Orphan #8 (25 page)

Made sleepy by the swaying train, the women finally stretched their legs across the space between the facing seats, fitting their feet between each other’s hips. The next day, the Western Express made its halting way across Ohio and Indiana until the teachers tumbled out at Fort Wayne. By the time the train pulled into Chicago’s Union Station, Rachel had stopped measuring the passing hours by which bell would be ringing back at the Home. The conductor told her there was a coach car on the Overland Express to Denver, and she climbed the stairs from platform to mezzanine, anxious to get a ticket.

Rachel had barely taken in the barrel ceiling and stone columns when two boys came chasing each other through the station. The smaller one was running full out to stay ahead, skidding across the marble floor and careening around a statue. The older boy caught at his jacket, and the little one, twisting to get away, ran into a
column right in front of Rachel, his head bouncing back from the force. Blood started to drain from the boy’s nose. He let out a howl that sent the older one scurrying. Rachel scooped him onto her lap and settled on a bench, tilting his head up in the crook of her arm. She pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand while fishing out her handkerchief with the other.

“Now, now, it’s not so bad as all that,” she murmured as the boy coughed and cried. “Was that your brother chasing you?”

The boy looked up at her and nodded, tears mixing with the blood that drizzled across his face to puddle in his ear. Rachel wiped his cheek, then held the handkerchief under his nose. “Just breathe through your mouth, it’ll stop in a minute. Relax, now, relax. It’s all right,” she said, mimicking Nurse Dreyer’s soothing tone.

“My brother’s always chasing me. I hate him,” the boy whimpered. His breath smelled of iron.

“Can you imagine if you had a hundred brothers, how many bloody noses that would add up to?”

He frowned. “No one has a hundred brothers.”

Rachel lifted the handkerchief. The bleeding had stopped, but she kept up the pressure on the bridge of his nose. “I had a thousand brothers and sisters.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

Rachel checked to see if the blood was still flowing. It wasn’t.

“How about you, is that your only brother?”

He was draped across her lap, his head heavy on her arm. “No, I have a baby brother, too, and a sister. But I’ll never chase my baby brother like Henry chases me.”

“Of course you won’t. What’s your name?”

“Simon. What’s yours?”

“Rachel.”

Henry was being dragged toward them by an imposing man in a top hat and evening jacket.

“Father, Henry chased me!” Simon tried to sit up, but Rachel held him.

“You have to keep your head back for a while longer or your nose’ll start bleeding again.”

“Yes, Simon, do as the lady says.” The man’s eyes swept over the young woman cradling his son. “Are you a nurse, miss?”

Rachel nodded, the lie she’d told the ticket agent and the teachers sounding truer with each retelling. “A nursing student. I was doing my apprenticeship at an orphanage in New York. Now I’m going to Colorado to care for my father. He went out west last year for the cure, but my mother wrote that he’s taken a turn for the worse and she needs me there.”

“You’ve certainly taken good care of Simon. What do you have to say to your brother, Henry?”

“I’m sorry, Simon.”

“Now go back to your mother.” The boy walked away, breaking into a run as soon as his father wasn’t looking. The man sat on the bench beside Rachel and placed his hand on Simon’s forehead. “All better, son? Ready to try sitting up?”

“Oh, not yet, it’s best not to rush these things,” she said.

“Rachel has a thousand brothers and sisters, Father!”

“Is that so, miss?”

“At the orphanage, they liked the children to think of each other as siblings. I got in the habit of seeing them all as my younger brothers and sisters.” She smiled, liking the way that sounded.

“And you’re going to Denver?”

“Leadville, actually, but Denver first. I was hoping to make the Overland Express.” She looked around, anxious. “Do you know when it leaves?”

“It was scheduled for eight o’clock. You would have missed it, but there’s been a delay, some problem loading the horses. I was supposed to see my family off before attending a function this evening, but I couldn’t very well leave my wife to watch these ruffians by herself. Would you allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Cohen?”

“I’m afraid I should arrange my ticket.” Rachel sat Simon up gently.

“I’ll take him,” his father said, picking up the boy.

“I’m not a baby, I can walk, Father!”

“Very well.” He set Simon on his feet and extended a hand to Rachel. She stood.

“I’ll talk to the ticket agent to be sure there’s a place for you. I know my wife will want to thank you personally.”

They found Simon’s mother on a bench surrounded by luggage, a baby in one arm and a little girl sprawled, sleeping, across her lap. A purple satin jacket strained to contain the roll of fat around her waist. The feathered hat perched on her head looked like a seagull bobbing on flotsam.

“Oh, Simon! Just look at your collar. See what you’ve done, Henry!” Henry, beside her, hung his head.

“Althea, this is Miss . . . ?” The man looked at her.

“Rabinowitz, Rachel Rabinowitz. Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cohen.”

“My pleasure, dear,” Althea said, distractedly offering a limp
hand. “David, when can we board? I need to settle them into the car before they drive me to distraction.”

“Rachel is a nursing student, dear. She took care of Simon’s bloody nose just now. She’s going to Denver, to see her parents.” Althea looked at her husband and lifted an eyebrow, as if an idea had been communicated between them.

“Really? Do you have your ticket yet?”

“No, I need to arrange it.”

“Listen, dear, I know this is abrupt, but would you consider traveling with me? The children’s au pair was taken ill and Dr. Cohen won’t allow her to travel, but I don’t see how I can possibly manage on my own.”

“Oh, come with us, Rachel! We’ll have such fun on the train,” Simon pleaded.

“Thank you, I’d be happy to travel with you, Mrs. Cohen, if I can be of help.” Simon applauded; Rachel interrupted him. “But, are you in coach as well?”

Althea let out a laugh. “Oh, dear, no, we’re in the Pullman, but you’ll join us, please. You can use the au pair’s ticket. I can’t express to you what a comfort it will be to have someone with me.” As if everything had been settled, Althea handed the baby to Rachel then shifted the sleeping girl off her lap. She stood and smoothed her skirt with gloved hands. “Just look at these creases,” she muttered to herself.

Their train was announced. The doctor escorted his family and Rachel down to the platform and into their compartment, where they said their good-byes. Soon after the train pulled out of Chicago, a porter arrived at their compartment to deliver their luggage and introduce himself. “Mrs. Cohen, my name is Ralph Morrison.”
His voice was deep, with a hint of bayou in the vowels. “I am here to make your journey as pleasant as possible. The dining car has been holding dinner, and I’ll be making up the beds while you enjoy yourselves a late supper. If you need anything at all, just call for me.” He cleared his throat. “Now, you are welcome to call me porter, or Ralph, but as I am lately a grandfather, I’m afraid I’m just a little too old to answer to ‘boy.’”

Ralph Morrison paused to gauge their reaction to his speech, which he delivered with a calibrated smile to every passenger, as if inviting them to be amused by the novelty of treating a person of color with respect. Althea was too distracted by the children to have paid much attention, but Rachel couldn’t see why anyone would call the tall man with a sprinkling of white in his close-cropped hair a boy.

Dinner was remarkable, thick steaks on china plates, silverware gleaming against the linen tablecloth. Rachel cut the meat for the little girl, but Simon insisted on struggling with the steak knife himself. Returning from the dining car, Rachel thought Ralph Morrison must be a magician to have transformed the plush compartment, with its upholstered couches and curtained window, into a bedroom, the four beds made up with stiff sheets and soft pillows. They took it in turns to undress in the tiny restroom, complete with washstand and toilet. Despite the polished faucet and beveled mirror, Rachel saw when she pulled the chain that their waste emptied onto the tracks rushing beneath them, just as it had in the coach car from New York.

It was the best night Rachel could remember. Never mind that the train stopped twice to take on cargo, the coupling of cars lurching her out of sleep. The spells of wakefulness allowed her
to savor the night. The boys had the top bunks; Mrs. Cohen had taken the baby into her bed, leaving the little girl, Mae, to sleep in Rachel’s arms, the small head resting lightly on her elbow. Rachel wrapped her arms around the girl’s breathing warmth and let the swaying train rock them to sleep as Illinois and Iowa rolled away beneath them.

I
N THE EARLY
morning, while the train was stopped in the yard at Omaha, Althea rang for the porter to bring coffee and rolls. Rachel feared Mrs. Cohen would remark on her bald scalp before she could settle the cloche hat over her head, but Althea was either too tactful to say anything or too distracted to notice.

“Just look at that sky,” Althea murmured. “That’s what I miss most, is that big western sky.” While they enjoyed breakfast in the quiet of sleeping children, Althea whispered her family’s history: how her father, Dr. Abrams, had come out to Colorado to start the Hospital for Consumptive Hebrews, and met her mother, the daughter of pioneers who’d been in Colorado since gold rush days. Althea met her own husband when he came out from Chicago to intern at the hospital; they’d been married in Temple Emanuel before Dr. Cohen moved them back to Chicago to establish his own practice. Rachel listened contentedly while she finished her coffee, wondering what it would be like to know so much about her own past. Althea rang for more rolls and cold milk as the children stirred awake.

“Do you know what happened with the horses last night, Mr. Porter?” Henry asked, sitting on his mother’s bed and popping a roll into his mouth.

“It’s Mr. Morrison, Henry,” Rachel corrected. Ralph Morrison glanced at her, then back at the boy.

“How’s about you call me Ralph and I’ll call you Henry, all right? And I sure do know what happened with those horses. My good friend saw the whole thing with his own eyes.” He took a knee in the open doorway of the compartment. Henry and Simon both came closer. “A whistle blew in the train yard, and one of Mr. Guggenheim’s prize stallions spooked going up the ramp into the horse car. When he reared up, his back hooves slipped off the ramp and he tumbled down on the tracks. Just then, the caboose got coupled on the back of the train and bumped the horse car. That stallion got caught under the carriage.”

Ralph glanced at Mrs. Cohen, seeking approval to continue the gruesome story. His tip—indeed, his career as a Pullman porter—depended on never giving offense. But anything that entertained her boys was fine with Althea. “Go on,” she said.

“Well, that horse was whinnying to shatter glass, and all the horses on the car started bucking and neighing. It was pan-de-mo-ni-um. Mr. Guggenheim’s trainer was raising heck with the conductor. The engineer moved the train back off the horse, and the poor creature had to be put down. Not only that, but then the horse had to be chained up and dragged off the tracks.”

“I wish I could’ve seen it,” Henry said.

“What was the horse’s name?” Simon asked.

“Now, that’s a very good question, young man, but I don’t know the answer.” Ralph Morrison took the pot to refresh their coffee. “Lunch will be served between twelve-thirty and two. Would you like the first or second seating, Mrs. Cohen?”

“First seating, please, the children will be hungry again.”

As the train rocked across Nebraska, Rachel took the boys down to the observation car. She waved away cigar smoke as they pressed against the window, the prairie sweeping past under a huge blue sky, the boys searching in vain for buffalo. After lunch, Althea tried to wear the boys out by letting them race along the corridor, to the unspoken dismay of the porters, while Rachel stayed in the compartment with Mae and the baby, both napping. Sitting by the window, she watched the sagging telegraph wires rise and fall like waves between the pine poles. She wondered what messages were pulsing through those wires, dash dot dash.

It was nearly ten o’clock that night when the Western Express pulled into Denver’s Union Station. Rachel had her cardboard case ready. She expected to say her good-byes to Mrs. Cohen and the children in their compartment, but Simon had fallen asleep and needed to be prodded to his feet, Henry was cranky, and Althea asked Rachel to take Mae while she carried the baby. Ralph Morrison, handing Mrs. Cohen down to the platform, looked satisfied, though not impressed, with the tip she pressed into his hand. He tucked the money into his pocket, adding it to the generous amount he’d gotten, with a knowing wink, from a banker traveling with his mistress.

Rachel followed the family off the train and up the ramp to the station, Mae’s sweaty little fingers in one hand and her case in the other. Henry ran ahead, Simon followed, and Mrs. Cohen hurried after them, the feathers on her hat bobbing above the crowd. In the station, Mrs. Cohen embraced a man Rachel assumed was her father, Dr. Abrams; the boys were bouncing around him while he cooed at the baby. Before Rachel could get near enough to hand
Mae to her mother, the group had moved toward the arched doors. Rachel looked over her shoulder at the ticket window—a few men were gathered there, as well as porters emerging from the tracks with carts of luggage—but before she could stop Mrs. Cohen, the family was outside. Rachel hurried to catch up, pulling Mae along, only to see them piling into a black sedan. As she reached the car door, Althea, settled up front with the baby on her lap, called back to the boys to make room for Rachel and Mae. Henry reached out and grabbed her case. Hoisting Mae onto her lap, Rachel rode the tide into the car.