“You see why I asked you who it belongs to now.”
“I do see,” Julie assured her.
Julie’s story made page 3 of the bulldog edition of the New York Daily and the police, discovering there was no such religious order as the Sisters of Our Lady of Hope, put out an alert for Sister Justina. The Willoughby claimed all of that very old money. It also threatened to sue the contractor whose procrastination made that part of the basement available to Sister Justina and her friends.
Mrs. Ryan’s faith in the nun remained steadfast: she might herself have got the name of the order wrong. Julie thought about looking up Goldie, the reformed pimp, to ask him what became of the gold-and-ivory cross he used to wear. But she decided not to. It was one more thing she didn’t have to know.
Christopher and Maggie
“AND NOW, MY GROWN-UP friends and all my little pals, our revels are almost over, as Shakespeare said.” The magician turned to his assistant who wasn’t much help at magic, an encumbrance really, but he liked to have her on stage. She added class. “Isn’t that what Shakespeare said, Miranda?”
Miranda, whose real name was Maggie, drew herself up to her full five feet one and a half inches. She was a pretty girl with shining brown eyes and a quick smile. She looked wholesome where Christopher would have preferred a sly, seductive woman. Miranda was about as mysterious as a duck. But since she was personable and the partner at hand, Christopher the Great used her to the limits of his imagination. Miranda intoned:
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
>As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
>Are melted into air …”
Christopher, one hand under his, chin in the manner of a popular vaudeville comedian, mugged amazement as Miranda roundly mouthed the words. A few lines more and he interrupted her and asked the audience, “Ain’t a college education wonderful?”
The audience of eighteen men and seven women sat with the same mute patience they accorded a dull sermon on Sunday morning. The twenty children were restless. The drafts kept gusting through the hall. The flag quivered in its stanchion. The lights flickered on the Christmas tree. The steam pipes hissed and rattled. At a signal from Christopher, Miranda gave a great whang to a Chinese gong. The audience jumped. They were alive.
Christopher announced as the finale the most dangerous feat in his repertoire. The act, he said, had made him famous the world over. He was a dapper man, slight, with hollow cheeks, a sharp nose, pale blue eyes, a thin mustache, and an unmistakable Midwestern accent although he claimed to have grown up in Budapest, Hungary. His hands were graceful and quick and his whole body had a squirrel-like agility. For this trick, however, he stood severely straight and still. He seemed to feed himself, one by one, an entire packet of needles. He grimaced in pain at every swallow. The folding chairs squeaked as his audience sat forward, finally alert. The children’s eyes were popping.
“Hush,” Miranda said to a house already hushed.
Christopher balled a length of thread and stuffed it into his mouth. In his display of agony, he resembled a Christian martyr often featured on funeral cards. His audience belonged to him. The hundred or so empty chairs no longer mattered. Then, with a silent prayer, he extracted an end of thread from between his tongue and his teeth and carefully drew out a chain of neatly threaded needles. He skipped down the steps and invited a youngster in the front row to look into the cavern of his mouth.
Maggie didn’t know how he did it. Nor did she care. It seemed mighty unhygienic. In fact, she hated magic, but she had the only job she could get. The country was in a depression—dust bowls and soup kitchens, Father Coughlin and John L. Lewis, the latter revered in Bluefield, West Virginia, the coal and rail town they were about to pull out of, to head home for Christmas. Home for Maggie was a small town in Michigan, for Christopher it was Fort Wayne, Indiana. Christmas was two days away.
It was ten past twelve when they hit the highway in Christopher’s sedan. It was custom-packed, floorboards to roof, the back seat removed to accommodate his magic, livestock, and luggage. Maggie’s luggage consisted of an imitation leather suitcase and a canvas bag of books for which the only room was at her feet. Two spare tires were strapped to the running boards. Those on the car were as bald as the liners inside them. The car gave a thud at every tar-filled crack in the pavement. There was a strong odor of bird dung in the car—Maggie didn’t think rabbit droppings smelled—but stronger was the smell of the half onion Christopher had at the ready in case the windshield frosted. It was a cold night and grew colder the higher they went into the mountains. An oval moon rode high. It silvered the hills, etched telegraph poles, slag heaps, and occasional cottages in which the lights were long out. Far down in the valley the railroad tracks shone in the moonlight. Their red, green, and yellow signals were cheery. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Maggie observed.
“What I wish—I wish there was more traffic,” Christopher said. “If we were to break down …”
Maggie cut him off. “We won’t.”
“That’s the difference between you and me,” Christopher said. “I look for the worst to happen, you the best.”
“Might as well,” she said.
Christopher sniffed. “Do you smell alcohol?”
“I smell onion,” Maggie said.
“If she boils dry we’re in trouble. She was already overloaded without those books of yours. What do you need with all those books? Why didn’t you sell them?”
“You know why,” Maggie said. What she had sold was her car—for thirty dollars on the spot when Christopher arrived in town and offered her a ride almost all the way home. The booking of Christopher the Great out of Fort Wayne called a minimum of five performances a week; they were promoted, in the name of the sponsoring local charity, by five women, each working a town a week in advance of Christopher, and moving on the day after the performance. There were towns like Glens Falls, N.Y.; Oil Town, Pa.; Pittsfield, Mass.; and Bluefield that Maggie wasn’t ever going to forget.
Christopher took off his mitten and groped for her hand where it was snuggled in her pocket. “I love you, Maggie, books and all. I love you the best of all my girls.”
“I love you, too,” she lied—or half lied—and gave her hand to keep him from groping any farther.
The road soon demanded both his hands on the steering wheel. He started to sing, “You tell me your dreams, I’ll tell you mine …”
Maggie sang harmony, a strong alto to his quavering tenor.
They were almost an hour into their journey when a thump, thump, thump signaled a flat tire. Christopher cursed philosophically and pulled to the side of the road. It took all his wirey strength to jack up the overloaded Chevy, a rock wedged under the other rear wheel. While he removed the loosened bolts by moonlight, Maggie went behind a billboard to pee. The billboard featured Santa Claus, a Coca-Cola in his hand: “The pause that keeps you going.” Christopher was blowing on his hands. A vast silence surrounded them. Then from inside the car came the cooing of his doves. Maggie laughed.
“It ain’t funny, Maggie,” the magician said. “They never coo at night.”
Then came another sound in the far distance, the fluted whistle of a train. Maggie wished she were on the train, but didn’t say so. She needed all her money to buy a few family Christmas presents and a warmer coat. If she had told her dream it was that she could get a job teaching history. She adored history. She was carrying twelve volumes of English history that had belonged to her grandfather, along with several volumes of poetry. An English major, a minor in history, she was overeducated for the jobs available.
A car went by so fast it almost sucked her with it. Christopher shouted curses after it. An echo made them resound. “Helloooooo,” Maggie called and her voice bounced around the hills. “Go to hell!” Christopher shouted. Hell, hell, hell, hell … A few minutes later he eased the car down, strapped the flat tire into place, and put his tools in the trunk. He went behind the billboard. Maggie warmed
her hands on the radiator.
“I should’ve saved it,” he said, returning. “Did I ever tell you about the time in Iron Mountain when the radiator went dry?”
“You did, you did!” One night every week after the show they would find a friendly tavern, drink beer and eat fried fish, French fries, and cole slaw. They’d play the jukebox and dance until the place closed. Christopher told several versions of his life story. She still didn’t know his last name unless it was Christopher. In which case she didn’t know his first name. One of his stories made her cry the first time she heard it—how he had wanted to be a pianist when he was a kid. His mother stole from the family food allowance to get him lessons and then somehow managed to buy a piano. His father made him play for him one day while he sat beside him on the piano bench. All of a sudden, without any warning, he slammed the lid down on the boy’s fingers. Three of them were broken. It was the doctor who got him doing magic tricks to make the fingers nimble again.
Maggie climbed back into the front seat, kicked her heels against her books, and tried to rub warmth into her arms. There was a heater but it leaked engine fumes and Christopher was afraid they might kill his doves or the rabbit.
According to a road sign they were forty miles out of Bluefield. Maggie said she was getting hungry. Christopher offered her a Milky Way. She had given up mushy chocolate in high school.
“How about half an onion?”
“No thank you,” Maggie said and started to sing “Stormy Weather,” her all-time favorite song.
They had almost made it to the top of a long climb when the car began to chug. The smell of alcohol grew stronger and stronger. Steam was escaping from the radiator. Christopher kept coaxing the hiccoughing car, “Come on, gal, I’m your pal …” He managed to pull off the road before the engine gave out. The “sealer” hadn’t worked, he said and cursed the garage man who had sold it to him with a money back guarantee—in Bluefield.
They searched the roadside, Maggie on one side, Christopher on the other, for a promising-looking house, then for just any house. There didn’t seem to be one. Christopher worried about his props, his twenty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment, more or less, a priceless white rabbit, and a pair of turtledoves.
Below them and running roughly parallel to the road was the railway track, even more sparsely traveled than the highway. Christopher was carrying a two-gallon milk can he hoped to fill with water. He waved it overhead and shouted as a pickup truck went by. It didn’t stop.
A metallic glow appeared ahead, illusive at first as a will-o’-the-wisp. It turned out to be a mailbox. They followed the rutted road that wended downhill from it. The road soon divided and still they could see no buildings. But from where they then stood they saw a railroad crossing and the crossing guard’s house. The light in it was like a beacon of civilization. Christopher figured that it had to be where the highway they were on crossed the tracks. If they could get the Chevy to the top of the hill they could coast all the way down. A raucous shriek shattered the stillness. It hit Maggie like a bolt of pain.
“It’s a goddamn jackass,” Christopher said. And to prove itself the animal gave several long hee-haws. That started a dog barking nearby. “Let’s get the hell back to the car,” Christopher said.
He talked to the car and patted the radiator before getting in.
“I’m praying,” Maggie said when he put his foot on the starter.
“Can’t hurt.”
The motor turned over, sputtered between life and death, took more gas, and when Christopher shot the car into gear it leaped ahead. Alongside the mailbox it began to chug again. “You can make it, baby. I know you can.” When it was on the verge of conking out, he threw it out of gear, revved the motor, and thrust it into gear again. It leaped a few yards more. They made it, cheering, to the top and began the long, winding descent. “Now you better pray we can stop,” he said.
The first thing Christopher noticed when they pulled off the road a few feet their side of the tracks was a well pump, a cup hanging on a chain alongside. The light in the crossing guard’s house seemed dimmer close up than it had at a distance. In fact, there was no window this side, what they were seeing was reflected light. “You go in and ask him if we can get warm and have some water,” the magician ordered. “But just in case he’s ornery, I’m going to fill her up right now.” He left the engine running and took off his scarf to muzzle the steam when he removed the radiator cap.
Maggie approached the little house through the stubble of a railside garden. The guard’s STOP sign hung beside the door. She wondered why women couldn’t be railway guards: all that time to read and a cozy rabbit hutch of a house. She rapped on the door and observed in the reflected light trackside that there was also a coal bin there. No one answered her knock. Sleep, she decided, must be a terrible temptation. Christopher was pumping. No water yet. The pump sounded a little like the donkey. She knocked again and thought of the poem, “The Listeners.”
“Eureka!” Christopher cried and she heard the splash of water.
She did not like to try the door. The guard might be doing God knew what. She went around to the window. It was bleary with dust. A halo surrounded a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. She rapped on the glass and cleared a place to look in. A gray-haired man was slumped in a rocker, his legs sprawled toward the stove, his back to the door. His chin was on his breast and a newspaper lay on the floor at the side of his chair. A fire glowed in the potbellied stove. She rapped again on the window, this time with her class ring. He made no move. She ran back to where Christopher was lugging the can of water.
“There’s something wrong with the old man in there. I think maybe he’s dead.”
“Dead asleep,” he said. “Get in the car.”
“We can’t just drive off and leave him.”
“Why not? That’s what people have been doing to us all night,” Christopher shouted, pulling back from a burst of steam. “I’m going to get another can of water and move on.”
“Chris, I’m going back and see what’s wrong with him.”
“What do you think you are, a doctor? And don’t call me Chris.”
Maggie ran back to the house. This time she opened the door. The big railway clock over the desk said 3:10. Every tick sounded as though it was going to be the last. The old man was in the same position as he was when she’d seen him from the window. “Mister …” She approached him tentatively and touched his hand. It was terribly cold although the room was warm.
Christopher came in muttering about putting a beggar on horseback. “Holy Christ,” he then said reverently. He walked slowly around the chair, stepping carefully over the old man’s feet. He stopped and pointed a trembling finger to where a thin trickle of blood dribbled from the man’s ear onto his shoulder. “That means he was hit in the back of the head. Have you got a mirror?”
“In the car,” she said. “Should I go get it?”
“Never mind.” Christopher went to the desk and picked up the phone. It was dead. He hung up and tried it again. Quite dead. A telegraph signal began to rap out of the apparatus on the desk. They just looked at one another. Neither of them understood Morse code, but the staccato transmission made the message sound urgent.
“If there’s a train coming through we can flag it down,” Maggie said.
“Like we did the cars,” Christopher said.
“Look, this can’t have happened long ago. If we saw the light from way up there it had to be through the open door, right?” She hurried outdoors in time to see a change in the colored signals alongside the northbound track, green off, yellow on. The train gave a long series of whistles and the automatic warning lights began to blink at the roadway crossing, the bell to ring furiously although there was not a car in sight. Maggie caught up the guard’s sign from alongside the door. The great white eye appeared from the south; clouds of steam billowed up and fell back over the engine to shroud the cars behind. The track signal switched from yellow back to
green. For just an instant Maggie caught sight of an automobile parked on the other side of the northbound track. The oncoming engine blocked it out. Then, a man jumped out of the darkness nearly opposite to where she had seen the car. He stood on the southbound track and waved at the oncoming train. Someone in the cab threw a sack down to him. Maggie lost sight of him in a billow of smoke.
“Christopher?” She called out as though he might do something.
He was right behind her. “No!”
The engine came abreast of them. Maggie waved the sign and shouted, “Man dead, man dead!” and pointed at the house.
The trainman waved at her, but heard nothing, she was sure, what with the grind of the wheels, the warning whistle, and the accelerating chu-chu-chu-chu—chu-chu-chu-chu … The train plowed on leaving them, too, in a spray of smoke.
She turned her back to the smoke and saw the man again, running toward the rear of the train; he had to get around it to get to the car. She started after him. Christopher brought her down with a flying tackle. Struggling to get up she saw the lights go on in the car on the other side of the train. “They’ll get away,” she shouted.
“You’re damn right they will!” Christopher headed for the Chevy.
Maggie took a last look down the tracks. Now the man was running toward her alongside the train. A few yards before he reached her he jumped for the ladder on the side of a boxcar, caught it, and swung himself onto the steps. For just an instant she thought of trying to grab hold of him but he was too soon past. The train picked up speed. Between the passing boxcars she saw the other automobile drive along the tracks as far as the road and then turn north. She caught sight of the man with the packet in the light of the crossing. He was clinging like a barnacle to the side of the boxcar.
Maggie looked into the flagman’s house from the door. He seemed more dead, as if that were possible, and she didn’t even know the telegraph code for S.O.S. She galloped back to Christopher’s car and clambered in. The caboose was rolling by.
In the Still of the Night: Tales to Lock Your Doors By Page 10
