Chapter 38 #2
“I have made my living,” she continues, “by understanding the difference between a secret that belongs to me and one only placed temporarily in my care. There are gentlemen standing before me now who have trusted me with business arrangements, family troubles, political preferences, debt, illness, false names, true names, and affections their wives might find educational.”
A few women turn to look at their husbands.
Lord have mercy. Goldie ain’t fired a shot, but I can smell blood.
She opens the ledger. Pages whisper in the damp air.
“I could read from this book,” she says.
“I could read all afternoon. I could explain who met with Mr. Everett in my blue parlor and on which dates. Who carried which messages. Who purchased which girl’s silence, which deputy’s attention, which newspaperman’s ink, which surveyor’s signature, which mapmaker’s conscience. ”
Everett’s face changes. Just a little. Like a door closing in his eyes.
Goldie looks down at the street. “But I will not.”
The crowd blinks at her, confused.
She lifts her chin. “Because unlike some men, I know the value of restraint. I know the cost of careless accusation. I know that one secret shouted loose in public can take innocent wives, children, and households down with guilty men. And I have responsibilities.”
Her gaze sweeps the crowd. It touches men one by one. I see them feel it.
“I can say only this,” Goldie continues. “Everett is not an honest man. I have proof enough to satisfy my own conscience and more than enough to trouble his. I have proof that his dealings with Hollister Timber have been dirtier than the boots of any outlaw standing under my roof.”
Everett steps down from the wagon bench to the crate, then thinks better of it and climbs back up, needing height. His hand trembles worse now.
“That is a lie,” he calls. “A desperate lie from a woman who profits by corruption.”
Goldie’s smile turns bright.
The first man steps forward from near the blacksmith’s awning.
He’s short, bald, mustache drooping over his mouth. I saw him day we arrived, back at a faro table, drunk enough to mistake his own cards for somebody else’s.
He clears his throat.
“I seen the Aces that night.”
My heart stops. Okee’s head turns slightly.
“The night they say all that happened. I remember clear. They were at the Gemini. Drinking with me.”
A hush falls.
Everett rounds on him. “You remember no such thing.”
The man’s face sweats under his hat. “I do.”
Another man steps forward. Younger. Nervous. Good coat. “I saw ’em too,” he says.
More men shift.
A third says, “They were here.”
A fourth, “I can swear it.”
Okee’s mouth falls open and he cuts me a look.
Everett’s control cracks. “Lies,” he snaps.
“Every one of you. Lying to protect your vices. Your debts. Your filthy little arrangements in that house.” Everett points toward Goldie.
“You would believe them? You would believe bought men and whores over the word of a Christian man? Over the law? Over decency?”
The hymn singers falter.
Goldie closes the ledger. The sound carries.
“Mr. Everett,” she says, voice high and clear. “I do not care what god you believe in, nor what pew you warm with that lying hide on Sunday mornings.”
A stunned little gasp moves through the crowd.
Goldie lifts one hand toward the gray sky. “But may God or Zeus or anybody else up there strike me down where I stand if I am lying. May he split the sky and burn the whole damn Gemini to its painted bones.”
For one heartbeat, nothing happens. Then Everett bends double and vomits blood.
It comes out of him sudden and terrible, splattering dark across the wagon bench, the crate, his gloves. The sound of it is wet and wrong, and the whole street recoils like one creature.
Women scream.
A horse rears.
The hymn breaks apart.
Everett tries to straighten, but his knees buckle. One hand claws at his throat. Blood shines on his lips, his mustache, his chin. His eyes go wide, like his own body has betrayed him.
Someone cries, “God struck him!”
Another shouts, “He lied!”
“Punished!”
“The Lord’s judgment!”
“Zeus!” somebody yells, sounding half drunk and wholly terrified. “She called Zeus!”
Oh, hell.
Men who five seconds ago wanted us hanged now start backing away from Everett like sin is catching.
Goldie looks at the sky with one brow lifted, as if mildly impressed by the promptness of ancient gods.
Everett collapses against the wagon wheel.
Deputy Hepburn drops from the rear bench, face white. “Mr. Everett!”
That’s when Lula moves. The canvas flap snaps open. She steps out of the wagon before Hepburn can catch her, shawl clutched tight around her shoulders, hair coming loose, face pale as candle wax and eyes burning green.
The whole world narrows.
“Lula,” I breathe.
Okee is already moving.
So am I.
Pearl hisses behind us, “No—”
Too late.
We run down the stairs so fast I near take the last four in one leap. The Gemini erupts around us. Girls shouting. Men ducking away. Goldie’s voice somewhere above, commanding calm.
We hit the front doors together.
The crowd sees us and surges back, then forward, then don’t know what the hell to do.
I don’t care.
Lula stands in the mud beside the wagon.
Everett groans at her feet, one gloved hand smeared red where he’s pressed it to his mouth. Hepburn reaches for Lula’s arm.
I draw my pistol.
“Touch her and lose the hand.”
My voice don’t sound like mine. It sounds low and old and mean enough that Hepburn freezes.
Okee steps beside me, rifle up.
The crowd backs another half step.
Lula looks at me, then at Okee, and for a second all the noise falls away. Her face changes into something fiercer. Like she’s seen shore after drowning and means to drag herself the last few feet.
Then she turns to the crowd.
“No,” she says.
It ain’t loud.
But it lands.
“No,” she says again, stronger. “You do not get to make this another lie.”
Everett coughs, blood bubbling at his lips. “Mrs. Clay—”
“Be quiet,” Lula says.
He does.
She takes one step forward. Her boots sink in mud.
“My name is Lula Clay. I was with the Bowering expedition on the Verdigris. We were not surveyors. We were not soldiers. We were botanists, note-takers, assistants, working people, and women who had the audacity to write down what men with money wished hidden.”
The crowd holds still.
Behind me, I feel Okee lower his rifle a fraction. Lula’s hands tremble, but her voice does not.