Witch in the White City: A Dark Historical Fantasy/Mystery (Neva Freeman Book 1) by Nick Wisseman (popular books to read .TXT) 📗

So I ask you again: why are we not doing everything we can to increase our chances of success?”

“Not this again,” a man grumbled to Neva’s left.

Derek ignored the comment. “Why haven’t we brought the colored waiters at the Florence Hotel into the fold or pressed the American Railway Union to allow Negro porters into its membership? We need every workingman on our side. Their interests are the same as ours in this matter.”

“Then why are the Negroes serving as goddamned scabs?” a woman asked loudly.

“Because we shut them out! Why wouldn’t they take our jobs when we exclude them from the struggle, and by doing so indicate they’re on their own? But if we extend a hand now, we can bridge the divide and swell our ranks before it’s too late.”

“It’s too late for nonsense,” the original grumbler cut in. “And don’t think inviting pretty colored girls to the meeting will sway us.” He jerked his thumb at Neva. “She’s got no place here. Neither do you, if you keep ranting like a fool.”

Derek didn’t reply immediately: he was too busy staring at Neva, whom he’d only just noticed.

Unsure how to respond with so many eyes on her, she gave him a small nod.

He ripped his gaze away from her. “I’m not asking you to refight the Great War,” he said to the rest of the room. “Just to think practically about what’s best for your families. Winning means being able to feed them. Losing means continuing to rely on charity. Think on it—that’s all I ask.”

“Thought and forgot,” the grumbler quipped, to general amusement.

Face dark, Derek climbed down from the workbench and headed for the back door. Brin stayed put, but Neva met him outside.

“Excellent timing,” he said before she could manage a hello. “Not that I had much chance of winning that argument, but now they probably think I’m only making it because I have a colored mistress. The predilection runs in the family, you know.”

She was shocked at how bitter he sounded. “Derek, I’m—”

“Why are you only showing up now? It’s been nine months. Lucretia said you stopped by the house in February, so I knew you were alive—then at least. But you couldn’t have come here before? Or after? Or at least sent word you were all right?”

“Derek, please ...”

“I spent days looking for you, Neva; weeks, once I got laid off. I even asked at Barnum & Bailey Circus when they came through in the spring—”

She stopped him with a hug.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered once he returned the embrace, haltingly at first and then wholeheartedly. “I’ve been an idiot.”

He had the grace not to say anything to this.

Releasing him and standing back, Neva sized him up again. He looked—and felt—skinny. He must be missing meals like everyone else in Pullman Town. Or rather, everyone who lived on its south side. “You were laid off?”

“Just before winter. Work was slow; I said a few things I shouldn’t have ...”

“You said a few things? What sorts of things?”

He winced—that was the same, at least. “Nothing repeatable. Told a manager off for flaunting his earnings when all his workers had just suffered another pay cut. Didn’t go over well.”

“I guess not ... You’re well, though?”

“Well enough.” He appraised her the same way she had him. “What about you?”

“I’m managing.” She grew conscious of how exposed they were in the street, and how she’d hugged him after he’d pointed out that being perceived as a Negro-lover would damage his arguments for integrating the strike. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

“We should.” He motioned to the north. “There’s not much to see right now with the boycott underway, but I can show you the Corliss.”

Neva hid a grin—this was the Derek she knew. “Is that a train car?”

“A generator. Come on.”

He led her to a building on the east side of the factory district, then into a room that must have been six stories tall and at least as wide. Neva didn’t say much as they walked and said even less when she saw what stood at the center of the room: an enormous engine shaped vaguely like a capital A, with twin cylinders thicker than her waist and a gear wheel many times her height.

Derek smiled at her reaction. “Its drive shaft runs six hundred feet through tunnels beneath the shops. Powers the entire works ... when they’re going.” He cocked his head back the way they’d come. “The town’s architects created Lake Vista to provide water for the steam and act as a cooling mechanism.”

“I feel like we’re back at the Fair.”

“We are in a way: the Corliss ran the machinery at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in ‘76. Then Pullman purchased it in ’83 and brought it here—took 35 railcars to carry all the parts. Real monster when it’s moving. It can generate up to 2,400 horsepower.”

Neva made suitably appreciative noises. “It’s fitting, actually—I came to ask you to return to the Fair with me. Our Fair.”

Derek crossed his arms. “Why?”

“To explain why I’ve been ... absent these last months. I need to show you something.”

“Today?”

“Please. I know there’s a lot going on, but it can’t wait.”

Curiosity crackled across his face, warring with hurt and indignation. His voice was perfectly reserved, though: “And I suppose you won’t tell me about it unless I go?”

She shook her head. “You need to see.”

He stared at the Corliss for some moments, then started to frown.

But someone else preempted his refusal: “Well, isn’t this a pretty picture.”

The voice was instantly familiar—it belonged to the woman from the repair shop, the striker who’d complained about colored scabs. She didn’t look older than thirty, but her hair was gray, and her eyes painted in the colors of fatigue: red streaks and black shadows. A similarly haggard man accompanied her into the engine room.

“Charming couple,” he observed of Derek and Neva.

“Never thought black and white would go so well together,” the tired woman agreed. “It’s like a photograph.”

Derek couldn’t help wincing. “Lecta, Whitby, this