by Steve Cash
For the next week I went over a thousand scenarios in my mind, trying to imagine what to expect and what to do about it. Without being obvious, I tried to keep a close eye on Star and the baby Caine. I told her not to go anywhere without taking Opari or me along. I said it one too many times, however, because she finally said, “Okay, okay, Z, I heard you the first time.” Then she looked me squarely in the eye and asked, “Is there something wrong? Should I know something you’re not telling me?”
“No, no,” I lied. “Nothing is wrong, just stay close, that’s all.” She agreed, but I don’t think she ever believed me.
I also asked Owen Bramley if he had any knowledge of an “Orphan Train.” He had no idea what I was talking about, but Carolina did. She told me the Orphan Trains were exactly what their name implied and had been around since the 1850s. Foundlings, homeless children, and others abandoned by parents too poor to care for them were gathered from the streets and orphanages of New York and other eastern cities, then put aboard trains to be “placed out” to homes and families out west. If no one chose them by the end of the rail line, they were shipped back east to try again. The program had sounded good in theory, she said, but in practice was often another matter.
“Do you…know someone on the Orphan Train?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I might. I just wanted to know what it was, how it works.”
Carolina gave me a strange look. Thankfully, she did not pursue it further.
On the morning of the eleventh, a day before the train was due to arrive, I was pacing the floor of our bedroom and mumbling under my breath, though I was unaware of it. Opari told me to relax, settle down. “Go to a baseball game,” she said. I argued that it wouldn’t change anything, but it was a beautiful day and I followed her advice. Carolina, Jack, and I took a taxi to Sportsman’s Park that afternoon to watch the Cardinals play the Cincinnati Reds. The crowd was sparse and there was little to cheer about. Hod Eller of the Reds pitched a no-hitter, striking out eight men and walking only three. The Reds won 6–0 and played errorless baseball.
To our surprise, Mitch was waiting for us outside the ballpark in one of the big gray and brown Packards. “Get in!” he shouted through the open window. “Hurry—I’m double-parked.”
We climbed inside and I told him about the no-hitter. “That ain’t really a shock,” he said. “Branch Rickey’s got a long way to go before that club is any good.” He asked who was pitching for the Cardinals and I answered, “Frank ‘Jakie’ May.”
“Man, that cat’s only got two pitches,” Mitch said, then went silent.
“Well,” I asked finally, “what are they?”
He turned in his seat and grinned. “Hope and pray,” he said. I smiled to myself and had to agree.
I had found only one notice mentioning the Orphan Train coming through St. Louis, a piece in the Post-Dispatch that began, “Wanted: Homes for Children…These children are of various ages and sexes, having been thrown friendless upon the world…” The article ended with the information: “…train arriving at 3:00 P.M. in Delmar Station.” That was encouraging because Delmar Station was small and within walking distance from Carolina’s. It meant Opari and I could observe everything without the additional distractions and crowds of Union Station. Opari suggested we take Willie along, reasoning we might need an “adult” with us to explain our presence, if asked. I agreed and briefed Willie on the entire event, carefully leaving out any references to the Fleur-du-Mal.
We left Carolina’s house at approximately 2:00 P.M., saying we were on our way to the park.
“It looks like rain is coming,” Carolina warned.
“We’ve been wet before,” I said and tried to avoid her eyes. Even though I had good intentions in mind, I could feel the weight of my lies piling up.
We were outside the station by 2:30.
“Spread out and walk around,” I said, “and look for anything strange. Find all the entrances and exits. Let’s not go inside until the last minute.” I knew Opari and I carried our Stones, but if the Fleur-du-Mal was involved, I also knew they would be useless against him or any other Meq.
In a drizzling rain, the Orphan Train arrived at 3:00 sharp. A large group of people stood waiting at the platform, I suppose in order to get an early glimpse. The two dozen or so children on board were supposed to exit the train with their chaperones and then be taken to a nearby theater, where they would be lined up and looked over by families and individuals.
The three of us scanned the curious, leering crowd. “The faces of these Giza remind me of the Carthaginians,” Opari said sarcastically. “And believe me,” she added, “there was little welfare in their eyes.”
One by one, the children stepped down from the train. Most were in oversized coats and shoes. All were tired and hungry. Only the older children bothered to see anything around them. One in particular, about my height, wearing an old black raincoat and a knit cap pulled down to the eyes, seemed to scan the crowd incessantly. Their chaperones were mostly women and all were wearing wide-brimmed hats and long dresses. They looked worn down by the miles, the job, and the hard, wooden seats on the train.
“No bloody damn good, this,” Willie said quietly.
Opari leaned in close to my ear and whispered, “Why do you think Unai and Usoa have chosen such a train, my love?”
I thought back to Cornwall and Caitlin’s Ruby and what Trumoi-Meq had told me. Though he hadn’t been specific about location, he said Unai and Usoa crossed in the Zeharkatu in 1908. That meant they were in their early twenties now. I thought they must be acting as chaperones, probably through Reverend Bookbinder, but if Usoa had become delusional, that would be unlikely. I watched more and more children stepping down, orphans who had known no other life than scraping by on city streets. Carolina had said, in many instances the Orphan Train was the only chance those kids would have, but it didn’t look like much of a chance to me.
“Maybe someone chose it for them,” I said.
In any case, Unai and Usoa never departed the train. Minutes later, the chaperones had the children walking in straight lines and shuffling off to the theater to find out their fates. The crowd lingered, then drifted along behind. We waited. The two cars that comprised the Orphan Train stood empty and silent. In the distance, there was the grinding, gnashing sound of other cars being coupled and uncoupled.
“Do we want to be takin’ a look inside, Z?” Willie asked.
“I think we should,” I said and glanced at Opari. “But just us, Willie, okay?”
“I’ll be right outside, Z.” He winked and nodded toward the open door and the steps leading up to the train.
Slowly, I walked on board and turned to my right, entering the compartment ahead of Opari. I was expecting to feel the net descending, the sensation I always felt in the presence of evil. I felt nothing. Yet, there was a foreboding, a weight in the silence. Cheap magazines and dime novels lay scattered in the otherwise empty wooden seats. Odd bits of clothing and a dozen toys were strewn through the car—chipped, broken, missing parts. We walked to the end of the aisle. Neither of us said a word nor made a sound.
We crossed to the next car and as I reached out to open the door, I paused and Opari touched my arm from behind. I heard a strange sound coming from inside the compartment. My “ability” enabled me to hear a barely audible, irregular bubbling sound, somewhere to the back of the car.
“Do you hear that?” I whispered.
Opari pressed her fingers into my shoulder. “No, my love. I hear nothing, however…there is something…”
“What?”
“I smell death.”
I knew Opari’s instincts and “abilities” were vast and refined over millennia. She would not be mistaken and there was no more time for caution. I pushed the door open. Inside, it was a complete change from the other car. Deep shadows and occasional bars of light crisscrossed the long compartment. Over half the window shades were drawn. Blankets were bunched in most of the seats o
r thrown over the backrests. This was the car used for sleeping, probably because they didn’t have enough blankets for two cars.
We walked through, glancing in every seat on both sides of the aisle. Nothing. Then I heard the bubbling sound again. It was just in front of me, in the last seat on the left. I ran the few feet remaining and turned to look in the seat. What I saw made me sick with grief and rage and broke my heart with a deep blow.
It was Unai and Usoa. They were under a thin gray blanket. Unai was leaning against the window and Usoa was slumped in his lap. Unai looked asleep. On his head was a simple beret, the kind seen anywhere in Bilbao. He resembled my papa in his early twenties. He wore an old jacket and a white, collarless shirt underneath that was no longer white. It was drenched in crimson blood. Unai’s throat had been slashed just above the collar line, ear to ear. I couldn’t see Usoa’s face. Her throat had also been cut ear to ear, then someone turned her head at an angle and removed the lower part of her right ear, the one in which she wore the blue diamond. I bent over them to see if their backs had been carved with a rose, the Fleur-du-Mal’s signature. There was nothing on their backs, but he might not have had the time. The bubbling sound came from Usoa’s neck and the razor-thin slice across her throat.
“Lo egin bake,” Opari said, then repeated as she leaned down to turn Usoa’s head back to a natural position. I wasn’t sure of the exact meaning of the phrase, but I knew it had something to do with sleeping in peace.
Why? Why? It made no sense, no sense whatsoever. My mind raced. I thought back to the orphans as they stepped down from the train. I focused on every face. The kid with the knit cap and the long raincoat, the only one who kept scanning the crowd—it had to be him! Then another thought occurred to me—where was the child? Arrosa had said in her telegram the two-year-old child was with them. Even before I finished the thought, I heard the muffled breathing coming from inside the wall of the train, just three feet away, the very back of the compartment. I examined the wall and found the outline of a narrow door, cut to blend in with the tongue-and-groove of the wooden slats. I pressed in on one side and the door popped open.
Inside, there was a small, shallow closet. Two axes were strapped against the back wall, along with a warning written in white paint: “FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY!” Crouched on the floor directly below the warning, a boy about seven or eight years old stared up at me with brown eyes the size of half-dollars. His mouth was stuffed with what looked like a biscuit. It was wrapped in cloth and he held it there tightly with one hand, probably to keep from being heard. In his arms, he was cradling a two-year-old, and his other hand was over the child’s mouth and face. The child was lifeless with open, fixed eyes staring blankly into space, and they were neither green nor brown, but blue. The boy had most likely witnessed the murders through the crack in the wall, and in his fear and terror, he had accidentally suffocated the child while trying to save it. The boy was unaware the child was dead. He was in shock, and yet once he searched the eyes of Opari, he relaxed, releasing his grip and his own consciousness. He fell forward and I caught the dead child in my arms, just as the boy let go his hold.
“Quickly—” Opari said without hesitation. “This boy needs our attention and protection.”
“Owen Bramley,” I said. “We should get to Owen as soon as possible—for the boy, for everyone. Let’s find Willie. He can get us to Carolina’s and Owen will know how to keep this among ourselves.”
I picked up a spare blanket from one of the seats and wrapped the dead child in it, then draped another blanket over the bodies of Unai and Usoa.
Opari held the boy in her arms. He was nothing but skin and bones, one of the poorest of all the orphans on the Orphan Train. She led the way out, but turned once and asked me a question. “Is this the way he usually does it?”
“Yes,” I said. I could see the Fleur-du-Mal’s face, his smile. “Yes.”
Eight days later, on the twentieth of May, I was back at Sportsman’s Park. The Cardinals were out of town and the Browns were taking on the Boston Red Sox. It was Carolina who talked me into going. I had been extremely morose and moody, angry and defensive, abusive to everyone for the whole week after we found Unai and Usoa. They were Egizahar Meq, friends of my own mama and papa, and had crossed in the Zeharkatu for one reason only—to be happy. They had lived long, fruitful lives, only to die in delusion and madness, betrayed by one of their own. I could not reconcile it or place it anywhere in my mind, and Opari, my Ameq, could not console me, though she tried in every way possible. I also feared greatly for the baby Caine. The Fleur-du-Mal’s obsessions were too close once again, and who knows what he had in mind for tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.
Owen Bramley had, indeed, taken care of all loose ends, including the police and the newspapers. The murders, the death of the child, and the discovery of the orphan boy were never mentioned in the news or in a police report. Carolina had requested to be the orphan boy’s guardian for as long as he liked, and he was to live in the big house, in Georgia’s piano room if need be, whatever it took to keep him from returning to the Orphan Train. The boy was mute, as Carolina’s sister Georgia had been, and whether the boy’s condition was from the trauma of events, or illness, or even a genetic defect, Carolina didn’t know or care—the boy was staying in St. Louis with her. Owen Bramley understood there would be no changing her mind and handled all the details involved. I thanked Owen and told him I was impressed with his “network” of people, information, and political clout. I also mentioned to him that he reminded me a little of Solomon with his talent for getting things done, one way or another. He replied, “Where do you think I learned, Z?”
Carolina finally got tired of my continued ill temper and gave me no choice. She said constant worry and expecting the worst at every moment was not healthy, not for me and not for her family. She insisted Opari and I accompany her, along with Jack, to Sportsman’s Park. “Baseball is the answer,” she said, and off we went.
We sat in Carolina’s box seats, three rows back from the field and just beyond the dugout on the first base side. They were great seats and foul balls were a common occurrence, making Opari wonder about the intelligence of sitting so close to the action. “That’s part of the thrill,” I said. “Wait until you catch one.”
On the mound for the Boston Red Sox was a big, lanky left-hander and he had good stuff. Dave Davenport was pitching for the Browns. It was a perfect day for baseball, sunny and warm, but my thoughts kept drifting back to the murders. Why had Unai and Usoa been duped and used in such a complex manner, then killed without mercy? It seemed unnecessary and arcane, even for the Fleur-du-Mal. It was as if they had been delivered to us, almost at the moment of death. What kind of a message was it? And again, the same question—why?
There was one thing I had resolved to take care of myself. Unai and Usoa must be given some dignity and shown respect for their long, long lives. I was the only one to do it. Their bodies deserved to be returned to their homeland, to the Pyrenees, and buried with reverence and ceremony. However, I could not leave Carolina, Star, and Caine to whatever the Fleur-du-Mal might have in mind. Someone had to be in St. Louis to protect them, someone who could sense his presence, possibly even kill him; someone who was Meq, strong, reliable, and knowledgeable of the Fleur-du-Mal and his history. I turned and looked at the only answer to my dilemma.
“Opari,” I said carefully, in a voice only she could hear. “I have a great favor to ask.”
She knew exactly what I was going to ask because she put her finger to my lips and said, “Take them to Kepa. I will wait for you here and watch for him. Do not take your concerns with you. I will watch carefully, my beloved.”
I kissed her finger and held it. “I know you wanted to see your home again.”
“And that day will come, Z. Do not be concerned. Remember what you told me in Africa—we have the time.”
I smiled and continued to watch the game, but in a distracted state of mind. Jack punched me i
n the arm more than once, saying, “Hey, Z, did you see that?” I would answer with “Yeah,” or “Sure did,” or something else just as unconvincing. I told Opari I thought I would ask Mitch to accompany me to New York instead of Willie or Owen Bramley. That would leave both of them in St. Louis, in case anything happened. She agreed and told me to try to enjoy the game—relax. I said I would, and I tried; however, I could not stop thinking about what was ahead and the problems that might arise.
“I wish I had another one of us with me,” I said. “Someone I trust completely.”
Almost at the same moment, before Opari could respond, I felt something—a presence, a Meq presence. I turned to look behind me and then heard the crack of a baseball being hit hard, and everyone around me leaped to their feet to follow the flight of the ball. I turned back to the field and saw the big, lanky left-hander, trotting around the bases, watching the ball sail out of the park over the fence in right field. Three runners crossed the plate ahead of him. The pitcher had hit a grand slam, the first one of his long career I was to find out later.
“Did you see that, Z?” Jack cried. “That ball went a mile!”
“Yeah, I did, Jack. Who is that player? What’s his name?”
“Babe Ruth,” Jack answered.
I looked at Opari to see if she had felt anything before the home run. She had, I could see it in her eyes. I started to excuse myself and motioned for Opari to follow me. I wanted to get higher up in the grandstands, where we could better scan the crowd. That’s when I heard the bitter laugh. Not the evil one I was all too familiar with, but another one, one I had not heard in years. It was coming from just behind me, two rows up. I turned again and found him immediately. He was standing on the steps in the aisle. His legs were spread wide and he had his hands on his hips. His eyes were a bright green. He wore baggy black trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked good, and healthy, and the only thing missing was his bowler hat, which was stored safely away in my closet at Carolina’s.