Girl Waits with Gun

by Amy Stewart

  He ran into the crowd and I backed under the awning of a shoe shop until he reappeared, his coat over his arm, his shirtsleeves rolled up. “Forgive me, Miss Kopp,” he said, panting a little. “We just had to push him out of the way. Now, listen.” He took my arm and led me down the street. “Don’t pay any attention to those ridiculous claims. They weren’t formal charges and they never will be. I saw this sort of thing during the strikes last year. These men call everyone they don’t like a Bolshevik and an anarchist. They get their lawyers to write up all manner of absurd accusations in hopes of confusing the matter and tying up the courts. But it won’t work. Not this time.”

  We crossed at the corner of Grand and a swarm of schoolchildren, all running after an ice cart, separated us in the middle of the street. I reached the other side first and felt an arm at my elbow. Thinking it was the sheriff, I turned around and found myself staring into a milky glass eye.

  “No more police.”

  He gave my arm a sharp twist that threw me off my balance, and by the time I regained my footing, I was face-to-face with Sheriff Heath and the man was gone.

  21

  THE SENSATION of that man’s fingers digging into my elbow stayed with me all evening. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Norma and Fleurette about it. I’d promised them that this day in court would put an end to our troubles with Mr. Kaufman, and I didn’t know how to admit how wrong I’d been.

  Sheriff Heath tried to tell me not to worry. He said that Henry Kaufman wouldn’t be foolish enough to bother us again now that a judge had ordered him to stay away. I told him it would be a mistake to underestimate Mr. Kaufman’s capacity for foolish and reckless behavior.

  It didn’t take long to find out which of us was right. I’d just settled down to sleep when a window shattered down the hall. I thought I heard a man laugh, but I might have dreamed it.

  The three of us staggered out of bed toward one another. There was no moon and it was impossibly dark. I could barely see their faces in front of me.

  “Whose window did they break?” Norma said. “It wasn’t mine.”

  It took a minute for each of us to understand that none of our bedroom windows had been broken. Once we realized that, we all ran for Mother’s room, half forgetting that she didn’t occupy it anymore.

  Norma was the first to find a lamp and light it. She made Fleurette go back to her room and put on shoes before she walked in. I found it very irritating that Norma had taken charge of the situation. Bricks coming through windows were my responsibility.

  By the time Fleurette returned, Norma had the letter in her hand. She looked at me with an expression that I cannot properly describe. It was as if she had never met me, as if I were a complete stranger, standing in her mother’s bedroom in the middle of the night.

  “Is this how Sheriff Heath protects us?”

  I didn’t say a word. Norma read the letter to herself and handed it to me.

  Madam:

  You are here given warning not to sue H. K. for if you do you will suffer for we his friends will get square with you, we watched you in court house, if you make him spend any more money we will trap you or burn you. Don’t give letter to police if you do you be sorry.

  H. K. friends

  We each read it twice, passing it around in the small circle where we stood among the broken glass. The brick had landed on the bureau, shattered a mirror, and knocked off a lacquered box of straight pins. They were splayed around us on the floor like slivers of ice.

  Before any of us could say a word, we heard a motor in the distance. The roar grew louder and I yelled, “Get down!” just before another window shattered and a second brick barreled to the floor, breaking in half when it hit. Fleurette screamed that she was cut and I ran to her, crouching low in case the men were still outside. But the tires skidded in the drive and the motor car rumbled away. Fleurette fell against me.

  “Are you hurt?” I said.

  “I . . . I don’t know. I felt something hit my head.”

  Norma moved the lamp closer, and I looked her over but found no cuts and only a few shards of glass in her hair. I reached for the brush on the dresser, but Fleurette said no.

  “Not Mother’s brush. Just leave it the way it was.”

  I set the brush down and smoothed Fleurette’s hair with my fingers. “I don’t think you’re hurt,” I said. “I think you’re all right.”

  Norma pulled the lamp away and it was only then that I saw the note tied to the second brick. She read it and held it out to me without a word.

  Dear Miss Florette,

  Have you ever been to Chicago? We believe a girl of your talents would find a nice place for herself with no trouble at all. Maybe we bring you with us next time we go. Are you ready for an adventure? Ha! Ha!

  —H. K. & Co

  Fleurette, still leaning on my shoulder, took hold of the letter and read it under her breath.

  “Chicago? Why am I going to Chicago?”

  Norma raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to explain it.

  “‘A girl of your talents,’” she read. “What do they mean by that? They don’t know me. Do they mean my dancing, or singing, or . . .”

  I took a deep breath, looking to Norma for help. Finding none, I blurted it out. “This is a kidnapping threat. They’re not talking about putting you on the stage in Chicago. They’re talking about taking you to Chicago and selling you.”

  She scrunched her face up in that childish way she had. “Sell? What do you mean, sell? How would you—” and then she stopped. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her chest. We’d all read about white slavery in the papers, but I didn’t know how much of it she understood.

  “They drug you,” I said quietly. “They grab you and cover your nose with chloroform and take you somewhere. There are men who will pay . . . who, ah, will pay for . . . that. For you.”

  Fleurette pulled away from me and stood with her fists tucked under her arms, looking down at her feet and the irregular pattern that the broken bits of Mother’s mirror made on the floor. She was possessed of the kind of fine, pouty features that could be so easily shattered, and I watched the corners of her lips drop and tremble as the truth came to her. “But that’s not what this is,” she said in a whisper. “They’re not serious, are they?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I think Henry Kaufman is very dangerous. I think our buggy collided with the wrong man.”

  For a minute we just stood where we were and considered that. In the dark Mother’s old room was quite beautiful. The chrysanthemums on the wallpaper glowed like distant jellyfish in the sea. Near the window was a lamp fringed in glass beads that she’d brought with her from Vienna. A breeze came in and pushed them against each other, making the faintly musical sound of bells ringing someplace far away. Her filmy dressing gown still hung on the closet door and it lifted and swayed like a woman dancing. At that moment it looked like a stage set, not a home where ordinary people lived. I could imagine stagehands wheeling it all away, leaving us with nothing but a black floor and a backdrop.

  “Well,” I said at last. “You can’t sleep alone tonight. I’ve got the biggest bed. You’ll sleep with me.”

  “What about Norma?” Fleurette said.

  Norma hadn’t said a word since she read the letter. I wasn’t sure she’d taken a breath. Her voice came out in a croak.

  “I suppose we have no choice but to hunker down like soldiers in a trench. I’ll make a bed for myself on the floor.”

  And that’s what we did. Fleurette climbed straight into my bed. Norma went to get some blankets and while she was gone, I went looking for Francis’s old hunting rifle. It had been years since I’d fired it, and I’d been aiming at rabbits, not at strange men in automobiles.

  “What do you intend to do with that?” Norma asked when she returned.

  “It does us no good in the back of a closet,” I said. I leaned it against the window.

  Norma settled down on her pile of blankets. “Why don�
��t you put yourself in front of Fleurette so she doesn’t catch the next round of flying glass?”

  She was already half asleep in the middle of my bed. I rolled her to the side away from the window. She moaned and kicked but moved over.

  I settled in next to her. Fleurette was so small that my body made a wall around her. Her rib cage rose and fell against me.

  Norma nodded in the darkness. “You’ll be the one they hit. That seems fair.”

  This time I had to agree with Norma. She turned to look again at the rifle, and then she put her head down, but I don’t think she slept. I didn’t either.

  22

  IT WAS NORMA who decided that we should live in Wyckoff. Mother was unable to make a plan of any kind. She was so astonished to learn that Francis and Norma had not only found me, but had made a commitment on her behalf to raise her newly discovered granddaughter as her own child, that she was rendered speechless and nearly paralyzed. Upon arriving in Wyckoff she stood on the porch at Mrs. Florence’s, with Norma next to her (while Francis waited in the carriage at the end of the drive, as they were all unsure as to whether a man should even approach the house), but she could not raise her hand to knock. It fell again to Norma to take charge of the situation, gaining entrance to the house and asking to see her sisters.

  Already Fleurette was her sister. There would not be a single moment in Fleurette’s life in which she was to be treated as my daughter. Norma had arranged for Mother to sign adoption papers making Fleurette hers, and great care was taken to make sure that my name would never be found in Mrs. Florence’s files—only the false name I’d given when I arrived. The letter Norma had written was returned to her. Only a few nurses knew our secret, and they were accustomed to forgetting any details not written in the files, to best protect the interests of the child. An illegitimate girl might never marry, might never have a family of her own, might be cast out of any social circle she attempted to enter. The nurses understood this better than the families did. They assured Norma that no one would ever be told the circumstances of the child’s birth, not even Fleurette herself.

  Once my mother signed the papers, Fleurette was taken directly from the nursery and handed to her. A few minutes later a nurse came for me, and that’s how I found her: seated in an armchair in Mrs. Florence’s office, baby in her arms, Norma looking over her shoulder. When I walked in, they both looked up at me with identical expressions of curiosity and shock, but then Fleurette made some sound and their eyes went back to her. I perched on a high-backed chair and watched while they fussed over her.

  I’d been so relieved when I learned that Norma had found me and that I’d be keeping my child, but now a stone sank to the bottom of my stomach. I wasn’t really keeping her. They were keeping me, that was all.

  We couldn’t go back to Brooklyn. Girls of eighteen could not disappear for months and return at the same time that a baby was brought into the family without attracting suspicion and gossip. Francis rented a suite of rooms for us in Paterson and planned to return to Brooklyn for our things as soon as we settled on a place to live. Philadelphia was under consideration, as was Boston, with the idea that Francis could easily find work and Norma could finish school. Mother had her inheritance, so we were not without resources.

  I believe we would have gone to Philadelphia or Boston had Norma not overheard, as we were leaving, a conversation between two of the nurses about a farm nearby. The man had moved out west and was eager to complete a sale. Norma made a note of the location and as we rode past Sicomac Road, asked Francis to turn and take a look at it.

  There it was: the wide and gabled farmhouse, the barn, the pen for animals, the meadow that led to a creek lined in willows. Across the road the neighbor’s cows moaned amiably. The drive was overgrown in weeds and the paint had flaked off the house, but Norma saw something there. She got out and took a walk around the barn and then around the house, and stood looking over the fields at the trees in the distance. When she returned to us—Mother, cradling Fleurette, with me sitting alongside, and Francis at the reins—she had already made up her mind.

  “No one would know us here,” she said to Mother. “And we’d be away from that filthy, crowded city.” She glanced meaningfully at me, as if to suggest that filthy cities themselves were to blame for what had happened.

  Mother nodded slowly. “When you children were small, I always wanted to bring you to the country. Your father would never agree to it.”

  Before Francis could object, she added, “Francis, you could fix up the farmhouse, and once that was done, I’m sure you could find work in Paterson.”

  “And what would you do?” I asked Norma. Everyone turned to look at me as if they’d forgotten I was there.

  Norma smiled and looked back at the barn. “I’d get a goat and maybe some pigs. And I believe I might like to keep birds of some sort.”

  23

  I MUST HAVE DOZED OFF around sunrise. I had been dreaming about a flock of messenger pigeons circling the roof in the early gray light before dawn, carrying slips of paper in their beaks and dropping them down on us. “Chicken Thieves Send Kidnapping Threat” arrived first, then “Police on Lookout for Brother’s Hunting Rifle.” Fleurette caught one in the air and held it out to me. “Sisters on War Footing,” it read.

  By the time I awoke the morning was half over. I sat up in bed and wondered if it had all been a nightmare—the brick shattering the window, the note threatening to take Fleurette from us. Then I saw the rifle leaning against the wall and knew I hadn’t dreamed it.

  A door opened downstairs and I followed the sound into our kitchen. Sheriff Heath had apparently just arrived and was holding his hat in his hand in the manner of a man about to deliver a speech. Norma and Fleurette were standing next to the kitchen table, each with a hand on the back of her chair. No one was saying a word. They were holding their postures as models do in a tableau. “Sisters Awaiting Rescue,” it could have been called.

  I leaned around the tableau in hopes that someone had left some coffee on the stove for me. They hadn’t.

  The sheriff’s eyes were even darker and more deeply sunk into their sockets. His hair was matted to the side of his head and, as far as I could tell, he was wearing the same brown suit I’d last seen him in.

  “You look like you’ve had even less sleep than we have,” I said.

  He grimaced and reached up to smooth his hair. “I suppose so,” he said. “I was called out in the middle of the night to pull Henry Kaufman’s automobile out of a ditch just up the road.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t just leave it there,” Norma said.

  “Where was Mr. Kaufman?” Fleurette asked.

  “He must have run off. We counted four men’s footprints in the mud. I sent one of my men to watch your house, but we never saw him.”

  “That’s because he visited us first,” Norma said, “and treated us to his latest literary efforts.”

  “I was afraid of that. How was it delivered?”

  “Again by brick,” I said, “but this time he aimed for our mother’s old room.”

  Sheriff Heath looked disappointed. “Smart man,” he said. Then he saw our surprised expressions and apologized. “I mean that he’s avoided using the post. If he mailed them we’d be able to charge him with a federal crime. He knows what he’s doing. Could I see the letter?”

  “There were two of them,” I said. I thought I’d left them upstairs, but Norma pulled the letters out of her pocket. He gestured for her to set them on the table, then he sat down. We took our seats around him as he bent over the crumpled papers.

  “Ladies, I’m going to teach you a little detective work.” Fleurette sat straighter in her chair. This was precisely the wrong sort of excitement for a girl of her temperament. Without taking his eyes off the letters, he continued. “The first rule of crime scene investigation is to keep your hands off the evidence. If we’re lucky we can take up a fingerprint, but not if yours are on top of it.”

  Norma
was not a woman who appreciated having her mistakes pointed out to her. “You wished us to leave the letter on the floor and go peacefully back to bed, having no idea of its contents?” she said stiffly.

  “Not at all,” he answered, still scrutinizing the letters. “Just use a pair of gloves, a handkerchief, a corner of your skirt to pick it up. Anything will do.”

  After he finished reading, he slid a finger underneath and lifted both of the letters with calm and steady hands to make sure nothing was written on the back.

  “I don’t like it,” he said, looking up at us at last. “It’s got all the marks of a Black Hand letter.”

  “Black Hand?” Norma and I said at once.

  “This is what they do,” he said. “They start small, with vague threats. Maybe they break a window or fire a shot in the air, to let their victims know they’re serious. Then the threats get more specific as to kidnapping and arson. There’s always a warning not to go to the police.”

  “How clever we were to ignore their advice,” Norma declared.

  “Your sister was right to call for me and to stand up for herself,” he said. “Most people wouldn’t. That’s why we don’t see many of these early letters. But then comes a demand for money, and by that time the victims are too scared to do anything but pay.”

  “Are you saying that Henry Kaufman is a Black Hander?” I asked. “He’s not even Italian.”

  “Not necessarily,” the sheriff said. “These letters have been in the papers so much that anyone can copy their style. They’re just imitating what they read. When did this happen?”

  I shook my head. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Heath, but I don’t think any of us thought to look at a clock. It was the dark of night and we were all so deeply asleep when it happened. There was a bit of confusion because—”