by Lyndsay Faye
“She’s right. We should run,” a voice suggests.
“I didn’t run from Jerry and I sure as hell ain’t gonna run from a pack of hooded clowns. Anyhow, if we ain’t running, they can’t chase us.”
The lights, once tightly grouped, are separating. Drifting and bobbing like malevolent sprites. Shouts reach our ears.
Some of the torches seem to be heading this way.
A soft chorus of swearing erupts.
“Whaddaya say, Doc?” Max questions evenly. “Do we figure this for Mons or Marne?”
“Marne.” The glint from Dr. Pendleton’s glasses makes him resemble a dreadfully robust beetle. “Skulking away is as good as proof of guilt for these sons of bitches. The aftermath would last a decade. Question is, how to attack?”
“I calculate I know what to do.”
Mavereen Meader’s natural voice has returned. It’s resonant, unafraid, and about as certain as gravity.
“Give Mrs. Vaughan and Miss James here lanterns,” she commands. “Quick now, and then light y’all’s up again, and we’ll meet them halfway. Mrs. Vaughan’ll go first, me and Miss James right behind her. It ain’t much of a chance, but it’s our best. Mrs. Vaughan, you willing to lead this march?”
Evelina Vaughan puts out her hand for a light. “More than willing. It’s a brilliant idea, Mrs. Meader.”
The quiet that follows is equal parts skeptical and dumbfounded.
“She’s right,” I realize. “It’s our only option. Max, what are you waiting for?”
“Ladies, no disrespect, but—”
“Maximilian, Lord love you for a gentleman, but that ain’t wanted just now.” Mavereen’s tone has turned as steely as her hair. “Let the womenfolk handle this one. I’m your commanding officer sure enough, and these here are my advance guard. Miss James, go on ahead and take Dr. Pendleton’s light. Max, hand yours over to Mrs. Vaughan here. I said hand it over.”
“You gotta be—”
“Child, you hard of hearing? Pass Mrs. Vaughan your lantern and mind your tongue.”
There’s no disobeying her. The lanterns hiss to life again, and we three women form a triangular phalanx—Evelina at the forefront, Mavereen on her right, and yours very truly on her left.
“Plumb craziest thing I ever done,” Mavereen mutters.
“Likewise,” I reply.
Evelina says nothing. She simply starts walking. In awfully fine style, considering everyone is frightened enough to jump clean out of their birthday suits.
The lanterns advance toward the torches and vice versa. I hear an owl mourning a loss, Dr. Pendleton’s rasping cough. Max’s footfalls are silent. But I pretend that I can feel his warmth as I remember what walking into a death trap feels like. I’d admired to leave those behind—but, then again, I’d admired to bring down all of Corleone, and witness how that worked out.
“Stand and declare yourselves!” shouts a voice like a sawmill.
An unknown energy electrifies Evelina Vaughan. It looks like a firefly taking wing. Small but fearfully mighty. While I’m grateful Blossom isn’t here, I wish she could see it.
I’ll yarn it to her later. If she’ll let me.
“Hello!” Evelina cries. “My, what a display! Are you holding some sort of Klan ritual?”
Despite our peril, I hear Mavereen softly snort.
“Who in hell is that?” a drunken voice yells.
“Mrs. Evelina Vaughan, wife of the Chief of Police. He’s on his way!” She shouts still louder, “What luck, I can introduce you to my friends before he arrives!”
It takes very little time for the torches to reach the lanterns. Very little time, for all to change and your world to hang suspended in the balance. The opposing sides stop with twenty or so paces separating us: about fifty people straining against the leash to make around fifteen people bleed. If this idea weren’t so absurd, I’d laugh at it. But, very like the notion of paying your protectors to safeguard you against them, it’s too ridiculous to be remotely amusing.
At least the Mafia weren’t so gutless that they hid behind bedsheets.
“Oh, thank goodness, I could hardly see you before—and I still can’t see you, what with the hoods and all, can I?” Evelina shields her pupils as if looking into the sun.
“Ma’am,” a moonshine-drenched voice questions, “these boys giving you trouble?”
“Come on over here now, and we’ll protect you,” another offers.
“I beg pardon, but I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”
“He means to keep you safe, ma’am. Seems to be an awful lot of ’em, and powerful unafraid to roam the woods after sundown,” another faceless fellow persists.
“Why ever should they be afraid?” Evelina wonders.
She sounds terribly stupid. But she isn’t stupid.
Mavereen’s plan is working, and Evelina’s bent on nothing whatsoever save time. Thomas Vaughan’s time spent in arriving here. Supposing it succeeds, my proverbial cap is off to her. If it doesn’t, some of us will be going home in wheelbarrows.
“I can’t think of any reason law-abiding citizens should be afraid to comb the woods for a missing person,” she adds sweetly.
“Law-abiding. You sure about that?” This new voice is strangely familiar.
“Oh, yes!” Evelina vows. “Absolutely, I was with them—the three of us women were, all searching for the missing boy, and though we didn’t find him, thank God no menaces like bears or timber wolves threatened us.”
“Look to me like you’re right in the middle of a goddamn menace.”
The mob hisses its agreement.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” Evelina smiles. “But how kind of you to worry! I hope that I can tell my husband your meeting the search party like this was only a happy coincidence. Because you see, Tom might be skeptical if he saw the cross lit up this way. And I think he’d be most . . . disappointed by it. So. Why don’t we leave you to your sacred ceremonies?”
“Why don’t you just own that you’re this fine city’s biggest nigger lover, Mrs. Vaughan?”
The stench of tobacco chew wafts in our direction. And I can place him now—it’s the ticket booth operator from the day Davy went missing.
Did you try the carousel? Did you try the floating bathhouse?
“You can’t talk to Mrs. Vaughan that way!” yells a swaying Klansman. “She’s only doing charity for the poor Negroes, same as she does for the Humane Society. Hell, that’s why God almighty made women.”
“Leave off Mrs. Vaughan and see that these darkies answer for the mischief they been hatching.”
“She’s nothing but a lunatic, you ask me!”
“I’ll not have you insulting Tom Vaughan’s wife!”
The crunch of a fist meeting teeth rings out among the Klansmen. More swiftly join the fracas, swinging and grappling—which starts off just swell, if you ask me, because only the KKK are getting their faces mashed.
“Stop it!” Evelina cries. “You have wives, you have children. For heaven’s sake, stop!”
As she shouts, she throws out a hand in protest. Her entire body wants them to cease, and just when I reach to pull her back, one of the hooded men seizes her wrist and—I truly believe through misguided assistance turned drunken accident—throws her savagely to the ground when he keels over.
Max yells and leaps, but the fellows he summoned to search for Davy wrestle him backward as the mob seethes, thank Christ. Mavereen and I dive for Evelina. The Klansmen are still exchanging blows, dragging their soused comrade away as he bellows something about decency and only meant to help. Torches come dangerously close to our black friends’ faces. Spit flies, and the Negroes stand there silent as their own graves. Mavereen cradles Evelina’s head in her lap. No one seems to object to this part—I suppose it must look like a mammy with her ward.
An awfully thick silence twines through the pale robes and the licking flames.
“Steady enough, but weak.” Dr. Pendleton leans in closer. “Mrs. Vaughan? Can you answer me?”
“Don’t you fucking touch her, coon,” rasps the Elms’s ticket operator.
“That’s Dr. Coon to you,” Dr. Pendleton volleys back. He’s much, much drunker than I supposed. “And my attention belongs to this patient, not some glorified Halloween spook.”
For at least three seconds, shocked quiet reigns.
Then the insults start flying. Along with more spittle, and threats, it’s like a Gatling gun, and if these idiots weren’t shit-assed terrified of what they just did to Portland’s marmalade-haired charitable figurehead, they would rip us all in pieces.
“He’s a doctor of medicine!” I attempt.
“Sure as I live and breathe, he don’t mean her no harm!” Mavereen cries.
“What is going on here?”
Thomas Vaughan approaches at last, with a pair of men behind him. One is Officer Taffy, his florid face goggling in dismay. The other is a tiny white chappie—immaculate posture, meticulously dressed in pinstripes, and approximately the size of Miss Christina.
“See to the crowd, Mr. Snider!” Chief Vaughan shouts as he breaks into a run with a look of abject terror on his handsome features.
Mavereen quickly places Evelina in his arms. The Klansmen, none too steadily nor willingly, retreat a few yards.
“Sweetheart,” Tom Vaughan begs. “Evy, can you hear me?”
“She couldn’t hear me, so, no, I don’t suppose so.” Dr. Pendleton doesn’t edge away.
“What the hell happened here?” Chief Vaughan cries. Several pieces of her old-fashioned coiffure have come loose, and he smooths them back. “Which misguided fool is responsible for that cross being on fire?”
“Terrible, just terrible,” the dwarfish man Tom Vaughan called Mr. Snider—who can only be Fred Snider, Muriel’s one true et cetera—laments. “Where do you lot think we are, Mississippi? Well, we shall chalk it up to high spirits, I suppose, but this is disgraceful!”
“Evy, I’m here,” Chief Vaughan keeps saying.
Officer Taffy, who I’d not noticed leaving, returns miraculously hauling a bucket and flings river water at the cross. Which elicits enthusiastic jeers.
“No, no.” Mr. Snider waves his hands. “Knock it down and we can smother it. Out of the way!”
“She’s only fainted.” Dr. Pendleton pulls his glasses off, revealing his densely freckled face. “She’ll be fine in a few minutes, I believe.”
“Didn’t hit her head or nothing, Mr. Vaughan,” Max offers. “I done seen it.”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Burton.” Thomas Vaughan realizes that there are other people besides his wife present. “I’m mighty sorry I wasn’t here sooner, wanted to bring one or two men as backup. How did the search progress?”
“Wish as I could say it progressed at—”
Thwack.
Several crashing sounds ring out. I don’t know how the brawl started again, but now it’s blacks and whites determined to pulverize one another. Which means one misjudged blow, one ripped-away hood, might spell our doom. Fists fly, men with lanterns dropping them to defend themselves against men with torches. Possibly worse.
In the frenzied grapple of bodies tearing at one another, I discern a single yell.
“You can’t!”
Officer Taffy inserts himself between combatants. His face is crimson, his neck streaming sweat.
“This isn’t the law.” The hooded men pause in shock. “There’s a lady here, and she needs help. She’s a good lady. I’ll arrest every one of you!”
“Yes, indeed!” snaps Mr. Snider from where he’s contemplating how to knock down a flaming cross. “You will not endanger a white woman, and one who also happens to be a pillar of the community! Go! I will make mention of this in my report to the Arlington Club and suggest that your Klavern be severely fined.”
Dr. Pendleton settles back on his knees as the ghostly men shake their fists. He checks Mrs. Vaughan’s pulse again, uncaring.
“This ain’t over,” Max observes quietly from behind me.
“No,” Mavereen agrees with flat dread in her voice. “This here’s the devil’s work, and he ain’t like to quit till the final trump sounds.”
Muttering curses, the specters begin to wander off. Somebody strikes up a tune, and the singing sparks like fire in dry tinder, voices raised in triumphant intoxication.
Over all the U.S.A.
The Fiery Cross we display,
The emblem of Klansmen’s domain:
We’ll be forever true
To the Red, White, and Blue
And Americans always remain.
Officer Taffy finds the rope used to raise the wretched thing and helps Mr. Snider to pull it down. Evelina stirs, to my enormous relief. Tom Vaughan looks as if Lazarus was just raised from the dead. So the Paragon residents gather at a little distance from the murmuring couple as the search party likewise disperses, the men glancing backward every few paces.
“Mrs. Vaughan came to the hotel to sound the alarm,” I say quietly. “She’ll be all right, I hope?”
“Of course not. The woman suffers from mental disorder,” Dr. Pendleton reports curtly. “But in this case, she can be under no better care than that of her husband. Anyway, I don’t have my bag.”
“You done touched her, though.” Max shakes his head.
Dr. Doddridge Pendleton closes his fists. “I took an oath. It might mean nothing to half the graduates of medical college. But it matters to me, damn it.”
“Like it oughta. I just wish there weren’t a pack of hoodlums there to watch.”
“Mrs. Meader, Dr. Pendleton?” Chief Vaughan calls out. Standing, he lifts his wife, whose face is hidden against his neck. “My car is here, and Officer Taffy has one likewise. I trust him and Mr. Snider to take care of the cross. Would you help me getting Evy home while I drive? I’ll drop you at the Paragon after.”
“With all my heart,” Mavereen answers. “Come along, Doc, and mind your manners. Max, you keep your eyes peeled, sugar, and drive safe. Lord knows what more sorts of ignorant trouble those folks got planned.”
So it happens that I find myself slowly walking back to the Elms’s entrance with one Maximilian Burton. A brisk breeze dances in the blackberry brambles, pirouetting under clean skies, and as the fear drains out of me, I want to rip off my head scarf and feel the gusts in my hair. I want to strip bare and plunge into the water and emerge frost pale and trembling. I want to climb one of these impossible trees and cling to the top, watching the stars drowning in the river.
I want the fellow on my left to lay me on soft pine needles and play every note of me.
We reach a sandy lot hosting a few scattered vehicles. My hands hang awfully empty where they aren’t clutching Max’s shirtfront.
Something really has got to be done about this.
“So you have a car?” I query, clearing my throat.
“I got a friend what always lets me borrow his when he’s off playing George. Should be in St. Louis just about now.”
“Felicitous. What sort?”
“Little Hanson touring jalopy. What, you got an interest in cars?”
“Aspects of them,” I breathe.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. They’re awfully useful when it comes to getting places.”
“What sorta places?” Max cups my elbow as we approach a squat black conveyance with white rims, and my heart leaps like an unbroken horse.
“We
can’t search for Davy anymore tonight. And by the time Mavereen gets back to the Paragon from the Vaughans’ she’ll figure everyone for lullaby land.”
“What’s that to do with the likes of us?”
“You have a cabin,” I whisper.
His eyes are charcoal in the dim. But I imagine them as they look in the daylight, golden as a cat’s.
“Get in the car,” he orders.
* * *
—
I stretch, tracing the muscles of Max’s broad chest. The quilt tangled around my feet is threadbare soft, a patchwork of lavender and cornflower squares. It’s been months since I’ve done this, and the space between my legs aches pleasantly. There’s a sore spot on my hipbone where Max held me down when I was arching, commanding me to mind my stitches. I imagine it blooming into a spread of purples like his blanket. Outside the cabin—which is military neat, and snug as can be now that Max has lit the fire—the wind is playing “Royal Garden Blues.” Or perhaps I’m imagining that, because Max is humming it, floating around the melody as he pulls his fingers through my hair.
“If you can reach my trouser pocket, I got a pack of smokes might not be too smashed up,” he suggests.
“Under no circumstances.”
“Why’s that?”
Leaning up, I say against his mouth, “Because right now you taste like me.”
He chuckles. “And you like that?”
“I like it.”
“Well, that’s good, ’cause I like it too.”
“No cigarettes, if you please.”
“Aw, I can’t refuse a lady.”
I touch his eyebrow. “The old girl could get used to this.”
A frown flickers across his features. I want to wipe it off with my lips.
“I done told you already, Alice, that ain’t what this can be. Nohow.”
“Not even sometimes?”
“Not supposing you prefers my neck without a rope around it.”
“You’re afraid of the Klan?”
“I ain’t scared of nothing. But I’m smart.”