Dust girl

21

The next town we came to was Madison. We sold Shimmy’s Packard for seventy-five dollars to the one auto dealer, and bought two tickets for the bus to Kansas City. I kept Shimmy’s handbag with her compact and her wallet. There was a paper in there that told me everything I needed to know about what to do once we got into the city.

There wasn’t any discussion about where we were going. I said what was going to happen and Jack agreed, and he set about dickering with the auto man, who already knew we’d take whatever he cared to offer. Jack wasn’t even looking in my direction any more than necessary, and that was just fine with me. If he hadn’t run out on me, Shimmy wouldn’t be dead. I clenched her white bag in my hand and looked out the bus window. Things were going to be different from here on out. Something had changed inside me when I’d made that wish come true, and again when I’d passed it over to Shimmy. That was all right too.

Kansas City was another world.

It was still flat, and the sky overhead was still colored by the dust. But unlike Slow Run, or Constantinople, or sad little Burden, Kansas City teemed with life. People filled the paved streets, crowding the sidewalks between stone and timber buildings. Some of those buildings were as much as ten stories tall. Cars, trucks, and wagons jostled each other in the streets. It smelled of exhaust and excitement. I wanted to plunge straight into the crowds and find out where they were going and where they were coming from. I wanted to wrap my arms around the city and hold it so close it would become part of me. Even the hard parts-the cops in blue coats and hats, with their clubs and guns on their hips, who seemed to stand on every corner; the men lounging against the walls, unshaven, cigarettes dangling; the apple sellers, with ragged families tucked in the shadows; the long line of people in front of the mission waiting for bread and soup.

Even in my excitement, there were parts I could have done without. Along with the signs for hotels and shops and cinemas and food, I saw the signs on the doors that said WHITES ONLY and NO COLORED. They hadn’t needed signs like that in Slow Run. Sheriff Davis kept anybody with brown skin from staying in town overnight. Mama kept the black hobos she put up behind closed curtains in the Imperial’s rooms. If Sheriff Davis came to inquire about who she had there, she distracted him with her cooking. But Kansas City was too big for simple tricks like that, and there were too many colored folks walking the streets. They had to be told straight-out where they weren’t welcome.

But I wasn’t going to let that matter to me. Not this time.

Jack wanted us to find some cheap boardinghouse where we could hole up, but I wasn’t having it. From the bus station we hailed a taxi. I climbed into the backseat and looked right into the eyes of the skinny white driver.

He wished we were rich folks. He needed to make the rental on his cab for the day, and he wanted a good fare, maybe somebody going to the Savoy or the Muehlebach Hotel. So I took that wish and made it come true. Just a little, just enough so he saw exactly what he wanted: a pair of rich white folks in his cab.

“Take us to the Savoy,” I said.

“Yes, miss.” He tipped his hat to me and pulled the taxi into traffic.

Jack opened his mouth, but I looked at him too, daring him to say a single word. He didn’t.

Finally, we pulled up in front of the biggest, grandest building I’d seen yet. I counted bills out of Shimmy’s purse. Of course there was enough. I should have known. There was all we needed, plus enough for a big tip.

A doorman with deep black skin, wearing a red coat with gold buttons and white gloves, opened the car door. He tipped his shining top hat to us as I marched through the front door and up to the registration desk.

The manager wore a pin-striped suit and a tight frown. He looked down at us with watery gray eyes. His name badge read WENTWORTH, and he wished that was his real name, instead of Weinstein.

“May I help you?” Mr. “Wentworth” asked in the sort of voice that meant the only help he was going to give was the kind that would get us out of his shiny marble and gold lobby as quickly as possible. Like the cabdriver, he wished we were rich folks, maybe movie stars on our way to Hollywood.

“My name’s Callie LeRoux,” I said to him. “I’ve just signed a three-picture deal with MGM Studios. I’m going to be the next Shirley Temple, but the train to California is delayed by a dust storm and I need a place to stay until the track is cleared.”

My magic shivered between me and Mr. Wentworth, and those watery eyes flew wide open. He shot out from behind the mahogany registration desk, rubbing his hands and all but bowing to me.

“Miss LeRoux, please allow me to welcome you to the Savoy. We are delighted to have you here. I’m so dreadfully sorry to hear about the delay of your train. Of course the Savoy will be more than happy to accommodate you.”

He took us up in the elevator to the top floor. He opened the doors of a suite so big, the entire staff quarters of the Imperial could have fit in there and still would’ve had space to rattle around. It had a sitting room with a dining nook, three bedrooms, a private bath with a claw-foot tub, and a balcony facing the distant green river.

I pulled a knot of bills out of Shimmy’s purse and laid them on the table for the manager to pocket. I wondered about that money, whether it was real or like the Hoppers’. Not that it mattered. Mr. Wentworth wished it was real, and that was enough. The manager bowed and smiled and rubbed his long, clean hands as he backed out the door.

As soon as he was gone, Jack turned to me. “Callie…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told him. I didn’t care what “it” was. I was done talking and worrying. And I wasn’t going to show up in front of a king and queen looking like a Dust Bowl refugee. That wasn’t how Shimmy would have done it. For her sake and mine, I was going to do things up right, and Jack could see how it felt to trail along and not know which way he was going for a change.

I bought us a huge luncheon in the Savoy’s dining room-Waldorf salad made table-side, steak, and lobster in butter sauce with heaps of french fries. We had banana splits piled with whipped cream for dessert. I told Mr. Wentworth I needed to do some shopping, and he phoned over to Kleine’s department store so the floor manager was waiting at the door with a small army of store clerks when we arrived. We were ushered up to the third floor and seated on plush chairs in a special alcove. Women in starched white aprons brought us lemonade and cookies. Boys in green jackets who looked about Jack’s age brought us one outfit after another for our approval. I bought us both enough fancy clothes for a week and paid with more cash from Shimmy’s purse.

Through it all, Jack looked like a hound dog whose owner had died. I told myself I didn’t care, and I almost believed it.

Back at the hotel, the bellhops carried the boxes filled with new clothes into our suite. I tipped them all, then used the private phone to order room service. Steak and french fries and more ice cream. It was going to be a long night, and I wanted a good dinner.

“Callie…,” said Jack behind me. “What are you doing?”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m sorry about Shimmy and about running out on you.”

“You left.” I shrugged. “You got caught, and Shimmy saved us both. What else is there to talk about?”

“It’s my fault Hannah’s dead.”

That turned me around. Jack stood in the middle of all that fancy furniture, his shoes sinking into the thick carpet. He hunched his shoulders up and stuffed his hands in his pockets, like he was trying to make himself even skinnier than he was, maybe so skinny he’d disappear.

“My family didn’t just run liquor during Prohibition; they made it. It was cheaper that way, and the syndicate bosses didn’t really care if you made a little on the side, as long as the good stuff from across the border got to the right warehouses.

“When I wasn’t out helping with the deliveries, it was my job to stay home and watch Hannah, and the stills. Moonshine stills… you gotta watch them close. If the steam pressure gets too high, you’ll ruin the brew, and the still can explode.” He licked his lips and took a deep, shuddery breath.

“I was supposed to keep Hannah out of the basement. I was supposed to keep an eye on the stills. But she was being a pain. She wanted me to play dolls, and I wanted to read, and I hated the cellar. There were rats and… I thought I’d locked the door. I always did, and it had always been all right before. But Hannah got down there and I guess she was playing with the knobs, or maybe there was a pressure buildup…

“The explosion shook the whole house, and by the time I got through the cellar door, the fire was burning, and she was… she was…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. “That was when Dad started laying down the beatings, and Mom started drinking harder, and the government said they were gonna repeal Prohibition, and the bosses were saying they had other work for my brothers and me and… I couldn’t stand it. I ran out and hopped a freighter. I thought maybe I could just get away from everything. But you can’t get away from a thing that’s your own fault.”

There were all kinds of things I should have said right then. Because way down inside I knew that what had happened wasn’t Jack’s fault. None of it. Not just with Morgan and Shimmy, but also with Hannah. Not really. I mean, what were his folks even thinking, leaving a kid alone with stills and a little sister? Mama might have kept me holed up in the Imperial, but she looked after me and did her best to keep me safe however she could. Jack’s parents were running ’shine and making their kids drive the car. It was plain crazy.

But saying any of that would have meant I still cared about Jack, and I didn’t want to care. Not after the rabbit drive and Shimmy. Not after he’d up and left me.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Hannah followed me. I see her every night in my dreams. And when I met you and found out about the Seelie and saw that movie, I thought… maybe they do have her. Maybe that’s why I can’t get rid of the nightmares. I had to try to find out, don’t you see? That’s why I left. I told myself you had Shimmy, you’d do all right. Hannah only had me. I had to get to her. But Morgan caught me instead.”

I couldn’t figure out where the anger was coming from, but it had a tight hold on me. It didn’t matter he’d been scared. It didn’t matter he thought the little sister he loved was being held prisoner. What mattered was he’d left me all on my own with a woman he didn’t trust. He’d barely even tried to get me to go with him, and if he had made it out to California, well, he wouldn’t have come back, would he? The only person who’d never run out on me, who’d stood up to everything that came after me, was Shimmy, and because of Jack Holland, Shimmy was dead and she hadn’t even gotten to take Bull Morgan down with her.

Maybe if I’d thought about all that slow and straight, it wouldn’t have made much sense, but I was way past thinking straight.

“It doesn’t matter.” The words came out even and hard. Three words to let him know that if he left, he was on his own. I wouldn’t be coming after him any more than he had come back for me. “You do what you gotta. I don’t care anymore.”

“What’re you going to do?” he asked.

“I’m going to eat dinner, and then I’m going to find my grandparents.”

“How do you even know where to look?”

I pulled out the paper I’d found in Shimmy’s purse and laid it on the table.

Jack stared at it. “Oh, now that just can’t be right.”

Because the flyer read:

KANSAS CITY DANCE MARATHON!

WHO WILL BE THE LAST ONES STANDING?

FABULOUS PRIZES

THRILLS, SUSPENSE, AIR-COOLING

MUSIC BY KANSAS CITY’S OWN

BILL “COUNT” BASIE AND HIS BAND

Starting April 14, 8 o’clock

AT

FAIRYLAND

KANSAS CITY’S PREMIER AMUSEMENT PARK!

“It’s right,” I said. “And that’s where I’m going.”