Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1)(62)
In the evening we run back, eat dinner, go to church whether we care to or not—the sermons are all about as inspiring as that first one—and go to bed. On Tuesday, nearly a week since we got to Summerland, we collect our meager pay. Most folks immediately take to the general store, a line of dark faces lining up out front waiting to spend their money. The colored folks ain’t all that different from the white working-class folks, since Tuesday is payday for the cowpokes as well and they’re all up in the saloon spending what little they got. The only change is Bob and Bill standing near the line of colored shoppers, only too happy to use their rifles if anyone should get out of hand. After what I saw my first day at the wall I have no doubt they would.
I watch the line, noting a few unfamiliar faces, older folks I don’t recognize. They most likely work and live in the nicer side of town with the fancy houses. That must be where they’re keeping Lily and the Spencers, and Katherine. I’m sure Katherine is fine—she’s too contrary to be anything else—but I’m desperate to get to Lily and see if she’s okay. I can’t leave town without the two of them in tow, so until I can find them I’m trapped here.
I’m also anxious about Jackson. I haven’t seen him since the day we arrived, and after witnessing Bill’s itchy trigger finger, I fear the worst. But I’ve heard no news of him being killed, so I nurse the tiny ember of hope the same way I nurture my rage.
I don’t go to the general store, even though I’m hungry and could do for some extra chow. I take my money to the Duchess for a bath, clean clothes, and to see if one of her girls can braid up my hair. The light-skinned Negro girl I saw perched up the bar on the first day, Nessie, comes into the bathing room while I sit in the rapidly cooling bath, weaving my hair into rows so tight it makes my eyes water.
“Why didn’t you go and spend your money at the general store like everyone else?”
I shrug. “I will at some point. I’d rather have clean blankets and clothes for now.”
Nessie laughs, the sound high and lilting. “You the only one. You’re smart to stay away from the general store, though. You go there, your pockets empty real fast. They got the prices so high, even a penny whistle costs two bits!”
After Nessie finishes braiding my hair, my head throbbing because of her braiding skill, I finally ask the question that’s been plaguing me all week. “How’d you end up in the cathouse? All the other girls are white.”
She ducks her head and shakes it. “Ah well, the sheriff, he took a liking to me back when I first got here. If you haven’t noticed, he’s kind of a sucker for a pretty face. Offered for me to work for the Duchess, instead of marching out among the dead.” She looks embarrassed, tugging at the low front of her dress, trying without success to pull it up. “It don’t matter much anyway now, but I was never any good at taking down shamblers. I always got stuck wondering who they’d been before. And after the last big massacre before the wall was finished, well, I didn’t have the stomach for it. I would’ve just gotten someone killed out on the line.” She goes quiet for a while, the sound of her breathing the only clue she’s still behind me. “Whoring ain’t so bad once you get used to it, just ask the other girls. Most of the men are okay . . . the sheriff’s boys can get rough, though.”
I nod, feeling like a lout for asking such a personal question. She offers me a hand mirror to check her work. I turn my head from side to side before pointing to my hair. “Thank you.”
She smiles wide, the shadows of shame fleeing her face. “Not a problem. Let me know if you’d like me to do it for you again. I’ll have the Duchess give you a discount. You got good hair, not as thick as some of these other girls.”
My lips quirk. Auntie Aggie used to always say that about my hair as well. It makes me homesick for Rose Hill, the ache so bad that I nearly cry.
Later I lie on my blankets, still damp from being laundered, and reread my letters from my momma for the millionth time. The night sky out here in Kansas is somehow plenty bright to read, and as always, a kind of pain blooms in my chest, part homesick and part grief. The last letter is from nearly a year ago, and in it Momma plaintively wonders why I haven’t written. I think of all my letters, all those memories and clever anecdotes, gone into the ether. I know Red Jack posted them for me. But if the postmaster never forwarded them, then they never went. What happened to those letters, anyway? Did Miss Anderson read them and laugh at my girlish sentiment? Or did she snatch them up and burn them? I imagine Miss Anderson tossing the letters into the fireplace, her hatchet face smiling evilly, and a white-hot rage seizes me so firmly that I’m half afraid I might murder someone just to watch them die.
I take deep breaths, pushing the rage aside, plotting instead of giving way. I’ve been in Summerland for a week, and I still got no idea how to get myself back east to Baltimore and Rose Hill. It seems like an overwhelming task, a mountain of adversity, separated from what few friends I have and a plain full of shamblers between me and where I want to be.
I doze in fits and starts, my near-empty belly and discontent stronger than my fatigue. Eventually I wake. I need to move, to go somewhere of my own free will, otherwise I’m going to explode in an ugly way. The feeling roiling around in my chest reminds me of the night the major tried to kill me, his hand tight around my throat, fear and hopelessness and rage warring deep within my being.