Phantom Nights (36 page)

Bobby winked at Ramses. "Cecily just looked at her and said, 'Sure, Mom. We can take the furniture. But I almost forgot to tell you the good news. Bobby and I are pregnant again.'"

"Congratulations," Ramses said.

"Thanks. I don't feel all that pregnant yet. But anyhow, Cece says to her mom, 'So Bobby and I have decided to make over the guest room into Brendan's room. We'll do that while you're on your cruise.' And Bernie says, wish I could've been there to see the look on her face,
'What
cruise?' 'The cruise you and Aunt Edith have been talking about doing together for the past twenty years. Can't think of a more perfect time to go, while your house is getting fixed up, and I talked to Edith long-distance just last night. She is so excited, said she'd make all the arrangements, and I'll bet her bags are packed already.' So then here it comes. Bernie doesn't know if she feels well enough right now, Cece is going to need all the help she can get with Brendan during her new pregnancy—and so on. But my wife just looked her in the eye and said, 'Mom, go. Have a good time. You deserve it.'" Bobby poured a little more of the Dickel into his cup. "Damn, I'm proud of her." He drank, smiling a little smugly. "I guess it did make an impression on Cece when I told her her mom's fingerprints were all over that Vaseline jar she tossed into Alex's wastebasket."

"How long does the cruise last?"

"Three months, I think Cecily told me. Want another?"

"Wouldn't mind." Bobby poured; Ramses tossed down the whiskey in a lump, finishing with a look of admiration and satisfaction. "I am going to miss this," he said.

"Plenty of time for a few more visits with ol' George D."

Ramses noted Bobby's discomfort and smiled to dismiss the spectre floating in and out of their awareness of every man's fate.

"I wanted to talk to you about Alex and his longstanding problem with his vocal cords. If there's a chance the damage can be repaired, I know the man for the job."

"Well, Ramses. Alex was disappointed so often I'd hate to—"

"This afternoon while waiting on the results of some tests, I had time to catch up on correspondence and attend to other, legal matters, the tidying-up that needs to be done." He took three envelopes from his coat pockets and laid them on the table. "I should drop these at the post office on my way back to the hospital. I seldom write letters. I suppose it's my reclusive nature. Dr. Charles Martorell, however, is someone I correspond with on a regular basis."

He fingered the fattest envelope on the table. "In this letter I've provided him with an introduction to Alex's case along with photostats of the medical reports you gave to me. Of course he won't be able to make a decision regarding surgery until he's examined Alex personally. Next month, in Paris."

Bobby rubbed a mosquito bite under his chin and smiled skeptically. "Alex is going to Paris?"

"Yes. At no expense to you and Cecily. I've made the arrangements, rather sneakily I admit, but time may be of the essence." Ramses began to cough, and the wracking cough turned him into a shadow figure on the picnic bench, sideways and shuddering helplessly. Bobby's left hand was in his lap; he dug his fingernails into the palm while waiting out Ramses's ordeal. There was blood on the handkerchief Ramses whisked from his lips when the spasm ended, blood he didn't want Bobby to see. When he straightened again he was smiling, his face composed. "Thank you for your patience. How about another spot of the Dickel?"

"I uh feel like we ought to—"

Ramses looked around slowly. "No, not yet. It's so pleasant here. When the wind is right." He nodded toward Pee-Wee's ramshackle restaurant. Bobby laughed. There was no wind yet, and the odor of fry grease from PeeWee's was almost a visible smudge in the air. The sun a faded glory, nearby landscape taking on the first soft tones of summer night. Bobby passed the pint bottle to Ramses, who finished off the whiskey. "'Red sky at night, sailor's delight,"' he said. "And one long voyage is nearly over. I never imagined that I would find myself back where it began, in the heart of a boy behind a mule plowing fields while adrift in sailor dreams, so tired he could barely hold his head up but thinking, Why can't I?"

Bobby nodded solemnly. Words, he felt, would have been an intrusion just then.

Ramses sighed. "You shouldn't lose hope on Alex's behalf, Bobby."

"I never have intended to."

"Good. He's just beginning to wake up to life, whatever may be in store." Ramses smothered a cough before it could develop into something punishing. "I sold my home in Nashville when I was sure of my prognosis and put the proceeds from the sale aside for Mally, along with my sayings." He made a small gesture of finality with his hand. "Alex's expenses and Charles's fee will be amply covered. Should Charles determine that Alex's condition is operable, then Alex will remain for some months as a guest in his house. He has twin grandchildren living with him and his wife, Alida, by the way, who are Alex's age. Both their parents were in the Resistance and were executed by the Gestapo."

"Ramses, have you had the chance to—"

"This afternoon I wanted to speak further to Alex about the surgery, but as we know, Alex decided to check himself out of the hospital." Now that the sun had set, Ramses removed his dark glasses and looked at Bobby. "Will you do this? It's for Alex, of course, but in a very important way it's for me as well."

"In this case I think—I want to do what Alex wants."

"Wonderful! Well, why don't we go and ask him right now?"

"You still think we'll find Alex hanging around the old depot at Cole's Crossing?"

"Yes, I'm sure we will. I'll explain while we're driving."

A
lex had hitched a ride with an elderly farmer named Fred Edgar Moody and his wife, Eula, who was fresh from the dentist with a new set of choppers; she had a sack of peanut brittle to try them out on. There was room for Alex and his duffel bag in the truck bed along with a couple of cartons of baby chicks and some fifty-pound sacks of Purina chicken feed.

He got off at Cole's Crossing in the last full, red light of day, shedding a few chick feathers, his mouth sticky from peanut brittle. Not knowing precisely what time it was. But he had left the square at a few minutes past eight by the courthouse clock, and with Fred Edgar driving like a geriatric madman all the way, easily busting twenty-five miles an hour on the straight stretches of country road, Alex calculated that it was about eight-thirty now. That gave him a half hour or so to wait for the arrival of the
Dixie Traveler
out of Memphis, thereafter Leland Howard himself. Alex had no doubts that he would show.

After that it would be up to Mally. He didn't know what Mally was planning. She had only smiled secretively and said
, You'll see, Sugar
.

An emaciated dog was picking its way stiffly across the silver rails west of the leaning old water tank. The stray lifted his head but didn't pause during his limping progress toward Little Grove. Keeping the dog, or anything else, in focus was difficult for Alex, as if his eyes were cheap binoculars that couldn't be adequately adjusted. His headache was as bad as it had been all day. He felt weakened by the pain and stumbled as he walked down the center of the track with his duffel over one shoulder.

He had always taken his reflexes and physical agility for granted. Now the parts of his body didn't seem to want to work together.

The gabled depot was stark against a rusty stain of sunset. Birds soared upward from the roof line. The Yella Dog River glinted like a scattered broken mirror beneath the long trestle. The air was still and thick where he walked, the earth no longer giving back the heat of day.

No sign of the stationmaster whom he'd seen on his last visit. But Alex couldn't complete the Crossing, of course, until the
Dixie Traveler
invested him with its power and Mally appeared. Then the old platform would swarm with bodies evanescent as locomotive smoke in the confused aftermath of their recent lives.

He climbed the steps from the roadbed and let his duffel drop on the platform, knelt to take out the crowbar be had purchased at Sy Carty's hardware store. He set about pulling off the boards that had been nailed over the depot's entrance. It was tough work that had him draining perspiration and feeling sparkly-faint before he was done.

Alex rested up, then put his shoulder to the door, forcing corroded hinges to give. The depot had been abandoned for years to birds and mice. Inside, the floor was cruddy with droppings. He'd been five years old the last time he stepped inside. The waiting room now seemed smaller. There were benches along two walls, a Franklin Stove in the corner between them. The stovepipe had collapsed across one bench and the floor. He heard the beat of wings above the rafters at his entry. A panic-shadow darted from the loft beneath the pitched roof and coursed around the walls, big as a kite in the still-bright reflection from the sky outside.

There was so much dust and crap on the floorboards, he left near-perfect footprints from the doorway. Alex had a sneezing fit that echoed like explosions at the back of his sore head. Weeping, he took a camp lantern, also from Carty's, out of his bag and set it on the scarred maple counter next to the pebbled-glass ticket window, which was miraculously intact. He lit the wick of the kerosene lamp and the expanding glow revealed mouse-scurry in a fallen stovepipe, more flutter of dark wings where the roof was pierced.

There were chalk traces from the depot's last day on the timetable beside the window. In spite of his vision problems and overflowing eyes, he saw
Hi, Alex!
appear, a big chalky scrawl in the middle of the blackboard. He smiled gratefully. Felt better already.

Jagged pieces of sooty glass in the trackside window frame took on a lurid glow as he walked with the lantern back to the entrance and closed the door. Then he chose a bench opposite the entrance on which to wait, the lamp beside him, the duffel between his feet, his head in his hands.

T
here had been a graveled parking lot adjacent to the depot on the north side of the Southern's right-of-way, but it had gone to hip-high ragweed and milk thistle long ago. Leland Howard parked his Pontiac Eight at the edge of the overgrown lot, and after having a look around and seeing no one, he transferred the Colt revolver from his boot to his waistband. The ragweed pollen irritated his nose; he snuffled into a handkerchief. About a quarter of a mile on up the road, there was a small farmhouse, empty rockers on the porch. Disembodied voices of Negro children at play.

He heard the frying drone of cicadas and a tree frog tuning up for a night's romancing. There was no sense of weather, just bake-oven heat, although the sky had lost its flame, burned down to a sultry yellow streak in the west with a small green wafer on the dusky landscape, the signal block at Half Mile. All clear for the
Dixie Traveler
.

It was a few minutes before nine o'clock. Early for his appointment, or whatever it was.

The best way to get to the depot was to follow the track.

Leland unwrapped a piece of candy, recalling that when he was a kid he could walk a single rail, light-boned, blithely balancing for half a mile or more. Tonight he plodded, one crosstie at a time, avoiding ballast, the crunch of footsteps, his nerves spinning out around him like spider's silk.

Halfway there, and he thought he saw a wink of light inside the depot.

Leland went slowly up the steps from track level and saw the litter of torn-away boards on the depot platform. Yes, and there was light inside, a modest flicker reflected from the jagged edges of glass in the window frame behind heavy wire mesh.

He looked in from the platform, a hand on the checkered walnut butt of his Colt.

Dust and silence. Footprints criss-crossing the floor.

Then his heart jumped. Someone was moving around in there. He saw the shadow on one wall, big, splayed out, shifting with her movements as she paced, as if she were impatient for him to come calling.

Leland moved a couple of steps himself to change his sight line through the wire mesh and caught a glimpse of swirling red in the part of the waiting room most distant from the pale flame of the camp lantern. The lantern had been placed on the floor beside a large duffel bag.

Red. She was wearing a red dress with something like sequins on it, he couldn't be sure. Flounces though, a party dress. Struttin' her stuff. He changed his angle of vision again, moved as far to his right as he could, and saw a bare arm, flash of skin tone, deep maple, quadroon probably. Like Mally herself. He grinned, but his heart was going like gangbusters.

From a long way down the line toward Memphis he heard the drawn-out howl of the eastbound
Dixie Traveler
.

Leland took three steps and kicked open the door to the depot's waiting room and stumbled off-balance inside. He drew his gun and took two more steps toward the woman in the red dress, who was turning to look at him in multiple flashes of little mirrors that stung Leland's eyes.

What a fancy dress.

But it wasn't a woman wearing it.

For God's sake!

It was a boy, a deeply tanned blond boy with a bandaged, scratched-up head and dopey-looking eyes. He was way too big for the size of the dress he had put on. The dress had split almost all the way down one side, and the ruffled hem was well above his bare knees. He wore khaki shorts underneath that skimpy dress.