Bounty Hunter
THE DEATH OF NUANCE
I sat in my paid-for seat in second class, legs crossed just so, gloved fingers resting on my reticule like it might fly away if left unsupervised.
And I felt like a thief.
I smoothed my skirt again, for the hundredth time, then uncrossed my legs just to recross them the other way, as if that might realign something in the universe. It did not.
Those women in the back. Lessie Mae and the mother. The others with their bundles and shawls and biscuit crumbs. They’d laughed, shared food, even smiled at one another.
The least I could do was bring them something.
So I stood and made my way to the small refreshment station near the end of the cabin. It wasn’t much: a crooked counter, a half-bored attendant, and a row of sweating bottles.
“Soda water,” I said. “Two, please.”
I carried them carefully, cradled like fragile gifts. My gloves smudged slightly with condensation, which annoyed me more than it should have.
When I reached the rear compartment, the women were where I’d left them—Lessie Mae with her feet up now, fanning herself with yesterday’s newspaper; the mother half dozing while the baby teethed on its own sleeve.
I cleared my throat.
Two heads turned. One smile bloomed—Lessie, of course—and the other looked startled to be addressed at all.
“Thought you went off and joined the white folks,” Lessie teased.
I didn’t reply, setting one bottle beside her and the other in front of the mother, who blinked down at it like it might explode. “It’s not much,” I said. “But… it’s cold.”
“Cold’s a blessing,” Lessie said, already cracking hers open with the corner of a button. The mother nodded, quietly murmuring her thanks. I gave a little smile and turned to go—not wanting to linger too long.
As I stepped back across the threshold into the second-class car, I caught him watching me.
The not-porter. Sandwich thief. He sat in the corner of the rear car, legs crossed, arms folded, chewing on a toothpick. I felt caught in the act of decency.
“Well,” I sniffed, adjusting my gloves again, “I’d better go.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you stay a spell? You’ll be sitting pretty soon enough in Carsondale.”
So he knew my nameandmy final stop. Was this bounty hunter huntingme?
So I sat in the rear car, between a now-calmed baby, a pregnant entrepreneur, and a bounty hunter watching my every move. It had been hours, and the porters had come to the rear car only with clinking jars of cloudy water. My loyalty to the rear car, already hanging by a crinoline thread, was beginning to wane.
“Well, ladies,” I said, beginning to rise, intending to find a cleaner death elsewhere when he spoke.
“You know they throw out the old sandwiches and trade ’em in for new ones when we stop in St. Louis.”
I blinked and nodded politely, the way one does when a child tells you how many teeth they’ve lost.
“If we could get Lessie some of those sandwiches,” hecontinued, eyes on me like he’d been reading ahead in the script, “it might help a lot of folks back here make it a little farther down the line.”
“Those sandwiches are twenty cents up there,” I said, adjusting the angle of my hat. “This car could barely scrape together the ten cents Lessie charged for biscuits.”
“Not everyone’s paying twenty cents,” he said, and then gestured with his chin like we were conspiring. “The VIP car’s got heaps of them. Just rotting. On platters.”
I scoffed. “Do any of us look like VIPs?”
I meant it as a joke. But the entire car fell silent and stared at me like I’d confessed to stealing from the tithing basket.
