Railroad Man

by Alle Wells

  I took a swig from my Tru-Ade bottle. “Jim, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  ***

  The passenger train stopped at the Huntsville station ten minutes before five. She waited for me, leaning against a dark green Ford truck waiting beside the station. Her lean body looked like a teenager’s in Wrangler blue jeans, a plaid western-style shirt, and boots. A bright red scarf tied snugly around her neck set the thick red hair on her shoulders afire. I thought of all the times I’d stood outside that building, remembering the last time I saw her, wondering if I’d ever see her again.

  An hour later, I sat at Marianne’s kitchen table eating a bowl of collard greens and a block of cornbread. She lived four miles off the main road in a plain A-frame farmhouse with a wide front porch. Her kitchen appliances dated back to the days when I used to visit her parents’ home. I felt the old resentment toward Uncle Johnny Mack rise in me when I saw how she lived and thought about all I could have given her. While Flo sat in a comfortable home with modern conveniences, Marianne had to make do in a cold, old farmhouse.

  Marianne came in the back door. She warmed her hands over the woodstove and poured a cup of coffee. She sat across from me, refilled my cup, and pulled a thick wrap around her shoulders. The wrap was blue and yellow; the zigzagged pattern reminded me of something Indians would wear in the cowboy movies.

  “Ooo, it’s cold out there. The dogs are fed and settled in their pen for the night. I pen them up because a bobcat prowls around here at night.”

  “Yeah, you’re pretty far from the main road. Don’t you get scared out here?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I never really thought about it.”

  I looked at the steam rise from the warm cup and form a vapor as it hit the cold air. “I thought your husband had money.”

  Marianne half-smiled. “No. He had land.”

  “How do you live?”

  Marianne jumped up and opened a cabinet. “Hey, can I get you anything else? I have some oatmeal cookies I baked yesterday.”

  I nodded. “Sure, I’ll take one. But, Marianne, how do you live?”

  Marianne scrunched her forehead and said, “Mickey, why do you care about how I live? You call me up out of the blue and ask me to meet you. Well, you’re here. It ain’t Atlanta, but I’m happy to share what I have.”

  I waved my hand gently. “Oh, no, no. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I’m just concerned, that’s all.”

  Marianne returned to the table and plopped a jar the color of Georgia clay between us. “I have two tenants who rent the land. They grow tobacco and corn. It’s enough to pay the taxes and make ends meet. I don’t need a lot to live. I grow my own food and live on the land that was left to me.”

  She pulled a cookie from the jar, and I did, too. I inspected the handles that stuck out like ears on each side. Oval eyes, a pug nose, and a mouth outlined on the front laughed at me. I twirled the jar around to find a curly tail springing up in the back.

  I chuckled. “Did you make this?”

  She blushed and flashed her perfect teeth. “Yep. That was what I call an experiment.”

  I looked closer. “A monkey, right?”

  Marianne laughed out loud this time. “I’m glad you can, at least, tell what it is. I’ve made better pieces.”

  We looked at each other, ate cookies, and drank our coffee in silence. I reached over and wound one of her red curls around my finger. It fell loose on the wrap. She looked at the table, embarrassed. I pulled my hand away.

  “That’s an interesting wrap. It reminds me of something you’d see in a cowboy movie. I like cowboy movies.”

  Marianne smiled. “Me, too.”

  She pulled the wrap tighter. “I made it. I have a loom. Clyde built it for me. Come on. I’ll show you the rug I made for the sitting room.”

  Across the drafty hallway, Marianne opened the door to a sitting room and an adjoining bedroom heated by an oil stove. The bright colors of the warm room drew me in. A diamond-patterned rug covered the floor. It was set in alternating colors of blue and rust on a gold background. I reached down to touch the fabric and felt the weight of it.

  “Marianne, this is beautiful. I can’t believe you made this, that anyone could make something like this. How long did it take you to make it?”

  Marianne looked at the rug as if searching for the answer. “I worked on it about three months in my spare time.”

  I looked up at the pieces of pottery in different shapes and sizes scattered around the room. She painted vases with linking vines and intricate floral designs. The pots displayed bold splashes of color.

  I smiled, feeling as proud as I would have if they had been my own work. “This must be your work.”

  Marianne bit her bottom lip the way I remembered her doing so many years before. She nodded.

  I touched a raised flower, a pink dogwood bloom on a sapphire pot. I turned to see a wall covered in watercolor prints of Tern Lake carefully protected under glass frames. I shook my head, trying to find words to describe the beautiful artwork that filled the room.

  “It’s just, just lovely. You are so talented. Mother said you’d find a way to be happy here. I see that she was right.”

  Marianne nodded. “Thank you. I have found happiness here.”

  I slept in a cold room that night at Marianne’s, but her warm presence in the house made the old farmhouse feel like home. Every evening that week, she waited for me at the Huntsville station. The next two nights, we stopped at a roadside café to get a bite to eat. We drank coffee and got to know each other again until the owner put the closed sign in the front window. The last night, we saw a cowboy movie and laughed all the way home.

  She was up and dressed at dawn every morning. The smell of fresh coffee and a homemade breakfast led my nose to the kitchen.

  “Hey there,” she said, setting a plate of food in front of me.

  “Hey,” I said, just above a whisper.

  I washed the country ham, hot grits, and biscuits down with old-fashioned chicory coffee. “You know, I don’t get food like this in Atlanta. I might just decide to stay.”

  Marianne refilled my cup. “Oh, Mickey. You’re teasing me. But, I have to admit that I’m enjoying your company.”

  “Say, how about I stay just for the weekend?”

  Her strawberry colored curls moved as she shook her head. “Oh, no. What will Flo think?”

  I threw my hands in the air and pled my case. “She’ll think I’m working. I’ll call and make sure it’s okay. How’s that?”

  Marianne turned toward the sink and looked out the window. She seemed to be preoccupied with her thoughts, but said, “Well, if you’re sure. I don’t want to cause any trouble between you two.”

  I gulped the last of my coffee. “Marianne. There’s been nothing but trouble between Flo and me for a long time. Nothing you do or don’t do will change that. I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me stay just for the weekend.”

  I gave her my most endearing smile. “I want to see how you make that beautiful pottery. Maybe we can go bird watching at Tern Lake like we used to. What do you say to that?”

  She twisted her full lips in a playful half-smile, half-frown. She reached into the pocket of her coat that hung on a peg behind the back door and pulled out the truck key that dangled from a rabbit’s foot chain. “Well, you have a big day ahead of you. Why don’t you just take the truck? I’ll see you this evening.”

  The 1943 pickup was a rough ride and even harder to drive. Marianne had grown into a remarkable woman, capable of handling the harder side of life. Yet her grace and beauty remained despite her hardship or maybe because of it. Either way, I knew that I had to be part of her life even if it was only for one weekend.

  During the lunch break, I dialed my home number from the burger joint on Rossville. Ackerman sat at our booth staring a hole through me. I gave him a hard look back. Ackerman had no way of knowing how many nights I had dreamed of this opportunity. He wasn’t there to see my heart
ripped from my body when she walked away from me nearly twenty years ago at the Huntsville station. I refused to accept his judgment on me for going back to the only person I’d wanted my whole life.

  Flo kept the roads hot during the day. I said a prayer of thanks when she answered. “Hey, I’m just calling to let you know I won’t be coming home this weekend. Something’s brewing here that I can’t get away from. As a matter of fact, I don’t know when they’ll let me come home. It may be a week or maybe two.”

  “Awright,” she answered.

  I noticed that Flo’s diction had been slipping lately. But I heard it more clearly that day.

  “Is that okay with you, Flo? You’re going to be fine, right?”

  “Right. Bye now.”

  I held the handset for a moment after the click just to make sure she was gone. Ackerman’s eyes followed me back to the booth.

  I shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s fine with her. She won’t even know I’m gone. She’s got the checkbook and the car. What else could she want?” I said, chuckling at my joke.

  Ackerman shrugged his thick shoulders back at me and bit into his burger.

  ***

  The next morning, I sat at Marianne’s kitchen table again warming my mouth on one of her delicious biscuits. She stood at the old black and white stove minding the grits. She called back to me.

  “So, you want to throw some pottery today? The ground is soft after several days of rain. I read in the Farmer’s Almanac that the temperature will be up around sixty-five.”

  I teased her. “Yeah, I can’t see my breath this morning.”

  She brought over two dark blue bowls filled with grits. The bowls, etched in an Indian design around the rim, matched the coffee cup in front of me. Marianne sat down and said, “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in the country. When I was little, I wondered what life was like in the city. I’d beg to go visit y’all so that I could see Atlanta, but Papa wouldn’t let me.”

  I sat listening to the silence, thinking about how different life was there; not even the faintest sound of a distant engine whistle could be heard. I sipped the chicory coffee from the blue cup and mulled over the question I’d always wanted to ask her. “Did you ever hold it against him? Keeping us apart, I mean.”

  She dipped a spoon into a tub of fresh cream butter and swirled it into her grits. “I was a normal teenager in love. Yes, I guess I pouted around for a while. I thought Papa’s way was law back then. As I got older, I realized that he’s just another person with flaws like the rest of us. Sometimes I wished that I’d run off with you that day. That’s why I went to the funeral. I felt like I had to see you one more time, at least. But when I got there, I realized it was the wrong time. I felt awkward. I thought I’d made a mistake.”

  “If you hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have had the courage to call and ask you to pick me up.”

  She sat looking at me with her crooked smile, her elbow on the table, her head braced with her fist. “Well, enough of that. Are you ready to sling some mud?”

  I laughed. “When you put it that way, I’m not too sure.”

  Marianne loaded two five-gallon buckets, one with a flat screen top, and two long handled shovels into the bed of the pickup truck. She jumped in the cab wearing a pair of knee-high rubber boots and dropped the second pair next to my feet.

  “These were Clyde’s. Put them on over your shoes.”

  She smiled at my puzzled look. “You’ll need them where we’re going.”

  Marianne drove down a wooded path until we came to the Tennessee River trestle. We stopped at the bottom near the riverbed. I pulled on the boots and leaned on the side of the truck looking at the trestle high above our heads.

  “Hey, remember when me and your brothers used to jump off that trestle? See how high that thing is? I’d never try that now. We were crazy kids, huh?”

  “Yep. You boys used to scare me to death doing that. Sometimes I held my breath waiting to see your heads reach the surface.”

  I looked at the river sparkle in the sun. It ran fast and hard over the rocky bank. “This is a beautiful place. Is this your land, too?”

  Marianne nodded. “This is what Papa wanted for me. He always valued land above everything else. He thought he was doing what was best for me.”

  “How much do you have?”

  Marianne looked at the clear sky above us, counting the acreage in her head. “Five hundred and fifteen acres.”

  I looked at the river and the land past it. “Whew, that’s a lot of land.”

  She interrupted. “But, keep in mind that over two hundred acres of that land is wetlands and water. There are two smaller lakes besides Tern Lake, and the river winds through the land. That still leaves plenty of good farmland, and there’s never a water shortage.”

  We both laughed. She continued, “I loved you so much, Mickey. I still do. But after you went back to Atlanta, and Papa was so dead set against us being together, this didn’t seem like a bad option. I’ve spent the last eighteen years doing as I please. Clyde wasn’t much of a mate, but he encouraged my painting and anything else I wanted to do. He wanted me to be happy.”

  Marianne traced a line in the sand with the toe of her shoe. “Most of the time he was more like a father to me than a husband. He was good to me.”

  I watched her every move down to the tiny twitch in her face when she talked about Clyde Kilmer. “I’m glad you’ve had a good life. Just hearing you say that you love me is all I need to make me happy.”

  Marianne looked at me out the corner of her eye and smiled her crooked smile. She pulled a shovel from the truck bed and handed it to me.

  “Now, let’s get to work.”

  She grabbed the other shovel and a bucket and walked to the riverbank. Marianne scooped up a handful of red mud with her bare hand. “A piece of pottery starts here. I can tell by the feel of the clay if it will hold together. This is a good texture. The rain over the past few days helped a lot. Let’s dig here around the bank where the ground is soft.”

  By the time the bucket was full, Marianne’s face was splattered with red mud.

  I laughed and pointed at her face. “Now, I see what you meant by slinging mud.”

  “Too bad you can’t see your own face,” she teased back.

  Marianne grabbed the bucket handle. I stepped forward to take it from her. “Let me. It’s heavy.”

  I looked up. Her face was inches away from mine. Her lips met mine as if they had been waiting for the moment. My mouth clung to her full lips. The feeling, dead inside me for twenty years, came alive. The kiss was easy, the way our love had been when we were young. The power she held over me hadn’t died.

  We pulled away but our eyes held on to the feeling we couldn’t ignore. I felt light-headed, but safe and grounded when I was with her. My face felt as if it was smiling from the inside out. I asked, “May I carry this for you?”

  She nodded. I jerked the metal handle. The bucket barely moved. “Dang! That’s heavy. Can you carry this?”

  Marianne’s eyes stayed glued to my face as she bent her knees slightly and lifted the bucket.

  I grabbed the handle again. “Wait a minute. Let me try that again or I’ll never live this one down.” This time I used my leg muscles to lift the bucket of mud the way she had done. Marianne had a good laugh while I strained under its weight.

  I lugged the bucket into the back of the truck. “What now, Master?”

  She dismissed me with a playful laugh and pulled on a pair of elbow length rubber gloves. Then, she lifted the bucket with the sifter on top out of the truck bed. “Now you’ll see why you need those boots.”

  “Oh, I thought I already experienced that walking through the mud.”

  Marianne waded into the cold water, scooped the fine white sand from the riverbed, and poured it through the sifter. She talked as she worked. “By sifting the sand, we’re left with fine silt to mix with the clay. The sand keeps the pottery from shrinking when it’s fired.”
<
br />   “That water is cold, Marianne. You might get sick wading around in there.”

  Marianne laughed at me. “You’re a sissy!”

  I grabbed the bucket for her as she climbed onto the bank. It weighed less than the clay bucket. Marianne pulled off her gloves and boots and wrapped herself in a thick, woven blanket.

  “Do you mind driving back since you didn’t get wet?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I smiled, jumping into the truck. The truck bumped and bucked back down the path.

  “You should have a better vehicle. This truck has seen better days.”

  “Mickey, would you quit complaining about every little thing? There’s nothing wrong with this truck. Besides, if it’s been abused, it’s my fault for bumping up and down these paths all the time.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was to get on Marianne’s bad side. I decided it might be best to keep my opinions about her lifestyle to myself.

  When we came to the house, she said, “You can park in front of the shop behind the house.”

  She opened the door to a long, narrow building with two wide windows in front and a large creek rock chimney running up one side. I set the buckets of sand and mud inside on the concrete floor. A free-standing sink on legs stood next to the door. Tables holding pottery in various stages and jars of paint lined the back wall. Marianne opened one of two cast iron doors on either side of a large fireplace. Inside the oven, a ceramic box sat on a gridiron rack. The oven was heated from a compartment below it that burned wood.

  I could hear the excitement and pride in her voice as she explained, “Here are the kilns. Clyde and his friend designed this system. It’s much bigger than others I’ve seen. See, I can fire several pieces at the same time. I guess you’ve noticed that I made all my dishes here.”

  Marianne sat on the wooden frame attached to a table built around a large spool in the middle of the room. She spun a large stone wheel underneath the table with her foot.

  I bent over and inspected the rod that ran from top to bottom. “I see. It works like a flywheel. The large wheel makes the small wheel turn twice as fast.”