Ticket Home

by James Michael Pratt

  “It’s okay, Mary Jane. I’ll just be on my way. I’m embarrassed too. It was good to see you. I best go. Got Guard duty to report to in New Mexico.” His face showed the red of anger, the paint of embarrassment, and the hurt of someone who had been treated meanly, unfairly. “I’ll be seeing your granddad soon. I’ll tell him how mighty fine you looked,” he offered in an attempt to mask his emotions, recover ground he had suddenly lost. He turned and began down the sidewalk away from her.

  Mary Jane witnessed the pain Norman was suffering and realized that she was helpless, but for words, to fix the damage. “Norman,” she pleaded, running to him, tugging at his shirt sleeve. “I love you, Norman.” She was as shocked at saying it as he was at hearing it. But it was true.

  He had never heard those words spoken to him. His eyes burned and he didn’t want her to see his torment, his bruised ego, his pain.

  “I love you both. You in a different way from Lucian.”

  He turned again to face her. His eyes gleamed wet like a hurt child. His countenance was hard, rigid, stern like a man. “I’ve never said this to another woman and might never say it again, Mary Jane,” his eyes glistened. “I love you. I love you like a crazy man without any common sense at all. It was from the first time. I love you like a hot fire burning up all the fuel it can find. I guess I always will. If I didn’t say that I think I’d burst. But I can’t …”

  She reached up to him and kissed him gently on the lips, a parting kiss, the way only a woman can. “If I had it to do all over again Norman, I would never have hurt your feelings,” she offered softly, tears now coming freely. She reached her soft hand up to his face and stroked it gently. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  He produced a weak smile, a silent thank you, and began to walk away, then stopping, he turned around to face her. “Did I kiss good?”

  Tears welled in her eyes and she nodded, adding with a voice strained to almost inaudible. “Too good.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “You sure got here in a hurry. What’s that all about?” Norman sneered from the door of the sleeper car as Lucian approached.

  “Oh, knock it off, Norm. It ain’t worth it.” He climbed up to the car to face him.

  “Seems it was worth you catching the next train up here to L.A. to try to stop me from embarrassing myself … not to mention …” He didn’t finish.

  “Did your mind ever burn so hot it felt like a fever … like it would melt?” Lucian shot back.

  No response. He continued packing.

  “So hot you couldn’t douse the fire? A fire so big that ten horse-drawn fire engines couldn’t put it out?”

  He kept his back turned and shoved the last shirt into the duffle bag.

  “Good gosh, Norman. Aspirin won’t help, getting stone cold drunk won’t help. My mind is burning up trying to figure out how to fix this. I didn’t mean for none of this to happen. She … Mary Jane … it wasn’t supposed to be … I wasn’t lookin’. It wasn’t as if I came out here to California ahead of you lookin’. I was in San Diego workin’. It was all an accidental meeting. She was with some friends down there for the weekend and …”

  “Shut up Lucian. Just … Shut! Up!” He grabbed his duffel bag and tossed it out of the sleeper. “Stay the night. It’s all arranged. I’m headed back to training for the Guard, then home.”

  His twin didn’t try to stop him.

  Norman brushed by him, hopping the distance from the car down to the rails, picked up his bag, and started in the direction of the next train headed southeast—Arizona, then El Paso, and finally Fort Bliss, Texas.

  “Norman!” Lucian called, beating his fist against the wall of the sleeper car. “Norman!”

  Lucian leaped the distance to the ground and ran after him.

  “What!” Norman turned on him.

  “It ain’t worth it, Norm.”

  “Oh, that’s real easy for you to say! You always do this to me, Lucian. You always have a way of getting what you want. Right?” He was angry and letting it show as he stared his brother down, nose to nose.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, to hurt nobody!” he yelled back. “Ah, horse collar, Norm. What we arguing about anyway?” he said, backing away.

  “About lying! About telling the truth, Lucian! About other people’s feelings!”

  “I got feelings! You don’t think it hurt thinking about how I was gonna break this to you? You don’t think I knew it would hurt you? I’m no good at lying, and, it appears, at telling the truth neither, but you gotta know, I didn’t want any of this to happen!” His eyes begged for understanding.

  “What’s the difference? You didn’t want it to happen, it did. I got to go.”

  “Don’t leave mad like this.”

  “Why? You can’t enjoy yourself so much if I do? You can’t feel free from guilt when you’re making out with Mary Jane? I got news for you. I’m not giving up. I won’t just roll over for you. If there’s a chance … well, may the best man win, brother.”

  “Okay. You want it that way? Okay then. All right. May the best man win!”

  “See ya, Lucian.” Norman waved, as he turned away from his brother and walked down the tracks.

  “I’ll be here. Don’t you worry about that. I’ll be right here!” he yelled back.

  CHAPTER 19

  “My name is Skully What’s yours, boy?”

  “Parker. Norman Parker.” He scowled.

  “You hurtin’ pretty bad, boy,” the grimy old-timer stated matter-of-factly from across the boxcar they both bummed a ride on.

  Norman whittled on a piece of willow as the tracks turned into miles east of Los Angeles.

  “Good thing it’s night. This desert gets a hundred and ten in the daytime,” the rail bum added.

  A grunt, wood shavings flying, implied Norman’s response.

  “Where ya headed, boy?”

  “Nowhere special,” he mumbled.

  “A man of the rails? Nowhere special? That’s my usual destination.”

  The clack of wheels turning against a tired iron rail line underscored the noise going on in his brain. It was a dialogue with Lucian that wouldn’t quit. He argued, Lucian countered. It was driving him crazy.

  “Got some food in that bag of yours?” the grizzled veteran of the railroad tracks asked, pointing a gnarled finger to Norman’s duffel bag. “Got cut off, trying to hop my first train. Works just fine,” he said, bending it. “A little shorter than it was, that’s all.”

  Norman shuffled through his bag and picked out a couple of oranges and tossed them to the old man.

  “I just love California oranges. I first went to California to pick ’em. From Oklahoma,” he added.

  Norman raised an eyebrow and nodded, continuing with his pocket knife against the twig.

  “Don’t know how a man lives without one of these,” the traveler said, pulling his own knife from well-worn trousers and slicing the first orange evenly. “Sweet,” he slurped as he sucked the juice out and ate the pulp. “Yes sir,” he continued, noisily sucking at the orange meat.

  Norman glanced at the man, seemingly contented to make his presence known with each bite.

  “Must be a woman. That or death. Nothin’ hurts more than bein’ a man in love or losin’ someone you can’t live without. That’s why I travel.”

  Norman threw the stick off into the passing night. “Shut up, please.”

  “You must be educated. Shut up, please,” he mimicked with a laugh.

  “Look, next stop, I’ll just get off and find my own car. Until then, just shut up! Suck the darned orange and shut up!”

  “Well, a man can get lonely sometimes. Hope someone treats you better when you got somethin’ to say,” the old traveler said diffidently.

  He had cut Norman to the bone with the remark. He was angry with his brother and the circumstances and didn’t mean to take it out on the man.

  “Still, I forgive ya. You’re hurtin’ and I can see that plain enough. Had plenty hurt in my life. Yes s
ir.”

  Silence rode between them like a deaf and mute companion would for the next hour. The veteran rail bum slumbered against his pack and the side of the boxcar he sat up against. Norman was sorry he had bit the old codger’s head off. He just didn’t want to talk. That was all there was to it.

  He looked through his pack and found a can of Spam and a half loaf of bread still good from the day before. Scooting over quietly, he set it next to the man and went back to his place on the car and engaged in gazing out at the crescent moon from the open boxcar door.

  “I was about thirty-two at the time,” the old man started suddenly, as if nothing had happened between them. “I was fixed pretty well for a young man from the sticks in Oklahoma. Had me a mechanics shop, a small plot of ground too. Wife, three youngins.

  “Had been to the big war and all. Did my part, came home, and won the hand of the prettiest girl in Seminole County. I thought if she ever could love me I would be the happiest man on God’s green earth,” he sighed.

  Norman winced, knowing all too well the feeling. The aging rail bum was starting to look human to him as he rambled on, eyes meditatively closed as he related his story.

  “It must’ve been the uniform when I got back from the war. That, and her beau was killed. The war got him, and I was happy. Not that he was dead, but that I had a chance. He was my friend, but that didn’t matter. I was glad I was alive, and he had been in my way.”

  Norman eyed the man in surprise. This tattered old fool was talking love, life, jealousy … things bums don’t usually spout off about.

  “Felt mighty guilty, though. Here’s my buddy, all shot up, was dying in my arms. No doubt I loved him too. You get like that in war. Like brothers, see?”

  “Yeah. I see.”

  “Well, he was ramblin’ on about his woman, the girl I secretly loved, and how I was to look out for her if he didn’t make it back, and well, I sat there with his head in my lap knowing that was exactly what I was gonna do … made me feel awful guilty at the time.

  “The thing I had for that woman was so pleasin’ it hurt. I got so bad over her I thought my mind would burn up if she didn’t have me.

  “Once she knew I was there to stay I finally got the nerve to ask her out. Kept wearing my uniform, just to impress her, ya know. She went out with me and by and by she kissed me. It was all lost for me then. I was a lost soul without her from then on. Yes sir, a damned fool puppy dog lost soul.

  “But—” He coughed. “I had my sights set on winnin’ her heart. I knew she married me ’cause I was kind to her and bein’ no other offer made in our town, well I knew in my heart that I didn’t have her love like she had mine. It kind of hurt. All the time, this pangin’ ache that just wouldn’t go away. So knows what I do?”

  “Nope,” Norman obliged, finally acknowledging the old-timer.

  “Well, I said to myself, ‘Skully you got two hands and one brain. Get to work day and night and build somethin’ for this woman that would make her glad she married you. Make her a fool to leave you too.’”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I fixed everything that people needed to have fixed. Everything in sight. Farmed too. Got me a small spread of land with my war earnings, built a one room house at first. Then two. And so it went. Built a work shed off the barn and turned people’s problems back to them fixed. If it were broke I found a way to fix it. I was good with these,” he sighed, holding up twisted fingers. “Real good.”

  “So how’d you end up here?”

  “People lost their farms and such with the damnable Depression. Moved away. Business fell off. I left town to find some work to keep our—my—dream alive, and when I came back she was gone.”

  Norman nodded and winced at the tired man’s pain. He understood. “You just found your house empty?” he probed.

  “Yep. Gone off with the first man who offered her some excitement from the dreary life with old Skully, I suppose. Serves me right for being glad the first man she loved was dead. Serves me right, I suppose. Oh, but she was a looker … a real dame, yes sir. A real pleasin’ woman. Better than I suppose should have me for a husband. So here I am. A wanderin’ fool.”

  Norman perceived the man differently now. He had a life. Gone bad, but a life.

  He loved Mary Jane but he’d never let a woman own his heart that it hurt so bad he’d go off and give up on everything. No sir. He was in pain but no fool. And he’d never be glad the man she loved was dead just to have her. No way He wasn’t judging the man, just saw no fight in him.

  “Got my kids though. She lets me see them two times a year. That’s where I’m headed now. Amarillo, Texas. Got me some new clothes, some razors, cologne. I aim on looking good for them and makin’ sure they know their daddy loves them.”

  Norman felt for the poor man’s luck.

  “You were right kind to give me this. I thought there was somethin’ better in you than you first showed,” he offered, holding up Norman’s gift. “I like Spam. Lasts forever it seems. Somebody ought to get a medal for figuring out how to can this stuff. Want a sandwich?”

  Norman shook his head. “No, thanks. Sorry, Mr. Skully, for your bad luck. And sorry how I behaved. I had no right.”

  “So it’s a woman, eh?” he spit back as he twisted the lid back with the tiny key made for it.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it don’t get no better, sorry to say. Not unless you find someone to fill up the hole in yer heart. Hope ya can.”

  Norman smiled politely and grimaced as he turned away.

  “Needles Town comin’ up, then we cross the Colorado River. Guess we’ll make good time this trip. Where’d you punch yer ticket for?”

  He answered slow. Deliberate.

  “Home.”

  “Mr. Skully?” Norman called above the clickity-clack of hundreds of freight car wheels turning in unison against the iron rails. “Mr. Skully?”

  The slumbering man, slumped against the side of the car, finally stirred. “What is it? We there?” he stammered as he jolted the sleep away with side to side shakes of his head. “You still here?”

  “Still here.”

  “What you wake me for? I was dreamin’ real nice.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, get on with it. You woke me, now make somethin’ of it.”

  “I thought you’d like a drink. Got some bottled Cokes in my bag.”

  “No booze?” the old rail rider snorted eagerly.

  “Sorry. I don’t drink.”

  “Well, best you don’t get started. Give me one of them,” he directed. He caught it in his lap as Norman tossed it gently.

  Skully opened the bottle by wedging the cap against the edge of a metal brace on the boxcar wall and popping at the top quickly with the palm of his hand. “Ahh,” he slurped, adding a satisfied belch when he had drained the glass bottle. “I like Pepsi-Cola better,” he said. “But this will do.”

  Norman smiled and nodded. He didn’t know how to begin, but he wanted someone else’s thoughts on what was troubling him; even a railroad-riding bum’s thoughts would be better than the solitary confinement he found his mind locked into.

  With nowhere to go with his pain and no one to tell it to, Skully at least offered someone to voice it out loud to.

  “So is Skully your last name?”

  The old traveler took the cap off his head, revealing baldness. He leaned down to show the top. “Got this hairdo compliments of the U.S. Army in World War One. A gas attack in the trenches in France was all it took. Lost my hair. Never grew back. The other men said I looked like a skull with skin and eyeballs. Not too flattering. They all began calling me ‘Skully’ and it stuck.”

  “So what is your Christian name?”

  “James Benson Scally, at your service.”

  “So you never grew your hair back?”

  “Nope. Kind of convenient really, if you stop to think about it. Not like that thick mop of yours.” He pointed. “No lice problems, no need to wash it wi
th soaps and such. Real convenient.”

  “So you were saying about your wife leaving you. You want to talk about it?” Norman probed.

  “Do you?” he returned.

  “Well, I was wondering why you just didn’t go after the guy who stole your woman and all. How you live with the anger and such.”

  “It’s a fool who gives anger and a fool who gets anger. Anger is good for killin’—like war. But that’s about it.”

  “You mean losing her didn’t make you boil?”

  “Sure it did.”

  “Did you ever get over it?”

  “Nope. Just dealt with it. I guess love’s imprint is written so deeply in the heart that a man would have to have surgery to dig it out. It aches … oh it aches, yes sir. But I got to be the one right with God. I didn’t cheat nobody, didn’t run off on her. I just keep rememberin’ that if I lived in a perfect world, she wouldn’t have hurt me so. Then I leave it be.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “You’re hurtin’ bad, aren’t ya, boy?”

  “Appears so. I can’t get over caring, wanting her. I never told anyone about it.” Norman tossed his Coke bottle off into the night. “She loved me first, then my galdarned brother. A woman like that ain’t worth it but I can’t seem to get her off my mind.”

  “She burnt it into ya. I know that feelin’,” Skully offered.

  “So what did you do?”

  “I drank booze first. I’m no drunk, but I’ve been known to forget my problems too many days in a row. I can stop. Most folks can’t. But I found it still hurt when I come to my senses.”

  “Then?” Norman prodded.

  “Worked any job I could as far away as I could from my former life. I didn’t care if I lived or died. There was nothin’ to go home to. Nothin’ mattered anymore.”

  “So that’s where you’re at?”

  “Yep. Except, my kids. I was forgettin’ that I had them precious gems. Now they matter. Yes, sir. Oh, she’s a changed woman and I don’t feel nothin’ for the woman she is today, but that gal I first loved … no sir, I don’t think no man can get over the gal he first loved. Romantic fools is what we are.”