He gives me a sidelong glance, like he doesn’t quite believe I’m sincere. “You expecting me to believe you?”
“Yes. You don’t want to fight, and that’s fine. You’re right, there’s no point to it.”
He crosses his arms and gives me an assessing look. “Why the sudden change?”
“Like you said, it’s a long way to Nicodemus, and fighting that whole long way is only going to waste energy we don’t have. We can be civil.”
“Can we, though?” he asks, his voice low.
I make my way over to sit back down on one of the crates, and Jackson takes the other. “How come you waited so long to tell me?”
Jackson shrugs. His posture is stiff, but if there’s anything Jackson enjoys doing it’s relating a story. “When was I supposed to tell you? When we were hiding out in that shambler hole on the Spencers’ farm? While we were chained up in a train bound for Kansas? In the middle of shooting some drovers trying to steal a wagon, or while I ran for my life ahead of an approaching horde?”
“Right before you kissed me outside of Summerland would’ve been a good time,” I say, propping my feet up on the railing that runs the length of the front porch.
“Ah! There it is. I knew you were going to be difficult,” he says, and it’s a spark to the tinder of my hurt feelings.
“I ain’t being difficult, Jackson, I just think it would be nice if the boy who got me upended from Baltimore and sent to the middle of Kansas told me about getting hitched to some trollop.”
“My wife ain’t a trollop, Jane, and you ain’t being fair.”
“I ain’t got to be fair about anything, Jackson. I can be as bitter and petty as I want to be.” I can almost hear Katherine lecturing me that you catch more flies with honey. Why bother catching flies in the first place when you can just smash them with a minimum of hassle? I jump to my feet, pacing back and forth across the boards of the porch, my anger too much to be contained now that I’ve loosened its leash.
“If that’s the way you want to play it, Jane. Then let’s go; let’s have it out.”
I stop. “You want me to fight you?”
He laughs, the sound a rusty blade, and leans back, crossing his legs at the ankles. “I ain’t about to fight you, I know better than that. You want to talk about this, so let’s talk. You want to know why I married some other girl and not you, because we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place if you weren’t feeling some kind of way about the whole matter.”
I freeze, because he’s seen through me in a way that makes me feel naked and cold, despite the lingering heat of the day. And right now I hate him for that.
“Okay,” I say, lowering my voice and choosing my words wisely. “I want to know why.”
“You mean, you want to know why her and not you. Be specific.” The mirth is gone from Jackson’s face, his expression stony, and I know I’ve made a mistake. I’ve overstepped the boundaries we silently set for ourselves, our flirtation and rebuke, the easy push-pull that’s characterized our friendship ever since he put me to the side. I’ve made the mistake of demanding something from him, something I never did even in the time we ran together, and now he gives me the same calculating stare I’ve seen him use on a dozen marks.
It ain’t a feeling I like.
“Yes,” I finally say. “You wanted a wife. I’ve been around longer than any other girl you know.” Shame fissures through me at being so weak, so needy. But I have to know.
Jackson climbs to his feet, paces, and takes a deep breath, scrubbing his hand across his face. “Would you have even said yes if I had asked?”
“You didn’t ask,” I say. Because that’s where my brain gets stuck. He didn’t ask because he didn’t want me. Even if I maybe wanted him.
Jackson leans forward again and stands. The sunlight is fading fast now, and pretty soon there won’t be much light to see by. But I ain’t worrying about that, I’m thinking about weddings and families, and the joy of being wanted. I got a whole lot of experience with folks wanting to see less of me, and knowing that maybe Jackson was one of those folks makes the whole situation even more painful.
Jackson points off into the yard, and I follow his finger with my eyes. “That’s why I didn’t ask you.” It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s pointing at, since the daylight is fading and the world is going to shades of gray, but I finally get it. He’s pointing to the puddle of blood left by the rabbit I shot. “I married because Lily needs a mother. She needs someone who can look after her. And that ain’t you, Jane. You ain’t the nurturing type. You’re a survivor, and I had to do what was best for Lily.”
“How are those two things any different?” I ask. “This world is about surviving.”
“Maybe, but you’re the Angel of the Crossroads, the girl who ran out of a safe place like Miss Preston’s in the middle of the night to put down the dead.” His words remind me of the first time we met, he and a troupe of other folks, their pony nearly overrun. I’d saved their lives, but the next morning I’d ended up getting the strap because I’d overslept and missed morning drills.
“You’re mad because I help people?” I ask, unable to temper my surprise.
He shakes his head, his frustration etched in the taut lines of his shoulders and his fisted hands. “You can’t help but get involved in things, even when you know better. How can I depend on a woman who finds it appropriate to run off into the fire instead of away from it? It’s who you are, Jane, and I’ve always loved that about you. But while that may be admirable in a Miss Preston’s girl, it ain’t in a wife. I want someone I know is going to be there, day after day, not off running on some adventure.”
“Why is that okay for you and not me? Why is it okay for a man to be out running around and not a woman?”
Jackson shakes his head. “I ain’t saying it’s fair, but that’s the kind of woman I want. Someone to keep my sister out of danger, and maybe give me some little ones of my own. But you’d never have wanted to be strapped down, chasing after babies. You know that, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself.”
He shakes his head, and I can’t help but feel that in all our time together I didn’t know him like I thought I did, not really.
He doesn’t want a wife. He wants a doormat.
My anger melts away like sugar in the rain, and my shoulders slump. How do I argue with him? Jackson is right. There are a few things I’m good at, but none of them are domestic chores. I’m good at putting down the dead.
I’m good at killing.
And what little girl needs that in her life?
Jackson’s expression starts to go soft, but then he grabs hold of himself, putting his hat back on and resettling the bowler at a jaunty angle. “We done here?” he asks, voice hard.
“Yeah, we’re done,” I say, throat clogged with emotion.
Jackson nods once and stalks off, long strides taking him around the edge of the house, following the same path Katherine and Lily took only moments earlier.
My body is too heavy to carry, my heart is a stone in my chest, but I don’t cry. Instead, I collapse on one of the crates, draw my knees up so that I can hug them, watch the horizon, and try to imagine myself pledging my troth to someone, anyone. To love someone else, to follow them even if it means giving up the fight.
I can’t.
Jackson is right. I’m a survivor, and in this world, that means doing what needs to be done. I think of all the choices I’ve made to get here—the shamblers I’ve put down, the lives I’ve saved, and the ones I’ve taken, all of it coming together in the long, dusty road that stretches behind and before us, a path I will keep walking until the end of my days. That feels more realistic to me than any kind of fairy-tale ending.
I realize, as the last of the sun sinks below the plains in a brilliant show of pink and orange, that I will forever be alone.
Because that’s how a killer survives.
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make yo
u free.
—John 8:32
—KATHERINE—
Chapter 4
Notes on a Restless Night
After an unexpectedly tasty dinner of roasted rabbit alongside roasted potatoes—Nessie had found some in a long-abandoned garden—we settle on who will sleep and who will take watch. Jane, her face an inscrutable mask, volunteers for the first shift, despite my objections. This is the second night in a row that she will be running on limited sleep. There are more than enough adults in our group for Jane to sleep the entire night. But no amount of reasoned discussion will get her to budge, and I know better than to keep arguing with her once she has that look on her face, jaw set and gaze distant, an unmistakable sign that her mind is made up. So, like everyone else, I make myself as comfortable as I can in the small house and drift off into an exhausted sleep.
I am startled awake what seems like only a few moments later by Jackson, shaking my shoulder. “Your watch,” he mumbles, stumbling off to find his own rest. I grab my weaponry before making my way out of the small house: my Mollies as well as several throwing knives and a rifle. I attend to my bodily needs before washing my face at the pump. There is enough moon to see by, as it is waxing, thank goodness, but not enough to cut through the darkness beyond the edges of the property, so I have to listen very carefully for the dead, trusting my ears to sense what my eyes cannot.
Which is how I hear Jane’s approach before I see her.
Her soft footfalls are as familiar as my own thanks to lives lived parallel to each other, our identical training. It is strange to know a person so well without really knowing them, and I turn toward her as she stands in the moonlight, painted in silver and shadow, her face hidden by the brim of the hat she still wears. Sheriff Snyder’s hat. It is a gruesome reminder of all that we have been through, and yet Jane refuses to part with it. I fail to believe she could not have found something else to keep the sun out of her eyes, and besides, there is no sunshine at night. But I do not bother querying her on the matter. She has had quite the day, and I know how Jane can take offense at even the most benign of comments.
I stick to an easier topic. “You should be sleeping.”
“I tried. The Duchess had second watch, and once she’d relieved me I laid down in the wagon out back, figuring that tiny little house was already full up.” She goes to the pump and drinks deeply, as though whatever restless sleep she took left her parched.
“Sleeping out of doors? Is that wise?”
“If the dead are gonna come for me, my penny will let me know, wake me up before anything happens,” she says, fingering the necklace tucked into her shirt.
I have long known about Jane’s penny. The story goes that her aunt gave it to her before she went east to Miss Preston’s, and that it is some sort of hoodoo. And I believe it. I spent nearly a year in the swamps with the Laveaus, the most famous voodoo queens in all of Louisiana, and what I learned in the bayou was that there are things that those with experience in such areas can do that defy explanation, and it is better to just keep an open mind.
But that does not ease my worry over Jane. She is going to push herself too hard, because that is her nature, but out here in the wild mistakes can be deadly. I need her fresh and ready to fight. Despite urging Jane to caution earlier, I have no doubt that once we get to Nicodemus we will find an untenable state of affairs. Perhaps it is cynical, but after Summerland I no longer believe in happy endings for Miss Preston’s girls.
At least, not without a fight.
“Jane, you need to give sleep another try. It is going to be a long walk to town.”
“I know that, Kate, but it’s too damn hot. And don’t give me that ‘language, Jane’ nonsense. The sun’s gone down and it’s still sweltering. Only hell can be this unrepentantly hot.”
I grin and swallow my laughter. “I fail to see the difference between this and Baltimore.”
Jane snorts. “And that was too damn hot in the summer as well. Plus the stink from the wharf? I miss Rose Hill. I never remember it being this blasted hot.”
I stare into the dark, letting myself think of home, my for-real home, for the first moment in a very long time. The memory is delicate, and I crack it open like an egg, swift and precise. “Louisiana is just like this. Once summer gets on, with the mosquitoes and the fever, I swear, you start to think you will never be comfortable again.”
“Louisiana? I thought you were from Virginia.” Jane moves out of the yard and comes closer. She leans against the porch railing, and I know I have piqued her interest with even that small bit of my history. At Miss Preston’s, I had been happy to let the girls think I was from somewhere else, mostly because it made it easier to pretend to be someone other than who I truly was. What girl wants to try to explain that she comes from a long line of women who made their living on their backs? Especially knowing the scorn folks like to direct at fallen women? I know Jane would give me a tongue-lashing if she were to know I felt such shame, but it is not easy to just throw aside something you have lived with your whole life, and I will never forget the way some people would look at my mother when they realized she was not an independent free Negro of means. I never wanted anyone to look at me that way.
Maybe it is wrong to care what people think. But I do. Deeply. I suppose that is the remnants of my mother’s instruction. She was sure to teach me very early of the need to be able to slip on a second self like it was a corset—an identity that men would find pleasing and would protect the fragile truth of oneself. I did it at Miss Preston’s in the hope that being the perfect student would somehow win me an early appointment, a way to earn some money so that I could one day do something with my life. Even though I have eschewed many of my mother’s teachings, that was one trick I never completely unlearned.
Jane is too taken with the possibility of a secret to notice my maelstrom of emotions. I sigh and stand, head out into the yard to take a walk around the house, checking on the horse and patrolling the grounds to make sure the dead do not sneak up on us. “Louisiana is where I’m from. Nawlins,” I say, letting my voice fall back into the distantly familiar lilt of my hometown.
She raises an eyebrow. “Well, ain’t you just full of surprises.”
“A girl needs to have a few secrets.”
“Indeed.”
She follows me like an out-of-sorts shadow, dogging my heels with her black mood. I ignore her and see to making sure our temporary homestead is safe. The dead are not the only concern out here on the prairie. While we have not seen any Indians in our time here I know they must be out there, living their lives unfettered since the Army headed back east to confront the dead so many years ago. I have no idea whose ancestral lands we might currently occupy, but the tribes in this part of the world have no love for Easterners, and rightly so. Some people I had met in Summerland, a family of white homesteaders, had related tales of the Comanche they had run into in the southwest, near the Texas border. “Between the dead and the Indians, heading west is near impossible,” they had said. “One wants to eat you, the other just wants you gone, however that might be accomplished.” I had no quarrel with anyone, but that did not mean I could ignore the potential dangers of the world.
It would be anyone’s guess who or what might come wandering through the area where we had set up for the evening. So even though I want Jane to get some rest, I appreciate her company here in the stillness of the night. Four blades are always better than two.
Once I am satisfied that things are as safe as they can be, we make our way back to the front of the house and the crates there. I have no sooner sunk onto one, adjusting the corset to keep it from digging into my hips, when Jane says, “Tell me about New Orleans. Or Nawlins.”
She is making fun of me, but I am too tired to even pretend to be cross about it. And if tales of my hometown can distract her from whatever it is going on between her and Jackson, I am happy to oblige. “What do you want to know? It is like most of the Lost States: miserable in the summer, slig
htly less so in the winter, and the dead chomping after you all the time.”
“How does such a place exist? Felt like Baltimore was only survivable because come winter the dead lay down and you could spend all of the spring harvesting them. Without such a culling . . .” Jane trails off, and I know she is mentally trying to calculate how large the hordes must grow in the Deep South.
“Nawlins’ canals trap many of them,” I say, my voice low. “After the dead rose, the people of the bayou were pretty well protected. The dead cannot swim, and the natural water currents would drag them out to sea by the thousands. A few folks got the idea that that same mechanism might be used to fortify the city, so they got to building canals. The ones used by the shipping industry had always been an important part of the city, so dredging new ones was not as hard as it might sound. And the city has stood ever since.”
“Wait, are you saying that the entirety of the city is made up of waterways? You don’t have any walls? Or bobbed wire?” Jane’s voice echoes the awe and surprise of most people when they first see the city.
“Nawlins is at sea level, pert near below sea level in a few places now,” I say. “There are the sea walls, too. They used them to keep out the storm surge during hurricanes in the old days, but now they also keep out the dead. Between the brackish water, which speeds along the decay of any dead that get caught in it, and the city patrols, it is enough to keep the city safe. Movement inside and outside the municipalities is tightly monitored, and there are ferrymen who will secure your passage into each area. Yellow fever is a bigger danger than the dead, the way folks tell it. I grew up in the French Quarter, and Maman used to say that nothing was prettier than the Mississippi sweeping away the dead in the morning.”
Deathless Divide Page 4