I look up and find Jim Boisclair. “Ready, willing, and able. You?”
“Always,” he says. “Might even pick up a lot for my general store.”
“Better be careful—I hear they’ll sell the same lot right out from under you.”
“You don’t say?”
The auctioneer places the list on the podium before him. He stares at it one last time. Then he picks up the gavel and bangs. “We’ll begin with the sale of future lots!”
Jim steps forward, lifting his sheet high. “Hold on! They’re auctioning off a lot I already bought and paid for!”
I give it a few seconds to sink in, listening to the growing unease around me. Then I wave my sheet in the air like a battle flag. “They’re trying to rob us! Selling the same property twice!”
From across the crowd, I hear Becky’s voice. “They’re selling my house! Which I own free and clear!”
From another direction, Mary, with a strong Spanish accent: “They’re robbing us! Ladrones!”
The voices of women in peril have gotten everyone’s attention. People in the crowd bow over their lists, studying them with a critical eye.
Henry yells, “Is that my trunk you’re selling?”
Jefferson: “You can’t sell my land without my say-so!”
The auctioneer bangs his gavel, but the crowd is provoked now. The murmur swells to a roar of angry voices. Frank Dilley’s right hand moves to his gun belt.
“I already own this lot on Front Street! I paid for it last week!”
“Lot twenty-two on Fremont belongs to me!”
“What’s going on here?”
“Crooks!”
Jim leads a surge toward the podium, and I follow in his wake. “I demand an explanation,” he says. “What’s going on here!”
“We have a right to know,” I shout. “Why is Hardwick trying to rob us?”
Someone, a stranger, hollers, “Hardwick’s trying to rob all of us!”
The crowd is riled up, turning into a mob. The auctioneer bangs his gavel and shouts, but nobody listens. Frank Dilley hollers, “Pipe down! Pipe down! Hardwick ain’t robbing nobody! Shut up or clear out of the square! We’ve got an auction to run!”
Jim and I push all the way to the front of the crowd. “Hardwick is selling the same property three and four times!” I shout.
Frank Dilley sees us. Smiles.
“I demand an explanation,” Jim shouts.
“I got your explanation right here,” Frank Dilley says. And he draws his gun and aims.
I don’t know if Dilley is aiming at me or at Jim. All I know is Dilley is capable of killing in cold blood as easily as you can say boo.
I yank on Jim’s sleeve. “Jim, get d—”
The crack of gunfire. A puff of smoke. The sharp scent of gunpowder.
Jim drops to the ground like a sack of flour.
The crowd goes dead silent.
Everyone steps back, and I’m kneeling in a semicircle of aloneness while a scarlet flower blooms on Jim’s side. We lock gazes, and God help me, but I’ll remember this look on his face for the rest of my life. “Damn fool, he shot me,” he mumbles. “This . . . not part of our plan. . . .”
Frank Dilley holsters his Colt, yelling, “We’ve got an auction to run here! If you don’t want to buy anything, then clear out. If you got a problem with the items for sale, then go talk to the sheriff!”
Everyone stares, cowed. After a moment, the crowd begins to thin as several slip away, quiet but fast.
The auctioneer picks up his gavel and bangs it again. “Our first lot up for sale is . . .”
Why is no one helping us? A man lies bleeding on the ground and no one cares. It dawns on me: because he’s a Negro.
Jefferson and Mary appear at my side. Jefferson says, “Jim, are you . . . is he . . . ?”
“Alive,” Jim murmurs. Flecks of blood land on his lips. “Stings a fair bit.”
“We have to get him to Jasper,” I say. “Now.”
“I could fetch the wagon,” Jefferson says.
“No time,” Mary says.
“He didn’t shoot my legs,” Jim says. “Help me up.”
I’m terrified that letting Jim walk is an awful idea, but I’m not sure what else to do. Jefferson squats to put Jim’s arm around his shoulder. “Jasper’s office is in Happy Valley,” he says, lugging Jim to his feet. “Nearly ten blocks away.”
“Then we better get going,” Jim says, and he starts toward Kearney Street.
“Walking will just make him lose blood faster,” Mary says.
Becky and Henry rush over. “We’re coming with you,” Becky says.
“Here, let me help,” Henry offers, reaching for Jim’s other arm, but Jim shrugs him off.
“Someone needs to stay,” Jim says. “If we can’t shout the truth, we can still whisper it where people will hear. Stay here and finish what we started.”
“We can do that,” Becky says.
“You’re a born performer,” I tell Henry. “You stay with Becky and help her.”
He nods solemnly. Behind us, the first tentative bidders are shouting offers for a scrap of land that’s still ten feet underwater.
We move fast for the first four or five blocks, with me and Jefferson helping Jim along while Mary presses a handkerchief to his side. Maybe that bullet just grazed Jim, I tell myself, but there’s a hole in the front of his shirt and nothing in back. More worrisome is the way he’s coughing up blood.
By block six, Jim is flagging. Mary bolsters his armpit and grabs his belt in her fist. “Run and get Jasper,” she says to me. “As fast as you can.”
I sprint down the final blocks as fast as I’ve ever run in my life, through the courtyard and into the parlor of the house, where a variety of sick people are waiting to be seen. A clerk or secretary of some kind sees me. “The doctors are busy, but if you’ll have a seat—”
“Jasper!” I shout, running from room to room. In the second room, an older doctor with remarkable whiskers looks up from his examination of a red-faced businessman. I find Jasper in the third room, wrapping plaster around the arm of a little Mexican boy. He’s standing there in shirtsleeves, with his cuffs rolled to his elbows. “Jasper!”
“Lee?”
The clerk appears behind me. “I told her to wait!” he says.
“It’s Jim. Frank Dilley shot him,” I pant out.
Jasper beckons the clerk over and orders him to finish wrapping the boy’s arm. Jasper wipes his hands on a towel while he says, “Where is he?”
“In the street outside, a block or two away.” The words come out in tiny desperate gasps. “We couldn’t get him all the way here.”
He grabs his stethoscope and puts a hand on my shoulder, as calm as I am terrified. “Show me.”
As we dash through the parlor, Jasper calls out in broken Spanish to a couple of men, who grab a stretcher and follow. Together, we sprint up the block.
Jim has collapsed to the ground. A small group of neighbors has gathered around Jefferson, who is kneeling with Jim’s head propped up on his lap. Mary is still doggedly pressing her handkerchief to his wound, but it is now soaked with crimson.
Jasper bends down to check Jim’s pulse and listen through the stethoscope.