Ticket Home

by James Michael Pratt

  “How long before we begin?” Mary Jane asked Norman, who brushed at the coal dust on his trousers, hoping to appear magically presentable somehow.

  “A few minutes is all. It appears Pa has gone back to tend to some item with Mama. Helping her get situated and all. He sure does love her, yes sir. I guess a man ought to love his woman with all he’s got,” Norman observed, making sure she noticed his answer. “All three of us are needed this trip, but we’ll be back before nightfall, God willin’,” Norman added.

  “Poor dear. I must go tell her good-bye,” she said, dropping her luggage on the ramp while she went to the small house to pay her respects. A few words, a womanly embrace, and some advice was exchanged obviously about Norman, for both women looked in his direction.

  “Good,” he said triumphantly under his breath. “Real good!”

  “I will miss Grandpa,” she said, returning to the dock. “I will miss you too, Norman,” she added, reaching out to touch his hand while glancing over to Lucian, who was busy in the cab.

  “Same here,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’d better finish loading. It takes a good boxful of this coal to get the fire hot enough.”

  “Well, I’ll just wait and watch.”

  Lucian was quietly jealous of the scene. He watched Norman strut and strain over the loads as he worked at impressing Mary Jane. It would be nice to find something to redeem himself with, some way of showing he wasn’t a total jerk.

  “Boys, you all about ready?” Jason called as he came out from the tiny depot holding a sack full of meat sandwiches and baked potatoes for the trip.

  “We’re just about there, Pa,” Norman grunted, shutting the compartment door to the coal box. “Got us a payin’ passenger too,” he added with a smile.

  “How far you say you was goin’, Miss Harrison?” Jason asked.

  “As far as you are, I guess. At the junction to Redemption I can catch a bus, then on to Amarillo where I’m supposed to catch the Santa Fe line clear on to Los Angeles.”

  “Well we got just the setup for you in the caboose. Norman, you show her to the car while Lucian and I finish the checklist. We’ll be ready to roll in no time,” Jason Parker finished.

  “Sure thing, Pa. This way, Mary Jane.” He smiled.

  “Norman sure looks happy. Don’t he, Lucian?”

  “Sure, Pa.”

  “Well then. Let’s do our checkoff. Tender been coaled and watered?

  “Yep.”

  “Running gear oiled?”

  “Yep.”

  “Checked dynamo?”

  “Yeah, Pa. Checked,” Lucian said with head craned to the caboose watching Norman give a hand to Mary Jane.

  “Hydrostatic lubricator?”

  “Yeah it’s filled, Pa.”

  “Sand dome?”

  “Filled.”

  “How’s our boiler pressure?”

  “Fine. Checks out fine, Pa.”

  “Pressure gauge at two-hundred pounds?”

  “Yep.” Lucian was having a hard time keeping his mind on the checkoff. His head was clearly turned by that pretty blonde Norman had taken to. It bothered him to feel this way. But she did something to him hard to describe.

  “Son, we are on our way. Let’s make sure that fire is ready.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, turning his head back to the coal box and shoveling coal into the fire. Hot. She really is, he thought as he shoveled.

  “Here let me help you with that,” Norman said, taking her two suitcases and trunk. “Looks like you mean to be gone for some time with all this luggage,” he added.

  “I don’t intend on ever comin’ back I guess. Except for a visit to Grandpa, that is once I get established and can earn my way out here again.”

  “Well, I hope that isn’t too long.”

  “Me, too,” she shyly agreed. “That brother of yours—Lucian. He sure is a sore-head. Most disagreeable. Why’s that?”

  “He’s just embarrassed I guess. Bein’ the situation and all at the pond. He really doesn’t mean to be so smart and tough. He’s just sore about a lot of things, I guess.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like wanting to go to school. Not be a railroader. Wanting to be a college boy. He likes city life, see. Me, I care more for all this. This land. This peace and quiet. I’d like to settle down someday. With the right person, of course.”

  Mary Jane was now settled in on a cushioned seat with a table in front of her. She patted it nervously with her fingers as Norman finished stowing her baggage away.

  “Here’s the washroom. It’s got all the facilities you may need. I hope you find it agreeable.”

  She peered over to the small closet door he held open. “I’m sure I will.”

  “I guess I’ll be back here with you, if you don’t mind. My job, see, is to look out for trouble, rest, be ready for a shift up front, change tracks, be a switchman while Pa and Lucian load coal and run the engine.”

  “Oh, I see. Will you be trading off with your pa or Lucian?” she asked.

  “Both I guess. The run to Redemption should be all mine back here. Then we have a short run beyond to deliver some goods for the government.”

  “Oh,” she replied simply. “What’s big city life like?” she asked with a brightened look. “It seems so thrilling and exciting; all those trains, cable cars, shops, lights. Why don’t you care for it?”

  “I don’t know why exactly. Guess I get tired of the fast pace. All the runnin’. There doesn’t seem to be a place to stretch out and lay back and just find quiet after twelve hours of work. It’s got some dangers too. I don’t think it’s so great for kids. The country is better.”

  “But it’s exciting?”

  “Sure, to visit. Anytime you want a little excitement just hop a train and on into town you go. Nothin’ to it. Since we own this line, I figure I’ll be seeing enough of the city life. My wife and kids too,” he added, hopeful she felt the same.

  “So you plan on getting married? You have a girl or something back in Oklahoma City? Tulsa maybe?”

  “Nope. Just thinkin’ ahead is all.”

  “It’s good to think ahead.” She sighed, leaning her back into the leather cushions of the seat, closing her eyes, dreaming, no doubt, of some exciting big city far out West. “You’re a sweet young man, Norman Parker. You deserve a good girl too. But then I’m sure you and Lucian know a girl in every city, travelin’ like you do.”

  “Well here we go,” he mumbled. Couldn’t she see plainly? Couldn’t she see he was attracted to her, that she was the “good girl” he had longed to meet? He doubted it even though he’d tried to make it obvious.

  “All clear,” he shouted out the window of the caboose to his father who waved a hand. The steam locomotive lurched forward.

  Norman gazed at the face of beauty that beamed from the corner of the car. He admired her in a way he’d never admired a woman before. He tried to settle back across the aisle watching her contentment at leaving the whistle-stop town behind.

  He noticed his soiled clothing, wishing he could change into something more suave … something clean and citylike. He doubted that any girl this attractive could take interest in a simple train man. But then maybe …

  After all, she was a country girl too. He reasoned she liked the fact that he had known so much about the city life.

  He gawked unashamedly at the serene repose settling upon the girl from Warm Springs. Missy, her grandpa called her. All of the shoulder length, flaxen locks and azure eyes that smiled but changed with the whim of colors she wore was more fair to gaze upon than anything he had seen or imagined.

  He was smitten bad, real bad, by this Oklahoma belle. Falling asleep so easily—she must have stayed awake all night excited to leave this place. Maybe she is just playing with my mind, he thought. Knows what she’s doin’ to me …

  Her lips opened slightly, a full pout that stirred him up crazily. He couldn’t resist the thought: What would it feel like to kiss lips like that?r />
  So content to be leaving. He wished she were contented to be with him now.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lucian exited the engine compartment and climbed up on the coal stack in the trailer car.

  “Lucian? Where you think you’re goin’?” his father, at the throttle, yelled above the hiss of steam and the crackle of the furnace. “You aren’t going to do that asinine trading-places-with-Norman trick are you?”

  He flushed red. How’d Pa figure me out? He questioned himself as he looked back at his father at the controls. “Just gonna ask if Norm wanted a break.”

  “Leave the boy alone. Can’t you tell what this means to Norman? I can read your mind even before it thinks, son.”

  “Awe, Pa, I’m just needin’ to tease him a bit. I’ll be right back.”

  Before his father could answer, he scrambled out into the tender and onto the water tanker walking on top like a man doing the high wire act at Barnum and Bailey’s. He’d seen that once when the circus came to town in Oklahoma City.

  Scrambling across the top of the rounded tank he felt like a bird in flight. The train motion was at thirty miles per hour now and he was walking the opposite direction. Dangerous, he thought. Fun dangerous. He grinned to himself.

  Norman shouldn’t be the one having all this fun. It isn’t fair, he thought. Maybe it’s justice for having been the one willing to linger in the bushes at the springs that day, willing to risk the embarrassment of the pretty country girl. But he knew she wasn’t right for Norman. She was too excited about the city life. More like me, he thought as he scrambled across the two boxcars connected finally to the lonely caboose.

  He had overheard her talking to the grocer a couple days before. She hadn’t noticed him in the next aisle behind the front counter cash register until she checked out. He had quickly scrambled to the front door of the tiny store and held it open for her. She had become more friendly, smiled, said, “Thank you, Lucian.”

  How could a girl do something so innocent and make a man fall so fast? He couldn’t mess with his brother’s dream, but he could flirt with it, he decided.

  CHAPTER 11

  Fall 1939, Warm Springs

  “I guess this is good-bye, Mama,” Norman said in reverence, kneeling at the base of the headstone. He gently stroked his hand across the words, then wiped at his eyes.

  Maria Linda Parker. Loving wife. Loving Mother.

  September 1, 1895-October 5, 1939

  RIP

  His father Jason, and his twin Lucian, had each taken their time to be alone with her. There was no explaining what had happened that day.

  Sunshine-filled sky.

  Enjoying her flowers.

  The trip to Redemption was a one-half day’s journey with the small load and dead-heading back. Just two were needed for the journey but Norman had chosen to ride along that day. It had been weeks since Mary Jane had left for California and he had a gift ordered at Paul’s General Store to pick up for her and send on to some place called Santa Paula, California.

  The weather was calm, eerily so, as he now recalled. When they returned home to a stormy afternoon, darkened clouds had filled their horizon as they pushed the steam engine to get back to Warm Springs. A sense of foreboding had swept over all of them. How could they have known?

  They found her there, in the rubble of the cottage, dead, next to a crumpled wheelchair. Their small home had been blown to pieces as a house of cards crumbles with so much as a flick of the finger.

  The twister gave no warning. None at all. Funny how the water tower got missed. Real strange how the depot stood practically untouched by the deities of thunder and lightning. Why those powers didn’t choose to protect the only human at the depot he couldn’t understand.

  Nature was allowed to take apart their home like it was a rag doll; she shook the stuffing right from it and a precious life was snuffed out as if Mama were an annoyance, in the way.

  Skipped right over old man Harrison’s, hit a shed, a barn, some out-buildings; on the other side of town, uprooted one-hundred-year-old willows and cottonwoods, and then flattened the dream Jason Parker had for the life he had planned—a dream of lovingly caring for his sweetheart stricken by polio and building a business with his boys.

  “Time to go, Mama. I got me and Lucian a job on the Santa Fe. Pa asked old man Harrison—you know Harry, Mama? He’s gonna be the lookout in the caboose and Pa says he can hire a boy now and then to shovel—be the fireman up in the cab. Things have slowed down considerable. We’ll be out in New Mexico, Lucian and me, for the time bein’, anyhow.

  “Gonna put up with Uncle Sammy Mead, your brother near the tracks in Albuquerque. We can stay for free for the time bein’ and can work the warehouse for old man Monroe and do double the money earnin’ by takin’ shifts on the rail lines. Me and cousin Johnny Mead will be joinin’ the New Mexico Guard together. Kinda makes me a New Mexican and Oklahoman. I thought you’d like that.

  “May even get to go to California for at least once or twice each year. Least Lucian says he’s gonna go as soon as he’s got some money. They say there is a big harvest out there in citrus and they were lookin’ for some boys to go; the Santa Fe warehouse folks and Monroe, that is. Lucian likes the idea—says he can be seein’ California, big cities and such all the sooner. But I guess you know all that, bein’ you are lookin’ down on us and all. Right, Mama?”

  Norman knelt down on both knees and bent over the headstone. “Bye, Mama. I love you, Mama,” he offered as he gently caressed the stone marker with her name on it. “Mama, I never knew love like you and Pa gave each other. I’m hopin’ for your blessin’. I want the girl Mary Jane to be my wife and I’m hoping you’ll smile on us, Mama. I won’t forget. Not ever. You were a beautiful woman, Mama. Pa, he loves you so. It’ll be real hard …” He choked on his words and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands as he made an effort to offer his final thoughts.

  “I’m goin’ now, Mama,” he said, his voice, husky with emotion, struggled. “I love you,” he added almost inaudibly. “I’ll keep the faith. Don’t you worry. I won’t let Lucian forget neither. We’ll both keep the faith.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Jason Parker, red-eyed and slow of pace, walked up and down what was left of the depot boarding and loading dock. Lucian had the steam built up in the reliable, but forty-year-old engine. The twister didn’t even touch the tracks it sat upon. Why take a life and not this worthless hunk of metal, he struggled to think.

  He couldn’t seem to comprehend what was happening. How so many years, such a grand dream, well within his reach, could be snuffed out in an instant—as if it didn’t matter, as if the dream didn’t count for anything.

  “Her name was Maria Linda,” he voiced roughly. He blinked at the incessant moisture stinging his eyes. “You know what linda means in Spanish?” he asked Norman who stood nearby, helpless at the sight of the broken man he revered. “Of course. I’ve told you boys a million times.”

  “Tell me again, Pa,” he answered.

  “Well, linda means beautiful. If you call a woman linda you are saying she is pretty. My wife was Maria Linda for a reason,” he said. “Pretty Mary. Oh, son, she was so very beautiful,” he whispered.

  “We best be goin’, Pa,” Norman offered gently as he reached for his father’s elbow. “Mr. Harrison … You know, Harry? He’s here now. Guess I’d like to train him as the fireman helper. He sure is a sturdy old coot.” Norman smiled through oppressive gloominess, trying to lighten the moment the best he could.

  “How you boys gonna make out? I mean, you are gonna be fine and all, aren’t ya?” Jason muttered low as he pensively sought solace gazing deeply into the boardwalk.

  “You know we will, Pa,” Norman feigned. He really wasn’t sure.

  “I mean the Santa Fe line, they’ve sure been good to us. Takin’ you boys on, givin’ you and Lucian jobs and such. And you, Norman, stayin’ nearby in Albuquerque, means a lot to me. Sure gonna miss that Lucian when he goes on out
to California. Wish he’d stay put and work with you,” Jason sighed.

  “I know it, Pa. I know how ya feel. Lucian has just got to see things—the world—a bit, I guess. He’ll be back. He’ll settle in. We’ll still make this place go. You’ll see.”

  Jason cleared his throat, tongue set in cheek, and paced looking for the right words. “I don’t know what to say to you boys. How to tell ya what you mean to me,” he answered. “You are the pride and joy of your mother and me,” he said wrapping his arms around his son’s neck and tearily giving him a moist kiss on the cheek.

  “Sorry, son,” he said as he reached into his overalls and wiped at his face with a considerably worn handkerchief. “You’ve made me proud, Norman. I want to thank you for all the extra you are doing, joining the National Guard down in Albuquerque with your cousin, Johnny Mead.

  “That extra fifteen dollars a month is gonna just about cover the remainder of the land payment. Just wish Lucian was there to look out for you. Guess he don’t care much for horse-riding though, does he?”

  Norman grinned through the weightiness of the moment. “He doesn’t care much for cow-pokin’, Pa. You know me. That Guard unit is one of the best and last cavalry units in the country. The money, a place to stay for free at the armory while working the warehouse on the Santa Fe docks—it’s a good deal. I believe in this place, Pa. I believe in you. I’m glad I can put the money back here to help out.”

  Jason Parker, head hung lower than his round shoulders, surveyed the ground for a response. He finally nodded and again studied his boy. They reached for each other in the same instant and embraced strongly. No words exchanged. None were needed.

  “Let’s round things up, son,” Jason remarked as he pulled himself together to greet the old man stepping up onto the platform.