“Alice Jean,” called the old nun from the dining room.
Tears rolled over Eleanor Anne’s cheeks. “One moment, Sister,” she said through silent sobs. Please, she mouthed to Lizette, don’t tell.
And with only the look on her face, Lizette promised she never would. She had no reason to. Besides, she needed to get back to work. There was a new dress to make, and this delivery had already taken too much of her time.
TWENTY-SIX
Shelter from the Storm
“Seems strange, don’t you think?” David said to Luz as he opened the office door to the street. It was late afternoon, the end of April. Luz was almost done with her shift. Sunlight moved around David’s shoulders and curly hair and pressed into the lobby.
“The thunder?” Luz asked.
“No, it’s too consistent,” David said, and stepped outside onto the sidewalk.
Luz stood from her desk and followed him into the warmish spring air. “What do you mean?” she called.
The sounds grew into a roaring pitch, a mass of jeers, their source concealed by the great gray city. The air turned. The sky was laced with a stinging cold. Several passersby had also noticed the unusual sounds, and they slowed to a stroll, faces turning toward the rumbling.
Luz stayed on the sidewalk and watched as David walked through the eerily traffic-less street, down the thin median surrounded by parked automobiles and dated brown carriages. He looked upon the horizon, where the sight of the road ended in the train station, nestled between brick offices and the backdrop of the mountains. Luz watched as David walked in his black suit. He moved gradually, but as the sounds grew, he sprinted until he reached what Luz suspected was a higher vantage point, the place he could see the source of all the commotion.
At once David turned and, with both arms waving, yelled for Luz to get inside. “Now,” he hollered, sprinting back in her direction. “Right now. Inside.”
Hairs rose along her neck. A darkness swirled overhead, dizzyingly strange, as if the city was about to be engulfed by a tornado.
“Now, Luz!” David ran to catch up to her on the sidewalk.
As David rushed toward her, Luz searched over his shoulders and scanned the long road once more. At the blurred edge of Seventeenth Street, in the space reserved for sky, Luz saw the unrelenting beginnings of a long white parade, men and women cloaked in robes, their pointed hoods bobbing along the horizon, an American flag displayed among the first row, a pine cross held high into the air. Luz hadn’t seen a Klan march with such numbers since her childhood, and the longer she stared, the more the parade revealed itself like a flopping white serpent emerging from the ground. A hateful moving body. In those fleeting moments as she stood on the sidewalk before David yanked her by the left wrist and guided them both inside the office, Luz stared at hundreds of Klan members. There was a section of women, their white faces rosy in the chilly afternoon, their small children, some no more than three or four years old, pulled along in red wagons. How could they bring their babies?
Once David pulled Luz into the office with him, she hunched forward, feeling as if she had swallowed stones. She coughed and sputtered in horror, half expecting herself to vomit rocks. David locked the door behind them. He directed Luz to close the curtains as he shut off the lights. He retrieved a wooden board from a cabinet and secured it across the front entrance, barricading them inside.
“Why are they marching now?” Luz asked as she fumbled with the blinds, her hands shaking. “There was no warning. I heard nothing, saw no flyers, nothing. I haven’t seen them out like this in years.”
“Into my office,” David whispered.
“How will we get home?”
Once they were inside his office, David locked and bolted the door. “You can’t leave, Luz. Neither of us can. Not until whatever it is they have planned comes to an end.”
Luz considered this and looked around the office, wondering what she could use as protection. All she had was the knife in her purse. “There’s so many more of them,” she said.
David asked her to take a seat in one of the black leather chairs for clients. He sat across from her at his desk and dropped his head between both hands. He sighed many times. “They’re considering opening a grand jury investigation into Estevan’s murder. Next month or so, likely. I just got the call.”
Luz leaned forward over the desk. She asked David what he meant.
“I was about to tell you. We could be celebrating right now.”
There was a sound like a hammer on the front door. Luz scooted away from the noise.
David looked at his papers, exhaled. “I don’t know what to say. But they’re not going to intimidate us.” He removed his suit jacket, laying it across his chair. He walked to the door, pressing his ear against the frosted glass. Luz could make out screams. David’s office had only three half windows toward the ceiling. The afternoon was fading into dusk. Luz focused on the dwindling sunlight as she listened for familiarity in any of the screams. She hoped no one she knew was being hurt.
David sat back down and was tinkering with an electric kettle atop his desk. From a wooden box with the words FINEST EMPIRE TEA, he scooped out tea leaves and with them filled two ball-like metal strainers. He gazed at Luz as he waited for water to boil.
“I’m sorry I have no food in here. They say it brings rats from the sewers.”
“Oh,” Luz said. “I couldn’t possibly eat with this going on outside anyway.”
“Fair enough.”
When David finished making tea, he stood and wheeled the metal tray beside Luz. He took a seat in the second black leather chair across from his desk, so that his knee was slightly touching the edge of Luz’s thigh. He handed her a cup on a plain saucer, steam rising into her face and hair. It was good tea, expensive, full-bodied black.
“How long do you think…until it’s over?” Luz asked.
“No idea,” David said in between sips. “If they’re doing a cross burning, this could go on until midnight or so.”
They both jerked as glass shattered in the front office, as if a brick had been thrown through the windows. David held his finger to his mouth. Shhhh, he mouthed and motioned for Luz to get under the desk. In case anyone should make it into the office, he whispered. Luz slinked from her chair and crawled over the rugs until she reached David’s desk, retreating deep into its walnut undercarriage. She pressed her body against the wood and looked out at her knees. Night had fallen, and beneath the desk it was dark, though just beyond, where David now crawled on his hands and knees, the room was a bluish gray.
When David entered the space, he pressed himself beside Luz. He smelled strongly of Ivory soap, his breath opulent with the aroma of black tea. Their bodies remained strict and silent—only the sounds of their heavy breathing passed between them. Luz prayed inside her mind that no one would enter the office, drag them out, beat them in the street—she imagined the horde, their jeers at the Greek lawyer and his spic clerk, lawing for the rights of the underclasses. Luz clenched her jaw to keep herself from crying out in fear. Then, from far off, they heard car horns and hollering, an indication that the march, the parade, the hate-fueled mob, was nowhere near finished. How long were they to stay there, packaged together like canned meat?