The Christmas Train

by Rexanne Becnel

  Miss Eva smiled and lifted a hand to Anna’s cheek. “You’re a good girl, Anna. A good girl.”

  TOM watched as the train emptied. More than once his gaze riveted on a girl who could be Anna. The right age. The right coloring. But what was the right coloring? Her mother’s dark, Sicilian beauty, or his pale, Nordic look? He didn’t know.

  He was the only single man waiting on the platform, though, so he was counting on her searching him out.

  Only no little girl looked twice at him. Instead they walked beside parents and siblings, or ran enthusiastically into the open arms of other waiting adults.

  Where was she?

  He approached a conductor. “I’m expecting my daughter on this train. Anna Spano? Ten years old, and traveling alone?”

  The man shot him a doubting look. “Ten years old and traveling alone? We don’t allow that, mister. Gotta be thirteen. Otherwise she needs a responsible adult with her.”

  Damn it all to hell. Tom looked over his shoulder at the passenger groups heading onto the brightly lit station. “Her mother didn’t say anything about someone traveling with her.”

  “And you didn’t see her get off?”

  “No.”

  “You sure you got the right train?”

  “Yeah.” Turning away, Tom felt his heart thump in rising panic. Where the hell was she? Had Carrie changed her mind? Or had she told him the wrong time?

  He pulled out his phone and punched in Carrie’s number. After three rings it went to voice mail. But as he was about to speak, call waiting signaled an incoming call. Carrie.

  “She’s not on the train!” He barked the words out before she said a thing. “Where is she?”

  “I put her on the train just like I told you,” Carrie bit back at him. “If she’s not there, then ask the train people, not me.”

  Tom couldn’t believe the lack of concern in her voice. “Good God, Carrie! Aren’t you worried about her? Even a little?”

  “Like I told you, I did my ten years with her. The rest is on you.” And with that she hung up.

  Beyond him the conductor’s gaze sharpened, and when Tom just stared at his phone, the man stepped nearer. “Ex-wife?”

  Tom shook his head. “Sort of.” He stared at the man. “She got on in Texarkana. But she’s not here. What do I do? How do I find her?”

  “Come on,” the man said. “We need to talk to security. They’ll contact the security offices at every stop between here and there. If she’s at any of those stations we’ll find her.”

  “And if she’s not?” Tom asked, a sick fear settling in his gut.

  The conductor frowned as they both hurried into the station. “Then we post an Amber Alert.”

  SOMEHOW Anna and Miss Eva managed to miss their connection. They’d eaten breakfast and had what Miss Eva called a standing-up bath in the ladies’ room. Then they made their way back down the long boarding platform only to realize they’d gone down the same wind-tunnel platform they’d arrived from, not the platform for their new train. By the time they struggled to the right platform, the train to Ennis had left. Gasping for breath, Miss Eva leaned heavily on Anna.

  “Darn.” Anna looked up at Miss Eva. “Now we have to wait for the next train to Ennis.” She used to take the city bus with Nana Rose sometimes, so she figured that, like buses, another train would soon come along. “I’ll go ask when it’s coming, okay? You wait here.”

  “No. You stay with me. Or . . . or I will go with you. I told your mother I watch over you.”

  “It’s just over there. See? Where it says information. You can watch me the whole time.” She steered Miss Eva to the nearest vacant seat. “I’ll be right back.”

  Anna felt grown up and important as she made her way to the information desk. When she got to there she turned and waved at Miss Eva. But even though the old woman was looking straight at Anna, she didn’t seem to see her. At least she didn’t wave back.

  Maybe she needed glasses, like Nana Rose.

  At the counter, the woman smiled at Anna. “May I help you, hon?”

  “Yes, ma’am. My . . . my grandmother and I missed our train. To Ennis. We went to the wrong boarding platform.”

  “I see. And where is your grandmother?”

  “There.” Anna pointed. “The lady with white hair and the pretty gray coat with all the embroidery on it.”

  “Ah, yes. And it’s just the two of you traveling together?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Anna kept a determined smile on her face. “Can you tell me when the next train to Ennis is?”

  The woman’s gaze flitted from Anna to Miss Eva, then finally settled back on Anna. “Let me check.” She focused on her computer screen. “Not until tonight at seven fifteen, arriving in Ennis at one thirty-two tomorrow morning. Do you need to notify anyone about your delay? Your parents maybe?”

  “No. Miss—Grandma Eva will call her brother and let him know. We’re going to his house for Christmas.” She smiled brightly at the woman. She didn’t know why she felt like she had to hide the truth about her relationship with Miss Eva. She worried, though, that attention from people Miss Eva didn’t know would upset her. Better to just get on board the next train and get to Ennis.

  “All right, then,” the information lady said. “Seven fifteen tonight. Platform four. Do you want me to write it down for you?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll remember.”

  “Okay, then. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Anna replied. Then she turned and skipped back toward Miss Eva, like she was the most carefree little girl in the whole wide world. “We have to stay here until tonight,” she told her, relating the details.

  “Ach. All day to sit. Well then, it is not so bad. I get some more coffee und we sit in that cafeteria with the television. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  But there was only so much television they could watch. Anna stared at other kids going by with their parents and brothers and sisters. None of them were traveling alone, like her. None of them looked scared about what would happen when they got to where they were going. They all knew there would be someone waiting with hugs and happy cries about how tall they were or how cute. A pair of twin girls younger than her had twin missing teeth, and Anna stared greedily after them, wondering how many aunts and uncles and cousins would sing that song about wanting two front teeth for Christmas.

  Would her father be glad to see her? She chewed on her lower lip. Probably not. Did he even know she was coming? With a gasp she realized that he was expecting her on the earlier train. What would he do when she wasn’t there? Slumping in her seat, she kicked at the table leg. Why didn’t her mother write down his telephone number?

  “Stop that, Paulie.”

  Anna looked up at Miss Eva. “I’m not Paulie. I’m Anna.”

  As if startled, Miss Eva blinked, then managed a smile. “What an old silly I am. Of course you are, Anna. It’s just . . . when my Paulie was little he had hair the same color as yours, blond and silky.”

  “Did you and Paulie and your husband always live in Arkansas?”

  “No. My husband, he is a soldier, so we move many times. After he stops being the soldier, that’s when we go to live there.”

  “So Paulie had to change schools a lot?”

  “Ja, but after, oh, sixth grade, we finally stay in the same place.”

  Anna began kicking the chair leg again. “I don’t want to go to a new school.” When Miss Eva patted her knee, Anna stilled her foot, then sighed. “I won’t know anybody.”

  “Ja. But you make new friends. I know you will.”

  “Maybe . . .” Anna stretched the word out. “But what about my old friends? Do you have any friends from when you were a little girl?”

  Miss Eva frowned and stared across the wide station hall. “No.”

  “No? None at all?�
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  “You are too young to understand.” The old woman shook her head. “It was very different then. When I leave my village I am only fifteen. And then after the war, I leave Germany and I never go back.” She rubbed absently at her chest. “And then I work in Amsterdam until I meet my Paul and we get married and we come to America and have Paulie. I make new friends. Good friends. And so will you.”

  Anna digested that for a moment. “What about Karl?”

  “Karl?” She gave Anna a hard look. “What about him?”

  Anna hesitated. “He’s your brother, right?”

  “Ja.”

  “Well, does he have old friends from Germany?”

  An odd expression came over the old woman’s face, a blankness, like a fog floating up and circling around her. It made Anna nervous. Why did talking about Karl always make Miss Eva get that confused look in her eyes? That lost, panicky look?

  “Karl,” Miss Eva began, only to drift away without finishing her thought. Then she began to cry, a slow, silent weeping as she stared off at nothing.

  Anna’s hands tightened on the chair arms. Miss Eva was sad, and Anna didn’t know how to make her not sad.

  Miss Eva took a heavy breath and blew it out. She fumbled in her pocket before drawing out a handkerchief with yellow embroidered trim and blotting her eyes. “Karl said the Madman wanted to change Germany, and the people, also, mostly by using fear. He warned us, though, that the fear would turn the people mad, too. Mad with hate.”

  She paused to take a steadying breath, then studied Anna with sad eyes. “They say we must never forget. But I think it is better that children like you never have to know about such madness.”

  “Nana Rose told me not to look at the TV about the airplanes that crashed into those buildings. She didn’t want any children to see. And the teachers, too, they didn’t want to talk about it at first. But us kids, we talked about it anyway. Allison Green said her uncle was in one of those buildings, and her cousins don’t have a daddy anymore.”

  Miss Eva stared up at the television mounted on a shelf near the ceiling. “Ja, the TV tells everything these days. We don’t have the TV when I am a girl, so at first we don’t know anything that goes on outside our village. But then we start to know things. Bad things. Even then, though, we don’t know the worst things. And always we hope and pray. Oh, how much we pray that it will get better. That it will be over and there will be no more war. That Karl und Papa will come home to us.”

  “But they never came back?” Anna asked, her voice small, like when she whispered to Nana Rose in church. She was afraid of Miss Eva’s answer even though she already knew what it would be.

  “Nein, they never come back. Things are not right anymore. First comes the Mischlinge signs against the poor Jews. Oh, it was very bad. Very bad. But it gets worse. The Nacht und Nebel comes, the night and fog, where people are taken away and we don’t know where or why. So much fear and suspicion. Soon there is no food in the shops, only what we grow in our little garden. And even then the soldiers take it like we are the enemy. We are hungry all the time. All the time. And then comes that last winter. I never forget it. I want to forget it,” she added in a lower voice. “But I cannot.”

  She pressed her lips together, breathing heavily through her nose. In the background Christmas music played. Just the music, no words. But Anna knew the words from the Christmas pageant. The fourth-grade chorus had sung “Let It Snow” and now her mind sang the words alongside the music until an announcement broke in, a departure for Chicago and points east.

  Anna propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her cupped hands. “Was it a very cold winter?”

  The old woman pursed her lips. “Bitter cold. And so much snow.” She was far away in the past, like Nana Rose used to get. “I climb out the window. ‘Mach schnell,’ Mutti says. She pushes my bag out after me. ‘Run and hide.’ I have only my ankle boots on, not my tall boots with the fur lining.”

  Anna’s attention was riveted on her. “Why did your mother tell you to run and hide?”

  “The Madman sends his soldiers to get us because of Karl and the Resistance.”

  “To get you? To put you in jail?”

  Miss Eva swallowed hard, her eyes fixed blindly at the wall. “They call them work camps. But they are worse than the jail. That night when the soldiers come for us? That is when I stop being a German and become an undesirable. An enemy in my own country!”

  It sounded like a movie, not somebody’s real life. But Anna didn’t doubt a word of her tale. “Where did you go?”

  Like a window shade pulled closed, Miss Eva’s pale lashes and blue-veined eyelids came down over her eyes. “Nein.” She whispered the word, fluttering one of her hands as if to erase that part of her past.

  Nein.

  Anna stayed beside Miss Eva a long time, afraid to talk to her, afraid to leave her alone. Miss Eva sat so very still, like a statue. Anna could never sit that still for that long. But she tried.

  A big clock hung on the wall and she timed herself, watching Miss Eva, but peeking at the clock to see how long she could sit absolutely still. No foot swinging. No squirming. No yawning or looking around at all the people coming and going. She could only do it for six minutes, though. That was the longest she could last.

  But Miss Eva . . . she sat in that restaurant chair, her hands in her lap and her eyes closed, and she seemed to disappear into her past, into that bad winter in Germany with the wrong boots on.

  Anna began to swing her legs at 2:44. At 2:50 she began to worry the broken nail on her left thumb. At 2:53 she got too worried to stop herself. “Miss Eva.” She reached over to nudge the old woman and whispered a little more urgently. “Miss Eva.”

  With a start the old woman came wide-awake. “Vas ist das?” Her eyes were wide and staring, but she stayed very still in her chair.

  “It’s me. Anna. You fell asleep.”

  “Ah, Anna.” She smiled, obviously relieved. As was Anna.

  “We have almost four hours until we get on the new train. I’m getting hungry again. And bored. Can we walk around or something?”

  “Of course, Liebchen. Of course.” Gripping her purse and carpetbag, she pushed heavily to her feet. “Where do you want to go?”

  They visited the ladies’ room again, and were crossing back to the restaurant when a pair of guards approached them. “Anna Spano?” one of them asked, studying Anna.

  When Miss Eva gasped, Anna clutched her arm, knowing Miss Eva thought they were soldiers. “You’re scaring her,” she accused the two men. “Come on, Miss Eva. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  “But . . .” She began to cough. “The . . . the soldiers.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Sorry. But we got a report of a missing child.”

  “I’m Anna Spano. Okay? We missed our train, that’s all. I already talked to a lady about it. We—my grandmother and me—we’re just waiting for the next train.”

  While Anna reassured Miss Eva, one of the men used his radio to confer with somebody while the other man hovered over them. “She’s just tired,” Anna said, more worried about Miss Eva’s coughing than by him. “She’ll be okay once she catches her breath.”

  The other guard interrupted her. “Your dad’s at the station in Ennis. You want to talk to him?”

  It was Anna’s turn to get scared. Talk to her father? Now? She shook her head.

  “No?” the guard said. “You don’t want to talk to your own dad?”

  When Anna remained mute, the other guard said to his partner, “Probably a custody thing. Kid doesn’t want to spend Christmas with Dad but the court says she has to.”

  Anna let them think whatever they wanted. After all, it wasn’t that far from the truth. By the time they’d passed word to her father that she was safe and waiting for the next train, Miss Eva was a little calmer. At least she wasn’t
coughing so hard. The security guards brought her a wheelchair to sit in, but Miss Eva refused. With Anna beside her, the old woman marched defiantly into the restaurant, sat down, and ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and milk for them both. Afterward they browsed the several small shops that lined the main station walls. At least Anna browsed them. Miss Eva sat in a central location where she could keep her eye on Anna’s comings and goings.

  Anna let her think that was the plan. But really, she was keeping an eye on Miss Eva. Just like the security guards were keeping a casual watch over the two of them.

  It worried Anna that Miss Eva was slipping in and out of her memories so much. At least she moved too slowly to wander off very far. Fortunately she seemed content to just sit and watch Anna. And she seemed more energized. Their brush with the security guards—soldiers, Miss Eva had insisted—had put her on high alert.

  But by seven o’clock, when they began their trek down platform four to board their train, Miss Eva had again begun to fade. The moment they left the cavernous warmth of the station terminal with its piped-in music and Christmas decorations, and entered the frigid wind tunnel of the departure platforms, she began to cough in earnest.

  “Cover your face with your muffler,” Anna suggested.

  “This wind—” Miss Eva broke off, coughing. “It snatches my—snatches my breath away.”

  Their conductor this time was a smiling, cheerful woman. “Let’s get you inside out of this wind, ma’am. Here, let me help you up.”

  If not for her uniform, Anna suspected Miss Eva would have welcomed the attention. But she refused to release her bag or accept the woman’s help. Anna just shrugged at the conductor, then steadied Miss Eva as she struggled up the steps.

  “Thank you,” Anna told the woman once Miss Eva picked their seats.

  “Let me know if you need anything, sugar. You hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I think we’ll be okay.”

  “Heading to Ennis?” she said. She scribbled something on a card and slid it into a slot above their seats. “Dining car is ahead one. Viewing car is behind one and on the second level.” She paused a moment. “You’re good to go, then?”