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In New York City, people were beginning to ask questions: Why weren’t they allowed to hear Margaret Walker speak for herself? She had been the last person to see Will Fitzgerald alive—perhaps she had valuable information! Some in the city weren’t willing to accept what Detective Malloy and Mayor Jimmy were telling them about her. They wanted to hear her story told from her lips. Outside the jail, a growing number of protestors gathered, shouting for justice. From her cell, Margaret Walker listened to the swell of voices. She hoped by the time she got to speak, it would not be too late.
In his tiny apartment a few blocks from Tin Pan Alley, David Cohn kept his radio on. He’d read about the broadcasts in the Daily News. The sound of his lover’s voice coming through the speakers had brought him to tears. He missed Henry like nobody’s business. When this was all said and done, he intended to kiss Henry DuBois IV as he’d never been kissed before—enough to knock the doubt and the ghosts from that boy’s mind. David sat at his desk writing lyrics for a melody he couldn’t quite hear, but one that he knew Henry would. It was a love song. It was their love song. He prayed they would all survive long enough for Henry to sing it.
“Come home to me, Henry,” he whispered.
In her shop, Harlem’s number one banker, Madame Seraphina, listened, laughing softly, like a cat. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Fight on, Baby Oungan.”
Backstage at a Masonic lodge in Louisiana, Alma and Lupe heard the gossip from others
who’d been listening. Territory bands spreading the news as they went. “I tell you what, it’s really got me thinking about how things are—and how they could be,” somebody said. “How they should be,” Alma corrected.
Harriet Henderson also heard. Her fingers tapped against her typewriter keys, pecking out words of doubt and accusation.
Men in white hoods listened. They passed the word along to other men, who passed it along to Roy, who drove into the mythic West with a fire in his belly, Manifest Destiny come calling with both fists on the wheel.
The news reached Jake Marlowe in his laboratory deep in the majestic redwoods. “What do you mean you can’t tell where it’s coming from?”
“They’re doing some kind of Diviner hoodoo on it,” the Shadow Man explained. “Impossible to get a fix.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Jake said. He said that so often it had become his slogan. And as if to prove his point, at that moment the Eye began transmitting to him from the other dimension, delivering a message from the King of Crows himself.
“They’re coordinates,” Jake said. “He wants us to go to the desert. Death Valley.”
“When?” the Shadow Man asked. There were people in Washington who’d want answers, not questions.
“He didn’t say when. He has some new specifications for the Eye.”
Excitedly, Jake watched the instructions roll off.
Someone else had been listening, too.
One day followed the next. The bright blue mornings pushed up from the land like a barn raising, a promise of something solid and good. Sometimes, when Theta rubbed the washing against the scrub board in the steel tub and looked out at the waving wheat, she could swear she heard the ghostly thunder of buffalo running across the plains. She shut her eyes and let that sound rumble through her soul. Memphis wrote by lantern light every evening. Isaiah tended to the kittens, feeding them milk from an eyedropper, feeling like a proud father when they’d take a few toddling steps. Henry gave Mrs. Olson lessons on the family pump organ in the parlor so that she could play whenever the church organist went to visit her daughter’s family in Lincoln. Ling taught her how to make beans the way her father did in the restaurant, and Mrs. Olson, in turn, introduced Ling to her family’s recipe for apple butter, which Ling found so delicious she wanted to spread it on everything. She couldn’t wait to share it with her parents, back in their apartment on Doyers Street. And with Alma, wherever she might be. Ling hoped she was safe. Out here, surrounded by so much peaceful beauty and far from danger, it was easy to forget how great that danger actually was. But all they had to do was watch Evie fighting to regain her strength to be reminded.
Bill hadn’t worked the land in more than a decade, but it came back to him quickly. It felt good to use his hands, to remember the ways of the earth. But this time, it felt good because he was doing it for somebody who was not Mr. Burneside. At the thought of his name, Bill spat into the dirt. He’d tried, but he still couldn’t forgive the man for what had happened to Samson. Bill had cared for that powerful horse every day for five years. Theirs was a special bond. And Samson had died all because of an arrogant man’s pride. Bill had warned his boss not to take the horse out in that flood, but that pompous fool couldn’t let himself be wrong. In the end, Samson broke his leg, and it was Bill who’d had to ease the great animal’s passing. He’d cried the whole time. He’d loved that horse as he’d loved no other. Yes, it felt good to work the land on his own terms. The honesty of his body clearing and planting. He liked it out here under the big sky. Maybe he would have some land of his own yet. Maybe even a wife, a family.
Still. Late at night, he was unsettled. It was Isaiah’s vision about the ghosts on the road that continued to haunt him. Which road? When? The boy’s prophecies weren’t all easy to decipher, and this one kept Bill on edge. He vowed to stay sharp, looking out for any hint of danger. This he could do. Everybody had a part to play. These young bloods were the future. Bill’s part, as he saw it, was to do whatever he could to keep them safe.
PROPOSAL
Mrs. Olson had insisted that Evie sit on the porch steps and soak up the sun.
“It’ll do you good,” she said, patting Evie’s shoulder, then going inside to make a rhubarb pie that Evie could practically taste.
Sam entered the yard. He took off his cap and bowed. “Pardon me, aren’t you the Sweetheart Seer of Cowtown?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Evie said, rolling down her stockings and stretching out her legs. “But I’m not supposed to listen to a thing Sam Lloyd says. Doctor’s orders.”
“Speaking of doctor’s orders, when this is all over, I’m gonna take you to Goldberg’s Delicatessen on Fifth Avenue.”
“What’s so special about Goldberg’s Deli?”
“Doll, you have never had pastrami like this.”
“You know, I really thought this was going to be a much more romantic conversation.”
“What could be more romantic than sharing the world’s best pastrami sandwich?”
“I could think of a few things,” Evie said flirtatiously.
