Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054)

by Stuber, Barbara

  “WHAT?”

  He walks a few steps ahead and turns back to me. He opens his mouth, but I speak before he can make things worse. “Don’t tell me this isn’t pathetic. Don’t you dare. I’ve just committed a crime to find out that that sneak has been planning to get rid of me, for God’s sake. It’s not fine… it’s… he’s…”

  Leroy’s face is dead serious. He clenches his fists, then levels his dark eyes on mine. “This is the way he always treats you. You’ve said it yourself a thousand times. I’ll tell you what I think you should do.”

  I cover my ears. Here it comes.

  Leroy growls the words, “Tell him no.”

  CHAPTER 2

  JUNE 1926

  I hate my feet.

  They’re stuck inside these prissy suede boots with grosgrain ribbon ties. The boots pinch. They squeak. They’re just big walking advertisements for Baldwin’s Shoes.

  The little girl across from me cannot keep her eyes off them. She looks from my feet to my face and back again. “How old are you?” she asks.

  “Almost sixteen.”

  “I’m eight.” She finishes cutting a family of paper dolls from the Ladies’ Home Journal and lines them up across the seat of the train. She puts me in charge of the father. I am to hold him upright when it’s his turn to talk, even though his head has not survived her scissors. Her mother gives me a resigned smile and hands me a peppermint. She wears nice tan boots with hook-and-eye closures.

  The girl acts out a paper doll drama about children begging their parents for a puppy. She hop-walks the family members across the upholstered seat, changing voices for each character. She seems to know exactly what each person in a family would say and do. And naturally, the kind and perfect Daddy finally surprises them with a dog.

  The paper father in my hand is headless, but not heartless, I think.

  The opposite of mine.

  I wave out the train window when the girl and her mother exit at Clearview. I sit back, caved into the space between my shoulders, staring at my boots. What an imbecile in diapers I was to believe I had a real role in my play-act family.

  Besides my feet, the other part of me I hate is the part that didn’t even try, that can’t say no to anyone about anything. I’m sorry, Leroy. I’m a chicken.

  I inherited it from my father.

  For one whole month after the letter came I rubbed the blister between Daddy and me with questions. At dinner I would needle him about my responsibilities at the store this summer. At breakfast I’d say things like, “I can’t wait to help with the window dressings in Kansas City. We should plant zinnias in pots by the front door.” But he just rattled the front page of the Atchison Daily Globe as though it had wilted under his fierce attention. He clucked over his cornflakes and pecked at his toast. He did everything but be honest with me.

  Carl, our shoe repairman, used to shake his head and, when he thought I couldn’t hear, mutter under his breath, “Charles Baldwin is a bullshit salesman.”

  He’s right. I am one of Daddy’s best customers. But then I’m just full of a different kind of manure—chicken. Did I refuse when he finally tried to sell Wellsford as a grand opportunity?

  “It’s lovely, Iris.”

  “It’s not on the map.”

  “Avery Nesbitt is a doctor. You’ll meet important people, cultivate friends, learn housekeeping and sick care.”

  “Dr. Nesbitt thinks I already know those things,” I had answered flatly. Daddy must not have noticed that our housekeeper, Mrs. Andrews, cooked and cleaned; she didn’t teach it.

  He said I would be bored in Kansas City.… Bored?

  I stare out the window into fields shimmering in the afternoon sun. Rows of spring wheat closest to the track whiz past us. Farther out they spin as though pulled by the train. Farther still, crumpled cloud pillows are tossed across the horizon. We rattle over bridges and whistle our way into stops with nothing more than a crooked water spigot and a painted plank sign: Newbridge, Tarkio.

  When we pull away, I see that cows are corralled where the rest of the towns should be. They look grand wearing their shiny hides of spotted black and white, chocolate brown and tan. We turn a curve, cross another bridge. The whistle shrieks. The brakes scream. We jerk—rock—jerk to a dead stop in the middle of nowhere.

  I lower the window, gulp the sooty air, my heart pounding. There’s nothing but whipped prairie grass and cottonwoods.

  A mangy little dog trips down the aisle, chased by a porter who yells as he passes, “Don’t worry folks. We just hit a cow.”

  I wiggle my toes; hear the puny creaks of my bleached leather boots, ghosts of the animals they once were. I remember Carl saying that a self-respecting cow should resist becoming suede.

  Men gather outside to stretch and light their pipes. Ladies hold their skirts against the wind. An old couple shares a tin of cookies.

  The train is hot, but I stay put. I’m closer to Leroy and Atchison in here. And I am not going to think about that cow, the way I am also not thinking about Dr. Avery Nesbitt and his half-dead mother. The train purrs in place. I raise the window to keep out the grasshoppers and grit.

  I know only one detail about Wellsford: Dr. Nesbitt has a black fountain pen and perfect handwriting. The rest of him shows up in my imagination. He’s a tall know-it-all, wide around the middle with a black caterpillar mustache. He is not one bit interested in me.

  Their two-story white house will be surrounded by elm trees and a wrap-around porch. The dining room shades will be drawn because it’s used as his mother’s bedroom. She’s shriveled and whiskery, bent over in her wheelchair. The kitchen is as sterile as a doctor’s office, with a jar of tongue depressors where the sugar canister should be.

  My stomach churns. I can’t see me in there anywhere.

  I can’t see myself anywhere, at all.

  The train gets underway. Clothesline poles replace windmills. In minutes we glide into the depot.

  I wipe my eyes. The porter knocks on my compartment. “Wellsford.”

  I grab my pocketbook and bag and suddenly I know what part of me will stay on the train. I walk out in my stockings, leave my boots hiding under the seat, ashamed, like they should be, to step into cow country.

  The depot is painted dark green with peeling red trim around the windows. A wooden sign reads: AMERICAN RR EXPRESS AGENCY. There are barrels, a blackboard listing the rail schedule, and freight carts pulled alongside the platform.

  I squint into the wind and hop from the bottom step in my stocking feet.

  My make-believe Dr. Nesbitt is nowhere in sight.

  “Heard you killed a fella.”

  The speaker is right behind me. I wheel around and stare into a wide, windburned face with dark piggy eyes.

  “What?”

  “You killed a bum.” The man’s tone says, Don’t you even know what you did?

  “Sir?”

  He answers as if I’m slow. “It wasn’t a boveen accident. Not a moo cow, missy. A man was kilt.”

  “Boveen?”

  He’s clearly amused by the confusion he’s creating. “Wasn’t a cow, like they claimed.” He glances down the track. “Doc Avery was supposed to pick you up, but he had to take off to pronounce him, or at least the remainin’ parts of him, dead.”

  “Who?”

  “The hobo fishin’ off the bridge.” He glances at the passenger car. “I see you picked up his mutt.”

  The hobo’s muddy stray has limped off the train and is sniffing my trunk.

  The piggy man looks me up and down, twice. He smirks at my stocking feet, and motions toward a horse-drawn wagon parked by the FREIGHT ROOM sign.

  I stand stapled to the platform.

  He raises his eyebrows, as if he wonders if I’ll know the answer, and asks, “You are Iris Baldwin, ain’t ya, Miss Iris Baldwin?”

  I barely nod.

  “Cecil Deets.” He says both names with an odd, drawn out e sound like he thinks I’m part deaf.

  He
takes forever putting my trunk in the wagon. He spits, rubs his palm on his overalls stretched tight across his belly, and tugs at his crotch. He glances again at my feet, then at me. I turn my back, dig my old shoes from my bag, and put them on as the train pulls out.

  Wellsford appears on the other side of the tracks. There’s a stone hotel, three steeples, a barber shop, and a Standard Oil gas pump in front of a dry goods store. There are houses and what looks to be a school next to a tiny courthouse.

  Cecil Deets lumbers onto the wagon seat, looks down at me. I get goose bumps, even on the inside. He scratches his fat neck, lays his hand palm-up where I am supposed to sit on the bench. “So, get in.” He motions toward the depot outhouse with its door hanging open. “Unless you’d like to use the… little girl’s room. We’ve got a long ride together.”

  “But where’s… ?”

  “Ain’t you been hired by Doctor Avery Nesbitt?” He sounds irritated. “Then that’s where we’re headed, Miss Iris Baldwin. To your new boss.”

  I climb onto the wooden seat, scoot as far from him as possible. We circle the depot and head out on a wide dirt road. My stomach is a knot. My trunk bucks and rattles behind me. “Where does he live?”

  “Miz Nesbitt’s farm. What’s he payin’ ya?”

  I ignore the money question. “He’s married?”

  Cecil snorts—something between a burp and a laugh. But he doesn’t answer.

  “Oh, I know, you mean Mrs. Nesbitt—Dr. Nesbitt’s mother.”

  “Queer,” he says, and then laughs again. “Yes, indeed.” He gives me a long glance. “Doc Avery’s been living here with his mama since his brother was shot by the Germans. I’m their tenant—rent their land.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I shut up. Talking to him feels rotten.

  The horse lopes along with its tail cranking against the flies. We pass a brick silo, a dilapidated barn, and a rusted plow choked by vines. So is this Daddy’s idea of a “lovely town”—full of creeps and strays and dead bums?

  I’ll have to ask him all about that when he comes to visit like he promised. That’ll be the day.

  The wagon hits a bump. I knock into Cecil and bite my tongue. The sting fills my face. I taste blood. I’m five years old again, riding home from Mama’s sanatorium with Daddy, and for an indescribable moment I wish like anything that this was then.

  Cecil’s knuckles are fat. He’s got spots on the backs of his hands and no wedding ring. I picture the little girl from the train. I wonder how she would act out this play. She wouldn’t, because in her life stories make sense, they have a point and a happy ending.

  “Dot’s my girl,” Cecil says out of the blue.

  “Y-your wife?”

  He swipes his nose. “My daughter. Thirteen.” He twists his neck, leers at me. “You look closer to seventeen.”

  I don’t correct him.

  “Dot’s mother… passed.” Cecil looks skyward. I follow his gaze. Hawks dive overhead. This land does not look that different from the surroundings of Atchison, but I feel like Persephone, in our Greek mythology unit, when she was banished to live in the underworld with Hades.

  Cecil yanks the reins. We roll past a mailbox, past a telephone pole, and up a long driveway. Ahead is a pale stucco house with a low green roof. It has cement steps to the front stoop and a pair of slanted storm cellar doors buried in the yard.

  I hop off the seat onto a patch of gravel. Chickens watch Cecil jerk my trunk up the steps. He opens the front door and yells real light and friendly, “Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Nesbitt, Miss Iris Baldwin is here, at your service!”

  Cecil lugs my trunk inside. He turns to me with that shifty smile and sweeps his arm.

  When I step in, he steps out. He huffs off the front stoop and into his wagon. He clucks the horse and hisses at me from a swirl of dust, “Shut the goddamned door!”

  I close it so fast, not even a shadow has time to escape.

  CHAPTER 3

  I blink at the gloom. My trunk, sitting crossways on the carpet runner, looks confused, as though it’s been delivered to the wrong threshold.

  My collar is tight. I can’t peep Hello? or Anybody home?

  I hear the tap and rustle of branches sweeping the roof. The doors along the hall are shut except one. The walls creak and moan Go… away… now…

  Morbid moves in.

  I imagine Mrs. Nesbitt is in one of these shrouded rooms, dead in bed. I shiver, picturing the grim dry seam of her mouth, her stiff fingers the color of tallow. She has died while her son is out pronouncing somebody else dead… and somehow Cecil knew it. He knew exactly what I was walking into. That’s why he swore and raced away.

  I grip my handbag and creep down the dark hall, clear my throat and whisper, “I’m here. Iris Baldwin has arrived.” I listen for a gasp, a whimper.

  Nothing.

  I step through the open door.

  Flies caught behind the heavy parlor drapes buzz helplessly. My slate-blue dress dissolves in the gloom. The wallpaper is faded rose bunches tied with poison ivy. A hulking upright piano fills one wall. The keys look like gritted yellow teeth. At least if Mrs. Nesbitt is dead, I can go home.

  A dingy dish towel covers a painting above the piano. I imagine a skeleton hand reaching from behind, pinching the cloth, and lifting it.

  I have absolutely no idea what to do, so I sit on the edge of the divan and stare into the painted black eyes of two figurines facing me from their little wall sconce. Their bored expressions ask, Why are you here?

  I want to go sit on my trunk, but I can’t make myself move.

  Daddy lied. This isn’t a house in a town full of important people. This is not like any farmhouse I’ve ever read about, heard about, or imagined. Farmhouses are supposed to be bright and sunny with muddy galoshes on the step. There are supposed to be litters of kittens on the porch, big soft chairs, and kitchens that smell like fried chicken.

  Or maybe Daddy didn’t exactly lie—he just didn’t care, wasn’t interested enough to find out the truth about this haunted funeral home.

  Stale wood smoke gusts down the chimney. A slice of late afternoon sun appears on the floor across the room. Behind it is a partially open door and another room cast in deep shadow. The pool of sunlight swims, as if the wind has blown it onto the rug.

  From miles off a train whistles. I know what Leroy would do. He’d hitchhike to the depot and jump a train home. But then, he’d have a home to go to.

  I stare at the spot—a glowing puddle of melted sun. Blown grit ticks the windows. I hear a slight shuffle, a tap. My scalp tingles. Out of nowhere a slipper and the tip of a cane step into the light.

  My hands fly up. “Ah?” I look at the owner of the feet.

  “Miss Baldwin?” says a tiny old woman.

  “Oh!” I scramble to stand. My hat and pocketbook thump on the floor.

  “Hello, Iris.”

  “M-Mrs. Nesbitt?” Every part of me trembles. “It’s so dark in here.… I thought…”

  She walks to the window, her back straight, her chin up, and raises the shade. The shawl wrapping her narrow shoulders blazes in the afternoon sunlight. It matches her slippers—gold silk, embroidered with crimson chrysanthemums and lanterns.

  She turns to me. Plants her cane. Her eyes are fiery, brilliant little headlamps. “Shocked by me, are you?”

  “I’m sorry, but I thought that you…”

  “Were an ailing invalid?” She looks heavenward behind wire-rimmed glasses. “That son of mine…” She glances at the piano. “Here’s my theory, Miss Baldwin. Piano tuners hear only the flat notes. Without sin, preachers have no livelihood. English teachers thrill at a flaw in a freshly diagrammed sentence.” She studies me and clears her throat.

  “Ma’am?”

  “And doctors, like my dear Avery,” she taps her cane to emphasize every word, “find half-dead invalids where there are none.” She pauses a moment and says, “After your journey I trust you could use tea.”

  She grips her cane with
crippled fingers, watches me intently. Does she wonder if I am also the type who will find her flaws, her limp, and nothing else?

  She steadies herself. “Meet Henry, my assistant.” She wags her fancy cane. “He’s bamboo. Quite elegant, although a bit too tall for me. Of Japanese descent, so conversation is a trifle difficult.” She winks.

  I swear, in my whole life nobody has ever winked at me.

  “So if I’ve misplaced Henry and he doesn’t come find me on his own”—she raises her eyebrows—“you’ll know who I’m talking about and will be kind enough to retrieve him for me.”

  I follow her as she makes her way across the hall and into the dining room. Her elegantly outfitted feet seem a bit less crippled than her hands. “You’re lagging behind, Henry,” she fusses, giving her cane a snappy hurry up tap.

  We raise the shades. A long mirror with a carved ebony frame hangs over the buffet. The table has been pushed aside to make room for a bed—my bed, I suppose, with a crocheted bedspread and monogrammed pillow case. Next to it is a night stand and a small chest of drawers.

  “Miss Baldwin, I am very embarrassed by your accommodations—sleeping in the dining room, for God’s sake! We will treat this space as your private domain.”

  I nod, remembering that an hour ago I had her living in the dining room.

  She slides a crooked finger over the table. “Oh, yes, we must discuss dust.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Why, I ask you, on the Seventh Day, didn’t the Creator pave the roads of Wellsford, Missouri, instead of resting? Rain tames the stuff, but not for long. So does frost, but”—she glances out the window—“not in June. Every day—several times a day—I will impose on you to dust.

  “My glasses are the worst.” She works the spectacles off her face and hands them to me. They weigh absolutely nothing. Mrs. Nesbitt fishes a hankie from her cuff. “Keep it. As you can see, my hands are lame. I simply can’t clean my glasses like I used to.”

  I wipe the lenses and hold them to the light for her inspection.

  She tilts her face to me. She wears lipstick, a bit of rouge, and perfume. Her bun is several shades of silver held with a tortoiseshell hair fork.