Ticket Home

by James Michael Pratt

  “Why sure does only they seem a bit smarter than quail. Can’t make too much noise and only the greediest get trapped. Serves ’em right though.”

  Norman nodded his head in agreement. He really enjoyed the trick. “I don’t suppose these are going to turn into chicken dumplins next Sunday?” He smiled.

  Harry grinned and patted him on the back. “Most people don’t mind. Chicken. Quail. Dumplins all the same. And that granddaughter of mine sure knows how to fix ’em.”

  “Don’t suppose you’d convince her to stay here in Warm Springs and cook them each Sunday for say, one year, do ya?” Norman quizzed.

  “She’s a headstrong one. Until you boys showed up there weren’t no prospects here in this town,” the old man commented as they walked with the cage full of squawking, irritated birds. “Can’t really blame her for wantin’ something better, seein’ California and such.”

  “No, sir, guess not.”

  “Unless of course …” He sized Norman up and down with his eye. “How old are you, boy?”

  “Eighteen,” he said, inflating his chest and rounding his shoulders.

  “Humm … Well she needs a real man or none at all. Come on in and let’s show Missy what we got. I’ll feed ’em real good this week and then next Sunday you and me can have roast duck.” He laughed loudly. “Just a little imagination is all it takes, son … Just imagination.”

  Norman winced. He had imagination all right. Enough to wrap his arms tightly around that pretty blonde, convince her to stay, if he could find the way. He had one month to try.

  CHAPTER 7

  “What are you seein’ that’s so all-fired interestin’, Missy?” the old man questioned, entering the small country kitchen for a slice of homemade bread and jam.

  She fluttered the window curtain as if straightening it. “Oh, nothin’, Grandpa.”

  “Them Parker boys ain’t exactly nothin’.” He grinned, leaving her flushed with embarrassment.

  She couldn’t deny her interest and now reached back into the recesses of memory where the heart had locked up a childhood crush she had for one of them. She glanced back out the window as the brothers continued their walk into town.

  “Hey, Mary Jane. What did you say to that one Parker boy?” Vera Scott asked as she came stomping back to the small country classroom from recess. “They sure are cute.” She giggled.

  “Oh, nothin’,” she answered.

  “You did so. You said somethin’.”

  “Oh, hush, Vera. I got my peace said is all.”

  “What peace? Did one of them boys tease you again?”

  “That Lucian. Always gettin’ in my way. Making some remark. Then he writes a note on my new paper book cover. See?” she showed. “Now I got to do it all over again. Make a new one,” she complained.

  “I think it’s cute!” Vera squealed. “He wrote something in Spanish?” she quizzed.

  “Yeah. He says his pa says it to his mother all the time, though he won’t tell me what it means.”

  “So. Maybe it’s a love note or somethin’,” she whispered from her seat at the same time a small paper airplane hit Mary Jane’s desk. “Look!” Vera pointed.

  Mary Jane, blushing, opened the small paper airplane to discover a note. “Sorry,” it read simply. She turned her head to see Lucian Parker looking around the room, with a silly grin plastered to his dimpled face like he was totally unaware of where the glider came from. Norman shrugged his shoulders toward her with embarrassment. He was the gentler, kinder of the two, she thought.

  “Mary Jane, we should go ask Annabella Garcia what this means before the teacher gets here. Don’t ya think?” Vera asked, smiling and waving to get Lucian’s attention. He looked away.

  “Don’t, Vera. I don’t want him to notice me.”

  “But he is the cutest boy in the class,” she protested.

  “His brother is just as cute,” she replied.

  “That’s because they’re twins, but there is something special about Lucian,” Vera assured Mary Jane. “I’m showing Annabella,” she said, grabbing at the math book.

  “No, don’t,” the pretty blonde replied.

  The two girls with the book held hands over their mouths, struggling to suppress the giggling while pointing to Lucian who now wore a wide smile of victory.

  Unashamed of his pranks, this one was his last way of trying to show the blond-haired girl from Warm Springs he cared for her as much as his more polite brother Norman did. They were moving out of town next week and he figured it couldn’t hurt.

  “Mary Jane,” Vera whispered excitedly. “Do you know what this says?” the freckle-faced flaming red-haired girl announced in a quiet breath of glee.

  “No, what?”

  “It says, ‘Yo te amo, yo te adoro. Tu eres la vaca, yo soy el toro!’” She cackled, becoming hysterical—doubling over in spasms of laughter because of the translation given by Annabella.

  The entire room now circled the two girls hoping to be in on what was so funny. “I love you! I adore you! You are the cow and I am the bull!”

  “Stop that! Vera Scott, you stop that right now!” Mary Jane protested. “All of you leave me be!” she cried, getting up from her seat and heading for the door.

  “Lucian loves Mary Jane … . Lucian loves Mary Jane …” the children sang. Another shouted, “Mary Jane the cow!” The room erupted in commotion-filled laughter.

  Lucian slid out of the room ahead of the girl while Mary Jane suffered the wisecracks as she headed to the back door.

  “I’m sorry, Mary Jane,” Lucian announced as she flew down the back steps where he now stood. She charged past, determined never to speak to him again.

  That was seven years before, the last time she had seen the daring twin, until this week. His family went to Oklahoma City for work and hers to California grape and citrus fields for labor wages. Norman was the obvious gentleman of the two and equally as handsome, but Lucian had a spark. She wasn’t sure what. She would be polite to Norman, maybe even end up liking him, she thought. But Lucian intrigued her in a way she was eager to understand.

  CHAPTER 8

  Maria Linda Parker was grateful for her husband and two handsome boys. They were her light, her life, and her joy. She had wanted more children but the doctors warned that her fragility wouldn’t allow another childbirth.

  Now, in midlife, with so much life and happiness ahead of them, the plague that tormented so many families each year had knocked on their door. How she got the virus that caused her legs to stiffen with polio she wasn’t sure. Only that the contagion was one of the most feared each winter.

  She longed to feel life there again, to hold her darling Jason in her arms and allow the lovemaking to happen that she was sure would last forever. Through all the years of poverty, the travail of the Depression, they always had love, the thrill of each other’s embrace and the intimate moments. Nothing could take that simple pleasure from them, until this.

  Now when their trial of shortages and privations was at an end, a new trial had stolen the former simple joys away. So ironic, she thought. But they had their dreams and whatever she could do to make Jason and her sons happy also fulfilled her now.

  Jason had always wanted the dream of a country railroad job. But his own depot and locomotive with four rail cars! This was more than he ever could have hoped for. It wasn’t every day in the Depression of the 1930s that a boon so grand was realized by a family. Jason had never asked for a handout, had worked for years, six, sometimes seven days a week. There were times that a dollar per day was all he had made, but he never gave up on his dream.

  She was so very proud of her father for finally understanding how much she had loved the poor rail-hand from Oklahoma. For having willed her and Jason the money sufficient for this dream. She adored him for that. She figured her banker father had finally seen what a good man he was and was sorry for the alienation he had created. The inheritance was a message of love but she would have preferred the real thing.
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  “Mamá?” Maria Linda called gently to her mother at work in the kitchen. “Mamá? Te necesito. I need help,” she announced gently.

  Since last year her polio had subjected her to life in a wheelchair, and her arms were just now regaining much of their former strength. But she still couldn’t quite budge the chair over the threshold. She wanted some fresh high desert air, the kind that a rainstorm cleanses and causes new life to blossom in the New Mexican high country.

  “Querida,” her aging but sturdy and stately Mexican-American mother answered. “Let me do it,” she said, pushing the chair over the hump in the floor to the covered patio that looked upon the mountain range in the distance.

  “The lightning is beautiful Mamá.” She pointed toward the mountains. “The thunderheads are like giants in the sky. See there’s one. Beautiful. No, Mamá?”

  “Ahh, truly. But beautiful is a word God created for my baby.” She smiled, kissing her child, now a woman in her forties.

  “Mamá?”

  “Sí hija?” she answered in Spanish, easily mixing the two languages.

  “Is it hard? I mean missing Papá and knowing he isn’t coming back,” Maria Linda asked, knowing the answer but looking beyond it for something else.

  “Aye, hijita,” she replied with a long release of breath from her lips. “I thought I could maybe love again once. But now? After forty-five years of marriage he was my partner, part of me. When part of you leaves … yes mi hija, yes my daughter. Yes, it is like losing a limb, like losing eyesight, like losing a friend all in one.”

  “Oh …” Maria Linda sighed looking down at the legs she had lost. “I see.” She stared with glazed eyes fixed upon the lightning show in the distance.

  “It is almost La Pascua … Easter, Mamá. My boys are coming this week. All three boys,” she said laughing. “Jason teases me so much every year with this stupid Easter egg joke about me being the best hen in the henhouse.” She laughed tearily.

  “I always scolded him for it—so improper—maybe I’ll tell it to you sometime.” She laughed. “But now,” she shook her head looking down at her rigid, motionless, paralyzed limbs, “I can’t offer him love,” she cried softly in the comforting arms of her mother.

  “Querida. Is that all a woman is good for? To give part of her body? No hija, but this you have.” She pointed to her heart. “And this you have.” She pointed to her mind. “And this you have.” She pointed to her lips. “And soft hands you have. A lovely figure you still have,” she added. “To say love is only given to a man in one way is to miss all of the other ways, hija,” she admonished. “Hija mia, remember tu padre? What he would say? He would say that ‘any cup with love in it is always full.’”

  “Thank you, Mamá. I had forgotten,” she said, wiping at the tears. “Mamá, do you believe we see our loved ones again when they die? You know, do you believe in resurrection, the promise of Easter? Seeing Papá again?”

  “Por supuesto hija! Of course!” she returned in both languages. “Now you are thinking very deeply. What makes you think this way my always carefree, cheerful Maria Linda?” She knew the answer to the question but allowed her daughter to speak, talk it out.

  “Papá, you know, wasn’t a very religious man but I love him and want to see him again,” she answered. “Then polio. And the thoughts of the holy words en la Biblia which say as in Adam ‘all men die, even so in Christ shall all men be made alive.’ If we all be made alive someday then we shall be perfectly reborn, made new and never lose our loved ones. No, Mamá?” Maria Linda asked innocently, childlike.

  “Sí, sí. Querida hija mia,” she uttered tearily, kneeling next to her deeply reflective daughter. “You are so wise in your age!” she announced, proudly placing her head next to her girl’s cheek. “See the rays of sun come from behind the dark rain cloud?” she pointed to the mountain. “So shall our love be again after this life, scattering all these miseries of this time on earth forever away. So shall it always be for those who love truly.”

  “That’s what I think too, Mamá. Yes that is what my heart tells me,” she smiled. “You know how Papá always taught us to keep the faith? Gave us each a ring with the initials ‘KTF’ on the cross so we would always remember the family motto? I always knew he taught that it meant we should stick together, do what is right to others, being proud of our family and name. I wonder if he understood the deeper meaning?” she pondered. “He never talked about the symbol on the ring.”

  Maria Linda’s mother shook her head with a smile. “He knew. That man of mine, he just was too macho to let anyone know how much he cared.”

  “Thank you, Mamá.” She smiled. “I made Jason a ring, you know, when we got married. Even though Papá disowned us for so long I wanted our boys to understand they must stand together, keep the family name proud. But also look to God.”

  “It is so good to have you home, hija.” Her mother smiled contented, and pulled a deck chair next to her daughter. “What will I do when you are gone?” They held hands and together watched the daylight turn amber, a rainbow accenting the horizon.

  As the rainbow faded, the deep fiery orange sunset blended to a star-filled night sky reminding them both how small they were, and yet how each soul was watched over. They had lived fully by the simple motto of the ring and now lived in the hope offered by the upcoming La Pascua—life and love everlasting.

  CHAPTER 9

  “One month since we called this Warm Springs place home, Maria Linda,” Jason softly whispered as he nuzzled her neck. She smiled broadly at his tenderness and at knowing how all this made up somehow for her sickness.

  “I’ll miss you every hour you’re gone,” she responded, tugging him closer and bringing her lips to his from her seat in the wheelchair. “Stop that!” she scolded with pretense of disapproval as his hand slid to a spot reserved for more private places and moments.

  “Just checking. Making sure all is in order.”

  “Everything was in order,” she replied and wriggled to straighten herself out.

  “No place like home.” He winked then blew her a kiss. “You sure you’ll be okay getting in and out of the house now with that ramp?” he called from the dock where he now stood.

  “Do I have to show you for the hundredth time?” Maria Linda asked with exasperation but grateful Jason cared so deeply for her safety. She wheeled herself around from the walkway on the front lawn to the entry door of the cottage standing ten feet from the depot. Easily she maneuvered the chair over the ramp and into the house then back again. “See? Perfect. Now go and don’t trouble your mind.”

  Norman both smiled and winced at the tender scene between his parents. He had grown up secure in their love for each other but also felt the fear his father must have to leave his beloved mother alone. He’d never known a man who showed his love and affection more often than his father had for his mother.

  “Pa, maybe I ought to stay,” Norman offered in low tones. He knew if he did he would lose the opportunity to be with Mary Jane traveling to Redemption where she was headed on her first leg of the planned trip to California, but his folks came first.

  “Son, I think your mama has a point to make with us. I would feel more comforted but she knows we got to work as a team and wants to prove she can handle it alone while we’re gone. Besides Claire from Kelly’s Drugs has promised to check on her two times, morning and afternoon.”

  “Te amo!” Jason yelled, grinning to his pretty but disabled Maria Linda.

  “I love you too, darling.” She waved and then wheeled herself to clip and tend to the roses.

  Lucian was busily engaged at the water tower filling the tank on the tender car down the tracks. Norman had just about finished loading the coal tender from the shed nearby.

  Lucian had noticed how Norman strutted, paced. Norman had been acting nervous all morning as they loaded the steam engine coal box and filled the boiler tank with enough water to make the run down the tracks to Redemption.

  They had fired the
train up now and moved it up the track to check off final preparations at the depot dock. “That Mary Jane sure is a pretty sight. Too bad she isn’t stayin’, Norman,” Lucian drawled with indifference in his voice as he chewed on tobacco, a habit he was determined to master. “With this right arm I’m gonna be a pitcher when I get accepted to college.” He smiled. “A good pitcher has to chew good and spit even better. Watch this.” He spit out the engine door and hollered, “Beat that if you can.” He laughed, looking toward Norman who brought another wheelbarrow of coal to the loading dock.

  The young lady stood there looking at the near miss before her and then at Norman’s twin. She shook her head in disgust. “Some things never change,” she remarked with a touch of sarcasm.

  Lucian removed his work cap and smiled a stained-tooth grin. “Mighty sorry, ma‘am. Didn’t see a woman. Norman and I were just having a spittin’ contest.”

  She looked over at Norman with a stunned expression. She had already come to know Lucian for the wild side and his mocking her, weeks earlier at the springs where she bathed. She even suspected he had been there spying on her since. She tried to act bothered, ruffled, but silently felt something else.

  “No, Miss Harrison. You don’t need to pay him any heed. I don’t do that. I don’t chew,” Norman offered in defense.

  “That’s good. I’m glad one of you has manners,” she said as she walked her bag over to the seat where she would wait until the train was ready for the trip.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” Norman offered eagerly.

  “Thank you, Norman,” she said politely in deference to Lucian’s snickers.

  Lucian mocked her actions and voice behind her back from the engineer’s seat where he readied the gauges. He was attracted to her, had made sure to keep an eye on her for weeks every chance he could but knew Norman had made his claim fair and square. If he could, he’d do something about that but there was nothing to be done now except admire and feign sarcasm, indifference.