Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

“Depends on where you’re going, boss.”

“Iowa City.”

“This train don’t go to Iowa City. We’re headed for Milwaukee and Minnesota.” He talked in a perfectly intelligible, practiced murmur. Mal continued to keep her eyes closed, sustaining the myth that she was asleep.

“Well, how far would you guess it was to Iowa City?”

“From here?”

“No, from Chicago. I don’t care, either one.”

“Are you going to Chicago or Iowa City?” asked the porter, and Mal smiled in the dark, recognizing the tone of humor in the man’s voice, knowing that July wouldn’t know he was being teased. He’s so serious, she thought.

“We’re going to Iowa City.”

“Oh, then you’ll have to change trains in Chicago.”

“I know that. I wonder how far it is to Iowa City from there?”

“You mean you want me to make a guess?—’cause it would have to be a guess . . . this train’s goin’ to Minnesota.”

“A guess, then. How far?”

“Five and a half hours.”

“Five and a half . . . I figured closer to six.”

“You might be right, boss.”

“Well, thank you.”

“You betcha,” and he went silently on down the aisle, his white coat a little bluish from the light.

“So ten hours,” July told his cat, “ten hours.” Then he got up, clambered over Mal and went to the bathroom again, came back, tried to read the paper, put it down and woke Butch up toplay with him. The cat jumped down and got into the box. July cupped his hands and looked out the window.

“It’s a shame,” he murmured, “for it to be so dark.” Mal was astonished. He talked to himself! She’d never known anyone who talked to himself. First sign of insanity, the saying went, but now that she’d finally heard someone she was sure it wasn’t true. July could be a hundred things she could never imagine, but not insane. His problem, she thought, was that he was too sane. There was a solidity to him that could never be shaken. She felt safe with him. She stretched, turned toward him and opened her eyes, thinking there would come a time between then and Chicago when she could tell him that she was going back.

“Oh hi,” said July. “Have a nice sleep?”

“Pretty good. Once you get used to the motion and the sound, it relaxes you.”

“Yes. We’re less than four hours from Chicago, and between five and a half and six to Iowa City from there. I’m so nervous. It seems we couldn’t be there fast enough and at the same time we’re getting there too fast and I wish I had time to get ready. I’m really glad you’re awake.”

“Well, good.”

“I wonder if we should go to the house first thing.”

“What house?”

“My house, in Sharon Center, just across the street from the garage.”

“I don’t know.”

“I wonder if anyone’s living there now.”

“I’m sure I don’t know. What does it look like?”

“It’s white, and not too big. There’s a three-wire clothesline in the front yard and two big cottonwoods. It sits on the northeast corner of an intersection, the blacktop to Hills and old Highway 1. Three bird feeders, one up against a kitchen window in back. The porch has a swing and Dad used to sit in it even in winter and Mom would open the door and tell him to come in for dinner. Snow could come in through the screenand lie on the cement floor and it would blow when the door opened. My father had a red Ford, a real old one that used to sit in the shed in front, and on rainy Saturday afternoons I’d sit in it and pretend I was going somewhere. This must be terribly boring to you.”

“Not at all.”

“Think of it, each second we’re getting closer, a foot at a time, eighty miles an hour. It seems somehow amazing.”

“What does?”

“Things like old Sehr’s house. It’s probably still there, all of it. The summers feel the same probably. Soon the corn will be dead in the fields, the beans brown. The limbs from the cottonwoods are probably still falling off into the yard. The highway commission wanted them taken down. ‘Trash trees,’ they called them. ‘Too much trash falling off into the road.’

“ ‘When you see some,’ Dad told them, ‘come tell me and I’ll clean it up, because nobody’s going to touch those trees.’ He had a black walnut in back and someone from the lumber yard offered him five hundred dollars for it and he wouldn’t sell it. Mom gave him a little grief about that, but he argued that if the time ever came when we needed five hundred dollars and couldn’t get it any other way, then we could sell it—the price of lumber wasn’t likely to go down. So if we kept the tree, then we had it and the money, where if we sold it we had just the money.”

“And were they really killed in an accident?”

“Yes. Just outside of Iowa City.”

“Whose fault was it?”

“It was an accident.”

“I know, but who was to blame?”

“Some guy who was twenty-six and drunk . . . but it doesn’t matter.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. Oh, I wish I could see out of this window!”

Without their having noticed him before, a conductor was standing beside them. “Keep it down here, folks,” he whispered,friendly. “People’s tryin’ to sleep,” then slipped on out of the car and they could hear the banging rails for a moment before the door closed.

“I wonder if we could go out there,” July said quietly.

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s just all so hard to believe. First I was in Iowa, then I was in Philadelphia and now I’m going back to Iowa—like three different people. And you’re with me. Only it seems like—no it doesn’t.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just babbling. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait in Chicago.”

“You keep asking me questions I can’t answer. Just try to go to sleep. When you get to Iowa City you’ll be there. Thinking about it won’t bring it any closer. Is it Iowa City or