The Christmas Train (3 page)

Her mother?

Suddenly Eva's memory opened up, like a seedpod spilling its secrets. This child
was
traveling with her. They weren't running away from German or Russian soldiers. They were taking the train to Ennis. To her home.
“Ja,”
she murmured as the fog receded. Eva had agreed to chaperone this child to Ennis, where her father would be waiting. “
Ja
, she was right to have you travel with me. But you must be careful and always tell me where you are going.”

“But I
did
tell you,” the girl protested. “I went to the bathroom and I was coming straight back like you said. Don't you remember?”

Eva frowned. No, she didn't remember. But she'd had enough lapses of late to suspect the girl was telling the truth. She forced a smile. “Oh. I must have been distracted. I was looking for my ticket, you see.” She peered down at her handbag. Where was that ticket? Had someone stolen it?

“But I pointed out where the bathroom was,” the girl persisted. “Don't you remember?”

Then Eva felt it, the stiff square of paper. Thanks be to
Gott
!

“Don't you remember?” the child repeated.

Eva sighed with relief. “Of course I remember, Anna.” And she remembered the child's name as well. “Did you wash your hands?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

This time Eva's smile came easier. “You have very nice manners, Anna. That is good.” She paused. “You learn this from your mother?”

Anna shook her head so hard her hair swung back and forth around her cheeks. Then she turned toward the window and the wintry cityscape that sped by. Warehouses, a highway, a church spire in the distance. “From my Nana Rose.”

“Your Nana Rose? Ah. Was that your
Oma
? Your grandmother?”

Though Anna's face was turned away from her, Eva saw her chin tremble. “Yes. But . . . she died.”

“Oh. I am very sorry you lost her, Anna.”

Frowning, the child pushed back in her seat, so that her legs stuck straight out in front of her. Eva reached over hesitantly to pat her knee. “You are sad. I can see you loved your Nana Rose.”

She was answered by the merest bob of the girl's chin.

“And now you are afraid of this new life with your father?”

Anna swallowed hard. “I don't need a father,” she muttered, her eyes glued to the back of the seat in front of her.

“Every girl needs a father,” Eva said, remembering her own good papa. But what did this poor child know of fathers? Mirroring Anna's posture, Eva turned her attention to the seat back in front of her. “You are afraid because you do not know what to expect,
ja?
I understand. I have been afraid like that. Of a new life,” she added.

They rode in silence, but it was not quiet. Passengers conversed; a baby whimpered; a pair of teenage boys tramped by. And underneath all, the rhythm of the train reverberated through the floor and up into the seats, the sound of it vibrating into their bones.

“You're a grown-up. Why should you be afraid?” Anna had tucked her chin, and now she pulled her feet onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You can do whatever you want.”

Eva sighed. “Not always. Sometimes we are very afraid. And sometimes we must do things we don't want to do at all.”

“Like my father.” The girl rubbed her face against her knees. Was she wiping away tears? “He doesn't want to take me, but he has to.”

How was Eva supposed to respond to that? “Tell me,
Liebchen
, when did you last see your father?”

Anna shrugged. “I never saw him in my whole life. He and my mother hate each other.” She looked over at Eva, her face far too solemn for such a young child. “Did your mother and father hate each other?”

“Oh, no!” Eva exclaimed, almost indignant at the thought. “Of course not. They loved each other. And they loved me and my older brother, Karl. Always the love in our little house. Always the love.”

Eva grimaced when Anna's arms tightened around her knees. She shouldn't have said all that about love. “You will be all right,
liebchen
. Your father, he will meet you at the station. You will be a little cautious with each other at first. That is to be expected. But soon enough it will be all right between you.”
If he is not another one like that mother of yours. Hard and holding tighter to the cigarettes than to the child.

They sat without speaking, and slowly the unrelenting sway of the train car lulled them, like a giant rocking chair calming a fussy baby. The passengers settled in, shedding coats and hats, and pulling out books and magazines and tiny radios they plugged into their ears.

Outside the view had softened from city edges to busy suburbia and now to the slow green undulations of southern Arkansas, browning now with winter's cold, but still majestic. Bare maples and oak trees reached up to heaven, silhouetted against the brilliant afternoon sky. A straggling vee of late-departing birds soared low over a hill. They headed south, while the train churned steadily north. To Ennis.

Eva smiled to herself. She sighed and shifted into a more comfortable position and let her eyes close. Not long now. By tomorrow morning she would be home with Mutti
und
Papa
und
Karl. They would all go to mass on Christmas Eve, with the church lit only by candles, smelling of winter greenery and smoky incense.

But no. Something gnawed at the edges of her memory. Not Mutti
und
Papa. They were gone now. Many years gone.

With an effort she lifted her eyelids, and looked at her hands folded in her lap. They were old hands. The bony, blue-veined hands of an old woman. Her parents were no longer at home. They couldn't be.

Panic pushed hard and high into her chest, a rush of fear and confusion that threatened to choke her. Her parents wouldn't be there! Too much time had gone by.

But Karl will be
. She stared blindly at her knotted old hands. He was only three years older than she. He would still be there. So tall and handsome he was the last time she saw him.

“Excuse me.”

Eva heard the child's voice but didn't respond. She'd much rather sink into the soft memories of their pleasant village, when Papa had kept cows and sold milk in the village, and Mutti had tended chickens and maintained a bountiful garden along the banks of the Oder River. Eva had hated all the weeding, complaining about her ruined nails.

What she wouldn't give now to have chores to do. Even in winter there were chickens to feed and eggs to collect, compost to turn, and potatoes and leeks to dig. And in their warm, low-ceilinged kitchen, there would be bread to knead, vegetables to chop, and pots to scrub.

There would be laughter, too. And Karl coming in with a fragrant spruce from the hills above Ennis. A tree to trim with ribbons and crocheted stars stiffened with starch.
Opa
had carved the crèche scene when he was only a boy. It was their most valuable family keepsake.

“Excuse me!”

“Was is das?”
With an effort Eva suppressed her irritation at the girl's interruption of her lovely daydream. “What do you want?”

The child stared up at her, hesitant now. “I, um. I only wanted to know if I can eat now. I'm hungry.”

“
Ja, ja
. Eat.”

As the girl dug out a paper bag with a foil-wrapped peanut-butter sandwich, a banana, and a bottle of water, Eva scanned the railway car, the backs of the heads of the other passengers, and the fleeting countryside racing past in the frames of the windows. How had she come to be here with this little girl, heading home to Ennis? Would anyone be there? Had their house even survived the war?

Across the aisle a man read the newspaper, and she saw the photos splashed in vivid colors across the page. The massive holes in the middle of New York, where workers still searched for the missing. The jagged remains of the buildings like skeleton fingers beseeching the heavens for help that never came.

She shuddered, remembering the violent sound of bombs shaking the earth as she and Mutti had hidden in the root cellar. And then the ominous clank and grind of the tanks crawling like giant nightmarish beetles across the fields, unmindful of fences or pump houses, crushing everything in their paths. That's when she'd run. That's when her mother had sent her fleeing into the cold, winter forest.

Mutti had been born in Poland but she'd married across the border to a German man, Eva's beloved papa, and after twenty years had been fully accepted in the village. She loved her homeland, though, and had taken her children to visit her family as often as possible. Karl had even been sweet on a girl just over the border.

When the Russian-German alliance had decided to divide Poland between them, however, it hadn't taken Karl long to join the Polish resisters. That's when things had turned threatening. Like most men, her papa had already been drafted into the army. He'd been gone barely a month when Karl had been declared an enemy. That had brought Mutti, with her Polish heritage, under suspicion. And Eva, too.

They'd received messages from Karl to be careful, to trust no one, and to prepare to flee if necessary.

Flee their home? It had seemed preposterous. Everyone in Ennis knew them. Eva was certain their neighbors would never turn on them.

But Mutti had heeded her son's warning. She'd prepared Eva for escape, drilling her about what to do, and she'd packed food and maps for her. She hadn't told her, though, that she meant to stay and hopefully distract the Nazi soldiers from following her daughter. So when Mutti had hissed at her to run, Eva had run. And run.

And run.

“Little Rock!”

Eva jolted to the present at the amplified announcement. “Little Rock with connections east and west. We'll have a thirty-minute layover. Continuing passengers must reboard no later than six fifteen.”

They were allowed to leave this train?

Eva's heart pounded like a drum in her chest. They must escape while they could! She lurched upright, reaching for her carpetbag.

“I don't think we're supposed to get off here.”

That girl again.

Eva looked over at the child, confused once more. And yet one thing was painfully clear. She must protect this child. She must get her safely to . . . to . . .

Anna frowned when the old woman didn't answer but only stared at her, her pale blue eyes wide and yet foggy, as if she were all mixed up. “This can't be Ennis already,” Anna went on, lowering her sandwich to the napkin on her lap. “My mother said I would have to ride the train all night, and it's only six o'clock. I don't think this is our stop.”

“No?” Miss Eva grasped her purse tighter, and for a moment Anna thought she was going to jump out of her seat and run down the aisle. The train began to slow down. What would happen to her if Miss Eva got off now? Would that frowning conductor man make her get off, too?

Even though she was scared, Anna forced herself to smile. “No, we don't get off here, Miss Eva. Not yet. Some other people might be getting off, but not us. Not till tomorrow morning when we get to Ennis.” She picked up her banana. “Here. You can have my banana if you want. Bananas are good for you. That's what Nana Rose always said. But she didn't like me to eat it whole. She always cut it up in a little bowl and made me eat it with a spoon,” Anna rattled on, trying to distract the poor old lady. “And she always told me to chew very carefully so I wouldn't choke on a big chunk. 'Cause one time when she was real little, my mother almost got choked by eating a banana.”

As if a switch turned on, Miss Eva's eyes blinked, and that fast the fog in them cleared. “
Ja
. Once my boy, he nearly chokes on a cherry. I had to put him on my lap and pound his back until it flew out.”

Anna smiled in relief. She was okay again. “You have a boy?”

“
Ach
, my boy, Paulie. Very important he is these days. In the Air Force, like his father before him.” She smiled, relaxing her tight hold on her purse, and accepted the banana.

“Where's his father?” Though Anna wanted to eat the banana herself, she gave it to Miss Eva. Anything to keep that lost look off her face.

“Oh, my Paul. He is Paul Senior, you see. But he died, let me think. Last year? No. Before that . . .” She looked off, her mouth moving as if she silently counted the years. “He died in 1990,” she finally said, her brow furrowed beneath her soft cap of white curls. “Can that be right?”

“That's before I was born,” Anna said. “I turned ten in October.”

“
Ja
, me, too.” Then Miss Eva chuckled. “I mean my birthday is in October. But I will be seventy-six. No, seventy-seven.”

“Do you have any other children?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Just Paulie. He had just joined the Air Force when his father fell ill.” She paused, her gaze far away. “My husband was so proud of him. Paul was a chief master sergeant when he retired. But Paulie, he is an officer, a major.”

Anna took a bite of her sandwich. The train had slowed to a crawl as they neared the station. “Will he be there? You know, in Ennis?”

Like a wispy curtain falling over her face, Miss Eva's expression turned vague, as if her real self wasn't inside her anymore. “Paulie? In Ennis?
Nein
. No. I never take him to Ennis.”

Anna cocked her head. She'd never taken him to see his own uncle? “How come?”

Miss Eva shuddered. Anna saw it happen, like a wave going right through her. Like somebody shook her by the shoulders and it made the whole rest of her shake, too.

“How come? How come I don't take my boy there?” Miss Eva's eyes had gone dark, like Anna's mother's eyes when she was angry. Anna shrank back in her seat.

“Because there is no more Ennis,” Miss Eva spat out. “It is gone. The airplanes with the bombs—”