She expected him to insist, but he went into the examining room and returned with a blanket and a pillow. “You might prefer the sofa,” he said, pointing to a green cloth couch that was more like a bench than a bed, but it was long enough to stretch out on. Hurd said he’d better go home and give Ida the news, and he promised to look in on Charlotte and Neva. Ellie didn’t expect to sleep, staring in the dark at the closed door that lay between her and Clare, but she did, and awakened to bright sunlight and the sound of Nurse Roover’s footsteps on the hard linoleum.
Ellie glanced toward Clare’s room and asked if she could peek in. Nurse Roover nodded and said, “But don’t wake him,” so she tiptoed in and stared quietly at Clare in his white metal bed. He looked both frailer and larger than Ellie had expected, perhaps because she didn’t see him lying down much anymore, certainly not stretched out like that on his back. As a baby he’d slept curled on his side, and as a child, with all his limbs flung out. She wanted to touch his forehead but didn’t. She looked at his hoisted leg. Whatever was broken was hidden under layers of gauze.
The room was comforting because it was so obviously a bedroom once, with a big window that let in the morning light. She still felt surprise to find herself in California, marveled when she looked out and saw trees, fruit, and green hills, all of it fed by water, none of it suffocating in dust. The window by Clare’s bed looked out over a small orchard: one tree each of lemon, orange, grapefruit, and persimmon. The persimmon tree, still dripping with rain, was the prettiest: all its slender brown branches studded with bright orange fruit. The leaves had fallen off but the fruit remained, as though someone had hung masses of red glass balls on it for Christmas. When Ellie looked hard, she could see that most of the persimmons had been pocked by hail or crows’ beaks, and the crimson scraps of skin hung down to tempt more birds. Even as she watched, a crow came and picked at the flesh, then stood on the branches and bent forward with each hard caw, its body like a black pump handle.
Clare stirred and, a moment later, opened his eyes. He saw her and at once mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
He’d gone through a phase in childhood where all he did was apologize, saying “sorry” even when he stirred in his sleep, or when his elbow brushed hers at the kitchen table. “Don’t say that,” she said, her eyes filling with tears she had to dab at before she could crush his hand in hers. “It wasn’t your fault, so don’t be sorry. How do you feel?”
Clare closed his eyes, opened them again, and flinched. “Don’t tell Dad, okay?” he said. “Crashing Mr. McNamara’s truck . . .” His voice trailed away.
Mr. McNamara had met them at the hospital. He said not to mind about the truck; he thought it would be fine. He just hoped Clare would be okay. Ellie told Clare all this, but she wasn’t sure what he heard. His eyes had again fallen closed.
78
Ansel stepped off the train slowly, reading twice the carved letters that said Emporia before he let go of the railing. The original limestone building, the one he could have sketched in his sleep, was now surrounded by red brick. The old place had been without shade or shelter; you were either indoors, or you were out. Now a series of arches stretched from the depot to the tracks. He walked to the corner of Third Avenue and Neosho Street and saw that the rest of the town was not much changed, except for the hard, dry browns and grays of it all. The drought endured. From the train window, he’d seen mile after mile of blown dust and abandoned buildings.
It was midday. Streaky clouds that Ellie called mares’ tails spread their feathery ice across the sky. Bare cottonwoods and maples, their shapes as familiar to him as his own hands, fringed the tracks where town ended and the prairie began. The air was cold and bright when the sun hit it slantwise, the way air was supposed to feel in November, and he felt that after a long time of wearing someone else’s clothes he had once again slipped into his own.
He walked east in the direction of the Harvey House and noticed that he still felt beneath his feet the steady a-way, a-way, a-way rhythm of the train, a pulse that was stronger than his own light footsteps. When he stood, at last, before the heavy glass-and-mahogany door of the old lunchroom, he took a breath and stifled a cough. The place had seemed grand in the old days, a place of bustling wealth where passengers gave off an electrical surge of anticipation. He had been young then, with no responsibility but to do his job, amuse himself, and stay loosely on the lookout for the right girl to marry and take back to Dorland. It was a strangely unhampered life. There had been plenty of time, plenty of food, plenty of people, plenty of cheerful girls, and then, in the end, one more interesting and serious girl, whose name was Eleanor Hoffman.
The ceilings, when he pushed open the door and walked in, were still elaborately patterned, the walls around him still of that height and breadth that meant no expense had been spared, but there was about the dining room a stillness that smelled of brown gravy and old steam.
It gave him a turn when a girl came out of the kitchen in the same uniform Ellie used to wear: black dress, white apron. Funny how it hadn’t changed in all this time. “You can seat yourself at the bar,” she said. Her voice was raspy and she looked even younger than Aldine, which was odd because she had a 2 on her apron badge, and seemed almost to be in charge. She was looking him up and down, assessing whether he was a tramp or paying customer, he guessed. She gave no sign that she took him for a customer.
“I’m looking for Gilbert Dorado,” Ansel said. “He around?”
“You aren’t here about a job, are you?”
“Nope. Gil’s an old friend.”
The girlish woman nodded. “That’s good because we don’t have jobs,” she said, studying him a bit more. “I have to say that ten times a day.”
He took this in and gazed across the room at the empty tables with their white tablecloths, heavy silver place settings, empty goblets and cups. Aldine had been here, and now she was gone. It was lunchtime but not a soul was eating. “I expected more people to get off the train here,” he said.
“Was the train full?”
“No . . . no it wasn’t.” He’d been glad of its relative emptiness, truthfully, because twice he’d been seized by fits of coughing and the Chinawoman traveling with her children had been able to move away from him.
“Sometimes they are, but usually they aren’t,” the waitress said. “I’ll go find Mr. Dorado. You going to want lunch?”
He wanted lunch, but he couldn’t waste money on it here. “No, but thank you,” he said.
“Well, the menu’s right there,” she said, pointing to the bar, “if you change your mind. I’ll be back.”