Seeing America

by Nancy Crocker

  Sure, they meant it. Did I resent my dad trying to control every little detail of my life? Damn straight.

  Woooo-wooooo!

  I was so deep inside my head I hadn’t even heard the train coming. The engineer waved as he passed, and I crossed my arms in the air, waving back too late. I was still signaling like crazy when the caboose came by, and that trainman waved too—like it was a normal thing, seeing a man out here in the middle of nothing, jumping up and down, saying howdy to the Central Pacific. Oh, well. At least I’d found the tracks.

  Not fifty yards west, I found more: a handcar sitting idle on a side switching rail. I pumped it onto the main track and looked behind and ahead. Plenty of view and nothing in sight. That would sure beat walking. I didn’t know what I’d do about the handcar if a train came along, but I knew I’d have enough warning to save my own behind. And I was no longer responsible for anything beyond that.

  “Come, all you rounders that want to hear . . . the story of a brave engineer . . .”

  I sailed along and made my own breeze. Up down, up down. It felt like I was flapping my wings and flying.

  Once I got a little winded, it was hard to keep singing. “Casey Jones—goin’ to reach Frisco. We’re gonna reach Frisco, but we’ll all be dead.” Two verses was all I could manage.

  An hour later, I’d estimate, I had to stop and rest. The sun was nearly overhead, and I was wishing I’d taken more from the Ford than Paul’s hat. Like lunch. I took the map out of my pocket and studied it. The little creek we’d run into was nothing but a line. It wasn’t even named. But at least I determined it was almost halfway between Goodland, Kansas, and Burlington, Colorado. I wondered if I’d have been better off going back to a town we knew.

  So what? That’s what I’d told Paul way back that first night, that this was a so what kind of trip. No use looking back. I started westward again.

  I made it to the Burlington train station and celebrated that fact until I saw the stationmaster steaming out the door toward me. He was just a little over five foot nothing, round as a barrel, with a face like an apple just starting to shrivel. “What are you doing with that, you hooligan? Where do you think you’re taking it?”

  “Well, good afternoon, sir. I’m part of a group of travelers, you see—”

  “You’re part of a group of jailbirds if you don’t get down from there this instant.”

  I accepted his invitation to join him on the platform. Both arms had seized up into solid knots of deadweight. “I came for help, you see—”

  “And you’re going to need it when I get through with you.”

  I clasped my hands behind my head and twisted left and right, working the kinks out of my back. Looking down on the flat top of the stationmaster’s hat gave me the notion he might not get to bully anybody very often. I did him a favor and kept my mouth shut.

  “You stay right here while I go get the sheriff!” He started away and changed his mind. “No, you come with me. I don’t trust a horse thief like you to be here when I get back! March, mister!” He was on tippy-toe, trying to get up in my face. He’d had sauerkraut for lunch, and my stomach growled back at him. I turned and marched, hands still behind my head.

  When we walked into his office, the sheriff was sitting with his long legs crossed at the boots on his desk. His hands were folded where a belly would be if he ever grew one, and he looked like the kind of man who’s never seen a hurry worth getting into.

  “Well, hell, Ed, what’d you expect him to do? Sit there and hope for a miracle?” That was his view of the situation after Stationmaster Ed tattled on me.

  “I was gonna offer to take it back when I got help,” I said.

  Ed practically jumped up and down. “You’ll do nothing of the kind! You are never going to touch railroad property again. Do you hear me?”

  “Speaking of railroads, Ed, don’t you have one you’re supposed to be running?” The sheriff’s mouth curved up the least little bit.

  Ed took his big watch out of his pocket and looked at it. He yipped like a puppy with its tail in the door and was gone.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Welcome, son. Ed doesn’t mean any harm. The little dogs always bark loudest when the parade goes by, you know?”

  “I do know.”

  We grinned at each other.

  He undraped himself from the desk and stood, and then I was the short man in the room. No wonder he was so easygoing. He could scare the devil out of people just by standing up.

  “George Windom. Or you can call me Sheriff.” He held out his hand and I had to reach up to shake it.

  “John Hartmann, sir.”

  He walked me over to the sidewalk in front of the drugstore where some benches seemed to serve as town hall. On the way there, I told him how the three of us had left Missouri first of June in our blind friend’s auto to see America. How we were headed for Yellowstone Park.

  He just nodded, but he was listening to me. You can always tell. Some grown-ups, you can practically hear another conversation going on in their heads while you talk to them. Not him.

  When we reached the benches lined with old men, the sheriff took off his cowboy hat and scratched his head and laid out my plight—including the getting up of Ed’s dander, which proved to be a high source of amusement.

  One old man provided the name of a farmer who had a steam engine tractor, and another asked how far I’d had to walk to the tracks. I told him, and Old Man Number Two reminded the first how far the nearest bridge was and how one might come in handy what with us stuck on the opposite side of the creek. A third old man suggested they load the tractor onto a train and ride it out there and back. Nobody even answered that, like they were used to hearing harebrained ideas come out of him.

  A fourth old man said, “What kind of automobile did you say it was?”

  I hadn’t, but I told him.

  He nodded. “They’re real light, aren’t they? Made out of some newfangled steel Henry Ford conjured up?”

  I told him yes, but that no car was light enough to be lifted up out of quicksand and then pushed out by men mired in the muck themselves.

  “Hog feeder lid,” Number Four pronounced.

  All the others nodded.

  I looked from one to the other, waiting for somebody to explain.

  They let Number Four go on since it was his idea. “You ever seen a hog feeder, son?”

  “Sure.” I thought back. Reimers’ farm: steel tub in the corral that looked like a tin can squashed by a giant. Big, round piece of steel for a lid. It might work. “Um, do you gentlemen have any idea where I might find one?”

  They laughed enough for me to think there must be a ready supply in the region.

  “Or how I can get it out there?” I added.

  This sobered them up and called for a round of “Hmm.”

  “You can take the handcar back out,” Sheriff Windom said. “Leave it where you found it.”

  “Oh, no, Sheriff, I don’t think Ed—”

  “Aw, hell.” He spat into the street and made a patch of mud the size of a quarter. “I’ll handle Ed. Tell you what—I’ll commandeer that handcar for official business.”

  All the old men haw-hawed at that. Ed was obviously more entertainment than friend.

  “You got any money?” the sheriff asked.

  I looked in my pocket and came out with two dollars. “Why?”

  He squinted off to the west. “It’d be dark before you could get back out to the creek and do any good today. Buy yourself something to eat come suppertime and walk over to the jail after. You can sleep there for free.” He swept the bench with a smile made of mischief. “All these fine gentlemen have done so at one time or another.”

  There was another round of haw-haw-haw, paying the sheriff for the joke.

  I went into the store where the old men sat guard, and I bought a newspaper. Habit, I guess. Then I came back out and asked the information committee where I might be able to buy supper.


  Old Man Number One pointed with a finger that shook a little. “Well, you can drink your supper over there.”

  I looked across at the first saloon I’d seen since Missouri.

  Haw-haw-haw, they chorused.

  Number Three said, “Why’n’t the sheriff just take him home for supper?”

  The others gave him a look that might have withered a smarter man.

  Another spoke up. “Miz Henderson sets a fine table, from what I hear, over at the hotel there. Got colored help and everything.”

  I looked where he pointed, thanked them for their help, and tipped Paul’s hat before walking away.

  I walked past the saloon and on to the hotel. The lobby looked like it had been nice when it was new but had seen too many years of cowboys and dust storms to keep living up to its past. I stood, hat in hands, and finally coughed a few times to draw notice.

  A colored girl stuck her head around a velvet curtain like a wren peeking out of a birdhouse. No more than she laid eyes on me, she ducked back in.

  Before long, I heard footsteps, and a woman my mother’s age shouldered her way through the curtain, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Yes?” Her face was friendly but meant business too.

  “Miz Henderson?”

  “Yes?”

  “The fellows”—I pointed—“holding down those benches over there told me I might buy supper here. Said you set a fine table, in fact.”

  She walked over and squinted out the window. “Nice of them, seeing how not a one of them would part with a quarter to eat here.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I didn’t.

  She looked me up and down. “Thirty-five cents tonight. I’m cooking pork roast. But it won’t be ready for”—she turned to look at the clock—“another hour or so. If you don’t spend all your money between now and then, you’ll eat like a king.” And she was gone before I could say boo.

  I sat down with my newspaper in one of the lumpy chairs in the lobby but couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I folded my legs. After fidgeting like a two-year-old in church, I folded the paper and walked outside.

  The benches in front of the drugstore were empty now, and that made it easier to walk back to the saloon and go in. I’d had enough haw-haws thrown my way for one day.

  It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Then I saw four men talking together at the bar, each with a boot on the rail, and some other men playing cards at two tables. A few looked my way and then went back to their game like they hadn’t seen anything interesting. I paid a dime for a beer, then looked around for the table with the most light.

  I had been squinting at the paper for only a minute when the barkeep came over with a kerosene lamp and set it in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  “Ruin your eyes” was how he said I was welcome.

  I scanned the front page. Theodore Roosevelt was back from hunting in Africa and was raising hell over what President Taft had done while he was gone—such as filing an antitrust suit against U.S. Steel, one of Roosevelt’s pets. “Shoulda stayed home, then,” I could hear my dad say. Yet one more person wrote about how great Mark Twain was and how he was still dead, two months running. And Arizona had got the go-ahead to think about becoming a state.

  I turned to sports. The Cardinals had lost to Pittsburgh the day before, but the Browns had won over Detroit, so that was a wash as far as I was concerned. I never could pick one St. Louis baseball team over the other. There was a short piece saying George Rickard was looking at two towns in Nevada for the Jeffries-Johnson fight—Goldfield and Reno. Paul would be interested to hear that.

  Paul. Henry. I wondered what they were thinking, stuck out there with prairie on one side and desert on the other and a car no good to them.

  Damn them. They’d be starving if it weren’t for me, and they were probably having a party because I was gone. The ant and two grasshoppers—that’s what we were. I ought to have let them run out of provisions, just to see what it was like. I drained my glass, and the barkeep caught my eye. I shook my head, stuck the paper under my arm, and saluted the man on my way out.

  When I came into the hotel lobby, the velvet curtain had been tied back and the smell of heaven came from the dining room behind it. I ducked under the swag and saw two married-looking couples and one table of three men already eating. The colored girl I’d seen before was scurrying back and forth with plates and pitchers, and I caught her eye for just a second. She cut her face away like a head-shy horse and nodded to a small table in the corner without looking at me again. I sat myself down.

  I guess Miz Henderson cooked two choices in the evening—take it or leave it—because the girl served me without a word of asking what I wanted.

  I was glad for still having the newspaper, as it gave me someplace to look. I had never eaten by myself in public. Miz Henderson was a fine cook, but her food would have gone down even easier with conversation.

  Damn them. I didn’t want it to matter.

  I already knew the cost of the meal, so when I finished, I left the coins on the table and left. I felt like a cipher that had blown through without anybody seeing me. I remembered Paul’s talk about a tree falling in the woods with no one around.

  I started for the jail, but it was still early, and I figured one more beer would be a sleeping tonic, good for me. Yes, sir, it would be.

  Off to the west, long pink and orange spikes poked the sky, and I wondered what waited for the three of us in that direction. I looked to the east, and the sky over Paul and Henry looked gray and doubtful. I let out a long breath.

  The saloon was much more popular now. The piano in the corner was playing all by itself, and I couldn’t help staring at that. But then a girl in a shiny green dress with a pretend hat, no more than a feather and a little veil, headed my way with a determined look in her eye, and I bolted for the bar fast as I could. I’d read about working girls in dime novels, sure, but I’d never had relations with any woman—during my waking hours, anyway—and wasn’t near ready to think about paying for the privilege.

  My old Missouri work boot fit on the rail just as well as the cowboy boots all down its length, and the barkeep gave me something to watch. I could feel my heartbeat when I reached into my shirt pocket for change. My hand even shook a little when I first picked up my glass, and I was glad Henry wasn’t there to give me the razz. Damn him.

  I managed to finish my beer and get out the door without looking at the girl again. Outside, I took a big swig of clean evening air and looked toward the east again. I stood there long enough I had to remind myself to move.

  The door to the quarters next to the jail opened. A beautiful woman with features sharp enough to cut glass greeted me with “What?” Her eyes were dark blue, and there was a fire in them that reminded me of somebody else I couldn’t place right away.

  I took Paul’s hat off. “Evenin’, ma’am. Sorry to bother you, but Sheriff Windom said—”

  The door opened wider, and the tall man appeared behind her, taking a hat off a nail and squaring it on his head.

  “I said he could sleep at the jail, Alma,” he said as he brushed past her. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Well, you’d better! Cook all day and you leave, you ungrateful—”

  The door closed behind him.

  We walked next door, and the sheriff put a key in the lock.

  “Sorry to upset the missus,” I told him.

  “Oh, you didn’t, unless you’re the one who slapped her when she was born.” I understood why he hadn’t invited me to dinner and why that came as no surprise to anyone but the village fool.

  He showed me to a cell and said he was going to lock the front door because all the guns inside were too much temptation for some elements. That’s what he called them: elements.

  “I’ll be back early, though, so get some sleep. I aim to ride that handcar out with you.”

  I thanked him, but he just waved it away on his way out. His key turn
ed in the lock, and then I heard his wife carrying on when the next door over opened.

  It was still early for bedtime, and I’d read more of the paper than I cared for, so there was little choice but to lay on the bunk and think. Those poor broken people and the sad little grave they left behind came to me. Thoughts of that turned into a vision of Catherine, back home, looking like she was all eyes and hope when she gave me her blanket. I wished I had it. It was stuffed into a rip in the seam of my pillow ticking, back at the auto.

  I wondered what she thought about her big brother being gone. Three weeks is a long time to a girl that little. I wondered once again where I’d end up after the summer and how long she’d go without seeing me then. I decided I should send her a postcard the next day; that’s what I should do.

  I wondered if they talked about me—about us—around the supper table. Wondered where we were, how we were. Three weeks with one short letter. My father was probably worried half to death, but not so as anyone could see. Mom too. A postcard to Catherine would help them too.

  I thought about Paul’s parents. Did they miss their boy and suppose the adventures he might be having? Was it any different to them from having him off in St. Louis?

  And what about Ellen McCombs? Had she possibly had a change of heart about Henry since he’d been gone so long?

  Or were the three of us trees in the forest? Once gone, did others close in where we’d been and leave no clearing?

  My throat tightened up and made me glad I’d had no more beer. Enough of this. Time to sleep.

  The next morning I was roused with “Rise and shine! Get up, you lazy sinner! We need the sheets for tablecloths. It’s almost time for dinner!”

  I sat up so fast I banged my head on the brick wall behind my bunk. Sheriff Windom was standing there with a big grin, holding a tin cup of steaming coffee and a saucer with two biscuits.