The Bible has been a comfort, and one of the younger girls has even started a school for the little ones. It is such a miracle to listen to them read the Scripture, although I must admit it does make me heartsick for you, darling Jane.
After a bath, I head out to find dinner. The town ain’t all that big, and it’s easy to see what the Duchess meant when she said that all the girls ate together. Everyone spills out of a plain, whitewashed building with a cross hammered onto the door. The meeting hall is next to the church but separated from the grander building by a garden of white crosses, memorials to the deceased. In the old days it would’ve been a graveyard, but most sensible folks have taken to burning their dead and mounting a cross in a field or yard, like these. It’s just safer that way.
The meeting house smells of good things, so I push aside my worry that God will strike me down when I walk through the doors. I’m too hungry to worry about my tainted soul.
As I enter, every pair of eyes lands on me. Toward the back of the building are two large tables of boys and girls, all Negroes, hungrily shoveling food off tin plates. The Duchess and her girls sit at their own table near the door, plenty of room around them, some of the girls making lewd gestures to a few rough and ready white fellas sitting at a nearby table. I don’t see Jackson. More important, I don’t see Lily or the Spencers, and I wonder if we made a mistake, if we got ourselves sent out here for nothing.
I get a plate of a thick, hearty stew and a slice of bread from the woman at the window. My serving is about half that of the white man in front of me, my plate hammered tin instead of the stoneware. I open my mouth to complain, but I ain’t given the chance.
“Keep it moving,” says a high voice. Bill stands over me, shotgun propped on his shoulder. Why’s he need a shotgun at dinner? No one else is armed.
The old man from the church glides up to me. He smiles, but there ain’t nothing friendly about it. “Jane, Miss Deveraux will be so happy to hear you’re settling in nicely.”
“I got this, sir,” Bill says, a quaver in his voice. There’s an air of fear about him, and after I spot the large gold cross around the old man’s neck I figure this must be the preacher the Duchess warned me about.
“No, Bill, you have other matters to attend to. It’s Bible study night. Go watch the door. I won’t have the whores sneaking out again.” Bill walks off. The old man still smiles, thin red lips stretched garishly over large front teeth. His eyes are watery, the brown washed out to the color of a penny, his hair completely snow white and thinning. He looks like a walking skeleton, sun bleached and pale, and I involuntarily shrink back from him when he reaches a hand out to guide me toward the back of the building.
“Allow me to formally introduce myself; I am Pastor Snyder. You’ve no doubt already met my son, Sheriff Snyder. While my son enforces the laws here, my purpose is to give Summerland both spiritual and moral direction. It’s a task I do not take lightly, as you will see.”
There’s a feverish gleam to his eyes, and his wide grin hasn’t left his face. I didn’t even know it was possible to smile and lecture someone at the same time, but here I am.
“Miss Deveraux told me that you’re a bit impulsive and she was worried for your welfare. Told me your services were a gift from her now deceased father, and how valuable she finds your companionship.” As we walk, the preacher keeps my right arm in a bruising grip, but I can’t shake him off without dropping my dinner.
“In any case, believe me when I tell you that I understand how to deal with headstrong Negroes. In my youth, I was an overseer in what was formerly South Carolina. Tobacco fields, sometimes cotton. It was there that I came to understand the divine order that the Lord saw fit to bestow upon we men. I also learned many of your kind fail to understand this order, and I know that you can deal with obstinate Negroes as long as you remember they are, at their heart, children. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ as the Scripture tells us.”
My penny has gone icy under my shirt, and I stop walking as the preacher stops. His eyes haven’t left my face, not once, and I get the feeling I’m being cataloged, like a butterfly in a collection.
“I’m sure you will find that your place is a comfortable one if you make it so, Jane. God can be merciful and kind, as long as you follow His laws. But how you find your life here in Summerland is entirely up to you. Do not disappoint Him and do not disappoint me, and you will prosper. Enjoy your meal.”
Preacher Snyder finally releases my arm as we pull up alongside the tables full of Negro boys and girls. Most of them are about my age, but none of them look familiar, and I wonder where they’re from. I’m glad there ain’t any other girls from Miss Preston’s, as I ain’t in the mood for any kind of heartfelt reunion. Still, I wonder where the girls Miss Preston has been feeding to Mayor Carr have gone off to. Is there more than one town like Summerland?
A dark-skinned girl with tight rows of braids looks up and gives me a guarded smile. “Hi. You want to sit here?” she asks, gesturing to the empty chair next to her.
I sink gratefully into the chair, my hands shaking as I set my tray down. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jane.”
“Likewise. I’m Ida.” Her voice is whispery and low with the deep-throated accent of the Lost States, those places in the Deep South where shamblers outnumber people. Ida keeps casting furtive glances in the vicinity of Bill and his shotgun. “So, I see you met the preacher.”
“I did. Charming fellow.”
“About as charming as the serpent in the garden. Watch yourself around him.”
I nod. Bill is now looking at us a little too intently and I decide to change the subject. “How long have you been here?”
Ida’s expression hardens. “Too long. Most of us came at the same time, shipped up on a train from the Jackson compound.”
“Compound?”
“Yes’m. Ain’t you never heard of the compounds?”
“Once, briefly. It wasn’t exactly an enlightening conversation. Mind telling me more?” Not much is known about life in the Lost States. It’s generally thought of as a place even more desperate than the Western frontier.
Ida talks while I scoop up my food with my fingers, since no one saw fit to give us forks. “Well, at ten you start your initial combat training. We have a test every year. If you fail it, they put you in the fields. But there are a lot of shamblers out there and chances are you’ll get eaten, so that’s no good. At thirteen, you join the patrols. But if you mess up—like if you don’t listen or they think you’re uppity—then they’ll move you to another compound. Or, in our case, they put you on a train.”
“Not in the fields with the others?”
“Only the little ones work in the fields, since they need all the grown folks they can get to keep the dead out. And if they can’t use you, they sell you to someone who can.”
“Slavery is illegal,” I say.
“Not necessarily. They got loopholes in that there Thirteenth Amendment. If you’ve been bitten by a shambler, the amendment says you’re no longer human, even if you haven’t turned yet, which means you don’t have rights as a person anymore. And there’s a reward for capturing bit Negroes, since everyone is convinced we’re immune. I’ve seen folks testify Negroes have been bit and then those Negroes get sold off by the compound. Same if you’re a criminal—and you can guess how that goes, when white folk are the ones who write the laws.” She catches herself, then looks around and lowers her voice. “Lots of different ways to pretty up the same old evils.” Ida looks down at her hands, wringing them something fierce. I can’t tell whether she’s angry or upset. “If I would’ve known they were going to send me here, I would’ve run off a long time ago.”
“Is it worse here?” I ask, not really wanting an answer.
Ida just shrugs, and a girl on the other side of her leans forward. “It ain’t so bad now that they got the whores to take care of the drovers. It was worse before they had something to keep them occupied.”
My stomach turns, unsettling my supper so that I have to swallow hard to keep it down. “Who lives in those houses on the other side of Summerland?” I ask, since she’s being so chatty.
“The good white folks do. They don’t eat with us. Most of the good people in the town are put over there on the southern boundary. It’s safer, and it’s mostly families and such. The only folks here in the town are the Negroes and the trash. The nice white folks don’t even attend church with us, because we might soil their souls.”
I nod. “So I heard.”
There is a loud banging. I look toward the noise to see the preacher standing at a podium that’s been set up next to the serving window. He looks out across the room, smiles his ghastly smile, and says, “Gather round, gather round, children. No need to be shy. There are some new faces in the flock today, and that is a boon. God has blessed us, because a growing flock is a lucky flock. As Summerland grows, as we welcome more souls into our humble town, so does the dream of a new Jerusalem, of our own righteous city on the hill.”
There’s some noise as chairs are moved closer to the podium. No one bothers moving where I sit. The tables full of colored folks are farthest away from the podium, and it feels intentional.
The preacher continues. “Tonight, I want to tell you the story of John, one of the first farmers to settle here in Summerland. John was a flawed man. See, when he came here to our fine town it was the beginning of the war, before the dead walked, and John had strange notions about justice and equality and God’s will. He’d come to us from South Carolina, my own home state, and he came west a man who was missing something, some vital part of the self.
“His father had been an overseer, and rather than follow in that man’s footsteps, he fled. Because John had lost his faith, you see. He couldn’t understand how God could let so many live in suffering and bondage while others profited off that misery. Like the abolitionists who unleashed this Sinner’s Plague of the Dead upon us, John doubted God’s will.”
It takes everything I have to keep my mouth shut, my thoughts to myself.
People in the crowd, mostly the white men at the tables full of roughnecks, are nodding and murmuring in assent. The Negroes just sit there. This ain’t the first time they’ve heard this sort of story.
The preacher closes his eyes and puts his hand over his heart. “And because he questioned, the Sinner’s Plague found him one day as he plowed his field. The problem with John—the problem with all nonbelievers—is they think they understand God’s plan. They think God sent His son to earth to die for our sins because, down past the roots, we are all sprung from the same seed. But that isn’t so! The Lord God Himself desires, above all things, order. An understanding of where we all fit in His church, this earth. The senseless tragedy that was the War between the States disrupted the order God had given to us, by His grace. For failing to understand this law, fundamental to His love, He has unleashed His wrath upon us. It was hubris to think we are all equal in His eyes, friends. Not in this world. But perhaps, later, in the Lord’s kingdom.” At that last bit he turns and gestures at us sitting in the back, as though the meaning in his words wasn’t clear enough. A few of the white folks, both the whores and the drovers, turn to look at us. I sink down a little lower in my chair, feeling very, very exposed.
The preacher smiles, as though he knows exactly the effect of his words, and continues. “But there is hope. You can cast off the sins of your past, and you can cleanse yourself of the Curse of Ham. You can toil and labor for the good of those God has made in His image, and thereby find peace and contentment. Because that is the dream of America, and it is God’s will; to work hard in the role God has provided for us, to be deserving of good fortune, and to prosper.”
Most of the white folks in the room are nodding and giving praise. I glance around the Negro tables and realize a few of those folks are as well. That makes me sad and scared.
The preacher clears his throat, and shakes himself a little, as though casting aside the somber feeling in the room. He smiles widely at us, his eyes shining in the low light. The penny around my neck is frigid. That man, that false prophet, might just be the most dangerous man in town.
“Now,” the preacher says, his smile unfaltering, “Let us pray.”