It was like a revelation.
Maud got up and went back to the counter, and I’m not sure I said goodbye or anything, I was so deep into imagining. I imagined this Jude saying to someone: “I ain’t seen Ben Queen’s girl around for several days.” And this someone answering, “No, but there was a woman they found dead over to White’s Bridge there sounds just like her.” I needed to find this Jude. I had got the idea he didn’t live in Spirit Lake, from the way the other men acted like he didn’t often come to Britten’s.
“Want to do the meters with me?”
The Sheriff’s voice startled me. I came out of my trance and focused. “Meters? Oh. No, I can’t. I’ve got to get back to wait tables.”
He’d got up, put a few dollars on the table, and was hitching his holster around. “You need a ride?” He looked at me out of eyes that seemed to get bluer by the moment. He smiled.
“Uh . . . no, I . . .” The thing was that I wanted to stop at Britten’s store and I didn’t want to have to explain why. I had never turned down a ride with the Sheriff—never. “I’ll just get one of Axel’s Taxis.”
The Sheriff positioned his hat, sort of snapped the brim, and smiled at me again. He left the Rainbow.
I thought for another moment about Jude and then looked at my hand. Why was I holding a spoon? I put it down. I looked at the Sheriff’s bowl of chili. Empty. I’d been eating what was left.
He never said a word.
That was the Sheriff.
• • •
In the taxi (driven by Delbert) to Spirit Lake, I had practiced what I would say, but I had been planning on saying it to the old regulars who had been there yesterday. There was no one in Britten’s except Mr. Britten himself, which would make my task nearly impossible. Mr. Britten was not much of a talker at the best of times, and I’m sure he didn’t connect me with the best. He liked to bury his hands under his brown cardigan and look at me over the tops of his black-rimmed glasses, ducking his head down in order to look up over them, as if he couldn’t trust me not to try and take a swing at him.
That’s the way he was looking at me now—very suspicious, wondering what I was doing back. I would have to invent, now, something my mother had told me to pick up. “Bisquick,” I said.
“Must be doing lots of baking. Two boxes just walked out of here with Walter.”
That was always how Mr. Britten described the sale of groceries: as if they operated on their own. No one actually bought them; they “walked out” or “danced out” or “fought for space on the shelves,” so that I sometimes had a picture of cans and jars and sacks and boxes doing all sorts of things, the store shaking with ferocious activity.
“Walter’s already been here? Already? Why, I was told to come get the Bisquick!” I just rolled my eyes and shook my head as if no one at the Hotel Paradise could remember his proper chores except me. I sighed, walked over to the long glass counter, and took some time looking at the candy and gum. “I’ll have some Teaberry, I guess.”
Mr. Britten didn’t like having to move even an inch for the likes of me, so his walk was pretty slow and grudging. He frowned over the packet he plucked from the rows of gum and then handed it to me. I plunked change on the counter. Slowly (for I was giving myself rethinking time) I unwrapped a stick and folded it into my mouth. Then I asked him, “My mother was wondering if that man named”— I tried to snap my fingers in an effort of remembrance— “is it Jude? The one who was in here yesterday?” No indication yes or no as he just stared at me out of his flat brown eyes. “Well, she was wondering if he was available.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure.” I wrinkled up my forehead as if trying to remember.
“Don’t know him.” Mr. Britten punched the cash register and gave me back my four cents change.
I stood there chewing my gum and feeling disappointed and was about to give up when the screen door banged and there was one of the men from yesterday’s conversation!
“Mornin’, Bryson,” he said. Politely, he nodded to me, too, as he put down a dollar on the counter.
“Lucas,” said Mr. Britten abruptly. Then he turned to the shelves behind him and slipped down a curled-up packet of Mail Pouch tobacco and put that on the counter in exchange for the bill. I guess it was Lucas’s standard chew. Britten’s was a little like the Rainbow Café in this respect, where Shirl and Maud knew more or less how everyone took their coffee—black, cream, sugar—and just set it before them.
“Anything else?” Mr. Britten glowered at me over his glasses. He always acted as if I’d come to hold up the store.
Now I had to reintroduce my subject. “You don’t know if this Jude lived in Spirit Lake?” Lucas had walked over to one of the wooden chairs, and I raised my voice a little so that he could hear. He did. He opened his mouth to comment when one of the other of the three men walked in (“Mornin’, Bryson—mornin’, Luke”) and took the other wooden chair. This was the one they called Bub.
Luke indicated me and said to his friend, “She’s askin’ after Jude. She wants to know does he live in Spirit Lake.”
All eyes were now focused on me, which I didn’t much like.
“No, he don’t,” said Bub, unfolding his paper. Why give out information to a kid?
Luke said, “Lives over in Hebrides, don’t he?”
Bub shook his head. “Over to Cold Flat Junction.”
I took in my breath sharply. Arrows flashed on and off in my mind like the sign above Arturo’s Diner, pointing to Cold Flat Junction. For a moment Bub and Luke quarreled over where Jude lived. I broke it up by saying, “And she—I mean my mother—said Mr. Jude did some work for her once.”
Luke shrugged. I think he might have been irritated that I seemed to know more about Jude than he did. I didn’t belong in here, after all; I wasn’t one of them.
Bub was friendlier, apparently eager for talk with anyone who came along, even me. “I seen you in here the other day, didn’t I?”
Mr. Britten said, loudly, “This is Jen Graham’s girl, from over at the Hotel Paradise.”
Whenever Mr. Britten decided to talk, it was always in this butting-in way. When you didn’t want him to.
Luke looked at me, wide-eyed. “You ain’t ever Miss Jen’s girl?”
I nodded and sighed, knowing Jude would now be forgotten, and so would Cold Flat Junction.
“Well, I’ll be! I used to work for your daddy, when you was a little bitty thing.” He measured off air the size of a mouse. He turned to the other man. “Hey, Bub, you used to work over to the Hotel Paradise, too, didn’t you? Fifteen, maybe twenty, years ago?”
And then they started swapping remembrances, which started at the Hotel Paradise and then extended to the whole of Spirit Lake. And it was just like a train coming down the track, stopping at this station and that station, picking up facts like passengers and suitcases and trunks, getting heavier and heavier because they were both so full of memories of the last twenty years that they both kept refining (“No, that weren’t Asa Stemple, it was Ada. It was Ada packed up and went off to New York City. Now Asa, he . . .”).
I left.
• • •
My mother was miraculously absent from the kitchen when I ran in twenty minutes late. It was empty except for Walter, in the dark by the big dishwasher. Also, there were signs that Vera was back again, for her coal-black full-dress uniform was on a hanger, covered with Whitelaw Cleaners (no relation to Suzy, the star reporter) plastic. It must be the really good uniform, for Vera washed and ironed the others herself. And that must mean a big dinner party tonight.
I hated the thought of that, as I would surely be called upon to act as Vera’s slave; she would be in the limelight, setting the plates before the guests, and I would be back in the shadows, carrying trays and handing off dishes to her. It was like those Dr. Kildare movies where the Great Surgeon is allowed at the operating table and the unimportant nurse is standing back and slapping instruments into his hand.
&nbs
p; I wouldn’t even have seen Walter if he hadn’t said hello. It was like a pocket of shadows back there, a place where you could stand and be nearly invisible. Since there didn’t seem to be any hurry about lunch, I decided to help Walter, something I hardly ever did. But I thought I should make up for pretending he was all wrong about the Bisquick. I picked up a towel and took up a dish. This way, I could both be helpful to Walter and invisible to Vera, should she walk in.
Walter smiled his half-moon smile; the corners of his mouth went nearly to his ears.
“I could have got the Bisquick, Walter. It’s too bad you had to make a trip.”
“That’s okay,” he said pleasantly, his hands slowly moving a sudsy cloth over a platter too big for the machine. Dishes were either too big or too small or too good, or pans too stuck with food. The dishwasher was near-useless.
“No, but I mean it. I was just up there and I could have picked it up. You shouldn’t have to run back and forth.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well. . .” I put a certain grumpiness in the word to let him know I appreciated him. Which I didn’t.
Vera came through the swing door then and went about doing busybody Vera-things, needful things-to-be-done just popping up all around her like bright weeds springing through the floor planks. I could hear clinking and china rattlings down at the other end of the kitchen as she went from table to cupboard to tray like a bee pollinating. Then she hefted the laden tray and returned to the dining room and I moved again to wipe the platter.
“I guess she’s not sick anymore,” I said, noticeably sad. Walter didn’t like her, either, though he never would have said this.
“Says she still is.”
“Why’s she back, then?”
“Says it’s a big dinner party tonight and she’s ob-li-ga-ted.”
“She wants the tips, that’s what.”
Walter chuckled.
Since no one considered Walter very much except when they wanted to blame someone, I suppose it wasn’t strange that I didn’t much think about him and about his life. But now I wondered how long Walter had been in Spirit Lake. I asked him.
“Near my whole life long.”
And then I recalled Walter lived not far from Britten’s store. I’d once or twice seen him in there, just standing around, not participating, but sort of standing around smiling. “You hang out at Britten’s, don’t you, sometimes?”
“Uh-huh.” He handed me a pot.
“You ever talk to a man named Jude?” I could ask such direct questions of Walter because Walter never wondered why I was doing something. Walter just wasn’t curious, or figured it wasn’t his business. So it was almost like talking to myself.
“Jude, uh-huh. He comes into Britten’s onced a week, just about.”
I stopped wiping and stared. All of that trouble and here Walter knew the answers? Excited, I asked, “Who is he?”
“Jude Stemple. Lives over to Cold Flat. Comes onced a week to Spirit Lake to do work for Miss Isabelle Barnett. I used to do yard work for her until I got a better job.”
Was he talking about the Hotel Paradise? I didn’t ask. “What’s he do?”
“Fixes things. He’s putting lattice up around her porch. I guess he’s like a carpenter, some. He’s real good, some say.”
“And this Jude Stemple lives in Cold Flat Junction?”
Walter nodded.
That day, I was lucky. There was only Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright to wait on at lunch. Everyone else had either checked out or gone off somewhere. An hour and fifteen minutes after my talk with Walter, I was down at the Spirit Lake railroad station, sitting on a bench and waiting for the 1:53 to Cold Flat Junction.
This time I bought a ticket.
THIRTY
Had I really thought the Girl would appear there, again, on the platform?
I suppose I must have, for I was disappointed as the train chugged to a halt and I saw the platform was empty.
It was a very short ride to Cold Flat Junction, eighteen minutes exactly, not even time enough for the conductor to punch my ticket. I could have got by without buying one. It’s annoying to be honest and law-abiding and not get the credit for it, not even have people notice. But I felt a little better when I discovered, upon studying the square of yellowish cardboard, that the date was so blurred you could hardly see it. I tucked it in my change purse with some plan for its future use. I snapped the purse shut and put it in my pocket.
Before Cold Flat, there was only the one stop in La Porte, and that was only a few minutes beyond Spirit Lake. It was truly enjoyable being a passenger on the train instead of one of the people standing down there on the platform. It was as if it gave me some God-like view. I pressed my face against the glass looking out, knowing that even if someone there knew me, my face behind the glass of a train window wouldn’t register.
Not even on Helene Baum—for there she stood, gawking up, her hand shielding the eyes behind her butterfly glasses. I assumed she wasn’t going anywhere, since it was her dinner party tonight. She must have been scanning the train for whoever she was waiting for, and she was frowning anxiously as if the person might be looking out and deciding upon seeing her that he or she would rather not get off. Helene was wearing one of her yellow dresses and a yellow cardigan around her shoulders. I couldn’t stand her, but I felt kind of sorry for her, with that look on her face that people allow themselves when they don’t know someone else is watching. Unguarded, I guess you’d say. It was the sort of look that people wear in movie theaters, looking up at the screen.
Finally, a heavyset woman wearing tons of costume jewelry stepped awkwardly down the little metal stairs the conductor put there. Now, Helene’s expression changed into a showy smile. They sort of charged towards each other, in that clumsy way of people who feel they’re supposed to hug but don’t want to touch, so that arms never quite make it around waists or shoulders, and kisses are planted on empty air. They chugged off, and so did the train.
Fifteen minutes later, I myself was on the little metal ladder the conductor flipped down from the car to the platform. The conductor nodded and smiled pleasantly, unaware that someone was getting off his train with an unpunched and blurrily dated ticket. I said goodbye and smiled back.
No one else got off and no one was waiting to get on, which didn’t surprise me. No activity at all was taking place on the Cold Flat Junction platform. After the train roared off and its clattering wheels went quiet in the dim blue distance, I walked slowly along the empty platform, stopping to marvel at the turreted and towered station building. I looked in all of the windows, cupping my hands around my reflection to peer inside. I don’t know if I thought the view would change from window to window. Having done this, I moved to the entrance, which had dark and beautiful molding that formed an arch above my head, with a half-moon of ruby-red stained glass over the doorway lintel. I stepped inside, hesitating the way a person would going into a church he didn’t really belong to.
Actually, it was more like the light and dark of a movie theater. An empty theater, at that. Six long, solid wood benches stood back-to-back in a neat row across the waiting room. Three walls were also lined with benches. In the fourth wall was the ticket seller’s room and window. No one was behind the ticket window, which seemed to be closed; a piece of wood had been placed in front of the semicircle opening in the glass, and a tan blind pulled partway down to announce absence. I could see, back there, the bottom half of a rack of a neatly arranged rainbow of tickets, as if these colorful destinations were always in demand. There was no sign saying where the stationmaster had gone, or if he would return. But the station was so well kept, there had to be a keeper.
On the bulletin board there were schedules, those complicated lines of tiny type and little arrows going up and down that probably nobody could understand. But I supposed there was the same train I had taken before from Cold Flat Junction back to Spirit Lake, the 4:32. I now had nearly two hours here in Cold Flat and could still
get back in plenty of time for the Baum dinner-party preparations.
Outside the station, I sat down on the same slat-back bench the Girl had been sitting on when I saw her. I needed to make up a plan. At lunch I had been too distracted to think, between Miss Bertha’s lunch and my own. Ham croquettes with parsley sauce and corn fritters naturally got my undivided attention, and dessert had been Floating Island, which alone would have driven out thoughts of anything else.
What I wanted was to find either Jude Stemple or (but this seemed almost too lucky) the Queens. And I wanted to plot out how I could get information about him or them. I tried to keep my mind centered on a plan, but it kept being drawn to the land beyond me, out there across the railroad tracks—bare and colorless and hardly even blistered with outcroppings of vegetation. There was scarcely a tree until far off began the dark line of woods. It was so far away, not even squinting my eyes could separate one tree from another. The distance and the light made the wood a uniform navy blue. Between the station and that line of woods, all was blank and empty. The land looked savaged, as if Indian tribes had thundered through here and scalped it, and whatever people there were, and whatever buildings had up and retreated to the other side of the tracks behind the railroad station, as if it were a fort.
I sat there staring at the emptiness for longer than I meant to, feeling the land sucking me in. Cold Flat Junction had that effect, at least on me: it wasn’t pretty like Spirit Lake, which was lush with big trees and where you could crush whole carpets of wildflowers underfoot; nor was it ugly like Dubois, twenty miles away, where the paper mill was and the houses were always coated with dark dust and the whole town smelled putrid. Cold Flat Junction just looked wiped out and anonymous. Only part of that look was the landscape; the other part was the strange quiet over the place, and that was because the town had come about from the promise of the railroad to give Cold Flat life. But life had never happened.
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