Railroad Man

by Alle Wells

  “Looks like you’ve done this before,” I said.

  Mrs. Jenkins’ lips curved. “I was thirty years old when I joined the Army Nurse Corps. At that time, I thought I’d be an old maid. Instead, I wound up a war widow. My husband died in an accident on the way to the base after the war. After that, I never went back to nursing.”

  She tied the bandage in a neat knot. “I’ve seen a lot of battle scars in my time. You’ll be fine in a couple of days. Did you and the missus have a spat?”

  I lifted the glass with my bandaged hand while she worked on the other hand.

  “Something like that,” I said bitterly, taking a swig of the whiskey.

  Mrs. Jenkins gathered up the bandages and put them away in the bathroom. “Well, that juice you’re drinking isn’t going to help. I’ll clean up this broken vase so you don’t cut yourself again.”

  I waved my white paw at her. “No. Don’t do that. I’ll sweep it into a dustpan. I’d like to keep it.”

  Mrs. Jenkins picked up two pieces of the broken pottery and held them together. “I can’t say that I blame you. It was a beautiful piece. I noticed it while I was cleaning your room. I could look at it and tell that it was made with love.”

  I took another gulp from the glass. I looked away so that she couldn’t see the pain on my face. “My cousin made it for me. She died yesterday. It was an accident like your husband’s death.”

  Mrs. Jenkins walked over and touched my shoulder. My body began to tremble. I clinched my teeth and set my jaw firmly to keep my emotions intact.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Life seems so unfair when our loved ones are taken from us unexpectedly. Time will heal. Have you ever heard that?”

  I nodded. “Yes. She said that to me when my little girl died.”

  Mrs. Jenkins patted my shoulder and said, “We never forget them, but each day the hurting gets a little easier. That’s a fact. Now, you let go of that drink, and I’ll make you some breakfast.”

  “Can you make some grits?” I asked feebly.

  Mrs. Jenkins quickly tied the strings of a red and white checkered apron behind her back. Her country breakfast made me feel steady again. Having her around made the house feel like a home. Flo didn’t have it in her to do that. I thought about how nice it would be to come home to a clean house, good food, and a nice lady like Mrs. Jenkins.

  I looked out the kitchen window. A Red-headed Woodpecker tapping on the neighbor’s tree caught my eye. I gulped the chicory coffee she’d made and asked, “Mrs. Jenkins, do you like birds?”

  She spun around. “I love birds. How did you know?”

  I shrugged. “Just a hunch. I like birds, too. Mrs. Jenkins, how would you like to have a full time job?”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat next to me at the kitchen table. “Well, I do need a job, but I’m wondering what your missus will have to say about that.”

  “Don’t mind her. You will work for me. I’d like for you to keep the house looking nice and cook for me when I’m home on the weekends. You could come in a few hours every day during the week, as you see fit. I’d like for you to give me a weekly report on what goes on around here. Do you think you can do that?”

  Mrs. Jenkins blew into the hot coffee and said, “I’d love to work for you, but I don’t know about her.”

  I placed my bandaged hand on her shoulder. “I promise that I’ll make it worth your while.”

  She nodded. “Fair enough.”

  Mrs. Jenkins craned her neck to look out the window and smiled. “Maybe we could put a birdfeeder in front of that little tree in the backyard. Maybe you could call me Jeannie.”

  I took a two-week leave from work and asked for a transfer to any freight line leaving Atlanta. During that time, Jeannie settled into her new job. She sat with me in the kitchen every morning while I ate breakfast. My hands healed quickly and my state of mind improved under Jeannie’s care. She took great pride in wearing the new gray and white uniforms I provided. She handled the shopping, the laundry, and the cooking. I almost smiled when she shared her first telephone conversation with Sophia.

  “MacDonald residence,” she said firmly.

  “Who is this?” Sophia demanded.

  “I’m Mr. MacDonald’s housekeeper. How can I help you?”

  Sophia stuttered. “I need to speak to Mickey, uh, Mr. MacDonald. Is he there?”

  Jeannie poised a pen in hand. “He’s not available now. May I take a message?”

  Jeannie said that Sophia’s voice rose to a high soprano tone. “You can tell him that I’m coming over – today.”

  Later that day, Sophia was banging on the door. Jeannie opened the door and pointed to the doorbell. “Good afternoon, ma’am. We have a bell.”

  Sophia stiffened. “I know that. I used to live here. Where’s Mickey?”

  “He’s in the backyard putting up a birdfeeder.”

  Sophia nodded. “Thank you, Miss..?

  “Jeannie.”

  Sophia fiddled with her new purse. “Thank you, Jeannie.”

  I was sitting on a stool, hammering the birdfeeder to a pole, when Sophia loped across my backyard.

  “Hello, Mickey.”

  “Sophia.” I nodded but continued to work on the birdfeeder. My sister had changed over the years. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the kindness I loved about her when we were young. She had become haughty and bitter. Her manner and fondness for wearing the latest fashion reminded me of Flo.

  “Mickey, you’ve got to take Flo back. She’s been with me a little over a week now. I can’t afford to support her. And well, I’m tired of cleaning up after her. You have to take her back.”

  I put the birdfeeder on the ground next to the stool and looked at her. “Sophia, I’m not keeping her away. She left on her own. She can come back on her own.”

  Sophia shuffled her high heels on the grass. “Well, she’s still pretty upset about you carrying on with Marianne.”

  I stood up and looked down at my older sister with clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever mention her name! You betrayed her and me. She didn’t deserve that. Don’t you ever speak of her in my presence again.”

  Sophia became very fidgety. “Well, Flo said that she’ll come back, forgive and forget, if you’ll buy a television.”

  “A television?”

  I’d never thought about having a television. I had seen them in the shop windows downtown but never saw the use in having one. Sophia walked off saying, “She said to call her when it arrives.”

  ***

  I solved a lot of my problems during that two week leave. Jeannie provided a nice home for me and someone to talk to. Buying the television for Flo gave her something to do for the next twenty years. Jeannie reported that Flo slept late when she didn’t have an appointment at the beauty parlor. She watched soap operas from noon until four o’clock every day. After that, she watched game shows. Jeannie and I rigged up a small window fan in the living room that ran, even in the wintertime, to let Flo’s cigarette smoke drift out of the house.

  Flo didn’t complain about Jeannie’s control over her household. She was happy watching the television, shopping, and going out to eat with Sophia in the evenings. Flo and I slept in separate rooms and lived separate lives in the same house. Jeannie and I planted shrubbery and flowers in the yard. We put some lawn furniture in the backyard to sit in when we got tired. We sat in the kitchen, talked, and watched the birds out the back window. Sometimes Flo joined us in the kitchen, but she quickly grew tired of our conversation and returned to the television.

  I finished the last years of my career with the railroad on an eastbound line to Savannah. I’d spent so many years in the foothills that the flat, coastal plains were a refreshing site. During the summer months along my coastal run, I’d fish off a pier in the evenings and watch the tide roll in. I ran the eastern line until 1974 when I retired from the railroad with a handshake and a plaque commemorating my distinguished service. The railroad provided me with a good liv
ing and a good retirement. Being away from home during the week helped me put up with what was lacking there.

  After my retirement, Jeannie had a stroke and now lives in a nursing home. I take her some flowers on my weekly visit, a small payment to the woman who saved a broken man.

  Chapter XIII

  The Secret Place

  1978

  The boy shakes my shoulder. “Mr. MacDonald, your rental car is outside.”

  I open my eyes to the bright sun shining through the gleaming Texaco window. My body had become stiff sleeping in the metal chair. The boy extends a hand to help me up. I don’t refuse. I nod, say thanks, and wave goodbye to my old buddy talking on the phone.

  A bright yellow Ford Pinto waits for me in front of Jack’s station. I wish they hadn’t sent a compact or a Ford. I’m a GM man; all railroad men are. I transfer the dirty laundry from my darn good-looking Buick to the tin can. The car putts through the drive-thru window of the laundromat and then to Hardees. I order a double serving of grits and two of their homemade biscuits.

  I park the tin can in front of my garage door. I follow the cement walk that leads to the small basement door. I unlock the dead bolt and flip on the light. Twenty years ago, I removed the steam furnace and covered the cement block walls with paneling. I boarded up the door that led to the main floor of the house, built a half-bath and a kitchenette along the outside wall.

  A wooden plaque engraved with the word “Riverside” hangs over the door. Tattered netting covers a safari hat hanging from a hook next to the door. I walk across the blue and red diamond-patterned rug and set my breakfast on the countertop underneath the window overlooking the backyard. House Finches, Chickadees, and Titmice twitter around the birdfeeder outside the window.

  I fill the pot with water from the sink, pour some chicory coffee in the percolator basket, and plug it in. I rake the grits into a dark blue bowl etched in an Indian design and heat them in the microwave oven. When the coffee is done, I wrap a blue and yellow shawl with a zigzagged design over my shoulders and lean back in the recliner. The landscape of Tern Lake catches my eye. I’ve never been back to Tern Lake since Marianne died. I heard that the State of Alabama turned it into a park. She would like that.

  I eat the grits and biscuits in peace, surveying the walls around me. My little Dottie’s portraits line the wall in front of me. Across from her, a Blue Heron stands on one foot holding a small fish in his bright yellow beak. Next to him a tiny red, white, and blue Kingfisher sits erect and alert on a bare tree branch. Lining the walls are sturdy wooden shelves that display an array of brightly painted pottery etched in delicate floral designs. My own electric pottery wheel sits on a small table below with pieces of pottery in various stages waiting to be fired in the gas oven.

  I click the remote connected to a replica of the Appalachian foothills and valleys of the Georgia-Alabama Line.

  “Choo-choo!” I say softly as the whistle blows.

  Steam puffs from the smokestack as the Baldwin 534 leaves a 1930 model of the Terminal Station. The brakeman waits for a signal from the yard master standing in the center of the yard to clear the way. A flagman waving a bright red flag hangs at a ninety degree angle from the railing of the caboose. Next to the rail, toy people huddle by a campfire behind a clump of miniature trees. A uniformed conductor waves from inside the gold-plated dining car of a passenger train in the Golden Age of the Railroad. Whistle stops made from Popsicle sticks, painted red and trimmed in green, wait around each bend. At the stick building marked Huntsville Station, a beautiful redhead stands next to an old Model T and waits for her railroad man.

  This is my secret place. Every man needs one.

  The End

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to my editor and friend, S. M. Ray, and Mr. John Wagoner, Interpretive Volunteer at the North Carolina Transportation Museum. Digital research sites are listed below.

  Lisa’s Nostalgia Café – the 1930’s

  http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1938.html

  http://railga.com/Depots/atlterminal.html

  http://whatwasthere.com/browse.aspx#!/ll/33.764232635498,-84.38247680664062/zoom/7/

  http://www.midcenturyhomestyle.com/inside/bathrooms/1940s/gallery/page08.htm

  http://railroadjobguide.info/railroad-carmen-job-description/

  http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/ogh/Atlanta,_Georgia_(1900-2000)

  http://atlantahighered.org/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=1

  http://www.utu.org/worksite/about_utu/local_chairmans_manual/chairmans_manual.htm

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Rolling_Mill

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbagetown_(Atlanta)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Bag_and_Cotton_Mills

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Atlanta_fire_of_1917

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwinnett_County,_Georgia

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirkwood_(Atlanta)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_radio

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Man%27s_Magazine

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Station_(Atlanta)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Lamour

  https://sites.google.com/site/historyofrrunions/home/history-1900-s

  http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos244.htm

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_locomotive

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery

  http://www.ehow.com/how_6167180_combine-clay-sand-making-pottery.html

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter's_wheel

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle

  http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/webdocs/df1_loom.pdf

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower