Super

by Jim Lehrer

  “Then she quit traveling on the Super?” Sanders asked.

  Hammond said, “I didn’t see her at least and I asked other crews and they didn’t either. But Mr. Wheeler kept riding, even after he got so sick. There was a routine chore for his porter—usually Ralph—to check out the train from one end to the other for his girlfriend.”

  Sanders took a deep breath. “Who is she?”

  Hammond looked at Charlie Sanders, then down at his leather pouch where he carried tickets and other papers, then out the window of the moving train.

  “I don’t think I should tell you that, Mr. Sanders,” said Hammond. “I’m thinking Jack Pryor’s got it right about what’s anybody’s business—including the Santa Fe’s.”

  “Everybody knows about Clark Gable and his goings-on,” said Sanders, still a little full of himself from his successful debut as a faux detective. “Movie star business is everybody’s business. I don’t get the secrecy about Mr. Wheeler and his friend.”

  The conductor replied as if issuing a papal edict, “This is different. Now he’s dead. She’s married. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Half the women Gable’s gone to bed with on this train and elsewhere were married, too, I’ll bet.” Sanders had to control himself. He was aware his voice was rising, something this little exchange truly did not rate.

  “That’s his reputation and he lives up to it,” said Hammond. “This woman’s reputation is for other things. It’s not for me to smear it. Sorry. But if you find her on your own, so be it. That’s your business, not mine.”

  “Find her? You mean she’s one of the two you were talking about on this train?” Charlie Sanders said, almost shouting.

  Hammond shrugged and started to leave. “Why do you want to talk to her anyhow? I hope you’re not just being nosy.”

  Sanders had to think about that a couple of seconds. “I think she should know about Otto Wheeler’s death.” He knew it was a weak point the minute he said it.

  Hammond, moving away, said, “I’ve got to walk the train and start getting ready for Bethel and Kansas City.”

  So be it, indeed, thought Sanders. It really was none of his business. Okay, maybe it was … a little. There might be a role for a beautiful woman in the Super Chief movie.

  He decided he would head to the observation car lounge, where he would just sit for a while. There were empty roomettes that he could, like Jack Pryor, use but suddenly he was too excited to sleep.

  Who are those two big lady movie stars?

  Sanders passed through three cars to the deserted lounge at the end of the train.

  He found a place behind the magazine rack for his suitcase, stuck it there and looked through the darkness at the rest of the car. He switched on one of the tiny wall lamps and decided he would take one of the two chairs on either side of the rear window at the very end of the car.

  He was no sooner seated when he heard noise from the door opening at the far end of the car. Then a shadow appeared at the doorway into the lounge. It was a woman—a small woman.

  Charlie Sanders stood.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” he said.

  The woman stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t expect anyone to be in here this time of night.”

  Charlie Sanders recognized the voice—or, at least, he thought he did. It was deep for a woman’s, foreign sounding.

  “I’m Charlie Sanders of the Santa Fe—I’m an assistant general passenger agent,” he said. “I’m on board to assist passengers in any way I can.”

  That caused the woman to continue her walk toward him. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Sanders.”

  In passing lights and the side lamp he could see that the woman was carrying an open book. No, it was larger than a book. It seemed like papers stapled together in a folder. Her skirt was long, inches below the knee, and her hair was cut short.

  Then he saw her face. Oh, my god! “Claudette Colbert! You’re Claudette Colbert!”

  “I am indeed,” she said, arriving in front of him. “Thank you for noticing.” Her voice was as sophisticated and quiet and appealing as it sounded in the movies. Her vowels. They were so round and full.

  Claudette Colbert! This is Claudette Colbert!

  She closed the folder and put it under her left arm, extending her right hand toward him.

  He took her hand into his own and then didn’t know what to do with it. Shake it? Hold it for the count of five? Hold it with both of his for a count of five—or ten?

  She put him out of his misery by removing it herself. Then she patted the folder against her left hip and said, “This is a script for a play I’m going to do in New York. It’s a comeback of sorts on the stage. I decided to go on the train so I could lock myself away, get into the part. One of my first roles was in a Broadway play called The Ghost Train. A bunch of weird characters get stranded at a small-town train station in Britain. It was in 1926, played only sixty-one performances … but you don’t want to know about all that at two in the morning.”

  You talk so beautifully in person!

  “Oh, Miss Colbert, I am just so thrilled to meet you. You can say anything you wish for as long as you wish. You are one of my most favorite of the favorites.”

  “Thank you,” she said sweetly but with what Sanders read as a signal that she had no intention of saying much of anything else.

  Sanders said quickly, “You’ll never believe who was on the eastbound Super Chief that arrived in Los Angeles this morning. Clark Gable. I met him, too.”

  She smiled and said only, “That’s nice.”

  “I can’t believe this. It Happened One Night. It’s my parents’ favorite movie of all time.”

  “I hear a lot about how my movies are parents’ favorites,” she said coolly as she began to pivot around and away from Charlie Sanders. “I must get on with my script work.”

  He kept up with her. “May I ask you a question, Miss Colbert?”

  She kept moving. “The answer is No.”

  “I’m so so sorry for even asking …”

  She stopped and looked at Charlie Sanders. She was smiling. “I mean the answer to your question is No, young man of the Santa Fe. You want to know the same thing everyone else wants to know. The answer is: No. I did not sleep with Clark Gable while we were making It Happened One Night or on any other occasion—including our second movie together, Boom Town, an awful thing about gushing oil in places like Texas. We were not a match either by attraction or inclination.”

  Sanders was happy that they were still in semidarkness. That meant this glorious woman of stage and screen and the world, Claudette Colbert, could not see the blush that not only infused his face but was deep down into the pores and cells of his being.

  “No, ma’am, that was not my question,” he hastened to say. “I would never ask such a personal question.”

  “Yes, you would. We of the movies are asked nothing but personal questions.”

  Now it really was good-bye, young man of the Santa Fe.

  But Charlie Sanders had more questions. “Would you be interested in playing in a movie that took place entirely on the Super Chief?”

  “Not in the least,” answered Claudette Colbert. “I am not Gloria Swanson, I ride on the Super Chief but it is not an object of my passion.”

  “Do you know Susan Hayward?” Sanders persisted.

  “Everybody in Hollywood knows everybody but nobody knows anybody,” said Miss Colbert.

  “Is she sick?”

  She flicked the question off with a flip of a hand.

  “What about John Wayne?” Sanders asked. “Is he sick?”

  “There’s not a disease in the world that would dare touch that man. Farewell, young man.”

  “Did you have a friend named Otto Wheeler?” Charlie Sanders asked as Miss Colbert eased farther away. “That was my real question, ma’am.”

  “Friend? Otto Wheeler?” She was still walking, but slowly. “I didn’t even have an enemy named Otto Wheeler. Who is Otto Wheel
er? Was he an actor? A director?”

  “He lived in Kansas—Bethel, Kansas.”

  The woman of the world laughed. “I am not Judy Garland either—I am really not Judy Garland.” She said it with the clear message that she was most happy not to be Judy Garland. “I have never even been to Kansas.”

  Sanders looked out the large window on the left side of the lounge to the passing landscape. “You are now,” he said. “This is Kansas.”

  “I am never in Kansas, young man,” said Claudette Colbert in full vowel, not even tilting her head toward what might be outside the window.

  Charlie Sanders remained as still as stone for at least a minute—maybe two or even more.

  Even though Claudette Colbert had physically vanished from his presence, having disappeared back down the passageway, he remained paralyzed by her starry magic, her perfume, her vowels.

  I just spent nine minutes in the dark with Claudette Colbert!

  That’s what he wanted to yell out a train window or telegraph to his mom, dad, little brother and every relative and friend in Garrison, Indiana, and everyone else everywhere.

  Or sing it, dance it, leap it as if he were Gene Kelly or Donald O’Connor. Or a trapeze artist in a circus.

  He knew this might very well end up being the experience of his lifetime.

  We are gathered here today at the First Methodist Church of Garrison, Indiana, to honor the memory of Charlie Sanders of the Santa Fe who spent nine minutes on the Super in the dark with Claudette Colbert!

  Sanders finally eased his way back to a chair at the very end of the observation car.

  As he continued to yell silently to everyone everywhere.

  She talked to me! Claudette Colbert called me “young man of the Santa Fe!” We had a conversation! I talked to her back! I called her “Miss Colbert”! She told me about a play she was going to be in! I asked her to be in a movie that happens on the Super!

  He was still sitting straight up and wide awake at least half an hour later when he heard a noise and then saw the shadow of a person enter the dark lounge.

  Charlie could tell only that it was a man. Claudette Colbert had not returned.

  “May I help you, sir?” he said to the man, who was not clear enough to make out—or recognize. “It’s me, Charlie Sanders of the Santa Fe.”

  After two beats of silence the voice said, “This is Rinehart of The End.”

  Sanders had no idea what Rinehart meant but he knew exactly what he was expected to do immediately.

  “I was just leaving, Mr. Rinehart,” he said. “I know you want your privacy here this time of night.”

  Rinehart had taken only two or three steps into the lounge and stopped.

  Now, as he got closer, Sanders could see Darwin Rinehart clearly. “The conductor told me you had turned right back around at Los Angeles and headed east …”

  “To die,” Rinehart said, finishing the sentence in a soft whisper. “I came back on the Super Chief to die.”

  Charlie Sanders turned aside, preparing to walk by Rinehart and out of the lounge. In a flash, he remembered his badtaste thought about Otto Wheeler of Bethel, Kansas, deciding to go The Chief Way.

  “Now, Mr. Rinehart, let’s not joke about things like that,” Sanders said.

  He and Rinehart were now facing each other in the dim light less than three feet apart.

  “Not a joke, Charlie Sanders. Will you help me?”

  “Mr. Rinehart, please,” Sanders said, his mind racing now with thoughts about how weird it was that two Super passengers in two days had brought aboard with their luggage a desire for a suicide assist.

  “Last night, same time, same place I tried but I couldn’t do it,” Rinehart said. “Without Gene I can’t do anything—not even kill myself.”

  Rinehart said his post-midnight excursion twenty-four hours ago had been the only time he had left his compartment until now.

  “Mr. Mathews seems like a really nice man,” Sanders said. He could think of nothing else to say.

  “I’m sure Gene would give you a job in pictures,” Rinehart said. “Help me now and Gene will help you later.”

  Now there was another thing Rinehart said that didn’t make sense. How was a dead man going to make sure his surviving friend honored any kind of commitment? But Sanders let it go with silence.

  Rinehart told Sanders that last night about this same time he walked out of the lounge, past his own compartment to the vestibule between the observation car and the next sleeping car.

  “We were speeding along through the California desert towns one after another. I thought I saw Needles, California, out there. Must have been Needles. Way too late for Barstow. What town comes next after Needles?”

  “Kingman, Arizona. But the Super Chief doesn’t stop there either—”

  Rinehart held up a hand for silence. He knew where the Super Chief did not stop, thank you.

  “I went to the side doorway on the right. There was the lever up there at the top, and another at the bottom that opens the door.”

  Rinehart closed his eyes. Sanders assumed he was trying to see himself standing in the open doorway.

  “The wind from the train was blowing my hair and clothes as I counted to myself—one, two, three … jump!”

  With his eyes reopened, Rinehart said, “I couldn’t do it. Imagine it, yes. But do it, no. Not without Gene. Do you know about Willy Loman?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sanders said. “The salesman in the play—”

  “He has more guts than I do, Sanders of the Santa Fe,” Rinehart said.

  Sanders of the Santa Fe knew he had a very serious problem on his hands—as a railroad employee, as well as a simple human being from Garrison, Indiana. Summoning up the authority he had gained from his phony detective experience, he said, “I will not permit you to take your own life on the Super Chief, Mr. Rinehart.”

  Rinehart put a hand on Sanders’s shoulder and gave it a shove. “Leave me alone then.”

  Sanders walked out of the lounge, toward the narrow corridor of compartments.

  “No train movies for you, kid!” Rinehart yelled after him.

  Sanders stopped in that same between-cars vestibule where Rinehart said he had come last night. He pulled down the small folding stool that railroad crew use. There he would remain as a sentinel on behalf of the Santa Fe.

  With his glass of scotch in hand, Rinehart made his way to a seat farther back in the quiet darkness.

  In a few minutes Sanders was back.

  “Sorry to bother you, sir,” he said loudly toward Rinehart. “But I wanted you to know that earlier tonight—right here, in fact—I happened to speak for a few minutes with Claudette Colbert. I asked her about the possibility of starring in a movie that happens on the Super Chief—”

  “Go away, kid!” Rinehart yelled.

  And before Sanders could actually go away, Rinehart added in a somewhat lower volume, “Relax, kid. I’m not going to do anything by myself. I can’t.”

  That was enough for Charlie Sanders to keep walking past his sentinel post at the vestibule to a vacant roomette three cars up.

  He was suddenly very tired. He needed to sleep—to rest.

  Without Gene there had been no one to talk to. He had a couple of books and some magazines and a newspaper. What else was there to do besides stare out the window at pitch black, sand, lights and an occasional train station? But that staring, that being lost in the unknown of out there was part of the magic of the Super. Wasn’t it?

  Without Gene, he had decided he was not up to being seen or seeing. So both evenings he had Ralph bring him his martinis first and then his dinner—again, roast rib, baked potato, salad and red wine—to his compartment.

  Now he sat there by himself in a private stupor, brooding over how he had failed to Jump!

  He tried to consider again if Gene could be right about making a comeback. He had never been that far up, that famous or powerful to begin with, so the return wouldn’t be that long a trip. Even
if Gene was also right about Elmer Gantry and Burt Lancaster there was no way in hell he could get the rights, the backing or Burt. And forget trying to get Grant, Saint, Mason and Hitchcock or any combination like them to ever do anything for him. Comeback? No, forget it. Nobody in pictures comes back from the kind of humiliating bankruptcy he was going through.

  They stole my house! My Brancusi!

  Television? What would it take for him, inside his soul much less technically and professionally, to make a television series? Could he actually organize properties, scripts, writers, directors, actors, networks, flacks and whatever it took to make hundreds of formula half-hour programs about cute families, feuding couples, tough cops, honest lawyers, frantic doctors, dedicated teachers? Would that be better or worse than humiliating bankruptcy—or even death?

  “Welcome, whoever you are.”

  It was a female voice. Rinehart adjusted his eyes to see a woman in sunglasses with a shawl over her head. She was smoking a cigarette.

  “Thanks,” he said. Company was not what he wanted—particularly right now.

  “I’m Miss Scarlett,” said the female voice. “Care to join me?”

  He wanted to yell No! But there was something familiar in her voice. And how in the world could he resist that name, Miss Scarlett?

  Whatever else, this woman was probably Pure Hollywood, mused Rinehart as she sat down in one of the lounge chairs next to him.

  “Don’t look too closely,” she said. “I’d prefer that you didn’t recognize me.”

  There seemed little chance of that. The large scarf, which seemed to be dark blue—it was difficult to see for sure in the dark—and the sunglasses combined to make her face nearly invisible. All Rinehart could tell was that she was a mature woman of an indeterminate age with bright white skin who had coated herself in a strong-smelling perfume and filled herself with what smelled like gin.

  She had set a glass of it in front of her. There was no ice in the glass, making it a perfect match with his own drink.