Flying Crows (14 page)

“I could see a man, a passenger, leaning out from the first sleeping car like he was looking for somebody. He waved at a couple of men standing next to me. They were both in suits and hats. I hadn't noticed before, but they were both carrying pistols. One had his in his belt, the other in his right hand.

“People started coming from the rest of the train, and then I saw the waving man get off the train with four other men, all carrying guns, big ones—shotguns is what they looked like. The men were in suits and ties and felt hats and looked tough, like crooks or cops. Right behind them came a guy with his hands together in front of him, fastened by a pair of shiny silver handcuffs. Some more guys with guns got off the train next, and with the two men already waiting on the platform they formed a little V formation, with the guy in handcuffs in the middle down in the point of the V and the others with suits and guns fanning out a little forward on each side. I couldn't believe it. I knew—no, I knew nothing; I figured, I guessed—he was some crook and the cops were taking him somewhere, most likely to prison, but I was just guessing. You believe me, don't you, Josh?”

Josh nodded. Why would he not believe the kid? Why was he asking these questions?

“I found out later—along with everyone else in the world—that the guy was named Frank Nash: Jelly Nash, they called him. They said he had escaped from Leavenworth federal prison, just north of here up in Kansas, but he actually just walked out like he owned the place. They said—the papers said it and I read it later—that he had become a trustee in the warden's office by acting like he had turned over a new leaf from reading William Shakespeare books he got from the prison library—which he stole, by the way, when he escaped.
You
didn't steal any books because you didn't know you were escaping, did you, Josh?”

Josh wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. He wanted to help Birdie, but he really had to start figuring out how he was going to get himself back to Somerset. . . .

Birdie moved back to what happened to Jelly Nash. “They finally caught Nash in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the cops and federal agents were taking him back to Leavenworth. They got on the Missouri Pacific's night train in Fort Smith, and they were going to drive him up to Leavenworth from the train here, right back to prison. That's what the paper said was their plan. I didn't know any of this at the time, of course. No way did I know any of that. Some people may not ever believe me, but that's the truth!”

Those words came out as if Birdie were pleading with somebody, not just telling a story. Josh didn't know what to think.

“All I knew was here was something pretty special coming right at me in V formation down the train platform. This was big, this was exciting. Coming right at me, walking toward me down a platform like this one, came a crook with his hands cuffed and cops with shotguns all around him. The other people scattered to both sides like pigeons, leaving a big hole for the men in the V to walk through.”

Birdie grabbed something out of his coat pocket and put it up to his nose. It was pink, a woman's kerchief. “Sister Hilda gave this to me. I may look her up. She said she liked to stay with a sister who lived on Garfield beyond Troost, just off the Brooklyn Avenue streetcar line. I know exactly where that is.”

Josh wanted to yell, You really are crazy! Fooling around with her already almost got you killed and it could again, and it could get her in even more trouble than she is probably in already. Leave the poor lady alone!

Birdie stuck the kerchief around his neck and tied it loosely. It covered up even more of what was left of his face to see.

Then he turned and started walking away from the tracks, and so did Josh. They were headed toward a flight of stairs marked with an overhead sign: TO STATION.

“My cousin Paul told me there are forty-four steps to climb up to the walkway that'll take us into the station,” Birdie said.

Forty-four steps? Who in their right mind goes around counting the number of steps in a train station? thought Josh. Maybe Birdie's cousin was crazy too. He had heard that a lot of lunacy was inherited.

Birdie, not slowing his pace or moving his head, said to Josh, “Once we get upstairs in the station with all the people, don't look anybody in the eye. Keep your head down. There could be cops and maybe some other people strolling around looking for us. Just in case, keep walking like we're ordinary passengers just off The Flying Crow, two honest, simple, harmless flown crows. Don't look at anybody. Crows don't look at live people walking anyhow. They only pay attention to dead things in the middle of the road. Isn't that right, Josh?”

Josh didn't answer. He was really worried about Birdie.

The kid was walking almost in a crouch, trying to make himself even smaller, trying to act invisible. Josh wondered if ordinary people in a train station—not cops or doctors or bushwhackers—could pick out people who have just escaped from a lunatic asylum. Escaped: is that what we did? We just left on the train. Yes, we escaped. Is somebody already looking for us? Maybe, sure. Somebody could have told somebody who told somebody else who told the police here at the Kansas City Union Station that we were on The Flying Crow. Two escaped lunatics, one of them accused of having copulated with the wife of a bank vice president, are on The Flying Crow! Streamliner didn't see anything. Only Lawrence of Sedalia really knew what happened and he wouldn't tell anyone. Birdie aside, Lawrence's happiness over having Josh stop his Centralia performance would have kept him silent.

But that's not going to help us at this train station, thought Josh. Do lunatics look different from other people? That's the question. I'm tall, skinny, big-nosed, very white. My eyes are blue, my hands are huge, my hair is brown and long. Birdie looks like the black-haired kid that he is. Are we dressed OK? Most of the other men here are wearing suit coats and ties. Our blue shirts and pants say we could be construction workers. Is there something in our eyes that's different? Can they tell our heads have been hit by baseball bats and our bodies have been immersed for hours in tubs of water like hippopotamuses and we have rocked in chairs and pushed brooms for hour after hour after hour? They can see all of my face but only a tiny bit of Birdie's. . . .

Birdie said to Josh, “Ever wonder why the Kansas City Southern named their train The Flying Crow? Don't all crows fly? What's so special about that?”

Josh didn't know or care. He wanted to say to Birdie that he should have asked Streamliner about all that crazy stuff. Although, as far as Josh could tell, Streamliner didn't really have two-way conversations about The Flying Crow or any other thing.

They walked over to the stairway, the forty-four steps. Nobody else was around.

“We'll take it easy going up, old man—friend,” Birdie said. “Do you want to get some bacon and eggs over easy with toast and grapefruit juice and coffee with sugar and fresh cream from the Adams dairy before we do anything—you know, outside with the massacre? The Fred Harvey House upstairs in the lobby has the greatest of everything there is to eat in Kansas City—in the world, probably. They even have a soda fountain and, next to it, a fancy restaurant with white tablecloths and silverware that weighs a ton. That's where the rich people come.”

Josh shook his head.

“Forget it anyhow,” Birdie said. “We haven't got any money. Unless we can find somebody who'll give us some money or some food, we're out of luck.”

Their pace was slow, with Birdie stopping every four or five steps to glance around. It had nothing to do with Josh's health or age.

At the top of the forty-four stairs they entered what Birdie called the
midway,
a long corridor that he said led off to the right into the big station building itself.

Josh didn't know what to expect. He had never been inside a big train station, in Kansas City or anywhere else.

They entered the grand lobby through a door underneath a sign that said FROM TRAINS, took a few steps, and stopped.

What lay before them was the most spectacular sight ever to hit Josh's eyes. Was it a mirage, a picture in a travel book, a beautiful dream? There was a high ceiling that seemed to go way up in the sky, which was painted with red and cream and green and blue curlicues and symbols and designs and ornaments. Chandeliers hung higher than Josh had ever seen in a building. There were people everywhere, walking and running in all directions, and there were the deep, metallic voices of men on PA systems announcing trains, and men selling food and drinks and magazines and newspapers, and more men in red caps offering to carry people's suitcases.

To Josh, it seemed like a carnival, a circus, in the grandest, most elegant, and busiest place in the world.

He glanced about several times, trying to take it all in. They were standing in what was essentially the cross of a giant T-shaped building. Behind them was the main waiting room, going straight north, with the grand lobby going out from the southern end east and west.

There was the Harvey House and its restaurants that Birdie had mentioned and a drugstore on the left. A door marked WOMEN'S WAITING ROOM was farther on the left, on the north. And the ticket office, a large half circle, came out from the main south wall with little windows with brass bars, twenty or thirty of them.

Josh was so absorbed in looking around that he failed to notice that Birdie had stopped jabbering. His mouth wasn't moving but his eyes were sure darting around.

“Don't you just love this place, Josh?” Birdie said in a near whisper.

Josh started to answer, to finally talk. But he was too emotional at the moment to come up with the right words to express the overpowering affection and good feelings he had at this flashing, moving moment for the Union Station in Kansas City.

Birdie, still moving his eyes around, started babbling again.

“There's supposed to be a depression, but look at all these people running around here with smiles and good clothes on. Somebody told me that when this station opened they had two days of parades through downtown Kansas City, and governors came here, and the president of the United States sent a telegram. I think that was back around 1915, during the war against the Germans. They said a lot of our soldiers came through here later, on their way to the front. One of my uncles was in the army, but he didn't go any farther than Camp Funston, a place over at Fort Riley in Kansas. Can you imagine going to war to kill Germans at the front and only being sent over the state line to Kansas? Did you know about the World War, Josh?”

Josh just moved his head slightly. It was no real answer. A couple of shell-shocked patients came to Somerset afterward who had been made crazy by what they saw or did as soldiers in the war. Josh got to know a few, but most of them were eventually locked up in Beech with the incurables. One of them told Josh about watching his best friend, also an American soldier, go nuts one morning and stick the barrel of his rifle into the mouths and ears of five little French girls. He blew their heads to smithereens. But Josh never talked to him or anyone else about what the war was about or who was fighting and why.

With Birdie still leading the way, they turned left toward the main waiting room, walking through a large entranceway, and under a round clock, at least six feet in diameter, that hung from the ceiling. Josh looked up to check the time. It was eight-forty-nine in the morning. He had never before checked the time on such a gigantic and elegant timepiece.

The waiting room was another spectacular sight, with ceilings almost as high as those in the lobby. Right down the center there was a large aisle as wide as a highway separating two series of row after row of double-sided, dark-brown, high-backed wooden benches for passengers to sit on while waiting for their trains. There were hundreds of people there this morning. Some were reading newspapers or books, others were sipping coffee or biting into rolls or fooling with babies or talking among themselves or just sitting there, some with their eyes closed, others wide-eyed. Were they thinking about where they were going on the train and what they might do there?

On both the east and the west sides of the room there were tall doorways, each closed off by an ornate steel gate and above it a two-foot-high numeral. Even track numbers were on the right side, odd numbers on the left.

A couple of the gates were open and a man in uniform was looking at the tickets of people as they passed through to their trains. Long black destination signs hung on either side of the door that had in large white letters the name of the train and the towns it was going to. Josh stopped to read one of them.

9:30 A.M.
FRISCO R.R.
No. 117

THE FIREFLY
Ft. Scott
Miami
Tulsa
Oklahoma City
Pittsburg
Joplin

Josh felt a hard shove from behind. “There's a cop,” said Birdie quietly. He had done the shoving. “Don't turn around. Look at the sign, look at the sign.”

Josh had no choice but to keep his eyes on The Firefly's sign. A cop? Why was that a problem? But again he read the towns served by the Frisco train. He figured being found by a policeman might even be a relief. He would explain nicely that he had made a serious mistake in leaving the Somerset asylum; he was sorry and was ready to return. But it was different for Birdie. He wasn't going back to Somerset. He couldn't go back without risking his life. . . .

After at least a minute, Birdie whispered, “Let's go.”

They headed back toward the grand lobby and stopped under the big clock. There were people everywhere, none of them, it seemed to Josh, the least bit interested in him or Birdie.

Birdie looked up at the clock. “I was still with the crook and the cops— behind them, right behind them,” Birdie said, picking up his story. He seemed more relaxed. Had the policeman seen his face and done nothing about it? Maybe that meant nobody was looking for them yet. Josh had no idea.