“You think she found her prince?” I say.
“She ain’t here, is she?”
Cynthia hugs her knees to her chest and watches the dancers do another pass above us.
“Why didn’t you leave?” I say.
Her legs drop from the bench. “You dumb or something? This is mine. I ain’t never leaving. Maybe you ought to be the one going. I been taking care of your ass too long.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to. .”
She act like I’m not here now.
I really am sorry.
Sorry I said it. Sorry I made her remember we ain’t little girls. Sorry we ain’t in a secret club and we ain’t innocent.
“Ain’t nobody comin for me,” she say, and draws her knees up again. “Don’t need nobody to, neither.”
I don’t say nothing else. I wait and watch her relax to the swirl above us where red curtains and dim lights paint the room. I could fall asleep right here.
The brothel door at the top of the steps swings open into the room and behind us new feet stomp up the porch steps. But by the time we turn around to see, the shoes have disappeared. They appear again in the doorway. New customers.
Cynthia leans forward in her seat to see who it is—“Mayor of Otalika,” she say. “How old you think he is?”
“Sixty.”
“He’s forty-five. One of those whose face ages in dog years. But I reckon with all the drinking he’s done, he’s pickled himself to live another forty.
“And him right there coming in and can’t find a seat. .”
“I see him. But there’s at least ten empty chairs up there. A seat’s a seat.”
“For you and me, maybe. Difference is a serial asshole will walk in any party and look for the one person he hasn’t shat on yet. Anybody else would look for friends.”
Before the mayor finds a seat, one of the girls is on him. He don’t fight her off. Meets her instead with his hand on her thigh.
“And him there,” she say, pointing to the corner of the room where a husky old man, dressed rich, laughs hearty. “Our new house dealer. Charlie Shepard. He been working up at the McCullen’s for years. They fell out. Probably ’cause of a woman. As long as it wasn’t stealing, I don’t care. He starts here tonight.
“Everybody calls him Mr. Shepard, even his wife. That’s her next to him. Soledad.”
She’s pretty and brown but not black like me. She got red yarn braided in her long hair. Maybe she half Cherokee.
I met her my first week here. I was pushing my broom by her opened door after she’d flown into a fit, and was slanging ceramics through her door hole. They shattered against the wall.
She was yelling in something Percy called Spanish. When she saw me, she grabbed my arm. Tears and sweat had drenched her face and hair. Her cheeks, chin, and mouth were hanging loose from anguish. So loose that it was like there was a whole other face underneath hers, and this one was a mask glued on. Her hot tears were steaming it away. If I pinched and pulled her bottom lashes, the whole thing would slough off.
She held me and shook me, not trying to hurt me, but for balance — drunk — then yelled up the hall, “These games get old, I quit, Cynthia! I quit you. I quit these men! I’m never coming back!”
Then she said to me, “You’re just her toy, you know that? She will get sick of you. And when she does, you come and see me. Hummingbird Lane.”
“She used to work for me,” Cynthia say, but I already remember. Though Soledad seems delicate now, dainty and feeble but put together smooth like the ceramics she smashed before she left. She smiles shyly at Mr. Shepard.
“He bought her a house,” Cynthia say. “Gave her things she could never earn for herself. And now she’s religious, too. You’d be surprised how many women find God for money. Mr. Shepard had the most. He did me a favor.”
I fly across the room when gunshots pop over the music, put my back against the broke door. But Cynthia ain’t moved. “That’s just Ray and Henry’s stupid asses. Cain’t hit shit. Always shooting and fucking up my ceilings. You can come on back over.
“Bounty hunters,” she say. “Hunt their own selves if it meant a payday. But they gon’ pay for that one. . like the last ones. Look at ’em. . damn fools.” They’re pulling at one of the girls nearby, rubbing themselves on her like it’s dancing. “The only one with any sense is the one sitting. Bobby Lee. All of ’em cousins, though.”
He’s slumped over his table, drunk or tired, his face hidden. His blue shirt is rolled up past his forearms where thick copper hairs look brushed.
“He lost his wife and firstborn, just a month ole,” Cynthia say. “Both of ’em on the same night. Bandits. He been looking for ’em ever since. Folks say he scratched his own eye out trying to stop the tears. He only comes here to drink and to not be by hisself. Good-looking, ain’t he? Hell, I’d give it to him for free.”
The girl that Ray and Henry was pulling sits on Bobby Lee’s lap. He nudges her off him but Ray and Henry grab her. Bobby Lee shoves ’em all away and they tumble to the floor, jump up ready to fight. Bobby Lee ignores ’em both, walks past ’em and brings the girl with him, toward us.
“Get back!” Cynthia say. We step back into a dark patch.
Bobby Lee stops at the bar just above us. Girl’s gone. She’s already working another table.
From here, I can only see from Bobby Lee’s ankles to his knees so I take a step forward and see under his nose. Even from here he’s good-looking. He fumbles in his pockets for change. Sam say, “What can I get cha?”
A nickel falls, hits the floor, bounces, flips, flutters, then lays flat, teetering on the end of a plank right above me. Bobby Lee bends to pick it up.
I don’t move.
I swear he’s looking me dead in my eyes.
Cynthia pulls me all the way back, next to her. We hold our breaths, then I whisper under the music, “I thought they cain’t see us.”
“They cain’t.”
When Bobby Lee stands again, I can see the whole flat of his face. He gulps his shot of whiskey, spreads his lips to stop the burning, says to Sam, “Tell Cynthia she got rats.”
13 / 1860, Tallassee, Alabama
JOSEY MOVES SLOWLY into the newness of the woods. This is the furthest she’s been from the slaves’ quarters since five years ago when Charles found her ’sleep on the dark ground, glowing white under the moon. Underneath her feet, once-green brush has turned to a dead gray like no rain’s been here. Except for this next step: soupy mud splashes under the soles of her bare feet while the smell of mildew and rot steams from the ground. Josey looks around lost, lifts her damp foot and turns it over where peaks of mud have splotched and mixed with something sticky and binding, eggy and brown. She scrapes it with a stick and leaps back on a small patch of grass, an island in the muck. She wipes her feet there.
Ada Mae has been trailing behind Josey, looking nervous, carrying her rolling hoop. “We shouldn’t have come out this far,” she say. “I’ve never been out here.”
“You said you wanted to practice with that hoop where nobody could see, didn’t you? The place I found was just up here.”
“I don’t want to no more.”
“You scared?”
“I don’t feel so good, is all.”
“There’s a good bush right over there.”
“You ain’t scared?” Ada Mae say, her eyes widening.
“No. Yes,” Josey say. “Maybe more.”
A glint of white catches Josey’s eye in the distance — a house between the trees. “I just want to see what’s out there.”
“Then take my hoop,” Ada Mae say. “Practice with it and I’ll catch up.”