AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Before Leah could unclamp her jaws, Teddy reached out and gave a swift tug on her muslin skirt. She bent down and he cupped his hands and spoke into her ear.
“Remember what you taught me, Leah. Don’t let ’em know you’re scared.” He looked up into her face for a long moment and then gave her a thumbs-up.
Leah gasped out a laugh. For heaven’s sake, what a grown-up thing for the boy to do. Thad must have put him up to it.
No, she realized in the next instant. It was Teddy who would remember those words. Not Thad, but his son. Teddy wanted her to know he was on her side. Leah’s throat ached.
Carl Ness’s impatient cough reminded her She was standing before a throng of angry townspeople, some of whom she did not even know. she must speak out, and She must do it now.
Suddenly she was unsure what to say. She knotted her fingers together, sucked in air, began to speak. What came out of her mouth surprised her.
“Were all of you who live in Smoke River born here, in America?”
Her question was met by some hesitant nods and more than a few grumbled no’s.
Struggling to keep her hands from shaking, she faced the barber. “Mr. Poletti, where did you originally come from?”
Pleased at being singled out, the barber beamed. “From Napoli. Bee-yoo-tiful Napoli, in Italy.”
“You came from Italy to America?”
“I sure did. On a big white ship.”
“How about you, Mr. Pritchard? Where do you come from?”
“Amsterdam. Is in Holland. My wife and I, ve are Dutch,” he said proudly.
“Mr. O’Brian, what about you?”
The red-bearded man stood up and bellowed, “Ireland, God bless ’er. The Emerald Isle. Came to work on the railroads.”
“I am from Chermany,” said an older woman next to Mr. O’Brian, her accent pronounced. “Both me and mein sister.”
All at once eight-year-old Noralee Ness shot to her feet and purposefully stalked over to Leah’s side of the room.
“Noralee!” her father snapped. “You get back here.”
The girl spun to face him. “I can’t, Papa. I’m real sorry, but what Miz Johnson taught us in school is right. In America, everyone is equal.”
The mercantile owner’s face flushed purple. “When I get you home, I’ll—”
“Stop it, Carl,” his wife ordered. “She’s right.”
Taking a deep breath, Leah resumed her questions. “How about you, Mrs. Rose?”
“I sailed from England, dearie. My family had a pig farm in Yorkshire.”
Leah turned her gaze on the oversize man who had beaten up Thad and Uncle Charlie. “What nationality are you, Ike?”
“Svedish,” he roared. “But my fader, he come from Denmark.”
“My husband, Thad, comes from Scotland.” She waited two heartbeats. “And I was born in Luzhai, in China.”
“Oughtta go back there!” someone yelled.
“What’re you tryin’ to say, lady?”
“Only this,” Leah replied. She waited until it grew so quiet she could hear Thad’s breathing behind her. “Do any of you feel you are better than anyone else in Smoke River?”
“Guess not,” a gray-bearded man grumbled. “I got more hair than ever’body else in town, but that don’t make me better’n them, just different.”
Harvey and Iris Pritchard chose that moment to march across the room to Leah’s side, followed by white-haired Granny Bolan. “I come from Russia,” the old woman said with pride as she sat down next to Ellie and Marshal Matt Johnson. “My name used to be Bolansky.”
Leah nodded. “It must be obvious then that all of us here are different in some way.”
Heads nodded and suddenly Leah felt a wave of courage wash over her. She raised her head. “But this is America,” she shouted in the strongest voice she had ever used. “We are all kinds of people, with all kinds of backgrounds. We all have the same rights because that is what this country stands for.”
“Ya, it sure does,” someone interjected in the silence.
Leah squared her shoulders. “And those rights include the right to live where we choose. To live here, in Smoke River.”
A sprinkling of guess-so’s and maybe’s came from her audience.
Leah raised her arms to include both sides of the room. “If you do not believe all of us here in Smoke River have these rights, stand up!”
Not one person moved.
She sucked in a long breath. “Now, about Ming Cha, my uncle Charlie. Charlie looks different from most of us, and that is because he is Chinese.”
“Yeah,” someone yelled. “But he sure makes good cakes!”
