The black iron skillet balanced light as a Ping-Pong paddle in Jack Meeker’s catcher’s-mitt hand, the eggs within it dancing like beebees, the bacon curling and sizzling. All of it so tantalizing Austin’s appetite that he was soon as salivating as a St. Bernard.
“Two eggs okay, Austin?”
“Two eggs are fine.”
“Just a couple days old.”
“Great.”
“Like ’em once ovah?”
“Yes, sir.” Austin swung his legs over the side of the cot and noticed his bootless feet.
“I took ’em off. Looked to be doin’ ya more harm than good. Guess ya didn’t realize I left the fire goin’ for ya.”
“I guess not.”
Jack was wearing a red plaid shirt beneath his sweater that was not unlike the plaid mackinaws Austin had seen up and down the line since arriving in Maine. Some salesman in that territory could sure sell plaids.
“Must’ve banked it too much. Didn’t care to leave a rip-roarer, ’cause it might burn down the whole depot. This depot burns down they’ll never build anothah. Wood’s so dry, a bulb’d set it off. Take sugar with ya coffee? We don’t have any.”
“Just milk.”
“Don’t have milk, actually, ’cause the refrigerator can’t keep nothin’ but a secret. Have this dried stuff pretends to be milk once it’s in the cup. Gives a good color, too. Appetizin’.”
“That’ll be fine.” Austin saw his socks draped over the stovepipe, drying. His boots stood across the room, splayed out, Charlie Chaplin style.
“Boots of yours are all wrong for up here. What ya want is insulated boots and not too tight. And maybe without laces. Laces get wet and shrink they can just about strangle ya feet to fallin’ off.” Jack plopped the bacon and eggs onto a blue-and-white speckled enamel-surfaced tin plate. For good measure he placed a chunk of sourdough bread alongside, careful to not break the eggs. Austin noticed how the bread was buttered and he smiled—there was a bit of the mother hen to Jack Meeker. “Come and get it, boy,” Jack said, rather proud of his culinary accomplishment.
“You know it!” Austin wrapped himself in the blanket and fairly flew to the table, mothballs flying like buckshot. He grabbed the tin utensils and dug in noisily and ravenously.
“Travelin’ light, ain’t ya.” Jack was standing, leaning against a far wall. It was the first time that he had looked directly at Austin. Up till then, whenever he spoke, it was pretty much over the shoulder and off the cuff, the words tending to carom off walls before striking home.
“I guess I just…jettisoned everything.”
“Bag?”
“Duffle bag.”
“Snow-pusher’ll pick it up. Providin’ ya left it on the tracks.”
“I don’t know. I think I did.”
“Oughta be along soon.”
Austin had no true interest in small talk and was incapable of hiding it. He just ate, slopping the food in almost without taking the time to taste it, like one of those dusky, wide-eyed children in the “Help India” ads he’d been aware of almost from the moment he was able to read. He looked up only once, because he felt Jack’s eyes frying his head to a crispness worthy of the bacon. They fixed on Austin for the longest time before swiveling away to look disinterestedly through the window.
“Don’t stop snowin’ soon, won’t be nothin’ left for the rest of the wintah.”
Austin nodded his agreement. The floor beneath his feet was cold, but the coffee was hot, and the eggs were perfection, and the bacon was soon gone except for two thin slivers stuck delectably between his teeth. “Guess I haven’t thanked you properly—for all of this. I really appreciate it.”
“I’m sure ya do, but it’s no imposition. I’m Civil Service. It’s on the town. Belden pays.”
“Well, just the same…”
Jack pulled up a chair and a cup of coffee and studied Austin for three gulps before beginning his inquisition.
“Something wrong?” Austin asked, aware of the hint of challenge in his voice but unable to suppress it. He didn’t like being looked over, especially by eyes that would have set better in the head of a district attorney.
“Three foot of snow, two below zero, and ya walk right into it like Daniel Boone. Now, why would a man want to do a thing like that?”
“I wanted to get to Belden.”
Jack nodded and digressed, and Austin wasn’t sure whether or not the big man was satisfied with his answer or just distracted. “Talk of doin’ away with this depot. Economizin’.”
“Oh?”
“A-yuh. But they’ll forget it ’fore they do it. It’s a forgettin’ kind of town. Nobody much in it anymore. Specially in the wintah. In the wintah people go deep south, to Massachusetts. Don’t suppose I’ll sell many tickets today. Only reason I came in was to see if you got here.”
“Place any bets?”
“Last bet I made was that McGovern would carry South Dakota.” Jack was up and looking through the window again, his coffee cup so lost in his huge hand that all Austin could see of it was steam. “Why’d ya want to get to Belden?”
“Friend of mine left me a house.”
“In Belden? He ain’t no friend.”
“Maybe you knew him. Maynard Whittier.”
“A-yuh. Maynard.”
“Maynard Whittier.” Austin wasn’t sure that Jack remembered him at all, since he was so unaffected by the news.
“I remember him. Ain’t seen him around in some time. Probably close to two years.”
“He’s dead.”
“Figured that by the way ya told me.”
“You didn’t know about it?”
“Nope.”
“Nobody told you?”
“Nobody can tell me if nobody knows.”
Austin felt increasingly annoyed at the big man’s indifference. “He was killed in action.”
A glimmer of recollection registered on Jack’s face. “That’s right. He was in the Army.”
“That’s right.”
“Killed in action, ya say?”
“Yeah. I say.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Bermuda. He was killed by a tourist. Run over on the beach by a paddleboat.”
Jack didn’t laugh. He seemed to understand the emotion and the sarcasm behind Austin’s remark. “You mean Vietnam.”
“Yeah. I knew it was some vacation spot.”
“Left ya his house, ya say.”
“Yeah. I say.” Austin was bristling.
“Ain’t much of a house.”
“He was my friend. That makes it a great house.” And now Austin was spoiling, moments away from throwing something at the big clod. Anything. A plate, the coffeepot, the whole table. He stood up, threateningly, his chair scraping the floor sharply as it was sent to pushing backward. “Listen—the hell with you!”
“Easy, son.”
“And I’m not your son, you ignorant sonofabitch!”
Jack was admirably composed, his voice never rising. “Folks die.”
“That a fact?”
“A-yuh. After a while ya get to understand that.”
“He was twenty-three years old!”
“Guess he was about twenty-three.” Jack was clearing the table, and Austin couldn’t fail to see the big gnarled hands, like the surface roots of an oak.
“He was exactly twenty-three!”
Jack piled the plates and stuff into the sink and turned the water on, his back to Austin. It was a big back, as broad in the beam as the Mayflower. “Goin’ to have to get used to folks up here appearin’ callous, Austin. Don’t really mean to be. Just they don’t know how to express their sympathy like city people, so they let it be ya own business.”
“Maybe they just don’t have any feelings.” Austin’s fists were clenched. They were rawhide and purpling, but the pair of them could fit into just one of the big man’s palms.
“Actually, I remember Maynard very well. Nice boy. Always had a smile. Funny little smile. Not l
ike you. You don’t smile at all.”
“When there’s something that’s funny, I’ll smile.”
“Kept pretty much to himself. I picked him up and drove him to the train the day he reported to the Army. He was actin’ pretty strange. Didn’t particularly like goin’—but he went.”
“He shouldn’t of.”
“Well, he had to.”
“Well, he shouldn’t of.” Austin’s fists were clenching, flexing.
Jack knew it but wasn’t quite ready for a showdown. “I think it’d be a good idea if ya just let go of those fists, son, ’cause I don’t think they really belong to you.” He wiped his hands on something that once was a towel, and he glanced up at the wall clock. “After the snow-pusher gets here, I’ll take ya up to Maynard’s house. Ain’t that far.” He looked at Austin and smiled. “That okay with you?”
Austin felt suddenly stupid and his fists dissolved. “Listen, I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. I understand.”
“I’ve been travelin’ a long time and I’m still a little shook up, and…well, I’m sorry.”
“I am, too, son. About Maynard. Truly.” Jack sat down at his desk and sharpened a pencil that was already so small that only its eraser seemed to emerge from the sharpener. Then he checked some ledgers, made some notes, and generally ignored Austin, who didn’t know what to do with himself beyond wandering around the room and studying schedules and pretending that they were very significant to him and to the world.
After circling the room four times and running out of feigned interest he felt his feet begin to chill on the bare wooden floor, and so he removed his socks from the stovepipe and slipped them on. They were cuddly and warm and his feet were grateful, though his boots were another story. Warped by the heat, they tended to point their tips toward the ceiling without having consulted on the matter with Austin. But even more bothersome, and burdensome, was that they seemed to have shrunk three sizes. It was hell getting them on and worse getting them off. After a second try, when his tortured toes still tried to curl under and hide beneath the balls of his feet, Austin found out why. Jack had stuffed wads of newspaper into the boots’ tips in hopes of helping them dry back to their natural shape. It was a grand gesture but a failing one, and, with Jack not looking, Austin pulled the paper out. Then, with Jack looking, Austin pretended to be reading that paper just as if he were on a bus with The Cincinnati Enquirer. Moments later his feet went better into his boots and no one was the wiser—except Jack, who, looking away, smiled and said nothing.
The telephone rang, coming as so fierce an interruption to the quietude that Austin straightened where he sat, even his toes stretching to their full once-upon-a-time length.
“Life is just one damned thing after another,” said Jack, not looking up from his work. “That was said by either Mark Twain or Richard Nixon.”
“Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“Not until five rings.” It rang the required five times and Jack answered. “Belden Depot, Stationmaster Jack Meeker speakin’. Your nickel…Oh, hello, Guerney.” He covered the mouthpiece and winked at Austin. “It’s Guerney.”
“Ahhhh,” said Austin, as if he understood.
“I don’t know how to answer that, Guerney.
“Well, the boy came in half dead, and, because you and me is such good friends, and because you had such a heavy bet goin’, I figured I’d let him die and then drag him back out and drop him a few yards up the tracks.
“Well, then I figured I’d tell Nawm he died before ever reachin’ the depot, and you’d win ya bet. How much did ya bet, Guerney?
“That much?”
Austin felt the depot house begin to shudder as a distant thunder began to mount, the floorboards trembling underfoot as if in fear. If Jack felt and heard it, he didn’t let on. He just kept right on talking to Guerney, passing the time of day.
“Well, anyway, Guerney, there I am, standin’ ovah this fella and damned if there ain anothah fella out there, runnin’ and a-staggerin’ up the tracks. No one told me there’d be two fellas, Guerney.
“A-yuh. Two.
“I shot him.
“I say, ‘I shot him.’
“Well, it looked to me like he was gonna make it, so, to protect ya bet, I shot him ’fore he evah reached the door.
“A-yuh. Went down like a bucket o’ pits.
“Pits.”
The noise grew louder, far off but closing perilously. The chairs complained, and the windows rattled, and the stove door flew open in awe, a lump of coal shooting out like a pulled tooth. And still Jack kept on, chatting folksily with Guerney.
“Did it for you, Guerney—so’s ya could win ya bet.
“Ain’t gonna be no autopsy, Guerney. Why should there be?
“Really?
“Hmmmm…
“Well, if ya think that’s a problem, wait’ll I tell ya about the third fella.”
The noise was ear-splitting, the depot house seeming to fly apart like a circus house. And Austin hit the floor as if under enemy bombardment, assuming the fetal position with both hands covering his head.
“That’ll be the snow-pusher, Guerney. Got to hang up now. Congratulations on winnin’ all that money.
“The thutty-five cents, Guerney. What ya got to do now is invest it wisely. I hear Coca-Cola’s a good thing.”
Jack hung up and Austin got to his feet sheepishly, smiling at Jack as if to say, “Shucks, I knew it was the snow-pusher all along.”
“Fall down, did ya, Austin?”
“Yeah. Slightly.”
The lumbering snow-pusher came on, shoving a mountain of snow ahead of it that seemed to Austin to be an Alp. Everything shook and ratcheted, the stove door repeatedly slamming open and closed like a harpy speaking its mind, the floor bending, the door straining against its bolt as if trying to withstand the onslaught of whatever beast it was outside.
Jack was standing alongside his rolltop desk, assuring that faithful antique that there was nothing to fear. And even as he steadied the desk his head was grazed by a swinging light bulb. And the coffeepot swan-dived to the floor, spilling its contents as though shot in the stomach. And things dropped from shelves, and the stovepipe chattered.
Through the window Austin could see the smoke exploding straight up as the ancient engine grumbled past, much of the snow it pushed spilling sideways onto the station platform, practically to windowsill height. The engine came to a halt some twenty yards farther up the platform, though its boiler kept cooking, declaring that it had just so much time to tarry, there being other places it had to go, other track to clear, other buildings to intimidate.
“Come on, Austin—let’s see what we got.”
Austin again wrapped his blanket around his middle, like an Indian, and followed Jack. The big man pulled the door open and immediately sidestepped, like a matador, allowing the snow to tidal-wave into the room. He got none of it. Austin got all of it, up to his knees and over his boot rims.
Jack explained it as best he could, fighting off an incipient smile. “Up here, Austin, sometimes ya have to let the snow in afore you can get out.”
“I’ll try to remember.”
Austin followed Jack out onto the sun-garbed platform, literally shivering in his boots and looking like a frozen Navajo. He was confronted by a huge deposit of snow but was surprised at how warm the unimpeded sun made everything feel. It was actually warmer on the platform than it had been inside the depot.
At the far end of the platform a man, larger even than Jack Meeker, climbed down from the engine cabin. He landed hip-deep in the snow, and the snow gave way. On one shoulder he balanced a huge mailbag, on the other shoulder Austin’s duffle bag, neither burden seeming to hamper him as he giant-stepped his way to where Austin and Jack were standing.
“Mawnin’, Jack,” he called out, his voice a bellow that shook snow dust from nearby firs.
“Mawnin’, Martin,” Jack answered.
“See ya had some snow.”
“A-yuh. Last night. A bit.”
“I think this’ll be all of it.”
“Can’t tell. Always a little more comin’.”
“One way or anothah.”
“A-yuh.”
Austin listened to the witty exchange and almost gagged while wondering why it was always thought that America’s biggest men came from its Pacific Northwest. For right there, in Maine, he was looking at two behemoths whose size and strength had to surpass that of Samson, Goliath, Atlas and the Pittsburgh Steeler defensive line.
Martin was soon standing alongside them, both bags still on his shoulders like twin oaks. He gave Austin the casual once-over. “Ain’t goin’ to sell many of those blankets up here, Chief. Folks got their own.” He nudged Austin’s duffle bag with his ear. “This yours?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir—”
Martin flicked the duffle bag at Austin as if it were a bag of feathers, and Austin, unprepared, caught it amidships, staggering backward a fair distance before falling on his rear, in the snow, and rather unceremoniously.
“Good catch, Chief,” said Martin as he entered the depot house carrying only the mailbag. “Got two months’ mail here, Jack. Expectin’ anythin’ urgent?”
“Just my Playboy calendar.”
“Wait’ll ya see Miss January.”
“Burt Reynolds?”
“Athah Godfrey.”
Jack followed Martin in, paying no attention to Austin, who was pinned down in the snow by his own duffle bag, an ignominious position for a combat veteran.
He pushed the bag off and stood, shaking off the snow like a wet terrier, his temper growing like a Doberman. He put the duffle bag on his own shoulder and reentered the depot house, trying to summon up some small amount of lost dignity. Also he was mad as hell at being made sport of.
Maynard’s House Page 3