Waltz Into Darkness

56

They came to a halt in Pensacola, at last, for a little while, to catch their breaths. They had now followed the great, slow, curve the Gulf Coast makes as far as they could go along it, heading eastward, always eastward. By fits and starts, by frightened spurts and equally frightened stops, some long, some short, they’d followed their destiny blindly. New Orleans, then Biloxi, then Mobile, then Pensacola. With many a little hidden-away place in between.

Now Pensacola. They couldn’t go any farther than that, along their self-appointed trajectory, without leaving the littoral behind, and for some reason or other, probably fear of the unknown, they clung to the familiar coastline. From there the curve dropped sharply away, past the huddle of tin-roofed shacks that was Tampa, on down to the strange, other-language foreignness of Havana. And that would have meant cutting themselves off completely, exile irrevocable beyond power to return. (Returning ships were inspected, and they had no documents.) Nor did they want to cut inland and make for Atlanta, the next obvious step. She was afraid, for reasons of her own, of the North, and though that was not the North, it was a step toward it.

So, Pensacola. They took a house again in Pensacola. Not for grandeur now, not for style, not to feel “really” married, but for the sake of simple, elementary safety.

“They spot you much easier in a hotel,” she whispered, in their rain-beaten, one-night hotel. “They nose into your business quicker. People come and go more, all around you, carrying tales away with them and spreading them all around.”

He nodded, bending to peer from under the lowered window shade, then starting back as a flash of lightning limned it intolerably bright.

They took the most remote, hidden, inconspicuous house they could find, on a drowsing, tree-lined street well out from the center of town. Other houses not too near, neighbors not too many; they put heavy lace curtains in the windows, to be safer still from prying eyes. They engaged a woman out of sheer compulsion, but pared her presence to a minimum; only three days a week, and she must be gone by six, not sleep under their roof. They spoke guardedly in front of her, or not at all.

They were going to be very discreet, they were going to be very prudent this time.

The first week or two, every time Bonny came or went from the house in daylight, she held her parasol tipped low as she stepped to or from the carriage, so that it shielded her face. And he, without that advantage of concealment, kept his head down all he could. So that, almost, he always seemed to be looking for something along the ground each time he entered or left.

And when a neighbor came to offer a courtesy call, as the custom was, laden with homemade jellies and the like, Bonny held her fast at the door, and made voluble explanations that they were not settled yet and the house was not in order, as an excuse for not asking her in.

The woman went away, with affronted mien and taking her gifts back with her unpresented, and when next they sighted her on the walk she made no salutation and looked the other way.

“You should not have done that,” he cautioned, stepping out from where he had listened, as the frustrated visitor departed. “That looks even more suspicious, to be so skittish.”

“There was no other way,” she said. “If I had once admitted her, then others would have come, and I would have been expected to return their calls, and there would have been no end to it.”

After that once, no others came.

“They probably think we live together,” she told him, once, jeeringly. “I always leave my left glove off, now, every time I go out, and hold my hand up high, to the parasol-stick, so that they cannot fail to see the wedding band.” And punctuated it: “The filthy sows!”

Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had come to Pensacola. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had taken a house in Pensacola. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers — from nowhere. On the way to — no one knows.