Down the Rabbit Hole

by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

  Mrs. Goodwin told me how her niece had a little girl just like Gideon. “The poor thing was two years old when her mother gave her up. When she died, no one could explain the black-and-blue marks on her little body.”

  “This school isn’t that kind of place,” I said.

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” said Mrs. Goodwin. “Are you willing to risk it? Can this doctor prove how many of his students turn out well in life?”

  Saturday, September 9, 1871

  Mozie and Mrs. Duggan

  Four days have passed since the conductor called out La Porte, the last stop before Chicago, which meant we were less than sixty miles from our new life. The train was scheduled to arrive at nine twenty.

  I remember staring out the window, mesmerized by the glittering lake, and thinking about how far we had traveled and hoping that Aunt Adeline and Uncle Edward and Ellen were sick with regret and worry.

  Mozie had gobbled the last sausage and was washing himself. He is fastidious about his paws, ears, and whiskers.

  “Do you think Aunt Adeline misses Mozie?” I asked Gideon.

  Gideon doesn’t understand sarcasm. He takes everything literally. “Mozie doesn’t miss Aunt Adeline.” He reached down to scratch Mozie’s head. The cat grinned and stretched beneath Gideon’s hand.

  Aunt Adeline was happy to be rid of us, I was sure. With us gone, she’d have more money to spend on her precious Rogers groups.

  Gideon’s and my money.

  Someday, I vowed, I would return to Scranton and boot them out of my house and all the way to Kingdom Come.

  I checked my carpetbag again. Miss Ringwald’s letter was there, neatly folded. It felt comforting to think that my mother had once been a girl like me and that she and Miss Ringwald had gotten a switching after they climbed the bluff behind the chapel. What other mischief did they cause? Did she and Miss Ringwald hang upside down from the tree outside the library? Did they lie across their beds at night, sharing their diaries and letters and secrets?

  I felt a pang of sadness. I missed Merricat terribly and longed to write to her. I missed Rabbit, too. Our departure happened so quickly. I had no time to leave him a note. What did he think? Was he worried? Was he hurt that I disappeared without a good-bye?

  A squeal broke my gloom. It was Lucy, crawling on her hands and knees beneath the seats. Gwen was also on her hands and knees. She grabbed Lucy’s foot and tried to pull her out, but Lucy’s shoe came off in Gwen’s hand.

  “Lucy, come out this instant.”

  “I’m not Lucy. I’m a cat. Meow.”

  Lucy meowed again and crawled under the next seat, where the elder Mrs. Duggan was dozing.

  Mrs. Duggan’s eyes snapped open. “Mouse!” she screamed, slapping at her skirts and stamping her feet.

  Up popped Lucy’s head. “I’m not a mouse. I’m a cat.” She meowed and licked Mrs. Duggan’s hand.

  “Oh, good gracious,” said Mrs. Duggan, smoothing her skirts. “I declare, that child likes the feel of skin, doesn’t she?” She excused herself and headed toward the toilet.

  With Mrs. Duggan out of the way, Gwen latched on to Lucy’s ankles. She dragged her out, feet first. Lucy’s fingertips scraped along the floor.

  Once in the aisle, Gwen lassoed her with both arms, but Lucy squirmed free and scooted under the next seat. She hissed and clawed the air.

  “Come out here,” said Gwen between clenched teeth. “Put your shoes on.”

  “Cats don’t wear shoes,” said Lucy.

  Gwen reached the point where smoke was pouring out of her ears. She was at her wit’s end, which explains what happened next. “You are not a cat,” said Gwen. “You are a little girl named Lucy Pritchard who is going to get a spanking.”

  “Mother cats don’t —” But Lucy couldn’t finish that sentence. Gwen snatched Lucy, dragged her out again, turned her bottom side up, and gave her a good swatting.

  Lucy howled.

  Loud enough to make the forward car passengers think we had arrived at the Chicago station.

  Loud enough to make the younger Mrs. Duggan and other prim-looking mothers and grandmothers smile with satisfaction as they pretended to look out the window.

  In the midst of Lucy’s howls, Gideon tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Mozie’s gone.” He pointed to the gaping carpetbag.

  That explained the ear-piercing scream. The elder Mrs. Duggan found Mozie. He was using the toilet.

  Even a cat likes his privacy in these matters. He swiped at Mrs. Duggan.

  Mrs. Duggan fainted. That explained the thud.

  The conductor pried opened the door. An indignant Mozie leaped over Mrs. Duggan and stalked haughtily back to our seat, where Gideon scooped him up.

  A good dose of smelling salts brought Mrs. Duggan around. Aside from her scratched pride, she appeared in good health.

  The conductor scolded us and said if we weren’t so close to Chicago, he would toss Mozie off the train.

  Gideon stuck out his chin and crossed his arms. “If Mozie goes, I go.”

  I told Gideon to hush, but the conductor’s eyes were smiling even if his mouth was not.

  Our Horror

  Little did I know that our train was running late.

  Little did I know that our engineer had stoked the engine and was making up lost time.

  Little did I know we were barreling toward disaster at a full thirty-five miles per hour.

  After washing the children’s faces, combing their hair, and fastening their shoes, Gwen looked affright. I offered to mind the children so she could primp for her husband.

  Gwen got out her brush and comb and hairpins and headed into the washroom. I gathered the children around me and began to teach them a game Merricat and I played called “Throwing the Smile.” Lucy beat us all. She set her mouth and squinched her eyes and managed not to smile or giggle, no matter how many smiles we threw at her.

  Just as it was Adam’s turn, Mozie clawed his way out of the carpetbag, leaped over our laps, and streaked into the men’s compartment.

  “Crazy cat,” I said.

  Little did I know that Mozie was the smartest one of us all. The floor trembled. A few seconds later, it shuddered.

  A shudder is never a good thing. In Scranton, if the ground trembles, it means something terrible has happened at the mines — a cave-in or an explosion. Every miner knows if the rats head up the slope, drop your tools and get out.

  “Stay down,” I said, pushing the children to the floor. “Cover your heads.” For once they listened to me, and just as they put their arms over their heads, our carriage pitched sideways.

  The screams! The car tilted one direction and then the other, tossing us like rag dolls across the aisle and back again. Overhead, the lanterns swung wildly. The car creaked and groaned and leaned precariously to one side. For a second, we hovered there, and then, with a great creak and moan and splintering of wood and glass, the car toppled over onto its side. We were flung against the carriage wall. With my shoulder, I shielded Sallie from the brunt of the force.

  Then all was still. In the distance, iron wheels screeched against iron rails. As if an alarm sounded, we all moved at once, turning into a jumble of arms and legs and bodies, clambering for the windows and doors, now overhead.

  Hands reached into our wrecked car. The children clung to me and cried for their mother. I passed Sallie through the window into a stranger’s arms. How she wailed! Next went Lucy — kicking and crying for me — and then Adam and then Gideon and me.

  Outside, Lucy looked around wildly and began to cry, “Mama!”

  I gaped at the cars. Our car and two others lay completely on their sides, each a distance from the other, each splintered wood.

  I turned into someone who gave orders. “You must listen to me. You are in my army
and I am your captain.”

  I grabbed Lucy’s hand and stuck it inside Gideon’s right hand and said, “Hold Lucy’s hand. Do not let go. That’s an order.”

  I grabbed Adam’s hand and stuck him to Gideon’s left hand. “Stay together. That’s another order.”

  The younger Mrs. Duggan was walking in a circle, looking dazed and calling for Mother Duggan. Her forehead was cut and bleeding. I peeled Sallie from my hip, handed her to Mrs. Duggan, and told her, “Mind the baby.”

  Numbly, she took Sallie.

  Sallie’s lower lip stuck out and she screwed up her little face and bawled. It hurt to ignore her reaching arms, but I picked up my skirts and dashed back to the car.

  Several men scrambled over the sides of the cars, helping to extricate passengers. The cars looked like giant insects with waving arms and legs and heads of passengers climbing out of the windows, not caring whose head or shoulders they used as a footstool.

  On the ground, men and women were lying about, groaning. Others sat, holding handkerchiefs to their faces. Some were weeping. In a mixture of foreign words and accents, forward-car passengers tended the hurt and the dazed, wiping their faces, giving them water.

  “Gwen!” I called.

  A dark fear rooted itself in my stomach. Was she still inside the washroom? Was she injured? Unable to climb out? Or worse? Just as the fear numbed my legs and arms, I heard my name. “Pringle!”

  Just as the fear spread to my arms and legs, Gwen emerged through a window. A man lifted her and helped her down. She stumbled toward me, her hair sailing about her shoulders and her dress dirty and torn. She cradled her right arm. “My children! Where are my children?”

  I steadied her. “Yes, everyone’s safe.” I led her to Gideon, standing like a soldier, clutching Lucy’s and Adam’s hands. Sallie leaped toward Gwen and dug her knees into Gwen’s waist and held on for dear life.

  Gwen dropped to her knees and covered her children with kisses, as any mother would.

  Mrs. Duggan rushed off to find the elder Mrs. Duggan, and I found a doctor, a German man who examined Gwen’s right arm and pronounced her elbow broken. He wrapped and splinted her arm and said it would mend in six weeks. I translated for Gwen, and he complimented me on my German.

  “You speak German?” said Gwen.

  “Ein wenig,” I said.

  “Anything else?” said Gwen.

  “Un peu de la langue française.”

  “You are full of surprises, Pringle.”

  Soon, farmers arrived with teams of horses to clear the wrecked cars. Their wives came, too, bringing baskets of food and jugs of water and bandages.

  Another German passenger took it upon himself to examine the wrecked cars. In a heavy accent, he shouted that the axle in the last car was defective.

  The defective axle had caused the last car to derail, he explained, and when it derailed, it pulled the second and third cars from the track. Each car was dragged about three hundred feet before it broke loose and toppled over.

  A woman remarked that we were fortunate the car’s coal stove and lanterns weren’t lit, or they would have set the wooden carriage on fire, just like the Angola tragedy four years ago in western New York. Forty-nine people were crushed or burned to death when the last two cars jumped the track and tumbled into an icy gorge.

  What an uproar that caused! The men passengers banded together and insisted that the German man inspect the still-standing cars.

  Together, the German man and the engineer climbed over and around and beneath each car. After a lengthy inspection, they declared the remaining twelve cars safe for travel. Other men passengers rescued our carpetbags and personal belongings.

  We piled into the second-class cars, crowded and weary and shaken but grateful that no one had died.

  As the gratefulness wore off, some passengers got to talking. They blamed the engineer for stoking the engine. Others blamed the railroad company for the defective axle. Others deemed it an accident and an accident can’t be helped. They said accidents are God’s will.

  God’s will, my thumb! God doesn’t will a rear axle to bend and disengage. God doesn’t will a train engineer to speed up and a railroad car to jump a track any more than God wills a carriage carrying a mother and a father to tumble down a ravine.

  The two Mrs. Duggans were reunited, and the older Mrs. Duggan was unharmed, except for a bump on her head and bruises on her paper-thin skin. Gwen huddled her children like a mother hen brooding her chicks. Lucy clung to her mother and kept her shoes on all the way to Chicago.

  Our only loss was Mozie. We called and called, but our dear cat was nowhere to be found. I am sick about it and tried not to cry when we had to board without him.

  Gideon disappeared inside himself. I squeezed his hand and told him that it was all right and to come back when he was ready. Before you get over a loss, you must move through the loss.

  After a while, Gideon leaned his head on my shoulder and two tears trailed down his cheeks. He wiped his face with his handkerchief and whispered, “Mozie’s a good hunter,” and I said, “A capital killer.”

  That’s when I knew Gideon would be all right. Together we prayed for Mozie to have a good long hunting life on the shores of Lake Michigan.

  It’s nearly midnight. My eyes feel gritty. My hand is sore from writing. Tomorrow I’ll write about our grand welcome at Miss Ringwald’s.

  Sunday, September 10, 1871

  Saying Good-bye to the Pritchards

  At long last, the train reached Chicago and continued slowly northward through the city. “She-caw-go! She-caw-go!” the conductor shouted. A thrill ran up my spine.

  The train whistle sounded as we approached the LaSalle station. The train rumbled across a series of switches. Its brakes squealed and it ground to a halt. The boilers hissed and exhaled. Their great breath drifted past the train windows.

  The conductor rushed to set the steps in place. My face felt pulled down as passengers scanned the crowd for loved ones. Gideon and I had no one to welcome us, and now we had to bid good-bye to Gwen and her little ones. I felt homesick for the Pritchards already.

  How is it that you can know someone for only three days and yet feel as though you’ve known them a lifetime? Some might say that near tragedy brought us closer, but that’s not the reason, or else I would feel just as close to the Duggans.

  Mother said this happens when our spirit connects with another person’s spirit. Perhaps the two spirits recognize one another from a different time and place.

  As I waited for the doors to open, a deep sadness coursed through me, sweeping me down a river I didn’t want to sail. I swallowed hard and lifted Sallie onto my hip and clutched Lucy’s hand.

  Gwen’s feet had barely touched the platform when a man with red hair and stylish goatee and wearing a tailored frock coat and narrow tie pushed through the crowd, calling, “Gwen! Gwen!”

  “Papa!” Lucy and Adam sang out and threw themselves at his legs.

  Sallie whipped her little head around and tried to leap out of my arms.

  Did Mr. Peter Pritchard care that Gwen stood in the middle of a crowded platform? That women wearing fancy dresses and hats twittered like scolding birds?

  “Avert your eyes,” he told the children.

  Lucy and Adam giggled and covered their eyes but peeked through outspread fingers as their father scooped up their mother and whirled her around twice. Her dress sailed out like a bell and he kissed her the whole while in a way that made me blush and grow warm inside and think about Rabbit.

  Forcing the corners of my mouth up, I knelt by Adam and Lucy. “Now, you must help your mother and take good care of her. You only get one mother.”

  Gwen’s eyes were bright with sorrow. “I’m going to miss you, Pringle. How would I have managed without you? Promise you’ll visit.�
�� With her good hand, she unclasped her little purse and took out a plain yellow calling card and pressed it into my hand. It gave her address on Sherman Street.

  Scowling fiercely, Lucy crossed her arms. “I don’t want Pringle to go.”

  Adam hopped up and down like a rabbit. “Please please please visit us,” he said. “Gideon’s my friend. I want to play with Gideon.”

  I choked up, hearing that, and bit my lip so I wouldn’t cry. Gideon’s first true friend!

  Mrs. Duggan and Mrs. Duggan strolled toward us, accompanied by a skinny, pimple-faced young man whom I presumed to be the infamous Duggan heir. His waistcoat and trousers flapped around him, making him look like laundry that had run away from a clothesline.

  “Oh, Mrs. Pritchard!” trilled the younger Mrs. Duggan. “This is my son, Harold. Did I tell you he’s a student at Harvard University?”

  “At the top of his class, just like his father,” piped the elder Mrs. Duggan. With a grand flourish, she offered her calling card. “If you wish to call, here’s our address on Pine Street.”

  Pine Street! Well, that’s the street where Miss Ringwald lives, and I was about to tell her that we’d soon be neighbors, but Mr. Pritchard asked Harold Duggan how he was doing in his classes and if Professor Brown still pulled out his glass eye and polished it on his sleeve.

  Harold laughed. “At the beginning of every semester, and at parties, to shock the ladies.”

  Mr. Pritchard guffawed and slapped his leg and said Mr. Brown hasn’t changed one bit and to give him Peter Pritchard’s best regards. “Our families go back a long ways. Why, when Robert Lincoln and I —”

  The eyes on the Mrs. Duggans popped at the mention of our late President’s son. “You know Robert Lincoln?” asked the younger Mrs. Duggan.

  “We were classmates for a short time at Harvard, before I joined the Union Army,” said Mr. Pritchard. “His father was a great man.”

  The Duggans stood there, trying to make sense out of Peter Pritchard, who attended Harvard and who knew Robert Lincoln and his father. Their eyes ran all over Mr. Pritchard, and then over Gwen, from top to bottom, and suddenly she didn’t seem so common. Gwen smiled politely at them.