I Went Down (NaNoWriMo Read-Along)

28 Cal

Cal wandered beside the canal as the darkness thickened. The fog rose in ghostly tendrils from the surface of the water, which was inky black in the twilight. A lamp lighter moved down the street, leaving a path of light behind him.

Cal had been to see Vincent in the lull between lunch and dinner, and gone back to Reuben’s to refill the sleeping dram. The green bottle was safe in his pocket now. He patted his breast pocket often, reassuring himself that it was still there, that he would be able to sleep that night.

He leaned his elbows on the stone wall which separated the canal and the street. It was carved of white marble, now gray from the smoke and mud of the city, streaky with moisture, green with the light layer of algae or moss which arose quickly in Delta Mouth’s damp climate. A few feet away a huge old tree pushed up the pavers of the street and trailed its branches down into the water, connecting again what the wall strove to keep apart. With the coming night, a flock of black-winged birds was arriving to roost in the tree’s massive limbs. They streamed in from all directions, calling to each other in hoarse voices. Their rustling commotion dislodged the day’s accumulated moisture from the tree and a shower of droplets fell down onto Cal.

He closed his eyes and let himself remember life on the Plains. Life before. Life sun-drenched, not simply drenched. He suppressed a shiver.

Before the railroads, relay riders had been the way that news moved over the Plains like the wind, like the herds of wild horses on the gallop. It was good money for a young man, and Cal had a fine horse he’d trained from its first days. The day when he had first set his weight on the gelding’s back. Of course, he’d been wet then, both of them in a lake together where the water would take some of Cal’s weight and give the young horse something else to think about besides the new presence on his back. And then, days when horse and rider melded into one, with pride hot in his breast as they galloped along the route from Halen to Mattean and back again, carrying dispatches to hand off to the next rider. He’d even carried the news of the coming railroad into the interior and then boasted of it to Minnie. He’d been happy then, never straying further east than Mattean or further west than Japheth. He had planned his whole life within the distance that a fast horse could run in a day.

The noise of the birds increased. Some argument was taking place above him and it sent down a new shower of water. Cold liquid trickled down the back of Cal’s neck and he couldn’t stop the shudder that went through his body this time. With a sigh, he opened his eyes and reached back to try and wipe the water away. One of the birds had perched on the stone wall next to him. The gas lamps had come on and the light reflected in the bird’s eye. Cal sighed and the bird, startled by his movement, hopped away from him.

Cal reached into his coat, found his pocket watch and held it up to catch the lamp light. Half past seven. The girls would be in the dressing room now, preparing for the evening’s show. Between themselves and the band master, someone would be found to fill in for Emiliana if she wasn’t up for the task of singing in front of an audience that might very well include Jimmy Primrose again.

But Jimmy would probably not be there tonight. His attention was fleeting. There were other clubs for him to keep tabs on, other girls to catch his eye. He’d been seen around town with Lily Lilt, the gossip-mongers said, a young woman with the career that all the chorus girls dreamed of. But no record deals for them, no business interests watching their backs. Only ineffectual managers like Cal, watching them be eaten up by the city.

He turned away from the opaque canal and walked down the street. He had delayed his return to Minnie’s as long as he could, but he could not stay away forever. Minnie was waiting for him, of course, and all the other girls who depended on him to run a decent club, something safer than life on a street corner. He almost laughed at the bitter thought. At least on the street, they might have a chance to run away from danger.

He had a sudden memory of a huge herd of wild horses out on the Plain, surging over the land while white-clad riders urged their mounts to the front, to take the lead and turn the animals to run into the broad funnel that would trap them in a corral, on their way to domestication. Every Angiers who had come to Delta Mouth had gotten caught the same way, funneled down into smaller and smaller spaces, until there was nowhere to turn to when the Pelagoans came to break them in to the will of the great colonial empire. Perhaps the foolish men still out on the Plain who dreamed of destroying the railroads and breaking Baccarat’s hold on the land were—but Cal could not finish this thought. Perhaps they were right, perhaps they were the last hope for the Plains, perhaps they were doomed to failure.

His reluctant feet had brought him back to the Torgove, where there were groups of men walking the streets. Latecomers, still choosing which of the clubs and restaurants would be the place to spend their week’s wages. Would it be the Aviary, where the dancers were part of the menu? Or perhaps the Wave, where patrons of the theater could drink cocktails and discuss business deals. Some of the Pelagoans, no doubt, were headed to Club 413, named for the immense variety of seafood dishes they claimed to have available. The passersby were evenly split between Pelagoans and Plainsmen. They were mostly working men from the port, but though they might labor side by side during the day, in the evening each man kept to his own kind. Cal brushed past a knot of Plainsmen with long hair tied at the back of their necks and they nodded companionably to him.

He was nearly back to Minnie’s now. The night was fully settled over the city and the evening’s fog was beginning to spill over the canal walls to pool beneath the street lamps. The show would have started; the first songs already sung for the early audience which would eat and go home to their beds before the evening really got started.

A few men stood at the bottom of the stairs, smoking and talking in low voices. As Cal approached, Harlan swung open the door above and a jumble of sound rushed out into the street. Above the rich brassy notes and thick undertones of the bass in the band, above the warm confusion of male conversation, above the clink of plates and glasses, Cal heard the voice of Emiliana Josephine. It flew out into the street like a white bird, as clean and pure as the distant headwaters of the Tharine River must be, before they came to mix with the mud at Delta Mouth.

“Everything all right, Mister Delanton?”

One of Vincent’s waiters was among the smokers standing by the stoop, all of them looking at him curiously. “Yes, thank you, I’m fine,” Cal said. “I just remembered something.” He went the rest of the way up to the doorway, where Harlan let him inside without a word. Cal went down the hallway and made his way to his usual spot at the end of the bar. He nodded to the bartender, who tipped his head in return to let Cal know that everything was fine. The shelves behind him were fully restocked from Arland’s visit.

Cal let himself turn on the barstool and looked out at the small stage. The black velvet curtains—faded, but who could tell in the low light?—were pulled back and bright lamps turned to the space between them. At the back of the stage, the chorus was arranged in a loose semi-circle. One after another, each girl put one foot forward and bent her arms and upper body forward in a flowing motion emphasized by the long feathers attached to their heads. And in the center, like a bee within the petals of a flower, stood Emiliana.

Harper set a tray of empty glasses down on the bar beside Cal and jutted his chin towards the stage. “She’s on fire tonight.”

“Sounds like it.”

When Emmy Jane had first turned up on the steps of Minnie’s, her voice had been pleasant enough to listen to. Now it was charged with a deep current of emotion which had stopped him in his tracks on the steps. Cal accepted a glass of pepper liquor from the bartender and a plate of Helen’s bread to cut the fiery taste. He sipped it carefully this time, and watched the tables slowly fill up. Jimmy Primrose did not appear, but as the evening’s show reached its peak, every chair was filled, and every ear turned to the voice of Emiliana Josephine. Whatever had broken within her the previous—and there was no doubt that something must have—she had put it away somewhere deep inside herself and surrounded herself instead with an armor of music as thick and strong and tightly woven as anything that the ancient warriors of Angiers had worn when they went into battle.