The Mine (6 page)

Grace gazed at her dinner partner. She liked what she saw. Slender and sturdy at five-ten, Paul McEwan resembled a young Spencer Tracy. He had thick reddish-brown hair, hazel eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles on a boyish face.

"You look handsome in that uniform. You should wear it more often."

"It will be standard equipment soon."

"When does your assignment start?"

"Right after graduation. I leave for Boston on the fifteenth."

With superior test scores and specialized training as a cadet, Paul had qualified to study at the new Navy Supply Corps School, located at the Harvard Business School. He would train to become an expert in supply, logistics, and combat support. Grace shook her head and smiled.

"You'll be a Navy officer
and
a Harvard man. That's almost too much to bear."

She took another sip of wine and thought of her parents. If they could see her now, they would surely send her to bed without supper. Alcohol had not been a staple in the many homes of Protestant missionaries William and Lucille Vandenberg. They certainly would oppose plans by Grace's Kappa Delta Alpha sisters to take her bar hopping in two days. But they would also be fiercely proud of their only child and the woman she had become.

They would like Paul too.

Paul and Grace had met at a Christmas party and dated for five months. He was a senior on the dean's list, a member of Zeta Alpha Rho fraternity, and a participant in the university's prestigious Naval ROTC program. He planned to make a career in the U.S. Navy. She was a junior who wanted to teach English and literature.

Grace played with a short string of pearls around her neck. It was a gift from a doting aunt, as was the shimmering purple swing dress she had worn for the occasion. The outfit complemented gentle curves, milky skin, and platinum locks that came from God and not a bottle.

The petite honors student did not go out often and generally preferred a quiet evening with a book to the chaos of parties and dances. But the sorority had brought her out of a shell. So had her man in white. He could not bear the thought of her staying at home on a Saturday night.

Paul was as dashing as ever but also fidgety. From the moment they arrived at the restaurant, he had appeared distracted. He tapped his fingers on a glass of water.

"Is something wrong?" Grace asked.

"Not at all." He offered a nervous smile. "I'm fine."

Gerard stopped at their table and took their orders. Grace requested halibut. Paul selected the New York steak and asked that it be "accessorized."

Grace beamed. She loved the way he phrased things, just as she loved how he pampered her. She looked forward to getting to know him better over the next year and seeing whether they had enough in common to form a lasting relationship.

When the waiter returned with their meals, Paul turned a pasty white. He pushed back his chair and straightened his tie.

"Your halibut, madam. Your steak, sir."

Grace assessed her meal and stuck a fork in the fish. She began to thank the server when she noticed that many eyes were focused on her table. She glanced at Paul. He had already dropped to one knee. Gerard handed Paul a small velvet box.

"Your accessory, sir."

"Thank you," Paul said.

He looked up at Grace, opened the box, and offered it with both hands.

"I know we haven't known each other all that long, but I can't imagine life without you. You're everything to me, Grace. You're all I could ever ask for and more. I want to be there for you. Forever. I love you. Will you marry me?"

Grace felt her stomach drop. She stared blankly for several seconds before putting her fork on the table. She looked at the waiter. He offered only a non-committal smirk, as if to suggest that Paul's proposal was probably better than the catch of the day.

She consulted the curious masses. A plump, middle-aged man holding a martini and a cigarette grinned and shook his head. His plump, middle-aged wife scowled at him and gently nodded at Grace. A thinner, younger woman held up both thumbs.

"Do it, honey."

Blood rushed to Grace's cheeks as she turned to face Paul.

"There's no hurry, sweetheart," he said. "I know this is kind of sudden. But I had to tell you where I stood before I shipped out. I don't want to lose you."

Grace took the box from Paul and removed the ring. It was no dime-store trinket. The half-carat diamond solitaire practically lit up the room. She shuddered to think what it had cost but figured it had probably cleaned out his savings. She looked again at the smarmy waiter, who remained on the fence, and the fat lady, who crossed fingers on both hands. Nearly a dozen others smiled and waited. Grace looked at her sailor.

"You're right. This
is
sudden," she said, taking a deep breath. "But that's OK."

Grace held the white gold ring between a thumb and a finger and examined it for several seconds before lifting her head. Nearby conversations ceased.

"You're a good man, Paul. I know this means a lot."

She put the ring where she thought it belonged, snapped the box shut, and pushed the package away. The fat lady fainted and the thin woman gasped.

"I love you too. My answer is yes."

CHAPTER 17

Mr. Smith went to Washington, but his whistle-stop tour hit the skids in Spokane. Several bulls, or railroad police, cleared out the boxcars when the train rolled to a stop. They arrested those too slow to sprint across the sprawling Great Northern rail yards to the relative safety of the rough-and-tumble Hillyard neighborhood.

Joel spent the last day of May learning the ins and outs of hobo life. Scruffy, who went by the name Hobart Katzenberger, taught him how to get a meal in a restaurant by offering to work for food and then waiting for guilt-laden patrons to pick up the tab.

Charlie, the five-foot-two leprechaun, directed him to a nearby machinist shop that was easy to enter through unlocked windows on evenings and weekends. Once in, the homeless and jobless had access to well-equipped rest rooms and a large washbasin. Never one to squander resources, Joel made use of both.

"Don't you guys ever stay in one place?" he asked.

"I do when I can," Scruffy said. He spoke with the gravelly voice of a longtime smoker. "But work's hard to find. You know that."

Though Charlie and Scruffy had marveled at Joel's shirt, they had not asked many questions. They no doubt figured he had stolen it or traded for it or found it in the garbage. One did not care about coordinated ensembles when riding the rails. The veterans treated Joel Smith like any young buck looking for employment or adventure. Joel, however, asked many questions of his new friends. He asked how they made it through a day, where they were from, and how they had come to be transients.

Scruffy, forty going on eighty, said he had once cut logs in Wisconsin. When his mill closed, he headed for the still profitable forests of the Pacific Northwest. He had bounced from one timber town to another for more than five years.

Charles Prescott had a sorrier tale. He lost a Chicago factory job and his wife on the same day in 1938, his thirtieth birthday. Delores Prescott had found happiness in the arms of his
sister
. Charlie hopped a train when the bills piled up.

As the day wore on, however, Joel became less interested in sob stories than how he could board a westbound train in Spokane without running into railroad security. He found out at ten the next morning, when Charlie guided him to a grassy field north of the rail yards. Scattered islands of tall bushes masked their approach. Not that it mattered. The bulls rarely ventured beyond the yards and this day was no exception.

They stood at a popular departure point only thirty minutes before they saw a long freight train, moving at glacial speed, pull out of its berth a half-mile away. When the locomotive approached the open field, Charlie handed Joel a badly worn business card bearing the name of a Seattle company.

"It's a big warehouse in Montlake, near the bridge. Ask for Brutus. He sometimes hires nobodies to move boxes around. It's not much, but it might keep you out of trouble for a while." Charlie laughed. "Good luck."

"You're not coming?"

The small man shook his head.

"Not this time." Charlie let his eyes drift toward town. He could hear church bells in the distance. "I've got a bead on something better here and I'm going to play it out."

"Thanks for your help. Here's something for your trouble." Joel handed him his last valid quarter, plus the two from the eighties. "Just be careful where you spend them."

He walked to within ten yards of the tracks and pondered his second joyride. With several open boxcars, the still slow-moving choo-choo was a target-rich environment. Joel chose a car toward the end and started walking with the train. As he picked up the pace, he glanced back at his companion. Charlie held a coin in each of his widely separated hands and smiled, as if to ask, "What are these?"

Joel laughed, waved, and turned his attention to the train, which had increased its speed. He ran beside a boxcar, studied its ladder, and let it drift away. He kept a steady pace as the target vehicle approached. New and graffiti-free, it appeared unoccupied.

When the car pulled even, Joel calibrated his steps. He moved toward the ladder, eyed the middle rungs, and let himself go. He landed squarely, firmly, and painlessly. As the train steamed through an intersection with a rural road, a well-dressed couple in a convertible honked and waved. Joel tipped his hat.

He pulled himself up several rungs and stared at the landscape ahead. Pine trees, small houses, and narrow roads broke up gentle fields of yellow grass. He visualized the stark, arid landscapes of eastern Washington, the majestic Cascades, and home. This was not how Joel had planned to spend Memorial Day weekend – in any year. But it definitely beat cramming for finals.

CHAPTER 18

Joel's joyride ended just after sunrise on Monday, when the Glacial Express rolled into the rail yard south of King Street Station. Because of a mudslide-caused delay near Wenatchee, the train did not cross the mountains until after dark. He spent most of the night shivering between two wooden crates.

When the train finally came to a stop, Joel wasted no time getting out. He had spent the better part of a day rattling around in an unoccupied boxcar and simply wanted to put his feet on solid ground. No bulls awaited him. No one awaited him. Why would they? He was a vagrant from another time and, to be honest, another place.

The city looked a lot like Seattle but very little like his hometown. No Columbia Center soared over a bevy of new skyscrapers, no partially completed football stadium abutted the train station, and no Space Needle loomed in the distance. The Century 21 World's Fair was twenty-one years away. Joel eyed the forty-two-story Smith Tower to the north. Completed in 1914, it was again the tallest building in the West.

Tired, sore, and hungry, Joel wanted to rent a cheap room, like the one in Helena, and sleep for a week. But he realized that that was not an option for a scraggly young man with little more than two useless dollars and a Ken Griffey trading card to his name. He needed a job, or at least an honest bookie. He tried to remember when Belmont held its Stakes. He wanted to bet on Whirlaway. But even that required cash.

So he wandered down to Pike Place Market, in hopes of finding a way to get it. Farmers, fishermen, and merchants peddled their wares on the waterfront, as they had done for decades and would do for decades more. But when Joel learned that none had work to offer, he kept on walking. Seeing and smelling fresh seafood and produce was more than he could bear on an empty stomach.

From the market, he cut east and south to Madison Street and walked four miles toward his old neighborhood in Madison Park. He talked to several merchants along the way but got the same story. No jobs. Even businessmen with Help Wanted signs in their windows told him to come back in a week. Some said he did not have the right skills. Joel suspected he did not have the right shirt and shave.

He loved the irony. He had four years of college, technical knowledge from far into the future, and fluency in French and Spanish. But on June 2, 1941, Joel Smith, wearing a cowboy hat, Candy in Chains sweatshirt, and four-day beard, could not get a job sweeping floors in a city of four hundred thousand.

For the most part, Joel took the rejections in stride. He knew that he could not solve all of his problems in twenty-four hours. He still had the business card in his wallet and a potential date with Brutus. Joel smiled for the first time that day.

Brutus. What parents would do that?

Joel's plight improved at noon when he walked into a grocery on Capitol Hill. The store had no jobs, but it did have food, including several cardboard boxes of fruits and vegetables that a teenage boy in a store apron carried to a garbage bin in back.

"Are you really going to throw that out?" Joel asked.

"I sure am."

"Why?"

"Because they are old and starting to get mushy. They won't sell."

"Do you mind if I help myself?"

"Take all you want. The bananas are still pretty good."

Joel did not wait for a review of the apples, grapes, and plums. He tore into the boxes and ate until he could eat no more. He knew he would pay for eating raw fruit, and nothing but raw fruit, on an empty tank, but he did not care. He needed sustenance and he needed it now.

When he finished his feast, Joel resumed his journey. He noted the rails in the road and sighed. He had hoped to hop a trolley that ran the length of East Madison Street but learned that he had arrived too late. The city had terminated the service in 1940.

Two hours later Joel made his way to a house on Thirty-Eighth Avenue, a home twice named among Madison Park's finest by a Seattle historical society. With shuttered, multi-paned windows, two chimneys, gables, three dormers, and a front door framed by two columns and an arch, the redbrick mansion was a tribute to colonial Georgian style.