The Hidden Library (18 page)

Finn’s fist pulls back, ready for a third punch, but the pregnant woman slides between their bodies. “Stop it! For the love of God, you two must stop this fighting!”

“I warned you,” Finn snaps. Instead of a punch, he juts out a finger, past the woman at the wobbly man.

A crowd swells the hallway. Curious eyes all angle toward the two men and the sobbing lady.

“Do something!” she shouts at me.

If I was not so concerned she might immediately go into labor from her histrionics, I just very well might have laughed. But while her tear-streaked face produces no pity within me, I also know that a burgeoning crowd in a town already on edge thanks to war is not the most favorable of places to air grievances. “If you truly want this to cease, then persuade Sawyer to depart at once.”

She is shocked by my ambivalence. She clearly would not last a full day in Wonderland.

A hand grabs hold of Finn’s shirt. “Please, Huck. I know you’re mad. But—”

He jerks away, leaving her stumbling. “Are you fucking serious, Becky?
Mad?
You think I’m just
mad
at this sack of shit?”

Sawyer’s eye has swollen shut. He is a pitiful-looking thing if there ever was one.

Becky breaks into heaving sobs again. I sigh and push my way into the hallway. A quick scan locates the innkeeper. “You there. Come and take this woman to somewhere more discreet. And be quick about it, lest you wish to have a babe born upon your floors.”

The heavyset man with a handlebar mustache rumbles forward. “You come with me, Mrs. Sawyer. I’ll get you a nice cup o’ tea.”

She resists, though. Sobs some more. “Don’t you dare kill him. Do you hear me Huck Finn? Don’t you dare! He’s got a family!”

Finn’s words rattle the walls. “Jim didn’t? What about his kids?”

The murmuring crowd goes silent. Even Becky has finally gone quiet, albeit hiccupping.

Jim was the name of Finn’s friend, the freed slave he said was the only from childhood he ever felt a true kinship with. And now . . . is Finn saying Jim is dead?

“You act as if I was the one to pull the noose,” Sawyer garbles, and Finn pushes past Becky and punches him again so hard, the man slumps once more to the ground. He is still conscious, though. Barely, but his dazed eyes look up at Finn, blinking in shock.

Becky resumes her hysteria.

“Take her,” I order the innkeeper.

He jabbers, “This is a peaceful establishment! I won’t put up with this kind of—”

“But you’ll stand back and watch innocent people lynched,” Finn rages. “Right? Or, is the only kind of violence you accept the kind against people you don’t even consider people, because they’re nothing more than property to you? Because their skin isn’t the same color as ours?”

Frenzied whispering of Northern sympathies surface.

“He’s been dead going on ten years now,” Sawyer mumbles. “It ain’t like—”

Finn rounds on him, his hand closing around Sawyer’s throat as he shoves the man up against the wall. “Say it,” he hisses. “Go ahead and try to justify, once more, what you’ve done. And I don’t care if it’s been ten years or ten minutes. Jim was my friend.”

The innkeeper finally pulls Becky away, with threats of fetching the sheriff.

Tears leak out of Sawyer’s eyes. “You don’ understand, you—”

“You’re right.” Finn’s fingers tighten, leaving Sawyer gasping. “Because here’s the thing: Jim was good to you. He risked
everything
to ensure you were okay after you got shot. Remember that? When you were an idiot and went and got shot? Hell, of course you do. You still wear the damn bullet around your neck like a badge of honor! But Jim risked his freedom to get you help. And what for? You knew he’d been freed by Miss Watson.
You knew.
And yet, you nearly allowed him to get killed all so you could chase your fucking high.”

Sawyer’s eyes roll back in his head. The pieces of Finn’s puzzle begin to slide into place. Suddenly, I am reminded of a framed photograph in Finn’s bedroom, of a dark-skinned man with eyes crinkled and a warm smile. A younger Finn stands beside him, his arm around the older man’s shoulder.

“How does it feel?” Finn’s voice is filled with fury. “Knowing the life is being choked out of you? Wondering if your last breath is almost here? Did you ever wonder what it was like for
him
that night?”

The crowd is so thick, I would not be able to traverse down either side of the hallway if I even desired to. I touch his shoulder, and immediately, Finn lets go of the swine. “You killed him anyway,” he spits out. “You fucking
led
them to him.”

Sawyer coughs gasps, his hands instinctively, protectively, going to his own throat.

“He was my friend, and you led a group of murderers straight to him. You stood back while they beat him and then hung him from a tree. You did nothing to stop them! You were there, weren’t you? I bet you watched the whole damn thing!”

My blood turns cold. Any shred of pity I might have for Sawyer dies a quick death.

But Finn isn’t done. “You then stood by while they cut him down and then burned his body. You did all this to a man who was warm and gentle and generous, a man who had a family and whose heart was wasted on a piece of trash like you.”

Sawyer cries silently, still slumped on the ground. The crowd moves closer, disgustingly eager for every word.

“Becky says I shouldn’t kill you because you have a family.” Finn squats down. “Did that stop you from letting your slave-loving buddies know where Jim was hiding?”

Sawyer says nothing as he stares at his former friend.

“What the hell happened to you, Tom? I knew you were a selfish bastard, but I didn’t think you were so evil. Jesus, I was blind, wasn’t I? What kind of person are you? You sell out your friends, you buy your way out of the war . . .” He shakes his head. “You’re a coward.”

“H-h-huck,” Sawyer mumbles, as if words are physically painful to utter. “Y-you—”

“Don’t you dare apologize. Your apologies are worthless.
You’re
the one who chose to get involved with Southern sympathizers. You are the one who fell in with anti-abolitionists.”

“I didn’t know at first! They were just—”

Finn refuses to let him finish. “Your excuses mean nothing.”

“I did my best to separate myself from them once I saw what they were up to!”

Finn is not swayed one bit.

“You don’t understand, they threatened Becky when I told them I—”

“I. Don’t. Care.” Finn stands back up, his hands curling into fists. And then, “I have a lot of regrets about my fucked-up childhood. But you’re the biggest of all.”

Fat tears streak down Sawyer’s face. “Don’t say that, Huck. We can—”

Finn is merciless. “Don’t ever contact me again. Is that clear?”

“But . . . I’m the liaison for—”

“We are going to go to your house,” Finn continues, “and I am going to collect every last piece of equipment. And I swear to God, if you say one thing to me during the handover, I will not hesitate to finish what I should have started all those years ago. The only reason you’re even breathing right now is because my parents physically restrained me from coming the day you told me about Jim.”

A murmur ripples through the crowd. A singular word sticks out like a sore thumb, and it has me immediately on the defense. I touch Finn’s shoulder again. I murmur, “We need to go.”

Sawyer has begun babbling. His words are hard to understand, coming from such swollen lips and a bruised jaw, and it only further enrages my partner.

In any normal situation, I would not hesitate to stand back and allow Finn to extract whatever bits of justice he feels necessary. His compass has not steered us wrong before. But if the crowd is correct, his reluctant visit to 1876/96TWA-TS will become much longer than the singular day he’d hoped for.

“Finn.” My grip on his arm is firmer. “This coward is not worth any further time. We need to go. Now.”

The crowd’s murmurings intensify just as Finn stands back up. And then Sawyer says, “If you just listen to reason—”

Finn’s fist first meets Sawyer’s stomach and then his bloody face once more. The man finally slumps to the ground, unconscious. And still, Finn hits him again. Kicks him.

A harsh voice yells out, “Put your hands up, or I’ll shoot.”

There is a gun pointed our way, and a badge on a coat. Finn’s hands slowly rise, and when his eyes meet mine, there is no regret in them.

The next few minutes are a flurry of confusion. The town’s doctor has been summoned, and I am agog when the crowd sympathizes more with Sawyer than Finn. My partner is placed into rudimentary handcuffs, and the whole while, the only thing he says is, “It’ll be okay, Alice.”

I immediately go for my dagger, hidden beneath the folds of this massive dress I’m trapped within. Finn shakes his head when he recognizes my intent, as if he knows even I cannot fight our way out of so many people in this tiny hallway.

Helplessness, the worst of all emotions, clamors just under my skin. Arguing with the sheriff does no good. And when I move to follow them, the grizzled man puts a hand out. “Ma’am, I’m requesting you stay behind. Jails ain’t a place for ladies such as yourself.”

Finn mouths, “Get the equipment.”

My blood boils when the sheriff roughly shoves Finn down the hallway. The crowd is scandalized my partner would dare to put his hands on an upstanding citizen like Sawyer. Those who recognize him shout about how they knew he’d never grow up good. One elderly lady says something along the lines of, “He was a devil of a child, and all of his godlessness has come home to roost.”

It takes supreme will to not to knock her down on her arse.

The crowd surges behind the sheriff and Finn, jeering and calling for blood, and I do my best to push through. The moment I reach the door, though, there is a pair of men who must have heard the sheriff’s inane order, because they remind me that it would be best I go back upstairs and rest.

One dares to put his hands on me. I inform him that if he does so again, he will most assuredly lose said hand. And I am close to following through when I force myself to remember that getting myself incarcerated is not the best way to free Finn. That said . . .

Sobbing makes its way out of the inn, informing me that Sawyer’s wife must still be inside.

A decision is made.

I make my way back in and follow the weeping. Sure enough, Becky Sawyer sits inside a small sitting room, a cup of tea clattering in her hands as she acts as if Armageddon has descended upon us. A woman I do not recognize waits with her.

“Get out,” I tell the woman.

She scurries away. I shut the door behind her, lock it, and then for good measure, drag over a nearby chair and wedge it beneath the knob. The insipid woman upon the couch shrieks, and I have no other choice than to slap her smartly across the face—not hard by any means, but just enough to focus her attention.

“My God, woman,” I snap. “Will you pull yourself together? This cannot be good for you or the babe.”

She gapes at me, but luckily, her outrage supplants weeping.

I pry the cup and saucer from her hands and sit down in a chair across from the couch she’s draped across. “Now that you have ceased your ridiculousness, we will have a talk, you and I.”

“Is-is Tom—”

“A doctor is tending him as we speak. No doubt, despite his revolting cowardice and highly despicable morality, he will recover with little more than a concussion, a few broken bones, and undoubtedly much wounded pride.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispers, and I hold up a hand.

She and Sawyer have said this far too often tonight. “Then make me understand.”

Her eyes flit to the doorway and then back to me. I calmly pour a fresh cup of tea from the pot sitting on a nearby tray. “Have no fear, Mrs. Sawyer. You are in no danger of physical harm from me, at least on this night. I merely have questions that require answers.”

She swallows, yet accepts the drink I offer her.

“Now,” I say, pouring myself a cup as well. “Let us discuss what it is I do not understand.”

“Huck is being unreasonable,” she whispers. “He’s hurt Tom so much all these years by refusing to listen.”

“Forgive me for being so blunt, but am I wrong in assuming your husband had something to do with the murder of a man named Jim?”

Becky blinks at me, dumbfounded. “Well, now, it ain’t as easy as that.”

“Was the man in question lynched?”

She blinks some more. “Yes, but . . .”

“Was he guilty of any crime? Jim, I mean?”

More blinking.

“Theft, perhaps? Murder? Rape? Robbery? Something that would even remotely justify such a heinous punishment?”

Stammering occurs, with very little substance behind it. Becky Sawyer is nothing but a mimsy, I realize.

“Mrs. Sawyer, where I come from, lynching is a despicable crime that requires the most severe of punishments. It is one I have no tolerance for in any circumstance. Now, perhaps you can explain instead what it is you think Finn is not understanding about this situation.”

Over the course of the next quarter of an hour, Becky informs me of how Tom met up with anti-abolitionists prior to their marriage when he moved to Southern Missouri to work for a few years. They were, she claimed, charming and convincing about their beliefs, and Tom—whom she insists is good-hearted and far too trusting—fell prey to their ideology. This was before the war, when Missouri was newly flooded with both abolitionists and pro-slavery groups, each eager to sway others to their causes when it came to the beating of the war drums. Always up for an adventure, Tom was keen to get involved somehow with the furor gripping the area, but went about it, in Becky’s mind at least, all wrong.

“His friends ended up being affiliated with anti-abolitionists.” Her voice trembles. “When Tom figured this out, he thought it best to leave. They weren’t having none of it, though. Said they had to ensure Missouri aligned with the Confederacy instead of the North.”

I have no patience for Tom if his stupidity was truly so strong he could not see his acquaintances for who they really were. “How does this tie to Jim’s lynching?”

Her lower lip quivers as she stares down at her cold cup of tea. “They wanted a show, and started to flush out freed slaves. They didn’t think it was right, that blacks be free.”