Galveston (61 page)

I longed for a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of hot Postum, and decided to treat myself to that or something else—even orange juice and a sweet roll would help to fill my empty stomach—and to get some magazines to read if I could find any. At the table in the dining car I sat across from a young woman, rather pretty with auburn hair pulled into curls on top of her head, and velvety white skin. She proved to be on her way to Grady, too.

Of course at the first opportunity, I told her of my business there.

“Well, dear,” she said, “I didn't think there were many reasons for anybody to go to Grady, but I must admit that's a new one on me.” She stifled a yawn as though from sheer boredom, and blew a puff of smoke into the air, reminding me I was out of cigarettes. “No, I've never heard of Mr. Byron, but then he must have lived there a long time ago. I'm visiting an aunt who lives there. I'm a widow, teach school in Brenham, and she's alone too. I wrote her this fall and said I'd spend Christmas with her. The poor dear was absolutely beside herself, you know … wrote me back right away and begged me to come as soon as I could.”

“You're young to be a widow. The war?”

“You guessed it. Seems most everyone lost something out of that pile of rubbish, if you'll excuse the reference.” She was primping now, looking into a cheap jeweled compact and rearranging the hair around her face.

“Then you've never actually lived in Grady yourself?”

“Heavens, no! Have you ever seen that little hole? There simply isn't anything there. Why anyone would want to live in Grady I'll never understand. My aunt owns a good bit of land outside of town, and that's the only reason she's stayed. Poor old thing is in her dotage now … my uncle died twelve years ago.”

“What's her name?”

“Talbeaux. Mrs. Cornel Talbeaux.”

“Oh, I see. It's a nice name, but I've never heard of it.”

“It's French, dear. He was full-blooded, and about the best-looking thing I've ever seen, even as an old man. Course she wasn't bad either in her day. But all of us get old, I guess, don't we? Only alternative to dying young, somebody once said.”

It was nice having someone near my age to talk with, and I was just about to suggest we sit together for the rest of the trip. Then a man who looked ten or fifteen years her senior walked past and asked if she'd like to join him in the smoking car.

“Don't mind if I do,” she said easily, and turned to me. “See you later, dear, and good luck.”

“Yes, all right. Thanks.”

It was unusual for me to be left sitting. I was generally the one who left others sitting. I could go into the smoking car if I chose to, and light up one of my own—if I could find a pack to buy—and take up with a man probably better-looking than the one who'd just picked her up, if any were available. Somehow, though, I really didn't feel like a cigarette, or the company of a stranger. I took my magazines and went back to my chair.

It was bitter cold when we pulled into the Grady depot, and the wind was like icy claws tearing at my hair and blowing my skirt. There must have been less than ten people waiting for others to arrive on trains, and inside the dimly lit building were three or four old-timers sleeping across the benches. It was too late to get anything done—even a town much larger than Grady would be dead by eleven-thirty at night—so I inquired of a sleepy ticket agent whether there was a hotel—not at all sure there was—and he directed me to the Silver Star, just a block down the street.

When I arrived there and checked in, it made no difference the room was dingy and impersonal around me. There was a gas stove lit in one corner. I pulled a rocker up in front of it, wrapped myself in my robe, and slept there. It was the warmest I'd been since leaving Houston.

Chapter 8

Morning in Grady. I awoke before seven and dressed by the stove. Even if this were a small town, there was no telling how long it would take to trace someone who lives here twenty years earlier, so time was important. I'd already been gone from Houston better than two days, and my money wouldn't last forever. If I were to find a lead on James Byron, it might call for traveling even further—maybe even to another part of the country—to locate him. I would have to sit down and evaluate everything carefully, decide how to get the money to go on, or whether to try to write him instead, and go back home.

Home? How could I return now? Had I gone on the day of the wedding it might not have been so bad, but by now the whole episode was reduced to a pile of unpaid bills on my father's desk, wasted food, wilting flowers, embarrassment in front of friends. Even if I had to take a job for a few weeks to pay my further way, I couldn't go home at this point, not with the only news being I'd given up the search, without even a triumph to cushion the blow to my parents. If I did eventually return home, I had at least to be able to say I had accomplished what I started out to do. Otherwise I should look like a little fool, on top of everything else.

I picked up the carpetbag, but left the alligator bag in the room. The sky was still heavy as I walked out of the hotel and found a cab, parked along the edge of the town square, across from the four-storied red clay county courthouse. I told the driver to take me to Number 2 Blackburn, and mentally crossed my fingers.

“You sure this the place you want, ma'am?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, sir, nice lookin' young lady like you and all … I just can't figger what you'd be interested in down there. But whatever you say.” He turned around and started the cab.

I had no interest in sustaining a conversation with him, so we rode on silently three quarters of the way around the square then out a side street between old dusty buildings with pillared porches that looked uncommonly quiet for a Monday morning.

Blackburn Place lay not far from the center of town, and as we turned the corner and I saw the street sign, I understood the driver's reluctance. The whole area was a shambles, unpainted houses with sagging porches and torn window screens, and junk heaped up in yard after dirt yard. Dogs with their ribs poking out roamed around without enough energy even to wag their tails, though at one house a group of stray cats had discovered a trash can with something in it worth eating. They'd overturned the can and were rummaging through its contents greedily, howling at one another like ladies arguing over merchandise at a bargain counter. Here and there I saw a woman or an old man sitting on a porch, rocking back and forth and looking aimlessly out at the street, as though nothing in the world mattered any more and maybe never had in the first place. And I couldn't help wondering if, after all I had chosen to throw away, I wouldn't end up the same way. Alone, just as always. Here lies Willa Katherine Frazier …

What children I saw were ill-dressed for the blistering chill, two of them without even a pair of shoes on their feet. I hoped, oh God, how I hoped, I would not find James Byron in this Godforsaken place, for I had not counted on anything like this in catching up with my past. I put a hand on the back of the driver's seat and leaned close to his ear. “Has it always been like this?”

“Awhile, miss. Time was, this was one of the finest neighborhoods in Grady, though. You c'n tell by lookin' at these houses they ain't always looked so bad. Some of 'em are big, you know, and used to be real showplaces for the upper class.”

“What happened?”

“Happened? What does happen? Progress, I guess. People began shiftin' toward the south side of town and further toward the outskirts. Then of course many moved away altogether cause there wasn't much to hold a body here. Yonder there, on the right, is the place you're looking for. Want I should wait?”

“Yes, please. I won't be long, I don't think.”

He pulled up to the curb and I got out. This was one of the larger houses, two-storied with gingerbread trim, broken in places around the balcony, and rows of deep windows. I tried to conjure what it might have been like when painted properly, and with flowers planted around the large yard, windows washed to a gleam and shutters cutting a handsome contrast to the color of the frame structure. There was an old rusted Model T Ford pulled up in the yard to the right of the sidewalk, its wheels sagging as though from exhaustion of having stood for so long in one place, and a line had been strung from one end of the porch almost to the front door, for hanging clothes. Ragged underwear, dingy linens, worn-out work pants, beat around in the wind. The handle was off the screen door so that I couldn't get a grip on it. I would just have to knock extra hard, and perhaps go around to the windows if no one heard.

It wasn't long before someone did hear the knocking, and opened the door. The lady looked older than I suspect she was, with greasy hair dangling at her shoulders, pale skin, and a hopeless look which blended well with the neighborhood. She held one small child on her shoulder and carried another in her belly, and there must have been two playing behind her. She didn't seem at all pleased to find me on the other side of the door. She shifted the barefoot child from one shoulder to the other, his leg pulling at her dress along the way, disclosing her protruding navel.

“Yeah?”

“Uh—my name is Willa Frazier, and I'm looking for a party who used to live in this house long ago, named James Byron. Would you have any idea—?”

“Never heard of him,” she said rudely. “Now, git outta here so's I can close this damned door. I've got enough trouble keepin' my kids from catchin' their deaths without standin' here talking to you.”

With that she slammed the door in my face, and a wave of relief swept over me as I hastily walked away. If I'd found James Byron in a place like this, and he proved a shiftless, no-good character, it might bear out what Susan Baxter had told me so many years ago about my mother …

The driver had edged down in the seat and pulled his cap over his eyes while he waited. “Where to from here, miss?”

“I don't even know. Where would I begin to trace somebody who lived here a long time ago?”

“Good question. Post office, maybe. You check the phone book yet?”

“Last night at the hotel. Nothing.”

“There's the courthouse. This here's the county seat, you know. If the person you're looking for owned the property, the deed would have been recorded there, wouldn't it? Maybe they'd tell you, I don't know. Might've saved yourself a trip by stoppin' there in the first place.”

“Take me there, then. Yes, maybe that's the answer.”

“Humph. Could've saved yourself the trouble,” he mumbled, and we drove away.

As it turned out, I could have also saved myself the trouble of going to the courthouse. Whether the clerk who waited on me—the only one around the empty office—was telling the truth, or was lying because she was anxious to take a morning coffee break or go to the bathroom, I don't know. She would not, however, offer me any help because I had only an address, and no legal description of the property. Peering self-righteously through round, horn-rimmed glasses, she said, “Come back sometime when you've got the proper information and I'll be glad to help you,” then promptly closed the glass window separating us across the counter.

I knocked on the window.

She opened it and looked out impatiently.

“If you won't help me, then will you at least direct me to the post office?”

“In the general store right across the street from the front of this building. 'Zat all?”

“Yes. Thank you for being so uncommonly kind. I'll be sure to recommend you for a gold star on your record, and a raise in pay.”

I could have pursued it further, gone to a supervisor, demanding an apology and some real assistance, but something told me it was time to quit beating my head against an immovable wall and take an easy route for a change.

Pickett's General Store looked warm and friendly compared with the imposing courthouse. I walked there with renewed determination and presented myself at the Grady post office—a small window on one side of Mr. Pickett's store.

Mr. Pickett himself was busy sorting mail behind the window, whistling while he worked. I knocked on the bars. “I beg your pardon. Are you the postmaster?”

“Postmaster, telegraph messenger, store owner, and just about anything else you might be able to think of, miss. May I help you?” His eyes were lively. There was a fringe of white hair around his otherwise bald head, almost covered by the green visor he wore around it.

“I'm looking for a James Byron, who used to live at this address twenty years ago—possibly longer. Could you check on whether he has a current address in Grady? I know he isn't on Blackburn Place any longer.”

He raised an eyebrow above his glasses after he looked at the paper. “No, judging by the address, and by looking at you, I would guess not. Let me see here, Byron. Wait a moment. I'll check.”

He disappeared behind a curtained door, and was gone several moments. I turned and looked around the room, overflowing with all sorts of merchandise—a place where one could browse for hours and still not see everything. In the opposite corner was a black potbellied stove, which looked as though it had been planted there like a flower, its pipe growing somewhat crookedly to the ceiling. Four chairs surrounded it, gathering its warmth, two of them occupied by bearded men, their feet propped against the stove, who now turned their attention toward me.

The postmaster had returned. “No, ma'am, I don't have a thing on him. Something about the name rings a bell, but I'll be darned if I can figure what 'tis.”

The man looked genuinely concerned, and seeing this for the first time since I'd left Galveston, brought tears to my eyes. “Oh, I just don't know where to turn now, I—”

There was a shifting over by the stove. One of the bearded men spoke up, “Ain't Byron the name of that schoolteacher up north of here?”