Chapter Twenty

The ill-mannered brew in Rowena’s speakeasy, honkytonk jazz, boisterous talk, and raucous bursts of laughter, tinged with all varieties and strengths of tobacco smoke, the vague scent of marijuana, and the aroma of concocted whiskey, escaped into the basement air vent, traveled up through the house, and permeated Amy’s bedroom.

If Amy had to hear strains of da da, da da, da da … she was going to scream. She hated Saturdays.

More specifically, she hated being subjected to her mother’s incessant business ideas, especially her latest scheme of opening the speakeasy for Saturday afternoon poker games.

The three-dollar admission included one basket of Rowena’s to-die-for crispy southern fried chicken, a generous side of her home-style coleslaw, and two-for-one drinks until five o’clock p.m., maybe six.

Amy’s labor pains last night had been a false alarm. Dr. Ford had prescribed complete rest, so Rowena insisted that Amy remain in bed all day.

What the three women had forgotten to consider is that it was Saturday, which eventually meant Saturday night.

Dr. Ford was coming tomorrow to talk to her, again, about giving the baby up for adoption.

Their first meeting, last week in Dr. Ford’s office, which was in her home, stunned Amy. She remembered that her mouth had gone dry when she’d realized what Dr. Ford was saying to her. She recalled that morning for what had to be the hundredth time.

“You’d like them, child. They’re a nice colored couple, a preacher and his wife, from Virginia. Newly settled in Nebraska. They can give your baby everything imaginable.”

“You mean, my baby?”

“Yes, child, of course. What can you do for a baby at your age? You won’t even have graduated from high school when he or she is born. How will you keep a roof over its head, and feed and clothe it, let alone yourself. Work in your mother’s hair salon or the speakeasy? A baby is a lot of responsibility. Have you ever even washed the dinner dishes or made your own bed? A baby is a real human being with many needs. Every day, every night, every hour, every minute, and every second. Whether you like it or not.”

Gratefully, someone pounding on Amy’s bedroom door brought her back to the present and snatched her from the brink of more crying.

She wanted them to please go away. She’d already turned down the plates sent up to her earlier, starting with breakfast, then lunch, and less than an hour ago, dinner.

Amy sat up, faced the door, and shouted, “Haven’t I said all day that I’m not hungry? All I want is out of this jail my mother has me in.”

“Girl,” came Lulu’s voice from the opposite side of the door, equally adamant, “you one hard-headed number. Just like your stubborn mama. You sure gonna be sorry one day.”

Amy glared at the door and threw her pillow. It hit the edge of her vanity table missing the lamp on it by mere inches.

“You change your mind, just slip a note on out here under the door,” Lulu said, again through the closed door. “I’m sure your mother’ll be sending me back up here before too long to check on you.”

Amy jumped off of the bed, ran to the door, and yanked on the knob.

“Luluuuuuu, please! Tell my mother she’s got to let me out of here. This is so unfair.”

She waited for Lulu to respond, but there was only silence. She fell against the door and let go her tears of frustration. She wanted out of here now.

Except for chaperoned trips to the bathroom, Amy had been locked in. She was nearly ready to do something desperate. But what?

She felt the baby kick. It wanted out too.

Without warning, she felt weak and wobbly. She took minced steps across the room to the window seat and collapsed onto the cushion.

Her breathing was suddenly heavy and labored. Trying to calm herself she peered out the window at the front yard. Her attention was drawn to activity across the street. Were her eyes playing tricks on her?

There were two boys, young men, really, about her age—one colored, one white—going at each other with fists.

She closed her eyes, breathed deeply several times, and looked again, confident this time she would see nothing except shadows cast by a late-day sun. Only it wasn’t her imagination.

Anthony and Kyle were punching each other like boxers in a prizefight. Anthony’s knuckles raked Kyle’s chin. Seconds later, Kyle retaliated with a right jab at Anthony’s nose. Both times Amy winced and cringed.

She struggled to raise the window, leaned out, and yelled, “Stop it, you two. Just stop it.”

Either they didn’t hear Amy, or she was flat-out being ignored, the match continued unabated. She yelled louder.

“Are you both crazy? Stop fighting!”

As if choreographed, Anthony and Kyle’s next attacks on each other halted midair, yet even with the distance and dim light, Amy could see they were still glaring at each other. What in the world were they doing here fighting?

Simultaneously, as if she’d called both their names, they looked up at her. All she could do was stare back at them, still not believing what she was seeing. The first colored boy she’d ever liked, and the only white boy she’d ever loved were beating each other senseless.

Hadn’t her mother made it utterly clear to both not to ever come around here again? Didn’t they understand that her mother wasn’t someone to be trifled with?

Maybe, months ago, it might have been her fantasy to have Anthony and Kyle duel over her, but she had grown up since then.

She was going to be a mother and all that was important to her now was protecting her child. This was a nightmare, or was it?

She waved for Anthony and Kyle to cross the street. Both stared blankly at her, as if struggling with mutual bewilderment. She waved at them again, more urgently.

⟞ • ⟝

“I think, she means both of us,” Anthony said.

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Kyle said, warily.

Without so much as a rope, Amy lassoed them both like ponies in a rodeo. In tandem, they looked for on coming traffic.

They had to wait a minute for a horse pulling a vendor’s fruit and vegetable cart.

They bolted across, ran onto Rowena Johnson’s forbidden front lawn, and stood beneath Amy’s window staring anxiously up at her.

Each young man’s gaze declared an eagerness to please.

⟞ • ⟝

For a long moment, Amy studied Anthony and Kyle. How was it, she wondered, that she had never realized how similar they were to each other, in height and build. Even their facial features were more alike than different, especially, their eyes. In fact, if it weren’t for their different skin colors, at a distance they might be mistaken for twin brothers.

The baby kicked again. If Anthony and Kyle were going to help her escape, they had to move quickly.

This time when she spoke, her voice was muted to just above a whisper. “My mother locked me in. She’s going to make me put the baby up for adoption. This might be my only chance to get away.”

Kyle’s face contorted.

“What? What the hell are you … ?”

Anthony quickly stepped in front of Kyle and interrupted him. “So, what do you want us to do?”

Amy pointed to the flowerbed. “There’s a little metal box buried behind that shrub with a spare key to the front door. Find it, then come up and get me out of here.”

This time Kyle nudged Anthony aside.

“Oh, yeah, right. We bust through your front door, then your mom unloads her 12-gauge in our guts. How ‘bout we try to come up with something that gets us all out of here alive?”

Amy heard Kyle’s question, but she couldn’t answer right away. She was dizzy from more pain.

Finally she caught her breath. “You’re right,” she said.

“That was a stupid idea. Maybe you’d both better just get out of here while there’s still a chance. I don’t want to think about what she’d do if she caught either of you here, let alone you together. Besides, she sends someone upstairs to check on me every hour, on the hour.”

⟞ • ⟝

Anthony and Kyle gave each other a sidelong glance; signaling an unspoken, if only temporary, truce.

Kyle spoke so that only Anthony could hear. “Tell her to throw down what she wants to take. I’ll find the key.”

Anthony nodded, “Uh sure,” but his attention was on a passing patrol car that slowed down and then sped off.

When he turned back around and looked up at Amy, he was unprepared for what he saw, her unmasked affection as she watched Kyle search for the key.

Anthony shook his head. “Well, I’ll be a …”

But before he could finish his thought Kyle was calling to him.

“Hey, I found it.”

⟞ • ⟝

Anthony turned the key in the lock, opened the front door, and tiptoed into the house. Kyle followed close behind.

The din of music and voices downstairs captured their attention immediately.

“Wow!” Kyle said, peering curiously down the hallway that led to the basement stairway.

“Yeah,” Anthony agreed. “Wow!”

Kyle was already looking elsewhere and stepped a foot inside the beauty parlor. “Hey, this is some setup,” he whispered admiringly.

“True,” Anthony whispered back. “Except we’ve got trouble.”

He nodded at a couple, a professional-looking white man and one of the house girls, making out near the top of the stairs.

“How we gonna get past them?”

Kyle looked up at the couple.

“Oh shit!” he said, and ducked back into the shadows.

Anthony ducked back too. “What?” he asked in a hush.

“Dr. Locke’s Kligripp,” Kyle said.

“Dr. what?”

“Dr. Locke’s Kligripp. My dad’s boss’s personal secretary.”

“Maybe this isn’t going to work so great, after all,” Anthony said.

“Are you kidding?” Kyle said. “Amy is depending on us.”

He thought a moment, and reached for the lone cap on a nearby coat and hat pole. Fortunately, the cap was several sizes too big for Kyle, and when he put it on, the bill fell down over his eyes.

“Okay, clever,” Anthony said, and gave Kyle a thumbs up. “But just to be safe, stay crouched behind me.”

The precautions proved unnecessary. The moment the man heard the stairs squeak under the weight of Anthony and Kyle’s footsteps he untangled from the woman, and within seconds, scuttled down the stairs past Anthony and Kyle without a word or a glance.

Abandoned, the girl came down too, but she stopped to speak to Anthony.

With her palm pressed against his shirt and chest, she inquired, “How ‘bout you, handsome?”

Anthony blushed and gently removed her hand.

“I’d rather you went back home to your family,” he said. “They can’t possibly know this is what you’re doing with your life. And you’re still so young and beautiful.”

Her honey-colored features were finely chiseled and her wide-set brown eyes mesmerized with their hazel tint. She replied with only a skeptical laugh, but gave Anthony an innocent kiss on his cheek before continuing down the steps.

Kyle tugged at Anthony’s sleeve. “Come on, we gotta hurry.”

Anthony nodded. In seconds, they were at Amy’s door. Anthony started to knock but Kyle blocked his hand.

“Hey,” Kyle said, “how do you know where …”

“Look,” Anthony said, “it’s you she wants. Let’s just get through this and get the heck outta here.”

Kyle’s face tinted pink. He moved aside. Before Anthony could rap on the door, Amy whispered loudly to them from her side. “Anthony? Kyle? Is that you?”

Kyle leaned close to the door.

“Amy. There’s no key in the lock. Stand back. We have to break the door in.”

Anthony glared at Kyle in disbelief and mouthed, “Are you nuts?”

Kyle hunched and held out his palms. “You got any better idea?”

“Okay, okay, maybe not. But you two are on your own once we’re outside.”

“Sure, no problem.”

With that, Anthony and Kyle each angled their bodies so that both of them had a shoulder pressed into the heart of the door. Anthony started the count.

“One,” he said.

“Two,” Kyle added.

“Three,” they called in unison, and rammed the door.

It only buckled. They heaved into it again, and again.

At last, the wood splintered and Kyle kicked open a hole big enough for Amy to step through and reached in for her hand to help guide her out.

Anthony turned his back momentarily as Kyle and Amy embraced. They were still kissing when he looked back around. “Look,” he admonished them in a weak attempt to hide his own feelings, “you two are gonna have to hold off on all that for awhile. If her mother catches us, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“You’re right, man,” Kyle said. “Let’s go.”

But before any of them moved a step, Amy put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder. She wanted his full attention.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and kissed him lightly.

“Sure,” he sighed deeply. “I’m a real Boy Scout.”

“In my book, too,” Kyle said, his hand extended to shake Anthony’s.

Their hands clasped, and in spite of all that had transpired, the gesture was warmly given as well as received.

“Hey,” Anthony said as they started down the steps, “My Dad’s car is around the corner and it has got enough gas to get as far as Dearfield and back. My folks have a ranch out there. You can both stay overnight in the barn.”

Kyle searched Amy’s face for her response. She nodded yes. Kyle hugged her closer.

“That’s real swell of you,” he said to Anthony. “I owe you one, buddy, but you’re right, we’d better get going.”

⟞ • ⟝

Anthony turned the car east, onto York Street. The drive to Dearfield was going to take four or five hours. Amy rode in front with him to play it safe. Her head rested against his shoulder as she slept.

Kyle was lying on the back floor covered with an old army blanket.

The horn of an oncoming car alerted Anthony to an out-of-control driver. He held his right arm across Amy to brace her, and used his left hand to maneuver the steering wheel back and forth as he worked to avoid a collision.

“What ‘n the hell?” Kyle protested from his secret berth. “Try to kill me, why don’t you?”

“Sorry,” Anthony replied nonchalantly, trying not to wake Amy. He didn’t want to let on to either of his passengers that they had nearly been run off the road by a dairy truck driven by someone dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe.

Amy roused and shifted away from Anthony.

The last twenty-some miles to Dearfield were without incident, except when another car trailed close to their bumper as they traveled through Limon, Colorado.

By the time they parked in front of the barn on Anthony’s family ranch, the prairie’s evening sky was changing from swirls of deep magenta and antique gold to a vast stretch of navy blue.

Still, Anthony felt the need to remain vigilant. Too much had happened in recent times. Such as Negroes kidnapped from their homes or as they walked down a road, then beaten, or tarred and feathered and dumped in the middle of town for all to see.

Bloody race riots incited by white mobs; decorated colored G.I.s, real heroes, spit on; and lynchings, hundreds of them, across the nation.

His father told him to ignore the cross burnings in North Denver, Ruby Hill, and Golden, but the fire last month downtown in Hop Alley had all the indications of being started by the Klan.

Five Points had had its share of threats too, which meant Dearfield was also on tenterhooks.

Many nearby farmers resented that Negroes had homesteads and incorporated the town, and made no bones about wanting to keep even the plains “for whites only.”

Yep, ole Jim Crow was alive and well everywhere in the country. Anthony knew, as all Negroes did, that out west, down south, or wherever in this great democracy, a colored man, woman, or child, best stay alert.

They had to get out of the car eventually, though.

He let Kyle and Amy sleep while he went in and found a lantern and made some sort of bedding for them.

But when he opened his door, Amy moaned. He leaned across the seat and felt her forehead. She was running a fever and seemed to be shivering.

“Kyle!” he shouted, “Wake up! Something’s wrong with Amy!”

Kyle bolted upright, threw off the blanket, and stood to look over at her. Her face was ashen and her skin was beaded with perspiration. Kyle was about to put the blanket on her when she cried out and balled up in pain.

“Oh my god,” he cried, “something is wrong. We’ve got to go back. She needs to be in a hospital.”

All Anthony could do was look at Kyle. It wasn’t the time to try to explain to him that Negroes weren’t allowed in Denver’s hospitals.

“Let’s get back to town first,” said Anthony. “We’ll find someone who knows what to do.”

“But what if …”

“Look, just stay down,” Anthony warned Kyle, as he floored the Cadillac’s gas pedal.