Mercy Train

by Rae Meadows

  “Are you good with babies?” a woman asked the meek girl, who looked down and nodded. The girl was fourteen, with a heavy bosom and a high forehead, and Violet had not yet heard her speak.

  “Okay, then,” the woman said. “I’ll fill out the application for you. Number seventeen.” She had not asked the girl’s name.

  “Illinois will not be a dumping ground for the filth of New York City!” a man in a suit yelled from the crowd. “Go back where you came from!”

  The kids looked up, but they had all heard much worse as immigrants or orphans or street urchins. Mrs. Comstock bustled among the visitors, making assurances. As the man was escorted out of the hall he looked back, and Violet stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Ain’t you a picture,” a man said to her. His face was sunburned and creased, his hair greasy. “Open your mouth.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, open your mouth. I need to make sure you ain’t sickly. I got a farm to run. Let me see your teeth.”

  Violet went to speak, and he jammed his sour tobacco-stained fingers in her mouth to feel around.

  She gagged and then bit down as hard as she could, grinding his knuckle between her teeth before he could get his hand out, screaming. He hit her face with the back of his other hand and knocked her to the floor. Mrs. Comstock ran over, waving her hands.

  “How dare you hit this child?” she said. “I must ask you to leave, sir.”

  “She bit me,” he said, holding up a bloody finger.

  “Violet?” she asked.

  Violet stared at the man with a razor blade of hatred and then kicked him in the shin as hard as she could. She ran to the door, pushing her way through the people, not thinking about where she would go or how, just that she had to get away and she was better off alone. She flung the door open and leaped out of the hall. But once outside, she was shocked by rain like she had never before seen, hitting her head like pebbles, the wind slapping her wet dress around her legs. The sky was tinged a menacing tornado yellow.

  She retreated and sat along the wall of the building under the overhang of the roof, which did little to shield her from the pelting rain. No one would care if the earth opened up and she fell in. There was nowhere for her to go.

  A while later the door to the meeting hall creaked open. Expecting Mrs. Comstock, Violet looked away. But it was the boy Frank, his ears too big, his jacket too small. He sat down next to her and tucked his knees to his chest.

  “It’s over?” she asked.

  He nodded. “There’s a bunch of us left. No one even talked to me.”

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Eleven,” he said.

  “Yeah, me too. I guess we’re too old for out here.”

  “Too young for everything else.”

  “Where’d you live before?”

  “Five Points.”

  “Fourth.”

  He nodded. “Miss it?”

  “A little. You?”

  “I didn’t want to go. I got parents. They’s in the poorhouse. That’s why I went on the train. This whole business is for the birds.”

  They sat without talking, watching the rain. She couldn’t tell him about her mother, because then she’d have to admit that Lilibeth could have kept her but chose to give her away. Instead, she thought about the night before she’d gone into the Home, running around with Nino and the other boys. Before she’d ever heard of the orphan trains.

  * * *

  They had jumped off the back of the streetcar before it stopped, before the conductor could come after them, the electric lights of the theater signs hazy beacons above them. They had whooped and darted out of the street, one behind the other.

  “Hey,” Violet said, pointing up, as they stopped to catch their breaths. “Look.”

  “What I tell you?” Buck said, bobbing his small head, his teeth resting on his bottom lip. “I know the way. I told you I know it.”

  In front of them the Moorish tower rose up to a colonnade and niche arches, topped by a magnificent dome, with the word CASINO a collar of winking lights at its base. Violet had never seen anything like it, had never even been uptown. She felt something expand in her chest, a warm balloon pushing against her ribs.

  “Every man for himself, fellas,” Jimmy said, skirting down 39th Street.

  Violet worked her fingers, sore from gripping the ledge of the streetcar, and breathed in the foggy air, redolent with the scent of hay and manure from the Horse Exchange a few blocks north. Despite the carnival lights all around them, there was a quiet pent-up stillness—the night’s shows had already begun, and patrons were packed snugly inside the theaters.

  Charlie stood next to her on the sidewalk and rocked on his heels. He smelled fishy, like putrid fat.

  “Any ideas?” he asked.

  Nino’s large hands hung down at his sides like sacks of flour. He made fists and unclenched them as he thought.

  “I ain’t waiting around for you dillydalliers,” Buck said. “I aim to see maidens.”

  He was scrawny, with a mouselike quickness, and Violet wouldn’t have been surprised if he nibbled his way inside with those teeth.

  “Go on, then,” Violet said.

  “Who made you the biggest toad in the puddle?” Buck asked, looking for backup from any of the others.

  “Ribbit,” she said, planting her hands on her hips.

  “Screw you and your mother,” Buck said.

  Charlie laughed, crinkling his chubby face. “You wish,” he said.

  Buck wagged his head and skittered off down Broadway in a huff.

  It had been Violet’s idea for them to come up here, her mother having talked about Florodora with breathless delight since Reginald Smith had taken her to see it. But everyone knew about the Florodora girls anyway, a sextet of beauties exactly the same height and weight with the same glamorous pile of dark hair. Violet touched her own unruly mane, thick and long, held back from her face with a blue satin ribbon she had found that morning tied around her mother’s wrist.

  “I don’t know,” Nino said. “I never been inside one of these places.”

  “What if we end up on the stage or something,” Charlie said.

  Violet laughed. “Maybe you’d get a girlfriend out of it,” she said. “If she doesn’t faint from a whiff of you.”

  “Shut up, Kentucky. What do you know about anything?” Charlie said.

  They could hear drums and cymbals from the orchestra, the serpentine cry of a violin.

  They walked down 39th Street to the end of the theater, where it was darker, where the fire escape made a lightning bolt down the side of the building.

  “Get up here,” Nino said to Violet. “Try to grab the ladder.”

  Violet climbed up, planting her feet on Nino’s muscled shoulders. He held her calves next to his ears. She reached a hand for the bottom rung, bobbling to maintain her balance, her fingers grazing the cold metal. Her dress hiked up above her knees as she stretched, the night cold against her legs.

  “Higher,” she said, the bar just out of reach. “Push me up.”

  “I can’t grow none,” Nino said.

  She stood for a moment longer and then jumped. Her hands landed squarely on the pigeon-shit-crusted lowest bar, and the ladder groaned and rolled out with her weight until it stopped with a jolt, dangling her just above the sidewalk. She hopped down, wiping her palms on the front of her coat.

  “You could have told me,” Nino said, rubbing his shoulders. “Your head would have split open like a watermelon if you missed.”

  “I got it, didn’t I?” Violet asked, punching his arm.

  Nino went up first, then Violet, then Charlie, who pulled the ladder up behind them.

  “O tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?”

  “There are a few, kind sir, but simple girls, and proper too.”

  The song from the theater was tinny but recognizable as they reached the last stairwell. Violet and Nino cracked open the d
oor—they’d lost Charlie somewhere on the way down—and found themselves in a room of gold. Intricate inlaid patterns covered the walls, from the marble floor all the way across the span of the high arched ceiling, shimmering in the low orange light of the filigreed wall sconces.

  Violet gasped. The room glowed. Nino flicked his eyes around, uncertain. The opulence made them momentarily shy with each other. They were both trying to pretend they weren’t in awe, but neither could think of what to say to deflate the otherworldliness of the vestibule. Finally, Nino motioned toward the empty ticket booth and the entrance.

  There was no one to keep them out of the theater. The ushers were all watching the show, the biggest thing to hit New York since the century turned a few months before. Violet and Nino squeezed through a door and then stepped around purple velvet curtains. She held her breath as they slipped in behind hundreds of people shoulder-to-shoulder in their seats. Ahead of them in a blaze of light was the magnificent stage. There they were, the six perfectly sized Florodora girls with their ruffled white dresses and black sashes and large befeathered hats, each of them with a man in a morning suit and top hat on her arm.

  “On bended knee, if I lov’d you, would you tell me what I ought to do?” the ladies sang, their voices like tinkling bells.

  “Then why not me?” the men answered.

  “Yes, I must love someone, really, and it might as well be you!”

  The audience erupted in a boom of laughter and applause. A group of sailors near the back whistled through their fingers.

  Music from the orchestra pit swelled up into the theater, as the Florodora girls opened white parasols and spun away from the men, their skirts lifting just enough to see their ankles.

  Violet glanced at Nino, who stared, rapt, at the stage. The theater was warm with bodies and lights, the smell of tobacco mixed with something dry and clean like her mother’s face powder.

  “What’s it about?” Nino whispered, nodding toward the stage.

  “My mama said something about perfume. I don’t know,” Violet said. “They’re on an island.”

  “Let’s go there,” he said.

  Violet did not want the night to end, could not tell Nino that, come daybreak, her mother would deliver her to the Home.

  “I don’t know what else to do with you, Vi,” her mother had said, her gaze darting around as if looking for a place to hide.

  Violet had quickly tried to suture the hurt with a thread of defiance, stomping her foot. But when she’d looked at her mother’s ashamed face, she couldn’t say any of the mean things she’d wanted to.

  * * *

  They sat out the rest of the storm in the empty hall. Fourteen were now six: the ugly girl Nettie; the two teenage boys, Patrick and William—ruffians that no one seemed fooled by; big-eared Frank; Hans, a younger German boy who was sullen and pouty and spoke little English; and Violet.

  The Lutherans had provided lunch for them, and the children, worn and spent, ate the pickles and ham sandwiches on the floor. Mrs. Comstock left them to attend to particulars with the local agent. One of the older boys leaned against the wall and picked his teeth.

  “This here is crap,” Patrick said, his Irish accent coming through in his rs. “You think we’re stuck out here if no one takes us?”

  “They got to take us back,” William said. “Drop us off where they got us with a kick in the ass.”

  Violet, her dress still damp, watched the boys, weighing whether she should place her lot with theirs.

  “I heard of a boy who ran off from out here and hitched back on the freights,” Violet said.

  “You going to lead the way?” Patrick challenged.

  Violet shrugged.

  “They won’t take us back,” Nettie said. “You think they pay for our passage? They dump us in orphanages out here. Or jails.”

  Frank stopped chewing. “I got a ma and a pa,” he said.

  “We all got something,” Nettie said.

  The older boys snickered.

  “You sure do, Rosie,” Patrick said.

  “My name ain’t Rosie. It’s Nettie.”

  “Whatever you say, Rosie,” Violet said, making the boys laugh.

  Mrs. Comstock returned, carrying bottles of milk.

  “Wisconsin,” she said. “We’re going on to Wisconsin.”

  None of them knew where that was, and they no longer cared.

  “The tornado didn’t touch down so the trains are running again.”

  Mrs. Comstock looked older and muddled, in disarray. The blossoms of blood vessels on her face were more pronounced, the skin under her eyes puffy and gray.

  She looks like a crushed hat, Violet thought.

  “You got young ones, ma’am?” Nettie asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, laughing a little. “They’re grown. But I think of you all as mine in a way, you know.” She dabbed at the inside corners of her eyes with her handkerchief. “I have faith that you will all find families.”

  Violet clutched her Bible, because it was all she had. It felt better to have something than nothing at all.

  “I have a family,” Frank said, picking up where he’d left off.

  “They couldn’t care for you, dear,” Mrs. Comstock said quietly. “They did what was best.”

  “But no one’s picked me,” Frank said. “They wouldn’t have done it if they knew no one’d pick me.”

  The others looked at the floor, the ceiling, or their hands.

  “They didn’t have a choice,” Mrs. Comstock said firmly. “They’re condemned to the almshouse. You know they don’t take children there.” Her voice lost its resolve, and she knew she should not have pursued the point. The trip, her third for the Aid Society, she had told them, had eroded her. “Come, come, everyone. Gather yourselves.”

  She went to the door and looked out, squinting at the new sun.

  “The rain has stopped. We’d best make our way while we can.”

  * * *

  As they neared Wisconsin, there were more hills and more trees, fewer towns, and fewer people on the train. As travelers got off in Chicago and Rockford, only a smattering of new passengers took their places. The orphan train riders spread out in the empty car, and Mrs. Comstock slept with her bonnet atilt, her arm hugging her suitcase.

  Violet was restless and anxious. She smoothed the rumpled number 8 on her chest and then tried to scrape the dirt from underneath her fingernails. She leaned up to Patrick in the seat in front of her.

  “You think this will be the last stop?”

  He turned to her and shifted in his seat. “I heard the agent lady talking to one of the locals back at the hall. She said she’d be on her way home tonight. Alone.”

  “They don’t take us back,” Violet said.

  He shook his head. “I got to indenture myself. Or rob a bank or something. I’m too old for no orphanage.”

  Violet bit her lip. She was not too old for an orphanage.

  “There ain’t nothing you can do about it,” he said.

  “What about him?” she asked, pointing to William, the other older boy. “What’s he going to do?”

  “Don’t go sniffing up that one,” he said. “Pretty girl like you.”

  Across from them, Nettie started to cry.

  “Come on, Rosie,” Patrick sneered. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Nettie cinched her arms more tightly around her body and squared her face with the window.

  He chuckled. Violet sat back in her seat, and a heavy wave of sleepiness made her eyes droop. For the first time, she thought, What will be, will be. She felt like her grandmother’s old weather-beaten shack when the roof had finally caved in, like a tumbledown heap. She felt done in. There was no going back, and going forward, she was no longer who she had been.

  Although they had all taken their own seats in the empty car, Frank moved up and fell in next to Violet.

  “Who invited you?” she asked.

  He pulled on his reddening ear and kicked the seat.


  “It’s okay,” she said. “You can sit.”

  “I’ll go with you. We could get back like you said on the freights.”

  “What good are you to me?” But she said it softly, without bite. “We’re just kids,” she said, to make him feel better.

  He nodded and scraped at an oval mustard stain on his pants.

  A few seats up, the boy Hans muttered in German.

  “Shh, child,” Mrs. Comstock said. “They’ll be Germans in these parts. Don’t you worry.”

  But he couldn’t understand her and kept right on talking to himself.

  Violet hummed the tune from Florodora, and Frank gave a little smile.

  “I know that song,” Nettie said, turning from the window. “That’s the maiden song.”

  “No one asked you,” Violet said, glad to have someone to be mean to.

  * * *

  The night they had stolen into the theater, Nino had nudged her and flapped his elbow—a watch dangled from the pocket of the man at the end of the last row, from their angle, perfectly backlit by the stage lights, swinging like a golden yo-yo. Violet wanted to take in every last moment of the show, but an opportunity was an opportunity.

  “Next clapping,” he said. “Get ready.”

  When the audience bellowed its applause, Nino, already crouched behind the man’s seat, yanked the watch, tearing it from its clasp. Violet was out first, through the curtains and doors into the lobby, and then she shot through the front door, Nino barreling out behind her into the cold night, now alive with theatergoers whose shows had already let out. Violet ran, legs kicking behind her, hearing nothing but her breath and the snare drum of pumping blood in her ears, laughing, knocking into the flounce of skirts, Nino struggling to keep up, as they dashed across Broadway, dodging the uptown and downtown streetcars and the horse-drawn taxi carriages lined up to spirit the fancy people home.

  They walked south, and the crowd thinned out, night lamps casting murky yellow pools of light. Nino tossed the watch to Violet. It felt like a river stone in her hand, cold and worn smooth.

  “Ollie’ll take it,” he said. His newsboy captain was a willing unloader of stolen goods.