Mission of Hope (14 page)

“Oh, they're aware of you, all right.” The major looked as if he didn't think that was such a good idea. “Now that you've got an identity, I'd venture people will be out looking for you. And not everyone will want to shake your hand, if you catch my meaning. I suppose the mask isn't such a bad idea after all.” Simon nodded toward the ordinary-looking rucksack Quinn used. Inside were the costume and weapons of—now—the Midnight Messenger. Major Simon kept the bag inside a locked chest in a closet near his office, setting them alongside the supplies on delivery nights.

With Reverend Bauers's help, Quinn had fashioned a fabric version of the Bandit's mask—a sort of dark bandanna skullcap with a two-holed flap that folded down over the eyes to tie behind his head. It covered Quinn's visibly blond hair, hid his ears and brow, and worked just as well under a hat as without. Quinn could almost feel himself transforming when he put it on. Still, these people needed so much more than what he'd been able to give them. “These provisions aren't enough,” he informed the major. “I'm going to need more.”

“Don't overextend yourself, Freeman.”

Quinn didn't care for his I-know-better tone. “I think I know how much I can do. I don't need you setting limits on me. If you can provide it, I'll find a way to deliver it.”

“And your cocky attitude will fast find a way to get you killed. You're exhausted, Quinn. You won't be any good to me dead.”

Any good to “me”? When had this become about Simon? “I'll admit I'm tired, but I'm not one of your liabilities. If I need rest, I'll get it. If you're so intent on my backing things down a bit, give me some extra provisions to take to Grace House. I'll let the reverend be the hero for the evening, feeding folks who need to be fed. A good meal's hard to come by, with cooking fires being outlawed and all.”

Quinn pushed out an exasperated breath. Even he had to admit the last remark was an underhanded blow. Everyone hated the army's banning of open flame—necessary as it was to ensure public safety. It wasn't Simon's fault people couldn't cook for themselves. Maybe he really was too tired if he let the major's superior attitude get under his skin like that.

Simon looked annoyed, but didn't rise to Quinn's challenge. “I just took a delivery of some bacon, beans and even a little sugar. And because its kitchen is intact, Grace House can have flour for baking. I'll throw in three extra sacks. Bauers can feed extra mouths and keep everyone occupied for a day or so. Will that convince you to slow down?”

Quinn was smart enough not to let his temper get in the way of a good solution. He'd never admit it to Simon's face, but the prospect of a night off was sorely tempting. And although his cot called to him, Quinn knew exactly where—and with whom—he wanted to spend his newfound free time.

N
ora stood in the living room later that afternoon watching glances bounce back and forth between her parents and Reverend Bauers. The reverend had just come to the house—under “major's orders”—to ask Nora to help with a last-minute army distribution of foodstuffs and supplies.

“I know Nora wants to help, but I need to be cautious about when and where she lends a hand, even at the request of Major Simon.” Nora hoped her father wouldn't force her to decline such a perfectly good reason to visit Dolores Park.

“It is a testament to you that your daughter is so willing to be of assistance. She'll be back for supper, madam.” Reverend Bauers folded his hands seriously across his chest. “You have my word. She'll only go to the very edge of the park, and she'll be escorted by Major Simon himself at all times.”

Mama acquiesced first. “Please tell the major he is most welcome to stay for dinner when he brings Nora back.”

They pulled up to the park edge to find Major Simon
smiling on the back of a large wagon mounded with a variety of clothing, blankets, building supplies and tins of various food. “How delightful to have your help, Miss Longstreet. It is a great pleasure to see you again. If you would be so kind as to sit behind this table and make a list of each family as they receive their goods? Just names please, as Sergeant Miller here will take note of the particular items over at the cart.” He handed her a ledger and pencil.

She settled herself behind the table, and as the major attended to the other officer, Nora discreetly swept her eye around the gathering crowd. No Quinn. Not even after an hour's worth of listing names. It was foolish to expect him to find her every time she set foot near the park. She was chastising herself for giving in to such disappointment when Reverend Bauers came up to the table.

“Miss Longstreet,” he said, “you'll be pleased to know I've persuaded the major to accept your mother's kind offer of dinner. I wonder if I could persuade you to offer me a moment of your time to help with the posts?”

“Please, Reverend, tell me whatever it is you need.” Nora stood up and the reverend tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. They had walked the half a block to the post when Bauers stopped and whispered into her ear. “What I need, my dear, is to get him what he needs.”

Nora pulled back. “What who needs?”

Suddenly, Nora heard a voice from behind her other shoulder. “I need to see you.” It was Quinn's voice, right behind her.

She moved to spin around and face him, but the
reverend held tight to her arm. “Quinn, can we at least
attempt
to be careful?”

Nora's eyes flew wide and her spine stiffened as she realized that Quinn had actually put the Reverend Bauers up to this meeting. “Quinn?” Nora fairly gasped.

“Mr. Freeman,” corrected the elder minister.

“Quinn is just fine.” Nora could hear the smile in Quinn's voice even if she couldn't turn to see it. “I had to see you.” She heard him shift his weight and groan. “Reverend, give me a minute?”

The minister tightened his grip on Nora's arm. “Within eyeshot of the major? Certainly not.” His voice was stern but Nora could clearly see the twinkle in his eye. “Nora, would you be so kind as to write down a dozen or so of these requests as I point them out to you? It should only take…” he inclined his head in Quinn's direction “…two minutes at the most.”

“Five.”

Nora was so flustered by the “conspiracy” and Quinn's nearby voice that it took her a moment to grasp the chalk and slate Reverend Bauers produced from his coat pocket. “Certainly. I had…very much…wanted to come back here and see…the posts.” It was like trying to have six conversations at once. “Papa is so very cautious now.”

“As well he should be,” the reverend chimed in, at which Quinn produced an exasperated groan from somewhere just off her left shoulder.

“I need to see you.”

Nora looked at the minister. How could she possibly answer such a question with a reverend inches away? As if hearing her thoughts, Reverend Bauers found some
thing fascinating in the sky to look at and began to whistle softly.

“I…I don't know. I don't know how.”

“I'll just talk to your father. Explain what's…”

“No,” Nora countered. “He'd never listen. Not yet.”

She heard him blow out an exasperated breath behind her. “I'd make him understand.”

His determination made her heart pound. “Perhaps you could, in time. But not yet.” The memory of Papa's scowl darkened her words.

“Your window is on the south side, right?”

Nora startled. “On my house? Aunt Julia's house?”

“Does it have a balcony?”

“Have you been reading
Romeo and Juliet?
” the clergyman asked in an exasperated tone.

Nora swallowed a laugh. The vision of Quinn Freeman scaling Aunt Julia's rose trellis made her want to giggle and sigh at the same time. “That's not wise.”

“To say the least,” Reverend Bauers said. He pointed out a message from the post asking for a hymnal and socks. “A meeting at Grace House is wisest. I told you that, Quinn. See here, Nora, there are three requests for dolls like the one you gave Edwina. I don't think the Ladies Aid society would see fit to provide those, but perhaps if Grace House supplied the materials you could make more.”

“I told him,” Quinn said. “Edwina was so happy.”

“Her grandfather came to services at Grace House the following weekend. I gather he's not darkened the door of a church in ten years.”

Quinn's voice was low and close. “You did that, Nora.”

Nora's satisfaction ran so deep she could almost
soak in God's smile coming down on her from Heaven. “That's wonderful,” she whispered, having to work hard to concentrate as she wrote down the three other names. “Of course I'll make more.”

“If you bring them to Grace House, I can meet you there.” The urgency in Quinn's voice made the back of Nora's neck tingle.

“I could be there Tuesday,” Nora replied. Tuesday seemed like a million years from now.

“Tuesday.” Quinn's single word seemed to echo her own frustration. Nora closed her eyes, feeling his gaze burn into her, sense his presence in the air just behind her, hear his breath. Her hand moved to grasp the locket around her neck.

“Tuesday it is. Take care, you two, we walk a knife's edge with this.”

Nora felt Quinn's exit as much as she heard his footsteps. After a moment, the minister pointed out another two or three requests tacked to the post, and somehow she managed to write them down.

“Why are you helping us?” Nora had never used the word “us” before. It seemed terribly important that she had now.

Reverend Bauers turned to her with a smile that wiped years—perhaps even decades—off his face. For a moment she saw the dashing young adventurer he claimed to have been in his youth. God's provision over the years had made the reverend a very brave and daring man—Nora felt a stab of guilt at thinking of him as just a gentle old preacher. He was gentle, and old, but he was so much more than that. Nora wanted, at that moment, to know that at eighty
she
would look back on her life as full of God's adventures.

“Why? Is it not obvious?” He chuckled. “The man is absolutely relentless.”

She smiled. “I believe I am coming to feel the same way.”

They returned to the table and Nora did her best to wrestle her attention back to the task at hand. There was a moment, a frozen moment in time, where she looked up and caught Quinn's eyes as he stood at a distance. Even from far away, the gold of his eyes glowed like topaz, the intensity of his stare stole her breath and flushed her cheeks. She glanced around, sure the whole world saw the power of their locked eyes, but everyone bustled by unawares. Life pulsed by all around them, noisy and busy and ignorant of the air that hummed between Quinn and her. She could live to be a hundred and still be able to recall the amber glow of his eyes in that moment.

Suddenly, Romeo facing death to scale Juliet's balcony didn't seem so melodramatic. She had thought herself too old for such childish romance, but with her heart beating as wildly as it did, Nora felt perhaps the heart's distinction between brave and foolish was a very fine line, indeed.

 

A thud and a yelp dragged Nora from her thoughts. Something had fallen off the piles of goods that filled the cart. When white powder pooled out of the burlap sack, she could hear the reaction by those who saw. Flour ranked as one of the most coveted and least available supplies anywhere—everyone wanted some and it was nearly impossible to get any. As a matter of fact, the army was saying there wasn't enough to distribute outside of the official relief stations that were cooking
for hundreds of refugees daily and supplying the endless bread lines.

“Flour!” one woman called out, pointing to the snowy mounds. “You've got flour in there! I want some of that.”

Major Simon stiffened. Clearly this wasn't a good thing. “Sergeant?” he said in a cautionary but commanding tone.

“I don't know, sir, it must have been in there by mistake.”

The woman who'd first cried out pushed her way to the front of the crowd. “They told us there isn't any flour to give out. Only there is, isn't there?”

Simon moved between the woman and the flour. “There isn't a way for you to use this. Baking requires fire, and fire is too dangerous right now.”

“For who?” a man jeered. “You got enough to lose track of, then I say you got enough to let decent people do their own cooking.”

“Who knows what else they been keepin' from us?” a second woman said, peering into the back of the cart. “I heard you been sellin' the flour rather than give it to us. Making profit off our need, are you?” This started a chorus of accusations against the army. Major Simon frowned and held up his hand to quiet the crowd, barely succeeding.

“We sell flour you can't use and buy things you
can use
with the money. One carelessly tended stove could start another fire. You know we can't have that. I know this is difficult, but…”

“Don't you get all fancy-worded on me. Ain't right to go profiteering off of folks in need. You think you know better than me, that's what I think. Well, you don't.
You're just another one of them, you are. Don't really care a fig for what happens to us so's long as you can keep us fooled.”

“No one's trying to mislead you,” the major said in a forced calm. “We're trying to give you what you need as fast as we can, but you've got to understand the dangers. The few common fire pits are the best we can do for now. We simply can't have you people using ovens. I'm sorry.”

“Yeah? Well, I'm hungry. Which of us is better off?” some man called out from the back of the crowd.

“The Messenger could get us flour,” the first woman declared.

“I'd hope the Messenger would care about the safety of your family as much as you do, ma'am, and he'd tell you what I'm telling you now.” The major was trying to stay calm, but the crowd had turned on him.

“Hang your ‘care,' captain. I'd rather have your flour. Wouldn't we all?” the man called out again.

“Let's try to see the bigger picture here,” Reverend Bauers interjected, coming to stand next to the major. “Safety is absolutely vital. Times are challenging for everyone.”

“Some more than others,” a thin woman grumbled as she tossed the pair of shirts she'd just collected back on to the cart. Several others followed suit, and Nora could see the major's jaw clenching.

Nora felt the tension gather in the air like a storm. Suddenly, it felt as if all of Reverend Bauers's promises of a safe visit were going up in smoke. She looked up, needing to find Quinn's eyes, wanting to know he would step in and save her, yet again, if things got out of hand. But Quinn had vanished. Her pulse began to rise.
Forcing calm into her voice, Nora turned to Reverend Bauers. “Perhaps it might be best if we left now and saved the rest of our efforts for another day.”

“Indeed. And perhaps it would be best not to ask the major to make good on his promise of escorting you home.”

As voices rose, Nora craned her neck around against Reverend Bauers's pull on her arm, striving for one last glimpse of Quinn, who surely must be somewhere in that crowd. Tuesday felt years from now.

 

“That was a disaster.” Major Simon let out a few choice words as he threw his gloves and hat down on the table in his office. He hadn't called for Quinn to come and see him, but it didn't take a genius to know that thanks to this afternoon's fiasco, the Midnight Messenger wasn't going to get the night off he'd planned. He and Simon stood in the major's office, staring at each other. It was the first time he'd seen Simon lose the edges of his slick control.

It was also the first time since he'd started that Quinn felt a pang of regret. Fear, even. It had been adventurous, a satisfying chance to make hope-sparking deliveries for people in Dolores Park. Now, Quinn felt the demands coming down on him like an avalanche. He was only one man—and yet the cries of that crowd seemed to expect him to do what even the U.S. Army seemed hard-pressed to do. “We set out to make a solution,” the major continued, “and we've made a monster.”

“The people want flour. Donated flour's coming in by the tons. How can we deny them things as if they're children?”

Simon sat down behind his desk. “And have them
burn the city down all over again? They've no real ovens. They've no safe storage. One careless spark, Freeman, that's all it would take. We've got to be vigilant. We've got to make decisions based on what's best for the entire city, not just one family's stomach. You heard me explain it—we've sold most of the excess flour to buy things they really can use.”