Hotel Paradise (34 page)

“Jude Stemple. Lives over to Cold Flat. Comes onced a week to Spirit Lake to do work for Miss Isabelle Barnett. I used to do yard work for her until I got a better job.”

Was he talking about the Hotel Paradise? I didn’t ask. “What’s he do?”

“Fixes things. He’s putting lattice up around her porch. I guess he’s like a carpenter, some. He’s real good, some say.”

“And this Jude Stemple lives in Cold Flat Junction?”

Walter nodded.

That day, I was lucky. There was only Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright to wait on at lunch. Everyone else had either checked out or gone off somewhere. An hour and fifteen minutes after my talk with Walter, I was down at the Spirit Lake railroad station, sitting on a bench and waiting for the 1:53 to Cold Flat Junction.

This time I bought a ticket.

Had I really thought the Girl would appear there, again, on the platform?

I suppose I must have, for I was disappointed as the train chugged to a halt and I saw the platform was empty.

It was a very short ride to Cold Flat Junction, eighteen minutes exactly, not even time enough for the conductor to punch my ticket. I could have got by without buying one. It’s annoying to be honest and law-abiding and not get the credit for it, not even have people notice. But I felt a little better when I discovered, upon studying the square of yellowish cardboard, that the date was so blurred you could hardly see it. I tucked it in my change purse with some plan for its future use. I snapped the purse shut and put it in my pocket.

Before Cold Flat, there was only the one stop in La Porte, and that was only a few minutes beyond Spirit Lake. It was truly enjoyable being a passenger on the train instead of one of the people standing down there on the platform. It was as if it gave me some God-like view. I pressed my face against the glass looking out, knowing that even if someone there knew me, my face behind the glass of a train window wouldn’t register.

Not even on Helene Baum—for there she stood, gawking up, her hand shielding the eyes behind her butterfly glasses. I assumed she wasn’t going anywhere, since it was
her
dinner party tonight. She must have been scanning the train for whoever she was waiting for, and she was frowning anxiously as if the person might be looking out and deciding upon seeing her that he or she would rather not get off.
Helene was wearing one of her yellow dresses and a yellow cardigan around her shoulders. I couldn’t stand her, but I felt kind of sorry for her, with that look on her face that people allow themselves when they don’t know someone else is watching. Unguarded, I guess you’d say. It was the sort of look that people wear in movie theaters, looking up at the screen.

Finally, a heavyset woman wearing tons of costume jewelry stepped awkwardly down the little metal stairs the conductor put there. Now, Helene’s expression changed into a showy smile. They sort of charged towards each other, in that clumsy way of people who feel they’re supposed to hug but don’t want to touch, so that arms never quite make it around waists or shoulders, and kisses are planted on empty air. They chugged off, and so did the train.

Fifteen minutes later, I myself was on the little metal ladder the conductor flipped down from the car to the platform. The conductor nodded and smiled pleasantly, unaware that someone was getting off his train with an unpunched and blurrily dated ticket. I said goodbye and smiled back.

No one else got off and no one was waiting to get on, which didn’t surprise me. No activity at all was taking place on the Cold Flat Junction platform. After the train roared off and its clattering wheels went quiet in the dim blue distance, I walked slowly along the empty platform, stopping to marvel at the turreted and towered station building. I looked in all of the windows, cupping my hands around my reflection to peer inside. I don’t know if I thought the view would change from window to window. Having done this, I moved to the entrance, which had dark and beautiful molding that formed an arch above my head, with a half-moon of ruby-red stained glass over the doorway lintel. I stepped inside, hesitating the way a person would going into a church he didn’t really belong to.

Actually, it was more like the light and dark of a movie theater. An empty theater, at that. Six long, solid wood benches stood back-to-back in a neat row across the waiting room. Three walls were also lined with benches. In the fourth wall was the ticket seller’s room and window. No one was behind the ticket window, which seemed to be closed; a piece of wood had been placed in front of the semicircle opening in the glass, and a tan blind pulled partway down to announce absence. I could see, back there, the bottom half of a rack of a neatly
arranged rainbow of tickets, as if these colorful destinations were always in demand. There was no sign saying where the stationmaster had gone, or if he would return. But the station was so well kept, there had to be a keeper.

On the bulletin board there were schedules, those complicated lines of tiny type and little arrows going up and down that probably nobody could understand. But I supposed there was the same train I had taken before from Cold Flat Junction back to Spirit Lake, the 4:32. I now had nearly two hours here in Cold Flat and could still get back in plenty of time for the Baum dinner-party preparations.

Outside the station, I sat down on the same slat-back bench the Girl had been sitting on when I saw her. I needed to make up a plan. At lunch I had been too distracted to think, between Miss Bertha’s lunch and my own. Ham croquettes with parsley sauce and corn fritters naturally got my undivided attention, and dessert had been Floating Island, which alone would have driven out thoughts of anything else.

What I wanted was to find either Jude Stemple or (but this seemed almost too lucky) the Queens. And I wanted to plot out how I could get information about him or them. I tried to keep my mind centered on a plan, but it kept being drawn to the land beyond me, out there across the railroad tracks—bare and colorless and hardly even blistered with outcroppings of vegetation. There was scarcely a tree until far off began the dark line of woods. It was so far away, not even squinting my eyes could separate one tree from another. The distance and the light made the wood a uniform navy blue. Between the station and that line of woods, all was blank and empty. The land looked savaged, as if Indian tribes had thundered through here and scalped it, and whatever people there were, and whatever buildings had up and retreated to the other side of the tracks behind the railroad station, as if it were a fort.

I sat there staring at the emptiness for longer than I meant to, feeling the land sucking me in. Cold Flat Junction had that effect, at least on me: it wasn’t pretty like Spirit Lake, which was lush with big trees and where you could crush whole carpets of wildflowers underfoot; nor was it ugly like Dubois, twenty miles away, where the paper mill was and the houses were always coated with dark dust and the whole town smelled putrid. Cold Flat Junction just looked wiped out and anonymous. Only part of that look was the landscape; the other part
was the strange quiet over the place, and that was because the town had come about from the promise of the railroad to give Cold Flat life. But life had never happened.

Cold Flat Junction didn’t have a center: no “main road” lined with stores, just a few scattered ones, like the diner and the filling station. There were the white clapboard schoolhouse and the church, and Rudy’s Bar and Grille that I’d seen before, and the post office, but there wasn’t any central point. It was as if Cold Flat were waiting for something to give it shape. There wasn’t a courthouse, and I didn’t recall seeing a police station, either. I knew the Sheriff got called to Cold Flat on a regular basis to break up fights and so forth, which was probably the only form of entertainment they had, and which probably took place mainly in Rudy’s Bar and Grille. There wasn’t even a movie house; that alone would have wiped the place off my map.

As I walked a runnel of path made by people who’d tramped down the earth to a smoothness between the station and “town,” I thought about how I was going to get my information. Remembering all of the arguing in the diner when I’d asked about the Tidewaters, I didn’t think it would be hard to get people to talk; the problem was getting them to agree. I didn’t want to be too direct; I didn’t want to just come out and ask for Jude Stemple. So I was trying to make up another first name that would throw people off that it was Jude I wanted to talk to. I wanted a name that probably didn’t exist among the Stemples—which was why I discarded Bob and Tom and so forth. As I came closer to the Windy Run Diner I was rejecting most names. Names from the Bible were good, but my knowledge of the Bible being what it was, I had to really think hard to bring any up.

I was right outside the Windy Run when I finally settled on Abel (Cain being too famous and too unpopular). A gust of wind coursed down the narrow road, blew my hair in my face, and sent leaves and sandwich wrappers and circulars skittering around the steps. I went through the louvered door and up to the counter, where I sat down and pulled a menu from between a sugar jar and salt and pepper shakers. I read it over, top to bottom, seeing “Louise Snell, Prop.” at the head.

Louise Snell must’ve wanted everyone to know she owned the diner. Then I replaced the menu, and without trying to seem interested, I glanced about the room and recognized a few of the dozen or so
people sitting there. I recalled the woman with the thick glasses, and the heavy one named Billy. Also, the couple in one of the booths looked familiar. But then, it wasn’t strange that they’d all be here, since it was the same time of day as before. Customers did that in the Rainbow, too. You could pretty much guess where the Wood boys would be at noon, or Miss Ruth Porte every evening at six, or Dodge Haines at three. I guess it makes you comfortable, knowing where you’ll be at a certain time and in a certain place. I know it does me. Clockwork habits make me feel safer.

There really must not have been much going on in Cold Flat Junction, for the waitress remembered me. “Well, hi there, sugar. Your folks get their car fixed up okay?”

A gravelly voiced man down at the end of the counter shouted, “If it’s Toots worked on it, probably it’s still up on the lift.” He thought this was terribly funny, and so did a couple of others in blue cloth caps. Toots must be the garage mechanic, I supposed.

I didn’t care to be so well remembered, but I just said yes and studied the menu. I decided to order a hot roast beef sandwich to see if it was really as “common” as my mother said. I couldn’t even remember having had one before. I asked for a Coke, too. I hoped the waitress wouldn’t ask me any more questions, for I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d said in here, except for asking about the Tidewaters. And I hoped they didn’t remember that, as it might seem strange that here I was again, asking now about the Stemples. I decided not to say anything until after I’d eaten my sandwich and give them a little while to get used to my presence. And since nobody brought up the Tidewaters, and whether I’d found Toya, I was fairly sure they didn’t remember. What they did was cast glances my way, but pretty soon they even got bored with doing that and went back to asking for refills on coffee. The heavyset woman asked Louise about “Betsy”—had she got over that cold? Louise answered no, she’s still sick and missing school. Betsy, I decided, must be Louise’s daughter.

I read my paper placemat so I’d have something to do. It was a collection of pretty easy puzzles, such as join-the-dots. I looked up when I heard a series of clicking noises. There was a partially open door off beyond the counter, and I saw the end of a pool table and a skinny kid in a white T-shirt with the short sleeves rolled up, I guessed to show off his muscles, what there were of them. He held a cue stick upright and was smoking a cigarette in quick jabs. Another boy came
into view, then, and he was taller and even skinnier than the first, as if he’d been pulled, head to toe, like taffy. I hadn’t noticed the poolroom when I was here before; maybe the door had been closed. The noise came from the clicking of the billiard balls.

It was then that the waitress, Louise, set my hot roast beef sandwich before me. Steam gusted from its surface in a way my mother would have approved of. The sandwich was lathered in dark gravy, which was also poured over the floury-looking potatoes and into a deep little well in the center. It looked really good for something “common.” I ate and watched the boys in the poolroom, only occasionally flicking glances towards the other customers around the counter, especially Billy, for he was the one making the most noise. Billy would reach out for Louise whenever she passed on her way to the kitchen or the coffee maker. She’d slap his hand away and he’d laugh as if this were the funniest thing. Well, it was the same way Dodge Haines and a couple of others acted in the Rainbow around Charlene and Maud. I guessed it must be standard diner-café behavior; it must be that a lot of men don’t feel manly if they just sit and drink their coffee and talk—they have to grab the waitresses and act like comedians. I had never seen the Sheriff stoop to grabbing and patting. That was a comforting thought.

When Louise came to take away my empty plate (how could I have eaten it all?) and asked me did I want some fresh rhubarb pie? (my mouth puckered at the thought) I told her no, thanks, and asked if she knew anyone named Abel Stemple who I’d heard lived in Cold Flat Junction.

“Abel Stemple? Now let me think.” She screwed up her face and looked towards the ceiling in a cartoon version of Somebody Thinking.

Billy got into it, as I thought he would. “You say
Abel
Stemple, little lady?”

(I hated being called “little lady.”)

“Ain’t no Abel Stemple. I never heard of no
Abel;
did you, Don Joe?” And he turned to one of the men wearing a blue cap.

Don Joe scrubbed and scraped at his whiskers, coughed, and said no, he never.

Billy then asked Tiny, the other man in the other blue cap, who shook his head and kept his eyes on the counter. Billy was pretty much taking possession of the name now, and he sort of rolled it out to each of the others in the diner, as if it was one of the billiard balls. He
seemed happy, relieved almost, to have this task of making sure there wasn’t an Abel Stemple in Cold Flat Junction. He confirmed this fact with each of the customers.