Dust girl

That was a door between the regular world and whatever kind of world the Seelie lived in, and Shimmy didn’t have the right kind of magic to get through.

I was going to ask more questions, but Jack was shouldering open the shack’s screen door. He carried white paper bags filled with fried egg sandwiches and fat slices of apple pie. Jack and I shared a bottle of milk between us, and he’d gotten Shimmy a coffee, which she thanked him all pretty for and drank down like she’d never tasted anything so good.

Jack watched Shimmy closely as he took another swallow of milk, wiped the bottle rim with his sleeve, and passed it to me. “You know, Miss Shimmy, you must be tired by now. Why don’t you ride shotgun a ways? I can drive.”

“Nice try, Mr. Jack. But I’d rather keep things as they are. Now”-she picked up her purse-“I’m going to make use of the outhouse. Don’t you let Mr. Jack here get any ideas, Callie. I’ve made sure no one can move that car but me.”

She left me and Jack sitting there with a mess of paper wrappers and the remains of our breakfast.

“You think that’s true?” Jack picked at the pie crumbs and kept an eye on the direction Shimmy’d gone.

“Can’t say.” I frowned at the car. From where we sat, it was just a car. “But it could be.”

“Might make the rest of this trickier.” Jack measured up the Packard with his eyes. I got the idea he was seeing through the hood to the motor and the wires, figuring how long it would take him to start the engine without the key.

“Might.” Then I screwed up my nerve to ask something that had been bothering me since Constantinople. “Jack, are you really a Jew?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Nothing,” I said. “But if you’re a Jacob Hollander, shouldn’t we be callin’ you Jake?”

“Sometimes it’s not so good for people to find out what you really are.” Jack crumpled the sandwich wrappers together and stuffed them into one of the sacks. “Like, for instance, are you really a Negro?” he asked without looking at me.

I’d known that was coming. But my answer didn’t have such a straight road to travel. “I think my papa had brown skin, but he was a fairy too, so I don’t rightly know what I am.”

Jack was quiet for a minute. “Well, from what I seen so far, being a Callie LeRoux is plenty good enough. Maybe you should just stick to that.”

I found myself liking Jack a whole lot right then, no matter what name he chose. I’d never really looked at a boy before. The ones I knew in Slow Run all seemed small and mean, nothing you’d ever want to stop and pay attention to. But as frustrating as he could be, I truly did want to pay attention to Jack. Maybe it was because he was older and had been places and seen all kinds of things I never had. And, of course, with those other boys, if I looked at them too close, they might look back at me and see something I couldn’t afford to show.

But Jack already knew.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What for?”

“You had a plan. You were going to Los Angeles, get a newspaper job…” The corner of my apron had three threads hanging off it. I pulled at the longest one. “And then I got you all caught up in… this. I’m just sorry, that’s all.”

“It’s okay, Callie. Just think of the story I’m going to have when we get there!” Jack grinned, and his whole face lit up. “You know, it’d make a great Sunday serial, maybe for a magazine.”

“Sure would.” I made myself smile back. I was faking, but I started to feel a little better all the same.

Jack stuffed the trash into a can beside the table and settled the lid down tight. “So, what are you gonna do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah, after this is over?”

My brain went blank, like a blackboard when the eraser swipes across it. I’d never thought about doing anything. My life had been the Imperial and taking care of Mama. I kind of knew other kids had plans about what they were gonna do and where they were gonna go when they grew up. There’d just never seemed to be any world outside Slow Run for me.

But I was out of Slow Run now, and there was a world. In fact, there was more than one world. But I still couldn’t see past what was happening right this minute. I wasn’t used to looking ahead. Not like Jack. Maybe that was why he had that ready grin. I could see through the dust, but he could see through time, and he didn’t even need magic to do it.

Before I could answer, Shimmy came marching around the corner of the shack, her face set in hard lines like she wanted to level some kind of curse on the outhouse.

It would have deserved it.

18

Gone and Left Me

By the time Shimmy parked the car in the dusty yard for Thompson’s Motor Lodge, night had come back round for another visit.

“Now, we don’t know what kind of place this is,” said Shimmy as we all climbed out. The air had gone still and settled heavy over a line of little white cabins and dead live oak trees, one per cabin. Crickets chirped in the dark, each letting the other bugs know they hadn’t starved out yet. “You two just let me do the talking.”

To my surprise, Shimmy unlocked the Packard’s trunk and pulled out two big suitcases. Jack moved to take one, but Shimmy brushed him off and made us both walk ahead of her to the little office, humming as she did. She smartly rang the bell on the desk. While we waited, Shimmy tugged on her white gloves and smoothed her blue- flower dress.

A squared-off white man with gray stubble on his hard jaw and no hair left on his speckled head came up to the desk.

“What can I do for you folks?” His eyes slid straight over Shimmy, to Jack and me. My throat tightened up until I caught a glimpse of us in the window glass. In the reflection, we were all clean and well kept. Jack’s clothes were mended and dust-free; even his shoes and stockings were whole. My hair hung in neat braids down the back of a tidy yellow dress. More important, though, my skin was nearly as white as Jack’s. Shimmy’s, on the other hand, had darkened up by several shades.

“These kids with you?” the motel man asked Shimmy slowly. It was a stupid question since we obviously were, except that wasn’t what he was really asking. He was really asking if she was with us.

“Yes, suh,” drawled Shimmy. Like the shade of her skin, her voice had changed, becoming deeper and slower, with the edge and shine all dulled. “Takin’ ’em out to Kansas City to stay with they gran’ma. Mrs. Holland’s laid up something awful after the last baby, and Mr. Holland out on the road so much… well, I’ll be seein’ ’em safe to ol’ Mrs. Holland an’ gettin’ back just as soon as I can.” She blinked rapidly and smiled way too big.

Jack fell right in with the act, slipping into the role of man of the party like he’d been there all his life. “We’d like two cabins for the night, if you please.”

But the motel man was taking his sweet time deciding whether the story he heard matched what he saw in front of him. I tried to stand tall and trust in Shimmy’s magic, but the disguise she’d thrown over us felt paper-thin. I hadn’t liked Slow Run a whole lot, and Slow Run hadn’t liked me. But I was a piece that fit in the puzzle of that town. This man didn’t know us. I was nothing to him. All he had to go on was what he saw, like the fry cook back at Flora’s. Like everybody we’d meet from now on.

“You can have six and seven,” the man said finally, turning the registration book toward Jack and handing him a fountain pen. “Seven dollars, cash, in advance. No pets. No cooking in the cabins. No noise after ten o’clock. Shower house is round back. Soap and towels, ten cents extra.”

Jack put his hand in his pocket but shifted his eyes toward Shimmy, who gave out her short, sharp sigh.