Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) Read online

  June 25, 1926

  Dear Iris,

  Be glad you’re not in dull, boring Atchison. My big excitement is watching the goldfish my little sister got for her birthday. She named it Wanda Juanita—because it sounds “watery.”

  The two older ones mostly act stupid, drooling over Motion Picture Magazine and dreaming up questions to ask me about you? ? ? ? ?

  But guess what? Last week my boss assigned me the railroad repair crew ice route—100 guys living in rail cars. We delivered 5,000 pounds to the cooler in their cook car and got to stay overnight. What a crew! They eat right and know how to make fun out of nothing—talking about girls, playing poker, swapping stories.

  News travels down the rails like telephone lines. It’s mostly bad—strike threats, cars stalled on the tracks, even a poor old guy struck by lightning.

  Besides the ice, I got another job loading dry cement sacks at the docks. I hate it. With me, it’s a life of lifting dead weight, whether it’s frozen hard or dry as dust. Guess I should have stuck with the piano. Ha!

  How’d they talk you into taking over the chicken house? Oh, I know—Mrs. Nesbitt kept pecking at you and you couldn’t say no! Please don’t tell me you volunteered. Here’s your chicken quiz:

  Will every egg be a chick if you don’t eat it first?

  Where are a chicken’s teeth?

  Which came first: the egg or the dinosaur?

  I can see you cruising around cows in Dr. Nesbitt’s car.

  And you’re right—loving to drive is one good thing you inherited from your dad. So finally you found something. Congratulations.

  Carl told me he talked to him last week. I really really hope you already know what I’m about to say—your dad told Carl that he and Celeste decided to get married in October and live in Kansas City. Please, please tell me your father already told you. Will they expect you to just pick up and move there in September?

  I’ll be delivering ice to the crews up by Wellsford real soon. Don’t be surprised if I knock on your front door. Maybe you can take me for a ride, if it’s okay with Dr. Nesbitt. He sounds real nice.

  Until then,

  I remain very truly yours,

  Leroy Patterson—ice and cement wrestler

  P.S. I haven’t talked about you to the crew,

  but I want to.

  So there.

  I sit on the bench, the letter shaking in both hands. “Well, no, Leroy,” I bark at the paper, “of course I did not know already. Why would that… suede salesman bother to tell me anything?”

  I stomp across the driveway and into the chicken house, avoiding Dot, who is stationed at the clothesline. The sharp manure smell shoots up my nose and tears roll down my cheeks. The chickens get blurry. So does my mind. I wipe my face, try to hold my breath, and fumble six eggs into my basket. I shoo a crazy hen pecking her own eggs. “Stop that!” I yell. I feel like ringing her scrawny neck! The coop gets blurry again. My father. He does this to me every time. Every single time.

  I exit the chicken house.

  Dot watches me stuff the letter in my apron pocket.

  She glances at Mrs. Nesbitt’s bedroom window, glowers at me, and half barks, half whispers, “You just work for Dr. Nesbitt. You ain’t his daughter. Why’d he teach you to drive? He feels sorry for you.” Dot turns her chubby rear to me, stretches on tiptoe to pin the corner of a bath towel to the line. “Why didn’t your own daddy teach you? Oh…” she turns, puts a finger to her chin, and says in a singsong voice, “that’s right… he sent you away, didn’t he? Well, my daddy likes me around all the time. He even had me quit school after Mama passed. Your daddy don’t want you, he acts like you’re an orphan.”

  My fingers tighten around the handle of the egg basket. My mouth tastes of chicken grit. Dot’s eyes flicker over me. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she had just read Leroy’s letter.

  She jabs a clothespin at me, lowers her voice. “Plus, where have you got to go in that car, anyhow? You ain’t got friends or family. Oh, I know, it’s so’s you can haul Mrs. Snob”—Dot nods toward the window—“to the asylum for nasty old crippled witches who are gonna be dead pretty soon their own selves. Miz Nesbitt already talks to the dead. I’ve seen her pacin’ the porch, chattering to her kilt boy like he was answering back.” Dot looks at me, mean and confidential. “My daddy says they’s queer.” She scratches her belly. “He’d never leave me off with them like happened to you!”

  Dot puts her hands around her throat and bugs her eyes. “And I heard your mama’s been dead so long”—she lolls her head like someone hanging from a noose—“if you talked to her, she’d never answer. She’s just a bag of double moldy bones.”

  I open my mouth then snap it shut.

  “You’re nothin’ to no one, Iris Baldwin.”

  I take a deep breath, bite my lip.

  Dot turns back to her laundry. I watch the crimson target of her fuzzy hair bob against the row of sheets and towels. My fingers search the basket, curl around an egg.

  In a flash it explodes off the back of Dot’s head.

  She jerks forward. Plants her feet. Growls. Squeezes her fists. It’s deathly quiet except for the drum of my heart. I brace against the fence. She’s going to kill me. But, odd as can be, she doesn’t turn around. She just swipes her hands on her sack dress and finishes hanging the towel.

  A chicken struts herky-jerky between us. It cocks its head and ruffles its tail at the bits of shell and egg innards dangling from Dot’s red frizz like tinsel in the sun.

  My chest heaves. I turn and burst into the house. The shotgun propped by the door slides down and clatters on the floor. Mrs. Nesbitt will be out of her bedroom any minute. I watch Dot from the window. She drops her apron full of clothespins in the dirt, spits, and ambles off toward home, leaving a pile of wet sheets in the basket.

  I scurry past Mrs. Nesbitt’s bedroom door and hide out in my room. I grab Rosie and hug her until I stop shaking. On the dresser is the letter I started to my father and Celeste yesterday. I had tried to write them something newsy that would help Celeste get to know me a little bit, like Mrs. Nesbitt hinted maybe I should do. Well, that’ll be a trick, because until today I had never met the Iris who threw that egg.

  July 2, 1926

  Dear Father and Celeste,

  I told the Nesbitts of your engagement.

  They send congratulations.

  How is the store progressing? Someday I will see the results of all your hard window-dressing work. I am now in charge of the chicken house—a spot that definitely needed attention. It’s not exactly a high-style shoe store, but the birds are finally getting used to me and their day-to-day routine.

  In answer to your question, Dr. Nesbitt drives a Ford Model T Tudor Sedan. It’s black. He taught me to drive, which I took right to. I think I inherited a love of driving from you. Who’d have thought we had that in common? How do you like your Cadillac?

  Do you talk with Carl? I miss him and the store.…

  The letter makes me sick. In every sentence I am pushing the pen uphill. I rip it up. Phony. Phony. It sounds like Celeste helped me write it. Me trying to add her into our “family” has made what there was of it disappear.

  I scrape my pen across a fresh sheet of paper. It’s not a push this time. That egg-throw feeling still pulses through my arm.

  July 2, 1926

  Dear Father,

  I am aware of your engagement news.

  Dr. Nesbitt drives a Model T.

  I didn’t recieve a letter from you regarding your wedding date in Octorber and your decision to stay in Kansas City. Did you mean to write or call me but just forgot?

  Iris

  I misspell the words on purpose. It’ll drive him crazy. My handwriting looks wobbly, but I fold the letter into an envelope and walk it straight down the driveway to the mailbox. I leave pennies for postage. I hope it hits him as hard as a dozen eggs, but I know it won’t. It’s like throwing rocks at God.

  I sit on the side of th
e ditch, hidden by corn and cattails. I hold my stomach, which feels like a coiled snake squeezing my organs to death. Grasshoppers leap on me, ticking and buzzing. The mailbox flag rattles when a truck rumbles by. When I was little I believed that grasshoppers spit real tobacco juice. How dumb was that? As dumb as believing I ever had a real home in Atchison to go back to. As stupid as wasting an egg on Dot. When I tell the Nesbitts what I did they’ll fire me. What else can they do? The Deets were here first, they live here. Mrs. Nesbitt still feels so guilty about Pansy leaving, she’s got to take Dot’s side.

  I hear Marie trot down the driveway. She sniffs me out, then sits—not a comfortable, resting type of sit, but alert and protective. Her tail stub thumps the dirt.

  I hug her. “I guess you know as well as anybody how this feels,” I say, “being a hobo just sitting in a ditch.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “I beaned Dot,” I say too quickly and too loudly the minute we sit down to supper.

  Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt look at me like I’ve just lit a cigar.

  I stare at my lap, wave a fly off my sweet potatoes. “W-w-with an egg.” All eyes, even Marie’s, are pairs of question marks. “I’ve never hit anybody before… ever. I just…” I grip my napkin.

  Mrs. Nesbitt gives me a long look I can’t read the meaning of. Dr. Nesbitt pushes away from the table, walks to the screen door, and stares off into the cornfields. He rises slightly on his toes, makes a fist. He looks mad. Marie trots over beside Mrs. Nesbitt, who covers her mouth with her napkin.

  “Back here? Did it happen in the yard?” Dr. Nesbitt asks abruptly, stepping onto the back porch.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He motions for me to come out. “Where was Dot?”

  I point to the clothesline pole. “I brought in the laundry,” I say feebly. “She left without reporting her count.”

  “And where were you?” he asks. I point again. He shields his eyes from the setting sun and paces the distance between the chicken fence and the clothesline. Then he marches past me back into the house.

  We sit at the table. Mrs. Nesbitt waves her fan against the drippy heat. We’ve still not eaten a bite. Marie acts as confused as I am. She pokes at her dish of scraps and looks up, as if asking, Is it okay to eat now?

  Dr. Nesbitt flicks his mother a look, then stabs a pickled okra.

  I put down my fork.

  Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt eat quietly. Nobody comments on the sweet potatoes that I’ve made for the first time. No one asks about dessert. No one asks why I did it.

  “Dot was right, Avery,” Mrs. Nesbitt says after a long, awful silence.

  My face burns. My hands tingle. I stand, ready to flee the room. “Ma’am?” My voice shakes. “How could you say that?

  “I am crippled and I do, or at least I did, talk to Morris and pace the porch. When Morris addresses me,” she says matter-of-factly, “it’s impolite, even for a snob, not to answer. I just so happened to have finished conversing with ‘the dead’ this morning in time to hear every word of Dot’s assessment of us through my bedroom window.”

  I catch my breath. Dr. Nesbitt mops his forehead with his handkerchief. He looks up at me, his face dead serious. “Did Miss Deets insult you in every way a fellow human being possibly could?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she attack things precious to you?”

  Mrs. Nesbitt chimes in. “Of course she did, Avery.”

  “So essentially, Iris, she hit you first.”

  I look down at the perfect part in Dr. Nesbitt’s hair.

  “It seems Miss Deets felt all too qualified to assess you,” he says. “What do you think of her?”

  I shuffle my feet. “She’s half rat.”

  Dr. Nesbitt nods and stands to face me. “An egg’s trajectory is wobbly at best. Hitting your target at twenty-five paces requires skill.” He holds me in his strong gaze, tips his water glass. “Well done.”

  Trouble.

  I shoot straight up in bed, my head filled with Dot and the egg and how she acted so strange, as though she was used to getting hit.

  I grab my pillow, thinking…

  Did Dot lure me right into a trap, make me do something to get fired? Or did she tell Cecil about it, get him all stirred up, put me on his bad side—as if there were a good one. Someday, somehow, he’ll pay me back. Maybe that’s why she stopped, didn’t wipe her hair… so she could say, “See what Iris did? She started it.”

  I shiver, imagining how shifty they all are, how Cecil treated his own wife. I know they would turn on anybody—the Nesbitts, me, even each other.

  An egg and a good aim won’t be enough for Cecil Deets.

  July 12, 1926

  Dear Iris,

  Would you believe our store is less than a month away from the grand opening on August 10th? Could you possibly come for it? I imagine you’ve made yourself indispensable to the Nesbitts. Could they spare you a few days?

  How is the elderly woman in your care? I so admire you for going about your day-to-day without the modern conveniences. Kansas City has such a climate of refinement and urban sophistication. Wouldn’t you leap at the opportunity to live here?

  Our wedding plans, besides deciding on the date, have taken a backseat to getting Baldwin’s Bootery (yes, we did decide) running. Our marriage will be October 10th—your 16th birthday! What a grand way to celebrate both occasions.

  Let us know if you need anything at all, dear. Sounds like you made a good choice with Wellsford, but do please give Kansas City a fighting chance.

  Love,

  Celeste

  P. S. Our store windows have garnered lots of attention. You know your father—he needs to be first, fastest, and farthest in whatever he does. Why, sometimes even I have trouble keeping up!

  Wellsford. A choice? She thinks I picked Wellsford? What a “refined” way my father has of twisting the truth.

  Well, no, Celeste, I do not want to come to the grand opening. Nor do I want to live with you two in the Paris of the Plains. And, most unfortunately, I accidentally left my suede footwear on the train, which makes a sophisticated leap into Kansas City absolutely impossible!

  CHAPTER 12

  “Don’t you dare laugh, Marie.”

  She tracks my rolling pin back and forth and sniffs the doughy bits I drop for her. “This isn’t squirrel stew. I’m practicing. It’s going to be a delicate pie crust. I’d like to see you try and make one.”

  I’m working to keep my mind off Dot, who will be here any minute to start the laundry. The Nesbitts decided to take “the high road” and not fire her, but I think it’s because nobody wanted to do it.

  I hear the Rawleigh man’s wagon in the driveway. Marie trots to the kitchen door, but her friendly yap-yap turns to a growl.

  “Shhh… Mrs. Nesbitt’s asleep. Don’t scare him off. He’s nice. I’ve got a list.…”

  But Marie is about to tear through the screen.

  It’s Cecil, alone, in his wagon.

  The egg. My mouth turns to cotton.

  Cecil’s horse pees on our yard. Cecil squints at the empty shed, then spots me through the kitchen door. “The Doc here?” he yells, his voice high and edgy.

  Why’s he asking? He can see the Doc’s car is gone. I open the door enough for Marie to slip out. “No.”

  He cranes his neck toward me, scowls. “Didn’t hear ya.”

  I step partway onto the porch. “I said, no.” I silently order Marie to chew Cecil to stew meat if he makes the tiniest move off his seat.

  He smirks at her clown-dog nose smudged with flour. He teases one foot off the wagon, which sends her into spasms of snarling. But he stays put on the bench. His face looks ragged. He winces, shifts his weight like the plank seat has sprouted splinters, and adjusts the front of his overalls. Get out of here.

  Cecil takes an eternity to dig a tobacco pouch from inside the bib of his overalls and sticks a wad in his cheek. He picks leaf flecks off his bottom lip. I wonder what stories about me lurk under that dirty
straw hat. “Dot’s not comin’ today,” he remarks, scanning the yard like he owns the place. “She’s feeling… poorly.”

  I don’t ask what’s the matter with Dot. “Dr. Nesbitt’s at his office. You can take her there.”

  He shrugs, then slaps the reins on his palm, his eyes shifting between the clothesline, the chicken house, and me. Leave!

  He glances at Mrs. Nesbitt’s shaded window and leans toward me, a glint in his eye. He whispers, “I hear you’re a feisty one.…”

  I wish I had the rolling pin in my fist. I wish the sheriff was in the kitchen with his rifle loaded. But before Cecil can utter another word, an angel, in the form of the Rawleigh man in his buggy, stops at the bottom of our driveway.

  Cecil grimaces, throws his hands up, and without another word forces his horse to make a tight turn around. His wagon stops halfway down the driveway. The Rawleigh man waits while Cecil folds a horse blanket and gingerly tucks it under himself on the seat. The medicine salesman tips his hat—“Mr. Deets”—but he shakes his head in a sorry kind of way after Cecil passes onto the road toward town.

  The Rawleigh gentleman stands down from his buggy and scratches Marie’s ears. I read our list. “We need Camphor Balm and Bee Secret.” He sorts through his sample cases. “What’s that Anti-Pain Oil for?” I ask, spotting a row of dark bottles.

  “The Internal or the External?” the Rawleigh man asks.

  “External.”

  “It’s for rheumatism.”

  “I’ll take a bottle for Mrs. Nesbitt’s hands.” I run inside and get cash from my pocketbook. It’ll be a present.

  He explains his assortment of penetrating rubs made with oils from Sicily, perfumes from Mexico, Japanese camphor, and eucalyptus. “W. T. Rawleigh searches everywhere for his scientific ingredients. A far cry from the usual folk remedies.” He rolls his eyes. “No doubt Mrs. Nesbitt has tried dozens of those, too.”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “In my business I’ve heard every remedy known to man. Course, Doc Nesbitt probably has too.…” He looks up. “Let’s see, for rheumatism… put a teaspoonful of salt in your shoe. Wear a bull snake tied around your waist or—my favorite—if afflicted with rheumatism, sleep with a dog wrapped around your feet, and the rheumatism will drain into the dog.” He tips his head apologetically at Marie. “I guess that means you, dear.”