Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes Page A

He’d heard: “ Run, nigger, run .” And he’d done it. He’d done it good. He’d outrun the paterrollers. He’d outraced them all.
    The sky was burnt orange. Day was nearly done. He ran skillfully, dodging clotheslines, vaulting fences, his breath roaring like surf in his ears.

10
    â€œL et me through. Coming through.” Sheriff Clay elbowed his way inside the crowded elevator. The external doors were solid but the interior resembled a gaudy cage. Ambrose, the building’s owner, called his elevator girls canaries. Clay had always thought him crazy.
    Bates, the building’s manager, thick-jowled, gut shaking like jelly, tapped his nails incessantly against the bars. Clay guessed Bates was already worried about losing his job.
    A brown-haired girl lay flat on the cage floor. Another girl, Louise embroidered on her pocket, was trying to use smelling salts but a white-haired man blocked her, not budging from his position, hunched over the unconscious girl.
    Several men—too old to chase the colored—lingered just outside the steel doors. Heads cocked, they were peering at the girl on the floor. Clay realized they were staring at the girl’s crotch. Her gray skirt was hitched to her thighs. Pushing to the front, Clay saw what the men were seeing—wisps of hair, pink thighs. Underpants gone.
    Clay flushed. He said, more harshly than he intended, “Is she dead?”
    Shocked, the man turned, his brows pinching upward. “No.”
    Recognizing Allen Thornton, Clay muttered, “Damn.” His luck—a colored on the run and Albino Allen hovering over the woman like she was some baby bird. Allen didn’t know anything about how Tulsa worked.
    Clay shook his head. Ambrose would have a fit. He was probably already strutting like a peacock, screaming about his reputation and honor. Everybody knew Ambrose plowed a different prostitute every night. Nonetheless, Ambrose and his oil men friends hand picked the railroad and school boards, even the county sheriff. Ambrose paid him to keep the peace.
    Clay bent, laying his jacket over the woman’s legs. Mary , her pocket said.
    â€œDoes anybody know what happened?”
    â€œThey were alone in the elevator,” said Bates, his face pained as if “alone” explained everything. A colored man, a white woman. Together. In Tulsa.
    â€œSo no one knows what happened,” said Clay, irked by Bates.
    â€œJust the nigger and her.”
    â€œShit,” muttered Clay, wondering how he’d ended up here. Clay’s job was to harass loiterers, keep the town respectable by jailing drunks and any coloreds who weren’t shining shoes or cleaning houses in Tulsa. And, as he was often reminded, to look the other way when the KKK did its haul. The worst had been the lynching of David Reubens. Ambrose told him to take a day off. To his shame, he’d gone hunting in the hills.
    â€œCan’t this wait?” asked Allen. “She needs care.”
    Clay remembered Allen coming to the jail after Reubens’ lynching and cursing him. Overturning chairs, Allen had bellowed repeatedly, “I demand justice. You know damn well who did it.” Clay had his deputies throw him out and he’d listened to them scuffling, battering Allen in the back alley, before letting him go. He hadn’t forgiven himself for that either.
    â€œYou know her?”
    â€œYes.” Allen crouched back on his heels.
    â€œBring her ’round,” said Clay.
    Louise, flashing a triumphant glance at Allen, pressed the vial under Mary’s nose.
    Mary woke up howling. Everyone fell back; the sound redoubled in the tight space. Louise retreated, pressing her salts to her bosom. Bates slammed his fist into his palm. The howl crescendoed, flying out through the lobby. Clay gritted his teeth. He remembered such screams from the war, remembered himself howling like a fiend when a man’s head landed in his