Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (28 page)

When we got near town, we detoured by the cemetery. My grave was there and there was something in me that felt a little fondness for it. It was a comfort. We followed Andrzej until he stopped at another grave and went to his knees in front of it. It was György Dózsa’s. It was undisturbed still, and so we knew he was taking the long rest. Andrzej made a hollow sob-like sound and then went quiet. I plucked a handful of grass and leaned it against the humble stone. Istvan said “
No
.” Our bodies had been thrown in the river – General Dózsa’s too – but the villagers recovered them and gave us proper burials.

Before he died, I remember the calm in Dózsa’s eyes. How he spoke in a voice that did not show the pain. He told his tormentors, with us there to witness, that each rebellion they crushed would rise again, and again, until the nobles were driven from the land. At the time it seemed a far-fetched thing to say.

We would do right by him, even if we ate them one by one.

We waited in the cemetery until dark. In the pocket of the noble’s cloak I found a gold piece. A pocket! What an odd invention. Made for those who have need of carrying things about. I took to flipping the coin and Istvan and Andrzej stood looking on in stony amazement, all of us eager to see which side would come up. Tails, heads, heads, heads, heads, tails. Who decided these things?

For Anelie I would be like an angel, vengeful and terrible. Except, I thought, looking down again at my awful hands, very much different. I wanted to see her.

In town we ambled from shadow to shadow. The village was reduced, what with so many martyrs having floated in its river. What could I buy with a gold coin? The only thing I wanted was Anelie’s happiness. Our happiness together.

We hovered about outside her hut. It was quiet, but there was a dim light within. Through the small windowpane my brother had installed before the poverty, I saw her sitting. She stared toward me, which gave me a start. She could not see me for the reflection on the glass.

From tucked inside my clothes, against my dead skin, I pulled the letter I’d written her. If Istvan delivered it, he would give weight to it, as she had known him living too. I could not bear to have her see me. I unfolded it and stared at the scrawl. She could not read, but she would find someone who could, and in that there was a complication too. My hands shook as I held it, and then I felt the weight of a hand on each of my shoulders.

No
, Istvan said softly. Andrzej shook his head and squeezed my shoulder, and then held out his hand for the note.

I clutched it fiercely and pushed them back and we scuffled there. I would not hunger for her, I would not! We were all we had left, each other. But they finally got through to me. She did not have me. I was not myself. They were right. It was a fantasy.

To give the letter up was a terrible pain, like nothing I remembered at my tormentor’s hands, a scooping out from inside me, and for a moment I had trouble standing. Andrzej put the letter in his own pocket. They were right, wise friends. The living do not wish to hear from the dead, not like this.

Instead I stared at her through the window, and Andrzej and Istvan came to the glass and looked in too. Her head was free of its scarf, and her hair pooled on her shoulders. I could see the enchanting outline of her bosom under her linen smock. In her hand she held my nephew’s cap. I moaned softly, unable to keep the sound within me. Andrzej put his big paw on my shoulder, and we stayed like that, looking in, me murmuring, until she finally must have heard something and looked toward us with alarm.

I hastily leaned the gold coin against the window sill, and then we bolted, loping through the streets. I was only vaguely aware of the sound that seemed to be issuing from me.

When we got back to the cemetery I ferociously clawed my way back into my own grave, Istvan standing over me saying “
No, no
.” I could hear them about up there for some time as I lay down there in the dark, the earth pressed in comfortingly against me.

I had always believed that what I feared most about death was that I would not hear how the story ended. How my kin fared. But in the end, perhaps it is not worth knowing these things. Perhaps the best tales are only half-told. I wished my tale had ended when I’d fibbed to my niece and nephew, myself eaten up by a grass-faced giant. Or when Anelie had pulled me into her bedroom, resting her lips against my neck, already wet with her tears.

But after a long while of sorting myself out, I hungered more and was a little bored and decided to come out. They were glad to see me, in the dim light before dawn. Istvan, with a surprising quickness, snatched my left wrist and held it up for inspection. My ring finger was missing! I stared at my hand with horror. The clawing scrabble down to my grave had been hard work, and I suspected it had become dislodged somehow. I kicked around in the dirt looking for it, but found nothing but worms.

“No,” Istvan said, and by that it was quite obvious what he meant: “
Yes!
Yes, we are brothers in arms! We are united! Yes!” He held his hand up next to mine, and I heard Andrzej’s low chuckle in the background.

“All right,” I said, but the words didn’t sound right in my mouth. “Come on.”

It would be dawn soon. We turned and headed back toward the castle. When the sun came up, the colts would run in the field again, and we wanted to be there to watch.

Art by GMB Chomichuk

1902
Phoenix, Arizona

Tanner named the motel Star Motel
because calling the place North Star Motel
would’ve been asking for it. Colored folks recognized that “star” and the little lights Jessie insisted they burn in the windows. Most of their customers were hungry, travel-weary young men who did not believe the VACANCY sign as they approached the motel and did not believe that Tanner, round as a dishpan, wide as the door, was its owner. None of them had the nerve to ask her if she was a man or a woman, but she saw their longways looks anytime she entered a room. They never stayed more than a night or two and spent most of that time asleep. Tanner checked them in at $1.25 a night on weekdays and $2.00 on weekends. She never shamed anyone for not having the full fee and would accept three quarters and a “thank you kindly.”

“Get up, Tanner, sounds like the iceman is here. Last time he didn’t ring the bell and most of the ice melted all over the porch. We don’t have money to waste, and I can’t stretch half a block of ice for a whole week.” Jessie was sitting up in bed, her breasts and collarbone soaking in the day’s first light. “I said go on and get the ice. The Campbells are checking out this morning, and Flo needs to get breakfast out to them by nine.”

“If you run me out this bed one more time, woman, you’re going to know it.”

“Ain’t nobody running you, just go get the ice. You can come back to bed after. Oh, and feed Rinny!”

Tanner knew Jessie was lying, but she got out of the bed anyway. By the time Tanner got the ice into the icebox and came back to their bedroom, Jessie would be halfway dressed, talking about the ledgers and dividing the day’s work between them. Best to go get the ice and start the day.

The ice was melting when Tanner reached the porch, but not enough to make Jessie have a fit. The iceman slipped everybody’s blocks into their iceboxes. Except for colored people. He left their ice sitting outside, anywhere, in dirt or sand or on a dusty porch. Tanner poured hot water down the block and quickly lifted it inside of the wooden box. Didn’t make no sense to tip the iceman but Jessie tipped him every delivery. “He don’t have to come out here, Tanner. Ain’t like we can leave to go into town and get it,” she would say.

Tanner headed back into the house and to the bedroom she shared with Jessie. “Mr. Campbell say what time they’d be heading out?” Jessie stood wearing a white blouse and ankle length skirt, her brown leather ankle booties tied tightly. “He wants an early start on the road. Almost fifteen hundred miles between here and Seattle. He thinks they could be there by this time tomorrow.”

Tanner grunted. Could be. She’d tried to talk some sense into Mr. Campbell the night before, but he was determined to make it his way. Tanner thought it would be better for them to stop somewhere in California for a few days and then head back to the road. Maybe leave his wife and newborn in San Francisco for a week or two and then send for them later. But Campbell wouldn’t hear of it. Said he was driving straight through, driving even if his eyeballs went bloodshot and burst through his head. “Give me the rundown, baby,” Tanner said to Jessie as she pulled her work trousers over her belly and bent to cuff them.

“Did you feed Rinny?”

“Yes, I fed Rinny, now give me the rundown.”

“Well, Campbell’s checking out this morning. That’ll leave us empty for the weekend, which is good because we’re sure to fill up the singles.” Tanner nodded. Single people always ran off the job on Fridays, soon as the boss paid them. By Monday morning they were long gone and so far on their way north or west it didn’t make sense to send Klan after their families. They were just gone. “Flo is getting started on the weekend menu, and I’m waiting for a cigarette delivery and the bread delivery. Me and Flo will get the parlor ready for this evening. I’ll air out the singles and Newt will sweep them. All you need to do is change the oil on the Campbells’ car and check the tires and whatnot. Maybe wash down the sides of the house.”

The house was peach-colored with a brown roof and sat a quarter of a mile from the highway. Travellers could see the Star’s marquee from the road whether on foot or automobile. The marquee was its own detached, two-pronged structure painted in mint green and white and lit up every night at 9:00 p.m. The house’s front room served as the motel’s lobby, stripped of all furniture save an upright and uncomfortable sofa, two wing chairs, a wall clock, and a small lobby desk with a silver bell. Tanner kept a wide black leather barstool behind the desk to sit on when her knee acted up. All other times, she preferred to greet her guests standing. The single rooms stood in a row of six to the left of the house. The doubles, another six, off to the right. The only formal place to stay for colored folks headed west on the lonely, desert highway.

It was Flo who came up with the idea of having jook nights on Fridays for the locals and travelers alike. Black folks were starting to stay in Phoenix to make a home and needed a place to go on the weekends. Friday nights at the Star Motel
were for card playing, thigh slapping, and smoky mingling. Tanner hated the idea at first. She needed to keep her family safe and didn’t want all of colored Phoenix in their parlor room on Friday nights, but the women were lonely. Flo complained of never having company and Jessie didn’t have to open her mouth for Tanner to know she was cross about it all.

Flo was one of Tanner’s first guests. Flo arrived with a belly brimming over its due date. Tanner knew the kinds of things that would make a woman run, pregnant and all, out of the swamps of Florida. They never spoke about it or how Flo found the place. She was flat out with her intentions when she checked in that night. “I can cook. If you let me stay on until my baby big enough, I’ll be your cook. I used to cook lunches for the orange pickers and deliver them in my truck. I can cook anything, and I can kill anything.” After Flora went into labor, she named the boy Newt, half because Tanner slipped on birth water running over trying to catch him out of the birth canal and half because he kind of looked like one.

Jook night at Star Motel
started at 9, but folks trickled in around 10:30. It gave Flora and Jessie time to change, time to tuck Newt in, time to perfume behind the neck, time to cast their muscled legs in nylon. The women always wore all black, including Tanner. That was the rule, everybody in something bright. Other rule was no outside food and no outside liquor. Tanner played the doorman and Jessie worked the bar. Flo managed the kitchen, bringing plates out to the cards players and collecting tips in her bosom. Flo wore a deep, matte red lipstick but kept her fingernails short and bare. “Can’t cook with that shit on my hands,” she’d say and wink at whatever woman was questioning her manicure. The manicure-questioning woman always knew Flo’s reputation: she could outlast a man, she took her time, she could cook, and she didn’t lie. Flo was thickset, with an impressively square jaw and roundish eyes. She openly bedded other women; the few nights a month she spent with Tanner were in one of the single rooms.

Tanner stood at the front door of the house, on the porch, collecting the dollar fee it cost to get in. “Order your plates with Flo,” she said, “All plates from Miss Flora. All booze from Jessie.” The parlor was lit just enough to see a card hand but barely enough to see if you were putting your fork in meat or vegetables. As soon as the brass band started up, Jessie rattled her tambourine. She bounced it off of her hip and then smacked it into her open hand. Her feet moved in time, and her hair wagged back and forth on her head with every tambourine slap. They would bring in an easy three or four hundred dollars between the food and hooch and card games. They split the income evenly and saved for their future plans. Jessie was going to Los Angeles, Miss Flora was sending Newt to Howard, and Tanner would open another motel.