The Christmas Train (18 page)

He checked the corridor, drew the privacy curtain closed, and unzipped the bag. Instead of loot, he found something inexplicable. It was newspapers balled up, just like the bunch that Regina had been carrying on the Cap. He looked at some of the papers. They were from various editions of newspapers on the East Coast. Unable to make sense of this, he kept looking through the bag until he found a photograph of Agnes Joe and what Tom took to be her daughter. He didn’t know for sure, because the two women could not have looked more dissimilar. The younger woman was taller than Agnes Joe and was one of the most beautiful women Tom had ever seen, truly a stunner. And she was dressed in a circus performer’s outfit, so at least that much of Agnes Joe’s story was true. He looked for a date on the picture, on the front and back, but there was none. Agnes Joe looked about the same, so it couldn’t have been taken that long ago. They seemed happy or at least cordial in the photo. He wondered what had gone wrong since the picture had been taken, something that might explain why the mother wasn’t spending Christmas with her only child.

Not wanting to risk discovery, he put the photo back in the bag and slipped out of the compartment. He went to the other section of sleepers, stopped dead, ducked inside a vacant unit, and peered out cautiously. Agnes Joe was emerging from one of the units. She looked around, as Tom had, to see that no one was watching. She didn’t appear to be carrying anything, but she could have had something in her pockets. She headed off in the opposite direction. Tom slipped out, moved down the corridor, and peered into the compartment she’d been in. He didn’t see anything that identified whose unit it was. He was about to go in to determine who was staying there, but he heard people coming and walked away. However, he got the letter of the unit, and he figured it would be fairly easy to find out whose it was.

As he walked off, his thoughts returned to a seemingly lonely woman with a curious background, gregarious nature, and propensity to stuff old papers in her bags and invade other people’s dwellings on a moving train. His trip of soul-searching and personal discovery was turning more into an investigative journalism outing, solving the matter of the modern train robber, who was perhaps named Agnes Joe. For many reasons, however, he hoped she was innocent.

As he came through the lounge car he saw Herrick Higgins at the other end peering anxiously out the window.

“What’s up?” asked Tom. “You look a little uptight.”

Higgins smiled, but Tom noted there wasn’t much sincerity behind it.

“Oh, nothing much. Just watching the snow coming down.”

“Well, snow can’t hurt a train.”

Higgins didn’t smile or nod in agreement. “We’ll be hitching on a third engine at La Junta before we cross the Raton Pass,” he said.

“Is that normal practice, or because of the snow?”

“Oh, it’s normal. See, it’s quite a climb, and a third engine just adds a nice little comfort zone.” His gaze returned to the snow falling outside, and his expression grew serious again. Tom walked on, but he glanced nervously back at the old railroad man, trying without success to read his thoughts. chapter twenty-one

Upon Roxanne and Eleanor entering the coach car housing the boys’ choir, Roxanne pulled out a can of Lysol and started spraying everywhere. “Okay,” she said, “we got us some serious travel funk going on here. Now, do not try to deceive Ms. Roxanne about this for she has five sons of her own and lots and lots of grandsons, and thus she has a Ph. D. in what she likes to call ‘stinky young men syndrome,’ and that just won’t cut it on Ms. Roxanne’s train. Do we all understand this?” All the young men nodded. “Good, now I have two showers reserved for you for the next hour, and we will make good use of that time, won’t we?” They all nodded again. She assembled them in two rows. “Three minutes per boy per shower, no more no less, for this train does many wonderful things but it does not make water out of air. And we will shampoo and we will get behind our ears and between our toes, won’t we, and we will come out with not one dirty digit because there will be an inspection—oh yes there will. And the good Lord will look down upon all of you squeaky clean young men and He will bless you this Christmas like no other.” For emphasis she sang snatches of tunes Pearl Bailey and Billie Holiday had made famous, and then the chaperones marched the lads out.

“How did you end up being the choir’s caretaker?” asked Eleanor. “I understand the singing connection and all, but is there something else?”

“They’re good boys, with a lot of potential, but also lots of things in their way too, especially where they’re going back to. I won’t accept that fifty or twenty or even ten percent of those boys won’t make it to adults, I won’t! Every one of them, every single one of them, is going to make it. I’m taking a month-long vacation come this summer, been saving up for a while now, and we’re going to go on the road, me and those boys, and we’re going to play some places, and they’re going to see some things that will make their bellies burn to do the right thing in life. They’ll find dreams they never thought they even had, and old Roxanne will be right there holding their hands ’til they don’t need me being Momma anymore.”

“That’s quite an ambitious undertaking,” said Eleanor.

“But they’re worth it, don’t you think?”

Eleanor smiled. “I think they’re more than worth it.”

They went into the next coach, where a dazed-looking man was walking up and down the aisle.

Roxanne said in a low voice to Eleanor, “You’ll find that coach on the long-distance trains can be an interesting place. You want some stories, you could do a lot worse than plunking yourself down right here.”

She said in a loud voice, “Hello, Ernest, you feeling okay today, baby?”

“Demons, demons everywhere, Roxanne—out the window, in my clothes, the food. I saw some in my Diet Pepsi.”

“I know, I know, but I tell you what, I saw you were going to be on the train so I brought some antidemon dust. This concoction is guaranteed to take care of any demon there is, including supersize.” She handed him a bag that she pulled from her pocket. “What I’d do, Ernest, is sprinkle that on you, but no one else. You don’t want to waste it, ’cause that’s all I got.”

“Thank you, Roxanne, thank you. You’re the only one who understands.”

Ernest went off, sprinkling himself along the way.

Eleanor said, “Sounds like he might need professional help.”

“Yeah, I thought so too, but what I think he wants is attention. He’s got nobody, so far as I can tell. He’s been riding this train for years, never hurt anybody, just walks around, looking crazy, but I don’t believe he is at all. He dresses like he’s homeless, but this train trip is beyond the purse of any homeless person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met quite a few. I found out he’s an engineer at a firm in San Diego. He’s the sort probably never had a lot of friends, and now that he’s around forty-five or so, I don’t think he knows how to make them. I’ve spent time with him, and he’s intelligent, articulate, but his brain’s not wired the same as you and me. When he first gets on the Chief he always does the demon thing. We get past that, then things are cool.”

“Why do you think he takes the train so much?”

“Well, nobody wants to be alone, especially around Christmas. I’m sure you know that most suicides happen around the holidays. Besides, this isn’t a train this time of year. It’s a social club of strangers looking for a friend.”

A frantic-looking older woman ran up to Roxanne waving her ticket. “Oh my God, I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Well, honey, tell me where it is you want to go, and then we’ll work from there.”

“Denver,” said the woman.

“Denver, okay, you need to be on the Zephyr, not the Chief. The Chief goes to LA and not by way of Denver. I’m surprised they let you on here.”

“I think I stepped on the wrong train.”

“Well, the Zephyr does leave out of Chicago too.”

“I can’t believe this is happening. My daughter and her family are expecting me for Christmas. She told me she’d fly out and ride back with me. I don’t like to fly and my husband has passed on. She said my faculties weren’t sharp enough to travel by myself, and maybe she’s right.”

“Hey, you had enough ‘faculties’ to come ask for help, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but when I don’t show up in Denver, she’ll know. Then all Christmas she and her husband will be saying ‘We told you so.’”

“Who said you’re not getting to Denver in time for Christmas?” asked Roxanne.

“But I’m on the wrong train.”

“For now you are, but see, we’re going to get you on the right train.”

“I don’t understand. How can you do that? You said this train is going to Los Angeles.”

“At Kansas City, we’ll get you on a short connecting service to Omaha. The Zephyr stops in Omaha, and you’ll be there in plenty of time to get on and sail right to Denver. Not a problem at all. I’ll make all the arrangements and come get you when we get to KC tonight.”

The woman couldn’t stop thanking Roxanne for all her help. After she had left, Roxanne said, “People come in here all the time, hot, bothered, worried about everything in the world. You got to read their body cues, solve their problems, get them interested in the trip, make ’em part of the process. You got kids and parents traveling together, you talk to the kids, not to the kids through the parents. The little ones appreciate that, makes ’em feel big and important, and then they listen to you. You bite off a little bit at a time, and some passengers you never really get through to, but most you do. It takes time, but either you work the job or the job works you. That’s what I tell my daughter all the time, beat that into her head.”

“You’ve done a great job with Regina, she’s wonderful.”

“Yep, she’s special, all right. Momma’s proud of her.”

“You sound like a psychologist.”

“Unofficially I am. And I got no end of patients.”

“You sure you’re not an angel dropped from Heaven onto the Southwest Chief? You sound almost too good to be true, and I mean that with mountains of respect.”

“Well, honey, I’m a sixty-three-year-old fat woman with sore feet, high blood pressure, and the beginnings of diabetes. I know I don’t have all that much time left, and I can either spend it moping and complaining about the things I never got to in life, or I can do something I love and help people along the way. I decided to keep plugging ’til I drop.”

They stopped at one seat and Roxanne put her hands on her hips. “Excuse me, what we got here, shug?”

The young man, about twenty-five, was reclining in his seat without any clothes on. Luckily, the space next to him was unoccupied, the car was darkened for sleeping, and no one else had noticed, at least not yet.

“Hey, it’s cool,” said the young man.

“I bet you’re cool, you ain’t got no pants or a stitch of nothing else on.”

“Well, I’m from Arizona, this is how everybody sleeps in Arizona.”

Roxanne said, “Is that right?” Eleanor had averted her gaze, but Roxanne sat right next to the man. “Now let me get something straight with you, slick. We’re not in Arizona, we’re in Missouri, and while I know they call Missouri the Show Me State, you don’t have nothing I haven’t seen before, so I don’t need no showing of it. Now, if you don’t get all your clothes on right now, you’re getting off this train before we get to Kansas City.”

The young man chuckled. “I gotcha there. La Plata was the last stop, and there’s not another one until KC.”

“That’s right, there’s not, is there?” Roxanne stared at him pointedly until it started to dawn on the guy.

“You wouldn’t put me off in the middle of nowhere? You can’t do that,” he sputtered.

“I wouldn’t call the middle of Missouri the middle of nowhere, would you, Eleanor?”

Eleanor shook her head. “No.”

Roxanne continued, “I mean, folks live there. So it has to be somewhere . I know that the farms are quite a ways apart, and it’s December and cold as I don’t know what, but it’s not nowhere . In fact, the place we’ll let you off, all you got to do is walk about thirty miles, southwest I believe—or maybe it’s northeast—and there’s a motel or something like that if memory serves me correctly, though they might have torn it down, it was very old.”

“Thirty miles! I’ll freeze.”

“Well, not if you have your pants on. And be optimistic about life. I don’t tolerate whiners. You’re young, strong, you can probably make it.”

The man’s eyes bulged. “Probably?”

Roxanne pulled out her walkie-talkie. She didn’t depress the button, something Eleanor noticed but the young man didn’t.

“Service boss to the conductor and engineer. We got us a red alert, situation one-four-two, repeat one-four-two. We’ll need to stop and discharge a passenger. Over.”

“Wait!” said the panicked man. “What’s a one-four-two?”

“Oh, honey, that’s just train talk for an uncooperative passenger. On big fancy planes, they just tie you up and sit on you, because they can’t open their doors six miles up.” She smiled sweetly. “But we don’t have that problem on a train, now do we, shug? See, on Amtrak we just kick your little disruptive butt off wherever we want. Now, we do provide a flashlight and a compass to help guide you once you’ve been discharged. That’s official Amtrak policy, and a good one I think.” She looked out the window. “Mercy, the snow’s picked up again, looks like a regular blizzard.” She spoke into her walkie-talkie. “Service boss here again. On that one-four-two, bring a shovel and a first-aid kit with frostbite applications for the discharged passenger. Over.”