Authors: Lyn Cote
April 19, 1906
“Cecy?” Linc's scratchy voice woke Cecy.
Her heart pounding, she moved to her knees and reached for his hand. “We're at the Presidio garrison. You were shot.” With one hand, she felt her way gently up to his forehead. But his fever hadn't broken.
“Baby? Childrenâ¦found?”
“The baby's fine, butâ¦the childrenâ¦no, not yet.” Speaking of the children clogged her throat with emotion. She focused on Linc to gain control. She reached toward Kai Lin, who was still slept beside Cecy, and touched her hair. “Is it morning yet, Kai Lin? Please go get us some coffee.”
“I go quick.”
Cecy heard the rustling of the woman leaving the tent.
“Who?” Linc's voice sounded like a rusty hinge.
She laid her hand on the side of his face. “Kai Lin. She came to nurse the baby. How do you feel?”
“Hurt. Hot.” His voice came out in forced gasps. “Children?”
“I described them to the soldier who shot you. He promised to look for them. We'll find them.” Cecy pulled a crumpled handkerchief from her pocket and wiped his forehead.
“Fires?” he asked.
“Yes, fires still burning,” Kai Lin's voice replied. “Here coffee.”
Cecy accepted a cup. “Linc, can you sit up?”
“No,” he moaned.
“I brought spoon. I do it.”
“I feelâ¦weak,” he murmured. “Thanks. So thirsty.”
Cecy listened to Linc sipping and swallowing the coffee. She brought her own cup to her lips. Her hands shook. Maybe today the fires would stop. Maybe today.
Linc asked in his weak voice, “What does it look like outside?”
“Big smoke over San Francisco. Color red over city, show through bad black smoke.”
Cecy asked, suddenly sniffing the air. “Is something burning close by?”
“Tent burn! Look up!” Kai Lin exclaimed.
Reflexively, Cecy did look up.
“Sparks,” Linc said with despair. “Waterâquick.”
“Isn't anywhere safe?” Cecy half rose, but Kai Lin pushed the child into Cecy's arms and ran out.
Soon, Cecy heard men's loud, hurried voices and footsteps outside the tent. The sound of water being splashed and a faint spray from overhead told her that the sparks were being put out. She gripped Linc's free hand again.
“The children,” Linc murmured.
“They are in God's hands.” Saying the words gave her comfort, a new sensation. Cecy closed her eyes and prayed aloud for the thousandth time for Meg, Del, and Susan.
“Youâ¦praying?” He squeezed her hand weakly.
“Last night God was all Kai Lin and I had left.” She waited for his reaction.
Cecy felt Linc's smile. How could that be?
“I love you, Cecy. Thank you, Lord.” Linc's voice, though thready and weak, sounded confident. “Childrenâ¦Godâ¦send someone.”
Cecy bowed her head until it touched to Linc's hand. How dear he was to her. He wouldn't die. The children would be found. Softly she sang the words from an old school hymn, “God has led us safe this far. And He will lead us home.”
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The second day passed like a month. The baby, now fed, quietedâeven gurgled when Cecy tenderly rocked him in her arms. But Linc's fever rose. The nurse brought aspirin but to no avail. Using a small basin and cloth, Cecy bathed and bathed Linc's burning face. Kai Lin continued to douse the tent against showers of sparks.
Explosions punctuated the long hours. Rumors that Nob Hill had been demolished saddened Cecy. Were her servants safe? The remembered image of her mother, Nana, Susan, Meg, Del, and Linc all together in the lush conservatory made her heart ache.
I don't
care if I never see again, Lord. I can live with blindness, but I can't live without my family.
The odor of burning flesh came on the wind. She realized parts of the city had become pyres for the dead. Fleur, Clarence, Little Annâeven Victor and Clarissa. Were they safe?
Every once in a while, a woman would wail out in shock and grief. All other voices would fall silent. The wailing would drop into moaning, the other voices would start up again louder, discreetly shielding someone's grief. Less often came shouts of welcome, of reunion. Loved ones found. Cecy recited the Twenty-third Psalm silently and clung to Linc's good hand. He lay still, too weak to talk, almost too weak to swallow broth.
April 20, 1906
“Papa! Papa!” Meg's voice.
Feeling a shock of joy, Cecy sat up from where she'd slumped asleep on the cold ground. She held out her arms.
“Meg, thank God,” Linc's frail voice spoke in the darkness. “Del? But where isâ¦Susan?”
“Oh, Papa.” Meg began crying and must have bumped the cot. It moved. Linc moaned.
Cecy held her hands over Linc on the cot protectively. “Meg, dear, your father's shoulder is hurt.” She held out her arms reaching for the child. “Don't touch his sling.”
Del mumbled, “Grandma died.”
Cecy's heart hurt.
“How did it happen?” Linc's feeble voice showed strain.
“We got out of the house,” Meg whimpered. “Then we started walking and then Aunt Susan had to sit down. She couldn't breathe. We tried to get someone to helpâ”
“But no one would listen to us,” Del added.
“Then she had to lie down and she couldn't get up.” Meg began to sob.
Cecy's searching hands connected with Del's arm. She pulled
him close to her. Susan gone. She hugged Del and whispered her love for him.
“They made us leave her.” Del's stark words reverberated with raw pain. “They said she was dead. Kang died, too.”
Cecy stroked Del's moist cheeks and kissed him. “You're safe now.”
Meg went on tearfully, “They took us away. They said we had to go to Oakland. We ran away. But they found us againâ”
“Who?” Linc asked.
“The army,” a man's voice replied.
Linc looked to the entrance of the tent. He hadn't noticed the soldier who'd wounded him stood there.
“I found them, sir. They were at Golden Gate Park.”
“Thank you.”
“The fire is dying and it looks like rain.”
Cecy asked, “Have you found out about my mother?”
“Ma'am, from all the information I've been able to glean, your mother's sanitarium wasn't affected much. She should be okay.”
“Thank you.” A lump of cold dread in her middle dissolved.
Mother, Nana are safe.
Cecy wept for joy.
The soldier doffed his hat and left without a word. His debt paid in full.
Linc tried to believe what the children said about Aunt Susan, but he couldn't really take it in. In his memory, the faces of his mother Jessie and Susan captured for one moment in time. They stood side by side on the back porch of the Chicago house before the fire. They were laughing.
Oh, Mother, she's with you now.
Linc let his eyes close. “Lord, we commend our beloved Susan to Your care. She has fought the good fight. Bless us. Make us strong again. Heal our pain.”
“Papa?” Meg bent her head and laid her cheek beside his. She pointed to Kai Lin. “Who's she?”
“She is Kai Lin, our new friend,” Cecy replied, dabbing at her eyes.
Linc glanced at the sad, young Chinese woman who sat on a drab army blanket holding the smiling baby in her slender arms.
“Whose baby?” Del asked.
Cecy found and stroked Del's curly hair. “The poor child is an orphan. Meg, let me touch you, dear. I need to hold you.”
Linc closed his eyes remembering the mother lying dead. The baby left all alone as the deadly fire had drawn nearer and nearer. Tears slid down the sides of his face.
Thank you, God. Over all the noises, Cecy had heard the baby's cry.
After Meg kissed and hugged Cecy, she drew near the baby. “Can we keep her?”
“It boy baby.” Kai Lin smiled wanly.
Cecy spoke up: “We've named him Shadrach because he came through the fire. If we don't find his family, we'll adopt him.”
“I'm an orphan now, too.” Del looked close to tears.
“As long as we live, you have family,” Cecy said, reaching out, drawing him close again.
The words were exactly what Linc would have said. He gazed at her.
Sitting on the bare ground, still wearing her driving hat and coat, Cecy smiled. Her beautiful face was smudged with dirt and smoke, her driving coat torn, and her auburn hair bedraggled. So weak he still couldn't lift his head, he saw clearly Cecy had changed. Her lovely brown sugar eyes had no sight, but she looked at peace, even in the cramped tent.
Drawing a shaky breath, he felt like a flattened flour sack. But they'd made it through the crucible. “We won't be afraid anymore,” he stated. Speaking took so much energy, but healing words needed to be said. “The six of us are family now. If you agree, Kai Lin?”
The Chinese woman nodded through tears. “We come through fire. We family.”
Linc touched Cecy's hand. “You know God's love is true now. Do you believe I love you, too?”
“Oh, yes.” She ran her hands over him till she found his face. She kissed him.
He kissed her in return. Del and Meg knelt on either side of Cecy. She whispered the words that had brought healing and had come true. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.”
New Orleans
January 2, 1920
Voices shouted, “Police!” Del reared up in bed. A fist caught him in the eye. The lightbulb dangling from the ceiling exploded into blinding light. Three uniformed policemen crowded Del. One gripped him by the throat. One pointed a gun to his head. One was pawing under his mattress. “Well, look at this.” He waved a thick wad of greenbacks. “And here's the gun.”
Del gawked. The officer who had Del by the throat dragged him off his bed. Del clawed at the fingers on his neck.
Dear God, are they going to kill me?
Another blow like a brick. Another. Light flashed in front of his eyes. He scrabbled at the fingers around his throat. Pain shot through his head. Blackness.
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Cold water doused Del's face. “Why'd you kill Mitch Kennedy?”
Del ached. His arms were bound behind him to the hard chair he sat on. He shook his head, trying to come to.
“We're gone get a confession outa you or else. Hear me, boy?” A hard fist crashed into Del's jaw, bringing an unwelcome memoryâ¦Red-orange flames. German shells bursting, reverberating through his bones. He'd fly apart if it didn't stop!
“Why'd you shoot your boss?” Pain zigzagged through his head and face. The voice fadedâ¦
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Gabriel St. Clair, New Orleans Parish Attorney, hated the dirty, drab anteroom to the city jail. The prisoner blinked, but his head lolled to the side. “Delman Dubois?” Gabe repeated.
Delman looked up. The sight of the black prisoner's battered face, one eye swollen shut, lacerated lips, and a swollen jaw, turned Gabe's stomach. “Rooney, you've got to keep your men from roughing up prisoners so badly.”
“He resisted arrest,” Deputy to the Chief of Police Rooney said; his lips twitched in a nasty grin.
“Delman, do you know the charges against you?” Gabe asked.
“No.”
Gabe grimaced. Even a colored deserved to have his charge explained to him and a dog would have been treated better. “You've been arrested for the theft of two hundred dollars and the murder of your boss, Mitch Kennedy.”
“Mitch's dead?” The prisoner licked his lips.
“You know he is.” Rooney reached to strike again.
Gabe caught his arm.
Rooney glared at him, but pulled back.
“Delman, can you afford to hire counsel?”
“Afford a lawyer?” Rooney snorted again. “He's just a cheap piano player.”
Gabe studied the prisoner. Beating a helpless man made Gabe sick. But what could he do after the fact? And legally, there was so little he could do for this boy. The money and the gun had been found in his room. An easy conviction. Just another cheap, nasty crime in Storyville.
The prisoner's head sagged forward. He jerked it up again, pain etched on his bruised face. “Sir,â¦you in France?”
“You served, too?” Gabe stirred just saying these words. The man's question about France brought back instant memories. Sweat beaded on Gabe's palms and he couldn't turn down another soldier, another survivor.
“Telegraphâ¦please, Linc Wagstaff, 143 Calâ¦fornia Streetâ¦San Franâ¦cisc⦔ Delman passed out.
Gabe gazed at him. “See that he gets a clean bed and a doctor. I'll check on him tomorrow.”
Rooney scowled. “That's the problem with lettin' blacks serve as soldiers. He'd never thought of shooting a white man here if he hadn't shot white men over there.”
Gabe was familiar with the sentiment, but didn't believe it. “He faced death for his country.”
And worse.
“He gets a bed and a doctor.”
Rooney nodded sulkily.
Straightening his stiff white collar, Gabe walked away. He repeated the San Francisco address to himself. Despite his attempts to focus on the task at hand, more war images crowded into his mindâflying over trenches teeming with soldiers huddled under enemy fire; bodies slowly rotting in no-man's-land; the rush of adrenaline, panic when an enemy plane came into sight, then rangeâ¦
His heart pounding, he closed his eyes, willing them away. He'd send the blasted telegram and get busy. Keeping busy was the only antidote now.
San Francisco
January 3, 1920
In her red silk robe, Meg Wagstaff sat in the darkened nursery and rocked Kai Lin's infant son. Though Kai Lin and her husband kept house for her parents, they were more like family. Home from war-ravaged Europe for only three months, Meg still suffered sleepless nights. Rocking the almond-eyed infant was the only sedative that worked.
She bent her head and breathed in the scent of baby powder and innocence.
The front door bell chimed through the sleeping house. Who'd rung their bell at nearly four in the morning? Meg heard the front door downstairs being unlocked. She carried the baby into the
darkened upstairs hallway, where she met Kai Lin's husband coming up the stairs.
“Telegram for Mr. Linc.” The man, in a blue cotton Chinese robe, exchanged the baby for the telegram. Meg walked to her parents' door. “It's Meg. A telegram.”
Her father opened the door and took the yellow envelope from her. Suddenly feeling chilled, Meg moved into the room and onto the high bed, beside her blind stepmother, Cecy, who felt for Meg, then pulled her satiny blanket over her. “You're chilled, dear. Linc, good news could have waited until dawn.”
Meg nestled close to Cecy. Under her arm, Meg felt Cecy's pregnant abdomen stir.
Little dear one, did we wake you too?
“Who's it from, father?”
“A Gabriel St. Clair in New Orleans.” Her father opened the telegram.
“That's where Del is.” Meg watched her father's face widen into shock. “What is it?”
“Del's been charged with murder.” Disbelief laced her father's voice.
“No!” Cecy reached out for her husband and Linc hurried forward to catch her hand.
Meg stood up. “Read it.”
Her father took a labored breath. “Delman Dubois arrested for murder. Stop. Being held at the New Orleans City jail, awaiting arraignment. Stop. Signed, Gabriel St. Clair, New Orleans Parish Attorney.” Father looked at Meg over his reading glasses. The worry in his eyes shook her out of denial.
“Del wouldn't murder anyone,” Meg said.
“I warned him against going South.” Linc scowled. “Lynchings have exploded since the warâ”
“He was at worse risk in France,” Meg snapped, then felt ashamed. “Sorry.”
“That's all right, sweetheart.” Handing Meg the telegram, he took both of his wife's hands.
Meg stared at them, her father's graying blond hair next to her stepmother's auburn beauty. Their love for each other and concern for Del radiated in the dark room.
“We should call Fleur Bower,” Cecy said. “Maybe she knows the St. Clair family in New Orleans.”
“What difference would that make?” Meg bit out, then was ashamed again of her sharp tone. “I'm sorry, Cecy. I don't know why I can't seem to keep my temper lately.”
Neither of her parents spoke a word, but their worried faces said much.
Meg looked away. She hated wounding them, but she would never again be the naive twenty-year-old girl who had put off law school to go to France. And no matter how much they loved her and she loved them, she couldn't fit back here as though she hadn't changed. “What are we going to do?”
“Linc,” Cecy urged, “you'll have to goâ”
Her father looked sick. “I can't leave you! You could go into labor any day.”
Resting a hand on her large abdomen, Cecy replied calmly, “That can't be helped. Del needs us. We're the only family he has.”
“We'll get him legal help. The best. But I can't leave you. Don't ask me to.” Her father's face, though harassed, was determined.
Meg understood why he couldn't leave Cecy. Though Meg had only been five when her own mother had died in childbirth, she had vivid memories of her father's wrenching grief. Now, finally after fourteen years of marriage and two miscarriages, Cecy was carrying a child to term. But the doctor was worried and visited weekly. Meg crushed the telegram in her hand.
“As soon as it's light outside,” he said, “we'll call the Bowers. Fleur knows New Orleans and Clarence will know what to do legally.”
Cecy wiped away a tear.
Meg nodded, then left her parents. Feeling oppressed by the appalling news but oddly distanced from it, she walked to her room
to sit and watch the sun come up. She knew exactly what she'd do. Only one of them must go and she would be the one.
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The next morning Meg stood beside her luggage at the San Francisco train station. The sound of steam building in the locomotive engine filled the air. People, dressed warmly against the January chill, hustled along the crowded walkways between tracks. Negro and Chinese porters pushed carts of luggage along briskly. Everyone hurried.
Aunt Fleur and Uncle Clarence rushed up in the bleak early-morning light. “Oh, we're in time.” Aunt Fleur stood on tiptoe embracing Meg. “I brought you the letter of introduction to my cousin Emilie. If you need anything, just call on her. I wish you would stay with her. I telegraphed and she'd love to have youâ”
“I'll be happier at a hotel.” Meg smiled to soften her refusal.
“Oh, these modern girls!” Aunt Fleur exclaimed. “Cecy, I can't get used to girls rushing off places without chaperones. We're quite old-fashioned now.” She affectionately tucked her arm into the crook of Cecy's elbow.
Meg's father pulled her close. He whispered fiercely into her ear, “I wouldn't let you go if there were any other way.”
“I'll be fine,” Meg assured him. He was so dear, so good.
“I'll be praying every minute,” he continued, “and I'll come as soon as I can leave your stepmotherâ”
“I'll be back before you know it.” She spoke these words with another smile, but she didn't feel any confidence in them. After helping Del, she might go back to New York City. She hadn't felt quite so desperate there.
She itched to be on the train and away, but leaving was hard. She hugged her parents, showing her love without words, then her honorary aunt and uncle, and finally her younger adopted brother.
The strident train whistle and the conductor's “All aboard!” released Meg from the parting. She ran up the metal steps, following the black porter struggling with her bags. When she reached her Pullman compartment, she looked out the window. Meg waved as
the train pulled out. With her straight, thick brown hair bobbed and her drab brown eyes, Meg always felt her lack of beauty compared to her mother and aunt. The two women, though fashionably dressed, still kept their skirt hems barely above their ankles and neither had yet parted with their old-fashioned long hair and large hats.
Meg dragged off her close-fitting cloche hat and ruffled her bobbed hair. A French officer in Paris had once told Meg she was more than a beauty, she was a striking woman with an air of mystery. Since he'd been trying unsuccessfully to seduce her at the time, she hadn't taken him seriously. How shocked her mother and Aunt Fleur would be if she told them that story. Since her return from France, the gulf between her and her parents left her feeling isolated and alone.
Sighing, she crossed her silk-stockinged legs and leaned back into the seat. She swung her ankle with the increasing clickety-clack of the metal wheels speeding away from San Francisco, her hometown. Where she no longer felt at home.
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Dismal rain was streaming down the train window when Meg arrived in New Orleans. The old city looked gray, dilapidated, and depressing just after dawn. The porter knocked and entered. With a smile, Meg handed him three dollar bills. “One is for you. One for James in the dining car. One for the redcap to take my bags.”
“Thank you, Miss. I'll take care of it.” The porter smiled sincerely.
She tugged her ruby red cloche hat over her hair, then glanced at her compact. She powdered her nose and put on fresh lip rouge. “Make sure I get an honest cabby, please.”
“You'll have the best in New Orleans, Miss.” The way he pronounced the city's name, it sounded like, “Nawlin's.”
After two days and two nights in the swaying car, Meg left her tiny compartment, feeling crumpled and grimy.
If I could only sleep
.
Soon she was stepping out of a yellow cab in front of the hotel Aunt Fleur had recommended. Under her black umbrella, Meg scooted through the pouring rain into the imposing white frame
building with ornate black wrought-iron balconies. Inside, she folded her umbrella, letting the stream of water drain down its point. Damp and drowning in fatigue, she sauntered to the desk and placed a hand on its smooth wood.
A clerk approached her. “May I help you, miss?” he asked in a thick southern accent.
“I'd like a room with a bath, please.”
The clerk's mouth primmed up. “Will your husband be joining you?”
“I'm single.” She sighed. “Where is your guest register? I've been on a train for two days.”
“You are traveling alone?” His tone was icy.
Meg finally looked the man directly in his frosty face. “What is the problem?”
He folded his hands. “Here at Hotel Monteleone, we're not in the habit of registering young
painted
females without escort.”
Good grief! Young painted female because she powdered her nose and rouged her lips? Meg mockingly folded her hands, too. “Please ask the manager to give me a moment of his valuable time.” The clerk began to object. From under the low brim of her cloche, Meg stared him down.
Within a few seconds, Meg was ushered into the manager's office. The impeccably groomed manager stood just within the door, poised to give her a quick denial. Meg brushed past him and made herself comfortable in the commodious green leather chair in front of his desk. Forced to give ground, the manager sat and eyed her.