by Cat Winters
Another love story required completion.
It involved two young women compelled to save as many lives as they possibly could, even though they lost their own lives on a pair of lonely railroad tracks the week before.
Some struggle to complete a task they didn’t finish when they were alive.
I roamed a Southside neighborhood of crowded clapboard houses that all looked like duplicates of one another, all painted the same dung shade of brown, with identical square windows and tired front porches that sagged from time and wear. The waxing moon graced the rooftops with a weak and ethereal light that appeared almost violet.
I strained my ears, in search of the rumble of the ambulance’s engine, and I pressed my lips together and forced myself to refrain from shouting out Nela and Addie’s names, out of fear of frightening children or anyone else who might awake from the sound. To certain ears, my voice might resemble the keening of the wind or the desperate cry of a train charging down the tracks.
Back on Lincoln Street, I gave up and perched myself on the edge of a curb. A light shone in a top-story window of one of the shadowy textile mills that reigned over Southside with hawklike vigilance. A small part of me longed to creep inside the structure to see if some late-night mill worker hunched over his desk or his loom, struggling to complete a task he hadn’t finished while he lived. I wondered if he hated Germans and wished men like Daniel dead. I imagined him as a round fellow with a cigar jammed between his lips, who overworked and underpaid the immigrants subordinate to him—and caused strife to Nela and Addie’s families. Or maybe he possessed compassionate eyes and a worried brow. Maybe he mourned a son struck down overseas or fretted over his wife and children, who shivered in bed from the flu. Perhaps he was peeking out of his fourth-story window at that very moment, spotting me staring up at him, just as I often saw Billy and Lucas watching from the shadows.
I stood up and headed north, toward the tracks, while an eastbound train whistled across the fields a mile or two to the west. A Model T of some sort traveled up one of the nearby streets. The echo of the motor bounced across the houses and rumbled in my bones, and I thought of both the APL men and the Red Cross ambulance sneaking through the nighttime roads of Buchanan. I stopped and turned, squinting to see through the darkness, hoping for the latter possibility.
A large vehicle peeled around a corner. Headlights blinded my eyes, coming closer at too fast a speed, swelling as large as two bright suns. I put up my hands and shrieked, and the vehicle screeched to a halting stop a mere four feet away from where I stood, quaking, my arms frozen in the air in front of my face.
“Ivy?” Nela turned off the engine and, with it, the headlights. She leapt out of the driver’s side in her usual gray uniform and wiggled her mask down below her chin. “What are you doing in the middle of the street down here?”
I lowered my hands to my hips, bent forward at my waist, and blew a relieved gust of air through my lips—although I wondered, Would I have truly gotten hurt if that ambulance had struck me down? Could I have stood there and let it pass straight through me?
“I was . . . looking for you,” I said, gasping to catch my breath as I spoke. “I’d just . . . given up.”
The eastbound train clacked closer, the whistle screaming and hollering at us to stay off the tracks. Nela covered her ears and sank to her knees, and beyond the windshield, Addie did the same, disappearing from my sight. I crouched down next to Nela and braced my arm around her back, feeling the fear inside her hammer across my body. A squall of wind and the force of the locomotive’s power tore straight through us—I tasted the sting of death in its fury of metal and steam. The whistle blew directly next to us, the cries blaring across my brain, making my eyes water, warning of broken glass and twisted metal and bodies tossed through the air.
The train passed. It wreaked its havoc and sped off to the eastern farms of Buchanan, chugging, whistling, clacking-clacking-clacking.
“Addie . . .” I kept hold of Nela, but I lifted my face toward the passenger who hid inside the ambulance. “Please come out here. The train is gone. I need to talk to you both.”
The whistle faded into the pitch-black distance, and Addie slipped out of the truck, her hands still clamped over her ears. Nela rose to a standing position and removed her flu mask. I backed up to properly face them both, and Addie lowered her mask and cleared her throat.
“Tell me,” I said, a tremor in my voice, “that night I first found you stalled on the tracks, how long had you actually been there?”
Addie and Nela glanced at each other with their lips half open. I heard the nervous beating of their breaths, but they did not answer.
“Do you remember what day it was when you first tried driving across those tracks?” I asked. “Was it Saturday, October 5?”
“I think . . .” Addie gulped and winced. “I think it was a Wednesday . . . or a Thursday. The flu was just getting bad.”
“It was Wednesday, October 2,” said Nela without hesitation. “That’s when we tried driving Liliana to the emergency hospital and stalled.”
“You . . .” I clutched the buttons of my blouse above my chest. “You stalled on the tracks on October 2?”
“Yes.” Nela averted her gaze to her Red Cross boots down below the thick hem of her skirt.
“And a train came?” I asked.
Nela’s chin shook. She wiped at her right eye with a knuckle. “Yes, a train came.”
“Did it—”
“Yes.” Nela looked me straight in the eye. “It hit us. I tried and tried to crank the engine back to life, and I jumped back in, while Addie was just about to jump out—and it hit us.”
I turned toward Addie, whose lips shivered. She hardened her jaw and blinked back tears brewing in her eyes.
“Do you both know what happened to you, then?” I asked. “Have you known all along?”
“We don’t talk about it,” said Nela, bracing her hands on her hips. “After you leapt into the ambulance and helped it off the tracks, there seemed no point questioning what had happened. We just wanted to keep going. To keep fetching and helping.”
“The people you’re helping”—I swallowed—“do you know . . . ?”
Both of them turned their eyes away from me, peering instead at the dark patches of weeds that filled the land between the tracks and the houses.
“They already lost their lives,” I said, my arms hanging by my sides like two bars of iron. “Do you know that?”
Both of them kept their eyes averted. The moon kissed their cheeks, and a silent wind plucked at their skirts and their sleeves.
“Their souls got stuck in their houses,” I said. “Or else they didn’t want to leave—that’s why some of them yelled at us to go away with so much passion.” I trekked over the pebbles in the road and wrapped my right arm around Addie’s thin shoulders. “You don’t need to keep fetching them unless you truly believe some of them are trying to get out.”
“I don’t know . . .” Addie covered her eyes and quaked against me. “If this is true, then why haven’t I found my sister?”
“Didn’t you say she succumbed to the influenza?” I asked.
“Yes.” Addie nodded with her lips pressed together. “Our Florence. I can’t find her anywhere here in Southside.”
I squeezed her against my side. “Does she like to dance?”
Addie sniffed, and, out of the corner of my eye, I caught Nela cocking her head at me.
“Does she?” I asked. “Could you imagine her dancing to jazz?”
Addie nodded.
“Come along.” I steered the girl back to the passenger side of the ambulance, my arm still tight around her. “Both of you. I’m going to show you another place where you can potentially take your transports. I have a strong suspicion Florence might already be there, discovering what happens when people bid good-bye to earthly troubles.”
I SWEAR, THAT MASONIC LODGE BALLROOM had ballooned to twice its previous size in just a matter of hours.
A saloon-style bar, topped with polished wood and rows of bright-colored bottles, now stretched the entire right side of the room at the far end. Three well-groomed men in white coats and bow ties served drinks to a line of Guests bellied up to the marble countertop, their feet resting on a brass foot rail.
I had to laugh a little, for in the middle of the bar stood a pyramid of crystal glasses, which Ruth Sellman turned into a fountain of champagne by standing on the counter in her blue fringed dress and pouring a bottle into the topmost glass. Golden liquid splashed and bubbled, and a small crowd of men and women, army boys included, cheered her on in a variety of languages, from English to Polish, Russian, and Norwegian. The more she poured, the more the music gathered speed.
The five windows that watched over the street and Daniel’s store seemed to stretch twenty feet farther across the room, the exterior wall no longer made of bricks, but of glimmering golden paper with flecks of silver and swirls of crimson that resembled bodies intertwined. The Guests danced in their jewels and bandeaus and pinstriped suits with long tails, and some of them kissed and caressed each other.
I noticed that a freckle-faced redhead had joined the band, and his enormous brass tuba belched a vigorous bass line to “Livery Stable Blues,” which inspired a whole slew of popular animal dances among the crowd: the fox-trot, the grizzly bear, the turkey trot, the bunny hug. Everyone wiggled and waddled and clasped one another and beamed bright-wattage smiles that made the crystal chandeliers burn even brighter. All the bedazzling colors of the place—the gilded coating of the walls, the deep red of the velvet curtains, the blues and the blacks and the greens of the gowns—gleamed with the warm hues of a Renoir painting.
I stepped farther into the room on the sweet bubbles of champagne, flanked by Addie and Nela, and I gaped at all the familiar faces I hadn’t seen in the place before. Sigrid—dressed in white silk, a pearl comb shining in her pinned blond locks—now danced with her Wyatt. The synchronization of their feet in their polished black shoes, the gaze they shared as they stepped and turned across the floor, made my heart beat with a contented patter. I didn’t see their children anywhere, as hard as I looked among all the faces gathered together in that room, and I hoped the absence of the little ones meant they had lived. Perhaps the abandoned rag doll in their house would be reunited with its tiny owner.
Mr. Greene from the Hotel America leaned against the bar with a flute of champagne in one hand and the other hand tucked in one of his trouser pockets, his position awkward, slightly tilted backward, as if he hadn’t yet decided whether he belonged within those walls.
Addie looped her arm around my elbow and pulled me close. “I see our Florence.”
“Where?”
“Over there.” She pointed toward one of the windows. A pretty dark-skinned girl in a lime-sherbet-green dress turkey trotted with Benjie.
“Go.” I patted Addie’s hand. “See her.”
Addie stiffened.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “She’ll be so happy you’ve found her. Go to her.”
“I don’t know . . .” She untangled her arm from mine and inched toward the door. “I’d rather just get back into the ambulance and keep going.”
“As would I,” said Nela, also making an abrupt turn for the exit. “We’ve got work to do. People to help. This party here has nothing to do with us.”
“Nela,” called a fellow coming our way from the crowd around Ruth—a uniformed soldier, a tall one with pale-blond hair and hazel eyes that obviously recognized my friend. He removed a cloth army hat from his head and tucked it beneath one arm.
Nela stopped and pivoted on her heel toward him. A whispered Polish phrase slipped from her lips, along with a gasp of shock.
Without missing a beat, “Livery Stable Blues” slammed into “Jelly Roll Blues,” and in the same amount of time, Nela and the soldier clamped each other in a firm embrace that warmed our side of the room with an unexpected blaze of heat. Nela squeezed her eyes shut and murmured the name “Freddie,” and the soldier cradled the back of her head with his fingers embedded in her strands of fair hair.
Addie bolted from my side and left the room.
“Addie?” I followed after her, but by the time I exited the double doors, she had made it halfway down the hallway.
“Addie, where are you going?” I called after her.
“I’m not ready for this. I don’t want to be here.” She turned the corner in a streak of Red Cross gray, and the soles of her boots clomped down the steps of the lodge’s side staircase.
“Addie!” I swung around the bend and chased after her, clinging tight to the slick rail. “Don’t be frightened, please!” I rounded the bend in the staircase, not seeing her anymore.
The glass-paneled door of the lodge swung shut before I even reached the middle steps. I pushed the door open and found Addie in the driver’s seat of the ambulance, the engine already rumbling, ready to go.
“Addie.” I grabbed hold of the bar running up the right side of the passenger entrance. “I’m sorry. I should have spoken more delicately about what happened.”
“I’ve got to go.” She shifted the clutch lever into neutral, exactly as I’d instructed. “Please stop hanging on to the ambulance.”
“It’s not fair—I know. I feel too young for this, too. But it happened, and we might as well enjoy ourselves in the ways we still can. Don’t you think?”
She peered out from the vehicle with wide, dark eyes. “We’re just going to be numbers in the newspaper. ‘Statistics,’ my daddy called it whenever he read about the war over the breakfast table.”
“Addie, no, that’s not—”
“On the day Florence died, the Sentinel said six Buchanan residents lost their lives. They didn’t even print her name. Just a number.”
“But—”
“Have you heard about any motion picture stars or world leaders dying from this disease?” she asked, her left eyebrow cocked.
“Well . . . I-I-I’ve only read two newspaper articles in the past week . . .”
“Have you heard about any of those fancy, famous people dying in the war either?”
I shook my head, my mouth pressed shut. “No, I suppose not.”
“The only famous dead person in all of this has been Archduke Ferdinand, who went and got himself shot and set all these troubles into motion. Everyone else is ordinary people. We’re just numbers, and when I was a little girl, I sure as hell didn’t dream of growing up and turning into a damned statistic.”
“But people won’t forget us.” I dropped down to the seat beside her with a squeak of the springs beneath the leatherette upholstery. “I think, even years from now, they’ll figure out that music like this . . .” I tilted my ear toward the lodge. “Cripes, just listen to that desperation mixed with a wild joie de vivre. That doesn’t come out of nothing. They’ll be able to hear that a massive eruption once rocked the world and scattered pain and passion in its wake.”
She slid her hands down the steering wheel until the tops of her fingers and thumbs hung from the bottom. “I hope you’re right.”
“They won’t forget.” I scooted across the seat to her. “And I’m sure they’ll learn from all of our mistakes.”
She popped her bottom lip in and out of her mouth and seemed to waver over what to do next.
I rested my hand on the crook of her right arm. “Do you want to go back up there and see your sister?” I asked. “Or would you genuinely feel better driving around?”
“What are you going to do, Ivy?”
I sighed from deep in my belly and glanced past her head at the closed door of Liberty Brothers Furniture standing there, motionless, in the steady electric lamplight shining across the street. “I’m going to talk to my German for a bit. But . . . after that . . .”
She knitted her brow. “After that, what?”
“That’s a very good question.” I climbed out of the ambulance and smoothed down my skirt. “I spent so much of my life hiding and pr
otecting myself from fear. I’m not quite sure what to do with this new taste of liberation.”
“Well, I think I’m gonna drive around a bit.” She pulled her gauze mask back up over her nose.
“Addie . . .” I leaned back down with my hands on my knees. “If you see a young doughboy with hair my color—someone who looks a little lost—will you ask him if his name is Billy Rowan?”
She nodded. “All right, I suppose I could.”
“And if it is Billy, will you tell him that Wendy Darling said to go to the Masonic Lodge, which is a little bit like Neverland? If you mention that Ruth Sellman is there, showing off her gams, that would probably help.”
“Your brother, right?”
“Yes, my brother. The one we lost in France.” I cast my eyes down the sidewalk to the nearest streetlamp to see if he happened to be standing right there. A golden haze hovered beneath the bright bulbous casings, but I didn’t see Billy—although a pair of thick lenses glowed in the darkness beyond.
“I’ll tell him,” said Addie.
“Thank you.”
I stepped back from the ambulance and watched her adjust the levers for the throttle and the spark advance. With the skill of an expert driver that made my instructor’s heart proud, she maneuvered the vehicle around into the opposite direction and puttered off to the westward junction to Southside.
I put my hands on my hips and braced myself against a stark chill left in her wake.
“Go upstairs to the music, Lucas,” I called down the street without actually looking in the direction of the dark patch where I’d seen his spectacles. “Take off your badge and stop spying on me. You can retire now.”
No sounds emerged from his unlit corner. I puffed a sigh through my lips and turned my head toward him.
“You got sick from this flu, didn’t you?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, but I heard him kick a pebble into the street. The stone rolled around in the blackness of night and spun to a stop somewhere in the middle of the road.
“Did it turn into pneumonia or some other complication?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered from down in the darkness. “Meningitis.”
