Dupree's Rebirth

by Micheal Maxwell

  “You can take the lawyer out of the courtroom, but you can’t take the courtroom out of the lawyer!” Dupree laughed.

  “You certainly seemed to know what to say to that poor young lady.”

  “If she’s smart enough to get it, it’s pretty simple stuff, really. Sometimes the simplest things are difficult for brilliant people to understand.”

  “We all get smart and foolish mixed up at times,” Michael said.

  “Sometimes I will reread the same passage over and over trying to understand its truth.” Jill tapped her Bible with the eraser of her pencil. “The Bible says the Word of God has been made simple to confound the wise.”

  “Well you’re not confounded in your beliefs, and you seem very wise to me,” Dupree said gently.

  He glanced over at Michael; his face fairly glowed with pride in his bride.

  “Oh, you lawyers, always turning people’s words around on them. You must have been a very formidable opponent, Mr. Dupree.” Michael was nodding with approval.

  “I did enjoy the playing of the game.”

  “I must ask you,” Jill looked at Dupree for a long moment before speaking, “Why are you on this train? Why does a man of such obvious professional prowess have two black eyes and a broken nose? I am a good listener if you need a friend.”

  “Sweetheart, Mr. Dupree must have a lot of friends. I don’t think he needs Miss Nosy Rosie prying in his business. Leave the poor man alone.”

  “Thank you, Michael, but she is a very charming lady, and you are a lucky man. Here is the long and short of it. As you might say in religious terms, I have been born again. I have made a conscious decision to change me, my life, and my environment. I found that my life was in a downward spiral. I had to escape or I would have died. If not by my own hand, a stroke or heart attack would have got me. My head was about to explode. So I walked off. I was hitchhiking, and a guy I got a ride with clobbered me and booted me out of his car. Some wonderful people helped me and insisted I take the train the rest of the way to my destination. So here I am.”

  “My,” said Jill, putting her hand over her mouth. “That was short but very profound. I will be praying for you, Mr. Dupree. I think you have much more to learn. I think God has a plan for you. Be open to it.”

  “When we stop learning we’re dead, right? I am not a believer in much of anything, but if there is a plan I don’t know about it, I’d love to take a look.” Dupree chuckled. “No offense, I just think I can work things out on my own.”

  “How’s that working for you?” Jill smiled.

  “Ouch! Have you ever thought about the Law?”

  “Only God’s.”

  “If you want her to stop, just let me know. She is mighty in her faith.” Michael nodded and put his arm around his wife. “I don’t know what I would have done in my life without her.”

  “As I said, Michael, you are a lucky man.”

  “OK, I’ll give it a rest. But you can’t outrun God. Now eat that last egg roll.”

  The three friends laughed, but Dupree was more than a little pleased that the conversation would take another path.

  “Time for a bathroom break.” Dupree stood and stuck the egg roll in his mouth like a cigar. As an afterthought, he turned and picked up his pack.

  The restrooms were in the rear of the car near the doors to the exit. When Dupree left the restroom, a flash of green caught his eye through the passageway. He tapped the button to open the door and was hit with a clean blast of fresh air.

  The space between cars was open. There were doors about waist high on either side to prevent someone from accidentally falling off the train. Dupree stood to let the cool air wash over him. For a long moment, he stood eyes closed, just taking deep breaths of the rain-washed air.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” a voice asked from behind him.

  “It really does. I wish I could put a chair out here,” Dupree said brightly but didn’t look behind him.

  “Mind if I foul the air a bit with a bit of cherry tobacco?”

  Dupree turned to face a man of about eighty, holding a straight stem pipe. He wore a grey tweed sport coat and a deep red vest, and atop his head was a matching tweed cap.

  “Help yourself,” Dupree said, looking into the old man’s bright blue eyes.

  His eyes nearly gave off sparks. They twinkled with such a mischievous, youthful, possibility.

  “Farmer is my name, named such because my father wanted to raise fruit, veg, chickens, and goats. My mother would have none of it! So, I was the constant reminder of what he gave up for her.”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “His business card read Conrad T. Bennett, Esq. Attorney at Law. The truth of it was, he only had two clients. One, the estate of a filthy rich coal tycoon, who hated his six children and put all his money in a trust, with a pittance of an annual allowance. The other was a woman whose parents were killed in an accident. She was left in a coma for the next thirty years. He saw to it the sanitarium where she was stored got their monthly check.”

  “Quite a practice.” Dupree smiled.

  “Every day he would rise at six-thirty, dress, have breakfast, and go to his office at precisely ten minutes to eight. At exactly ten minutes after five each day, he returned home. He did that every day without fail until he shot himself when I was sixteen.” The old man stuck the pipe in his mouth and repeatedly tried to light it. After about six attempts he shoved the pipe in his pocket. “I never have got the hang of that damn thing. I can’t abide cigarettes though. Would you say I had an oral fixation?”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” Dupree tried to respond, but Farmer cut him off.

  “So as soon as my father was in the ground my mum booked passage for us on a ship to Canada. She was shit for geography, and we landed in Nova Scotia when our destination was the home of her cousin in Victoria, B.C. She died when I was at university so I followed a skirt to Oregon. Her father ran me off, but I settled. Thought I would give law a go. Retired ten years ago, and spend my days riding trains, ferries, and waiting for the grim reaper.”

  Farmer took the pipe out of his pocket and shoved his thumb in the bowl, then turned it upside down and held his lighter under it. He puffed several times and finally, a cloud of bluish-white smoke billowed around his head.

  “You look like a man with a story. Let’s have it.” Farmer crossed his arms and gazed at Dupree.

  “I’m off to see the elephant.”

  “I knew you were a man with a story! Barnum! Ha! Brilliant, go on!”

  “I married a woman whose greatest achievement in life was looking good on my arm at dinner parties. We spawned two offspring even more self-absorbed than their protective mother. I considered your father’s way out but decided to strike out for the open road. The black eyes are from getting robbed and dumped on the highway in the middle of nowhere. Your story is far more intriguing than mine, but I’m still on the first chapter of the sequel.” Dupree grinned at Farmer who was nodding in appreciation of his story.

  “Where do you leave this leg of your journey?”

  “I heard of a small town in Washington that piqued my interest. I think I’ll see what it has to offer. And you?”

  “I’ve decided to ride to the border, then turn around and ride as far south as I can go. Then who knows, maybe I’ll head east. My intention is to die on a train.”

  “You look pretty stout to me,” Dupree said.

  “To every plan, there is a wrinkle. I may run out of money before I run out of days.” Farmer gave an impish grin.

  “How old are you, if I might ask?”

  “Ninety-three August last. I thought about taking the train east and booking passage on a ship back to Wales. But then I realized there was nothing there that I would know. It was a romantic notion I savored for quite a long while.”

  “Do you have family in Oregon?”

  “No, I’ve outlived them all. My son died at sixty-eight last year. He had one son who died in Iraq. Damn st
upid war that. My wife has been gone for forty years, nearly twice as long as we were married. You know, if you live long enough numbers get to be quite fascinating.”

  “It seems you have lived an incredible life. Have you ever thought of writing a memoir?”

  “Too much work. Besides, it would end up lies, exaggerations, and scandalous truths.”

  “Besides your charming family, what has your life been about?”

  “I, too, was an attorney. I loved the game, you know, besting my opponent, but I began to wonder what it profited anyone other than clients who already had cheated, stolen, and manipulated more than their fair share already. I began to feel for the losers. It began to really weigh heavily on my mind.”

  “Oh dear, you were growing a conscience. If you are to be your kind of lawyer you can’t have one of those if you are going to continue. I always fought for the little guy. David versus Goliath, Mary Pickerin’ against the Great Pacific Lumber Company. I got her three million. Her husband fell into a plywood pulp machine. The foreman removed the safety rail, under orders from the mill manager. I grabbed them by the balls and never let go until they screamed uncle! God, I miss it.”

  Dupree nodded in agreement. “The fight is what I’ll miss. I just seemed, in the end, to always be on the wrong side. Tell me something, Farmer. In all your years, what is the one thing you can tell me to get me through?”

  The old man didn’t hesitate a second. “Always kick ’em when they’re down because if you don’t, they might get up and kill you.” The old man winked at Dupree, banged his pipe against the outside wall of the door, and went back into the train.

  Dupree looked down at a mangy, black German Shepherd barking for all it’s worth at the passing train. He thought of Don Quixote and yelled: “Give it up!”

  CHAPTER 9

  It seemed an eternity since Dupree boarded the train. He felt the need to stretch his legs, more than the occasional trip to the restroom. After about ten minutes he followed Farmer’s lead and entered the adjourning car, his goal being to walk the full length of the train in both directions.

  It felt good to walk more than a few feet. Dupree tried to estimate the length of the cars as he approached the end of the first complete car he passed through. His math was derailed when a massive woman in yoga pants was overtaken by the shopping bag she was trying to remove from the overhead storage.

  The bag full of chips, several open bags of candy, a half-full liter bottle of Pepsi, three empty Gatorade bottles, and a hand full of candy bars fell, emptying its contents on the heads of a pair of sleeping, dread-locked travelers.

  The pair leaped to their feet yelling like the sky was falling.

  Yoga pants returned their shouts with strong admonishments to not wake her baby.

  “You woke my baby!” the blond, bearded hippie yelled back at her. “You okay, babe?” he asked his companion.

  She nodded with a spacey stare, and settled back under her poncho and closed her eyes.

  “I need my stuff,” Yoga yelled.

  “Dude, you’ve got way more processed poison than three people would need in a lifetime. Let it go. Get some fruit, vegetables, organic if possible, and begin to cleanse your body and spirit of the poisons you have been abusing it with. A bowl of ganja would certainly help with your anger issues. You are a walking time bomb just waiting for a heart attack or stroke. Let it go, learn to chill. Sorry I shattered the environment with noise, but your monsoon of artificial flavor, colors and processed sugar totally shattered my REM sleep.” He swept the various foodstuffs from his seat, sat down and pulled part of the poncho over his shoulders.

  The woman threw herself to the floor and began frantically scooping up the candy. Like a scene from a Dickens orphanage, she snatched and grabbed like the bits of butterscotch and multicolored Jolly Ranchers were the only thing between her and starvation.

  Dupree was given no choice but to wait until the woman was satisfied she retrieved the last peanut M&M and Skittle from the floor. As he stood patiently waiting, he watched the people observing the scene pointing and giggling as her top rode up, exposing her soft, white, stretch-marked belly wobbling from side to side as she worked feverishly.

  When she finally was able to pull herself up from her knees and to a standing position, she scowled and looked from one grinning passenger to the next. “I hope you’re amused! This is my lunch.”

  No one spoke. Her glare eventually landed on Dupree. He just shrugged and moved to get by her.

  “Thanks for the help,” the woman growled as he tried to squeeze past.

  “Excuse me,” Dupree said, softly pulling himself forward with the back of a seat.

  She made no effort to move.

  The next three cars were free of incident and Dupree walked along smiling and nodding at the mostly friendly passengers. A conductor stood a few feet from the end of the third car and glared at Dupree as he approached.

  “End of the line.” The conductor’s tone said, “Turn around.”

  “What’s up there?”

  “Baggage and the engine.”

  “Oh, right. Is it possible to see the engine?” Dupree asked.

  “No.”

  “Alright. How many cars are on this train?”

  “Six passenger, three freight.”

  It was apparent to Dupree the conductor was not interested in him or his questions. “Thank you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  With reversed direction and renewed dedication, Dupree headed back to find car number six. As he walked from car to car, it was like being on a different train. A new set of faces greeted him even as he went through the cars he already visited. Upon entering the fifth car, he spotted a staircase. There was no posting of any kind so he went up the stairs to find a nearly empty observation car. The view was far nicer than the seats he previously occupied. He decided to stay.

  The People magazine Dupree read was left on the seat by a previous passenger. As he caught up on a world he was pretty much oblivious to, the train jerked hard and someone slammed against Dupree in an attempt to keep their balance.

  “Whoa! You alright?” Dupree said, trying to right a woman in a tight headscarf.

  She slid into the seat across the table as the train rocked from side to side.

  “Where are you going?” Dupree thought he might need to help her get back to her seat.

  “I’m running away from home.” A whimsical smile gently touched her lips.

  The truth of her statement made it clear; it wasn’t an attempt at humor. There was an undercurrent to the frail woman’s first words to Dupree.

  “Me too,” he replied.

  “Did you pack a lunch? Most runaways forget to bring something along for later. When I was a little girl I ran away from home in the third grade. Instead of going to school, I went to the park. I played on the swings, climbed all over the Jungle Gym, can we still say that?”

  “Do you really care?” Dupree reflected back.

  “Not really.”

  “Me either.”

  “I had such a wonderful time,” she continued. “I made sandcastles. I even tried to play on the teeter-totter, but that was futile.” She chuckled softly. “I played until I grew very hungry. I figured that it must be time for school to be out, so I started back home. When I went through the back door into the kitchen my mother was standing at the sink.

  “She gave me a perplexed look. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  “Am I late?”

  “No, three hours early!”

  “Did you learn a lesson?” Dupree questioned.

  “I did. I remembered it until I was eighteen and ran off with a boy who played guitar and wrote songs with deep, philosophical lyrics. They actually were pure piffle, but it was all rainbows, daisies, and Volkswagen buses in search of peace, love, and harmony in those days.

  “It lasted all the way to Santa Cruz. On the first night, we made love on the beach in the shelter of the dunes. When I awoke on the bus, my c
lothes, the guitar player, and the money stashed in my Kotex box were gone.”

  “So this is your third attempt at running away,” Dupree said, hoping she would continue.

  “No, there was my first husband, Ruben. We met in a Psych class. He was so brilliant. After being married to him for six months, I understood why he knew so much about psychology. He was psychotic!” She moved her scarf back just above her temple to expose an indentation the size of a quarter and about as deep. “Ball peen hammer. That was runaway number three. I went all the way to Vermont to make sure he didn’t find me. I turned twenty-one working on a maple syrup commune, pregnant with Ruben’s baby. It was born with too many birth defects to survive. They wouldn’t even let me see it. So I don’t even know if it was a boy or girl. Just as well. I needed to grow up.”

  Dupree smiled but didn’t speak. He had no words.

  “I’m Mary Ann.”

  “Dupree.”

  “I didn’t mean to blather on, but when your clock is winding down it seems you have more to say than you have time or people for. Where are you headed?”

  “White Owl, Washington.”

  “Oh, I went to the Summer Solstice Festival there. It is a mystical village as I recall. Lots of positive energy, as we used to say.”

  “What do you say now?”

  “I’m dying.”

  “How long?” Dupree felt a real connection with this frail woman.

  “A month tops.”

  “So where are you going?”

  “Lake Louise. It is the most beautiful place I ever saw. I used to tell people it had water to die for. I want to see if I was right.” Mary Ann laughed until she coughed violently.

  “Can I get you anything?” Dupree asked as the cough subsided.

  “A full-body transplant? Relax, this will pass.” She paused a three count then said, “and so will I.” The black humor seemed as natural to her as breathing.

  “So who did you run away from?” Dupree asked.

  “You first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Dying people have a special gift. It’s in your eyes, Dupree. We are fellow travelers, except you’re healthy. Emotionally I have a feeling you might be a cracked vessel.”