Landry Park

by Bethany Hagen

  “He’s afraid of us,” someone said.

  “He has reason to be afraid,” Smith growled. “Soon everything he loves will be gone.”

  “You have to be careful. The landowners are beginning to meet in secret, and Alexander is likely ready to summon the Uprisen from around the country. If they go after you, your revolution will be over before it even begins.”

  “Of course you want us to be cautious. You’re one of them.”

  “I support your cause, Smith.”

  “You support our cause, eh?” Smith said. “For an entire month?”

  “Two, actually,” David replied calmly. “Not to mention my involvement with the Rootless in Atlanta. Since I was a boy I brought them food and money.”

  “You’ve brought enough money to fund a small country—”

  “And we’re grateful,” someone interrupted.

  “—But action is what we need to see. Revolution. We may be eating better because of you, but we’re still enslaved. Still sick and dying.”

  David sighed. “I know you’re anxious to see change. We all are. But we have to strategize. Rushing headlong into violence will get us nowhere.”

  Smith made a noise like he was going to interrupt, but someone else spoke instead.

  “David has a point,” a measured voice said. Hoping no one was facing my direction, I dared a look, raising my eyes just above the sill and squinted into the gloom. Ten or eleven men sat around the table, grimly clutching glasses of dark beer. David sat in the middle, the only one without a drink, looking casual but alert, his eyes smoldering indigo even in the darkness. The man speaking in the slow voice was the tallest and looked to be the oldest—at least fifty. Sores clustered like small clouds over his arms and face.

  The door opened, spilling sunlight into the shadows, and I could see that he was younger than I first thought, perhaps only a few years older than my father, but his hunched back and poorly bandaged lesions made him look wizened and weary, like a dying hermit.

  “Jack,” Smith said, “I know you feel like you owe some sort of debt to the boy—”

  “I do,” Jack said, interrupting Smith with a sharp look. “David brought my stepdaughter, Sarah, to me when no other of his kind would have. She would have died there and not at home in my arms and her mama’s. And for that, I’m grateful.”

  Sarah. So that was the name of the Rootless girl from the park. An intense sadness filled me at the thought of her death. I wished furiously that I could have been less of a coward and helped her when she needed it most.

  The men cleared their throats and looked away. Smith glanced toward the window and I ducked, praying he hadn’t seen me.

  “Well, it won’t matter if the gentry discover our plans,” one man said finally. “Not with our new allies.”

  “What new allies?” David asked.

  “Don’t tell him.”

  David sounded irritated. “I know how convinced you are that I am untrustworthy, but I am only trying to help. And if you are trying to reach out to other groups, then I might be able to help you sort out the politics of it all.”

  “Help us?” Smith snorted. “Because we’re too stupid to figure it out on our own?”

  “That is not what I—”

  “Stop it, Smith,” Jack ordered. I got the distinct feeling he was in charge. Smith bit his tongue, though I could almost feel the waves of resentment rolling off him.

  “I want it to be clear,” Jack said, “that David has my full and complete trust. He was raised as gentry, but his heart is as clear as ours. He grew up caring for and knowing our people in Georgia, and he can help us now. Yes, Smith, you may resent it, but David grew up in the military and went to the best schools. He knows things about the world that we do not. We will listen to him.”

  “Thank you,” David said quietly. “Now please—who are these allies?”

  “You know that we have most of the working-class laborers and even some of the middle-class merchants on our side now. The servants are still too comfortable working in the great houses and the farmers do not wish to get involved.”

  I dared another look inside, wanting to see who was speaking. A thin man with no hair had his hands spread wide, gesturing to a map on the table.

  “They sent us a package at first. A letter of goodwill that only Jack here could read, and a pound of jade beads. It was enough to buy medicine and food for all of us for several months. That was two years ago. Last year, they gave encrypted tablets to the Rootless leaders in each city so we could talk to one another. Before the tablets, we used to send messages with our men on the packing trains, but it was difficult for them to pass along those messages when the trains only stopped for a few minutes in each city for track switch overs. Now, we can communicate with our brethren in any city at any time.”

  Jack spoke again. “Then, last month, one of them visited and we heard what they had to say.”

  “And ‘they’ are . . . ?”

  “The Eastern Empire, of course,” Jack answered.

  More silence.

  David leaned forward. “You realize that the Empire only help themselves? They may fund you and encourage you, but they will only use you as a tool to destabilize the country. Once you have done that, they will sweep in and take everything for themselves, and they will leave nothing for you.”

  “You would say that!” Smith roared, standing up. “You would say anything to stop us!”

  Smith stopped suddenly, finger still raised from when it had pointed at David. His eyes were trained on the window. On me.

  Gasping, I tried to crouch down and sneak away, but Smith was too quick. In an instant, he’d crossed the tavern and reached through the window, hauling me up by my hair. He grabbed my arms and lifted me through the window. A small scream of fear escaped my lips, and when he threw me to the roughly planked floor, I was crying. Bruises bloomed on my arms from his fingers, and I felt as if my scalp had been ripped from my head.

  David stood, alarmed. “Madeline?”

  “There’s another one,” Smith said, pointing outside. A few of the others had gone out the door and into the alley, and I could hear Cara shouting as they grabbed her. They dragged her inside, and it took three men to hold her. I saw with more than a little pride that one sported a bloody lip.

  “She’s a strong one,” a man said.

  “Cara?” David looked incredulous.

  “So you know these spies?” Smith demanded. “We should kill them right now before they run back to their manor and tell the gentry what they’ve heard!”

  “I am not a spy!” I cried.

  He turned on me. “Then what are you doing here? Did the gentry send you? Did the government?”

  “No! I was just—I was just following David.” It sounded lame, even to my ears.

  “So he led you here? He told you about our meeting? What else did he tell you?” He grabbed my arm again, yanking me up and shaking me. David leaped forward and shoved Smith, fist cocked and ready to strike.

  “Enough!” Jack roared, and everyone, including me, froze.

  “David, please step back. Smith, kindly take a seat.”

  David lowered his hand, but Smith still stood, tensed and angry.

  “Smith,” Jack said. There was a coldness to his voice that frightened me.

  Smith pointed at me. “She’s dangerous. They’re all dangerous. Maybe you don’t want to see that, but I do. We won’t be safe until she’s dead.”

  Jack got out of his chair, struggling with a cane. But whatever weakness his body betrayed was more than made up for by his expression of fury. He walked up to Smith and spoke ominous rumbling words in his ear, deliberately pronouncing some and emphasizing others with nudges of his cane. Smith slowly paled and pulled back.

  “I’ll sit,” Smith said.

  “Good decision.” Jack then trained his stone-colored eyes on my own. “You are a Landry, are you not? Alexander Landry’s daughter?”

  I nodded.

  Several of t
he men hissed. “A Landry within our own walls,” one spat. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  Jack held up a hand. “She may be a friend yet.”

  “No Landry is a friend of ours.”

  “What about this one?” someone said, jerking their head toward Cara. “This is the Westoff girl. The reason our people are being beaten and arrested right now! We should show her personally all the trouble she’s caused.”

  Cara started struggling, and some of the men began cheering.

  “But she is David’s debutante,” I blurted, trying to think of a way to help her. “They just debuted together. She wouldn’t tell anybody anything she’s heard, I know she wouldn’t.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows and turned to David, who looked just as surprised as everyone else. “Are you involved with Cara Westoff?”

  David hesitated, then answered. “Miss Westoff and I debuted together.”

  Even though it had been my suggestion, hearing the words out of his mouth pained me more than the bruises on my arms.

  Cara nodded emphatically.

  Jack frowned at Cara, and then at David, as if deciding whether or not to say something else. Finally, he shook his head and gestured for the men to let Cara go.

  “We will not harm these girls.”

  Some of the men protested.

  “They deserve it!”

  “What if they tell?”

  “They may indeed tell, although I hope they will not, but hurting these girls would be the end of us, the end of our hope of building a better life. You see what’s happened just on the basis of one attack with no evidence—save for your word, Miss Westoff—”

  Cara looked down.

  “What would happen if two gentry girls were hurt, and we actually had done it? Alexander Landry would execute Smith if he ever found out he’s responsible for the vandalism. How many would he kill to avenge his own daughter?”

  Smith didn’t answer, but glared darkly at me, as if everything was my fault.

  Jack turned to us. “I would like to speak with you young ladies privately, and then you will be free to leave. Is that acceptable?”

  Cara and I both nodded.

  “I’ll come with you,” David offered.

  “Excellent. Will you lead Miss Landry and Miss Westoff to my house while we finish our meeting here?”

  David agreed and hurried us out of the door, away from the roiling resentment of the men in the tavern. David squinted at me in the sunlight. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “I’m not,” Cara said. “You have very rude friends.”

  “Half of their sons and daughters are in prison. They were actively talking treason. You can understand why they would be a little jumpy.”

  “No, I can’t understand. The Empire? A revolution?”

  “I thought you, of all people, would be happy to hear it,” David said, and Cara flushed a dangerous color.

  “Be careful,” she warned, and the heat in her voice was palpable. “Now I have just as much dirt on you as you have on me.”

  David inclined his head politely, as if they’d just finished a game of whist. “As you say.” He offered me an arm, which I took out of habit. He offered his other to Cara, who just rolled her eyes.

  And then he led us farther into the park, back onto the clean, narrow street lined with tiny houses.

  “What were you thinking?” David asked after a minute or so of awkward silence. “Smith could have killed you. Any one of those men could have attacked you.” He moved his arm and put his hand on my waist to guide me around a small pothole.

  “Their leader wouldn’t have let them,” I said, distracted by his hand. Cara seemed determined to ignore both of us, walking as far behind us as she could without getting lost.

  “You mustn’t tell anyone,” David said. “About what you’ve seen or heard. Promise me.”

  “Do you really think I would? When my father would have all of them killed? Even if I didn’t agree with them, I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t.”

  David slowed down. “So you do agree with them?”

  I slowed down, too. “Yes.”

  He didn’t say anything to this, but his hand began sliding up and down on my waist, as if he wanted to touch more of me. Unable to keep them still, his fingers drummed restlessly, dangerously close to the bodice of my gown. A hot flush spread up my neck. What if Cara saw?

  “It’s strange,” I said, trying to act casual, like men touched my waist all the time. “On our side of town, you always act so—”

  “Charismatic?” he answered for me. “Magnetic?”

  “I was going to say arrogant.”

  We walked for a while in silence. When I looked over at him, I saw the same face with the same curved nose and long eyelashes, but it wasn’t the same David. His playfulness was tempered. The self-centeredness he wore like armor was gone, replaced with a hushed intensity. His eyes were burning, fervent.

  “You are looking at me very strangely,” David remarked as we passed another ration station.

  “I have lots of questions,” I said.

  “Ask them, then. I can’t have those judgmental eyes trained on me any longer.”

  I bit my lip. It was all so confusing—his involvement with the Rootless, his strange exchange with Cara, how he had been so protective of me in the tavern today, but so incensed with me at Cara’s debut—I didn’t know where to begin.

  I didn’t even know how to feel. With every step closer to Jack’s house, my feelings tangled together in an impossible tumult. Envy, shame, guilt, pride, bewilderment, and, strongest of all, that nameless pull in my chest that made me want to walk closer to David, that made things like revolutions and the Eastern Empire seem infinitesimally small.

  “Well?” he asked, finally. I opened my mouth to speak, and then he turned and waved to Cara, who had stopped to retie her shoes. I felt the absence of his hand like an ache.

  “Go on ahead,” Cara called out. “I’ll catch up.” Then she flapped her hand to signal that he should keep moving.

  He sighed. “My girlfriend,” he said to himself.

  We started walking again, and I collected my thoughts, pushing the image of David and Cara together out of my mind. There were so many other things to think about, so many other important things . . .

  “How long?” I asked.

  “How long what?”

  I gestured at the Rootless ghetto. “You said you’ve been helping the Rootless here for two months, but how long have you been sympathetic to their cause?”

  “Did you have a nanny?” he asked suddenly.

  “I hardly remember her. I had a governess by the time I was four. Father believes children should have education, not coddling.”

  “In Georgia, our nannies are like our mothers. Certainly my mother was loving and took a large part in raising me—much more than most southern gentry mothers—but Nan was everything to me. She bathed me, dressed me, taught me how to read, took me into the peach orchards to gather fruit for pies. When there were storms at night, it was her bed I ran to. And when Father delayed coming home, it was Nan who hugged me and showed me the new litter of kittens under the porch.”

  Even over the metallic smell that tinged the air, I could smell that distinctively David scent. Tobacco and spices, with a whiff of something more eastern and expensive, like plums or cherries. He put his hand on my side to lead me around another pothole. The warmth of his hand was palpable even in the June heat. I glanced behind us, wondering if Cara was watching, if she was angry or jealous, but she was more than a quarter mile away. I chewed on the inside of my lip, knowing I should pull away from David, but wanting to move closer instead.

  Children ran out in the fields to our side, laughing and chasing a hoop with sticks. They looked remarkably like the children I’d seen playing in the middle-class part of town with the same smiles and shoves and shouts—save for the faint green smudges under their eyes, and the rags they wore f
or clothes.

  “Our estate in Georgia was massive. Some years we would stay at the beach house in Savannah, but mostly we lived in our plantation house south of Atlanta, especially years when the hurricanes were bad. There was this wide avenue leading up to it, lined with live oaks. The house was yellow, with white columns in front and peach trees everywhere. I miss the peaches.

  “Anyway, the estate was huge, so I followed Nan everywhere. Except on Mondays. She had Mondays off, and she would sneak out of our room before dawn and go down to the kitchens. She would pack a hamper full of food and steal away before our cook arrived to make breakfast. One day, when I was seven, I snuck out behind her.

  “It was hot. Georgia summers are always hot. They are either hot and wet, or hot and dry, and that day a storm was coming, so it was hot and humid. It was so dark that day. Quiet. We walked north, along the road to Atlanta. I could see the skyline, the glass flashing in the lightning. Then Nan turned west and I realized she was going to the Rootless part of the town.”

  David looked over at the children, who were now running along in front of us, waving and cartwheeling. He waved back and so did I.

  “It’s different, down home,” he said. “With the hurricanes and the heat, it’s harder. The rations are smaller. The ghetto itself is smaller.” He let go of my waist and shoved his hands in his pockets. A muscle along his jaw twitched.

  “It’s better here, though,” I said hopefully. “Right? They have more food and more room and we don’t kill them—”

  “As much,” he finished for me. “Your people do not kill them as much. But you have the right to. At any point, like right now, your father can muster the authority to unleash hell on these people and they have no choice but to accept it. They have no legal rights. They have no place to go and no money to get there. They’re not even human to the gentry.”

  I wanted to answer, to have a response ready that made us sound better, made me sound better, but I could think of nothing.

  “So I followed Nan into the ghetto that day,” he said. “I made sure she couldn’t see me as she handed out food to everyone she saw. The hunger in their faces—it was feral. Terrifying. And the way they eyed me, and my clothes, and my watch, and my shoes . . . I stayed close to Nan, hoping that if I got robbed, she would hear me. But soon, I felt shame. At my nice clothes and clean skin and full belly. Shame that I had never really noticed the people changing our charges. I didn’t even know the names of most of our servants. How had it escaped me that these were people?”