by Sarah Dreher
“No, I’m not.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a travel agent.”
They all looked at her. From the expressions on their faces, she might as well have said she was an astronaut.
“A travel agent,” she explained. “When people want to go somewhere—like on business or on a vacation or something—I help them get there.”
Cherry leaned forward and touched her napkin to her mouth. “How do you do that?”
“We...my partner Marylou and I...we make hotel and motel reservations, get plane tickets...”
The others looked at each other. “Motel reservations? Plane tickets?” Dot asked.
“That’s right, you don’t know about planes, do you?”
“Of course we know about plains,” Dot said. “We’re sitting right in the middle of some of the biggest plains in the country.”
“No, I mean airplanes.” She searched her brain for an analogy. “They’re like train cars, sort of. Metal. Carry lots of people. Only they go through the air. On wings.” She realized how crazy that sounded. “You have to see it to believe it.”
“I expect that would help,” Dot said politely.
Stoner caught Blue Mary’s eye. Help me!
“Things are very modern back in Boston,” Blue Mary said. “Would anyone like tea?”
“Water’s fine,” Lolly said, reaching for the pitcher and refilling her glass.
“I’ll bet you don’t have an acid rain problem out here,” Stoner said.
“Not sure what it is,” Dot said around a mouthful of cake, “but I never heard of us having it.”
“It’s caused by pollution. From factories. See, the smoke from fossil fuels goes up into the atmosphere and gets trapped in clouds, and when it rains what falls is kind of acid.”
“What sort of acid?” Cherry asked.
“Sulfuric, I think. I’m not sure.”
“And you’re telling me that back in Boston it rains sulfuric acid.”
“Well,” Stoner said uncertainly, “it’s not very strong, but technically, I guess... Well, it’s ruining our lakes.”
”Are you really from Boston?” Cherry asked, “Or from Hell?”
Stoner laughed. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.”
“At least they have decent food,” Lolly declared.
Cherry snorted. “Food, food, food. That’s all you care about.”
“My friend Marylou’s like that,” Stoner said to Lolly. “You’d be crazy about each other. She could take you to every exotic restaurant in the city. I go with her sometimes, but I’m not very knowledgeable. I’ll bet, within a week, the two of you would be comparing notes like professionals. ”
Lolly beamed from ear to ear. “When you go home, take me with you.”
“I wish I could,” Stoner said. She realized she was becoming very fond of Lolly. “Marylou’s more particular about food than anyone I ever met.” She laughed. “The irony of it is, her mother only eats junk food.”
They all looked at her again. “Junk food?” Lolly asked.
“Junk food is...well, it’s what you get at a take-out restaurant. You know, when you’re too busy to cook. We have hundreds of them. Burger King. Kentucky Fried. Pizza Hut.”
The blank stares made her a little hysterical. “Taco Bell? Arby’s? Roy Rogers? McDonald’s? You never heard of McDonald’s? They’re all over the world. They have them in Japan.”
“Gosh,” Lolly said, “you’ve been everywhere.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve been to Japan?”
Stoner raked her hand through her hair in a frantic way. “No, I haven’t been to Japan. But I could go if I wanted. If I could afford it.”
“Know what you mean,” Dot said. “It’d cost a fortune, a trip that long. But I don’t think I could stand looking at the ocean for weeks at a time, even if I could scrape together the money.”
“Hours,” Stoner said. “From L.A., twelve hours max.”
“Mary,” Dot said to Blue Mary in an undertone, “I don’t think she’s as recovered as she thinks she is.”
“Japan is nothing,” Stoner insisted. “Some people have been to the moon.”
Dot shook her head. “Delirious.”
“I saw it on television.”
Blue Mary came around the table and touched her shoulder. “Stoner, dear, it’s time to calm down. We don’t want to frighten our guests.”
“Sorry.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Well,” Cherry said at last, “it’s not my place to say what’s possible and what isn’t. My goodness, the things I’ve seen in New Orleans.”
“The French Quarter?” Stoner asked.
Cherry turned to her. “Have you been there?”
“No, but it’s very popular with our clients. Especially the Soniat Hotel. On Chartres.”
Cherry’s eyes lit up. “I know the place. It’s a little rough on Saturday nights, but fairly decent. Near the river.”
Stoner felt as if she’d made contact with alien life forms. “That’s right. Have you ever been to the Quadroon Ballroom?”
Cherry threw back her head and laughed. “And in what capacity would I have been in that place, may I ask? My Mama wasn’t exactly in a position to show me off to fancy gentlemen.”
Stoner had the sudden panicky feeling she’d committed some horrible social gaffe. “I didn’t know about that,” she said quickly.
Cherry turned to the others. “The Quadroon Ballroom,” she explained, “is where high-born Mulattos make their debuts into New Orleans society.”
Dot cut herself a slice of pie and raised one eyebrow. “That so?”
“The local wealthy young white men are generally in attendance,” Cherry went on. “They look the girls over and select a mistress.”
“Really,” Stoner said, “I wasn’t implying... I mean, I didn’t even... I mean, I thought the Quadroon was just someplace people went to dance.”
“It’s all right,” Cherry said, and touched her arm lightly. “I’m flattered you’d include me in such company.”
“But I wouldn’t,” Stoner prattled. “I mean, I’d never imply you were a kept woman.”
“There are worse ways to live. The woman is financially established for life. Her children are educated at the man’s expense. She never wants for anything.”
“Well,” said Lolly, making a face, “I’ll bet she has to be on the look-out for the wife.”
“Not at all. These things are usually done with the wife’s blessing.” Cherry turned to Stoner. “But, you see, one has to have attained a certain level in Mulatto society to even get into the Quadroon. And with my background...”
Stoner took another piece of turkey. “Have things been very different for you since Emancipation?”
“Yes and no,” Cherry said thoughtfully. “For many of the Negro race, yes. But I had already emancipated myself, you might say.” She glanced at her. “But you don’t want to hear that dreary story. Not on your first day back from the brink of death.”
“I do,” Stoner insisted. “Very much.”
Cherry looked around at the rest. “Do you think you could bear to hear it again.”
“It’s my favorite story,” Lolly said. “It makes me cry”
“My great grandmother was brought here from Africa in the early days, to a plantation in Mississippi, down toward Natchez. Her daughter, my grandmother, who was half white, was sold to another plantation in Alabama, where she married one of the other slaves. Not married in the legal sense, of course. We weren’t permitted that. My mother was bought by a lawyer in Georgia named Calhoun—no relation to the South Carolina Calhoun's—who became my father, though he wouldn’t admit it. Nor would his wife, but I’m certain she knew.”
She broke off a crumb of cake and ate it, touching a napkin to her mouth. “My mother worked her way up to become the Calhoun's’ cook, and I was allowed to play in the kitchen. But what really attracted me was the lib
rary. I had a fascination with words and reading, and I promised myself if I didn’t do anything else in my life, I would learn to read.”
“Negroes weren’t supposed to read in the Confederacy,” Blue Mary explained. “Education of any kind for Negroes was against the law.”
“The Calhoun's had a son,” Cherry went on. “A repulsive child, actually, and a bully. He was several years younger than me, but he could read and write, and I managed to manipulate him into teaching me. He had his price, of course, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what it was.”
“No,” Stoner said. “You don’t.”
“I’d get books anywhere I could. Going through people’s trash. Trading sexual favors, all I had to offer. I even borrowed from the Calhoun's’ library without their knowledge. I returned them, of course. But one time I got caught and they beat my mother. That was the end of my borrowing.”
“How old were you?” Stoner asked.
Cherry frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not exactly certain. We didn’t keep track of such things. But I know I hadn’t reached womanhood.”
She sighed. “When that finally happened, the Calhoun's— father and son—were after me day and night as if I were a bitch in perpetual season. I found it distasteful. It’s one thing to tolerate discomfort when one has something to gain from it. But quite another if there’s no personal benefit, don’t you agree?”
“Absolutely,” Stoner said.
“I couldn’t hide how I felt about them, so they sold me to a drover from Mississippi. A thoroughly wretched human being. Sadistic. Fortunately, he was also rather stupid, and a drunk. I spent about a year with him, and slipped away one night when he had drunk himself into unconsciousness—which he did with increasing frequency. As we were in New Orleans at the time it was easy to lose myself among the Mulatto ladies of the night. He never found me.” She gave a sharp laugh. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think that man had ever looked at my face. He wouldn’t know what he was looking for. Then the War broke out, and afterward I decided to come out here. The Yankees, for all their high-mindedness, were really no better than our owners had been. Men are men, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Stoner said. “They certainly are.”
Cherry leaned forward and tapped the table with her perfect finger. “They were so proud of themselves for ‘freeing’ us—and there’s no denying it’s better to be free than slave—but I wonder what their reaction will be when they realize they’ll have to pay us for our work, and educate us. I wonder what they’ll do when we decide we want to be not just free, but equal.”
I could tell you, Stoner thought. About another century of poverty and lynchings and prejudice. About slow, painful progress through the law. About Martin Luther King, Jr. And Malcolm X and H. Rap Brown and the Black Panthers. About the Civil Rights Movement and marches and sit-ins and boycotts and raised hopes. About assassinations and riots, and “Burn, baby, burn.” Black pride and black culture, and new respect for your African heritage. School desegregation and affirmative action. And the 1980s, the Decade of the White Male, and the piece-by-piece erosion of what you’ve gained.
“I suspect,” she said carefully, “there are difficult times ahead.”
Cherry laughed and reached for a biscuit. “Difficult times behind, difficult times ahead. Life goes on.”
Lolly had been unusually quiet. Stoner glanced over at her. Tears trembled in the corners of her eyes. “Lolly?” she said.
“It’s so sad,” Lolly burst out. “I wish I could kill those people.”
Cherry reached across the table and stroked Lolly’s hand. “We do what we can, honey,” she said. “And what we have to do. And we have a good life, now don’t we?”
Lolly nodded. A tear escaped and cut a channel through her face powder. Then another. And another. She blew her nose on a rumpled handkerchief. “See what I mean? I just adore that story.”
“Suppose you got yourself a gun,” Cherry said. “Suppose you went after that old Calhoun and his upstart son? Suppose you hunted them down and shot them dead? You know you’d be caught, and what would Cherry do without you?”
“You’d do all right,” Lolly murmured. “You got along before.”
“But who’d I have to tease? Who’d pester me to cook fancy tarts for her? Who’d mend my clothes and gossip with me around the stove all winter?” She threw a wink in Dot’s direction. “Not the boss-lady. The boss-lady’s got her business to see to, and you and I, we have each other to see to, now, don’t we?”
If they don’t stop all this sweetness, Stoner thought, I’m going to start crying, too.
“Just look at you,” Cherry said with pretend sternness. She stood up. “I’m going to have to take you in the other room and fix your make-up before Stoner gets the idea Western whores are careless about their appearance. We have to set an example.”
“Well,” said Dot as Cherry and Lolly left the table, “I suppose the boss-lady’d better clean up after the working girls.” She gathered up a pile of plates and went to the sink.
“Isn’t Billy coming in?” Stoner asked as she followed her with mugs and silver.
Dot glanced out the window. “We’d best save something out for him. Looks like he’s talking to a cowboy out there.”
“A cowboy?” Blue Mary came to the sink. “It’s late in the year for cowboys. Must be a drifter.”
“Don’t you have cowboys around in the winter?” Stoner asked.
“During the spring and summer months, mostly,” Dot explained. “Driving cattle to the markets over in Kansas City and St. Louis. But by fall they’re pretty well settled in on the ranches. Doesn’t make much sense, driving cattle when they might freeze to death as easily as not.”
Stoner looked out. The sunlight was cold and hard, the gentle hills like mounds of cement. Billy was talking with a dusty-looking man on a dusty black horse.
“I wouldn’t want to be a drifter in Tabor these days,” Dot mused. “Folks are ready to hang any strange face.” She turned to Blue Mary. “You probably didn’t hear. There was another one last night.”
“Oh, dear,” Blue Mary said. “What was it this time?”
“The Allen's, out on the Ridge. The whole family was killed. Did you know them?”
“Not really,” Blue Mary said. “I’d run into Jenny Allen now and then in town, but she never warmed up to me. Introverted kind of person. But I suspect she’d have opened up a little in time.” She shook her head. “What a shame.”
“Sounds to me like the same kind of thing as back in August when the DeSantis’ barn burned.” She turned to Stoner. “They’d been struggling along for some time, just had to pack up and move back to Mexico.” She scrubbed roughly at a dish. “Too bad, too. They were good folks.”
Blue Mary shook her head slowly. “It seems to be intensifying. This is the first time there’s been loss of life.”
“Well, I wish they’d find out who’s responsible,” Lolly said as she and Cherry came back into the room. “It’s getting to be bad for business.”
“It is?” Stoner asked.
“Everybody’s jumpy,” Cherry explained. “Can’t keep their minds on what they’re doing.”
“There’s been talk,” Dot said with apparent reluctance.
Blue Mary looked at her expectantly.
“Cherry overheard some of the ladies after church…”
“Honest to God,” Lolly sputtered, “are you hanging around that place again?”
“Can’t do any harm,” Cherry said.
“Can’t do any good, either. What do you want to go listening to that old Booger for?”
“I’m not listening to the old Booger. I’m listening to the gossip.”
“If he catches you inside the church, he’ll run you all the way to the saloon, like he did last time.”
“Excuse me...” Stoner said.
“And wasn’t that a picture?” Cherry laughed.
Stoner cleared her throat and said, “Uh…”
They
all looked at her.
“Who’s the old Booger?”
“The parson,” Dot snorted as she poured more hot water from the kettle into the sink.
Blue Mary picked up the piece of worn flannel she used as a dish towel. “Now, Dorothy, you know that’s just your prejudice against the clergy.”
“Is not,” said Dot. “I’ve known one or two good ones in my time. Though, to be honest, I think it’s a shameful way to live, going around telling folks what you disapprove of about them, and expecting them to pay for the privilege.”
“I don’t know about that,” Lolly said. “I had a customer a while back who paid me extra to do it to him.”
“Hush, now.” Cherry gave Lolly a poke in the ribs. “You’ll shock our company.”
Stoner laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve heard of such things.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Dot said. “A nice girl like you.”
“Woman,” said Blue Mary. “She wants to be called a woman.”
“Oh?” Dot raised one eyebrow. “What’s that about?”
Stoner tried to think of how she could explain the Women’s Movement in twenty-five words or less. Maybe, if she left out the part about equal pay...
“Where she comes from,” said Blue Mary, “it’s a sign of respect.”
“Well,” said Dot, “that certainly gives me something to think about.”
Outside, the cowboy turned his horse and rode off. Billy started for the house.
Blue Mary placed a dried plate in the cupboard. “What’s the talk?”
“You know how people are,” Cherry said. “They get suspicious of anyone they don’t know.”
“Me?” Stoner asked.
“They could,” Dot said. “You might recall I was. But the burnings started several months ago. You weren’t in the area, were you?”
Heck, no. I wasn’t even in this century.
She waved at Billy. Billy waved back.
“I think you should know, Mary, there’s talk of taking action against our boy.”
Blue Mary turned to look at Dot. “What kind of talk?”
“It’s still at the idle chatter point, but if things keep going the way they are…”
“Billy wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Stoner said.