Under a Gilded Moon(6)
To her left, the Italian cried out in his sleep and grabbed for his little brother.
“No!” He lurched to his feet. “No!”
Chapter 3
The shriek of a steam whistle cut through the dark. A ship, it must be. Just approaching the wharves.
Or . . . no. Not a ship this time.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t make his mind clear. Sparks swirled, singeing his arms.
They had him trapped. Just a matter of moments now before their faces appeared, torchlit and raging.
“Nico,” he murmured. “Stay close to me.”
The very ground under him vibrated, another wave of men swelling behind the first, all of them livid.
Even through the cloud of his fear, he could smell the tar and pitch, the brine and sweat.
“Mafia rats,” one of them sneered. “Goddamn lying garlic eaters.”
“Who killa the chief,” another mocked. “Filthy dagos.”
Alone, he might have escaped. But he’d made a promise.
Behind the shipping crates where they crouched, he pulled his brother closer.
More shrieks, more quaking beneath him.
It all happened at once: the whistle, the rumblings. Grabbing for Nico, he leaped to his feet. His body ramming now into something ahead, he tumbled backward.
And jolted awake.
It was no longer dark but twilight, as if time had spun backward to wrest the sun up from where he’d watched it sink into the bay. There were no longer torches blazing. Only a weak wash of gold over some bright-colored trees and a glowing glass bulb swinging from the ceiling a few feet away.
He’d fallen back onto a bench. Not on a ship this time, but a train.
Not crossing an ocean, but careening through mountains.
Half standing, his weight balanced on one leg, little Nico opened one eye from sleep. Seeing Sal there, he squeezed his eyes shut again and slumped back.
Nico was used to these outbursts.
But the same couldn’t be said for these strangers.
Every passenger in the railcar had turned to stare—from beneath hat brims and behind black-and-white newsprint barricades. The slick, colored magazine pages of Godey’s Lady’s Book flickered as a heavyset woman in mauve stole frightened peeks around its sides.
He’d lit a fear in them, he knew. Not only with his lunge just now but also before that. Just by his presence, even when he said and did nothing at all.
Behind them, the door whacked open, and Sal jumped. But it was only the conductor stalking up the aisle.
“All off here for Old Fort! Black Mountain next stop!” He stopped to scrutinize Sal. “Tickets?”
The conductor had already checked everyone’s ticket. Hesitating, Sal reached again for his. Arguing was not an option for people like Nico and him.
The conductor examined it—and him. “Hey. Yous. That little scene just now . . .”
“A dream only.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t allow no dreams that scare the holy crap out of my passengers. Yous got that, guinea?”
Yous. These Americans in their separate parts of their country; they seemed not to be using the same language.
Spinning on one heel, the conductor stomped toward the door. Behind it was the vestibule, the new accordion-sided connector between cars, which, for most passengers, probably beat being thrown off on a sharp curve. But for Sal it meant one fewer place to escape.
Like every time, his nightmare was slow to loosen its grip. He was still sweating, pulse racing, as if he and Nico had been running for their lives all over again.
Directly across the aisle from him sat the young woman Kerry, who’d challenged his name. Reason enough to speak little to her.
And there sat the reporter. He and Sal both being careful not to acknowledge each other. There’d be time for that later. If all went as planned.
His chest tightening with the old spasms of worry, Sal focused on the young woman, Kerry. Her face had beauty in it, but also—what was it?—risentimento.
She and her brother and sister all had hair the color of Palermo roofs, with their dark-red tile. And so did the graying older woman who stole looks at Nico and him over her knitting. Wiry hair prickling out from her bun, the elbows of her blouse worn to threads, and her toes poking through the ends of her shoes, she was giving Nico and him looks of pity. Well, fair enough.
“Aunt Rema,” the boy Jursey said now, glancing toward Sal, “has that man yonder gone loose to the head?”
The old woman held a finger to her lips.
“All their kind is,” a man in front of the old woman offered—loudly, as if addressing the whole car. Flicking his bowler back from his face, he snapped the pages of his Baltimore Sun. “Paper’s full with them extorting from their own kind. Murder, too.”
Murder.
Hundreds of miles from the wharves of New Orleans, yet the word had followed them here. Like it was scrawled in blood across Sal’s face.
Maybe the man in the bowler had recognized him. Alongside pictures in the newspaper of a police chief, gunned down, who’d lived long enough to name his killers.
Glancing to the other side of the car and also forward, Sal could watch his fellow passengers in the windows’ reflections now as twilight began to settle outside. Across the aisle, the girl Tully tugged at her braid, a shredded strip of burlap tied at its end.
The woman Rema addressed the boy. “Hush, Jursey. Ain’t neighborly to point. And I’ll thank you to recollect the Lord also loves them that’s done lost their minds.” She lowered her voice—though not enough that Sal couldn’t still hear. “Just stay a piece clear of the poor soul, in case he pitches to muzzied again.”