The Diviners (71 page)

A gust of wind howled across the cobblestones of Doyers Street, rattling the paper lanterns of the Tea House. In the back room, the girl with the green eyes came out of her trance with a gasp.

“What is it?” the older man asked. “What did you see?”

“Nothing. I saw nothing.”

He frowned. “They told me you had the power to walk in dreams, to talk with the dead.”

She shrugged and took his money. “Maybe the dead want nothing to do with you.”

“I am an honorable man!” he yelled.

“We’ll see.”

“You are a liar! A half-breed with no honor!” the man accused. On the way out, he banged the front door so hard it shook the windows.

The young man came out of the kitchen, looking scared. “I thought you said you could keep the ghosts away.”

The girl stared out the window. “I was wrong.”

Mabel could barely study for the hubbub in the other room. Her parents were having one of their meetings. The conversation had
grown more heated in the past twenty minutes, and she could tell this meeting would stretch into the wee hours.

“We do not endorse violence,” Mr. Rose said. “We are about reform, not revolution.”

“Without revolution, there can be no reform. Look at Russia,” a man with a thick accent insisted.

“Yes, look at Russia,” another said. “Chaos.”

“What about the workers? If we don’t stand together, we fall. Unity is strength.”

Mabel poked her head out to see what was happening. The room was teeming with smoke and people. Papers and pamphlets were strewn everywhere. Her mother was holding forth about the conditions at a garment factory where the women weren’t protected.

“Just like at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory,” she explained.

Mabel was startled to see a handsome young man sitting on the settee. He was looking right at her, and she was sure she recognized him from somewhere. Mabel went back to her room and crawled out onto the fire escape for some fresh, crisp air. A moment later, the handsome man crawled through the window to join her.

“Remember me?”

“From Union Square,” Mabel said as the memory came back to her. “You saved me.”

He stuck out his hand. “Arthur Brown.”

“Mabel Rose,” she said, shaking it.

His smile was wry. “I know.”

“Shouldn’t you be in there with the others?”

“They’ll just spend the next hour arguing and getting nowhere,” he said, laughing, and Mabel smiled. That was exactly how these evenings tended to go. “In the end, they’ll agree to give another speech or write an editorial in the paper. Maybe they’ll try to unionize workers on the docks or picket a business or two.”

“Isn’t that good?” Mabel asked.

“They call themselves radicals, but they’re not, really.”

“And you are, I suppose?” Mabel felt a little insulted on her parents’ behalf. “My parents have sacrificed a great deal for the good of others.”

Arthur Brown’s gaze was unyielding. “Including their daughter?”

Mabel felt the remark in her marrow. Her cheeks reddened. “That was rude.”

“Yes, it was. I’m sorry. They mean well.”

Mabel cocked her head. “But…?”

Arthur smiled in an apologetic way. “There are times when change needs a little help. There’s a group of us who want to bring about change faster. Our way. If you want to meet up with us sometime, we could use a smart girl like you.”

“I’m usually helping my parents,” Mabel said.

He nodded. “Of course. Forget I mentioned it. It doesn’t have to be a meeting. There’s a joint nearby that makes the best egg creams. You like egg creams?”

He had big brown eyes. Mabel felt a small electric thrill when she looked into them. “Doesn’t everybody?”

He reached inside his jacket and Mabel saw the outline of a gun. “Here’s my card.”

Mabel stared at the black lettering.
ARTHUR BROWN
.

“Is that really your name?” she asked.

He smirked. “It is now.”

Mabel shivered in the chilly air. “I should get back to my studying.”

“Pleasure, Mabel Rose.” He tipped his hat and held the window open for her before returning to the dining room and the arguing, which, Mabel knew, would go on well into the night.

From the safety of her bedroom, she watched Arthur Brown
make his passionate points. He spoke with confidence for someone so young. At one point, he caught her eye and smiled, and Mabel quickly ducked out of sight. She deliberated for a moment, then opened the secret drawer inside her music box and put Arthur Brown’s card inside.

In the ramshackle apartment in the old Bennington, Miss Addie turned away from the window and fretted about in her room, trying to figure out what to do next. At last she called out to her sister. “Let me change my dress, sister.”

She emerged a few moments later in an old nightgown and an apron. “Now.”

Miss Lillian brought one of the cats from the kitchen, a tabby named Felix who was a fairly decent mouser, which was a shame. He was limp in her arms after the cream and opium. She laid him on the kitchen table, which had been covered in newspapers. Humming, Miss Addie opened a drawer in the secretary and took out a dagger. The dagger was as sharp as it was old.

“That’s a nice tune, sister. What is it?” Lillian asked.

“Something I heard on the radio. It was sung by a soprano, but I didn’t like her voice. Too reedy.”

“So often that’s the case,” Miss Lillian clucked. “Are we ready?”

“The time is now,” Miss Addie said. Miss Lillian held fast to Felix, whose small heart began to pound. He tried to squirm but was too woozy to do much.

“It’ll all be over soon, kitty,” Miss Lillian assured him. She closed her eyes and spoke in long tangles of words, old as time, as
Miss Addie plunged the knife into the cat’s belly, making the necessary incision. The cat stilled. She reached into the stomach cavity and pulled out its intestines, plopping them into a bowl. Some got on her apron and she was glad she’d changed first. She stared into the bowl, frowning. Miss Lillian left the cat’s bloodied corpse and joined her.

“What is it, sister?”

“They’re coming,” Miss Addie said. “Oh, dear sister, they are coming.”

In the quiet museum, Will sat at his desk, the green glow of the banker’s lamp the only light. Earlier, he’d noticed the plain sedan parked across the street and the two men in dark suits sitting inside, watching. One of them ate nuts from a paper bag, dropping the shells out the window. Will had locked up and, whistling a carefree tune, strolled to a nearby Automat with a view of the museum for a sandwich and coffee, which he barely touched. Only when he’d seen the sedan drive away did he return to the museum, frowning at the break in the piece of cellophane he’d left across the doorjamb. He took a long, slow walk through the building, examining each room. After a careful inventory, he saw that nothing was missing. It had just been a look-around. For now.

Will craned his neck to gaze at the room’s mural, the angels and devils hanging above the hills, plains, and rivers, above the patriots, pioneers, Indians, and immigrants of the new world. Then, in the hushed green glow of the old library, he walked the stacks until he came to a large leather-bound edition of the Declaration of Independence. From inside its pages, he retrieved a worn
envelope. The envelope had been stamped on the upper-right-hand corner:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF PARANORMAL, 1917
. He opened the file to the first page.

Memorandum. To: William Fitzgerald, Jacob Marlowe, Rotke Wasserman, Margaret Walker

Top Secret.

Project Buffalo.

Will sat at the desk, rereading the file. When he had finished, he sat staring into the shadows.

He sat for a very long time.

The land was a pledge, and the land was an idea of freedom, born from the collective yearning of a restless nation built on dreams. Every rock, every creek, every sunrise and sunset seemed a bargain well-struck, a guarantee of more. The land was robust. Rivers ran swiftly by on currents of desire. Purple mountains crowned sweet-grassed plains. A rejoicing of elms and oaks, mighty redwoods and sheltering pines sang across hillsides that sloped gently toward valleys grateful for their song. Telephone poles jutted up beside roads, their lonely wires stretched across the open fields, thin promises of connection. Ramshackle hickory fences of the kind that made good neighbors bordered rustic farmhouses, curved around red barns and stoic windmills. Corn rustled lightly in warm breezes.

In the towns, there were Main Streets of the sort that lined the halls of hazy, fond memory. A church steeple. Barbershop. Ice-cream parlor. Town square and a public green perfect for picnicking. Butcher. Baker. Candlestick maker. On the far side of the fabled towns, covered bridges made beautiful in the reflected glory of fall foliage hovered atop streams rich with fish fit for a wounded
king. In the courthouse under a wheezing ceiling fan, the women’s fingers busied themselves with needlepoint—
HOME SWEET HOME
,
GOD BLESS AMERICA
—and their husbands fanned themselves with folded newspapers as an argument droned on about whether man had been fashioned in the image of a master craftsman, wound with a key at the back and set into motion to play his part in a mysterious destiny, preordained, or had crawled from the mud and trees of the jungles, cousin to the beasts, an evolutionary experiment of free will let loose in a world of choice and chance. No verdict was reached.

The roads needed room. They stretched. They roamed and conquered. Past the open ranges. The deer and the antelope. The buffalo. Past the tribes pushed to the sides under the watch of the cross, for this nation has its reservations. They kept pace beside the railroad, that great steel spine of progress, backbone of industry. The cicadas’ song joined the song of the steam-train whistle, the shrill signal of the redbrick factories as they released the sweat-stained workers at five, then took them in again at seven. The coal miners hacked and hauled their load deep underground, one eye ever on the canary. Out west, oil spewed from hard earth, staining everything in money. In the cotton fields, the weeping left their harps upon the trees.

The roads reached the cities. The gleaming cities frantic with ambition, rich in the commerce of longing, a golden paradise of businessmen prophets, billboards advertising the abundance augured on Wall Street, promised by Madison Avenue: “Physicians say Lucky Strikes—they’re toasted for your pleasure!” “Move with the times! Imperial Airways.” “Of course you want Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream!” “Studebaker—the automobile with a reputation behind it!” The people sculpted monuments to great men, men who had built the nation, led the armies, their beliefs safely
ensconced in marble and granite. The people made idols and tore them down again, baptizing them in ticker tape parades, blessing them in long tears of profit and loss, throwaway tributes tossed with abandon from tall windows, a celebration of the good times that seem as if they will never stop, the land a fatted calf.