Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054)

by Stuber, Barbara

  “Thank you,” I say quietly. I recall the picture of the artist I saw on Dr. Nesbitt’s desk.

  We do the dishes in silence. Dr. Nesbitt rinses one plate for almost a minute, leaves soap smears on another. But I just take whatever he hands me and dry it. Mrs. Nesbitt watches him while sipping her tea. The warm glow in her eyes seems to cast a halo around her son.

  CHAPTER 28

  Five long rings rattle me awake.

  Emergency call!

  I shoot out of bed, step right on Marie.

  Pansy! Cecil!

  Something horrible.

  I hear Dr. Nesbitt race out of his bedroom to the phone. I light my lamp, carry it to Mrs. Nesbitt’s room, and help her out of bed. We stand together in the kitchen, blinking, conjuring the worst.

  Dr. Nesbitt’s pale gray nightshirt waves ghosty around his ankles. His bare toes are long and bent. I look away, hope he hasn’t seen me staring. Mrs. Nesbitt’s hair is a silver tangle down her back. My robe is inside out. Only Marie looks her normal self. We, and surely everybody else on our party line, await the operator’s voice with news guaranteed to be bad.

  Dr. Nesbitt’s shoulders slump with the report. He turns to us, disbelief and sadness in his voice. “It’s… it’s Newt Futter. Hung himself in his barn.”

  Mrs. Nesbitt’s eyes narrow. Her mouth looks to be chewing something not fit to swallow.

  Dr. Nesbitt hooks the receiver and says to the floor, “I have to pronounce him dead.”

  We stare at the phone, as though it is at fault somehow.

  “The sheriff’s coming to pick me up on his way over.” Dr. Nesbitt stops, raps his knuckles on the table. “Newt Futter was a nice man. Had two boys.”

  Within the time it takes him to put on clothes, the county car arrives. Its headlamps bleach the side of our shed. With his black bag and a look of grim determination, Dr. Nesbitt hurries out, leaving us to balance the weight of it all.

  I didn’t know Mr. Futter, but I can imagine the scene at his barn—the bewildered gathering of friends and neighbors, the sleepy boys huddled in the house.

  Mrs. Nesbitt turns to me. “This isn’t the first hanging for Avery. Three years ago, for some ungodly reason, the authorities waited for him to arrive to cut a poor fellow down. It’s one of the few times I have seen him mad.” She sighs. “People will count on him tonight because he’s seen it before. There’s strange comfort in that.”

  We lean down and rub Marie between the ears, then I let her out to patrol the chicken house. With hot tea and the crossword, we attempt to fill the deep well Mr. Futter’s decision has dug inside us.

  “Noctambulation,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Twelve letters.”

  “Is that a word? Noc—oh, I see, night plus ambulation. Walk at night… nightwalker.”

  “That’s only eleven. It’s ‘sleepwalking.’”

  “Good.” I look at the puzzle. “Diabolical. Five letters… starts with ‘c.’”

  Mrs. Nesbitt spells on her crooked fingers. “C-r-u-e-l.”

  We fill several columns and have a second cup of tea. Well past three we still wait for Dr. Nesbitt. The moon joins our vigil, full and absolutely brilliant.

  Car lights snake up the drive, sweep the shed, and flash oddly over the back porch. “Avery. Finally.” Mrs. Nesbitt’s voice is weary and relieved.

  I step to the porch. The car, partway on the yard, illuminates the clothesline and my sawhorse full of shotgun targets. The taillights wash the chicken coop red.

  I squint into the headlamps. The engine sputters and chugs. The tailpipe sparks. In one horrid moment I realize it’s not Dr. Nesbitt… or the sheriff.

  My stomach drops. “It’s Cecil,” I hiss through the screen.

  He’s not wearing his greasy straw hat. He tilts his head back. In one swig he empties a moonshine bottle and hurls it out the window. It bounces once and shatters against the clothesline pole. The car door squawks open; Cecil turns, peers out.

  Mrs. Nesbitt steps right next to me on the porch and passes the flashlight to me. I aim the beam in Cecil’s face.

  He squints up at us, swipes his mouth. A pulse pounds in my neck.

  Mrs. Nesbitt asks, “It’s the middle of the night, Cecil. What’s the matter?”

  “What’d you do with Dot?” he snarls. “She belongs to me.” Oily automobile exhaust fills our yard and our noses, chokes the crickets into silence.

  “Dot?” Mrs. Nesbitt sounds as though she has not thought of her in months. “What do you mean?”

  Cecil swings a leg out. His foot gropes for ground. “You helped her run off.”

  “We did not!” Mrs. Nesbitt says with force and finality.

  Cecil stands and steadies himself against the car door. “Or she’s hiding…” His gaze shifts from us to the kitchen door to our storm-cellar doors. He takes a few steps, holding a hand behind his back, stopping not more than ten yards from the porch step. “DOT!” he demands. “Get out here!”

  Mrs. Nesbitt and I stand silent. I see moonlight flash off his bald head and the hunting knife in his hand. He takes another step toward the porch.

  Pansy’s warning circles through my head: Never let him in, don’t turn your back…

  “She’s too smart to hide here—so close to home,” Mrs. Nesbitt says matter-of-factly. “Have you contacted the authorities?”

  “Unless… ,” I say slowly, turning to Mrs. Nesbitt, “would she hide in our shed?”

  “No!” Mrs. Nesbitt says—her tone incredulous.

  I ever so slightly nudge her elbow, hand her the flashlight. She pauses a moment, points at the garage. “You don’t mean in there?” Cecil follows her gaze, stumbles in that direction. I step backward into the kitchen, grab the shotgun, and slide it beside me.

  The double barrel feels powerful, deadly in my fist.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Marie streak across the chicken yard onto the lawn. In a split second she lunges at Cecil like she has eaten a stick of dynamite.

  “Marie. NO!” I scream.

  She charges and clamps her teeth in Cecil’s calf. He jerks back, cursing and kicking. She hits the ground hard.

  Fury rises in me. In one burst I hoist the gun to my shoulder, cock the hammer, aim high, and pull the trigger. The recoil knocks me against the doorframe. Gunpowder sears my nose. Mrs. Nesbitt grabs my raised arm to balance herself.

  Cecil looks skyward as though the shot spray was a swarm of mosquitoes.

  “MARIE!” Mrs. Nesbitt says her eyes fixed on Cecil. “Come here.”

  She doesn’t. She springs to her feet and leaps back, snarling at him. He walks slowly forward, waving the blade, grinning. “Come on, girl. I got ya…”

  Cecil throws the knife down and in one horrendous sweep grabs Marie around the neck with both hands. He stands and holds her out to us, writhing and twisting.

  I cock the second hammer.

  “Shoot again, I strangle the mutt,” he says. His voice is thick, taunting.

  I lower the gun, stopped cold by Marie’s cries, her pathetic whimper.

  Then he wheels around and throws her into the car. “Can’t call the sheriff, can ya. He’s busy tonight. So’s the doc. I know who you’re in cahoots with. Dot won’t get far.”

  Cecil gets in, slams the car door, and yanks the wheel. He careens down the drive, bumping our telephone pole, then fishtails away, scraping the mailbox as he turns—not left toward home, but right toward Olive’s, leaving the stink of hate, exhaust, and gunpowder in his wake.

  My mind flashes on Marie limp on the car seat and Olive at home asleep. I run into the kitchen for the phone. It’s dead. I burst outside, furious at that bully forcing his sick, drunk self on everybody.

  I swipe tears from my cheeks. “I’ve gotta go warn Olive.”

  But Mrs. Nesbitt plants Henry right in front of me. “Stop.” I turn. Her look could split stone. “If you are going, so am I.”

  And in moments the two of us and a third passenger—the shotgun on Mrs. Nesbitt’s lap—hea
d out.

  My stomach feels like I’ve swallowed Cecil’s knife. I focus beyond the glow of our headlamps, Mrs. Nesbitt’s hand on my knee. I yank at the corner of my robe caught in the car door, clamp my teeth, and drive.

  In a moment we see taillights. I speed up a bit, thinking out loud, “For Olive’s he’ll go straight, left toward the bluff road, then right to her house.” The road rumbles under us, the moon a spotlight on this impossible night.

  But suddenly Cecil’s car lurches left, scales a shallow ditch, and bumps onto a pasture.

  I jiggle the steering wheel. “What’s he doing?”

  “Either it’s a shortcut or a trap,” Mrs. Nesbitt warns. “Don’t follow him.”

  The trail of matted grass behind his headlamps looks like a lit fuse. A covey of quail swoops up—hundreds of noisy birds reflecting the moon. Night creatures skitter in front of our tires. I ignore them.

  “Now left,” Mrs. Nesbitt directs at the intersection. We make a sharp turn onto the road that intersects Olive’s. Through the hedgerow, I see Cecil zigzag across the grassy field beside us. He guns his engine, bucking every which way. The pasture is slow going. I force a pitiful image of Marie from my mind.

  We reach the bluff road before he does. I brake, start to make the right turn to Olive’s, then stop short. Cecil’s car has burst out of the stubble onto the narrow gravel stretch, but instead of turning toward us, it jerks wildly left, spins once around, slides sideways and is gone.

  I blink at the instant emptiness. Absorb the moment of silence before the earth receives the blow.

  Plumes of dirt soar skyward. Flames tower. Sparks shoot the moon. We watch the sky turn from black to gold. Brambles and trees look hit by lightning.

  Hot wind and grit tick off the windshield. I swallow smoke. Mrs. Nesbitt coughs into her sleeve.

  I sit numb, as though Cecil’s death car has plowed right through me.

  The flames shrink. From the bluff, small explosions punctuate the night. We stare at the dirty orange sky, then bow our heads, rub each other’s hands. Softly Mrs. Nesbitt says, “The volcano finally erupted. The devil took our angel.”

  CHAPTER 29

  I sit on Olive’s front stoop and gaze down the bluff road. The moon has faded, exhausted like the rest of us. My throat is raw, my chest choked with smoke and a sadness I can’t cough away. Stop that, Daddy used to say when I was little, because coughing reminded him of Mama. I wonder if he’d scold me now.

  In the distance the wreck still steams, pink in the dawn light. The sheriff is down there now and Dr. Nesbitt and some other folks. But not me.

  Olive has given me a glass of water, a damp washrag, and a pillow to sit on. She and Mrs. Nesbitt are resting inside. Except for the long telephone conversation I had summoning Dr. Nesbitt and the sheriff from the Futters, I have hardly spoken since we arrived here. I can’t even think. I don’t want to.

  I hear men’s voices and car doors slamming. The county car snakes this way. I cover my face. It means there will have to be talk—descriptions, explanations, plans. Tears run under my fingers, in my mouth, down my neck. My hankie is soaked. I tilt my head and blot my face against the collar of my robe.

  Mrs. Nesbitt and Olive come to the door when Dr. Nesbitt and the sheriff get out of the car. I look up, desperate to see Marie with them.

  She is not.

  Dr. Nesbitt hugs his mother a long while, then the older ladies go inside. He sits beside me on the step. His eyes are rimmed red, his shirt dirty and stuck to his back. He smoothes away a soggy curl matted to my cheek and looks at me with such concern and respect that I straighten my shoulders a bit and raise my chin.

  We go inside to Olive’s round breakfast table. The sheriff rubs his forehead, as though enough massage will revive his frayed mind. His fingernails are grimy, his cuffs stained dark. Olive brings a pitcher of lemonade that is surprisingly sweet and cold. I pour it carefully, the same amount in each glass.

  The sheriff clears his throat, begins slowly. “Cecil was thrown from the car before it exploded.”

  My heart skips. Mrs. Nesbitt looks stricken.

  “He did not survive, if that concerns you. But we were able to make certain assumptions based on evidence.”

  I watch a sunbeam spread across Olive’s dingy carpet. I want it to crawl into my lap.

  “The car trunk was full of liquor bottles—thus the series of smaller explosions you described over the telephone. But Mr. Deets’s fatal driving maneuvers were a result of more than moonshine. The deceased, in addition to the predictable injuries, was covered with bite marks on his arms and hands, even his neck.”

  “Marie,” I whisper.

  Dr. Nesbitt shakes his head. “She was a hobo dog at heart, no stranger to the rougher side.”

  The sheriff slides paperwork in front of him. “I’m sorry, Avery, but I need the certificate, if you could…”

  Dr. Nesbitt fills in the form: Missouri Bureau of Vital Statistics Standard Certificate of Death. His handwriting is calming to watch. He fills in the date—Sept 24, 1926—then turns to the sheriff. “Lowell, I don’t know this information—the name of Cecil’s father, his mother’s birthplace.”

  I look off. Never once have I considered his having parents. What must they have been like? How do you raise a Cecil?

  “Why, I just imagined he crawled out of a flaming hole in the ground,” Olive says, draining her lemonade. “And tonight, thank God, he crawled back into the inferno.”

  We shift in our chairs. Dr. Nesbitt clears his throat, swallows, and proceeds to the “Medical Particulars” section. On the line that begins “I hereby certify,” he prints:

  Cecil Deets—deceased.

  “Deader ’n hell,” the sheriff remarks with a sigh.

  “Beautifully put,” Olive says as the officer folds the form into his pocket. After he leaves she remarks, “Cecil could put two and two together. He’d been stalking all of us since Dot left. He knew that when the Sheriff and Avery were at Newt’s, he could come hunting her.”

  Olive wipes her mouth with a gray hankie. “Demonic doesn’t mean dumb.” She looks from Dr. Nesbitt to his mother to me and proceeds cautiously with her next remark. “And dead doesn’t always mean gone.”

  “Oh no, Olive!” I say. “Cecil is gone.”

  “But the dog… ,” Olive says, “is invisible now. Not gone.”

  Mrs. Nesbitt sighs, her voice weary. “Forgive me, Olive, but I can’t hear about your dog problems right now.”

  “I am not speaking of my dog difficulties. I am telling you that Marie is not gone unless you make her so.” There is fierceness and kindness in Olive’s face. “Dead and gone versus a spirit—there is a difference. It’s a choice we make with loved ones who’ve passed.”

  Olive looks toward the door and smiles slightly, as though she has seen Marie trot through it.

  I climb from our car and walk across the yard determined to avoid the broken liquor bottle, the ruts and tracks, the flashlight left on the porch. But of course I do look at them and, hardest of all, the moment I step in my room I stare at Marie’s lumpy blue blanket on the floor. My mind flashes to Atchison, to Daddy’s slippers—how they also held his shape.

  My sheets and pillow are a rumpled mess. I grab Rosie and sit on the rug by Marie’s bed. There’s dog hair and the curve of her back pressed in it. I fill my nose with her scent.

  Everything is so still, so unbearably quiet and empty. My stomach knots around the raw pain of missing her. I think of her stumpy tail, her habit of getting stepped on, her fierce love and protection of us.

  “Marie?” I whisper. “Are you all right?”

  I sit a while, watch my goddesses watching me. I smell coffee brewing, hear the telephone ring for the third time since we’ve been home.

  I run my finger around the blanket’s bound edge. “I love you.”

  My back aches. I stand and stretch, not knowing what to do with myself. By the wall a tiny movement catches my eye. I bend down. A furry, silver-
brown spider is building her web between my bedpost and the window. It’s in an odd spot and the design isn’t perfect. The tiny silk ropes are crooked. It is more a loopy oval than a circle, but the spider just keeps spinning back and forth as naturally as can be, knitting her new home in the air.

  CHAPTER 30

  I wake up mad.

  Rage at Cecil—that walking, talking accident of a human—mixes with other rough feelings, especially the ones about Daddy.

  I could pull that trigger a thousand times more. I grip my pillow and sob.

  I don’t try to make myself stop crying anymore, Daddy. That rule of yours was stupid.

  People don’t have all the time in the world either.

  You were wrong about that, too.

  You were wrong about lots of things: Iris, you can’t draw.…You should project yourself more.… Shoes make the woman.…

  You were wrong to say “I love you” and not mean it.

  It wasn’t fair of you to make me hold my coughs. No little girl should have to stifle a cough!

  “I am going to let what’s true inside me out, or I’ll end up like you, a suede salesman with no insides at all!” I yell. I march outside to the bench, ragged feelings crashing in me.

  Oak-branch reflections slice like black cracks across the sunny birdbath water. I cry hard, my fists in my lap. I can’t stand that Marie isn’t here.

  I rock and hug myself for the longest time.

  I know I have lots of dusting to do in my cellar of ghosts. But I have a plan now. If even one more ghost dares to show up, I’ll do exactly what Pansy said: Never ever let him in.

  September 30, 1926

  Dear Miss Baldwin,

  1t has been my challenge and pleasure to capture the essence of your eyes on paper. 1 used the recent photograph as a guide and shaded them with the intelligence and grace Julia and Avery find in you.

  I pause, lower the note to my lap. My cheeks burn. What on earth have the Nesbitts said?

  The young man about to receive them should be warned of their potency—but then, if he has looked into your eyes once, he already knows. 1t’s a wonder he can do much else!