Rust & Stardust

by T. Greenwood

  “I’ll go to the girl,” he said to his partner. “You keep an eye out for La Salle.”

  As he got out of the cruiser and approached her, the girl backed up against the side of the canteen building, shaking her head. “Please help her.”

  He was confused. What was she talking about?

  He walked slowly toward the girl with his palms up, in some strange surrender. As if approaching a wounded wild thing.

  “Miss Horner,” he said, and she shook her head. There was a strand of hair, wet with tears, clinging to her fat white cheek like a single parenthesis.

  “Please, Officer, you gotta help Ruth.”

  “Mrs. Janish? The lady that called in? Where is she?”

  But before the girl could answer, there was a scream, and a gunshot from inside one of the trailers.

  RUTH

  Ruth had heard the city bus pull up but hadn’t thought anything of it. Frank was supposed to get a ride home at the end of the day with Ben. She and Florence had at least an hour before they should be coming home.

  Ruth had sent Florence to the canteen, where she knew she’d be safe in case Frank did come back, and told her to wait there. Then she had gone into Frank’s trailer herself to gather the rest of Florence’s things. Nauseated, she’d made her way to the bedroom, trying not to cry as she considered everything that had been going on in there for the last two years and for all that time at the Good Luck, right next door to her. Her heart ached with all the ways she’d failed Florence. But she wouldn’t fail her again.

  She threw open the drawers and grabbed Florence’s clothes, the hairbrush she’d given her, her composition notebook, her stomach clenching as she considered what secrets were written inside.

  When she heard the trailer door open, she thought it was just Florence come back from the canteen.

  “Sweetheart, I told you…,” Ruth began.

  But the shadow that filled the doorway wasn’t Florence, and the stink of him, that gasoline-and-pomade stench, burned her nostrils.

  “Well, looky here,” he said calmly. “Looks like we’ve got a burglar on the premises.”

  “Frank,” Ruth said.

  “You know, it’s fully within my rights to protect what’s mine.”

  The dusty sunlight at his back, he was only a silhouette, but it didn’t take long before she realized that he was holding something, and that something was a gun.

  A body either cooperates or defies you, Ruth knew. And while in the past, her own body had failed her when she needed it the most (she considered her inhospitable womb, the blood that appeared predictably, nearly religiously month after month), she willed it now to obey. Calm, she thought. Keep calm. Do not show him how afraid you are.

  “You’re home early,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “What are you doing in here?” he said. “You think you can just trespass in a man’s home?”

  Home. God, she had never, ever thought of her own trailer as home. Home was a place she dreamed of, a little house with shutters and green grass, a waist-high fence and a chimney exhaling cotton ball puffs of smoke. A backyard with a tree for climbing, with a bedroom for her and Hank, for that baby girl that never was. Home was a phantom. A chimera.

  “I said, what are you doing in here, Ruth?” Frank said, throwing his small shoulders back, thrusting that skinny chest forward in some semblance of intimidation. Something about this made her pity him. He’d become a monster in her mind, but here he was, just flesh and bone. Just ribs and jaw and ragged breath.

  “I know what you done to Florence,” she said softly. “To Sally.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Listen, Frank. I don’t know why you done it, but you’re a decent man. A hardworking man.”

  She knew that when Hank was angry, when he felt defeated, flattery went a lot further than you’d ever think. One of the ladies whose hair she cut once told her that the way to a man’s heart was not through his stomach, as the old saying went, but rather through a pat on his back.

  He didn’t seem swayed, however. What was it they also said about flattery? It’s like cologne, better to be smelled than swallowed. And he wasn’t swallowing it.

  “I don’t want any trouble here, but it’s time you let her go home,” Ruth said, keeping her voice calm and even. “You still got time.”

  “Time for what, Ruthie?” he asked, moving toward her now. The gun was raised, pointed directly at her chest.

  “Time to get out of here,” she said, stunned by her body’s stillness. Peace. “Before the FBI arrives.”

  “FBI?” he said, chuckling a little, and then his laughter turning into a racking cough.

  “You can get right back on the city bus and be at the depot in twenty minutes. Connect you to anywhere you want to go,” she said. “You need money, I got some in my trailer. But you got to let her go, Frank. She don’t belong to you. She ain’t your daughter, and she surely ain’t your girlfriend.”

  At this, Frank stopped short, the gun inches from her chest. She’d never been this close to a gun before.

  Instinctively, her hands rose over her head. She could feel and smell the perspiration that now stained her blouse.

  “I seen how good you been to Florence. How much you care for her,” she tried again. “You just got caught up in this thing. It don’t mean you’re a bad man.”

  He pressed the gun against her skin in the small gap between her buttons. Her blood pounded in her temples, in her ears, against the cold metal barrel.

  She thought of Florence. She’d gladly sacrifice her own life if it meant that sweet child might be saved. Ruth closed her eyes, waiting for him to shoot, but then her hand, as if with a mind of its own, reached down and grabbed Frank’s wrist.

  When the gun went off, she felt a warm splatter. Was it her own blood? Was this odd buzzing thrumming feeling death? But there was no pain. Only the smell of gunpowder and the odd, sharp scent of citrus.

  She opened her eyes and saw the bowl of oranges she’d brought over the day before, shattered into a thousand pieces. The pulpy remains on the Formica counter.

  A voice had boomed as though through a loudspeaker outside the trailer: “Come out with your hands up.”

  * * *

  Ruth figured that Frank would kill her now. His eyes were dead as he aimed the gun at her again.

  “Frank,” she said. “If you shoot me, they’ll come in and kill you.”

  Frank looked over his shoulder at the closed door of the trailer.

  “But if you do as they say…”

  The door of the trailer flew open then, and a police officer stormed into the trailer. Smirking, Frank set the gun down on the kitchenette table. He winked at Ruth, then raised his hands in surrender.

  After they had pulled Frank outside, Ruth walked tentatively out of the trailer, and it made her think of walking out of a dark movie theater into a bright afternoon. It took her eyes several moments to adjust. Two other officers had Frank on the ground, his arms yanked behind his back. The air was murky with a cloud of dirty dust. Frantically, she scanned the lot, searching for Florence. For Sally. Finally, she saw her cowering at the picnic table in front of her own trailer. She ran to her, embraced her. The child was trembling so hard, it made Ruth think of the night she went to the hospital for her appendix. But this time, she wrapped her arms around her. Held her tightly.

  A police cruiser peeled into the motor court followed by two more. They parked cockeyed in the drive, and the doors flew open.

  “You’re under arrest for kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines,” one of the officers with Frank said, like he’d rehearsed these lines for a play.

  Frank lifted his chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer. You mean Sally? Sally’s my daughter. Well, my stepdaughter, but I raised her up from the time she was just a baby.”

  “I think her mama would beg to differ,” the officer said, handcuffing Frank’s wrists behind his back.

&nb
sp; “Her mother?” Frank scoffed. “Ella Horner? She the one that sent you after me? I’m married to that woman. You can check the records. You think I’m some sort of criminal?”

  “Yes, sir,” the cop said. “And we been looking for you for almost two years. Had our guys looking for you in Baltimore, in Dallas—”

  “I’m a businessman, and I had business in Dallas. I got business here. I always registered my truck in my name. If you were doing your job, you coulda found me easy.”

  “Ma’am?” An officer loomed over Ruth and Sally, blocking the sun. “You and the girl. You two okay? Should we call an ambulance?”

  Ruth felt Sally quaking inside the cocoon of her arms.

  “We’re okay,” she said. “Everything is okay now.”

  She closed her eyes and pressed Sally’s head to her chest, felt Sally’s tears dampen her blouse. Inside her chest, Ruth’s heart tumbled, cartwheeling with relief and something like sorrow.

  Camden, New Jersey

  April 1950

  ELLA

  They brought her his watch and his hat.

  The officers, when they came to Ella’s door that night. Found by the tracks, they said. The only evidence that it was Russell who had walked out in front of the train as bystanders watched in horror.

  “I don’t understand,” she’d said. “What does this prove? Where is he?”

  They had tried to explain that the impact, the blow of the locomotive, had left nothing recognizable behind.

  She left his shoes by the door. His side of the bed tightly made. His aftershave in the medicine cabinet. As if she might get a call at any time telling her it had all been a terrible mistake. But after a while, she knew he wasn’t coming home. That his watch, hands stopped at the time of the impact, was all the proof she’d ever get.

  By the time they called to say Sally was coming home, she’d felt a similar sort of resignation. She’d begun to believe that the little red suitcase, the photograph of Sally on the swing, were the only traces of her daughter that remained.

  But Al had insisted. Held both of her crippled hands in his and looked her in the eyes.

  Sally was coming home. The impossible somehow suddenly possible. Ella felt like her world had been turned right side out after being inside out for the last two years. Her little girl was coming back to her.

  It was past midnight, and the house was still. Susan and the baby were staying the night again. They had been staying with her since the FBI had found Sally. The baby had fallen asleep after a warm bath, and Susan had gone upstairs to sleep hours ago. Now Ella sat at the sewing machine, her body aching but the machine humming. As she sewed, oddly it wasn’t Sally she thought of but Russell. The night the officers came to Ella’s door to tell her that they’d found Russell’s remains on the tracks, she’d been sitting in the dark, sewing as well.

  Ella could never sleep when Russell was out, and if she did manage to fall asleep, she’d jolt awake, reaching for him on the other side of the bed only to find it empty still. And so, on those nights, she sat up. Waited for him to come home as if he were a teenager instead of a grown man.

  That night Susan had come home from the picture show, For Whom the Bell Tolls, that’s what it was, and gone upstairs after mooning over Gary Cooper for several minutes. Sally had gone to sleep hours before. The house was still. She had figured she might as well use her time to get ahead on her work. She was still tense from the argument they’d had, and so when she heard the footsteps coming up the front porch steps, her shoulders relaxed. He was home early. Daly’s stayed open until 2:00 A.M., and so usually he stayed until they kicked him out, stumbling home by 2:15. But the grandfather clock said it was only midnight.

  She didn’t get up to answer the door. It was unlocked. He could let himself in.

  Knock, knock.

  Damn it, she thought. Fool’s so drunk he’s forgotten how to turn a doorknob.

  She stood up from her work and made her way slowly to the front door. But when she peeked through the small window, it wasn’t Russell but two police officers standing there. And just like that, the fissure, that fault line that she’d been straddling forever opened up. The firmament cleft, and the world swallowed her whole.

  “Is Daddy home?” Sally had asked, standing at the top of the stairs, rubbing her eyes.

  Might be easier, he’d said. If I was dead. It was her fault. She’d handed him a one-way ticket on that train. Put him on those tracks, just like she would put Sally on board that bus five years later. Only a fool makes the same mistake twice. She was a fool, a goddamned fool. She deserved every ounce of heartache she’d suffered.

  For that reason, it was nearly impossible to believe that Sally was coming home. That this time, Ella was getting a second chance.

  * * *

  “Mama,” Susan said now, standing in the doorway. “It’s late.”

  The room was scattered with the fragile whispery paper of the pattern pieces. Scraps of fabric. Bits of ribbon and lace all over the floor. Susan had taken her to the fabric store, where she had chosen a pretty pink dotted swiss. The decision had been easy. But deciding on the pattern size had been nearly impossible. Ella had no idea how big Sally was now, how tall. How much she weighed. And so she’d chosen a pattern a size smaller than her own, the size she herself had been at thirteen years old. Vivi had offered to help, but she’d sent her on home to her own mama.

  “You should get some sleep. Sally will be home tomorrow,” Susan insisted, hands on her hips.

  “I’ll be up soon,” Ella said without looking up from her work. Begrudgingly, Susan went up the creaking stairs alone.

  Ella hadn’t sewn in months and months, but it was like riding a bicycle, the way her fingers remembered. She ran the swath of fabric beneath the presser foot, watched as the stitches tethered the soft pink pieces together. Her joints were diseased, but she still had a remarkably steady hand, and she only had the hem left to do. She could hear Susan above her, the groan of the bedsprings in her old room as she lay down. The small sounds of Dee stirring.

  She positioned the cloth and lowered the foot, pressed her foot to the treadle to finish the dress. Sally was coming home, and she’d need a dress to wear to Sunday services.

  SALLY

  Sally had never flown on an airplane. The lawman, Mr. Cohen, sat next to her, nose buried in his newspaper. He didn’t seem to notice that she was shaking with fear. She should have been happy—they were headed back to Camden finally—but instead she felt like she might be sick.

  After the police took Mr. Warner away, after she clung to Ruth, still afraid, the officer made her sit in the backseat of the police cruiser. Ruth had released her slowly, squeezing her hand, kissing the top of her head. “You go on now, Sally. Your mama’s waitin’ for you at home.”

  Home. It was all she’d dreamed about for almost two years now, but then why did it feel like her heart was being torn in two? She’d sat in the backseat of the police car all alone, the window down. Ruth leaned in and touched her hair. “I wish we had time for me to give you a nice trim before you went home,” she said wistfully.

  It wasn’t until they were pulling out of the trailer park, her hand pressed against the glass as Ruth watched her go, that the officer told her she actually couldn’t go home right away. No matter that she hadn’t seen her own mama in nearly two years, she couldn’t go back to Camden until Mr. Warner was charged in the court. She had to be there, they said. And so she’d spent the night at the county detention home for juveniles, where a friendly nurse took care of her before the doctor performed his medical exam, which she wept through, ashamed and horrified as she answered his questions about all the things that Mr. Warner had done to her. But he’d only nodded and scratched down illegible notes on his clipboard.

  That night she hadn’t slept at all, even though they gave her her own room away from the other children who lived there. Every time she started to fall asleep, something would startle her awake again. When the prosecutor came to pick
her up and take her to the court, she felt like she was in the middle of some sort of peculiar dream.

  In the courtroom, she’d sat in a hardback chair as they brought in Mr. Warner, Frank La Salle, his hands and ankles shackled. She fought the tears that welled up in her eyes.

  He wasn’t an FBI man. And he wasn’t her real father. He was a criminal. All of this had been a lie, and she’d been so stupid. So gullible. All she’d had to do was pick up the phone and call home. Any time, and she would have been free. This was what Mr. Cohen had explained to her. Frank La Salle was a con man, a predator, and she wasn’t the first young lady he’d taken advantage of. She thought of the photos in his valise, and wondered what the other girls’ names were. If they’d been scared like she was. What else they shared in common. She wondered if they’d ever met—she and these girls—if they might have been friends.

  But those girls were long gone; she’d never know them. Sally was alone in her grief and agony and shame. She wanted Ruth to be there with her, to hold her like she had when the police came for her. But as Mr. Warner had shuffled into the courtroom and winked at her, she knew she was completely and absolutely alone.

  “Is this man your stepfather?” the judge had asked her.

  She’d thought of her stepfather, remembered the song he used to sing. Her mother had been right, it was Russell, not her real daddy she was remembering. After a few too many drinks some nights, he’d wander into her room and sit at the foot of her bed.

  “You awake, Sally?” he’d ask.

  “Yes, Daddy,” she’d say, and he’d sing his favorite song, “Waiting for a Train.”

  Sally loved when her father sang; his voice was as pure and sweet and steady as his trumpet. Even when he’d been drinking, his words were clear and sharp.