Before the Dawn
Authors: Beverly Jenkins
BEFORE THE DAWN
To Dorothy Jean Simpson:
9/8/32â1/11/00
She is missed.
Ryder Damien's black eyes glowed with grim satisfaction as heâ¦
The conductor gave Leah and Cecil a knowing smirk asâ¦
Leah sat in the backseat of Seth's fancy carriage wonderingâ¦
The interior of the house was as grand as theâ¦
That next morning Leah awakened to the smell of coffee.â¦
Sam was loading Leah's trunks into the wagon when theyâ¦
By Saturday, Leah was looking forward to the idea ofâ¦
Later that Sunday afternoon, Ryder's knock on Helene's door wasâ¦
While Leah waited for Ryder's return with the food, sheâ¦
Leah hissed at Eloise, “I thought you said he wouldn'tâ¦
Inside, Ryder introduced Leah to his small staff.
The next morning, Leah hitched a ride to town withâ¦
R
yder Damien's black eyes glowed with grim satisfaction as he read the wire informing him that his father, was dying.
So, the old man's finally getting his due,
he thought.
Hope Satan makes the pit nice and hot
.
Hardly the expected filial response, but Ryder hadn't seen his father in thirty years. He tossed the telegram onto his desk and walked over to the windows that looked out on the world from the second-floor office of the Damien Mining Company. According to the calendar, spring was coming, but you couldn't tell by all the snow on the mountains. The Colorado mountains never surrendered to warmer weather without a good fight, and this year proved to be no exception. Ryder hoped that by concentrating on something else, the news about his father would fade from his mind, but as much as he disliked admitting it, thoughts of Louis Montague wouldn't leave him alone. Why make contact now, after all these years? With all the suffering Ryder had
been forced to endure, surely Louis didn't believe he'd come running to his deathbed, mouthing absolutions?
Ryder turned from the window and went back to his desk.
Â
Thirty-two-year-old Leah Barnett moved slowly through the nearly deserted tavern, collecting the last of the empty mugs and tankards. Her day at the Black Swan had begun at dawn, and now that night had fallen, she didn't know which felt wearier, her body or her feet. She looked over at the last of the regulars seated at one of the dark wood tables, and called out, “Tom, you should be getting on home now. Don't want the wife to have to come get you again.”
Tom Pollard met Leah's frank dark eyes, then hung his head sheepishly. His wife, Bess, had paid a visit to the Swan four nights ago, and it hadn't been a pretty affair. Bess Pollard towered over her elderly husband by a good six inches, and she'd issued such a blistering lecture on demon rum and familial responsibility that every man in the place had gotten up and slunk home. Leah hadn't been pleased watching the night's profits go streaming out the doors, but witnessing the look of fear on Tom's face when his wife blew in like a November gale had almost been worth the loss. Leah had been telling him for months that he should be spending more time with his young bride and less time with his cronies playing dominoes and backgammon.
In response to Leah's warning, Tom shuffled to his feet and put on his coat, saying, “Caught a lot of ribbing about that. Don't want it to happen again.” The slight sway in his old legs interfered with his attempts to fasten his coat buttons. “How's Monty doing?”
“Doctor says it won't be long,” she responded sadly. Louis Montague, her mother's lifelong companion, lay upstairs in his bed, dying. “I'm going up to check on him as soon as I'm done here.”
“Well, you want me to stay until you lock up?”
Leah smiled tiredly in reply. Tom had been coming to the Swan since she'd been tall enough to see over the tables, and she appreciated his concern, “No, Tom. I'll be fine. You go on. I'll see you tomorrow.”
He nodded and headed out into the early-April night.
His exit left Leah alone, and she went back to cleaning up. Usually she savored the silence that settled over the place after locking up, but not tonight. Tonight her thoughts were heavy with Monty's fate.
Last April, the death of Leah's British-born mother, Reba, had broken Leah's heart. Now, Monty lay at death's door, too. Leah's world had always included the two of them, and she couldn't envision a future devoid of their presence and love.
The Black Swan had been passed down to her upon Reba's death, and Leah supposed she'd spend the rest of her life there, washing tankards and hauling in kegs. At the advanced old age of thirty-two she stood little chance of snagging a husband and having children, so she'd stopped hoping long ago. She'd also stopped wanting to see the world and its many wonders; women of her ilk weren't destined for such things. She'd been born in the Swan and would undoubtedly die in the Swan, just as her mother had.
The small drinking establishment, with its sturdy wooden tables and packed-earth floor, would provide her a frugal life at best. One of the few remaining coastline taverns that catered to Black British seamen, it turned enough profit to pay bills and buy necessities, but nothing more. Unlike her old friend Adele Sears, who'd married well and constantly ordered new gowns in order to rub shoulders with Boston's Black elite, Leah had to make due with gowns that had seen better days and shoes with pasteboard in them to cover the holes in the soles. Granted, because she had a way with numbers, Leah earned a few extra coins bal
ancing the ledgers of some of the other businesses on the waterfront, but that went to pay the salaries of her two employees: a bartender and a waitress.
Done with the washing and sweeping, Leah checked the door's bolts, doused the tavern's lamps, and slowly headed upstairs to look in on Monty.
Leah had lived on the tavern's upper floor her whole life, and the space was as familiar as her own heartbeat. Reba and Monty had shared the big room in the back that overlooked the often moody Atlantic Ocean. Reba had drawn her last breath in that room. Monty seemed destined to do the same.
Leah entered the firelit room quietly. In the big walnut bed lay Louis Montague, apparently asleep. In the chair beside it sat his old friend, Cecil Lee. The short, brown-skinned Lee, with his wire-rimmed spectacles, had always reminded Leah of a church mouse. The two men had come to Massachusetts together from Colorado almost thirty years ago.
Leah asked softly, “How's he doing?”
Cecil's brown eyes met hers. He shook his head sadly. “Not well. Two daysâthree at the most is all the doctor could say.”
Leah walked over and touched his thin, stooped shoulders sympathetically. Cecil had been taking Monty's decline hard.
As Cecil removed his spectacles to wipe at the moisture on the lenses, Monty opened his eyes and snarled softly, “If the two of you don't put away those long faces, I'm going to go sooner than that!”
Both Leah and Cecil jumped with surprise. Leah looked down into Monty's tired but impish blue eyes and shook her head. Not even the impending jaws of death were strong enough to diminish his spirit. “We thought you were asleep,” she scolded tenderly.
“Well, I'm not. There's much to do before I meet your mother on the other side.”
Leah cocked her head. “Such as?”
“Securing your future. Tell her the plan, Cecil,” he ordered brusquely.
Leah turned puzzled black eyes Cecil's way.
Cecil looked uncomfortable, but stated, “Louis has decided to make you heir to his estate.”
“What estate?” Leah asked.
Monty answered, “The one your mother wouldn't let me leave her. It's a good thing I loved her because she was the stubbornest damned woman I ever met.” Then he added sagely, “You're a lot like her.”
A smiling Leah inclined her head. “Thank you, but again, what estate?”
Monty labored to a sitting position. Cecil moved to help him, but Monty waved him off. “I'm all right, old friend. I've still enough in me to see this through.” Monty made himself as comfortable as he could on the wealth of pillows at his back, then paused for a moment to catch his breath.
Watching him struggle pained Leah. Six months ago, doctors had found a growth on his liver. The progression into the last stages of the terminal malady had been swift. He now bore very little resemblance to the tall, handsome man who'd walked into the Black Swan nearly thirty years ago and fallen in love with her mother at first sight. His
café au lait
skin was now lined and jaundiced with disease. As a result of all the medicines and tonics, the straight black hair that once framed his striking Creole features now grew only in sparse gray patches. He'd become so gaunt and frail during the past few weeks, it was hard to believe that this time last year he'd been a hale, muscular man of almost sixty years. Leah took some solace in the knowledge that her mother hadn't lived to see him this way; the sight would have broken her heart, just as it was doing to Leah's now.
Monty's papery voice broke the silence. “I should've married your mother. One of the greatest regrets of my life.”
Leah chuckled softly. “The way you two fought?”
He grinned beneath the death mask. “I loved battling with herâmade me feel so alive. More than I ever thought I could be.” He went silent for a few moments as if going over the memories in his mind. He then whispered, “I miss her⦔ His sad blue eyes met Leah's, and he confessed, “I'm scared of dying, Leah. Didn't think I would be, but I am. Brought so much pain into the world, Satan probably has a pit just for me.”
“I don't believe that,” she pronounced. “You did real fine by Reba and me.”
“But she wouldn't let me marry her. Kept waiting for Roman to come home from the sea.”
Three months before Leah was born, Leah's father, an American seaman named Roman Collins, had been washed overboard during a tropical storm off the coast of Jamaica and presumed drowned. The ship's owners sent Reba a letter of condolence and the pay he'd accumulated, but she never gave up hope that someday he would return to her, his child, and the tavern they jointly owned and named. Yes, she'd loved Monty, but that hope, illogical though it might have seemed, made marrying him impossible.
“She promised him she'd wait until the day she died,” Leah reminded gently.
“I know, but I wanted to do right by her. She shouldn't've had to bear the talk.”
Her mother had endured much finger pointing and gossip because of her long relationship with Monty, but Leah knew that the high-and-mighty types like Adele's mother and her friends would have found fault with Reba, no matter what. Reba had no husband. She'd borne a fatherless child and managed a tavern. In their minds, certainly, there was no more godless woman on the face of the earth.
“She never minded the talk,” Leah told him reassuringly. “She always said, âIf they're talking about me, I must be pretty important.'”
“Well, let me do right by you.”
“Monty, you already have.”
“What're you going to do once I'm gone?”
Leah shrugged. “Run the Swan. Make Cecil wash tables.”
Cecil smiled but didn't rise to her bait.
“Is that all you wish from life?” Monty asked.
“It isn't about what I wish,” she replied matter-of-factly. “Life is about what must be.”
“Suppose there could be more, what would you wish then?”
She thought a moment. “To have more than one gown. Travel. Maybe see what's on the other side of the Great Divideâwalk the tropical islands my father wrote about in his letters.”
“Suppose I could make that possible?” Monty said.
Leah's humor showed on her dark face. “How, by waving a magician's wand over me?”
“In a way.”
Intrigued by the response, she cocked her head his way. While growing up, Leah had always thought Monty to be much more than the simple bootmaker he presented himself to be; simple bootmakers didn't recite Latin Classics, nor intelligently discuss any subject under the sun, as Monty was prone to do. In all the time she'd known him, though, Leah couldn't recall him ever offering any information on the life he'd led before coming to live in their small costal town. She did remember being about twelve years old the one time she asked her mother if she knew anything about Monty's mysterious past. Reba had replied, “A man's past is his own, Leah, unless he's willing to share it.”
Leah took that to mean she was to mind her own busi
ness, and as a result never brought the subject up again. That same curiosity resurfaced now.
Monty's voice brought her back. “You're awfully quiet, Leah.”
She shook herself free of her musings. “Just thinking how I always imagined you were more than a bootmaker.”
He nodded wearily. “At one time I wasâ” He looked up into her face, then said with pride, “You will always be the daughter I never had, Leah Barnett. Always.”
He held out his clawlike hand. She enfolded it in her own, and said, “And you are very, very special to me too, Louis Montague. I don't need an estate to remember you by.”
“I know, but let me do this for you. Cecil and I discussed the possibilities of my adopting you as my daughter, but that would take too much time. We decided you'd fare better as my widow.”
Leah's eyes widened, and she chuckled. “Your widow? Monty, I can't marry you.”
“Sure you can. It'll be a marriage in name only, but by the time anybody has questions, I'll be dead.”
Leah was taken aback by his bluntness. “Butâ”
“And if you're worried about what folks around here might say, don't. After the money comes to you, you'll be your own mistress, and you can leave here and do whatever you wish. Go see those islandsâgo breathe the air near the Divide. Just let me go to the grave knowing I've done right by one woman in my life.”
Leah looked to Cecil for advice, but his face remained unreadable. She turned back to Monty. The plea in his eyes pulled at her heart.
Leah knew she had no choice.
Â
The next evening, Leah Jane Barnett put on her best clean gown and became the bride of the dying and bedridden Louis Montague.
With Cecil standing as witness, the sealing of the will and the wedding ceremony were performed by James Raddock, a prominent Massachusetts jurist. Leah had never met the elderly White man before, but Monty and Cecil assured her that they'd known him for many years, both as a valued customer and a trusted friend.
Once the legalities were done, Leah and Cecil walked the judge back downstairs to the Swan's door.
Cecil shook Raddock's hand, and said, “Have a safe trip home, Jim, and thank you.”
“You're welcome.”