Quiet Dell: A Novel (31 page)

“It will be that box, then, for Hart and Grethe Eicher. And for Mrs. Eicher and Annabel?” He moved slightly aside in his wheeled desk chair, allowing Emily to see the shelf of displayed urns.

“Yes, an urn. Could you . . . move them to the desk, please, so that I can compare them more easily?” She put the box to the side of the desk and waited as he arranged several metal urns in front of her. Some were engraved with flowers or scrolls. Duty jumped down from her lap as Emily studied them. She’d taken one up to see it more closely, and turned to see Duty lying before a low shelf that displayed a white urn; it was the size of an apothecary jar. “Oh,” Emily said, “that is a lovely one.”

“It is, yes. It’s not for sale, I’m afraid. It has been in the family since Beinhauer opened in this location, in 1910. It is alabaster, with a lovely relief sculpted into the front. Let me show you.” He rose to retrieve the object and placed it carefully on the desk.

The alabaster was translucent, like marble lit from within. The small relief described a standing angel whose wings flared to the double handles of the oval receptacle. Emily removed the lid, which fit quite securely, and locked into place once turned. “How ingenious,” Emily said. She looked up at the gentleman opposite. “Your name, sir?”

“I do apologize. I’m Louis Beinhauer. This is my family establishment, begun by my grandfather.”

“And taken up by your son, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or my daughter, who has displayed more interest.”

“You are a modern man, Mr. Beinhauer. Is the family of German origin?”

“German on my father’s side. My mother was Danish.”

“Like Asta Eicher. She and the children were Danish, and spoke Danish a bit, I understand, at home, but the children were all born here, and thoroughly American.”

He smiled. “I’m afraid I would not recognize Danish, except for the songs my mother sang.”

“One does not forget those songs,” Emily said, “even if the words are only melodies.” She touched the alabaster urn lightly. “Mr. Beinhauer, the Eichers were done a great wrong. We are only receiving them now, back from a dark place. This urn before me should hold the ashes of Annabel Eicher and her mother, whose family name was Anna. Anna, I’m sure you know, means ‘favored of God, given of God.’ ” She paused. “Mr. Beinhauer, I know I am asking far more than is required, but I ask you to let me purchase this urn, at any price you suggest, for Anna Eicher and her daughter Annabel.”

He was silent for a moment. “Miss Thornhill, my daughter’s name is Annabel. Please allow me to provide this urn for Annabel Eicher and her mother.”

Emily nodded, for she could not speak.

“Will the urn be seen,” he asked, “or buried in the casket?”

“I wish it might be seen—at the memorial service—but then it will be buried, in the cemetery near the Lutheran church the children attended, near their father’s grave, and their grandmother’s.”

“So be it.” He stood. “I’m pleased to accompany you while you wait, if you wish.”

“Not at all, Mr. Beinhauer. I thank you on their behalf for such a generous gift, and I am pleased to wait alone.”

He showed her through the small chapel to the garden back of the building. It was a courtyard with a fountain, and plantings of rose trees set off by boxwood hedges.

Emily sat on a white iron bench. She saw a long stone structure to the far rear of the property, with small Romanesque windows of leaded glass. A smokestack rose above it and smoke poured constantly forth. Duty walked up and down the stone paths. She took the leash off his collar so that it wouldn’t drag behind him.

•   •   •

She waited on the platform of Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Station with her luggage, and Duty suitably enclosed in his carrier. Louis Beinhauer himself accompanied her in order to present special permits to the Pennsylvania Railroad conductor. The caskets, draped in dark blue satin, would be loaded onto the baggage car. Emily walked behind the wheeled biers, holding Duty in her arms, while a porter followed with her luggage. Passersby stopped respectfully; many of the gentlemen removed their hats.

The train came on, shuddering the platform, blowing steam straight up in shots of plume. “It’s the Broadway Limited,” Mr. Beinhauer was saying. “Just on schedule. You will make Chicago by nine tomorrow.”

The maw of the baggage car opened; Beinhauer’s employees loaded the caskets. He introduced Emily as a representative of the family, and a valued
Chicago Tribune
journalist. “This gentleman will show you to your compartment,” he said.

“Mr. Beinhauer, I can’t thank you properly, on their behalf, and for showing me . . . such consideration.” She felt tears fill her eyes, though she’d determined not to weep. She’d not done so, even when he’d opened the two simple mahogany caskets in the viewing room. Fold upon fold of white satin lay within, fixing, in one casket, the box with its sailing schooner, firmly within an ocean of satin waves. In the other, the alabaster urn lay enfolded as though in shining cloud.

Beinhauer tipped his hat to her now as the conductor helped her onto the train. Her private compartment, the conductor explained, was courtesy of the railroad. “The observation car at the far rear has an enclosed outdoor deck,” said the conductor, “very popular with those wishing to observe Kittanning Gap, summit of the Alleghenies.”

“The train itself is so lovely.” Emily followed him through the generous vestibule. The way narrowed; they passed an open compartment and the conductor showed her to the next. Each seated
four persons comfortably on facing upholstered seats for day travel, but made into sleeping accommodation of one full-size bed. The conductor pointed out her compact private lavatory, whose tanks the porter filled on a schedule.

“Thank you, sir. We so appreciate the privacy.”

“Enjoy the train, ma’am. You should have a quiet ride. The dog, leashed, is allowed anywhere but the dining car, but you may pass through to the observation car or lounge.”

“The
Tribune
so appreciates the flexibility shown us. I know it’s quite unusual.”

She sat, facing forward, and unleashed Duty, grateful the compartment allowed him freedom of movement. She took off her hat, gloves, jacket, for she had dressed somewhat formally this day, and lay her head back on the cushioned seat to gaze at the blur of the large window. She’d left Clarksburg only that morning, aware of the caskets behind her as they shifted slightly on the winding mountain roads. Dorothy Lemke, Asta Eicher, the children in their headlong travel, had likely seen the same hairpin turns and picturesque observation points.

She thought of Eric, driving to Chicago, then of William, and wanted him with her. “Duty, you must be thirsty,” she said, for the dog pawed excitedly at the window, licking the glass. She took his small bowl from her valise and filled it at the lavatory; Duty drank noisily, then stared fixedly outside.

She must look over the armful of newspapers she’d purchased at a sidewalk kiosk just outside the station. Stories she’d hurriedly filed yesterday appeared in the
Tribune.
She opened the paper to below the fold, to see her article on Grimm’s intercepted missive. “
Let On You Hate Me,” He Writes Wife
headlined Powers’ letter to Luella. Emily checked to see that the text was quoted exactly, and read her own careful words:

 . . . said to have been written shortly after Powers’ arrest. . . . How it was translated is a mystery, but Chief C. A. Duckworth . . . admitted its contents were familiar to him. “Yes, I have seen that letter.
I am sorry that it is out.” . . . He would not give further information . . . other than to say, “It is the Powers letter!”

Papers from New York, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., Charleston, Pittsburgh, featured Powers, front page, item after item gleaned from local reporters or the AP. Powers’ published directive,
Say You Are Against Me,
undermined the sisters’ claims, one column over, just as Grimm intended. The train had reached full speed. They were going home, all of them; Emily could not cross the distance fast enough. She pulled Duty to her for comfort and thought of the baggage car she’d glimpsed from the platform. The Eichers were there. She felt them profoundly, moving with her, as though the cremation had distilled the power of their vanished lives and released them from any confines.

She closed her eyes a moment and allowed herself to remember the open caskets. The yards of white satin brought to mind the wedding gowns the girls would never wear, the bride Hart Eicher would never touch. An upper-class, European family, transformed to striving, penniless Illinois householders, was ended; if there were any relatives, Emily would not be here, thinking of weddings that could not happen. She wished to hear quiet, trilling laughter from the identical compartment behind her: children and fond parents would so enjoy such a train ride, sleeping all night in a bed that gently moved with the roar of passage. She lay across the seat, pulling up her knees like a drowsy child.

She must sleep, even for a few minutes. Duty lay in his carrier, insensate. She pillowed her head with one arm and felt herself rocked in the intense forward motion. It was as though she flew forward and fell backward, back and back, into warm enfolded safety she could not remember.

•   •   •

Annabel is above the train, borne up gloriously on the ruffling air, for the cloud of the steam engine’s heat is like a rolling wave. It is
nearly twilight below. The train gleams along its length, roiling the gathering dusk.

She is with her mother; Grethe is with Hart. Some trace of them is here, secreted together in the dim baggage car. She sees into the lounge with its facing sofas and armchairs: the manicurist polishing tiny scissors, the barber folding towels. Tables in the dining car, menus in place on the white tablecloths. Small lamps at each table cast illumined half-moons.

She sees within; she flies above. Charles’ long white scarf streams from her, winter silk that something tugs and wants. She follows it down, passing her hand through the stream of the train, and sees Duty at the window. She can fly along with him this way, one moment to another; she hears his ragged, excited breathing. He has found her again, a sense only. She would throw her scarf through to him, to smell, but it is only air, the air of her.

She sees Emily sleeping and must tell her that Duty needs some remnant, some scent still real and left behind. Mrs. Pomeroy, hidden, has the golden cord about her. Duty must have it, and Mrs. Pomeroy’s soft face, her fabric skirt. Annabel can see through Duty’s eyes, a sideways veil, and smell intensely, following a scent that disappears.

Annabel flies faster now, higher in the blooming air above the train, and beyond. She sees her street, her house, skips away as St. Luke’s opens its broad doors for the service. She knows the pale blue robes the children wear, and the songs they sing: Jesus loves them. The words follow her to broad, flat fields flung open to the sky, and a deep barn filling with hay. Annabel wants to see but hears the train, louder and louder, everywhere about her. Their compartment is quite comfortable and Grethe is playing jacks, laughing as she never did, scooping up the metal jacks between bounces of a small red ball. Their mother smiles, her hair done up fashionably, her eyes young. Duty cannot smell or see them, but knows them and waits to hear his name. Mother will take them to the observation deck; the view is grand and disappears like a film before one’s eyes.

Annabel flies before them. The train shines into the dark, lighting the rain in Quiet Dell, lighting the slippery road. Mr. Pierson’s car is there in the ditch and Mrs. Pomeroy has fallen in the wet mud. Annabel takes her up quite easily, only thinking of touch, until Mrs. Pomeroy is in the car, hidden deep in the crease of the backseat. The doll is cotton batting; she can crush quite small. Annabel tells Emily: the world is air and the heavy train moves through it.

•   •   •

Emily is swimming in her sleep, for the heavy rain buoys her up like a river and she floats within it. To one shore the sun is shining brightly: that is Mexico. Charles O’Boyle stands on a balcony with Annabel, who clutches her faceless rag doll and puts out one hand that a bright parakeet might land upon her finger. To the opposite shore a snowstorm rages. Emily finds herself with Charles and the children; the long toboggan is quite large enough for five and she is on the sled. He takes their picture as snowflakes drift and fly, catching on the children’s eyelashes and their blouson hats. Duty barks from the porch, snapping at the snow. How odd to hear the dog bark, a deep and welcome sound, for Duty has never been injured and Powers has not arrived. Powers will never arrive if Emily stays on the sled. She holds on to Grethe tightly, a head taller than the slender girl, and feels Charles pressed close behind her. He has got them to the top of the hill in the park and shouts, over the wind and whirling snow, to hold on; they must hold on to one another. They are flying down, too fast it seems, from day to night, and the snow all about them turns to heavy rain.

It is a pounding, clattering storm on a humid summer evening; a car is stuck in a ditch, sitting lopsided so that its headlights shine askew. Emily hears a train, far off behind the trees. She must get the children onto the train, for it is Powers’ car in the ditch, his empty car. The back passenger door flies open. She sees a glow within, shining up through the backseat—a small, weak glow, like a firefly trapped in the palm. Something is there. Emily hears Duty
barking his raspy, broken sound, very near her face. The dog barks, furious to be heard, for someone is knocking, knocking. Emily hears the train roar up about her.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?”

The sound is lost in the noise of the train, which drops away suddenly. She is awake.

“Ma’am? Porter, ma’am.”

She was on the train, of course, and stood so suddenly she had to catch herself. She opened her door to the porter, a Negro gentleman in spotless white, bearing a silver pitcher in a pleated cloth napkin. “Good evening,” she offered. “I do apologize, I must have fallen asleep. Do you have the time?”