Flying Crows (15 page)

“I wasn't going to miss a second of this, whatever was going on. If I had known what was going to happen I wouldn't have minded missing it, that's for sure. It made me crazy. I still am crazy, Josh. You have to stay with me and help me live a normal life.”

Birdie led them diagonally and quickly across the left front of the ticket office, past the newsstand and a small Travelers Aid booth, toward the main doors on the east side of the ticket office. There was a matching set of doors on the west side.

“There were crowds that morning just like now. Most of them saw the V formation and the guns. They moved out of the way, but they wanted to see what was happening. I could see everything. It was really like a movie.”

Birdie pointed to the Travelers Aid booth. A young black-haired woman in a red dress was behind the counter. “There was supposed to be a different, older lady there that morning, but I didn't see her. Later she said she saw the whole massacre, but I don't think she did because she wasn't anywhere around until after the shooting started. There were a lot of people who
said
they saw things that I don't think they really saw.”

Birdie suddenly realized that in telling his story he had allowed his face to become exposed, so he adjusted his hat and collar and kerchief to cover himself more.

They were at the big doors that led outside, seven or eight of them, each at least ten feet tall, glass framed in heavy bronze. Josh had seen pictures of doors like these in books but never in person.

Birdie pushed open a door in the middle and Josh followed him outside. “I was still right with them . . . behind them.”

He stopped on the sidewalk barely three yards from the door, still under a canopy that protected passengers from the entranceway out to the curb and the roadway for taxis and drop-offs in front of the station.

“This is as far as I should have gone that morning, I guess,” Birdie said. “I don't know what made me keep walking, moving with the cops and the crook. I knew . . . I could see where they were headed. There was a row of cars parked there, just like now.”

Birdie stepped off the curb onto the roadway. He pointed straight ahead another ten yards to a line of cars, parked head-on against a curb facing south, away from the station.

“The cops in front opened all the doors on one car—”

Birdie suddenly threw his hands up to his eyes and spun around, back toward the station. “No! The blood! Don't shoot no more!”

Josh grabbed Birdie and held him close until the screaming stopped. It was only to a count of five or six.

“You see, Josh, you see? I'm still crazy. It didn't work. I still need your help. See?”

Josh guided Birdie back into the station, weaving through the people, passing at an angle between the Travelers Aid booth and the ticket windows, across the grand lobby, and under the clock into the waiting room.

They walked down the center aisle to the very end of the room, turning only after reaching the last row of benches, at the waiting area for Track 16. There were no people there. Josh set Birdie down on the dark wooden bench.

“You OK, Birdie?” Josh asked.

Birdie smiled and straightened. “Thanks for talking again, Josh,” he said, almost as if nothing had just happened. “I was beginning to worry about you more than me.”

There's nothing I've been doing that's half as crazy as what you've been up to, Josh thought, but he did not say it. Instead, he said to Birdie, “Stay right here. I'm going to be gone for a few minutes.”

Josh knew he had to go back to Somerset. But he just could not leave Birdie here at the train station in this condition. Only one person might be able to help.

The woman in the red dress at the Travelers Aid desk flashed a sympathetic smile from the very beginning of Josh's request for assistance.

“My friend is ill and I need to talk to his doctor,” Josh said, trying not to sound to this woman like somebody who might have just escaped from a lunatic asylum.

“It doesn't surprise me that he's sick. I couldn't help noticing the two of you passing by just now,” said the woman, who Josh figured to be about thirty. “He was shaking so and his face was all covered up like he was feverish.”

The woman reached under the counter and came up with a loose-leaf binder. “We have doctors on a special list to call—”

Josh held up his hand. “There's one doctor in particular who knows about his condition. He's a specialist. His name is Mitchell, Will Mitchell. Would you mind calling him and then letting me talk to him on the phone?”

Josh had no idea if Will Mitchell was still a doctor in Kansas City—or, for that matter, if he ever was. All he knew was that's what Will said he was going to do when he left Somerset in anger some thirteen years ago.

The woman shook her head slightly—officiously. “That's not how we do it, sir. The procedure is for us to summon one of the doctors who have been certified for volunteering to treat passengers here at Union Station. Otherwise, for an emergency or anything else, we're to get the Kansas City Police officer on duty to see whether an ambulance is necessary.”

“If you could, just this once, make an exception. His name is Mitchell. Dr. Will Mitchell.”

She looked down at her list of doctors.

“His name's not here. He's not a certified volunteer.”

“Could you look him up in the phone book possibly? I would be forever grateful, I really would.”

“What's wrong with your friend? What's his ailment?”

All right, here we are. A moment of a truth—that must be handled with a creative untruth.

“He's what the doctors call a crow maniac,” Josh said. “He thinks he's a flying crow—you know, like the train from Texas, only a real one.”

The young woman quickly grabbed another book from under the counter. In a matter of seconds, she said, “There is no Dr. Will Mitchell. There's a plain Dr. William Mitchell—no middle initial at all—a Dr. William A. Mitchell, and a Dr. William B. Mitchell.

Eagerly she went to work, setting down a black phone with a long cord between her and Josh. First, she dialed the four-digit number of the first William and said to someone exactly what Josh suggested that she say. “This is Wanda Levenger at Travelers Aid at Union Station. I'm telephoning for Dr. Mitchell on behalf of Josh of the Sunset at Somerset. Would the doctor have a few moments to discuss crows in Centralia?”

The third and last Dr. Mitchell was the right one.

“Josh, is that you?” Josh remembered that deep, happy voice as that of the man who had changed his life.

Wanda Levenger, clearly a person of tact and quality, on her own moved away from Josh so as not to be in a position to overhear his conversation.

“Yes, doctor, it's me,” Josh said.

“What are you doing on a telephone? Where are you?”

“At Union Station.”

“Where? What Union Station?”

“This one. Yours. The one in Kansas City. I came up here today from Somerset on the train, The Flying Crow.”

“What? How did they ever let you go?”

“They didn't. I just left.”

“What? You escaped?”

“You might say that. But it's complicated and it's medical. It was to help another man—quite a bit like me—who is here and needs your help. I've got to go back but I can't leave him yet.”

“Where at the station are you?”

“In the big waiting room . . . the last row from the main entrance.”

“I'll be right there, Josh.”

It wasn't very long before Dr. Will Mitchell was indeed right there.

He and Josh shook hands and then grabbed each other's elbows and then, finally, embraced like brothers—friends.

“Damn, Josh, I don't have to tell you what kind of jeopardy you're placing yourself in. Unless something's changed about your case, if they think you're sane enough—”

“Meet Birdie,” Josh said, not letting Dr. Mitchell finish his sentence. Josh knew all about his case and his jeopardy. There was no reason for Birdie to know too. This was about Birdie, anyhow.

Josh really did worship Will Mitchell, this special man in a dark blue suit and white shirt and pink tie now shaking hands with Birdie. Did he love him too? Josh knew the word and used the word but he had no idea what it really meant when it came to anybody, particularly somebody like Will Mitchell.

It had been nearly fourteen years since Josh had seen Will Mitchell. How old must he be now? At least forty, maybe forty-five. He seemed like just a kid when he was a doctor at Somerset. The hair was still curly, full and mostly red, though tinted now with some gray. The face was as bright white and smooth and open as ever. He had gained some weight, most of it having gone right to his stomach, a hunk of which hung down over his belt in clear view through his unbuttoned suit coat.

“This is the man who saved my life, and now he's going to save yours,” Josh said to Birdie.

Will Mitchell's face didn't change expression. As Josh recalled, it seldom did, always maintaining a great combination of comfort and wonder. There was no way to look at the man and not feel at ease. There had even been the hint of a child in the way he listened to the stories and concerns and delusions of Josh and the other patients at Somerset.

Now, sitting on a bench at Track 16 between Josh and Birdie, he was listening again.

Josh did most of the talking at first, explaining Birdie's problem in closing his eyes without seeing the horror of what happened right here at this train station just a few months ago.

“That was some awful mess, I'm sure,” Will Mitchell said to Birdie, in a tone that seemed to Josh to be a bit skeptical, like maybe he didn't believe Birdie's story. “My office is only a short distance from here. I heard the sirens that day and listened to everything I could on the radio. Some of the people in my office even drove over here to gawk like they were on some kind of sightseeing trip.”

Birdie said there were a lot of people who did that. The parking lot out front was filled with gawkers within minutes after the killings.

“Did you see Pretty Boy Floyd?” Will Mitchell asked.

“I can't talk about that,” Birdie said, with an edge of irritation. “I don't want you to tell anybody about any of this, either. Don't let anybody know you saw me here, now, in Kansas City or about me seeing the massacre. Do you promise as a doctor?”

Josh had not seen Birdie that way before.

Will Mitchell smiled, put his right hand over his heart, and said, “I do so promise.”

Josh moved on quickly to tell Dr. Mitchell what had happened with Birdie outside the station a short time ago as he tried to re-create the murder scene.

“Come with him now and help him finish it,” Josh said. “It might really help him. He's been acting even more crazy since we got here.”

Will Mitchell, the good and happy doctor, said no. “I'm not in that part of medicine, Josh. I closed out my life and times with massacres, lunacy, and the insane the day I left Somerset. That's over. A redcap at this train station would be as much help—professionally—as I would. I'm just a regular doctor. I listen to heartbeats, take pulses, set broken arms, and remove tonsils. In fact, I'm due to remove a twelve-year-old girl's tonsils in just over an hour. I'm sorry.”

“It worked for me, why not for Birdie?” Josh said.

“That was all hunch and luck, Josh,” Will said. “I didn't know what I was doing and I still don't. It was all dumb luck and maybe quackery— something I probably deserved to lose my license for.”

Josh stood up and went into performance mode. Lowering his voice and looking straight over and past Will Mitchell as if he weren't there, he said, “I have to say now, dear listener, as I approach a description of the final horrors of the massacre, my voice grows weak, my sight is dimmed, and my heart sickens with the recollection. But I feel I have no choice, no alternative to completing this tale of terror and horror. Therefore, I must return to the details, sickening and atrocious as they are. . . .”