red-cheeked and wild-eyed. Norma was as grim as I’d ever seen her. She kept her eyes on the floor, and her breath came out noisily as she worked up to whatever she was going to say.

  “How did he find us?” Fleurette asked, bouncing on my bed.

  “I wish you’d stop fidgeting,” Norma said.

  “I can’t. How does he know my name?”

  They both looked up at me expectantly, Fleurette eager for the rest of the story, and Norma dreading it.

  “Well—the letters. I put our address on them and our names.”

  Norma tied a knot in a loose piece of piping around her knees. Fleurette considered it a waste of her talents to make undergarments for us, when a complete set could be purchased so inexpensively from the catalogs, but Norma had grown attached to a particular style of nainsook chemise that was no longer offered. She wore them until they frayed at the hems and then had to bribe Fleurette to make her a new one.

  “Don’t pull on it,” Fleurette whispered. Norma pulled her hands away but kept her eyes on the fraying edge.

  “I’ll go to the police tomorrow,” I said.

  Norma snorted. “I take a dim view of the police in this county.”

  “What do you know about them? We’ve never so much as spoken to a police officer.”

  “I read the papers. They can’t even catch a pickpocket. Do you remember just last week, at the train station—”

  “Norma,” I said, giving a great sigh of exasperation, which was what I so often did after saying her name. “It’s a simple matter for the police. He has wrecked our buggy and refuses to pay, and now he’s harassing us.”

  “And why is that?” Norma said.

  “Why is he harassing us? You saw the crowd of hooligans he runs around with. They probably have nothing better to do. They—”

  Norma raised one eyebrow at me, a particular talent of hers that she deployed whenever she wanted to assign blame.

  “You don’t think I’m at fault!” I cried. “If he’d been any kind of gentleman, he would have paid the damages straightaway. All I’ve done is to try to collect what we were owed.”

  Fleurette had been looking back and forth between the two of us like a spectator at a tennis match. But she couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Where does Mr. Kaufman live? Let’s go to his house tonight. We can all wear disguises, and we’ll wait until he’s gone to bed, and—”

  Norma shushed her and put her hand over mine. “I don’t think you know how you look sometimes,” she said, patting me in a show of sympathy.

  I pulled my hand away. “How I look?”

  “At the accident. You towered over him, and you shoved that car door closed so he couldn’t get in. How do you think that made him appear to his friends?”

  “Like a fool,” I said.

  “He is a fool,” Fleurette added.

  “And what about today? Were his friends with him again?”

  “Oh, they run in a pack,” I said. “They’re like wild dogs.”

  “And by any chance did you make Henry Kaufman look like a fool again today?” Norma asked, her voice still quiet and steady. “In front of all those wild dogs?”

  I closed my eyes and pictured his head hitting the plaster, a detail I was now glad I hadn’t shared with Norma. “But that’s no reason to come after us. He’s the one who ran us down.”

  “I don’t believe he sees it that way.”

  “Well, it’s nice of you to take his side,” I snapped, and tugged at my bedcovers, dislodging Norma. Hunger got the better of Fleurette, and she persuaded Norma to go downstairs with her to see what they could salvage from our ruined dinner. I stayed in bed, feeling that I deserved to be sent upstairs without my supper. The very idea of food turned my stomach anyway. I was made nauseous by the idea of drunken lunatics charging at us in motor cars and strange men hurling threats at Fleurette.

  Fleurette, who had seen so little of the world, who Mother kept even more carefully hidden away than her other girls. Fleurette was like a little jewel, small and bright and easy to steal. And now, with me in charge of her welfare for only a year, these men were driving by the house and shouting at her.

  What was I to do? Mother would have wanted me to put up the storm shutters and bar the doors and hide in the root cellar every time an automobile drove by. Norma, who saw the farm as some sort of fortress designed to keep the re
st of the world at bay, would have agreed. But I was tired of hiding out here in the country.

  Francis would have wanted me to sell the farm and move in with him, where we could all be properly supervised. But I wasn’t about to become one of those women who serves out a life term as her brother’s housekeeper.

  The only way I could fall asleep was to tell myself that I was making too much of the situation. I had made one small miscalculation in confronting Mr. Kaufman and had brought a little trouble our way as a result. It would not happen again.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Norma and I sat down with Fleurette and warned her to be wary of automobiles driving past our house and to stay away from unfamiliar men in all circumstances.

  “You two sound like Mother,” Fleurette said, rolling her eyes. She still had the long dark lashes that some children are born with, and she had a habit of fluttering them at us dismissively.

  “This time it’s real,” I said. “This time it’s serious.”

  “Mother thought everything was serious.”

  I didn’t appreciate being compared to my mother, but Mr. Kaufman did seem to pose a fresh new danger. “Promise me,” I said. “No automobiles. No strange men. We must stay away from him until he forgets all about us.”

  She promised. “But we’re still going to Paterson next week, aren’t we?”

  I looked over at Norma for an explanation. She reached into the basket next to her chair and pulled out yesterday’s newspaper.

  “I might have seen something about a moving picture concern coming to town,” she said, thumbing through the pages. “They’re going to film a motor car running into a trolley as part of a safety campaign.”

  “I think we’ve had enough of motor cars running into things,” I said.

  “Oh, we have to go,” Fleurette said, jumping up from her chair. She wore an outlandishly large pale pink dahlia in her hair. It seemed to be placed purposefully next to her face as if to offer a comparison. “Norma promised you’d take me.”

  Norma kept her face behind the paper. “I would go myself, but I couldn’t possibly. You know I take my pigeons out on Thursdays.”

  “You take them out on Wednesday and Friday, too,” I said, “and on Monday and Saturday. Tuesdays are—”

  “They dislike any change to their routine,” Norma said. “It would put them out of joint.”

  “Well, I can’t go, either,” I said, although I didn’t have a reason.

  Fleurette tugged at my arm the way she used to when she was a little girl. “But what if they’re looking for actresses?”

  “It’s a crash,” I said. “What use would they have for an actress?”

  “I have experience with crashes,” she said.

  “I don’t think they’d want you for a safety campaign.”

  “Please,” she said. “Norma said you would. She said you had nothing else to do but keep me entertained.”

  “Norma!” I tried to snatch the paper away from her, but she wouldn’t let it go.

  “And after that terrible fright I had yesterday,” Fleurette said, working her eyebrows into a sorrowful little knot. “Wouldn’t an afternoon out do me good?”

  She leaned over and pursed her lips at me in that droll, beguiling way she had. The girl was unbearably pretty and knew it. Sometimes I wanted to pick her up and squeeze her until she could hardly breathe. Whether that impulse grew out of love or rage I could not say.

  THE ACCIDENT was to be staged at the corner of Main Street and Market. Norma helped us hitch Dolley to the runabout we had on loan from the dairy. Its seat was only just wide enough for the two of us.

  “You see, I couldn’t have gone anyway,” Norma said with evident relief.

  The questions began as soon as we rolled onto Sicomac Road.

  “What sort of part do you think they’d have for a young girl?” Fleurette asked.

  “We’re only going to watch.”

  “I could play the part of the victim with her leg crushed under the wheel.”

  “You are not going to be in the pictures.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I kept pointedly quiet, but it didn’t matter since she hadn’t been listening to me anyway.

  “At least let me drive.”

  “After what happened last time?”

  We continued in this fashion until we reached Paterson and rode over the river and past the great hulking Lambert Castle, one of those foolish medieval follies built by American industrialists after their first trip abroad. This particular industrialist, a silk man named Catholina Lambert, was still occupying his folly, after having seen his wife and all but one of their eight children off to the graveyard, most of them lost to consumption or childhood fevers or a kick to the head by a horse. I heard that he married his wife’s sister, herself a widow, and that they spent their days in the marble atrium gazing up at the enormous dark oil portraits of other, more distant castles, and of moldy forests, and of the Lambert ancestors. The terrace offered an expansive view of New York City, but apparently the occupants of the castle didn’t care to look at the view, for no one ever saw them outdoors.

  Fleurette fell silent as we rode under the shadow of the castle. When she was a child and misbehaved, we used to threaten to send her there to work in the kitchen. She believed us. She believed everything we told her until she turned fourteen. The castle held enormous power over Fleurette—and over everyone in town, really. No one could stand to go near the place.

  “Who lives over here?” Fleurette said, once we had put the castle behind us.

  “All the silk men do,” I said.

  From our vantage point on the hill, we could see the mills and factories clustered together at the edge of Paterson’s downtown, casting their shadows into the Passaic River. Narrow brick stacks discharged coal smoke into the air, where it formed a permanent gray cloud. The river dwindled to a trickle this time of year, leaving nothing but mud and boulders and puddles visited by mosquitoes. The mill owners preferred to live a comfortable distance away from their red-bricked empire, so they retreated to this cool, quiet neighborhood with its canopy of elms and wide, sloping streets.

  “You’re taking a very roundabout way into town,” Fleurette said, fidgeting with her hat.

  “We’re early,” I said. “I thought we could ride around the park.”

  “Well, I wanted to get there early!” Fleurette protested. “I wanted to have a chance to meet the director!”

  “I know you did,” I said, slowing Dolley to a leisurely walk under the elms.

  PATERSON was a city of industry. Every schoolchild read the story about Alexander Hamilton and his Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, conceived for the purpose of harnessing the powers of the Great Falls of the Passaic River and building along its banks a national manufactory. Although things did not go as Hamilton had planned at first, Paterson did eventually grow into a city of steel mills and, later, silk mills. The factories produced locomotives, Colt revolvers, and, most recently, hair ribbons and yardage. But all industry ceased when a motion picture concern came to town.

  As Fleurette rushed to the intersection of Market and Main, dragging me behind her, we passed banks that had closed for the afternoon, grocers who had locked their fruit stands, and jewelry stores with shutters over their windows. Businessmen in pinstriped suits stood on the sidewalk as if they had no business to attend to. Schoolteachers crowded into the street with their young charges. Police officers pushed the crowd aside, only to get a better look for themselves.

  Fleurette couldn’t see above anyone’s head, so I let her climb the stairs of the library (closed until further notice) and perch atop a lamppost pedestal. She wrapped her arm around the post and craned her neck to see. In a peach-colored afternoon dress that flowed and swirled around her and her hair in dark glossy waves around her shoulders, she looked like Liberty with her torch. I stood below and watched with alarm as young men took their eyes off the proceedings down the street and grinned up at her instead. S
he kept her chin high, but I saw her glancing down at her admirers and wished I’d taken the post with her to discourage their interest.

  The intersection had been cleared as if for a duel. One of Paterson’s older trolley cars sat on the tracks, awaiting its fate. An enormous black motor car lurked on the other side of the intersection, half a block away, its engine growling. A wooden platform had been built for the camera, which stood all alone on its three-legged stand.

  Finally the motor car’s engine roared and a conductor jumped into the trolley and waved to the crowd. Everyone yelled back and fluttered their handkerchiefs at him. The driver of the motor car stood and waved to even more applause. Then they both settled down and a hush fell over the crowd.

  The cameraman gave a nod. Someone raised a megaphone and counted down.

  “Three. Two. One. Go!”

  Over gasps and screams from the audience, the trolley rolled along its tracks and the motor car came at it broadside, picking up speed, just as Henry Kaufman had. The conductor looked out with an exaggerated expression of fear, which drew a laugh from the audience just as the car plowed into the trolley. It rocked back and forth. The conductor’s expression grew more alarmed, and finally, with one last push from the motor car, it collapsed on its side, its wheels spinning.

  Cheers erupted from the crowd. Fleurette was jumping up and down and clapping madly. Policemen, firemen, and a doctor with his medical bag all ran to the trolley, but the conductor emerged, victorious, shaking his fists in the air. All around me, people were congratulating one another as if they’d had some role in the outcome.

  I turned to look for Fleurette, but at that moment I felt a hand on my sleeve. It was the red-haired girl from the factory.

  “You don’t remember me,” she shouted, straining to be heard over the crowd. She was younger than I’d first realized—not much older than Fleurette—and would have been pretty if she hadn’t spent her life in a dye shop. Her hair was thin and dull, her mouth pinched, and there was a burn mark on her neck and another one like it on the back of her hand, both of them quite brown, suggesting an accident that occurred years ago. Her fingers bore the gray stains that accumulated from the dye.