Because the coffee tasted burned and oily and the boy's sad shrieking was soon intolerable, Walenty strayed outside to the platform. The train was late by half an hour and when it arrived the stationmaster charged out of his office toward the engine angrily brandishing a sheaf of papers. Among the passengers disembarking was a man in a heavy woolen suit and a fedora. He was carrying flowers and scanning the platform.
Boarding ahead of Walenty was a slender young woman in a lace dress, traveling solo. The hem of her dress snagged on a piece of metal as she was climbing into the car, causing her to slip backwards into Walenty. He caught her by the waist and holding her there, like dancers in a pas de deux, he reached down to unsnag the dress. It had torn just a little and behind him Walenty heard two women say awww, noting between them that the dress was real lace. When the woman in the dress turned to thank Walenty he could see that she'd been crying; her gray, longlashed eyes were rimmed with a pinkness like that of raw meat. She disappeared to the rear of the car but if he listened closely he could hear her choked-back sobs, random but persistent, at least until the train started moving and his ears were overwhelmed by the clatter.
The last thing Walenty saw, as the train left the station, was the boy. The man with the flowers had his arms around the boy's mother, the flowers, in his left hand, pressed hard against her back. Far below them the boy was clawing at his father's legs, trying to climb his way into the embrace, and as the train rocked forward Walenty saw the father raise his right arm as if to—but that was all. The stationmaster's office blocked the view and in an instant there was nothing left to see. Walenty sank down into his seat and closed his eyes. There was no Free State of Trieste and there never could be.
Yours sincerely,
Benjamin R. Ford
Dear American Airlines Page 19
