Most of the occupants of the bar were now watching, since Mr. Hemingway made no attempt to be discreet.
“Fine,” she said, almost angry. “We’ll leave when you’re done.”
“Good.” I climbed the stairs again as Mr. Hemingway whistled his approval.
The crowd clapped, and Irene returned to the table, shooting daggers at me with her eyes.
“What’ll it be?” Hemingway asked me as he took a seat behind his cello.
“I suppose you don’t know ‘Amazing Grace’ or ‘Rock of Ages,’ do you?”
He laughed, hard. “I do,” he said, “but I don’t think this crowd will appreciate either one. How about ‘Downhearted Blues’?”
It was a popular song, one I’d heard Irene sing several times since our journey began.
“Alright.” I gripped the microphone like an anchor, trying not to look as nervous as I felt.
Almost every gaze was on me as Mr. Hemingway began to play.
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the room and remember the lyrics that I’d only heard a few times.
The entire room was silent as I sang. I slowly opened my eyes and found their attention was riveted to me and the stage. Several of them were smiling and tapping their toes.
There were no judgmental stares, no one whispering behind their hands, and the weight of my father’s reputation was nowhere to be found.
A smile lifted my cheeks, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t hate singing in front of an audience. It was a strange and liberating feeling.
When the song came to an end, there was a brief pause, and then the room erupted into applause. They cheered and stamped their feet, calling for an encore.
I grinned. I couldn’t help it.
The door of the Dingo Bar flew open, and a man ran inside shouting, “Lindbergh did it! He made it to Paris!ViveLindbergh!”
The Minnesota boy had made it across the Atlantic Ocean all by himself.
Everyone left the bar to join the celebration in the street.
Mr. Hemingway was at my elbow, a smile on his face. “Come on, Miss Reed. Let’s go commemorate this amazing feat of mankind. The first person has flown an airplane across the ocean. For better or worse, our world just got a whole lot smaller.”
I didn’t care about the world. All I cared about was finding Irene and returning to the hotel before my parents knew we were gone—and before I could think too hard about what I had just done or why it had felt so good.
3
MAY 22, 1727
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
Before I opened my eyes the next morning, I was aware of the cold, wet earth beneath me. Slowly, I blinked awake and found myself in the cover of trees just off the main road into Charleston. I’d come this way with Grandfather several times and knew I was less than a mile away from the heart of the city.
I sat up and winced. My neck and back were stiff from lying on the hard ground. The cloth I had used to bind my chest was loose, and my shoulder-length hair had fallen out of the ribbon. My clothing and skin were damp from the dew, but I would soon dry.
Urgency pushed me as I stood and unbuttoned the vest I had borrowed and then untucked the cotton shirt underneath. The linen cloth covering my chest was long and narrow, so I had to wrap it around several times, as tight as possible. It was uncomfortable, but no worse than a corset, which I had left behind. When I lowered my shirt and tucked it into the knee-length breeches, then buttoned up the brown vest, I felt confident I could pass as a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy. I had feminine features, but so did a lot of younger boys. I carried myself with proper, ladylike deportment, but I could change that, too.
I slipped my leather tricorn hat over my hair and buckled my shoes, ready to continue my flight to Nassau.
I pushed thoughts of the Dingo Bar and Irene out of my head. She’d protested all the way back to the hotel the night before, but we had made a deal. I couldn’t risk getting in trouble—or worse, hurting my father’s reputation. My brothers were trying to do a fine job of that already. Andrew had left his work at the bank to bootleg alcohol from Canada into Minnesota, and Thomas was getting paid to cover up criminal activity in Saint Paul. If my parents knew the truth, they’d be devastated. If their enemies knew the truth, they’d be ruined.
Instead, I focused on today as I stepped onto the road. The sun had not yet crested the horizon, and I suddenly realized something important was missing.
