Karen Memory (12 page)

The Threadneedly end of town was nearer the rich folk’s homes and the airfield than the docks, and one big airship drifted over while we walked, shadowing us from the rare winter sun. It was a gaudy thing, gold and vermilion and peacock blue and parrot green, and as the docking boom reached up into the sky to snag it and it tilted slightly, I read the words
Minneapolis Colony
appliqued up the hydrogen bag. I spared a thought for if that was a port of registry or the name of the thing—neither seemed likely. Still, it caught the light, and I heard Priya catch her breath at how it glittered.

“Colors like home,” she said when I glanced at her.

The homesick in her eyes made me wonder if I could live in India. And it made me think maybe I’d been right to pick those bright, bright colors for her quilt. I know I’d meant to do the curtains first … but the ring pattern was more fun, anyway.

Priya’d need a coat, I reckoned, and two pair of trousers. A pair of boots that could stand up to the wet. Shirts. There was a good wool check in black and yellow that I liked and she liked, too. We smiled over it conspiratorially: we’d both seen the dime-novel covers with Tombstone cowboys wearing shirts of that stuff. She liked a bright pink gingham with little green sprigs, too, which was more ladylike than I would of taken for her. I decided I could make a shirtwaist of it, for fancy, and there was no law saying she couldn’t wear a woman’s shirtwaist with men’s pants.

Actually, there was a law saying so, but the same law said she couldn’t wear trousers at all—and Miss Francina couldn’t wear sixteen yards of crinoline and skirting. I didn’t see it as about to slow down either one of ’em.

The boots were harder, but in the third shop we found a pair ready-made that were narrow enough for her. They was boy’s boots, for walking, not for riding, in dark blue leather. They cost about the earth, but I didn’t let her find that out. I just paid while she still had ’em on her feet and was admiring. She wore ’em out of the shop. She seemed to have given up protesting.

Crispin winked at me conspiratorially while I handed him loaded baskets and my old pair of boots Priya’d given me back, along with four out of six socks. I wasn’t getting nothing past Crispin. But then, he knows pretty well that I feel exactly the way about women he don’t, and I didn’t think most anybody could have missed me mooning over Priya. Except possibly Priya. Who was pretty and clever and a wit … about everything except me being falling-down in love with her, apparently.

We was only halfway down the block and hadn’t yet found the right wool for trousers when she stopped stock still on the boards and stared. I followed her line of sight, and I ain’t ashamed to say I cussed as well as staring. There on the wall beside a barbershop and dentist’s was a big printed placard in two colors of ink, advertising the mayoral candidacy of Mr. Peter Bantle, Democrat and local businessman.

I liked to have turned my head and spat, but I remembered at the last minute that I was out on the street and ought to comport myself as a lady. Cussing aside, but it was too late to rein that wagon.

Crispin, coming up behind us, didn’t seem too much more pleased. He lifted a sagging basket out of Priya’s shocked hand, though, and made a little production of redistributing his loads. I thought it was probably intended to hide whatever he happened to be thinking.

“Can he do that?” Priya asked, waving her now-freed hand at the sign.

“He can’t win,” I said. I looked at Crispin, and I knowed my face was begging for him to offer an opinion backing mine. He made an attempt at it, but I could tell the encouraging expression was spackled on. “Madame pays more in taxes than he does. Half the city council are her customers. She…”

“Greases the right palms?” Priya asked, grinning wickedly.

“So to speak.” I laughed softly. Even in my desperate denial, I felt better for her humor.

But then her face fell. “Bantle
can
win.”

I glanced at her for an explanation. No explanation was forthcoming. Just tight lips and a curt, quick shake of her head.

Crispin said, “There’s them as would give Bantle money. Just to spite Madame. Or because they think it’d be good to have the mayor owe them. Or for half a dozen other reasons. Who’s running for the Republicans? Is it going to be Mr. Stone again?”

It was a good question, and I wished I’d thought of it. The Republicans were the party of President Hayes, and I knowed a lot of people didn’t like him because of the way he’d been elected. But they were also the party of President Lincoln, who people still talked about in hushed tones as a martyr. Of course, here in the Washington Territory we couldn’t vote for President and being a woman and under twenty-one, I couldn’t vote at all.

I didn’t know a lot about politics. But I did know that even just within the confines of Rapid City, we elected a lot of Republicans. “He can’t win,” I said. “He’s a Democrat.” A sick thought came up in me like water up a drilled well. “He’s just doing this to get back at Madame.”

Priya’s brows bunched up over her nose, shading those deep-textured eyes. “How does this … get him back at Madame?”

I winced and looked at Crispin. He was studying on rearranging those baskets, still. None of us was supposed to know about Mayor Stone and Pollywog. If my mouth was a mare, I’d put her on a curb bit.

Priya was just looking at me like it was a matter of life and death that she understand what I was talking about. And I couldn’t tell her. “Just,” I said, “the city council owes her favors. Just what we said before.”

“Ah,” she said. She thought about it for a few seconds and looked satisfied, like she’d figured something out. Priya’s not just smart as a whip. I bet she got no end of practice reading between the lines, working for Peter goddamn Bantle.

“Anyway,” I said, hoping to change the subject without letting on that I was changing the subject. “He can’t win.”

“He can win if nobody runs against him,” Priya said.

“That’ll never happen!” I said. “Mayor Stone would never give up without a fight, even if nobody else was running!”

Priya cocked her head at me, her braid falling over one shoulder. “No doubt,” she said, “it shall be as you say.”

*   *   *

But she was right, of course. We tracked down a fresh hot copy of the
Rapid City Journal Miner Republican
from a newsboy crying the afternoon edition in the street. He looked to be about eight years old, and I slipped him a silver quarter, which was exactly double the price of the paper. But newsboys paid for their own papers and most of them were orphans, like me—or had homes such as you wouldn’t send a child back to under any circumstance.

We gathered around that rag and skimmed past stories about a gold ship sunk coming back from Anchorage and a splintercat that had done some damage up at a logging camp near Shasta. We quickly discovered that not only was Priya absolutely correct—Bantle was running unopposed—but there also was a full column of editorials discussing how Peter Bantle was undoubtedly the man for the job. In sickening and laudatory detail. And wishing Mayor Stone well in his retirement.

It weren’t raining, for a mystery. But the day felt pretty dark to all of us just then, notwithstanding.

I crumpled the paper in my fist, more or less by accident, and hastened to smooth it out again. “How did you know?” I demanded of Priya.

She gave me the bleakest look imaginable. “I know Bantle. He’s got his ways.”

Our previous merry mood was shaken, and I hoped to recapture it. We were by that time down by the opera house, which was about the grandest building in town. It was dark green with white and brick-red trim, all gussied and hung with elaborate jigsaw work in the English style, and it was about as big as three banks put together. It was dark on a Monday afternoon, but I wandered over to look at the bills anyway.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were prominently billed, and somebody called Anna Bichurina—we were getting a lot of Russians over, with the new fast steamers and the airship route from Vladivostok. “Who’s Ram Shankar Bhattacharya?” I asked, no doubt mangling it terribly.

Priya reached out to touch the posted bill with one fingertip. The touch lingered. I noticed that she chewed her nails and loved her a little bit more than I had already. “A court musician,” she said. “Very famous in my homeland.”

I wondered, suddenly, how long she had been in the territories. How she had come here and where her family was. What had happened to them. When you meet someone in our line of work—or, I guess, my line of work, as she’s out of it now—you sort of assume that if they had any family they’d be doing something else with their lives.

I thought again about the stable, about my idea for a little business of my own. I wondered if Priya liked horses.

For her, I bet I could stand to be around them again.

“How long have you and your sister been in America?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Since last winter.”

Ten months, then. Twelve at the outside. She must of seen my expression and read it flawlessly, because her spine got longer and her chin came up. “I’m quick with languages.”

Crispin elbowed me. I looked at him, and he was grinning.

“Yes,” I said to him. “She slapped a brand on me, all right. How kind of you to point that out.”

I turned back to Priya. “I noticed,” I said.

Priya was looking at Crispin and me in slight confusion of her own now, though. “He laid hands on you.”

“An elbow,” I said. “Not exactly the same thing.”

But she looked wounded, and I took pity on her. “Among the things Madame don’t tolerate is lording it over people on account of their skin.”

“She was a—an abolitionist?”

Crispin patted her on the arm. He glanced around; there was nobody nearby. As I said, the opera house was dark Mondays.

“She’s black,” he said. “Just very fair complected. We’d say that she ‘passes.’ But she’s got a black great-grandma, and that makes her black, by American law.”

It was an interesting thing, watching the procession of emotions dawning and fading across her face like the sequence of the seasons, each replacing the last. Consternation gave way to surprise, which gave way to something else.

“She’s low caste, then. But she can employ people of higher caste?”

I didn’t know what a caste was, then. Now I know it’s like classes, in Priya’s homeland—lords and commoners and gutter scum.

“Does Bantle know?”

Crispin shrugged. “Maybe suspects. It’d be hard to prove out here in the middle of the wilderness, especially as none of us knows where Madame came from, or even her right name. We ain’t never lied about it, to my knowledge. Just let people assume.”

“He called her Alice,” I remembered with a twist of unease. “Bantle called her Alice. He knows something. Or he thinks he does.”

Priya nodded, and I could about see that glittering brain of hers work and spin. She said to Crispin, “You shouldn’t of told me. You trust me too much.”

He winked. “You was going to tell anybody, either way?”

She shook her head, but she didn’t seem appeased. I could almost feel her thinking what a weird country we had. Rather than remarking on that, though, she seemed to steel herself and seize an opportunity for conversating. She turned to me. Quietly, she asked, “Have you … you’ve been so kind other ways. Have you learned anything about my … about Aashini?”

Damn. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask. And the way she had to sneak up on her sister’s name about broke my heart.

I had tried. The problem, it turned out, was finding ways to slip it into conversation. Natural like. Men liked to brag, true. But they didn’t always like to be distracted.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m thinking there has to be a way to find out where she is, and maybe get her a message. But I haven’t found it.”

Her face fell like Connie’s soufflés don’t. Like when you put your lips against a vacuum tube, except as if somebody had done it to her expression from the inside. “I’ll think on it, too,” said Crispin. When Priya cocked her head at him, he said, “Slaves had families, too, miss. Sometimes it ain’t so easy to keep in touch. We had our ways of getting word around, and keeping track of kin.”

When the air came out of Priya and her shoulders fell, that was when I realized how twisted up inside she’d been and how much courage it had taken to ask that question. I thought about the burn scars on her arms.

Bantle had dozens of girls in his cribs. Surely he didn’t have time to give that sort of attention to each and every one of them.

Priya, I surmised, might of been a special favorite. And the special favorite of a man like Bantle … well, in her shoes I would pretty fast get so I didn’t let anybody know what I did or didn’t care for, I imagined. Because vulnerability … that’s the sort of thing that a man like Bantle would use against you.

Well, a man like Bantle would use anything against you that he could. And—it occurred to me—a man like Bantle might have ways of getting hold of somebody’s sister, if he wanted to hurt that somebody. And, like Crispin’s relatives, he might have ways of making sure word reached that somebody. Sooner or later.

“Hey,” I said. “Friends do things for each other.”

She stared at the toes of her new blue boots, frowning on one side of her mouth. That long face of hers made all sorts of complicated whimsies happen when she wasn’t careful to guard it. I could see the leather flex as her toes wiggled restlessly beneath.

When she looked up, though, her eyes were bright. Her expression impulsive. “Let me make you a new rug,” Priya said, bouncing on her toes a little, swinging her arms like a boy of seven bursting with so much excitement he has to share.

Friends do things for each other.
So were we friends, or was I courting her? Did they have to be exclusionary? How did I find out which she wanted it to be? It bothered me for a whole half a second before I realized that if I was only being her friend because I wanted to get into her bloomers then I was a pretty lousy friend
and
a pretty lousy romantic prospect.

And maybe if we spent enough time being friends, I’d study out for myself if she had some kind of interest in making more of it. Or at least I’d study out if that was the sort of thing she might not care to be asked about. Because I was pretty sure I could ask … but I wouldn’t if it would chase her away. Because I wanted Priya in my life any way she’d have me, so scaring her as to my intentions just wasn’t in the plan.