JOHN AND ROSE
Chapter Forty-Six
August 19, 1931
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Nadia raced down the street, breathing hard.
Her long, black hair whipped around her face as she ran, desperate to get home
in time to try to do something to save Sam. She had a good idea of what those
hooded men intended to do, and although she had never actually witnessed a
lynching, she had read and heard enough about them to know what one was. If
something wasn’t done, and quickly, she would never see him again—not alive,
anyway.
Her feet pounding on the steps, Nadia got to
the front door and reached into her skirt pocket for the key, then banged
frantically on the door when she realized that the key was missing. At some
point, either during her struggles with the hooded man or when she had run
home, the key had fallen from her pocket.
A moment later, John opened the door, his
face a mixture of anger and concern—anger that someone was bothering the family
in the middle of the night, and concern that something was wrong.
His anger faded immediately when he saw
Nadia’s terrified face, her hair hanging loosely and her once-pristine white
blouse torn and dirty. Shocked, he pulled her into the house and closed the
door behind her.
"They took Sam!" Nadia gasped, her
voice panicked.
"Who took Sam?" Rose asked,
hurrying down the stairs with a wailing Peter in her arms. At the top of the
stairs, Jane screeched and struggled, trying to free herself from her
grandmother’s restraining arms.
"The—the Klan. They attacked us around
the bend in the road…everybody watched, but nobody tried to help…and while one
of them attacked me, the others grabbed Sam, tied him up, and drove off with
him!"
"What?" John raked a hand through
his silver-streaked hair, unable to believe he was hearing this.
"I recognized the man who attacked me…it
was your head foreman, Dad…I pulled his hood off, and I recognized him…James
Saunders, who you’ve had to take to task so many times for abusing the
workers."
Nadia flinched at the look of rage on her
father’s face. "Nadia, what did he do to you? Did he hurt you?"
Nadia shook her head vehemently. "No…no,
he didn’t do anything. He just pushed me down on the pavement…and then I pulled
off his hood…and I bit him…"
John looked at her, slightly relieved. That
explained the blood spots on her blouse, but…
"Do you know where they took him?"
he demanded.
"No. I tried to chase after them, but
there’s no way I could keep up with a car…"
"Someplace accessible by car,
then."
"They were talking about lynching
him!" Nadia voice rose. "They had to have gone somewhere where they
could…could…Dad, we’ve got to do something! We’ve got to stop them! If it’s not
too late already…"
"It could be too late, Nadia." Ruth
came down the stairs, a subdued Jane on her hip. "They could hurt you,
too, if you go after them."
"I have to try, Grandma. Dad…Dad knows
at least one of them…and he has a lot of influence in this town…that’s why one
man stopped the foreman from attacking me."
Ruth shook her head. "Nadia, these
things happen all the time. You knew when you got involved with him what could
happen."
Nadia turned to her, her eyes growing cold.
"You sound like you want something to happen to him, Grandma."
Rose thrust the wailing baby into Ruth’s
arms. "Mother, if you had anything to do with this…"
"I most certainly did not!" Ruth’s
voice was indignant. "Do you honestly think that I would do something that
would harm my granddaughter? I tried to warn him away, but none of you
were listening."
"Why did you try to warn him away,
Mother? Is it just because you don’t like Sam, or did you know something was
going to happen?"
Ruth hesitated. "I…"
It was the answer Rose needed. "You know
something, Mother. I know you do. Tell us what it is, or so help me God, you’ll
never see me or your grandchildren again."
"Rose!"
"Tell us, Mother. Maybe it will absolve
you of your previous sins…like the time you let an innocent man be framed for
robbery and locked up in a sinking ship."
John and Nadia turned to stare at Ruth,
mouths agape. Nadia spoke first.
"Grandma…if you know anything, you have
to tell us! I know you don’t approve of Sam, but that doesn’t matter. I’m an
adult. I can make my own decisions about who to see…and I’ll tear this town
apart looking for him if I have to."
Ruth looked from one angry face to the other,
her own face reddening. "Fine!" she spat. "I do know
something!"
"What is it?"
"I was home from the market today when I
passed by a house with an open window where several men were arguing loudly. I
heard Sam and Nadia’s names mentioned, so I stopped and listened. I couldn’t
see who they were, but they said something about taking Sam if the two of them
went out tonight, and taking him to the river…"
"And lynching him?" Nadia asked.
"I don’t know. I hurried away after I’d
heard that much."
"Then why didn’t you tell us?"
Nadia demanded.
"I tried to warn him off!"
"It would have been a lot better if
you’d told us outright. We never would have gone to town tonight if we’d
known."
"I didn’t know for sure."
"But you suspected, Mother, and you kept
silent. Now a good man may die because you couldn’t be bothered to tell anyone
what you heard."
"Rose…"
"Not now, Mother. We’ll discuss this
later. For now, we’re going to go and find Sam."
"You can’t be serious!"
"I am, Mother. I once risked my life to
save another’s on a sinking ship, and I’ll be damned if I’ll just sit back and
watch someone else die." She turned on her heel, stalking toward the tall,
locked cabinet in the living room. "Open this for me, John."
Casting a warning look at Ruth, John retrieved
the key from under a chair and opened the cabinet, revealing several firearms.
One was left from his days in the war, a vicious, bayoneted rifle that hadn’t
been taken back when he was sent home to America after being injured.
He grabbed that one, then handed a smaller,
western-style gun to Rose. It was one that she had used in two different
pictures and had kept as a souvenir. She had only fired blanks with it—when she
had used it at all—but it was a real gun, and if loaded with bullets was just as
deadly as any non-prop gun.
"Rose, you can’t go after them like
that!" Ruth argued. "You’ve never really fired that."
"I know how to use a gun, Mother,"
Rose responded. "Cal liked target shooting and hunting, and he taught me
what he knew. He did it as a joke—he didn’t think I could—but I proved a far
better marksman than he could ever be." She had never told anyone about
the way that Cal had tried to shoot her and Jack on the sinking Titanic—and she
wasn’t going to start now. She had just been lucky that he had rarely been able
to hit a moving target.
"Rose, you have two young children at
home…"
"I’ll be fine, Mother. You watch them
while we go after Sam." She loaded her gun quickly, tucking more
ammunition into the pocket of her robe. There was no time to change. "I
just pray to God that we’re not too late!"