Ruby (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Searching for your father. Searching for your father
. The train wheels clacked out the rhythm, driving the words ever deeper into Ruby’s mind. No matter how hard she concentrated on the needlepoint piece in her lap, the clacking reverberated clear from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, setting the gossamer veil that draped from the brim of her hat to quivering. Here they were, only on their second day heading westward, and she was already counting the hours—even the minutes—until their arrival.

“Tell me about Papá.” Opal flopped back down in the seat across from her sister. So far, the train was not full enough that they were confined to only two seats.

Ruby hid a smile behind her hand as she dabbed at her dripping nose with a handkerchief. The draft from the frequently opened door seemed to be bringing on a cold, the last thing she needed to distract her. Their father had never been called Papá, with the accent on the second syllable, as far as she knew. He was Father, Far, or, as their mother had called him, “Per, dear,” as if the two words were inexorably linked together. But for some reason Opal had taken to calling the father she had never known Papá, in the French manner.

“What to tell you this time?”
“Tell me about Papá”
had become Opal’s incessant request just as the train clacked out its own beat. “I remember how fine he and Mor looked when they dressed up to attend a soiree or a concert. Mother loved music, and while Father only tolerated the ‘highfalutin’ classical music, he went along for her sake.”

“What kind of music did Papá like?”

“Oh, fiddle music and dance music of all kinds. Far loved to dance. Give him a good polka or reel or pols any day. He liked to be moving not just sitting.” And he loved to dance with all the beautiful women, Ruby had learned when she’d asked her mother why she was crying one day. But this was not the stuff to be told to a starry-eyed young daughter who needed a father that could hold his own to the likes of Mr. Brandon. She had once heard Opal wistfully wish for a father like the head of the home they had just left. Ruby doubted Christopher Brandon would have abandoned his two young daughters to the care of his aging mother-in-law as Per had, whether he had just lost his beloved wife or no. Sometimes when she allowed herself to think of how and why he’d left, she used words like deserted or abandoned, and those words alternately stabbed her heart or ignited her fury. Some things were better not thought about. If only he had written more.

“So what did Mor and Far wear when they went out?”

“Mor always wore shades of blue because Far said blue made her eyes sparkle like the fjords of Norway on a summer’s day. She could have passed for royalty anytime, she held herself so beautifully. I believe the word grace was created to describe our mor. Even when she was growing big with you, she moved like water flowing over stones in a creek bed. She tried to teach me to move and bend as she did, but grace like hers is either born into one or not. And it definitely skipped over me.”

“I think you move beautifully.” Opal cocked her head to study her sister. “Only you are quick like the birds that hop around searching for seeds.”

“Why, thank you.” Even as she said the English words, Ruby could hear her mother saying
mange takk
and
tusen takk,
speaking still the language learned at her mother’s knee. Though Ruby’s mother had been born in America shortly after her family arrived and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where so many others from Norway had already taken up residence, she had passed on the language to her daughter, unlike many of the other immigrants.

Strange how so many memories had surfaced since she’d boarded the train. Perhaps they came because she sat still long enough for them to catch up with her. That thought provoked another memory.

“I remember one birthday, it must have been my tenth. Mor decided I must have a party. She loved to give parties, you know, and this one was no exception. I always wanted a pony—”

“Like me.”

“Ja, just like you, and—”

“Do you think I will have a pony when we get to Dakota? I want to ride astride like Rupert down the street from the Brandons. He is learning to jump.”

The envy in her voice told Ruby that Opal had dreamed of a horse far more than she’d admitted.

“But he never let any of the rest of us ride his pony. Said we might ruin its mouth. How can you ruin a horse’s mouth?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“I sure would like to have a pony”—Opal’s eyes, more sapphire than blue gray like her sister’s, lit up like crystal reflecting candle flame—“or a real horse.” The words were said with the awe of one talking about a dream beyond expectation. As if a pony had possibilities but a horse would be a miracle.

Ruby dabbed her nose again. Along with the runny nose, her head was beginning to feel like someone had stuffed it with wool batting.

“Please, Opal, don’t go getting your hopes up.”

“But we could buy a horse with our inheritance.”

“We will only have an inheritance if our father dies.Wouldn’t we do better to pray for him to get well from whatever is making him ill?”

Opal nodded. “I s’pose. Do you think maybe he was wounded by a gunshot when he was saving the bank from the robbers or protecting the town from the Indians?” She stared at her sister, willing her to join in the fanciful.

“Opal Torvald, where do you hear such things?”

“Ah . . .” Opal looked out the window, suddenly assuming a look of such innocence that she could make an angel look like a street urchin.

“Opal?”

The young girl’s shoulders rose and settled on a sigh. Her voice dropped so that the wheel song overrode it.

“What did you say?”

“I said in the men’s car where I hid behind a seat.”

The words came fast and nearly inaudible, but Ruby needed only to decipher about every other word to realize what her sister had been up to. She attempted to assume the calm that Mrs. Brandon had tried to instill in her. Taking two deep breaths, she sat straighter, needing the rigidity of being tied to a steel post to keep her from taking Opal by the shoulders and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Ruby deliberately loosened her clenched fingers, modulated her voice, and put the aforementioned steel into her words.

“And when did you trespass into the men’s car?”

“When you were sleeping.” Opal studied the crease she was forming in the skirt of her dress by repeated pinching between thumb and forefinger.

“During the night?”
Calm, keep your voice calm. Do not let her see that you are upset. You must keep the upper hand here or you will fail in your duties of older sister
. Ruby watched as Opal shook her head. “I trusted you to sit right there in your seat and read your book.”

“I know, but I got tired of reading and you weren’t awake to tell me stories, and that boy who is sitting two seats behind you asked me if I wanted to come and so I did and . . .” Opal peeked out from under impossibly long eyelashes. “I’m sorry, Ruby, I won’t do it again.”

“I wonder how many times I have heard those words?” Ruby kept her tone conversational. It was true that Opal seldom had to be scolded for the same infraction twice.

“And you didn’t say I couldn’t go to the necessary and the place we were hiding was just on the other side of the door and I thought you wouldn’t mean I couldn’t go anywhere. I mean—”

Ruby held up a hand, then blew her nose, dabbing no longer sufficient to do the mop-up job. “Enough. Right now I am having a hard time just thinking. There’s no way I can unravel one of your storied excuses.”

“Oh, do you not feel well?”

Ruby caught herself in a shiver. How much more thankful she was becoming that Mrs. Fleish had included two quilts in the box that now rested under her feet. Something to remember them by, indeed. A second shiver made her reach down and pluck one of the quilts free to wrap around herself.

“Are you sick?” Opal’s eyes darkened.

Was it fear that Ruby saw there?

She blew her nose again, wishing she had a steaming kettle to bend over and inhale the heat and vapor. Steam always made a cold feel less severe. She mentally looked around the car again, wishing for a seat out of the draft, but the other four seats facing were all full, and she didn’t want to cram their belongings into two seats until they were forced to. They would be changing trains in Chicago in the morning.

“Would you please bring me a cup of water?” She held out one of the cups Mrs. Klaus had packed for them. How a good cup of hot broth or lemonade would relieve her head right now. She thought to the packet of headache powder in the basket. She would mix that in the water, and perhaps that would be all she needed. She huddled into the quilt. What an unfortunate time to feel so ineffectual.

Opal held out the full cup. “Here, I didn’t spill any.”

“Good.” Ruby tapped some of the powder into the cup and stirred, then drank it down, making a face at the bitterness.

“Icky, huh? I don’t like medicine either.” Opal looked out the window. “It sure is taking us a long time to get to Dakota Territory.”

Ruby would have laughed at both the comment and the doleful look on Opal’s face if she had felt up to it. “We are moving very fast. It wasn’t that long ago that the only way west was by horse-drawn wagons. And it took months then, not days. Take out your history book and read the next chapter so we can talk about it. Write down the words you don’t understand. Perhaps if I sleep for a time, I will wake up feeling better.” She stared sternly at her sister. “And don’t you get out of that seat except to use the necessary, and then come straight back. You hear me?”

Opal nodded, her arms locked across her chest and lower lip thrust out enough to attract the coal dust that floated so freely through the air.

“Opal?”

“I heard you.”

“And you will mind?”

A nod.

“Good. I am trusting you.” Ruby stood and wrapped the blanket all around her, then using her arm as a pillow, folded herself into the two seats and closed her eyes. She heard the door open and felt the cool draught on her face, but opening her eyes took more effort than she could summon.

“How is your sister?” The conductor’s voice echoed through her fog.

“Not so good.”

“You’d best be taking good care of her, eh?”

“I know.”

“You need to heat something up, you can do so on the stove.”

“I will tell her.”

“And the coffeepot is always on.”

And like mud, totally undrinkable
. Ruby fell asleep on that thought.

The conductor’s voice announcing another stop woke her. She had no idea how much later. Seeing her reflection in the window told her that night had fallen. Several people were lined up with their baggage, ready to disembark.

She glanced at the other seat to see it empty, the quilt rumpled as though Opal had been there and left in a hurry.

Surely she is in the necessary
. The thought made Ruby realize she needed to go there also, so she sat up carefully, grateful that the pounding in her head had ceased.

Opal was not in the necessary.

Ruby stared into the wavy mirror. She looked bad enough to scare small children. Huge purple swaths circled under her eyes, her hair hung in disarray with tendrils hanging and pointing every which way, and her cheeks held sufficient pallor to indicate incipient death throes. She rinsed her mouth out with water, dampened her fingers to tuck and smooth the errant strands of hair, and patted her cheeks to force back some semblance of color into her face, other than that of her red nose.

Now to locate her missing sister.

She thrust open the door and exited, missing a fatal crash with a cigar-smoking gentleman by a mere hairsbreadth.

“Excuse me, miss.” He stepped back and pressed himself against the train wall to allow her passage.

“I . . . I’m sorry. Pardon me.” She knew her face now bore sufficient color. The heat of it fairly radiated in front of her.

She swayed her way back to her seat to find Opal huddled under the opposite quilt.

“Are you all right, Opal, dear?”

A nod moved the part of the quilt nearest the armrest at the wall. At least she thought it to be a nod. “Has something happened I should know about?”

“Indeed, it has,” said a voice just to the right and behind her.

Ruby turned to find a red-faced man whose midsection stuck out far beyond the foot-long cigar clamped between fleshy lips. The man’s eyebrows formed a straight line above a bulbous nose, slightly flattened at the end, that reminded her more of a pig’s snout than a human feature.

Ruby felt the first real laugh since they had left the Brandons’ begin in her midsection and work its way upward. She covered it with the closest thing to a ladylike cough that she could muster.

“I see.” She covered her lower face with her handkerchief.

“No, you don’t see at all, for I have not begun to apprise you of the actions of that . . . that . . .” A shaking finger pointed at the quilt-covered child. Only her shoes peeked out from under the blanket. “That hoyden,” he snarled from between teeth clamped on the stupendous cigar. His checkered vest wore the dusting of ashes from more than one of the smelly smokes.

Ruby rose to her full five feet five inches, squared her shoulders under the shawl she’d donned to keep off the chill, and faced her attacker. She glared at the bowler hat still perched on his head, fanned the smoke that he’d expelled in her face and now billowed around her head, and leaned slightly forward.

“I don’t know who you are, mister, and the thought of pursuing any sort of acquaintance makes me want to call for the conductor, but let me tell you this, my sister is not a hoyden, and whatever she has done to affront you cannot begin to compare to the effect you are having on me. Now, you will speak to me in a gentlemanly way and start with minding the manners that I am sure your mother, God rest her soul, tried to instill in you. Your hat, sir—and I use the term lightly.”

“Ah, I . . .” He jerked the hat off his head and held it with one hand.