Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

“Sharon Center . . . but there’s nothing there. It’s just a little community I guess you’d call it. It’s about eight or ten miles from town.”

“Town being Iowa City.”

“Right.”

“How big’s that?”

“Not big. There’s a university there. That’s nearly as big as the whole town.”

“Oh. Well, let’s see, what time do you suppose it is?” She tried to distinguish the hands of her watch in the bluish darkness. “Nine thirty, I think.”

“Then we’ll be in Chicago by one.”

“These trains are nice, roaring through the countryside with one light, on its own track, away from busses and cars and people. Just this thing with us inside and everyone else safe.”

“Safe?”

“Yes. At this very second everyone’s safe. Don’t you think?”

“Well, I suppose. I wonder if anyone changed my old room around, or if the garage is being used, or if someone broke inand stole all the tools. It used to be that when Dad’d leave for lunch he’d just walk across the street and in the house without bothering to lock up and never lost anything to people stealing. He loaned out tools, of course, and sometimes it’d be months before he’d get ’em back—but that’s just laziness more’n anything else. Of course, things change. The men used to joke that there wouldn’t be any use to come there and steal ‘cause you could never find anything. The wind blowing through the cottonwoods! I can remember that sound. Mal, you should’ve heard it when blowing would come up in the night and Grandma and I’d sit on the front porch while Mom and Dad were asleep—it sounded like nothing else in this world. We sat with the lights out and those old branches’d wave and glitter . . . then the lonely sounds of the cars coming through and moving out of hearing, popping bits of gravel with their tires.”

“How old were you when you left?”

“About ten, why?”

“Just that your memory seems pretty good for it being that long ago.”

“I had occasion to go all over it quite a few times, and I guess it kind of made it clearer for that reason. Sometimes I’d lie at night and just try to remember as far back as I could.”

“I’ve done that. It doesn’t work very well.”

“I know. You have to use the memories to get at the time. It won’t work the other way around.”

“It must’ve been pretty terrible, your folks getting killed.”

“It’s a horror that never seemed to realize itself. Just when I’d think I had it under control, bang, and I’d know it was worse than that. I kept getting it into my imagination—not consciously, understand—that they weren’t dead, they were just gone for a while. And let me tell you, you pay for those things.”

“What did you do then?”

“Lived alone. Do you remember that apartment I showed you?”

“The one in the office building?”

“Yes. Well, I never lived there.”

“I knew it! I just knew it!”

“Shhh,” came from somewhere in the car.

“I lived underneath City Hall, under a subway platform, there at the Broad Street terminal,” he whispered.

“Not really.”

“Yes. I lived there for four years, selling newspapers.”

“You told me you sold newspapers.”

“Then I worked for Franklin Carroll and lived in the furniture store—Carroll’s Furniture.”

“I remember that place. It’s not open any more.”

“I know. Carroll shot himself.”

“Really? . . . You didn’t see him do it, did you?”

“No.”

“He was your boss, huh?”

“Yep. What time is it now?”

“We’ll be there soon enough,” she whispered and touched his arm. “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of these things before?”

“I don’t know. It seems so melodramatic, I guess.”

They were quiet for a long way, July feeling the motion of the train through every inch of him. They held hands. An old woman wandered by and went to the bathroom.

“Mal,” he said softly.

“What?”

“If you want to go back, that’s OK.”

“Is it?”

“Well, of course it isn’t all right with me, but as far as my life’s concerned it’s fine, if you know what I mean. For the first time I feel like maybe I’m getting out from under some ugly things. I’m so excited about coming home. If I was rich, I’d buy the trains.”

“Well, you probably wouldn’t. Rich people don’t buy things like trains. They make investments. . . . I was thinking about going back.”

“I thought so. In Chicago?”

“I don’t know. But you have to promise that if I decide to, you won’t say anything.”

“Not even ‘Oh heck’?”

“Nothing. Promise that you’ll never say anything.”

“I promise.”

“Good. Now I’m going to take a nap.” And she closed her eyes and fell asleep, noticing that she was much more comfortable than she had been before, and that her mental image of July was now bigger than a peanut.

They got to Chicago and learned, much to July’s dismay, that the layover would be eight hours. The prospect of sitting in the transit station all that time wasn’t appealing. The dark walls and windows were gloomy. And July could tell Mal was very tired, despite all the sleep she’d had. The trip was taking her emotional strength away as fast as she could build it up. He wanted to leave quickly, because any moment she might decide to go back, march off into a black metal train and be gone forever.

“We’ll go to a hotel,” he said, “get something to eat, catch six hours of sleep and come back.” They walked uptown. At the first place, July wrote them down as man and wife to save money and was given a key. Mal was too tired to eat and they went right up to their room.

July had an unexpectedly pleasant sensation locking the door and hanging the chain. The little room was light green with a single window and Mal seemed to wake up as soon as they went into it.

“I’ll take a shower,” she announced on peeking into the bathroom, and hurried to open one of the suitcases for her nightgown and toothbrush and toothpaste and a bottle of perfume which she picked up