Chapter Text
March 16th, 1912
The Lord’s House, Lawrence, Kansas
It didn’t look as perfect as it was.
The storm was rolling in, spreading long arms of brackish clouds ahead of it, across the sky. Everything had been clear and beautiful half an hour ago, but the blue was washed out with ribbons of gray now. Wind chased itself through waist-high grass and the air, thick and humid, smelled like the coming rain.
Cora Mason stood in the small dressing room just off the chapel, smoothing down the high collar of her white dress. She could hear the guests milling, laughing and chattering, and a surge of butterflies rushed through her stomach. She anxiously stroked the small tarnished pendant resting between her breasts, hidden by the chaste folds of the wedding dress.
She didn’t really know how they’d make up for this rain; there just wasn’t enough room to dance and dine inside the church, but going outdoors was unthinkable in weather like the sort she was seeing out there, far over the horizon-line. Black clouds and rolls of thunder. It would be moving in, and fast.
The door opened behind her, ushering in a strong scent of wildflowers and honey. She twisted around on the small, three-legged stool to look at the man standing behind her with his salt-and-pepper hair. “Cora? It’s just about time.”
“I know, papa.” She said quietly, still idly jostling her necklace. Her father, his eyes creased at the corners from years of squinting out under the hot sun, didn’t seem to miss the movement. He shut the door quietly and walked to join her, taking her hands in both of his.
“Your mother would be so proud of you today.” He said huskily.
She smiled, refusing the tears that wanted to ruin the charcoal they’d painted around her wide almond eyes; all of the girls in the class has put together their meager incomes to get her just a little something for this day, and she’d be ashamed to put it all to waste just now. “I know, papa.”
He lifted their entwined hands to brush at any dampness that threatened to spill over her lashes. “You are the most beautiful thing I ever saw,” He said, and he took her shoulders, turning her on the stool to face the cracked mirror on the makeshift vanity. “You see the color of that skin, Cora?”
She looked, in fact, she’d been looking for half an hour, ever since she’d slipped into her mother’s old dress. It wasn’t easy being a woman of color, not even in a church where she taught the children of the negro community, the way her mother had done, and her grandmother. White men in town still gave her looks sometimes, looks that made her feel small like a newborn kitten, and just as helpless. But some of the white folk, they liked her—they liked hearing the laughter floating into town from the church, which served as a schoolhouse five days of the week. She’d even become friends with one or two of them, and a cowboy named Abel Fry had introduced her to Roosevelt Truman: son of freed slaves, handsome and strong as an old proud tree, and a cowboy to boot. A man of rugged adventure.
And now here she was, knowing Roosevelt, her Rosie, was waiting for her out there. And somehow that made the rain, and her mother’s absence, bearable.
“Don’t ever be ashamed of all this.” Her father gestured to her whole body in a sweep of his hand. “Every proud thing, from the tilt of that head to the spring in your step, that’s a woman. That’s your mother in you.”
Cora raised her head and took her father’s hand, letting him draw her to her feet. “It’s time to go, papa.”
And just like that, the organ started to blare from the chapel, and the chatter died away. Tucking one gloved hand into the crook of her father’s arm, Cora stepped proudly out into the chapel, all but gliding between the pews toward her Rosie, dressed in his cowboy finest, with Abel behind him—as out of place with his flop of sandy hair and sun-worn leathery skin as anything, but grinning just the same. Cora matched his smile fleetingly, but her eyes were all for Rosie up until the moment her father kissed her cheek and gave her hand into his.
Some of the younger children erupted into cheers, blissfully unaware that it was a bit soon for that. Cora turned a brilliant smile on them, watching with affection and amusement as their parents wrestled them into silence; despite the outburst there wasn’t an uncomfortable face in the lot, not one. Cora knew each and every one of these families like they were her own, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and children. Adversity had united them; the children were all under her tutelage, and all as tightly knit as the rest.
The warm glow of contentment made Cora’s heart sing.
Roosevelt gave her hand a slight squeeze. “Are you ready?” He asked in his smooth, quiet way. She nodded, sure she was glowing as much outside as inside, and they stepped up to join the preacher on the dais in his flowing dark robes. He began to read a passage from the book of Corinthians, and since the children had just learned it the week before, some of them, stumbling, chimed in. The older ones—they could pass for men, eighteen, seventeen summers old—bearing the littler ones along whenever they forgot what was the next virtue of love.
Cora knew from the stories just how difficult it had been for her father and mother to marry, in this very same church. How much opposition they’d faced, from townsfolk and from their own friends who just weren’t sure they should be testing the peace. And now here Cora stood, in large part because of the sacrifice and risk put forward by others along the way. Feeling as though the spirit of her mother was just there beside her as the preacher said, “Are you ready to take your vows?”
“I am.” Cora said without hesitation.
“I—” Rosie began, but then he stopped, glancing toward the door. For one second Cora felt a horrible swoop of anxiety between her ribs. Then Rosie, frowning just a bit, met her eyes and smiled. “I’m ready.”
“Then do you, Roosevelt—”
But this time it was Cora who looked away, hearing a faint, slithering clunk from the back of the church. For a moment she thought it was one of the children, bored of sitting, deciding to wander—no. It was coming from outside.
Rosie squeezed her hand. “Cora?”
“Hush a moment.” Cora whispered, staring at the door.
There was no denying the clatter and click that came after that, and half the people in the pews turned to look.
“What in the name of God?” Rosie said quietly; his hand slid from Cora’s and he walked to the door, laying his ear against it, listening while the whole congregation looked on with bated breath.
He took the small knob in his hand, finally, and pushed against the doors. And there was no mistaking the great swell of surprise in his dark features.
“It’s been chained!”
The pandemonium was almost instant; as Rosie began to kick wildly at the door, Cora gathered her skirts and rushed into the dressing room, stepping in her soft flats onto the vanity and peering out the porthole window at the back of the room.
She had a clear view here of the rolling plains that surrounded Lawrence in a gentle grip; and there, men, men on horses, circling the church it seemed. Against the backdrop of black storm clouds, their starched white costumes seemed shocking and out of place.
“Cora!” Her father’s harsh command had her looking away from the window, feeling like the same child who’d been caught on the bench seat, watching as her mother and father argued with the farmer outside—watching as the farmer shot her mother. “Come away from there!”
Cora slid from the table and ran to her father, letting him take her arm as they went back into the chapel to find the men had still had little luck with the door. Several of her students came running to meet her, tucking in close against her sides.
“What are they?” Cora asked, keeping one arm around each cluster of children.
“The Klan.” Her father said grimly.
Cora was not uneducated; in her position of counsel she could never afford to be. Her eyes widened. “That movement’s been dead for decades now!”
“It don’t look dead to me!” Abel howled, peering through the slat of the doors. “Oh, Lord Almighty! They’ve got torches!”
Cora stepped back, pulling the children with her and out of harm’s way as the men continued to beat the door mercilessly. Cora’s gaze swept the chapel, searching for some way out, and finding none save for the windows high, high above the door, the last sunlight pouring through before the storm clouds could swallow it.
That was where the first torch came in, with a tinkling shower of glass that rained in a twist like sun-dappled streams onto the floor. Cora shielded the smallest children from the projectile spray—but could do nothing against the sudden, overwhelming choke of smoke as the nearest pews, dry and brittle, caught fire.
The fear was more potent than anything, a tangible taste in the air. When Cora looked up form her charges, throat and eyes already stinging, she saw her father sit back on one pew, hands clasped in prayer. And finally she looked to Rosie, with his stricken, heartbroken face.
She reached for his hand. “I will.”
And he took hers. “I will. I will love you in this life and the next, Cora Mae Mason.” He pulled her in close and his chapped, hot lips met hers as the fire erupted through the church all around them.