Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(52)

Katherine sighs softly from behind the old man. “It’s a euphemism for the curse Noah put upon Canaan, Ham’s son. It’s the reason the Negro was enslaved,” she says. There’s a tightness in her voice that reveals she doesn’t agree with this particular line of thinking, but the old white man doesn’t notice. He nods in agreement with Katherine’s explanation.

“In these days of His castigation upon the earth, we must reaffirm the hierarchy of His creation and His will. Your soul will be cleansed in Heaven; in the meantime, your kind are made to serve His image through toil and labor, girl.”

“What part of the Scripture is that from?” I mutter. The old man either doesn’t hear me or chooses to ignore me.

“Your mistress won’t have use of you any longer. Here in Summerland we take care of our blossoms the way the Lord has always intended. We have no need for Attendant companions to live alongside our fair blossoms, no matter what Mayor Carr has instituted in those heathen cities of the east. Here, we have worked to reestablish the Lord’s natural order, and peace and safety has been our reward. You’ll serve the patrols. Take yourself to the house of soiled doves. The Duchess will take care of you.”

With a vacant smile, he closes the door in my face.

I stand there for a few moments, sweating, arms piled high with boots and clothing. I consider kicking in the door, but then what? I don’t know how anything works around here, and I have nowhere to go.

So I turn around and go back the way I came, toward the house of ill repute.

When I reach the end of the boardwalk, I keep walking past the saloon and back toward the rail yard where we entered town. For a moment I think that maybe I could just keep walking, out toward the mystery of the wall, past that to the open prairie, continue moving until I’ve left this whole mess behind. Running away has never been my style, but it doesn’t seem so bad, now.

The road past the rail yard is lined with poles, and beyond it are houses, which I can get a better look at now. Beautiful houses, whitewashed and large, the kind of house where you could raise a nice family. Screams filter up the road from the houses, and I tense until I see a pack of kids come running around the side of one of them, playing some game of chase and laughing in between their proclamations of mock terror.

The sight stops me in my tracks. When was the last time I saw kids running and playing, not a care in the world? Even back on Rose Hill we tended to be cautious in our play, the memory of Zeke casting a long shadow for years to follow.

If kids can run and play and scream in delight, then maybe Summerland ain’t all bad.

I turn back the way I came and head to the saloon.

As I walk, I think of what Miss Preston said, that Katherine came from a brothel, and wonder if that’s why she has such pretty manners. Even now, in the midst of a full-fledged crisis, Katherine has managed to retain her deportment. I grew up in the big house on Rose Hill, and even I didn’t have manners as pretty as Katherine’s when I got to Miss Preston’s. I figured she’d grown up someplace where appearances would be important, but not a cathouse.

Of course, everything I know about brothels I know about from books. I read a novel, The Captain’s Forbidden Woman, that was all about a poor girl named Annabel who ended up as a working girl after her father’s rival ruined her family; she was eventually rescued by a dashing ship’s captain. I think Jackson got it to scandalize me, since the red velvet cover was decidedly lurid, but it ended up being a very good story. Annabel spent many paragraphs relating the extravagant furnishings and decorum of the brothel. It all sounded very glamorous, although the idea of tossing up my skirts for pay struck me as being even more laborious than killing the dead. Especially if being a working girl meant a lot of swooning. Annabel swooned at least once every chapter, sometimes twice.

Thinking of Jackson and the things he used to smuggle me makes me think of my mother—the silence from the postmaster every time Jackson came calling, or so I thought. I touch the small packet of letters tucked in the pocket of my dress. I’ve been gone from Rose Hill going on three years, but it’s only been a year since the last letter I got from my momma. The packet seems too small to hold a year’s worth of correspondence. What if she gave up on me? What if she is dead?

I need answers about my momma and the fate of Rose Hill, now more than ever. That is enough of a reason to find a way out of Summerland, fine town or not.

I draw even with the brothel and find the doorway empty. There’s no door, and the room beyond is so dark that I ain’t sure there’s even anyone inside.

“Hello?” I call. “Is anyone there?”

“Come on in, sugar,” says a voice from inside, dark and smoky like whiskey. My penny hasn’t gone cold, and this seems like the place where I’m supposed to be, so I walk on in.

The room beyond the doorway comes into focus, the haze from a trio of half-dressed ladies sitting around a table smoking cigarillos and playing cards. Along the one wall is a bar, a half-dressed Negro girl perched at the end talking to a rough-looking fellow. Behind the bar, a white man, bald and shiny, leans against the polished wood counter, eagle eye on the coarse fellow and the girl.

I suspect that every kind of vice an enterprising sort could imagine can be found under this roof. And I am determined that I will not let this place cow me.

I zero in on the redhead I saw earlier and head straight to her. She sits next to an empty hearth in a big tapestried chair, the kind you’d find in a ladies’ sitting room.