He stepped off the Pullman car into a chorus of birdsong. The trees on the north side of the tracks were full of birds, all vocalizing. It made Jesse wish he knew something about birds or their calls. He guessed some of the birds might be sparrows. He asked the uniformed stationmaster about it. “Sparrows,” the stationmaster said, looking him up and down, “bluebirds, goldfinches, ovenbirds, uh-huh—the whole choir.”
Stony Creek was a one-street town surrounded by smallhold farms, with a brickworks and a pottery factory on its outskirts, cut through by a river that turned all the requisite mill wheels. The train depot smelled of sun-warmed lumber, creosote, coal smoke, wildflowers. The stationmaster was a squat box of a man maybe ten years older than Jesse. His uniform was dusty black wool trimmed with gold braid, and he looked at Jesse’s canvas bag with an undisguised, almost avaricious curiosity. Jesse asked him about a residential hotel in town.
“Staying long?”
“Probably not more than a day or two.”
“For that, the Morgan House. For a longer stay, Coretta Langstaff rents rooms by the week. Depends on your business, I suppose.”
Yankee manners ruled out a direct question, and the stationmaster was clearly chafing under that constraint. Jesse said, “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for someone. Maybe you can help me.”
“I guess that depends on who it is you’re looking for. Do you represent the law?”
“No, sir, I don’t. But I don’t mean anyone any harm. There’s a family trying to find their daughter.” This much was almost true. “Not a child but a grown woman. They think she might have arrived here around this time last year. Unaccompanied.”
“This woman have a name?”
“She probably isn’t using her family name.”
“Is she in some kind of trouble?”
“I’m not at liberty to say what drove her from her family. I’m to tell her they hold nothing against her and want to see her again, if she’s agreeable. I have a letter to deliver. That’s all.”
“Are you some kind of Pinkerton man they hired?”
“Not Pinkerton, but hired by the family, yes.”
“Well, it’s none of my business,” the stationmaster said.
“And I shouldn’t have asked. I thank you for your time.” Jesse tipped his hat and made as if to walk away.
“It’s an unusual situation,” the trainman called after him, “a woman traveling unescorted.”
Jesse turned back. “Maybe the kind of thing folks remember?”
“I don’t know anything about it. But a woman from out of town has been staying at Widow Langstaff’s for most of a year now.”
“And which way is Widow Langstaff’s?”
“East. Just this side of the millpond. There’s a sign in the window.”
New Englanders weren’t such bad people, Jesse thought. More generous than they were given credit for. Back in San Francisco he would have had to pay for information like that.
He thanked the stationmaster and set out to walk. Stony Creek’s main street was pressed earth, white with dust. The birds kept up their chorus, the breeze was soft as cotton. Passing strangers glanced at Jesse; curious faces peered at him from the sun-silvered window of a barber shop, the shaded porch of a dry-goods store. Jesse ignored them all. His bag was heavy in his hand. The bag contained a change of clothes and a pistol, and in his pocket was money enough for two fares to New York City. Of these, he expected he would require all but the pistol.
After a walk long enough to draw out a light sweat on his forehead, he came within sight of Widow Langstaff’s house. The house resembled its neighbors: heavy cornices, gabled roof, a long porch furnished with wicker chairs. Bookending the chairs, two tall ceramic vases with dried cattails sticking out of them. A sign in the window offered ROOMS TO LET. Jesse stepped onto the creaking porch and knocked at the door.
The door opened, wafting out a scent of dusty carpets and wood polish. A gray-haired woman gave him a long up-and-down look, just as the stationmaster had. Maybe it was a New England custom. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Langstaff? My name is Jesse Cullum.”
“You want to rent a room?”
“No, ma’am, I’m sorry but I don’t. I want to speak to one of your guests.”
“Anyone in particular?”
The true name of the woman he was looking for was Mrs. Standridge, Claire Standridge. She wouldn’t be using Standridge, in all likelihood. But she might have stuck by her given name. Runners often did. “Her name is Claire.”
“Are you a relative?”
“No. I have business to discuss with her.”
“Well, she’s upstairs. I’ll see if she’s available. You said your name was Cullum?”
“Tell her I represent her people from the City.”
“Which city?”
“She’ll understand.”
“Well—you can wait in the parlor if you like.”
“Thank you, but it’s such a nice day I’d rather sit out here, if it’s all the same to you.” For the kind of conversation he hoped to conduct with Mrs. Standridge, the porch was likely to be more private.
“Suit yourself,” the widow Langstaff said.
Jesse wedged himself into a wicker chair and watched the street. The life of the town rolled by, what there was of it. A cargo truck drawn by two scrawny dray horses. A man on horseback. Another young man in creased trousers and a straw hat came quick-striding along, in a hurry to get somewhere—love or money was involved, Jesse guessed.
Then the door creaked open and a dark-haired woman stepped out onto the veranda. She looked at Jesse closely, more sadness than curiosity in her eyes. She was tall, of an indeterminate age somewhere north of thirty, and she wore a white day dress and a small, ridiculous hat. “Don’t get up.” She settled into the chair beside Jesse. “I thought someone like you might show up sooner or later. Mrs. Langstaff said your name is Cullum?”
“Jesse Cullum.”
“And you’re from the City.” A deliberately ambiguous statement, on the off chance she had misunderstood.
“I work for the City, yes.”
“A local hire?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve been in the City’s employ almost four years now.”
“And you’ve come to take me back?”
“It’s not in my power to compel you to do anything at all, Mrs. Standridge. I’m just a messenger.”
She flinched when he said her name. “And the message is?”
“Eighteen seventy-seven is the last year the City will operate, as I’m sure you know. August Kemp means to shut down the Mirror as soon as winter sets in. And once that door is closed, no power on Earth can open it up again. The City discourages runners, obviously, but there’s no penalty for changing your mind, and we’d be happy to pay your way and protect your anonymity, should you make that choice. But the time has come. It’s a choice you have to make.”
“So this is Kemp doing due diligence? Covering his ass in case my family tries to bring a lawsuit against him for losing me?”
Mrs. Standridge had lived in New England for a while now, according to what Jesse had been told, but apparently she hadn’t lost her futuristic habits of speech. (At least not for the purposes of this conversation—Jesse hoped she was more careful when she spoke to her Yankee neighbors.) “I don’t know anything about Mr. Kemp’s motives, but the offer is genuine.”
And now she’ll send me away, Jesse thought, and that’ll be the end of it. Or she’ll begin to talk. If she began to talk, chances were good that she would leave with him.
She looked across the rooftops of the houses across the street, to the peak of a wooded hill and the small clouds that drifted lazily beyond it.