The bellhops and porters were Negroes. So were the waiters and, she presumed, the cooks. In California, she wouldn't have paid much attention—and there would have been all kinds of people doing those jobs. Here, seeing black faces made her nervous. She knew it shouldn't have ... or should it? How much did they hate whites? How many good reasons for hating whites did they have?
When a bellhop tipped his cap to her as she went out, she almost screamed. What was he thinking? How much did he despise himself—and her—because he had to make that servile gesture? How much did he wish he had a rifle in his hands and were fighting the soldiers from Virginia? Wouldn't paying them back almost be worth getting shot?
A lot of Negroes in Charleston sure seemed to think so.
Going out on the street, getting away from those people who wouldn't have been polite if they weren't getting paid, came as a relief. . . for a little while. Then she found out how much the hotel's soundproofing muffled the noise of gunfire. It was much louder, and much closer, than she'd thought.
"Let's see your papers!" a soldier barked at the first checkpoint she came to. She handed them over. His eyebrows jumped in surprise, almost disappearing under the brim of his helmet. "California passport! What in blazes are you doing here?"
"Visiting friends," Beckie said, which wasn't even a lie. "I didn't know I'd get stuck when the war started." That was also true.
"Who are these friends?" the soldier asked.
"Justin Monroe and his uncle, Randolph Brooks," Beckie answered. "Mr. Brooks runs a coin shop not far from here."
"He does, Everett," another soldier said. "I remember seeing the place."
"Okay." Everett looked at the passport again, shook his head, and gave the document back to Beckie. "You can go, I guess. But be careful. Things aren't exactly safe around here yet."
She found out what he meant when she walked around the corner. Two bodies lay there—one white, one black. Flies buzzed over them and settled in the blood that had pooled on the sidewalk. A mockingbird—a cheerful, sweet-voiced mockingbird— pecked at one of the corpses and swallowed . . . something. Stomach knotting, Beckie waved her arms. The bird screeched but flew away.
Those bodies were fresh. Something in the air told Beckie of others she couldn't see. The ones she smelled had been dead longer. How long would that stench last? How could anyone stand to live here till it went away?
People were on the streets. Some moved warily, as if afraid of what might happen next. Beckie moved that way herself. Who could tell when a wacko of any color might pop out of a doorway and start shooting? But others walked along as if things were normal. A man in his twenties smiled at Beckie the way he might have on any street in the world. She nodded, but couldn't make herself smile back.
Three blocks over then a left turn, then downhill toward the Kanawha. Lots of Charleston—lots of western Virginia— seemed to be uphill or downhill or sidehill or somethinghill. California had country more rugged than this, but hardly anybody lived in it. There were no towns in the Sierras with a couple of hundred thousand people in them.
On the way down toward the river, she had to go by one of the bodies she'd been smelling. There it lay, all bloated and stinking, a monument to ... what? To stupidity. To man's inhumanity to man. But the Virginians wouldn't see it, neither the whites nor the blacks. Why not? It sure looked obvious to her.
Not even Justin and Mr. Brooks would admit it, and they seemed different from the other Virginians she'd met. The Snodgrasses couldn't even see the problem. Beckie had the feeling Justin and his uncle could, but they didn't want to look.
She wondered if she was imagining things. She didn't think so. That was probably a big part of why she was on her way to the coin and stamp shop. They were unusual people, and they might have unusual ways to help.
And there was the shop, across the street. Actually, first she saw the car in which Mr. Brooks drove her and Gran to Charleston. But COINS AND STAMPS was neatly lettered in gold on the plate-glass window closest to it. So was the street number. In Los Angeles, odd numbers were on the western and northern sides of the street, evens to the south and east. She hadn't needed long to see they didn't do things that way in Ohio and Virginia. The stamp and coin shop was on the west side of the street, but its address was 696. Close to the number of the beast, but not quite, Beckie thought.
There wasn't much traffic. Beckie didn't feel the least bit guilty about jaywalking. In Charleston right now, she was more likely to get hit by a sniper than by an oncoming car. She wished she hadn't thought of it like that. She especially wished she hadn't when a burst of automatic-weapons fire only a couple of blocks away made her jump in the air. A woman screamed, and went on screaming. She shuddered. One more noise you never wanted to hear.
She tried the door to the coin and stamp shop. It was locked, which wasn't the biggest surprise in the world. But she could see people in there, even if the sun film on the window kept her from telling who they were. She knocked. When nobody came to the door right away, she went on knocking.
Justin opened up. "Come on in," he said. "You're no looter."
An assault rifle leaned against the far wall. He was dirty and needed a shave. "What's up?" he asked.
Beckie was glad to see him no matter how he looked. "Gran's got it," she said baldly.
"Ohhh." It was almost the noise Justin would have made if someone hit him in the belly. Behind the counter, Mr. Brooks made an almost identical sound. A tall woman Beckie hadn't met winced. Justin said, "This is my mom. Mom, this is Beckie Royer, who I've been telling you about."
"I'm glad to meet you," Mrs. Monroe said. "I'm not glad about your news, though, not even a little bit. We've already had too many cases in Charleston."
Picking his words with obvious care, Mr. Brooks asked, "What do you want us to do, Beckie?"
"Whatever you can," she said. "I'm a stranger here. I don't have any money, not on my own. The credit cards are all in Gran's name, and she's . . . not with it right now." She told him about the muffins, whatever that was supposed to mean. Then she took a deep breath and went on, "I don't know that I'll ever be able to stand her after spending all this time with her. You've seen what a pain she is. But that doesn't mean I want her to up and die on me." Tears stung her eyes. No, it didn't mean that at all.
"We could get her to a hospital for you," Justin's mother said slowly.
"They aren't having a whole lot of luck with this in hospitals," Justin said. "Either you get better on your own or you don't. Mostly you don't." He sent Beckie an apologetic look, but he wasn't saying anything she didn't already know. "Doctors here are kind of dim," he added.
Both his mother and Mr. Brooks coughed loudly. Under the dirt and stubble, Justin turned red. He didn't take it back, though.
"Hospital's still my best bet, isn't it?" Beckie said. "I want to do everything I can."
"Well. . ." Justin started. He got two more sharp coughs. Beckie wondered what was going on. Whatever it was, nobody seemed to want to come out and tell her. Justin said, "Let me see what I can do."
What was that supposed to mean? Whatever it meant, Justin's mom and Mr. Brooks didn't like it for beans. Beckie could see as much, even if she had no idea why they felt the way they did. "What exactly do you think that is?" Beckie spoke as carefully as Mr. Brooks had a few minutes before.
"I don't know yet. Give me till five o'clock," Justin said, while the two older people in the shop looked daggers at him. He went on, "If she gets really, really sick, don't wait for me. I don't want her to die before I do ... whatever I can do."
He still wouldn't say what that was. What could a coin and stamp dealer's nephew do that a hospital couldn't? But he sounded as if he thought he could do something, somehow. And Beckie knew the hospitals weren't having much luck with the disease. Would they have done better in California? How could she tell?