Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (11 page)

Wellsford. A
choice
? She thinks
I
picked Wellsford? What a “refined” way my father has of twisting the truth.

Well, no, Celeste, I do not want to come to the grand opening. Nor do I want to live with you two in the Paris of the Plains. And, most unfortunately, I accidentally left my suede footwear on the train, which makes a sophisticated leap into Kansas City absolutely impossible!

“Don't you dare laugh, Marie.”

She tracks my rolling pin back and forth and sniffs the doughy bits I drop for her. “This isn't
squirrel stew
. I'm practicing. It's going to be a delicate pie crust. I'd like to see you try and make one.”

I'm working to keep my mind off Dot, who will be here any minute to start the laundry. The Nesbitts decided to take “the high road” and not fire her, but I think it's because nobody wanted to do it.

I hear the Rawleigh man's wagon in the driveway. Marie trots to the kitchen door, but her friendly
yap-yap
turns to a growl.

“Shhh… Mrs. Nesbitt's asleep. Don't scare him off. He's nice. I've got a list.…”

But Marie is about to tear through the screen.

It's Cecil, alone, in his wagon.

The egg.
My mouth turns to cotton.

Cecil's horse pees on our yard. Cecil squints at the empty shed, then spots me through the kitchen door. “The Doc here?” he yells, his voice high and edgy.

Why's he asking? He can see
the Doc's
car is gone. I open the door enough for Marie to slip out. “No.”

He cranes his neck toward me, scowls. “Didn't hear ya.”

I step partway onto the porch. “I said,
no
.” I silently order Marie to chew Cecil to stew meat if he makes the tiniest move off his seat.

He smirks at her clown-dog nose smudged with flour. He teases one foot off the wagon, which sends her into spasms of snarling. But he stays put on the bench. His face looks ragged. He winces, shifts his weight like the plank seat has sprouted splinters, and adjusts the front of his overalls.
Get out of here.

Cecil takes an eternity to dig a tobacco pouch from inside the bib of his overalls and sticks a wad in his cheek. He picks leaf flecks off his bottom lip. I wonder what stories about me lurk under that dirty straw hat. “Dot's not comin' today,” he remarks, scanning the yard like he owns the place. “She's feeling… poorly.”

I don't ask what's the matter with Dot. “Dr. Nesbitt's at his office. You can take her there.”

He shrugs, then slaps the reins on his palm, his eyes
shifting between the clothesline, the chicken house, and me.
Leave!

He glances at Mrs. Nesbitt's shaded window and leans toward me, a glint in his eye. He whispers, “I hear you're a feisty one.…”

I wish I had the rolling pin in my fist. I wish the sheriff was in the kitchen with his rifle loaded. But before Cecil can utter another word, an angel, in the form of the Rawleigh man in his buggy, stops at the bottom of our driveway.

Cecil grimaces, throws his hands up, and without another word forces his horse to make a tight turn around. His wagon stops halfway down the driveway. The Rawleigh man waits while Cecil folds a horse blanket and gingerly tucks it under himself on the seat. The medicine salesman tips his hat—“Mr. Deets”—but he shakes his head in a sorry kind of way after Cecil passes onto the road toward town.

The Rawleigh gentleman stands down from his buggy and scratches Marie's ears. I read our list. “We need Camphor Balm and Bee Secret.” He sorts through his sample cases. “What's that Anti-Pain Oil for?” I ask, spotting a row of dark bottles.

“The Internal or the External?” the Rawleigh man asks.

“External.”

“It's for rheumatism.”

“I'll take a bottle for Mrs. Nesbitt's hands.” I run inside and get cash from my pocketbook. It'll be a present.

He explains his assortment of penetrating rubs made with oils from Sicily, perfumes from Mexico, Japanese camphor,
and eucalyptus. “W. T. Rawleigh searches everywhere for his scientific ingredients. A far cry from the usual
folk
remedies.” He rolls his eyes. “No doubt Mrs. Nesbitt has tried dozens of those, too.”

“I don't know, sir.”

“In my business I've heard every remedy known to man. Course, Doc Nesbitt probably has too.…” He looks up. “Let's see, for rheumatism… put a teaspoonful of salt in your shoe. Wear a bull snake tied around your waist or—
my favorite
—if afflicted with rheumatism, sleep with a dog wrapped around your feet, and the rheumatism will drain into the dog.” He tips his head apologetically at Marie. “I guess that means you, dear.”

I smile. “We'll try the massage instead.”

“You'd better do that in red flannel pajamas with an acorn in your pocket.” He climbs in his buggy, circles the driveway, and stops. “Or there's always tying a woolen string just below the knee, or rubbing a cow's gall bladder on the afflicted joints…”

I make a face. “Maybe next time. Thank you,” I yell as he wheels past the mailbox.

“Seems Cecil's rear end is what's feeling poorly today,” I whisper to Marie as we go inside with our purchases. “What's the folk remedy for
that
, I'd like to know?”

I sort our unusually large and nasty pile of laundry. Except for the lipstick on Mrs. Nesbitt's hankies, it looks like a load from a railroad repair crew—greasy rags, a frayed cook's apron soaked with blackberry juice, even a hand towel caked with Marie's muddy paw prints.

“Mrs. Nesbitt?” I say as she and Henry step out by the washing machine. “It looks like we used these napkins for tea bags. And what did Marie get into?” I pinch the corner of an especially smelly scrap of blanket from Marie's bed.

“Sorry, dear.” She looks down. “We're guilty.” Mrs. Nesbitt glances at Marie. “Both of us. I…
we
so looked forward to Dot having to do all this awful wash. Payback for the mess
she
made. A bit pathetic, perhaps… but”—her eyes light up—“the girl asked for it.” She points with Henry. “Oh, and look in the bottom, you'll find the dishcloths we glued together with egg yolk. Not to worry. They're all just rags you can throw out.”

“Very clever,” I say the way Dr. Nesbitt would. I raise the Borax to her. “Well done.”

Since I've dusted her glasses a hundred times with
out breaking them, Mrs. Nesbitt says she trusts me to massage her fragile fingers with the oil. We sit, turned toward each other, on a cushion in the old spring wagon seat by the birdbath—the place Mrs. Nesbitt likes to ask me hard questions in a soft way. I keep an eye on the driveway, for fear Cecil will come rolling up.

Her hands across a pillow on my lap look like wilted hibiscus blooms.

The Anti-Pain Oil brings the smells of the whole wide world into the palm of my hand. Marie sniffs it, sneezes. I tell Mrs. Nesbitt about the exotic ingredients. “Ah, the sweet life you might have had with a French or a Japanese
hobo,” she says to Marie, who sneezes again. “By the way, do you two know what ‘hobo' really means?”

“No, ma'am.”

“It means ‘homeward bound.'” She sits back, closes her eyes. I fumble her fingers apart and begin to work the oil. Like tumblers inside a frozen lock, her joints loosen a little. “And,” she says, “that's exactly how we felt—like hobos, when Avery and I came to live here after Morris died. We came home
for
Morris, since he couldn't.” She grips my hand. “He was lost at sea… a German U-boat.”

My thoughts travel to Morris, drifting and bumping forever across the floor of the Atlantic in his uniform, then to Mama, all dressed up in her earthly coffin home in Kansas. I shake the images away. “I'm so very sorry, Mrs. Nesbitt.” We gaze at the sturdy tugboat of a farmhouse Morris built, anchored in this sunny green ocean of grass and corn.

She smiles sadly. “Would you like to know what I say to him?”

“Morris?”

“Yes, when I pace the porch and talk to him. May I tell you what I say?”

“Yes, ma'am, please.”

“I apologize for being so angry at the world for his dying, for being miserable and morbid for so long. I turned my angel into a ghost.” She wipes her eyes. “So Avery, bless his heart, who has had his own grief to bear, finally wrote a
prescription
for me. A folk remedy, so to speak. And here you are! He knew I needed a person, not a pill.”

Mrs. Nesbitt places both her hands on mine. We sit silent
for a long while.

The words tumble from my mouth before I can stop them. “
I
have a person—sort of a friend—who might come visit me here, if it's all right.”

“From home?”

“Yes, ma'am.” My face is hot. So are the soles of my feet and everyplace in between.

“So tell me about her, Iris.”

“Her name is… Leroy.”

Mrs. Nesbitt turns with her mouth open.

“P-P-Patterson. Leroy Patterson,” I sputter. I swear I have never said his whole name out loud before.

“So
she's
of the male persuasion.” Mrs. Nesbitt smiles.

“He's got three sisters. He knows a lot about girls.…”

“Interesting.”

“I don't mean he's
known
a lot of girls, I mean he's…” I want to swallow every word, curl up, and die.

“How old is Leroy Patterson?”

“Almost eighteen. He's good at lifting, or he could pull something heavy for you, like cement, or maybe help with chores, or…” Leroy sounds like a donkey, and I sound worse than Celeste would trying to sell a pair of used work boots.

“Please invite him, Iris.”

“Yes, ma'am. Maybe I'll do that. Thank you.”

“I'd like to go to Atchison with you sometime,” Miss Nesbitt says softly. “See your home.”

I inhale sharply, shift on the bench. “My father is going to sell it.”

The Anti-Pain Oil radiates across our hands.

“I'm trying not to think about it,” I say. But longing washes over me. I want to go there this minute and dust it. There's so much I can't say right now. Too many empty places to fill. I want to ask Mrs. Nesbitt what she'll do in September when I'm gone, but I don't. I can't think about that either. Clouds hover over the house.

Her tone is halting, careful. “Tell me about your mother, Iris?”

I slip my hands back. “I… she…”

Mrs. Nesbitt seems suddenly interested in a jumble of elm branches dipping in the wind. She passes me her hankie.

“She was always so sick. I wasn't allowed to touch her.”

“Did your father ever tell stories about her, or… ?”

“Never.”

Mrs. Nesbitt studies me. Her eyes are sea gray. I imagine Morris in them.

Mrs. Nesbitt says, “You know, Iris—Morris, your mama, Marie, you, me, why even Pansy Deets, we're all hobos. Homeward bound.”

Dr. Nesbitt squats by a wagon rut in the grass and
frowns. “Was Cecil by here today?”

I shudder. “Yes, sir. And the narrow tracks are the Rawleigh man's buggy.”

“Did Dot come?”

“No.”

Dr. Nesbitt looks up at me, his face troubled, his white
broadcloth shirt still neat as a pin after a long day at work. “Did Cecil act strange?”

“Of course he acted strange. He's Cecil,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Why?”

“He came to my office.”

“With Dot?” I ask. “She's sick.”

“No.” Dr. Nesbitt shakes his head. “Cecil didn't say anything about Dot. He has a horrible case of hemorrhoids.”

“Sir?”

“This is a bit medical, Iris, but I know you can manage it. Hemorrhoids are a painful inflammation of the buttocks.” I swear I see a trace of mischief in Dr. Nesbitt's expression. “The vessels of the rump.”

I work furiously to fight off the picture forming in my mind.

Mrs. Nesbitt screws up her face. “Is the inflammation everywhere?… I hope.”

“Well no, Mother, it's…” He squeezes his fist.

Mrs. Nesbitt waves her hand. “Never mind. At least, for once, we're not hearing your grisly diagnosis at the
dinner table
.”

“So
that's
why Cecil showed up this morning.” I shiver. “Why, he acted like a rooster trying to lay an egg. I thought he was after revenge for my hitting Dot.”

I can't tell them how he leers at me, how I think he might touch me if he thought he could get away with it.

Mrs. Nesbitt's eyes sparkle. “Did you treat the affected rump, Avery?”

“Yes. Consider Cecil all tied up, at least for now. But”—his expression darkens—“Cecil's spleen is enlarged too. Most likely he's drinking again.”

Mrs. Nesbitt sighs. “His drinking is even worse since Pansy left, isn't it, Avery?”

Dr. Nesbitt shrugs. “Mother, Cecil Deets's moonshine habit is not your fault.”