Railroad Man (18 page)

I looked out over the bare land that I used to call home. “Maybe this is for the best.”

Lewis nodded. “Maybe.”

***

We helped Sophia get settled in that week. She raved over our modern bathroom and her new bedroom. Flo occupied herself with making Sophia comfortable the way she had cared for Dottie. Watching the two of them get Sophia settled in made me feel comfortable about making my own plans.

I had not been completely honest with Flo when I said that Ackerman had more pull at work than I did. Actually, it was the other way around. I made a couple of telephone calls while the girls were out shopping. I used my connections in Chattanooga to reverse my route duty and make Chattanooga my home base, which meant that I’d leave from Chattanooga instead of Atlanta. Then I would hop on the passenger train back to Atlanta once a month to pay my bills and check on the girls. The timing was right for Sophia to move in with Flo and for me to establish a new base with my first diesel run. I sat back and smiled. Things were finally turning my way.

Chapter XI

Georgia and Alabama

1948 – 1958

The next seven years were the best years of my life. I had a great partner on the Chattanooga run. We worked together without getting into each other’s business. He never asked me where I lived, and I never volunteered any information. I liked it that way. When Ackerman and I ran into each other along the line, we were civil to one another, the way good neighbors should be. Sophia and Flo got along like a couple of teenagers and loved going out on the town. They let me tag along like a third wheel whenever I was in town. Flo didn’t complain about me being gone three weeks out of the month. She didn’t ask any questions about where I spent my time either. I liked it that way.

Marianne and I settled into a life where no one else existed. We planted a garden every spring. I spent entire days in the summer bird watching and lying in the sun at Tern Lake while Marianne worked on her masterpiece, a landscape of Tern Lake on a panoramic scale. During the fall and winter months, I finally learned how to throw a decent piece of pottery. Our time together reminded me of when we were young. Together, Marianne and I were young and lived in a timeless existence. We were playful and happy beyond my wildest dreams. I loved the simple life at the farmhouse far away from the rest of the world. The farmhouse off Riverside Road became my home.

As time went by, I upgraded her kitchen appliances and made repairs to the house. I offered to install a modern furnace that would heat the whole house, but Marianne refused to let me spend the money. She scolded me when I drove up in a red 1953 Chevy pickup truck and handed her the keys.

She gave the keys back to me. “Mickey, you shouldn’t have. What if Flo finds out?”

Then she said stubbornly, “I’m still hanging on to my old truck. You know how I love it.”

I kissed her forehead and said, “That’s fine. I’ll use the new truck to drive back and forth to work.”

***

The election of President Dwight Eisenhower brought about the changes Mother had patiently waited for. Part of the new Interstate Highway System would run right through her land. Unfortunately, she died quietly in her sleep before she received payment on the deal she’d made with the State of Georgia.

I stayed in Atlanta the winter months of 1955 and 1956 and mourned the death of my mother. She had meant the world to me as a child, and I cherished the lessons she taught me. I stood on her front porch on a cold March day and watched the Purple Martins swoop around the pole boxes. I thought about Mother. The bird naming games we used to play ran through my head. I remembered how excited I was to see her the day I came home from training in Chattanooga. If it hadn’t been for Mother, I would not have had the opportunity to be a railroad man.

Her health declined rapidly after Sophia moved in with Flo and me. As Sadie predicted, the burden of caring for Mother during her last days fell on her while Sophia and Flo enjoyed the Atlanta nightlife. Sadie said that Sophia was a dreamer, a runner. I wondered if Sophia wasn’t being a little bit selfish, leaving Sadie to care for Mother alone. I felt a twinge of guilt when I thought about the part I played in Sophia leaving home.

I stayed in Atlanta for three months tying up the loose ends of Mother’s business transactions. Several months later, the State of Georgia sent Mamie MacDonald’s heirs a check for $60,000. Sadie bought her first new car and a house in Lawrenceville. Sophia bought a house in Decatur, four blocks from the house on Edinburgh. I gave $10,000 to Lewis and Miss Sara so they could buy a house as close as possible to Sadie. I put the other $10,000 in a Huntsville bank in Marianne’s name.

Marianne fussed and said that I should have given the money to Flo. I refused to listen to her. Only I knew how much money Flo spent in a year. Marianne couldn’t spend in five years what Flo spent in one year. The money was my way of paying Marianne back for all the good meals and happiness she’d given me over the years. When Flo asked about the money, I told her that I gave it to Lewis and Miss Sara. Knowing how I felt about them, she never mentioned the money again.

Living with Sophia had leveled Flo out. She acted more grown-up and sensible. After Sophia moved into her new house, I gradually went back to staying with Marianne three weeks out of each month. Flo and Sophia continued to meet for dinner on weeknights and spent most weekends together.

***

I left the Huntsville Station on a cold and rainy Friday in November, 1957. I inched along in traffic on Highway 53. A wrecker passed me, pulling a battered green truck from the intersection of Riverside Road and the highway. I felt every nerve in my body rise to the surface. The sensation radiated through my skin like a heartbeat. Then, something inside me fell with a hard thunk as the wrecker drove by. I swallowed hard to rid myself of the heavy feeling.

I pulled over and threw on my yellow raincoat. Two highway patrolmen stood in the ditch. I slid down the bank to where they stood. “Hey there, what’s going on here?” I asked.

The young man tipped his hat. “Good morning, Sir. The best we can tell, the brakes failed on that old truck, and she slid into the highway in front of an eighteen wheeler. The truck driver wasn’t hurt, but the woman never knew what hit her.”

“
A woman?” I mumbled.

“
Yes, sir. Are you from around here?”

I nodded and pushed my voice through the tightness in my throat, barely above a whisper. “I live on Riverside Road.”

The man looked at my face. He looks so young, I thought. For the first time in my life, I felt old and scared. He extended a hand toward me. “I’m Sergeant Fields. And you are?”

I accepted his hand. “Mick MacDonald,” I said softly, my name fading into the air.

The officer held the driver’s license in his hand. “Mr. MacDonald, do you know Marianne Kilmer?”

I stared at the young man whose face looked so clear and untouched by grief. I looked for a way to describe how I knew Marianne Kilmer.

“
She’s my cousin and my best friend,” I said.

He touched my arm. The touch reminded me of the day Dottie died when another man touched my arm in the same way. Both times, a shiver ran down my spine. It was the cold touch of death I felt.

“
Mr. MacDonald, can you identify Mrs. Kilmer’s body?”

I may have nodded. I don’t remember, but the patrolman led me to the ambulance. He pulled back the thick white sheet that covered her body. I didn’t recognize the woman. Her face was bloody beyond recognition. I’d never seen Marianne’s blood. I darted my eyes to the ground beneath the stretcher. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. A strawberry ringlet that had been tangled in the sheet fell loose. The sight of it hurt like someone had stabbed me in the chest.

“
Mr. MacDonald, is this your cousin?”

I choked on the mucus welling up in my nose and my throat. I fell into a coughing spasm and looked away until my airways were clear enough to respond. “The hair. It’s her hair,” I said.

“
You can take her to the morgue now,” the young man in the wide brim hat said to the man inside the ambulance.

He turned to me and said, “Come on, Mr. MacDonald. My partner can take it from here. I’ll ride home with you.”

He called back to his partner, “Pick me up at that address in an hour.”

I drove up the long path to Marianne’s house. “How did you know that I lived here?”

The young man sighed. “When you deal with accidents like this all the time, you know a lot of things, Mr. MacDonald.”

I stopped the truck. “This is her house. I bought this new truck for her, but she was partial to the old one.”

The officer looked genuinely saddened and said, “That’s too bad. She should have taken you up on your offer.”

We sat on the back doorstep. The storm was passing and the rain had stopped. I didn’t cry the way I did when I sat with Ackerman on my back steps the day Dottie died. I knew that I had the rest of my days to mourn Marianne’s death, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I gave the patrolman Uncle Johnny Mack’s address and asked if he and his partner would deliver the news to her parents.

I watched the patrol car pull away and felt the loneliness of the place without her. I stayed put on the steps and watched the clouds move over the dingy gray sky. My body weighed a ton when I finally lifted myself up. Grief lay heavy on my soul and made each step toward the door a chore. I used my key and let myself into the house. The place smelled like her. I’d never noticed that before. You notice so many little things after people are gone that you don’t notice while they are here on Earth.

I knew that Marianne didn’t have a will. We discussed it when I put the $10,000 in her name. She planned to have a will made. She just didn’t have time. She had so little time to do all the things she loved to do. To her, life was an adventure. I stared at the bed we shared. “I promise adventure,” I heard her say. She kept that promise every day I shared with her. The adventure in my life died that day with Marianne. I knew that I’d miss her laughter, her body, and the comfortable silence between us every day for the rest of my life.

I had mourned over my little girl and later, my mother. My grief for them didn’t compare to what I felt the day I lost my sweet Marianne. I couldn’t remember a time in my entire life when I didn’t love her and look forward to seeing her again. I knew I’d never be able to repair the numbness that seeped deep into my soul when I saw them take that truck away. Marianne’s death ripped a piece out of my heart. To me, she was the most perfect woman that ever lived. Nothing in this world would ever take her place.

I couldn’t stay in the house I’d called home for nearly ten years. The woman who made it a home was no longer there. I threw a canvas in the truck bed. I started with the diamond-patterned rug, then the landscape of Tern Lake. I wrapped the pottery in thick woven blankets that still held her scent. I took her favorite blue dishes with the etched Indian design. I loaded every piece of Marianne I could squeeze into the back of the truck and covered it tightly.

I drove a hard two hundred miles to Atlanta. I saw Marianne’s bloody face under the sheet. I heard her scream as I jumped off the trestle into the Tennessee River. I tasted the tears on her face the day I left her at the Huntsville Station. I touched her long tapered fingers and ran my hand through her curly red hair.

By the time I pulled into my driveway on Edinburgh Drive, I was exhausted physically and emotionally. My body stiffened as I got out of the truck. I felt dazed or drugged. Walking to the house, I noticed a Fuller Brush truck parked behind my car on the street. It was late in the day and a Friday, too late for a salesman to be calling door to door. I stepped inside the front door and saw a man’s overcoat hanging on the back of the wingback chair. I heard Dean Martin’s voice croon and faint voices drift from somewhere in the house.

I followed the music and the voices to the bedroom with the rosebud wallpaper. I stood at the door and watched a naked man hump my wife. The smidgen of energy I had left in me turned into rage. I jerked the man up by the shoulders and twisted his arm behind his back until he begged for mercy. Then I pushed him through the house and out the front door without a stitch of clothes on. Flo hadn’t said a word and tried to hide from my rage. I went back to the hallway and yelled at her, “Throw him his clothes, you whore!”

Flo looked at me with fear in her eyes. She threw on a slippery housecoat and grabbed the clothes and a pair of shoes at the foot of the bed. The man stood plastered against the brick wall on the porch as if he thought that would hide his nakedness. She opened the door and threw the clothes out the door. Flo backed away from me and ran toward her bedroom.