Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (9 page)

Mrs. Nesbitt looks at me, surprised. She shakes her head in a phony lament. “Oh, boy, a whole afternoon spent stirring up the roads. We'll be dusting for weeks!”

I picture myself spinning dirt devils out of the exhaust pipe. I smile, but truly, I'd rather be dusting than driving. You can't kill anybody with a dustcloth.

By lunchtime my stomach is a knot.

In the driveway Dr. Nesbitt insists I sit in the driver's seat. “We will begin,” he says in a serious way, “with the three easiest driving skills to master. Number one: stalling the engine. Number two: getting stuck in a ditch. And number three: getting lost.” He looks at me without cracking a grin. “Which'll it be?”

“How about going backward when you mean to go forward,” I say with a laugh that sounds more than slightly hysterical.

The seat is hard and high. For the first time in my life I'm glad to be gangly. We review the foot pedals: gears on the left, reverse in the middle, and engine brake on the right. “Driving is much easier for folks with three legs,” Dr. Nesbitt remarks. We review the two levers on either side of the steering wheel and the two on the floor. “And four arms.”

After a string of directions, I start the engine. The car jumps to life. I inhale so sharply I choke. I am petrified. What's a “Tudor Sedan” anyway? A booby trap? Over the engine noise Dr. Nesbitt says to press the left pedal to the floor for low gear. Next he says to adjust the throttle.
Throttle?
My hands flutter up and down.
Throttle… throttle…
I spot it!
Okay
. I move the right steering wheel lever to “
give
her a little gas
.” Mrs. Nesbitt waves Henry at us from the back porch. Our tires spray gravel. “Get out of the way,” I scream at the chickens as we buck forward.

“Now brake,” Dr. Nesbitt says, calm as can be.

I press the right pedal. We stall out. I exhale for what seems like the first time in hours. Panting, I turn to Dr. Nesbitt with my mouth hanging open.

“Well done, Iris. You mastered skill number one on the first try.”

I learn neutral and reverse and quite a bit about horsepower and flat tires and electric starters versus the old crank style. Dr. Nesbitt tells how he used to treat drivers with a “Ford Fracture”—the broken arm they got when a crank starter accidentally spun the wrong way.

I've sweated through my dress again. My shoulders ache from being hunched to my ears. My fingers won't release from the steering wheel. Mrs. Nesbitt watches from the porch, smiling and waving like we are her children going round and round on a carnival ride. Poor Marie is pooped. She's worn a strip in the grass trying to chase us.

I turn off the ignition and mop my forehead. I have been driving now for almost two hours and we haven't left the driveway.

“At least we didn't get lost,” I say.

Dr. Nesbitt smiles. “You seem like a natural, Iris, truly. In a few days you'll have this car climbing telephone poles.”

I get out and slam the door. “Yes, sir… in reverse.”

June 17, 1926

Dear Leroy,

Dr. Nesbitt is teaching me to drive! It's actually fun. Maybe I take after Daddy a little—but not his reckless, show-off style.

Driving is lots easier than cooking, which is something I can't steer away from any longer. Help! The other night when we faced another sloppy bowl of limp cucumbers floating in vinegar, Mrs. Nesbitt said, “Why can't any of the good cooks in Wellsford get sick.”

With a cookbook and Mrs. Nesbitt's help I've learned biscuits, oatmeal (big deal), and creamed corn, but so far, when I'm through the kitchen mostly smells like scorched potholders.

When you visit (I think the Nesbitts would say it's okay) we'll take a chicken coop tour. I'm in charge of it now. No admission fee. Pee-yew and UGH… hens are crabby. I wonder if the art of cooking includes choking your own chickens?

The girl at the farm “next door” has it out for me. Her name is Dot.

Dot = hen + snapping turtle.

Her mama's gone. Dot claims she passed on, but really she ran off because her husband hit her. What's worse—having your mama disappear in the middle of the night or pass on? I say getting left high and dry is worse. Maybe that's why Dot's so mean.

Another “ugh”—Daddy is engaged to Celeste Simmons. I should have seen it coming. Everybody in Atchison already knows, right? Celeste is the opposite of Dot—too cuddly, with a giant helping of phony. Maybe she won't last, just like all his other lady friends. I swear I am not going to think about it.

Thank you for the postcard. If you don't want the chickens and everyone else in the world to read them before I do, try a letter in an envelope.

I miss you a whole lot—so there.

ILB

P.S. Please come. Chicken tour is optional.

On Sunday, while most folks are at church, I'm back
in the driver's seat. Dr. Nesbitt's wearing old work pants and
a straw hat. “It's time to hit the road,” he says. I don't tell him how last night when I couldn't sleep I
drove
sitting on a dining room chair. The goddesses thought I was a talking octopus.

I start the car and adjust the levers and pedals. We glide down the driveway. Thankfully I avoid picking off the telephone pole and the mailbox, and then I make such a sharp left turn, I wheel us in a complete circle. As we buck and hump along I feel sure an octopus could drive better than me. “I'm sorry,” I say without taking my eyes from the road. “I hope I don't shake your teeth out.”

Dr. Nesbitt is quiet a long moment. “Years ago, right before my father died, he taught Mother to drive. Dad insisted on it, knowing she'd have to be independent. I can still see them cruising around our old neighborhood—Morris and me cheering her from the curb. She needed a big pillow at her back so she could reach the pedals. Once you learn, Iris, I hope you two will get out.” He smiles. “Do the town!”

We pass a walnut orchard and a thin dirt road leading to a white box farmhouse surrounded by trees. It seems to spin slowly to watch us go by. I steer around the Rawleigh man's yellow medicine buggy and an abandoned truck with two flat tires.

“If Mother were here, she'd insist we get out and dust it,” Dr. Nesbitt remarks.

A horse and wagon lope ahead of us in the distance. My heart stops.

Okay.

Think.

Which is the brake… find the brake pedal and the parking brake. Just slow down a bit. Don't stall. My mind's running faster than the car. Where's the horn? Where's the
horn?

Oh, God. It's Cecil and Dot.

They stop. I creep up and stall inches behind them. From the corner of my eye I see Dr. Nesbitt press an imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side.

Cecil nudges Dot. They swivel around on the seat to face us. “Well, well. What have we here?” I clench the steering wheel, brace for Dr. Nesbitt to put me on the spot, make some smart remarks about my driving—either a brag,
Iris is a whiz behind the wheel
, or a snide
Good thing we stalled, it's the only way Iris can stop this thing.
But the real Dr. Nesbitt looks from Dot to Cecil to me without saying a word.

I sit straighter, adjust my sleeves, and watch Dot size things up. Her eyes are wary, not piggy like her father's. I wonder if he sees Pansy every time he looks at her. Dot curls her lip ever so subtly at me, then smiles at Dr. Nesbitt. I know she's busy twisting this moment into a string of nasty remarks.

Cecil spits. “Et looks like your
horsey
stalled out on you, Miss Baldwin.”

I don't answer. Cecil's mare pees in the dirt.

Dr. Nesbitt asks, “What about that old
horsey
you bought, Cecil? Is that rusted Chevy you're always tinkering with still
on the fritz?”

“You know I prefer
ree-al
horsepower,” says Cecil, with what is supposed to be a charming country bumpkin tone. He squeezes Dot's knee. “I told my girl, ‘A horse'll stop at a barbed-wire fence. But, I ask you, will a car?'” Cecil gets a self-satisfied expression, as though he's the first person to be born with brains. “A car will drive right off a bluff, but will a horse?” He folds his arms.

“I don't know as I can say,” Dr. Nesbitt remarks. “I've never seen a horse drive a car.”

“I guess we'll have to save getting lost for another
day,” he says as we pull up our long driveway and stop. We have churned the dust on dozens of county roads. I've learned how to stop without stalling. I no longer head straight into every ditch. I'm getting reverse, and I even wormed around a Sunday driver who was pokier than me.

Dr. Nesbitt turns to me with a nice smile and asks, “So, Iris, how are you doing?”

I blurt out, “Besides seeing the Deets… I mean… sorry, but anyway… it's been the best afternoon of my life!”

Dr. Nesbitt salutes me with his hat. “Do you learn everything this fast?”

“Driving maybe, but not cooking.” I smile. “Thank you for teaching me.”

We make a deal to practice before supper every evening until I can go by myself. Dr. Nesbitt gets out, stretches, and
kicks the tires.

I stay in the driver's seat for a moment. In my mind I see a ribbon of road rolling away from me, like when I was little staring backward out the car window. A feeling leaps in me, a surge toward something—I don't know what. Driving is like nothing else on earth. I'm not terrible at it. In fact, I love it. I can't believe it, but I do.

But, by far, the very best part of the whole day was just now, when Dr. Nesbitt turned and
asked
me how I was doing rather than telling me.

Mrs. Nesbitt and I cruise through Wellsford with
Henry and Marie, the backseat full of supplies: chicken scratch from the feed store; Borax, coffee, evaporated milk, cornmeal, ink, and Wrigley's Gum from Fly's Dry Goods; my silent purchase; and a tank of propane for the range. We have an hour before we pick up Dr. Nesbitt at his office.

Mrs. Nesbitt looks regal in her earrings and embroidered coat. She waves at two little farm boys on the curb. “We need some climbing roses like those,” she says over the engine noise, motioning with crumpled fingers toward a brilliant red trellis the color of her jacket. The owner of the roses swings her watering can at us. Marie yaps hello.

Dr. Nesbitt knows everybody here—inside and out. But I wonder what people think of the three of us “ladies” out on the town without him. I steer past the Presbyterian Church and cemetery and away from the busy Saturday morning streets.

I am truly not nervous driving. In fact, it beats riding any day. I keep the church steeple in sight as we slide past farmhouses under a lace coverlet of cottonwood shadows. Out of the corner of my eye even the purple hollyhocks—privy flowers—bunched around a lonesome outhouse look royal. We pass a spiny brown ridge that reminds me of Marie's back when she first arrived, scrubby and starved. The wind explores the morning, fills my sleeves, twirls up my skirt, ruffles the robins, then switches destinations, and so do we.

As we crest a hill I feel the earth release us, then hug us tight going down. Emerald corn fields rustle under the scalloped telephone wires. I hear rivers of clover hum the same soft pink note. Everything is moving, talking, touching above and rooted below. I slow to let a garden snake show off his swivel dance across the dusty road. Mrs. Nesbitt pats my arm.

Something brand-new hums in me too. I think it is
joy
.

“Thank you. Thank you… I love you,” I tell the
mailbox. “Finally, a real, private letter from Leroy!” I squeeze the envelope. It's fat, at least two pages. My name looks gorgeous written with his pen. I scout around
for a private place to read, and decide on Morris's bench.

June 25, 1926

Dear Iris,

Be glad you're not in dull, boring Atchison. My big excitement is watching the goldfish my little sister got for her birthday. She named it Wanda Juanita—because it sounds “watery.”

The two older ones mostly act stupid, drooling over Motion Picture Magazine and dreaming up questions to ask me about you? ? ? ? ?

But guess what? Last week my boss assigned me the railroad repair crew ice route—100 guys living in rail cars. We delivered 5,000 pounds to the cooler in their cook car and got to stay overnight. What a crew! They eat right and know how to make fun out of nothing—talking about girls, playing poker, swapping stories.

News travels down the rails like telephone lines. It's mostly bad—strike threats, cars stalled on the tracks, even a poor old guy struck by lightning.

Besides the ice, I got another job loading dry cement sacks at the docks. I hate it. With me, it's a life of lifting dead weight, whether it's frozen hard or dry as dust.
Guess I should have stuck with the piano. Ha!