Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054)

CROSSING
the
TRACKS

 

BARBARA STUBER

 

MARGARET K. M
C
ELDERRY BOOKS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents
are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events
or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Stuber

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

M
ARGARET
K. M
C
E
LDERRY
B
OOKS
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Book design by Mike Rosamilia

The text for this book is set in MrsEaves.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stuber, Barbara.

Crossing the tracks / Barbara Stuber.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: In Missouri in 1926, fifteen-year-old Iris Baldwin discovers
what family truly means when her father hires her out for the summer as
a companion to a country doctor's invalid mother.

ISBN 978-1-4169-9703-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4169-9705-4 (eBook)

[1. Families—Fiction. 2. Household employees—Fiction. 3. Missouri—History—
20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.S937555Cr 2010

[Fic]—dc22                 2009042672

 

To my grandmother
Ina May Baldwin Kohler

My gratitude to the folks who inspired this story—the family members who have passed on and the characters I “met” through the magic of writing.

For excellent guidance and immense encouragement, I thank Judy Hyde, and also Laura Manivong, Elizabeth Bunce, Sue Gallion, Anola Pickett, Judy Schuler, Tessa Elwood, Victoria Dixon, and all the talented members of Heartland Writers for Kids and Teens.

Huge thanks to my kids—Anna for knowing Iris better than I do, Andy for his keen ear and good cheer when asked to listen to just one more chapter, and Austin for his incredible insight and humor.

Special thanks to my sister, Anne, for remembering and for having so much faith in me.

I am so very grateful to Ginger Knowlton for finding Iris the right home at Simon & Schuster, and to my editor, Karen Wojtyla, and to Emily Fabre, who so wisely walked Iris across the tracks.

Thanks to my dear friends for the power of their optimism and enthusiasm.

And, most importantly, love and gratitude to my husband, Jack, for the unwavering support, terrific ideas, patience, and loving kindness he has shown me from the very first moment I decided I wanted to write.

A
TCHISON,
K
ANSAS
—N
OVEMBER
1916

I'm under Mama's coffin. My little house in the
center of the parlor has silky black curtain walls and a hard ceiling that I can touch with the top of my head if I sit cross-legged and stretch my neck. They moved all the furniture against the walls except a little round stool right by the coffin box, so even short people can see Mama this afternoon. That's why I'm wearing my scratchy church dress with the purple bows.

“Iris!” Daddy calls from the hall. “Where are you?”

I am invisible. I lie down with my knees bent. His footsteps scrape across the rug toward Mama and me. They stop right on the other side of the curtain.

“IRIS!”

I hold my breath and lift the hem. The shiny toes of his black boots are so close I smell shoe polish. My ceiling jiggles. The lid of the coffin creaks open. Daddy takes a deep breath and holds it forever. It's so quiet. Just the three of us at home together, until the doorbell chimes and Daddy turns and walks away.

I reach under the curtain and pull the stool into my playhouse. I try to sit on it, but I'm too tall. So I drag it out, stand on top, and look into the creamy box with thick silver handles that has Mama inside.

She's wearing her dark green dress with covered buttons. Her eyes are shut. I know she can't play our game now, but I lean down anyway and blink at her like we did at the sanatorium when her throat got too sore for her to talk. I'd blink all different ways and she'd blink back exactly the same. We thought it was funny. You can just tell from a person's eyes if they think something is as funny as you do.

When Mama got so sick that breathing made her cough, she quit that, too. I tried to stop breathing like her, but I couldn't. A person can't make her own heart stop beating either—God has to help you do that.

It's good now because Mama isn't coughing. She must be so glad.

Her fingers, folded on her chest, don't move when I poke them. Her shiny hair, the same dark brown as mine, is tucked under her head. It looks lumpy to lie on, but I don't tell her, because dead people can't move anymore.

Her feet are under the part of the coffin lid that won't
open. I can't see her shoes, which is bad because Daddy sells shoes. A person wearing the proper shoes for every occasion is real important to him.

I need to know which pair she is wearing for her walk into heaven. I sneak into Mama's empty bedroom. A sachet of dead rose petals hangs by a silver ribbon on the wardrobe knob. I count her shoes—black pumps, black boots, tan and white, brown with high heels and elastic sides, gray, and ivory with buttons. All six pairs are here—one for every year since I was born.

“IRIS!”

My hand jerks. I knock Mama's shoes from their neat row.

Daddy marches up to me, his watch chain bouncing on his coat. I smell his pipe. He closes the wardrobe almost before I can get my fingers out of the way. “You made a mess.”

I feel hot. I don't look up. “Is Mama… barefoot?”

“The guests are here. Get off the floor.”

“But…”

Daddy turns and points at me with his pipe. “And be polite.”

APRIL 1926

I pull my hand from our mailbox, the letter bent in
my fingers, my mind reeling. An official letter for Daddy from a
doctor
. A bud of panic starts to grow in me.

My father is sick.

I drift up our endless front walk, turn a slow circle on the porch before I open the front door. Up and down our street is empty and deathly still, like my heart.

I slide the letter under the mail-order catalogs on his desk and sit on the edge of the divan. He went to a doctor in another town to protect me from the bad news, to avoid the Atchison party line, the gossip. The gaping black hole of our fireplace stares at me. I stare right back.

My worst fear, that I am going to lose him the way I did Mama, is sealed in that envelope. I picture his coffin in the parlor, just like hers almost ten years ago. I squeeze my eyes shut to crush the scene and try to breathe.

A family of wrens chatters in our lilac bush, unaware that my family of two is about to become one. In a moment I'm standing at his desk. I retrieve the envelope and hold it to the light, but I can't see through. I reach for the letter opener. With one simple slice I could know the truth.

No, not yet. Not by myself.

I sit in the desk chair, my head down, and listen to Mama and Daddy's old anniversary clock on the mantel chop the silence to bits.