Death Train to Boston (3 page)

Eons passed, or so it seemed, before I regained full consciousness. Much of this time I couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep; in either state I was miserable. I was
continually either shivering with cold or drenched with sweat. I had terrible, violent dreams, full of screeching, tearing noises, screams and fire and blood.

In my better moments I saw faces I had never seen before, and heard voices I'd never heard before. I was afraid, and angry with myself for being afraid, but too weak and sick even to stay angry. I called for Michael, called and called, but he did not come. I called for Father too, and a man did come—but he was not my father.

At last I gave up wanting and calling. I stopped fighting the strangers. Fortunately, or so I must suppose, they did not stop taking care of me. And so, I did not die.

A time came, finally, when I opened my eyes and saw clearly the woman who sat by my bed. She was a stranger, yet not a stranger; I knew somehow that she had sat in that chair many a time in the past days . . . not only that, she had done a great deal more than sit with me. By now the poor dear must have known my body as well as I knew it myself. At least on the outside of my skin.

She was mending or sewing, with her head slightly bent, and had not yet noticed that I was awake. I lay perfectly still while committing her features to memory, for I had a sense that she was kind and that I might not have survived without her. She was certainly several years older than I, perhaps even approaching forty; her skin had a weathered look, full of tiny criss-crossing lines. Her hair, of an indeterminate color, neither brown nor blond nor yet quite gray, was skinned back into a knot or a bun or a braid, I couldn't tell face-on. She had large hands with big-knuckled fingers, possibly arthritic, but they were nimble enough as she plied her needle, working some kind of garment by hand. I could not see her nether limbs, of course, but she appeared to be a large woman. Not fat, just big. Her manner of
dress was simple and countrified: a plain gray dress covered by a pinafore apron, white with narrow pink stripes running vertically.

As her fingers flew, she hummed tunelessly under her breath. Did I detect a slight tremor in her hands? Was she nervous? Or just worn out with looking after me? My heart went out to her.

"Hello," I said, or rather tried to say. I had to clear my throat and try again: "Hello."

Her head jerked up suddenly, and she jumped as if I'd come up behind her in the dead of night and whispered
Boo!
She pricked her finger with her needle—I saw a drop of blood fall, not on her sewing but on the pinafore.

"Saints be praised!" she said. "You're awake, and talkin' sense!"

I smiled, weakly no doubt, but sincerely. "Thank you for taking care of me. I know I've been very ill, but"—I frowned—"I'm afraid that's about all I know."

"Don't you fret." She put aside her sewing, sucked on her finger for a minute, frowned at it, then rose and came to the bedside. "No need for thanks, neither. Takin' care of sick folks is our bounden duty." The woman laid the palm of her hand against my forehead and nodded in satisfaction. "Fever's gone." Her fingers explored my scalp, lighting upon an exceedingly tender spot.

I winced, and raised my own hand to touch what I deduced from its sensitivity must be a healing wound, on top of my head and to the right, in line with the outer edge of my right eyebrow. Where there should have been hair, my fingers felt instead a bunch of prickles and coarse puckers. "It feels so odd," I said.

"That's where the doctor shaved your head to put in the stitches."

"He
shaved my head?
Oh dear!"

"Not your whole head, just where the cut and the
blood was, where all the hair was matted up. He had to, so's we could keep it clean, but the wound got ugly anyways. Festered some. You had a high fever." She bent over me while pushing down gently on my chin with her hand, so as to see the top of my head better. I cooperated, listening with relief to her clucks and um-hms.

"The festering, I suppose that was what made me so sick," I mused. "You've taken good care of me, and I do appreciate it. You probably saved my life. Thank you—" I stopped abruptly, once more caught up short by ignorance. "I don't even know your name."

"It's Verla. Verla Pratt. I'll say you're welcome just because it's mannerly, but it wasn't me saved your life. 'Twas Father who did that. You'da died if he hadn'ta brought you home, he said so himself."

"Thank you, Verla. This is your house, then? You live here with your father?" The name Pratt was dimly familiar to me, but I couldn't for the moment call up its association.

"You might put it that way, yes. You thirsty? Like a drink of water, Carrie?"

Yes, I was thirsty. Verla helped me to sit up, helped me to hold the glass because when I tried, my hand shook so badly I would have spilled water all over the bed and all over the soft, worn flannel nightgown I was wearing. It was a few sizes too big for me. I wondered what had happened to my own clothes.

Then, belatedly, I took note of what she'd called me: Carrie, a shortened form of the name Caroline. My mother had particularly hated to hear anyone shorten my name to Carrie, though I'd rather liked it myself. Certainly I'd preferred it to Caroline.

As I slowly sipped, getting the hang of it and taking the glass on my own, I thought how odd it was to be called either Carrie or Caroline. Mother was dead, I
knew that. Surely I had gone by my middle name, Fremont, for years now?

A rudiment of memory rushed forcefully back, and I blurted, "Where is Michael?"

Verla gave me a stern look, took the glass from my hand, and set it on the washstand beside the bed. She didn't answer me right away, but went to a dresser against the opposite wall and took up the pitcher from which she'd poured the water. At the foot of the bed she paused. "You were askin' for him before. We don't know who he is. Father didn't bring anybody else home but you. Now you're awake, in your right mind and all, you'd best fergit all about that Michael and not speak his name no more. It makes Father angry. You remember that."

"But—"

Verla ignored my protest as if I hadn't spoken. "I'll go for Father right now. He wanted to know the minute you came to your senses. And while I'm gone, I'll fix you something to eat. You lay back now, wait for Father."

I sank back on the pillows, noting an emptiness in my stomach that I very much feared had nothing to do with hunger.

But Verla did not leave the room immediately. Instead she thought better of it, put the pitcher down again, picked up something else from the dresser, and came back to the bed.

"Here," she said, pushing a hand mirror and a wide-toothed comb at me, "with Father coming, you'd best tidy yerself up as best you can. If you think you can manage."

My eyebrows went up; my new-found friend, the only one I had in this place—so far as I knew, which was not far at all—seemed suddenly rather irritated with me. "I can manage," I said; then, as I felt my weakness assert itself, I amended, "that is, I'll try."

"Best a body can do sometimes is try," Verla muttered, turning back to the door. This time she left, taking up the pitcher on her way out.

I struggled up higher against the bed pillows, and raised the mirror before my face. "Oh
n
o
!" I said in a hoarse whisper, appalled.

I had always been on the thin side, but the face in the mirror was thin beyond belief. Not much more than a skull with green eyes.

How long had I been here? What had happened to me? Why couldn't I remember?

FROM MICHAEL KOSSOFF

HOTEL MORONI

SALT LAKE CITY UTAH

TO MRS EDNA STEPHENSON MR ALOYSIUS STEPHENSON

J&K AGENCY DIVISADERO STREET

SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA

RETURNING TO SAN FRANCISCO STOP WHEREABOUTS OF

FREMONT JONES UNKNOWN STOP PLEASE LOCATE IN PALO

ALTO MISS MEILING LI STOP SAY HER ASSISTANCE I

S NEEDED STOP ASCERTAIN IF SHE CAN BE AVAILABLE STOP

ARRIVE TUESDAY STOP KINDEST REGARDS STOP

MICHAEL

I conquered my distaste for my appearance by the simple expedient of putting the mirror aside. I did not need a mirror to comb my hair. Odd Verla hadn't braided it, I thought, as it should have been much easier to take care of in a braid.

But as soon as I began to comb it, I understood why: tangles. Masses of them. Not to mention that my hair— indeed my whole self—was badly in need of a washing. I combed straight back as best I could, by fits and starts,
wishing all the while for a hair ribbon. Though I had always detested fuss and frills, even as a child, it did occur to me that a well-placed bow might hide that awful gap on the side of my head.

More composed on account of knowing what to expect, I took up the mirror again and ventured another look. It was bad, no two ways about it, but hair grows back. And weight can be gained if one eats enough and doesn't go around running one's food all off, which was what my mother always used to say I did when I remained a young, skinny, flat-chested thing long after all my friends had begun to have interesting little buds beneath their bodices. Young girls are such lemmings, and I hadn't been much different then, I'd wanted breasts too.

Eventually I'd grown them, after a fashion, but by then my mother was dead. . . .

I turned my head to gaze out the window at nothing, for there was nothing out there but reddish brown hills with a few trees. Not thickly forested, not farm land either, not much of interest in the visible landscape. But I wasn't looking at the scenery anyhow, for I had begun to remember . . . many things. Things that included the name of this place with the reddish soil: Utah.

I remembered being on a train. Eating luncheon with Michael Archer Kossoff in the dining car. I was wearing my new aubergine dress and had looked quite wonderful in it, if I did say so myself; purple and green being my best colors, though Michael also likes me in blue. For lunch I'd had creamed tiny shrimp with peas in a puff pastry shell, and a salad of orange segments tossed with butter lettuce in a sweet dressing, plus a light, fruity white wine to drink, and coffee after, no dessert for me. Michael had had lemon meringue pie.

I remembered telling" him, over the food, about my distant relation John C. Fremont's maps of this area, which he had made long ago, before the Civil War.

About the incredible hardships he and his men had gone through on their surveying expedition, how they'd followed riverbeds that dried up and vanished underground, how their Indian guides had deserted them one by one, how the food had run out. I'd told Michael how everyone, Cousin Fremont included, had believed there was only one great mountain range between the Mississippi and the Sierra Nevada—but this had not proved to be the truth. No, the land of the high Western plateau was all folded, range upon range of mountains pushed up with valleys and even a vast desert in between. So over and over again, Fremont and his starving men had climbed to the top expecting to see the blue waters of the Pacific in the distance, only to have their hopes dashed. All that lay ahead was more desert and another range of mountains. No wonder many of Cousin Fremont's party had given up hope and gone insane.

I had told Michael all that, bit by bit, spinning out the grim tale deliciously slowly, while he had done his best to get me thinking, if not talking, on another track entirely. I knew what he wanted, of course, I knew that look in his eye. . . .

How very odd! I remembered putting my napkin beside my plate, properly draped not folded, and then walking up the aisle between the tables with Michael's gaze burning into my back. He'd wanted me to turn around, to give him the matching look of desire that would bring him into my compartment, and into my arms. Oh, and I would, but not . . . then, not . . . just yet . . . and as I passed through the door a uniformed porter held open for me, I'd been wondering how long I could hold out against Michael's seductiveness. . . . And that was all.

I frowned. There was more, just a bit more, I could almost,
almost
grasp it. . . .

But no, not quite. The pictures in my head wouldn't
come together. Only a noise, a terrible, ear-splitting sound, an . . . explosion!

Yes, that was it, an explosion!

I touched my head. I lifted the covers and looked at my legs, heavily bandaged and immobile. I tried to move them, which proved not to be a good idea. Far too painful.

The enormity of what had happened overwhelmed me. I let the covers fall and closed my eyes, but still two tears slipped out from beneath my eyelids.

So somebody blew up the train,
I thought. The good people here saved me. But I couldn't have been the only survivor, surely not? Where were all the rest? Where was Michael? WHERE
IS
MICHAEL??

I heard the latch pop on the door to my room, and I opened my eyes. A very large, rather handsome man came in first, then Verla behind him, and four more women behind her. The women fanned out behind the man in a semicircle, like the chorus in a Greek drama. Verla took one step forward and said her line: "Carrie, here is Father."

I looked at the large man and said the one thing that was foremost in my mind, even though it was the one thing I'd been told not to say.

"Where is Michael?"