The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  People get ready, there’s a train a coming …

  CHAPTER 4

  Enroute 1945

  ELLA HARDIMAN FELT THE FIRST LABOR pain as the train flew through Twin Falls, Idaho. She’d been staring at a herd of Guernseys standing drowsily in a field watching the clackety-clack of the train whizzing through the landscape, as if watching her watch them. The steel of the train glistened in the red dusk of evening like a snake shining through the green meadow grasses. The field was bordered with strands of barbed-wire, far as any eye, cows or human, could see, and an occasional stand of cottonwoods rose up to trouble the line of the horizon.

  Ella was alone, and this was her first pregnancy. The train had flung itself through the rushing landscape tirelessly, lumbering from Omaha, through Cheyenne, down to Rock Springs, and up into Idaho; the rip of steel trilling against steel had lulled her into a misty memory of the husband she’d married nine months before. The Army had called Walter Hardiman to officers training school on the eve of their marriage and now she sat watching a young private smooching with his girl at the back of the train, full of child, and wondering where her husband might be.

  Lieutenant Hardiman had recently landed on the island of Leyte in the Asian-Pacific theatre under heavy Japanese fire and relentless tropical rains. Counter Battery Officer Hardiman spent the next week in mud and sand at the Battle of Leyte, moving, after the American victory, to the village of Carigrai Carigrai where he scouted enemy troops for the Army and the Navy. On the particular night that Ella boarded the train bound for Oregon, he was deep in sleep. A Japanese bomber nicknamed Washing Machine Charlie moved over Carigari Carigari, like it did every evening. The bomb blast startled Hardiman up out of his sleep; he ran out of his hut, the mosquito bar still hanging around him, and looking, his buddies said later, like Ichabod Crane, then straight to the Captain in his skivvies.

  He saluted, and said, “I’m Counter Battery Officer Hardiman, Sir. And I’m too young to die,” the incident becoming the battalion joke till they left the Pacific months later.

  He too, had left Omaha by train, moving from Rock Springs down into California where he boarded the Dutch ocean liner, Bos Fontaine, and then towards the International Dateline, and then the Philippines.

  A change in the rhythm of the wheels alerted Ella that the train was slowing. She widened her eyes and looked curiously outside, closing the Yank Magazine she had been reading, and stuffing it in her purse. The fence posts became singular items passing one by one by one as the train lugged to a quiet pant, crawling at a snail’s pace along the track. The atmosphere of the rail car had grown moist and musty and uncomfortable, candy wrappers and Kleenex and newspapers were scattered underneath the seats. The private and his girl stopped kissing and looked around sheepishly as if the motion had made them invisible, and, now, with the slowing train, their necking foolishly exposed. The girl patted her hair and the private leaned back in his seat and looked interestedly towards the window. Other passengers stirred discontentedly, folding up papers, shuffling feet, and stretching the cramps out of their legs. The man behind Ella opened the window and stuck his head outside, looking up and down the track, wondering about the stop. Shouts were heard from outside.

  A conductor had slipped off the train and was running ahead. The train hissed and sighed. Ella sat hoping to hear something beside the grind and clank of steel on steel. She wondered about the commotion, leaning over to peek out the window. The man pulled his head back in, “Something on the track,” he said. “Must be a cow. Maybe it’s a cow.” But three more men ran by the rail car carrying a stretcher. The man stuck his head out again.

  By then people on both sides of the car had opened their windows. They shouted at the conductors, but no one answered. Three civilians and one sailor got off on Ella’s side of the train and ran in the direction of the men with the stretcher. She could hear the crunch of gravel outside and shifted in her seat. The stalled nature of the rail car filled her with apprehension; she’d gotten used to the motion, liking the hypnotic lull of the wheels spinning.

  The thought of moving closer and closer to her destination was comforting; she hoped the delay wouldn’t last long. Shouting filled the air outside along with the scuffle of gravel; it sounded like a fight. She leaned over to the window again. The conductors passed by struggling, the stretcher between them, trying to keep their balance on the slanted ground. A man seemingly dead was slung between them; his long legs dangled beyond the end of the cot and his pointed boots were worn and dusty. A dirty cowboy hat without shape lay crumpled on his stomach. His hair was short cropped, but he sported a long mustache and his face needed shaving. Three other passengers walked behind the cot. One man said, “But I had to punch him. He had a rock in his hand.”

  “He was just drunk,” said another.

  “Yeah,” the other argued. “But he was belligerent. He wanted to fight.”

  “Hard to say,” said the third. “It hardly matters now.”

  “Well, we couldn’t leave him like that.”

  “He was an accident waiting to happen.”

  “Well, not much harm done. His jaw will be sore for a while.”

  “Will they take him to jail?”

  “He was just drunk. No law against that.”

  “Yeah, but in the middle of a railroad track? The conductor said he was trying to stop the train. Crazy drunk.”

  After everyone had boarded the train, it woke again to life, sputtering and jerking to motion. Ella sat back, grateful for the movement.

  The first pain shocked her into another reality, that of her bulging uncomfortable stomach. After the pain, the baby kicked, a sharp jolt under her left breast, as if one contraction weren’t quite enough for this child about to be born. Ella shifted uneasily; she wasn’t truly sure it was a contraction. It was the first one she’d ever felt. Later, of course, she would have known immediately. After six children, she got the contraction thing right away. But this was the first. She sat staring at the cows until the train passed into a hillside and then over a large river running then up the side of a canyon and rushing off into the landscape. The baby kicked her left side again. She felt anxious and straightened her laced collar and tried to smooth her navy top, and adjusted the padding in her shoulders, looking nervously at the man across the way who was reading a paper. She wanted to get up and walk but decided against it. She rubbed her Oxfords against each other. Her legs were swollen to the size of small stumps. She moved her legs apart to see if a new position might ease her discomfort. As the porter walked by, she smiled at him nervously. He stared at the large lump of stomach and walked up the aisle inspecting each passenger. Another contraction tightened the muscles around her lower back like a rubber-band twisting underneath her skin and tightening into her. The tension expanded inside her. She took a breath hoping to escape and then it suddenly disappeared. She breathed harder. Before she caught her breath another contraction tightened, this time deeper, under the muscle, the tremor clamping her body down with a shudder of spasmed muscle, a contradiction of energy binding her body. She cried involuntarily.

  The man behind the paper looked up. You all right, Miss? embarrassed because she was obviously a Mrs., no, she smiled no, and cried again, with tears. The man pushed his paper away and ran to find the porter. She cried as the muscles squeezed involuntarily inside her, and the train trilled a low moaning sound. The porter and the man and the train doctor came and helped her to a room, and laid her down in a bed as the muscles squirmed under her skin like unruly children. And then, after lifetimes of shuddering spasms the baby squirmed into the birth canal and stuck. The child had been perfectly content inside his mother’s dark wet spot, curling in amniotic fluid, crunching in tight spirals, swirling, scrunching and swimming his way through a stream of sweet darkness, drifting, then slowly towards the light, but the drift turned hard and solid.

  The baby was caught, the doctor brought out forceps; Ella’s screams were heard tremoring above the clack of the train,
the whistle of pain haunting the early evening, and then the baby cried his fierce long protest. The doctor had pulled, yanked the infant, with the steel forceps clamped around the soft bloody skull. A high shrill scream cut the air. The doctor was trembling by then, his muscles in spasms underneath his own skin, his shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, blood spattered. The muscular forearms could barely hold the infant, they were shaking so hard. Dr. Jameson had delivered several babies in this very room, but none of the births had been so difficult. The depressions in the child’s skull were severe. The baby howled. The porter had brought some warm wet towels from the kitchen which he now handed to the doctor, who wiped the baby carefully, checking the skull, watching bruises form under the infant’s eyes. He put the child in Ella’s arms. The child was now at her breast sucking, and her breasts tingled as the small lips cramped around her nipples, and the child sucked itself to life with a brief sigh. It was only then that Dr. Rudolph Jameson noticed the blood seeping out of Ella, a glistening red-milky-whey, the blood spreading over the bed, down to the floor. Too much blood. Ella’s life scuttled dreamily away from her. She grew weaker and weaker as the child sucked itself to life.

  When the ambulance met the train in Sand Point, Idaho, Ella Hardiman barely clung to life. The child still clung to her breast, sucking vigorously as the medics moved the still bleeding mother to a cot and rushed her off the train, into the ambulance, through the streets of the small town to the hospital where pints of blood were waiting, needles were jammed hastily under Ella’s skin. The child was whisked to an incubator, his first tight white fists were clamped down and harnessed. The child screamed a high trilling scream, a hard whistling sound that echoed throughout the corridors of the hospital, the sound equal to a mighty fierce rage.

  After two weeks, the child was allowed into his mother’s room. His face had quieted to pink, the bruising now healed. In the morning hours, when the child awoke, his immediate reaction was to imitate the whistle of the train, the sound piercing his mother’s dreams.

  Charlie Miers pulled the ’39 Ford close to the curb of the hospital and jumped energetically out of the car to find his sister Ella and his new nephew. Ella was weak but well. He cradled the infant in his arms as Ella checked out at the information desk. They continued by car to Oregon where Ella rented a small apartment to await the return of her husband. She would wait two years.

  The young Henry would have few men in his life until then. Like other young families starting out during World War II, the father was absent.

  Zihuatanejo

  Maggie looked in the mirror. She still dressed the same and thought maybe she should grow up or something, but it seemed like so much trouble. Besides, growing up was overrated. She’d always known this. She twisted in front of the mirror. Her jeans were faded and ragged. Her gauzy green blouse tinged with pink flowers was rumpled; it looked like she’d accidentally bumped into her clothing and somehow it just clung, more like an adolescent boy, like her clothes didn’t know how to settle down on her. Her blouse chose a shoulder but slid to one side, making a beeline for infinity, casting flowers in her wake. She imagined flowers scattered all the way from Redlands to Big Bear where she’d met Hank, then scattering all the way to Devore, and helter-skelter into the small Mexican village, then all the way to the cantina, and now abandoned outside her hotel. It made her feel sad, like she’d lost something. She sat down on the bed and counted the flowers on her blouse. They were all there. Not lost at all. So she rifled through her Italian red suede purse. She found the chapstick and put it on. Her lips were always so dry. She checked under the mattress. The money was there. God, what if someone had stolen it? You dit, she thought. You have to be careful in Mexico. Just because this was a fancy hotel doesn’t mean they won’t steal your money. One thousand, two thousand, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Yep. It was all there. All stacks of twenties, fifty of them, wrapped with rubber bands. Of course she needed that much! A girl never knows what kind of trouble she might run into in Mexico. Especially Maggie. There was the seven they agreed upon, but don’t think that will be it. First, she’ll have to give him another thousand just to get started. Felipe will pout and do nothing until she gives him another thousand. Now that his mother isn’t around, she’d have to give him more money. She was as sure of this as the heat and the flies. She could hear a mariachi band playing outside. She thought maybe she’d go listen to music for a while, eat enchiladas and go to bed early.

  Felipe would be back early tomorrow. She figured early afternoon was what he meant. Then he’d say we can go tomorrow, which will mean the day after. She’ll say, no, today. This today. The one now. He’ll shake his head and say it’s not possible. Then she’d have to pay him the seven thousand. And he’d say maybe. Maybe we can go today. He’d go to the bar and get a drink. She’d hang around for a while and then go get him. What if I give you another thousand? she’d say. It’s all I have. Then I’ll leave. We have to hurry now, or we won’t get back in time. What time, he’ll say. In time, she’ll say. In plenty of time. He’ll shake his head, but she’ll hand him another five hundred dollars and tell him he can have the rest when it’s done. He’ll get up from the bar. Come on, he’ll say. Let’s get outta here.

  He’ll shake his head, but she’ll hand him another five hundred dollars and tell him he can have the rest when it’s done. And it will start all over. She hated Felipe, but she had to put up with him. She had no choice. She couldn’t start from scratch again. It would have been impossible. Really. The ordinary was out of the question. Wasn’t it? The problem was when she dropped out, she forgot to drop back in. Details. Details. She wanted a gin. But if she had a gin, she’d want another, and after two she wouldn’t even think about three. Could she drop in now? Just for a moment? See what it’s like? Better not. Not now. Not this time. Better have the gin. Then she’d just have it, because she’d think she was just fine. Two gins. No problem. Of course, if she had two gins she’d be toasted. She can’t tolerate alcohol, but she likes the taste. That was one of her big problems. She hardly ever drank, but when she did, watch out world. She didn’t have that gin. Never have a gin in Mexico alone. Never have a gin in Mexico alone. The thought made her shudder. She’d seen the bar in the hotel earlier, an icy cold lair harboring nostalgia and trouble. Not her trouble.

  Her trouble’s right here. The orange was sitting on the side table; it was still sort of fresh, so she pulled it apart and decided to eat orange instead of drink gin.

  Gather round people wherever you roam …

  CHAPTER 5

  THE RANCH BECAME A PLACE for a new kind of family gathering, a family bred by chance and circumstance. Life was an open house and the opening was the Rough Rider’s Club. They were barely settled when Gary Merchant dropped by. Maggie recognized Gary’s Volkswagen van before it came into view because it was missing on one cylinder. The pop, pop, pop, rang up the hill. A large sun was painted on its face with purple wiggly spirals crawling up over the top. She’d met Gary when she lived in Big Bear, the same place she’d met Hank. Maggie had been waiting tables at Sportman’s Lodge. Gary showed her how to take orders and carry four plates at the same time. He’d made work a game even though he was serious minded. He made her look at herself less seriously. Sometimes she could do it. Before Big Bear, he’d worked for a while as a social worker in San Diego, but it had frustrated him, he said, not really being able to circumvent the volumes of red tape inherent in the system. He’d quit the system to concentrate on his art, to work out this vision of how art should be. He kept experimenting with color and form, but he was always dissatisfied. If the color was right, the form and composition were wrong. He’d been trying to get it right for years. Lifetimes. Eternities. But he’d been doing experimental work. Trying to hold it together to survive while extending all the boundaries, breaking all the rules, and still, standing apart brought him no satisfaction. The ability to break convention was unsatisfying. It
served no real need. His art was still incomplete. This had concerned and confused him. He’d thought that breaking the rules would bring him some sort of satisfaction, set him apart from the other artists, make him distinct, unique. So lately he’d been uncertain about how to proceed. He was interested, now, he said, in a painterly realism. Something more traditional than he’d ever tried before. Something far less experimental. That is how he saw his life. In terms of art, a direction that he wanted to follow.

  Maggie was glad to see the rickety beige van. The face with the spiral seemed like a purple smile moving towards her. Smiling. The van crawled up the pot-holed driveway, pulling to a stop next to the house.

  Gary unfolded himself and got out, then a guy she didn’t know and finally, Lucy Pointer. Maggie was glad to see her; she’d been spending a lot of time with Hank and Patrick and their friends. Guys. She’d lost touch with her girlfriends. Not that she didn’t like guys. She loved them. But they were guys. And the guys spoke a different dialect. Sometimes the dialect was totally unintelligible. They worked on different assumptions. They assumed that girls do like they did, but they were wrong there. Girls do as girls do. They do better. It’s worse when there’s only one girl and a bunch of guys. The girl is left out of the conversation. The guys assume and slap each other on the ass and laugh and assume that they know what they know and that it’s right that they know it because they happen to think it. They think that if they think it they know it, but they forget that they might think something else in the next minute because something might happen to change this thinking. Or that they got it wrong in the first place, entirely wrong, and only thought they were right about it when all the time from the beginning they were wrong about everything. They were wrong because they assumed too much. They forgot to ask. If they’d asked in the first place, it would have all been different. They would have known better than to think the wrong things. They would have known the right things: the things that were obvious, the things that girls always see. Boys have it bad because they don’t see things, and when they don’t see them they have to guess about them, or use their feeble intellects, the ones that only think in the boy ways. Girls have the balance. They can see and think. They can see the things that have always been true and will never never change not if boys think and think and think and try and be entirely too clever and get it wrong anyway. If guys relaxed, we all know that they’d be better off from the beginning. Just relax and let it be right and take what you have and be happy with it because it was yours from the beginning of time and that was simply and certainly how it is and always will be. Or sometimes, and even usually, guys entirely ignore you and think you might catch their thinking from the air like a disease and then you’d have the same miserable symptoms of assumptive thinking which of course you never ever wanted. And they also want to think that you want to think their thoughts and that those thoughts of theirs are in some mystifying way superior which of course they are not, not even remotely. But they might have thought you wanted almost any ridiculous thing because they’re guys and that’s simply the long and short of it. And then their outmoded assumptions about how it was but never was gets shoved into some perverse reality that they make absolute, all based on their own erroneous thinking. So they assume that their thinking is perfect and right and absolutely indelible, and when there is more than one guy they preen and shine and strut with each other just because they share one inane pea-sized thought. And it’s like this road girls keep getting lost on because there are so many guys and they have the power and all and girls often get lost on this road since it goes through such scary territory like hairpin turns with no guardrails, and the road gets thin and twisty and dangerous and up steep ravines because this is the big road, life, you know, and if you fall here, you might die a thousand times, but like a fool you keep going because something truly perverse in you likes the scare of it but the other part of you hates the scare and keeps looking for a turnout or something but you’ve gone on too long and you can’t change directions and you keep hoping it just won’t be so damn scary any more. And the other thing is the fear of it if it gets smooth and safe and calm and it’s what you want because you want it and you don’t want the ache in your stomach anymore. Guys don’t have access to any of these signals. What signals? You know the signals! The cosmic signs. Some guys don’t even know how to read these signs. They think there’s a new sign around every curve. Maggie’s guys got a lot of the signals. Of course they were loaded when they got them. Warning. Dangerous Radiance. They said they could make it through the night. Hank said it. They all believed it. That they could reach the morning light.