Mercy Train

by Rae Meadows

  “Wait up,” he said.

  “Beloit!” a porter called. “Next stop, Beloit!”

  “What’re we going to do for food?” Frank asked. “I’m hungry.”

  “I don’t know. Swipe something from the station. Or a store in town. Every place has a store, don’t it?”

  He followed her to the top of the car, and they stood at the door watching the world slow down. Frank didn’t offer her much, but being with him was better than being alone. She would keep running until she got back to New York. She could find Nino again, she could even find her mother. Lilibeth would have to take her back, wouldn’t she?

  The train groaned to a stop. She jumped down the steps.

  “Now!” she called to Frank, who hung back in the doorway. “Come on!”

  But he wouldn’t move.

  “You go on,” he said, tugging his cap down low. He took a step back into the shadow of the vestibule, like he was worried she would try to pull him off.

  Violet looked at the people milling about on the platform, and through the windows of the station she could see the waiting wagons and carriages. Did freights even come through here? A man with a thin mustache and dark close-set eyes leaned against the depot wall and watched her. He ran his hand over his mouth and stared. She didn’t know what to do next, and she felt frightened by her smallness in this strange wide-open place. The whistle shrieked.

  She heaved herself up the ladder and shoved Frank out of the way. She was back on the train.

  * * *

  The conductor came through and punched their tickets, alerting Mrs. Comstock to their approaching destination. She sat up and shook her head to clear it.

  “Children,” she said. “Wake up now. We are almost at Stoughton.”

  Violet retrieved her Bible from underneath the seat where she’d left it.

  They were herded down Main Street, through the small town of brick-and-stone buildings, and crossed over the Yahara River, its water green and placid.

  “What a lovely little place,” Mrs. Comstock said to the attendant rolling the trunk and bags.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, through a thick Norwegian accent. “The church is just up ahead.”

  “Look at the ducks,” she said to Frank. “You ever see ducks before?”

  He leaned over the railing for a better look.

  “Wouldn’t you like to live in a place where ducks swim about, no one bothering them?”

  He smiled a little. He wouldn’t look at Violet, who’d been scowling at him since Beloit. The group walked on.

  She wondered if this river went south and met up with a bigger river, which might connect to the Ohio, which might snake all the way to the Kentucky border, back to where she had started. Her boots pinched her toes. Her dress was no longer white, its hem ruffle was torn, and she smelled of coal ash and sweat.

  They were greeted by a somber group of women with weathered country faces who served them fried fish, boiled potatoes, and cabbage on the lawn in back of the church alongside the cemetery.

  “Grace, children,” Mrs. Comstock said, eyeing Nettie, who’d already picked up the fish with her fingers. “O Lord, we pray thy blessings, upon this food and upon our souls. Guide us through life and save us through Christ. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the kids mumbled.

  “They’re setting up a platform out in front,” one of the women said to Mrs. Comstock. “Bring them around when you finish eating.”

  Soon Violet could hear wagons and carriages, horse hooves against the gravel, as the curious and the interested arrived. Amidst the chittering of birds and the rustling of the heavy-leafed towering oak came the low murmur of voices.

  The children ate and ate, forestalling the terrible auction to follow.

  “William, Patrick, Nettie, Violet, Frank, Hans.” Mrs. Comstock knelt before them. “Give your best smiles. Stay cheerful. Be polite. Patrick, speak slowly and hide your accent. Hans, nod, even if you don’t understand what someone says to you.” The boy looked down and smashed an ant with the tip of his finger. “The past is the past. Remember that.”

  Mrs. Comstock rose and rummaged in the trunk for a comb, which she used on each of their heads. Even the older ones didn’t resist. They were all too fearful that this was their last chance.

  “We are all God’s children,” she said, straightening jackets and dresses.

  How Violet wished that were true.

  A suited man came over then, looking official with his eyeglasses and a clipboard.

  “This is Mr. Jefferson. You are henceforth in his charge.” Mrs. Comstock’s eyes filled, and she busied herself with checking her bag. She looked haggard from the trip, but she rolled her shoulders back with the consolation that she had done the Lord’s work.

  Mr. Jefferson looked from list to child, check-marking next to each name.

  “You can pull off those numbers, since there are so few of you left,” he said.

  Violet yanked off the light-blue paper, leaving the pin in her dress, and slipped it into her Bible, not ready to part with it just yet.

  Mrs. Comstock shook Mr. Jefferson’s hand.

  “There’s a carriage in front for you, madam,” he said.

  “Goodbye, children,” she said, picking up her bag. “God bless you.” Mrs. Comstock pressed her trembling lips together. She did not look at the faces of the stunned children. She walked briskly away.

  Violet scraped her heel in the dirt. Next to her, Nettie sobbed, her lank hair hanging over her face. Mr. Jefferson drew back from the girl, repulsed. He checked his watch.

  “Order, please. Line up,” he said. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  The teenagers, William and Patrick, went first, taken as farm hands. A boisterous family of five, who’d come merely to see what the fuss was about, couldn’t bear to leave little Hans standing there, looking around on the makeshift platform. They spoke to him in German—it was the first time Violet had seen him smile—and led him off the stage to the dappled applause of sparse onlookers.

  Violet had noticed the woman earlier, sturdy in body, shiny in face, wearing a uniform like a servant’s, a simple black dress with a white apron, her graying hair pinned in a high bun. Now she approached the stage, her hands behind her back, and, though she paused briefly at Nettie, she moved to stand in front of Violet, motioning her forward.

  “This is rather strange, isn’t it,” the woman said.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Was the trip all right?”

  “It was pleasant,” Violet said, Mrs. Comstock echoing in her ears.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve,” Violet lied.

  The woman blew air out through puffed cheeks. “I’d hoped for a little older,” she said, quietly, not wanting Nettie to hear her. “You know how to bake?”

  “I can make biscuits, is about it.” Violet crinkled her nose. “But I learn quick.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Violet.”

  “Well, Violet. I can’t offer you a mum and a dad, if that’s what you’re holding out for.”

  “I’m not holding out for nothing,” Violet said.

  “It’s a small hospital. I’m the matron. We need help in the kitchen.”

  She was brisk but not cold, and Violet thought she seemed more trustworthy than most.

  “I can do that,” Violet said. It was not what she had hoped for, but neither was it what she had feared.

  “Helen can teach you all her secrets. Her special confections and such. She makes some fancy things I never even heard of.” The woman smiled. “Room and board. The residents keep to themselves, but it’s a lovely place, really. On a lake.”

  “Are there fish in it?” Violet asked.

  “Oh, sure. Walleye for certain. Bluegill and bass and the like. You can ask the doctor about that. He’s a fair and kind sort.”

  “What shall I call you?”

  “The name is Clara Moody. Miss Moody. So it’s settled then?”

/>   Violet nodded once. So this was it. There was no rush of excitement, no giddy whoop, no tearful hug, no doll to unwrap, no silver locket to slip around her neck. She had left those childish notions behind on the train. Relief was new to her, and she felt its heaviness sink her shoulders. There was nothing more to fight.

  “I’ll go fill out the papers,” Miss Moody said. “Come along if you’d like.”

  Violet turned to look at Nettie, who would not meet her eyes, and Frank, whose ears burned red in the sun. They were on their own, but she didn’t have enough left to feel sorry for them. She was just glad not to be last. She jumped off the stage.

  * * *

  The carriage bumped along north. Miss Moody pointed out Lake Kegonsa on the right, and then a few miles later, Lake Waubesa on the left. In the endless space, with the lulling sound of the horse’s hooves, Violet thought about the Fourth Ward, which felt so distant from her now, and thought that if she were to go back there, she would feel like a stranger. She thought of Nino, whose family slept like sardines in their low-ceilinged rooms, and wondered how he would look in all this vastness.

  “I go to Madison once a week,” Miss Moody said. “You can come with me on the next trip if you want.”

  “What’s it like?” Violet asked.

  “It’s the state capital, you know. And the university is there. Two big lakes. A bustling city.”

  Miss Moody did not ask Violet about herself, and Violet did not offer. Her old life seemed faded and cracked, inaccessible almost, and to explain it to Miss Moody in this wide-open air, where it was quiet enough to hear the mourning doves when the horses paused, seemed impossible. Violet decided she would heed Mrs. Comstock’s instructions after all: from here on she would not talk about the orphan train and what came before. Her story would be her own, and she would start again.

  “I’m really just eleven,” Violet said.

  Miss Moody pressed her lips together with a sigh, but she did not scold her or turn the carriage around.

  “Anything else you would like to tell me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  They rode up to the east of Lake Monona, the sun hot on Violet’s head. She wiped her hands on her already soiled dress.

  “We’ll have to burn that, I suspect,” Miss Moody said.

  “I won’t miss it.”

  Violet closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the wind and the papery shake of tree leaves, and smelled the green.

  She thought about little Elmer, who had sat next to her all the way to Illinois, and she was happy he’d gotten a family, even if he’d had to leave his sister. She gathered Irish Patrick would be indentured, and wondered if he would run away. She hoped well for all the others and guessed that some would get lucky and some would not. She knew she was being taken to a new home by a woman who seemed straightforward, even kind, and that she, Violet, might have a chance for more than she would have had in New York.

  “It’s a hospital,” Miss Moody said, as they turned onto a wooded lane. “Did I mention that already? A rest home for women with female troubles. But it’s quiet. And your room will be near the doctor’s quarters on a different floor.”

  A room, she thought. I will have a room.

  Soon Lake Mendota came into view, flashes of blue and light through the trunks of the ash and walnut trees. The surface of the lake shimmered, rippling from the breeze. She had missed beauty in the Fourth Ward, missed the subtle sounds of birds and bugs, wind and water.

  A mansion appeared as they rounded the thumb of the lake. It was imposing, almost lavish, but for the cracks in the sandstone walls and the missing slate tiles on the roof. This was the hospital, airy and warmly ramshackle, with sweeping views of the lake. She hoped it would someday feel like home.

  * * *

  Violet worked alongside Helen in the kitchen, more like an apprentice than hired help, and eventually took over the desserts, the cakes, the puddings, and—the doctor’s favorite—Conserve of Roses on angel-food cake. Miss Moody picked out books for her from the library in town—A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, Black Beauty, The Prince and the Pauper—but Violet left them unopened to explore the woods, to climb trees, to play games with the residents for whom she was a mascot of sorts, a communal daughter. Mrs. Benton, who’d gone hysterical after her fourth baby died at birth, taught her how to knit. And Violet grew fond of the old doctor. Sometimes they fished together in early summer mornings, and in winter they skated on the lake. He was good to her, and, if not quite a father, he showed her a kind of love, and for that she was grateful.

  A few years later, while in Madison picking up kitchen provisions on market day, Violet ran into Frank, now tall and filled out, having grown into his once too-large ears. He smiled when he saw her, and then blushed, as if remembering how they’d left it between them. He told her he’d been picked by an old widow from Monroe who died a month later, and then a cheese maker across town took him on. A decent man, he said, kind of like an uncle, and he didn’t make Frank work too hard.

  “Have you heard about anyone else?” she asked.

  “I saw Hans once when I went on a delivery to Stoughton. There he was, throwing a ball in the schoolyard with the other kids. Still doesn’t talk good English. But it worked out for him. He’s part of the family and everything. He said he calls them Mama and Papa, even.” Frank cleared his throat and looked down at his shoes, trying to cover the longing in his voice.

  “What about the girl, Nettie? She get picked in the end?”

  Frank squinched up his face trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Probably sent up to Black River Falls, to the industrial home and broom factory up there. That’s what I hear happens to the ones left over.”

  Violet nodded, not all that surprised. “I guess we did okay,” she said.

  Neither of them spoke about what they had left behind.

  “Good thing we didn’t get off in Beloit,” he said.

  She snorted but smiled, resisting the urge to remind him that one of them did, in fact, jump off the train.

  “Good to see you,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s good.”

  It was the last Violet saw of Frank, and the last time she talked about the train.

  When she was eighteen, after the doctor had died, she married Samuel Olsen, a farmer whom she met at a dry goods shop in Madison, a man who was quiet and hardworking and loyal, a man who didn’t ask too many questions, a man who, for the most part, left her be. She said goodbye to her makeshift family at the rest home, and she and Samuel moved to a farm over the state line in Minnesota. After three miscarriages, she gave birth to a glacial-eyed baby she named Iris, and in that moment when she felt split open and re-formed, when the doctor placed the little warm thing in her arms, she forgave her mother—for letting her go—as mothers often do. Violet had feared she might have little reserves of tenderness for a child, having pined for her own lost mother for so long, but Iris tapped into a small, secret well within her.

  * * *

  Miss Moody stopped first at the supply closets.

  “A toothbrush, a flannel, soap. Let’s see. A dress. Some underclothes. They’ll be a bit big, but it’s a start. We’ll get you some more dresses in town tomorrow. Follow me now.”

  Past the doctor’s quarters, Miss Moody pushed open a door to a small lemon-painted room with a window that looked out on the lake. There was a narrow bed, a dresser, a lamp, and a night table.

  “Your room. And your key.” Miss Moody struggled to get it off her ring. “Here.”

  “A key to my room,” was all Violet could get out, from the tumble of emotion and exhaustion that washed through her.

  Miss Moody smiled. “The mosquitoes’ll start soon, so best not to leave your window open at night.”

  Violet nodded. To worry about mosquitoes almost made her laugh.

  “Clara?” a male voice called from down the hall. Footsteps clacked against the polished wooden floor.

  The doctor appeared in the
doorway, a white beard obscuring half his face, his eyes shiny and dark, and Violet put her hand up in a small wave. He looked inquisitively at Miss Moody.

  “Well, hello—”

  “Violet,” Miss Moody said.

  “Violet. I’m Dr. Marlowe. Welcome.”

  “Thank you, sir. Doctor,” Violet said.

  “How old are you, Violet?”

  “She’s thirteen, Doctor. Same age as the scullery girl here before.”

  “Huh,” he said, glancing again at Violet’s young face. “Well, I suspect Clara will see to everything. See you at supper.”

  * * *

  Violet never returned to New York City, to its endless struggle and brutality and life. She wanted to leave it as it was, to stay ignorant of what it had become. She did not know that, a year after she left, Nino had died in a gang fight, bleeding to death on the docks in a warm summer rain. But she knew it was better not to know what had become of him, as it would surely have cracked her heart in two. As an old woman, Violet would daydream about Nino and the other boys—the wild freedom of the street—and in her bones she would feel an ache for that teeming city of her youth, for the rotting, howling, reeking adventure of it. For those gritty quicksilver days, so long ago.

  After her husband died—that patient man who through time had become her friend—and with Iris married, with a son and another baby on the way, Violet felt set free. She lived alone on what remained of the farm, where she had experienced joy and sadness and where she now welcomed solitude. She was content to busy her restless hands knitting sweaters for Samantha, her new grandchild, watching her stories on TV, and watching the sun come up each morning.

  She would never know that, a few months after she left on the train, Lilibeth had gone back to the Aid Society to try to get her back but was told there was no record of any child with that name and birth date. Or that she had married a man, an eccentric old railroad executive, and moved uptown, or that she had died at the age of forty-three, her body riddled with cancer, asleep on a woven straw mat at Madam Tang’s. But with the long view of her life, Violet wondered sometimes about her girlhood migration, what she had gained—clean clothes, good food, her own bed, stability, and the kindness of Dr. Marlowe; a fair chance, really—and what she had lost—her mother. The lack Violet felt had never gone away. All the comforts of her life in Wisconsin had only changed its shape.