Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (52 page)

Kent
liked
Macon
. Findley Ironworks would make the family tons more money, and there were some wonderful houses. Now he was checking the shopping scene. Miribelle was a damn Tartar when enraged. He wasn’t about to go home without answers to every question on her list.

One shop’s sign proclaimed
Leopold L. Lieb—Importer of Fine Groceries
. God was good. Life with Miribelle in
Macon
,
Georgia
might be tolerable after all.

He walked the aisles and thanked God again, and just as he was leaving, a laugh caught his ear. A good laugh, a pleasant combination of daintiness and heartiness. He glanced over at the counter. Fine figure of a woman, from the back, anyway, trim and small and reminiscent of Miribelle’s figure before childbirth. She’d never bounced back, turning
Kent
into a furtive but avid admirer of the female form.

Then she turned.
Kent
ducked back behind the nearest aisle. Lord God. Was that? Could it be? Yes. Definitely. His cousin David’s wife, who’d run away in the dark of night, carrying David’s unborn heir with her. Woman must have the luck of the devil, too, none of the Pinkerton agents ever caught the first scent of her. The child should have been born sometime in March and her figure definitely wasn’t pregnant. When she left the store, he moved to the counter.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Well, actually, my wife and I’ll be moving to town real soon and I was just browsing through.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, sir. I hope you’ve found everything you were looking for.”

“Oh, I did. I surely did. My wife’s goin’ be real happy here, I’m sure of it. As a matter of fact, that lady that just left?”

“Yes, sir?”

“She looks real familiar to me. In fact, I’m almost sure she’s a friend of my wife from finishing school days but her name escapes me right now. They were right close but they lost touch, you know how it is, and it sure would tickle me if I could go back and tell my wife I ran into her and she lives in
Macon
now. Life’s strange, ain’t it?”

“Yes sir, it sure is.”

“You happen to know who she might be?”

“Well, to be honest, sir, I’ve never seen her before. Usually, Sadie shops for Gorley House.”

“Gorley House?”

“It’s a shelter, sort of. The preacher for the black Episcopal Church runs it, Joshua Devlin. A combination shelter, orphanage, school.”

“But that lady’s white.”

“Well, Joshua Devlin’s place, it’s—different. See, he sort of works with folks nobody else wants, people don’t have nowhere else to go. He don’t bother anybody, I mean, it’s not like he’s one of them uppity niggers trying to be better than he is. He grew up here, raised by a real good white family who took him in, so I guess folks kind of overlook a lot of things they might not overlook otherwise. Besides, some of the white folks, the white churches, they give him a hand every now and then, one of their charities. Now that you mention it, she don’t much seem like she’s one of his street people.”

“You sure she’s from this Gorley House?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Charged it to the account and believe me, I wish some white folks paid their bills like Joshua Devlin does. And besides, she had Jerry with her. Jerry’s one of their orphans, usually comes in with Sadie, that’s Joshua’s mama, to help out with the weekly shopping, so I’m sure.”

“I see. Well, ‘preciate your time. I’m sure my wife’ll be adding to your business real soon now.”

“We’ll look forward to it, sir.”

Kent
walked out and stood on the streets, shaking his head. So that’s how she’d avoided leaving any traces. Hiding out with the niggers. Probably did it in every town she ran through on her way here.

Kent
grudgingly admitted she had a lot of spunk. He didn’t like his cousin, and he wouldn’t want one of his daughters marrying any man who remotely reminded him of David Wentworth. But she’d birthed a Wentworth child with the niggers? And was
raising
him with them? He hadn’t wanted to ask too many questions of the obliging clerk but if this Gorley House was a Church offshoot, he might ought to tour the local churches. He hadn’t checked out
Macon
’s religious circuit as yet. Actually, Miribelle hadn’t mentioned it. Church for her was a social function more than anything else but she ought to be impressed with his thorough investigation.

A big Presbyterian Church stood on the corner of—now, what were those streets? Mulberry and First, that was it. God, new towns were hell. He collected his horse and rode on down the street.

He emerged from the minister’s office knowing a lot more than he’d ever wanted to know about
Macon
’s First Presbyterian Church. More important, he knew a lot about Gorley House and Joshua Devlin. Tolerant city,
Macon
. Basically, the white folks just let him take care of the business of needy folks so they didn’t have to.

Visiting the police station probably wouldn’t work, even if he flat out told them his cousin’s runaway wife had kidnapped a child and demanded they make the recovery. Because he was pretty sure when the residents of Gorley House denied it, unbelievable as it was, the
Macon
police would take their word for it. After which, of course, Serena would be gone in about fifteen seconds. Besides, the Wentworths didn’t go through channels. They made their own.

He consulted the street map, turned his horse and trotted down to
Third Street
, turning onto
Congress Street
.

He rode casually by Gorley House. The huge, clean clapboard structure wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Well-fed, well-clothed children played in the side yard. But half the faces were white and half were black. And Serena was raising a Wentworth child here?

He rode back to Brown’s Hotel. The Wentworths didn’t have to listen when Joshua Devlin told them Serena wasn’t there. He needed back up. The telegram to
Greenville
raced through the wires before noon.
‘Found her.
Macon
. Advise arrival time.’

Kent
passed a profitable afternoon and evening waiting for his cousin’s train to pull into the depot. Upper class
Macon
might be just fine and dandy letting Joshua Devlin handle the problem of the needy. But he knew one class of
Macon
wouldn’t be fine and dandy with it at all.

There were in-between folks, uneducated maybe, but not entirely illiterate. Of course,
Kent
wasn’t looking for Harvard graduates. These men weren’t upper class, or even middle class, but they weren’t trash. Fiercely independent, many were from farm stock whose families had been forced to the city streets and closely built houses by droughts or floods or failed crops or hoof-in-mouth disease. They didn’t have a background of
noblesse oblige
. Most of them lumped all people with dark skin into one neat category: they were niggers.

Kent
wasn’t surprised to find the working class men who stopped in at the small bars on Third and Fourth Streets for a mug of beer on the way home didn’t like Gorley House or Joshua Devlin. In fact, they were of the opinion
Macon
would be a hell of a lot better off if somebody rode that nigger out of town on the rails and burned the entire shootin’ match to the ground. After all, nobody was giving
them
any hand-outs. Not that they’d take any hand-outs were they offered.

Kent
smiled and disbursed liquid refreshment with a liberal hand. By darkfall, he had the bars incensed, ready to help in the righting of this terrible wrong. Things had come to a damn fine pass when a man’s wife took off without a by-your-leave and stole his young’un. So what if the young’un wasn’t born yet, didn’t that damn woman have no idea what a man’s first son meant to him? Didn’t she have no respect, hiding out with the niggers? And that highfalutin’ Joshua Devlin, who talked like a white man and acted like he thought his shit didn’t stink, well, he’d just stuck his nose in one time too many where it didn’t belong and if the rich white folks in this town didn’t have the guts to put him in his place once and for all, they sure as hell did.

They’d like to see him try and stop them from helping their newfound friend and his cousin get that baby back. They purely would like to see it. They hoped they’d see it.

Kent
left them at eleven p.m. to meet his cousin at the train depot. He’d meet then at Gorley House with David.
Kent
paced impatiently, checking his watch. Damnation. Almost midnight. Would the damn train never pull in? Finally, it did. David Wentworth stalked across the terminal platform.

“Where the hell is she?” he demanded.

For the briefest space, Kent, irritated as hell by David’s attitude—no expression of thanks, no appreciation that his cousin had finally brought Serena to ground when battalions of Pinkertons hadn’t been able to—almost told his cousin he’d been mistaken. That he’d thought he’d found Serena but it hadn’t been her after all. But damn it all, a Wentworth baby was involved. Why the hell did there have to be a baby?

“At a church shelter,” he said shortly. “It’s called Gorley House. Now if you’ll shut up, I’ll tell you what we’re goin’ to do about it.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that!”

“I’ll talk to you any damn way I please! I spent all damn day on this, I got the whole thing set up! Now you just shut up and listen to me!”

David did.

“What the hell you mean the police wouldn’t be much help? We’re Wentworths, by God, they’ll do whatever the hell I tell ‘em to!”

“I don’t think so. And it don’t matter anyway. I got better than the police. I got a whole group of liquored-up transplanted sharecroppers waiting down from the house ready to go in that door right behind us. Every last one of ‘em despises niggers and hates this Devlin nigger’s guts.

When they rendezvoused with the mob, David had to admit
Kent
had done himself proud. Nobody was going to stop this group. If Serena was in that house, they’d find her. And his son.

“All right,” he said shortly. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Fourteen

In this hour past midnight, Gorley House was dark. The children slept soundly in their dormitory rooms in the rear of the building, sprawled with the careless abandon of childhood between their clean cotton sheets underneath thin veils of mosquito netting.

The dormitory rooms reserved for those temporarily in need of shelter were empty. In high summer, seasonal farm work was plentiful and the nights were warm. No transient street people needed shelter that night.

Sadie was awake. She sat in the kitchen on the side of the house, sipping weak tea. The rumbling nausea had finally departed and she’d slept off and on through the day. Now, she couldn’t sleep. She glanced out the window, looked away, and glanced back. Lantern light? Not out front, but she was sure she’d caught a lantern glimmer going around the side of the house toward the front door. Surely no one needed help at this hour in high summer. She groaned and got up to go check. Sometimes she wished Joshua had gone to medical school. She’d swear to the Lord fewer people knocked for Everett and Paul in the middle of the night.

She stood by the door. Nobody knocked, but there was definite movement and low rumblings of mumbled conversation. Well, no sense letting them wake the house.

She opened the door enough to peer out. What on earth? Eight or ten men, all of them white.

Kent
moved forward. He didn’t trust David to handle this situation.

“Good evening, ma’am, we’re sorry to trouble you this time of night.”

“Yes suh?”

David pushed his cousin out of the way and shoved Sadie backwards. Caught off guard, she fell heavily and struck her head against the sharp corner of the low table standing against the foyer wall. She tried to fight off the dancing motes of lights behind her eyes and regain her balance but gravity pulled her on down. Her head bounced hard off the hardwood floor. She went limp, momentarily knocked unconscious by the successive blows.

“Goddamn, you idiot! This ain’t no social event! I want that bitch! And I want my son!”

David started down the hall, his rag-tag vigilantes close behind.

“Goddamn it!”
Kent
exclaimed under his breath. The head-strong, stubborn, stupid son-of-a-bitch. And this idiot was the head of the sprawling Wentworth fortune? They’d best start stockpiling their money or it wouldn’t last long. David was one insane little bastard.

Kent
bent over Sadie, uncertain whether to pick her up. He heard the low mutters of the men and slamming doors as they moved throughout the house. He could check on the old woman later. Now he needed to follow David and see if he could keep the situation under control.

He froze at the bellow of rage.

“You whoring bitch! Ruttin’ with a nigger!”