Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Author:Justina Ireland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

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.

Chapter 21

In Which I Attend Church

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.

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