Real Mustard
I adjusted the crisp folds of my traveling dress, already regretting how fine it was.
Every dart and button screamed of better company than the one I was currently keeping.
The cabin smelled like chicken fat and something pickled.
I sat bolt upright, back like a ruler, like my posture alone might protect me from the indignity of it all.
The seats were stiff and narrow, upholstered in a coarse fabric that scratched even through my gloves.
Every face looked hard up, but it was surprisingly worldly in this cabin.
I counted at least four languages. Across the aisle, a woman cradled a baby wrapped in a quilt that—God help me—smelled like onions.
Actual onions. The baby wept as if it knew where we were.
I don’t hate traveling. I love the idea of it—trains especially. The glamour of departure, the suggestion of progress, the elegant inevitability of arrival. But this was not that kind of train. This was penance on wheels.
I was supposed to be riding first class.
Well, not first first class but Negro first class: second class.
My monogrammed trunk should have been tucked away in a proper compartment, my hat carefully stored, and a porter—preferably well spoken and deferential—should have been offering me tea or a blanket by now.
Instead, I was wedged between a farmer who kept spitting into a tin and a woman whose hat looked like it had been sat on by a mule.
I hated this train.
I hated the grimy windows, the ticket I no longer even had, and the man—the porter, or whoever he was—who’d snatched it from me like he owned my whole journey.
I kept scanning the aisle, waiting to catch another glimpse of him.
How had he known my name? Why had he pushed me aboard like he’d been expecting me?
No answers. Just soot-streaked glass and a view of the bayou slowly dissolving into fields. I curled my fingers around the hem of my dress, right where the emergency cash was sewn into the lining. My little fortress of forethought.
The train shuddered. My past billowed behind me like the smoke curling from the engine, gray and impossible to hold.
The baby across the aisle wailed again, and the mother hushed it with a sweet little rhythm.
The train lurched to a stop, throwing her forward. The farmer disembarked—thank God—with his spit tin and his molasses breath, muttering something about “feed” and “cousins.” I resisted the urge to wipe the seat with my handkerchief. The mother and her screaming baby stayed, though.
No sooner had he cleared the threshold than a woman heaved herself onto the train. She was either pregnant or stealing an entire ham.
She wore a shapeless muslin dress and carried a small square suitcase. The box thudded onto the floor as she lowered herself beside me with a grunt.
Without a word, she reached across me—across me—and held something over the squalling baby. A small glass dropper.
“Sugar water,” she muttered.
The mother nodded, desperate, and opened the child’s mouth. The pregnant woman squeezed the dropper and miraculously, the baby went quiet. Not a fuss, not a hiccup. And for hours everyone in our row could breathe again.
“Lessie Mae,” the woman beside me finally said, nodding once before popping open the suitcase—which turned out to be a tin lunch box.
Inside: warm buttered biscuits. Ham sandwiches. A holy scent lifted into the air like a hymn. Half the compartment swooned on instinct.
A man reached out to grab one, and Lessie Mae snapped the tin shut like a bear trap.
“Ten cents, please.”
He reared back. “Ten cents? I could get a whole box of biscuits for thirty cents!”
“You’re welcome to the box then,” she said.
He blinked. Then shuffled off. But others surged forward—coins clinking in open palms, some throwing nickels, others dimes, one dramatic woman dropping a silver dollar like she expected applause.
Lessie worked the aisle like a practiced showgirl, taking orders, making change, never once standing up.
I turned just in time to catch the mother across from us—baby now passed out in sugar-soaked bliss—staring at the last biscuits in the tin like they might sprout wings and fly into her mouth. Then she looked away, ashamed of the wanting.
Without thinking, I reached into my reticule and flicked a quarter into Lessie’s open hand.
“Last two,” I said. “Plus, a tip for your trouble.”
Lessie winked. “Whew. Sorry folks, I’m sold out.” But she looked proud. As well she should. The train staff hadn’t so much as offered our section a glass of water, let alone ham on warm bread. I studied her sidelong. She was sharp. Resourceful.
Wordlessly, I passed one of the sandwiches to the baby’s mother. She hesitated—because that’s what pride does—but the baby stirred, and hunger does not argue long.
She took it. Tore into it with the quiet ferocity of a woman who knew this was the best meal she’d get for days.
I looked out through the cracked partition, pretending not to watch her.
I had a nice view of second class, though. Too fine to be poor, too poor to be fine. I caught sight of the man. The man who had robbed me, shoved me, named me. The so-called porter. I moved toward him like a bullet.
He was sitting in a sunbeam, positively lounging and eating a sandwich like someone without a single regret in the world. Roast beef, from the looks of it. Thick bread. Real mustard.
I slapped it out of his hands.
He didn’t even look surprised.
“I was wondering when you’d find me,” he said.
“This is my seat, you louse,” I hissed, arms folded, voice low enough to remain respectable. “Shouldn’t you be serving the passengers?”
He raised an eyebrow, chewing slowly. “Oh, you mean that porter’s suit?” He glanced down at the blue coat, now rumpled and unbuttoned. “Bit too tight, wasn’t it?”
I froze.
He wasn’t even a porter.
He wasn’t employed by this train. He was just some stranger in a borrowed uniform, a walking scandal, a thief with good posture.
“You—you stole a uniform!”
“Technically,” he said, licking mustard off his thumb, “I borrowed it. I’ll be returning it at the next major station. In better condition than I found it, I might add.”
“I—I could have you arrested!”
“Yes,” he said, nodding agreeably. “Or you could sit down here and talk to me, Caroline.”
I glared at him. “How do you know my name?” I demanded.
He looked up at me then, eyes dark and gleaming, like he found me terribly amusing—which, frankly, I couldn’t allow.
He stood and dusted off his coat. I thought he was leaving.
Instead, he reached into the inside pocket and pulled out… my ticket.
Neatly folded. Unsullied.
He pressed it into my glove like a love letter.
“I just wanted to look out the window for a spell,” he said.
He slipped past me and out the back of the car. I noticed something else tucked in with the ticket: a calling card. No name. Just a hand-drawn sketch of a crow in flight, and on the back, in that same neat hand:
Major Washington
Bounty Hunter