Page 37 of The Shield
I should’ve been ready for the turn. Yet, I wasn’t.
“But mayor?” He flashed the smile that had gotten him elected and reelected. “That’s horse-trading and arm-twisting. That chair chews men. No shame in saying some jobs aren’t for our girls.”
It was so casual he didn’t even hear himself. A few in the crowd chuckled the uncomfortable chuckle. One of the council aides actually nodded.
I smiled with my teeth. “Leadership’s not a gender,” I said, voice steady enough to stack sandbags on. “It’s a verb. And right now, the verb is prepare.”
The reporter looked between us like she’d stumbled on a tense family Thanksgiving. Before she could press, a siren rose on Meeting and cut the moment in half. One of the mounted officers angled his horse close, radio to his mouth. “Morrison and Meeting,” he called to me. “Bus stalled. Water at the door. Driver’s panicking.”
“I’ll go,” I said, already moving. “Owen, get cones. Kimmy, push the sandbag pin again with a photo. Huck?—”
“On it,” crackled my phone before I finished.
Butch stepped in, umbrella tilting over both our heads. “You don’t have to run to every puddle,” he murmured, Goliath-gentle.
“I don’t run to puddles,” I said, not slowing. “I run to people.”
He made a face that said affection and aggravation were cousins. “I’ll ride with you.”
We hustled to Owen’s truck, and for a mile Granddaddy was every ounce the man I’d grown up trailing—calling the intersections before we reached them, pointing at a sawhorse that needed three inches to the left like he was conducting withtwo fingers. The bus came into view, angled wrong, rear wheels sinking deeper with every useless spin. Brown water hugged the curb.
I went to the driver’s window. She was young, terrified, palms white on the wheel. I held my ID up to meet her eyes. “I’m Natalie with Kennedy & Neilson,” I said, the tone that had moved more than one heartbeat back down out of someone’s throat. “You’re okay. Kill the engine. We’re going to walk you out one by one.”
“Door is stuck,” she whispered.
“We’ll make you a new one,” I said, and grinned like it was easy, because sometimes lying with your face gets the truth moving.
In five minutes we had a chain—one firefighter at the bus door, another midway in the water, a Public Works tech braced at the curb, me and a volunteer in bright sneakers at the dry line.
One by one, they came down—two tourists in matching visors, a teenager who refused to surrender his skateboard, an older man who apologized to each of us in turn. The driver came last, shaking so hard I put my hand on her cheek like I would a skittish foal and said, “You did perfect. Breathe.”
By the time the tow showed, the light had gone the color of old bruises. Rain ticked harder. When I turned, Butch was watching me with a look I didn’t get often from him—quiet, unperformed.
“You always did like to get your feet wet,” he said, and then, because he couldn’t stop himself, “But you don’t have to do it with cameras.”
I glanced at the three phones I could see pointed our way. “The city does better when it sees itself being brave.”
“Maybe,” he said. He slid the umbrella between us again and lowered his voice. “Natty-girl, listen to me. You stand in the rain and tell this town what to do, they’ll love you. But runningfor that chair? It ain’t the same love. They’ll turn on you for sport. They’ll tell jokes about your voice. They’ll say your daddy paints because I broke him and they’ll say you’re trying to fix me by climbing. They’ll dig into your bed and your bank and your breakfast.”
I thought of my father in his paint-splattered jeans, joyful in his studio, and the way Granddaddy had wanted Columbia Law like it was a birthright. I thought of being nine and learning to pass deviled eggs in a silk dress while the men talked roads and contracts. I thought of the cops’ faces when they saw Ethan’s license and the quick, quiet shift I didn’t understand. Complications were lining up like little soldiers. And the tide was still coming.
“Do you hear me?” he pressed. “It’s not just hard. It’s mean. And they are not ready for a woman. Evelyn Hart was a woman, and look how that turned out.”
“She was a crook,” I shot back, sharper than I intended. “That wasn’t about her sex. A man in that chair would’ve made the same bad choices if he’d been wired like her. It’s not male or female—it’s decent or corrupt.”
His eyes crinkled, proud and infuriated. “You get that mouth from me.”
“I get the mouth,” I said. “But I don’t get the rulebook.”
He sighed, an old man’s sound in a still-strong chest. “Your daddy … I wanted him in that chair because I thought it belonged to us. He wouldn’t touch it. Said paint was his politics.” He shook his head, remembering and revising at once. “And you—I thought you’d make some man mayor behind the curtain. That’s how it’s always worked.”
“I know,” I said, not cruel. “I was raised on it.”
“And now, you’re looking me in the eye and telling me you want the storm to have your name,” he said, and there was something like awe under the warning.
“I’m telling you the storm already has it,” I said. “Every day a drain clears because I said so. Every day a car moves because I asked. Every day Ms. Rosa calls me instead of 911 because she knows I’ll answer. You taught me to love this place. You just didn’t think I’d love it in the open.”
We stood there a long second with the water tapping our shoes.
