Kind-Hearted Woman

by Spaeth, Janet

  eleven

  Farewell. It means, literally, travel safely. Be healthy. Enjoy your trip. And don’t forget about the one who loves you, the one who stays behind, holding her heart in her hands because it doesn’t fit inside her any more. Farewell. Go with my love.

  Lolly and her brothers rode into Valley Junction Sunday morning. Without Colin in the truck, the three of them were able to sit without being crammed together. Lolly held her own Bible now, one that she’d gotten from her parents when she passed her confirmation class. The days of sharing Colin’s Bible were gone.

  As soon as she stepped out of the truck, Hildegard Hopper hobbled toward the truck in shoes that were clearly too small for her. Her feet bulged over the tops of them, and she winced with each step. Lolly had to admit that they were beautiful, though. Made of a soft shell pink leather with a pearl fan on each toe, they must have cost a fortune. Or at least a month’s grocery bill, Lolly thought a bit jealously.

  Amelia Kramer followed in Hildegard’s wake like a small, drab rowboat. Her eyes were bright with anticipation, and both women smiled toothily.

  “Why, Eleanor,” Hildegard said, and Lolly flinched, “I see it’s just the three of you today.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “We left the dog at home,” Bud said.

  Lolly pinched his side so hard he yelped, and he looked at her with a fake wide-eyed innocence that she was sure didn’t fool the two women for a moment. “Why did you do that? It’s true. Bruno’s at home. So it’s just you, George, and me.”

  “Do you know why I like you so much, Bud?” Hildegard asked, as Amelia nodded enthusiastically behind her.

  “We really like you,” Amelia echoed.

  Why do they call him Bud, and me Eleanor? Lolly wondered. They must not know that his real name is—

  She suppressed the thought, realizing that it might actually have some bargaining power with her brother. She could threaten to tell the two women what his real name was. Bud hated it and wouldn’t let anyone use it.

  “Why do you like Bud so much?” she asked, wanting to deflect their attention onto her much more worthy brother.

  “He is just so cute and so clever,” Hildegard said, beaming at him. “And such a good boy, coming to church every Sunday.”

  “Very good boy,” Amelia repeated.

  “All three of the Prescotts come every week, don’t they, Amelia?” Hildegard asked.

  “They do.”

  “But for a while they had someone else with them, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Amelia took a step closer.

  If the woman had antennae like a beetle, I’m sure they’d be wiggling like mad, Lolly thought as she took a corollary step back.

  “A man, Hildegard,” Amelia contributed. “A man, named Collier? Colbert? Something like that?”

  “You know exactly what his name was,” Bud said.

  “Oh my, do I now?” Hildegard touched her fingertip to her mouth in artificial coyness. “What was the name of Lolly’s mail-order groom? Oh! I wasn’t supposed to mention that, was I? Silly me.”

  “His name was Quincy,” Bud said. “Quincy Peapod Featherbee the Third.”

  Lolly almost choked. She pinched him again, but he ignored her warning and plunged on ahead.

  “Yes, Quincy, or QPF the Third as we liked to call him, was a splendid fellow. Sailed in one day on a clipper ship, right on the Minnesota River, it was, and stopped for tea. His ship, sadly, sailed without him, but they finally realized he was missing and they came back for him. We miss him terribly, especially his strawberry and cream cheese sandwiches. Now, if you’ll excuse us, it’s time for worship.”

  Bud took Lolly’s left elbow, and George took her right, and together they walked into the church.

  When they were seated, Lolly scolded her brother in a whisper. “What on earth was that about? Now it’ll be even worse. I thought that everyone had let the mail-order groom thing pass, and now this. We’ll be the laughing stock of the town.”

  Then she turned to George. “And you! You just stood there like a big old goose and didn’t say a word! What’s the matter with you?”

  “I didn’t hear you say anything,” he pointed out.

  “Well, I didn’t, but I was pinching him.” She settled in her seat, her back straight and her hands folded over her purse.

  “Oh, well, that makes all the difference in the world,” George said. “You were pinching him.”

  “Is that a bit of sarcasm I hear?”

  “It’s a lot of sarcasm.” He leaned closer. “Don’t you see the method in his madness? What do you suppose the chances of us being corralled by those two again, either here or at our house? I think he might have just finished it.”

  “Or finished us,” Lolly said.

  She only half-listened to the sermon, paid a bit of attention to the hymns, and listlessly followed the readings. She was tired. Tired of constantly fighting with her brothers, fighting with Hildegard and Amelia, tired of fighting the constant lack of money, tired of fighting loneliness and hopelessness. Just tired.

  Once again she was trapped, trapped without options, without choices. Without hope.

  As they were leaving the church, she felt a touch on her arm. It was Dr. Greenleigh, the man who had first examined Colin.

  “I don’t see your young man with you today,” the doctor said.

  “First off, I don’t think he’s my young man,” Lolly retorted.

  “Fair enough. I was just concerned because he’s always here with you at services.” Dr. Greenleigh’s friendly face creased with a frown, and Lolly reproached herself for being so rude.

  “Actually, he’s gone again.” The words came out smoothly, and she congratulated herself on how normal they sounded.

  “Oh, good. So you did exactly the right thing, provided the correct amount of care, and got him healthy again. To be honest, I had my doubts at first that he would survive.”

  She drew back in shock. “You did? But you didn’t say anything.”

  “You know,” he said, “as a doctor I get to see a lot that surprises me. People who should by all rights be dead from an injury will live and you’d never know they’d had any kind of trauma. Of course, I see the other way, too, when death is unexpected.”

  “That’s true enough, I suppose,” she answered.

  “But that’s taught me the greatest lesson ever. I didn’t read it in a medical book or hear it in a lecture. No, I learned it from my patients. And do you know what that lesson is?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s that you can never underestimate the power of the human spirit, of its desire to live and soar as close to the angels as it can. That, I suspect, is what healed the man who collapsed on your property.”

  “It was the strength of his soul,” she said almost to herself. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t discount the role of support. Just like when you might need someone’s arm to lean on when you’re walking on an icy stretch, that’s very important for survival. Without you, he probably would have died. You were the support he needed.” He patted her on the arm. “You were the hands of God.”

  She stood in the shadow of the church, mulling over what he had said, and she kept coming up against something. She didn’t much like the way she had been acting since Colin left. Her words were snappish, and her patience was short while her anger was long.

  She needed to guard her heart, that much was common sense, but she didn’t need to encase it in cement and then make everyone around her suffer because it hurt. She was focusing on the wrong thing.

  She had done what she needed to. Colin was alive because of her.

  Take the victory, she told herself. You didn’t lose. You won. Take the victory.

  ❧

  Colin was out of practice. He’d lost his ability to duck
around rail yard guards and hide behind boxcars. He’d managed most of his travels from New York City by bartering rides when his feet had given out and he wasn’t able to walk anymore. He’d do some cleaning up for the yardmaster in exchange for the man’s silence about his presence in the boxcar.

  But not all yardmasters were amenable to this, and out of necessity he’d developed an ability to find an empty railway car in the dark to sleep in, and if it had taken him farther along on his destination, so much the better. At first it hadn’t bothered him. It was one more exciting step in the life he’d taken on that fateful day when he left his home.

  He remembered how, as the days wore on and the thrill wore thin, he spent long hours debating the rights and wrongs of what he was doing. Riding the rails, he told himself, was the hobo’s life. That’s what they did. But on the other hand, it didn’t seem right to tag along without paying in some fashion, even if the ride was in a dusty closed car.

  He wasn’t going to do that this time. It had been too early in the day to reach anyone in New York to see if some money could be wired to him.

  If only he had waited longer. He’d chased sleep all night, until he’d made his decision to leave in the early trickle of morning light. His impetuosity had put him back on the rails. He had no choice except to go back, at least part of the way, the same way he’d come out, as a vagabond.

  Still, when he got to Minneapolis he’d try to contact his company in New York. Let them know he was alive. Tell them he was all right. Ask for money.

  He smiled wryly as he thought of the reaction that call would bring. Would they even believe him?

  Night fell earlier in September than it had in June when he came out to Minnesota, and his judgment was off on which train went where and when—because now he was going in the opposite direction.

  He climbed into an empty boxcar and curled up in the corner. Once he got some sleep, he’d probably figure this out.

  This wasn’t at all the same trip. He’d heard some talk in the railway station in Mankato of cold moving through. It would probably chase him all the way to the East Coast.

  This time of year, the temperatures and precipitation could be unpredictable. It often swung from the shirtsleeves of summer warmth to the first cold breath of winter—within a day or two.

  “You going far?” A voice spoke from the opposite corner of the boxcar, and he realized he wasn’t alone. It was so completely dark in the boxcar that he hadn’t even noticed someone else sharing the space with him.

  “To New York City. What about you?”

  “I want to go someplace warm for winter. I’d like to see Virginia. Tennessee. Louisiana. And Florida. Oh, I’d like to go to Florida someday. Wait, I got a picture to show you.” Some scuffling in the vicinity of the voice followed, and a match scratched into light, revealing a man with a heavy growth of beard, his glasses taped together, and wearing a red plaid flannel shirt that was more hole than cloth. He lit the stub end of a candle with the match and scuttled over toward Colin. “See this?”

  He handed Colin a postcard of a palm tree on a shoreline. A couple played volleyball while the sun shone off a pristine sand beach and the turquoise-tinted water. “Don’t it look like a place a fella should be? And look. See? On the back. There’s writing. It says Dear Grandpa, Come to Florida and we will get seashells. I love you. Imogene. She wrote that herself, my Imogene did.”

  The card was addressed to Grady Shields, General Delivery, Omaha, Nebraska. “It’s really lovely, and your granddaughter strikes me as a charming girl. So your name’s Grady, is it?”

  The man sat back on his haunches. “How did you know that?”

  “It says so right here.” Colin pointed to the address and Grady nodded.

  “Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that.”

  The man couldn’t read. Colin had figured that out when the words weren’t exactly the same as what he’d said. The gist was the same, but the words were different enough to clue him in to the fact that Grady might be illiterate. The actual words were, Dear Grandpa, You can come to Florida and we can find seashells. I love you. Imogene.

  “Does this train go to Florida?” Colin weighed the advisa-bility of trusting a man who couldn’t read.

  Grady shook his head. “Nope. Goes to Chicago and then heads off toward Indianapolis and on to Nashville.”

  “Nashville is south.”

  “My Imogene isn’t in Nashville.”

  The cars shuddered a bit as the train came to life, ready for its travels, and Grady blew out the candle. “Just in case,” he said cryptically.

  As the train rattled its way out of the station, Colin asked, over the grind of the wheels, “When did you last see Imogene?”

  “Oh, I’d say going on four years now. I’ve had this card for about two of those four. It’s as precious to me as my own blood.”

  Colin closed his eyes as the motion of the train hypnotically swayed him back and forth in a regular rhythm. “Are you a Christian, Grady?” he asked at last.

  “Why, yes indeed, I am. I count myself among those who love the Lord, yes I do.”

  “Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “The Twenty-third Psalm?”

  “That’s The Lord is my shepherd, ain’t it?”

  “It is. Do you know it by heart?”

  “Parts of it but not all of it. Why are you asking all these questions? You planning to put me on the stage in some Sunday school pageant? Dress me up in a bathrobe and have me be one of the Wise Men? Want me to sing ‘Jesus Loves Me,’ too?” Grady’s rusty laugh echoed in the empty boxcar.

  Colin joined in the laughter. It felt good to laugh with Grady.

  “The reason I’m asking,” he clarified, “is that I’m thinking you might be wanting to perk up your reading skills before you get to Imogene’s house, am I right?”

  There was a long silence from Grady, and Colin feared he’d offended him. Then Grady spoke. “I can’t read at all. Not even a single word. I was raised on a farm back in the olden days, as Imogene calls them, and we got a little bit of schooling but not much. I can cipher a tad, but reading was one of those school subjects that just didn’t stick in this poor brain.”

  “You can’t read at all?”

  “Not a word, not a syllable, not a letter. Oh, I ain’t proud of that, let me tell you, no sirree, but facts is facts, and the fact here is that I just couldn’t learn.”

  Colin was grateful for the darkness. He didn’t know if Grady would speak so freely in the daylight. “How do you know which train to get on, then? Do you ask? Don’t you run the risk of them getting suspicious?”

  “Pffft. Most of the rail yard people don’t care as long as you’re neat and tidy and don’t leave a mess in the car for them to clean up. Like me, for example. Tidy Grady. Nobody bothers me because I also help them when I can.”

  “One hand watches the other.” Colin smiled in the inky train car.

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, just something a dear friend told me.”

  “How dear are we talking about?” Grady asked.

  “Very dear.”

  “And you’re going home to her now?”

  “No. I’ve got some things to do before I can ask her to settle in with me.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” Grady advised. “Hearts change.”

  Colin didn’t answer. It was his greatest fear, and it, more than anything, would keep him away.

  He changed the subject, this time to the conditions at the various railroad stations, and as Grady talked, he put his head back and thought about how his life had taken yet another odd twist. Here he was, once again, riding in boxcars, he who had less than a year ago been driven wherever he wanted to go.

  But now he had a new idea, how to make this time on the rails truly blessed. The phone call to New York co
uld wait. This was more important. He had work to do in that boxcar.

  ❧

  “Here.”

  Bud tossed something to her when he walked in the door. It landed on the counter and slid across the length, nearly knocking over the cup of tea she’d just made and landing at her feet.

  She bent over and picked it up.

  It was a new notebook. This one had pink roses scaling a trellis on the off-white cover. And in the middle it said, Mankato Hotel.

  “Very pretty, Bud. Thanks!” She tucked it into her pocket. She’d have to think about this, using a new notebook. What was that old adage? Once burned, twice shy? It certainly fit this scenario.

  “Well, aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing with a notebook from the Mankato Hotel? Aren’t you even a little bit curious? Don’t you want to know if I went to Mankato, and how I got there, and what I did? And why I ended up at the hotel there?”

  “Actually,” she said with a smile, “I didn’t even know you were gone.”

  “Okay, I wasn’t gone. I didn’t go to Mankato. But I saw this notebook at the post office, and I said that I had a sister who sure liked to write romantic stuff down and the fellow gave it to me. Then we got to talking, and he said I could come to Mankato and he’d see about getting me some work. So I didn’t go yet, but I am going to.”

  “Really, Bud?” Something somewhere in the area of her heart ached with a sudden heavy burden. “You want to move to Mankato?”

  He wrapped his body around a chair in a motion that, if she’d tried it, would have caused severe damage to her hips and torso. “I don’t want to, but this poverty stuff is about to make me loony. I love this place as much as you do, but we can’t do it, sis. We just can’t.”

  She leaned across the counter, her hands cradled around her hot cup of tea. “I know.”

  In a rare show of brotherly affection, he patted her arm. “You know that he’ll find you no matter where you are, don’t you?”

  He had, with that single sentence and the unnamed pronoun, identified yet another basis for her not wanting to leave. As irrational as it might be—Colin hadn’t given any indication that he’d be coming back—her heart still clung to the awkward hope.