by Deborah Heal
“What’s so funny?” Merrideth asked as she opened her package.
“It’s just my goofy college roommate. What did your dad send you?”
Merrideth peeled away the tissue paper and something pink, orange, and spandex slipped out. “He wants me to start an exercise class so I can get skinny,” she said, holding the workout clothes up for Abby to see. “As if. Here, why don’t you try it on? It will fit you.”
She was searching for something to say when she noticed the name printed on the package. “So your dad calls you ‘Merri’? M-e-r-r-i.` That’s cute.”
“I hate it. It’s so cheesy. And it’s not like it fits or anything.”
“Well, maybe you ought to be. Merry, I mean.”
“I don’t exactly have much to be happy about, you know.”
“Well, you know what they say, ‘A merry heart doeth good like medicine.’”
“No one I know ever says that.”
“It’s from the Bible. My roommate always quotes it. By the way, when she gets back from Europe, she’s going to come visit me here. I’d like for her to meet you.”
“No thanks.”
Abby felt a flash of irritation. “Why not? She’s nice and you’d like her.”
“But she won’t like me. People don’t, you know.”
“Well, she will. I would think since you’re so bored—”
“Here comes the train.”
At first they could only hear it and feel the vibrations as it rumbled toward them from the north. Then an Amtrak with four passenger cars passed the screen of trees.
“I wonder if it’s going to Chicago,” Abby said.
Merrideth scowled at the train, but with interest. She was probably wishing she was on it.
The train was nearly even with them before they noticed the small figure crouching on the tracks to their right. “Oh, dear God! It’s a little boy,” Abby cried, springing up from the porch steps. And then the train was thundering past, blocking their view.
Chapter 4
In stark terror, Abby began to run, praying that he would be all right, hoping ambulances came this far into the country. When the train was past the boy was gone.
She was breathing hard when she reached the tracks. To her relief, they looked normal, not covered in gore as she had expected them to be. She stumbled over the gravel, steel, and timber of the tracks and saw the boy sitting calmly in the grass on the other side of the embankment. Sunlight sparkled on his shaggy but glossy, black hair. He was studying something in his hand.
“Are you all right?” Abby asked. He looked up in surprise, and she saw that he was the boy she had seen coming out of the barn. His eyes were a deep brown and freckles nearly covered his nose. She judged by his missing front teeth that he was about six.
She heard a noise behind her. Surprisingly, Merrideth had followed and was huffing and puffing her way over the embankment. “Hey, little boy, don’t you know…it’s dangerous…to play…on the tracks?”
“Yes,” Abby said. “You scared us to death. We thought the train hit you.”
Eyes shining, the boy held out a rather grimy hand with a complete lack of concern.
Abby took the shiny piece of copper that had borne Lincoln’s profile before the train had flattened it. She shuddered and handed the penny back. “It was a very dangerous thing to do, you know.”
The boy spoke, obviously explaining something about the penny and the track, but Abby had no idea what he was actually saying. Whatever it was, it sounded as if all the beginning consonants were missing.
“I think we should call the police,” Merrideth said. “What’s your name?”
He answered politely and even repeated it slowly and patiently when Abby asked him to, but neither she nor Merrideth could understand what his name was.
Merrideth darted a look at her. “Where do you live, little boy?”
Wordlessly, he pointed to the south and then descended to the road and began to walk that way. His grass-stained jeans didn’t cover his ankles. The logo on his ragged T-shirt was too faded to read but involved beer.
“We’d better go talk to his mother,” Abby said.
“He’s retarded, isn’t he?” Merrideth whispered.
“Maybe. But maybe he just has a speech impediment.” Abby planned to lecture her later on the inappropriateness of the word “retarded,” but for now, she was just happy that Merrideth was making conversation.
After they got past the trees at the edge of Merrideth’s yard, Abby realized that they weren’t nearly as isolated as she had first thought. Several neat, well-kept mobile homes sat on either side of the road as it ran alongside the tracks to the south. But then they came to one that looked abandoned. The grass was overgrown, and a shed lay in ruins, nearly hidden by tall weeds.
“I told you it’s a stupid neighborhood,” Merrideth said between breaths.
“Shh. He probably lives in one of these trailers.” Abby frowned, but she couldn’t think of anything positive to say either. “You know it’s pretty amazing that anyone lives way out here, besides farmers, that is. I mean, why should these houses be clustered here anyway?”
“Who knows?” Merrideth said, running a little to keep up.
The boy continued on down the road, glancing back once in a while to be sure they followed. When they approached the last trailer, a rather rusty one, the boy slowed and allowed them to catch up with him. Merrideth was just about to ask him how much farther to his house when a dog suddenly rushed at them, barking furiously.
Merrideth shrieked and Abby felt her heart stutter and plummet to her stomach. The boy said something reassuring, which Abby interpreted, after a moment, as, “Don’t worry! He’s chained to the front porch.”
Abby and Merrideth panted in unison.
“My heart is pounding!” Merrideth said. “He scared me to death.”
“Me too! I nearly wet my pants.”
Merrideth giggled and Abby was surprised. Apparently, it was a bonding moment.
“He just don’t like new people,” the boy seemed to say. The black dog, medium-sized but very muscular, stopped barking and began to wag his tail furiously as he came near. When he patted its head, the dog added worshipful whimpering.
“Is that a pit bull?” Merrideth said, keeping her distance.
“Maybe part pit bull, but my sister-in-law Meg—she’s a dog trainer—says that pit bulls aren’t any more dangerous than any other kind of dog. Unless they’ve been trained to be mean.” Abby leaned down to pet the dog.
“Yeah? Well, how do we know whether that one has been or not?”
The boy said something more and motioned them forward.
Abby pulled her hand back. “Well, I think we had better be going.”
She and Merrideth decided to walk in the middle of the road to avoid any other unpleasant surprises. It seemed unlikely that a car would come by anytime soon. They crisscrossed the road whenever the boy’s eye caught something of interest—a stick or rock here, a wild flower there.
“What I want to know is, are we about to the kid’s house or not?” Merrideth’s upper lip was sweaty, and her hair worse than ever.
“We haven’t walked that far. Besides, what’s your hurry? We’ve got all afternoon.”
“Maybe you do, but I’m expecting an important call anytime now. From Chicago.”
“Oh. Well, I promise we won’t stay long. But we need to let his mother know what he was doing.”
They came to a small white house with green shutters. Next to it was a late model car, its front end jacked up and its hood open.
“Look at that!” Abby said. “A silver Camaro, just like my brother’s. It’s an awesome car. The engine is a 6.2 liter V8 and—”
She was just about to run a hand over its sleek side when a stream of foul oaths came from beneath the car. She jerked her hand back in shock and saw at nearly the same moment that a man’s legs and booted feet were sticking out from under it.
“I didn’t hurt your car,” she said indig
nantly.
“Sorry, ma’am,” came a muffled voice. “I wasn’t cussing at you. It’s this d—it’s this stupid transmission.”
“Oh.” she said. The little boy shook his head and put his finger to his lips. “He don’t like people botherin’ him when he’s working.” At least that’s what Abby thought he said.
“Oh,” she said again. “Sorry.”
As they walked on, Merrideth rolled her eyes. “Are you a flippin’ expert on every subject?”
“No, of course not,” Abby said. “My uncle Peter is the mechanical one in the family. He taught me how to do simple auto repairs. Well, actually, he taught my cousins and my brothers and they taught me. Alex and Aaron didn’t want me going away to college without knowing a few things about Skippy.”
“Who’s Skippy?”
“That’s my car, nothing as cool as a Camaro.”
The boy said something she didn’t understand until she had him repeat it.
Abby laughed. “Yes, I do talk an awful lot. I get carried away sometimes. My brothers call me Blabby Abby.”
The boy pointed and said something about his house, so they continued to follow him down the lane.
His house was the oddest one Abby had ever seen. It would have been impossibly tiny, but someone had added a lean-to, which now sagged from one side of the building. The whole house was brown—brown shingles, brown siding, even brown window frames. Curtains, which should have made it look homey, somehow didn’t.
“It looks like a bathroom at a state park,” Merrideth whispered.
After indicating that this was indeed where he lived, the boy showed no more interest, and did not suggest going inside. He said something about “Mrs. Somebody,” “nice,” and “house,” and began to walk away.
Abby called out, but the boy kept going. “Maybe he’s afraid he’ll be spanked for playing on the tracks,” Abby said. “But I’ll have to let his parents know.”
She knocked on the brown door, lightly at first, and then louder, but no one came. She didn’t have the guts to interrupt the man working on the car again. They might as well follow the boy.
The road came to an end at a barbed wire fence enclosing a pasture. The last house was small and covered in ugly gray asphalt shingle siding, but it was neat and well kept. The name on the mailbox said “Arnold.”
A woman was chopping energetically at the grass growing alongside the front sidewalk. The boy ran ahead to talk to her. From a distance, Abby had thought her no more than middle-aged, but when they reached the edge of her yard, she saw that, although she was tall and sturdy, Mrs. Arnold was quite old.
She was not dressed like any old person Abby had ever met. On her head, the woman wore a large sunbonnet over her gray hair, which was encased in a hairnet that peeked from under it in places. She wore a faded calico apron over a faded and shapeless calico dress and men’s lace-up work boots over bagging socks.
Mrs. Arnold stopped chopping at the grass and leaned against her garden hoe. “Good afternoon to you. Must be the new folks up to the big house.”
“Hi,” Abby said, shading her eyes from the sun. Mrs. Arnold smiled warmly at Merrideth. “Your Aunt Ruth was my best friend, God rest her soul.”
“Mom said she was my great-aunt,” Merrideth said, maintaining the bored look she had perfected. At least she hadn’t rolled her eyes.
“Well, now won’t that be fun for you to have some nice young people to play with, Michael?”
The boy grinned, and Abby turned to him and said, “Oh. Michael. That’s your name.”
“He can’t talk proper, you know,” Mrs. Arnold said.
“I wanted to talk to his mother. I knocked, but no one answered.”
“Oh, she’s in there.”
Abby was going to ask more about that when Mrs. Arnold suddenly cried, “Well come on then,” as if she were reluctantly giving in to their repeated pleading. “My garden’s this a way.” Picking up her hoe, she began to shuffle away.
Abby glanced at Merrideth whose look said, what did I tell you? Merrideth began humming the Mr. Rogers’ theme song, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
Michael opened a squeaky gate and Abby and Merrideth followed the old woman, who, using her hoe like a cane, started down a shady little path covered in wood chips. Ferns, violets, and hostas grew luxuriantly under a large maple tree.
“This is amazing!” Abby said.
A black and white cat sat among the green ferns, meowing as they passed.
“That’s Spooky,” Mrs. Arnold said. “Best mouser ever.”
Past the tree, the path took them back into the sunlight and masses of colorful blooming plants. Abby recognized a few of them—gladiolas, hollyhocks, coneflowers, and phlox. Their combined sweet scents flavored the air. A flowerbed made from an old tractor tire contained petunias and marigolds in colors that clashed but somehow looked just right. Here and there, vegetables grew among the flowers along with other plants that most people would call weeds.
Even Merrideth seemed fascinated. “Look at all the butterflies!” She smiled when a monarch landed on her arm.
A bird, perched on the roof of a small garden shed, was singing the same crazy song Abby had heard from her bedroom window. First it sounded like a cardinal, then a robin, next a blue jay and then other birds she didn’t recognize.
“It’s that ol’ Mr. Mockingbird,” Mrs. Arnold said as if she could read her mind. “He sings nice, but he tries to scare away all my other birds, even the bluebirds, and Heaven knows how ornery they are.”
Some of the beds were edged with curious glass domes that in the sunlight appeared to be lit up like little lanterns in shades of blue and green. Mrs. Arnold explained they were electric insulators left behind when the power lines were modernized back in the 1930s.
They came to a rosebush loaded with deep red blooms. Abby leaned over to sniff. “Ahh, so sweet!”
“Now Mrs. Miles, she was the one who could grow roses. Her trellises were just covered in pretty pink roses all summer.”
“My granddad’s a rose expert,” Abby said. “He’s the rosarian at the St. Louis botanical gardens.”
“Ruth’s husband was a Rotarian. Helped a lot of folks during the big flood down in Alton. The Rotary Club still meets every Wednesday at Sal’s Place in Brighton.”
Abby smiled but didn’t try to explain the difference between a rosarian and a Rotarian.
Mrs. Arnold breathed deeply in satisfaction. “Turned ninety-two in May, and I still do it all myself. People say my garden is the nicest one in Miles Station. ‘Course my house isn’t near as nice as the colonel’s. Doesn’t have the soul like Colonel Miles’ old house has either.” Mrs. Arnold looked off to the distance as if she had forgotten they were there.
“Who is Colonel Miles?” Merrideth asked.
Mrs. Arnold’s gaze snapped back to them. “Why, he’s the one this whole town was named after, honey. It was him that built the big house you’re living in. They say it was him that got the railroad to go through here down to Alton.”
Abby was puzzled. “What town do you mean, Mrs. Arnold?”
“This town, honey—Miles Station.” Mrs. Arnold leaned on her hoe and was silent for a moment. Propping her chin on her ancient, spotted hands, she said, “Well, I reckon it’s not much of a town anymore. But farmers used to come for miles around to shop and have their grain milled into flour in the colonel’s steam mill.”
Abby wanted to ask Mrs. Arnold more about the town, but she turned away suddenly and called out, “Michael, you stop trying to catch my squirrels, boy, or I’ll tan your hide.”
He turned and smiled, unafraid of her threat. The squirrel wasn’t afraid either, and went back to eating from an ear of dried corn wired to a post.
“Take them around and show them my pretty fish.” Mrs. Arnold had found more weeds and was happily chopping away again.
Michael led them down the path as it continued its way around to the other side of the house. A bluebird was
splashing and preening in a makeshift birdbath made from an upturned garbage can lid. The bird darted away in a flash of blue fire as they approached.
Dozens of Evening in Paris perfume bottles, in another shade of deep blue, were wired to fence posts, for no apparent reason other than to add color. The path took them to another shady, ferny spot where water was trickling over pink sparkly rocks into a child’s blue Disney wading pool.
The goldfish didn’t seem to mind their humble abode, or that the pennies that dotted the bottom of the pool didn’t quite cover the cartoon image of Snow White.
In spite of its oddities, the garden was appealing and restful, and they stayed there for a while before returning to the front yard. Mrs. Arnold was wrestling with a garden hose that didn’t want to unwind properly.
“I hate this cantankerous old thing!” She stared at the sky as if to see if any rain clouds had happened to arrive. “Lord, if you would send us some rain, I wouldn’t have to water my hydrangeas.”
“We could help with that,” Abby offered.
“That’s all right. You all go on now.”
Abby tried again before they left to ask her more about the vanished town, but Mrs. Arnold was no longer in the mood for polite conversation.
“I ain’t got time for gabbing. Got work to do,” she said, wiping her face with her apron. “You’ve got work to do, too. You find the soul of that old house and you’ll find….Well, Charlotte will show you.”
Merrideth tugged on Abby’s sleeve and whispered, “Come on. She’s a crazy old woman. Let’s go home. I’ve got to be there for my phone call.”
Abby said goodbye and Michael waved from across the garden where he was trying to catch a butterfly. The old lady didn’t watch them leave, just kept muttering as she wrestled with the hose.
When they had passed Michael’s house, Abby stopped suddenly and turned back to look. “Of course!” she said. “I should have realized. That answers our question.”
“What’s our question?” Merrideth asked.
“Why his house looks like a bathroom at a state park.”
“Okay, I give up. Why?”
“Because what Michael is living in is the old train depot—the Miles Station depot.”
