Chapter 11: Sixty Faces

By ten o'clock on Saturday morning, sixty people stood in the cotton warehouse with their arms folded.

Thirty had not come back at all.

The east-gate team's desks were bare, and a fern in a mug sat alone on one of them.

Jarrett stood on a loading pallet at the front of the floor, in his denim jacket, with his hands in his pockets.

"You've all heard," he said. "The chief engineer left for Aldridge. He took the east-gate people with him."

"Because of her," someone said, not quietly.

"Probably," Jarrett said. "Anyone who wants to follow him can go today, with a month's pay, and I won't hold it against them."

Nobody left.

Nobody spoke, either.

He looked at me.

"She's got something to say," he said. "I'd listen."

He stepped off the pallet and left it empty.

I'd rather have walked into a fire.

I climbed the two feet of wood, in a cardigan and sneakers, and sixty faces turned up to look at me.

I had spent nine years making sure that never happened.

My mouth was dry.

"My name is Calla Hartsfield," I said. "Some of you read it on the news and laughed, and I don't blame you."

A few people shifted.

"I wrote Lumen. I wrote it at nineteen in a dorm room with a stolen hot plate."

A laugh, small and surprised, from the back.

"I've never said that to this many people. I've never stood in front of this many people."

"You can ask me anything. I won't take it personally."

"Can we take your picture?" a woman called.

My stomach turned over.

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