My mother, before she died, said that trains brought change. I knew this was completely and always true, even at my good age of early twenties. I still think so. For instance, a train at the Blue Ridge station in Virginia brought the man who would not break my heart, but steal it. The man would stand innocently beside me while they lowered her body into the earth, a far too foul a place for the likes of a woman like her. The man’s betrayal to me would send me to the edge. But Ellis Chance would always be beside me. Always. Blue Ridge was uncomfortable after she died, a coat I had grown out of. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t home
........................................
I stood on the platform, which was noisy with the bustle of the departing train and the New Year celebrators. I however, did not indulge myself with any drink, as they were secretly doing, however much I would have loved to take a brandy. The sun was starting to go down, but the winter sky was overcast; everything was silvery and dreary, despite the holiday. The weather seemed to adapt its moods just for me; just for the task I had given myself. Allowing my face to break out of its careful make up of a just-pretty-enough woman, it broke into a howling mask, my mouth open wide with the pain. I covered it up quickly, pretending it a yawn, but the pain was still there. The dark cavern where my heart once sat was still empty. I had come to get it back, before it disappeared forever.
My right hand shook, clenched in a fist. The other held my coat, my mother’s before she passed on. Tears prickled my eyes and I wiped at them, smearing my makeup but still effectively postponing any leaks. Taking a deep breath, I moved to the train, searching their windows from a distance. I could only pray he sat on the side facing the platform; there wasn’t enough time to get on and search the other side, nor did I have any money to pay for a ticket. I prayed harder. I skirted around people kissing each other goodbye, or making last minute transactions, “We’ll see you soon, in the summer perhaps.” “See you next year…” “Yes, and we’ll enjoy a little party and a little, eh.” And they would say their own word for the illegal drink of 1920. Moonshine. Devil Soda. Boston Tea. Even now, on a day famous for it’s drink, people snuck silver canisters into their mouths like their life depended on it, and stuffed it back into their coats or bags or any concealing fabric they had on them.
The train was almost too tall for me. The whistle blew, signaling the last minute passengers, so I stepped on top of a bench out of desperation. I felt my skirt rip, a horrible detaching feeling as I stepped up. I paid no attention to it after acknowledging it’s happening though, this was too important. Where was he? I searched he windows, my eyes gliding across the length of the train. Desperation squeezed my chest; I hopped down and ran to another bench further along the line. I dared not call out any names. I wanted to closure, not confrontation. But still, where was he? Surely he couldn’t have gotten on the train early. He was terribly off-clock.
Again my face slipped, and I felt the satisfaction of a grimace on my face. It stayed there. My head rotated. He wasn’t there. Was it possible he was still in town? No, that was even more impossible than him being on the train. Another whistle shrieked, then the train started to pull away…
“No!” I whispered, horror sinking into my veins like cold from ice water. In the scenes with him I ran over in my mind, the trouble was speaking to him, not finding him. I was loosing him. Just goes to show, nothing in life is as you expect. “No.” This was louder, but less desperate. I took a last hold through the cars with my eyes, skimming through the fedoras and little bell hats that were so popular these days. And like magic, there he was. He was standing up, putting his suitcase away.
He was looking out to the platform too, and his face went slack when he saw me. The most handsome man in the world opened his mouth a little, if he was saying something. His eyes held mine for a mere moment, and then were blocked by a fat man in a conductor suit, talking to him. He was gone again, just as soon as he appeared.
Chug chug chug chug the train heaved itself farther along the line, and the compartments moved a little faster. That was it. One glimpse. I sank down onto the bench, defeat heavy on my shoulders. Tears, finally claiming victory over my composure, made a delta on my face.
The steam in the train’s brakes finally let go, and it flew out at the people remaining on the platform. It buffeted ladies’ skirts, men’s coats, and children as they left their loved ones to the trust of the railroad. The steam came at me too, and I felt my hat take leave of my head. I didn’t care, it didn’t matter any more. I could always get another one. My fingers unclenched and I forced them open as the hole where my heart had been started to burn. I took a ragged gasp and let out a sob. A ring looped in a sterling chain nestled in my hand. It’s white gold band shone like when I first received it. A pearl, halfway inlaid in the gold, was ringed in intricate silver lace, so beautiful and strong at the same time. It was old fashioned- the lace made it appear a bit grandmotherly, but at the same time it was so regal and pretty and loving. I let out another sob. I hated jewelry. I constantly lost it. But how, how could I ever loose this? Even with it gone from my pocket, it’s there in my mind. I felt my hand rub along my neck, tracing the hard gold and diamond necklace. The necklace was beautiful too, stylish and expensive far beyond this silly grandmother ring. Far more expensive, and from a man who would never hurt me. He had promised.
“Oh, Nooo.” I moaned, crying loudly on the bench, and I dropped the ring into my lap so I could bury my ugly sobbing face in gloves. Grief. Emptiness. There is no true way to describe agony. My mother used to say that each emotion is unique to each person. Where one person might feel a lifting feeling for relief, another person might feel warm inside. My sobs almost sounded like laughter. Hehehehehe. I felt the person amiss like dry ice placed behind my stomach. He was gone. The rumble of the train started to weaken, and when I looked up again, the last of the cars were pulling past me.
I buried my face in my hands again. There was no happy ending to this story, was there? The platform was nearly deserted, leaving me unmercifully alone with thoughts that tortured and memories that grieved. I had just wanted to give the ring back to the man who stole my heart. It was funny; he hadn’t broken it, like a few other men had. I could actually feel the loss of heart in my chest. He left a few slivers though, a few pieces other men had chipped off. There was the small shard from Tommy Jenkins, dulled down over the years. He was my first love. And here, this larger piece, from Sam Youvng. He hit me, and that was when the piece chipped off. I remember when I told Ellis what Sam did. He had been about to do business with Sam, and when I told him Ellis cut Sam’s business with him short. He cared, had cared, that much about me. A hateful smile flashed across my lips. But the entirety of my soul was gone. Stolen from me, and now I was faced the epidemic of never getting it back. Not completely anyway.
But Ellis had lied. I had promised myself that after Sam I’d watch the men I loved.
Then I felt feet thunk over too me, hurried, and yet, painfully slow. I felt a few phantom thumps of a missing heart.
“Here’s your hat, Luce.” The soft, deep voice rumbled through the cavern in my chest, and I looked up, my hair probably horribly amiss because of the steam and my face smeared with the ridiculous amount of makeup I had put on for Lancing’s party, but instead had come here.
“Ellis?” I hiccupped pathetically, “I mean-Cal?” Anger started to boil over, “It is Cal right?”
He smiled sadly. “If it helps any, I wish it wasn’t.”
Cal McGane, under the false name of Ellis Chance, sat beside me. For once loosing his natural comfort for people. He still fingered my hat in his rough hands, which were scarred from so many stupid illegal bar fights. His eyes, like old pennies starting to turn green, weren’t meant for such serious and angry matters. I took a shaky breath, controlling myself from running away, or throwing a tantrum. I felt weak. Like the world was being tossed under me.
“Also, if it helps, all my luggage was on that train.”
I shook my head, “Well, you can buy yourself some new clothes and a train ticket. Here,” I tossed the ring from my lap to his, “I wanted to give this back.”
He did not touch it. We sat in silence a long time… I wanted to say something witty, like I’m gunna marry John Lancing, did you know that Cal? I’m gunna marry the swoon of all the town, the richest man in it too, until you came along with your damn rum-running and corrupted everything. He’s beautiful too. And kind. And did I mention rich? On GOOD money? His daddy’s got the biggest goddamn mining company in Virginia… But none of those things made it past my mouth. It was true, John Lancing was the want of every woman of marrying age. He was all startling blue eyes and glossy black hair, with a strait nose. I cocked my head. Cal broke his nose in a fight with suppliers, leaving it slightly crooked, and had a scar through his eyebrow where no hair grew. But he was tall. He had nice lips. A better smile. New tears made my eyes blurry. How could something so wonderful go so badly?
“I don’t want it.” He said finally, after a while. A new wave of pain rolled around in my chest.
“Please,” I said, “Just take your rum, your ring, and go.” I got up. “I can’t move on with that damned ugly thing around my neck all the time.” I could see I hurt him. An instinctive snarl played across his lips, and his eyes narrowed at the necklace now around my neck. All our time together I had been wearing the ring on the sterling chain, because I don’t like rings on my finger.
He stood up to a full head taller than me. “So he’s got the legal wallet? That’s what your after?” he knew that wasn’t true, and blinked. His argument wasn’t going the way he planned.
“Oh please Cal, give me a break.” I felt exhausted. I dropped my hands to my sides. “You LIED to me. Like a parent to a child, you LIED.”
“What was I supposed to say doll? Hey I get shot at-.”
“Don’t you ever call me doll!” I pushed him, but he didn’t budge, and he continued while I assaulted him.
“-Every-other night running booze to mobsters across the border?”
“Yes.” Was all I could say, “Because when you gave me that ring-, that’s a promise Cal. That’s saying ‘I never ever want to love anything other than you. I never EVER want to leave, even if we fight I never ever want to stop caring.” I took a ragged breath, and choked on the spit in my mouth. I coughed out, “And you left.” I angrily wiped away the tears and looked at him. The police was probably ransacking his place right now, and he knew it. The man I knew as Ellis Chance was broken, and in him stood a scared little gangster under a fedora. The Virginia police would hunt a rum-runner down like a mad dog. He knew all the facts very well. Cal brought his brows down like shades. “So LEAVE.” I spat. But I didn’t go anywhere. I stood with him on the empty platform.
He was so handsome, even when he was mad at me. When he first moved to Blue Ridge, the women around labeled him as ‘handsome enough,’ A little under the standard John Lancing set. But even the first time I saw him, he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen. So adorable. I saw how his cheeks fattened when he smiled that wolfish smile, and the cute habit of tugging at his auburn hair, which I had teased would make him go bald. I touched the cold gold from Lancing; trying to bring his face to mind, give me strength against this lair and cheat. It offered no assistance.
I felt a few more ghostly thumps of the heart I once had, when Cal suddenly asked me to forgive him.
I stood there, swaying a little bit, and said “No,” not nearly strong enough.
“Please,” he stooped down on his knees, bringing me the memory of when he did propose. Warm beach. Lots of lights. Cold sheets getting warm. Lancing giving us a toast, but looking hateful at Cal all the same. I knew that nobody messed with the Lancings and what they wanted out of life, but at the time I thought John loved me enough to let me go. Such a fool.
“Forgive me, Lucy.” He took both my hands in his.
Then I felt the look in his eyes. Oh god, not the penny eyes, and felt heat in my cheeks. I knew then, deep in the hole in my chest, that my heart wasn’t the only one gone from its place.
I reached back and slapped him as hard as I could, even if I was aware that the platform had been filling up again now that the next train was coming soon. His flesh treated so harshly by mine was easy to do when I was angry, and I wasn’t as angry any more. How could I hit him? All the will keeping me upright and on my feet came down with surprising speed. I hated myself.
Cal was looking at me with hurt, surprised and confused eyes the color of rusty pennies. Then I couldn’t help but lean down and kiss him where my hand had hit so hard. “I’m so sorry Cal.” My tears made his own cheek wet and he stood up and hugged me. His strong arms around my waist was what I had wanted since I was brought into this world, I’m sure. I crave them more than food, more than air.
“Not as sorry as I am.” He whispered into my mused hair. I held his face in my hands.
“I forgive you, Cal I forgive you and I love you and I’m sorry and…”
A sudden and brilliant light came into his eyes then, “Then marry me, Lucy Manning. I love you more than my freedom. The police don’t scare me that much,” he smiled wanly, “so lets go home.”
I gasped. The sudden remembrances that there were no happy endings in this story came rushing back to me. I shook my head slightly.
“No,” I said forcefully. I am such an idiot for throwing my life away; I thought at the time, “No, Cal, you get on the next train…”
“Luce I’m not going anywhere-!”
“SHUT UP!” I laughed, and drew a couple of dubious looks from passerby. “Shut up Cal McGane…” I whispered harshly, “Because I’m going with you.”
Cal blinked, “But John Lancing-.”
“Fuck that wet snitch John Lancing. My mother’s gone, my father’s in it with daddy Lancing, and my friends sneered at your business when they drink the booze themselves.” I took a deep breath of train station smells. Gasoline. Pee. Grease. “I want to go with you.”
Cal smiled carefully, and brought up the pearl ring. I added quickly, “And I want that ring. More than almost anything.”
“Almost?”
“I don’t need to be married to love you, Cal McGane.” And he laughed, a deep, throaty laugh and picked me up. I knew I was as close then as I ever would be to my heart. I’m certain now it’s gone forever, but I can always be close to it again. And I know it’s in good hands.
He dropped me and held my face in his fingers. Then frowned, “I don’t have any money for another train ticket.”
“I do,” I smiled, and unclasped the golden necklace from my throat, and replaced it with the pearl on sterling.
The diamonds glittered in the station lights, and I realized then that I owe more to John Lancing than anyone else. We took it across the street to the pawnshop, conveniently located for situations such as this one at the station, and got a hundred and seventy five dollars for it. We ran back laughing to the train station and bought two tickets for the Savannah Pier train. “Why the Pier?” I said carefully. My new life apparently caused for some wet ducks.
“I’ve taken stock on life.” The rumrunner said, “And decided that the best thing for me is to skip country. The police can catch me again if I go inland, and worse,” he glanced at me, and I nodded, knowing what he would say. “So the best thing for us, I think, is to change directions and head back to our family birthplaces.” We now sat on a bench again, huddled against the cold and strangers who might identify Cal as the booze seller he was.
“Wait…” I said, thinking. The sudden shock and surprise of what Cal’s plan was caught up to me, “You mean to say, we are going to Europe?”
“Just England, I have a good friend who found himself in a spot such as ours, and did likewise in the situation. He’s got connections for me there,” Cal smiled that wolfish grin at me, and a spasm of joy went off in my chest, a contained firework, “Want to see London?”
London? The thought of going anywhere other than Blue Ridge was out of the question my entire life, and now, all of a sudden, I was going across the Atlantic with a fiancé rumrunner? How on earth had my life turned so suddenly? I opened and closed my mouth, unable to say much. I turned away to the tracks, and blew fog out of my mouth into the cold evening, like a smoker enjoying a stoggie. The next train was off in the distance; I could hear the whistle blowing. Trains are for change. A feeling unlike any I had ever encountered before swallowed me up. I felt the excitement in my toes. “I, would love to see London.” I smiled back at him. Cal huddled closer, and I could see he had the same feeling.
“Who knows?” He said, “We may come back someday, when this ridiculous prohibition law is amended. We’ll come back wealthy people, and that bastard Lancing will have run his stupid coal business into the ground.” I shook my head, and rolled my eyes. I will be happy just to get past security at the port, more than anything. That thought froze me, and Cal felt me stiffen. “What wrong dear?” I felt his warm breath on my cheek, but I had grown cold.
“How are we going to get past the police at the docks?” I asked him, suddenly afraid.
Cal smiled, “I was a good runner, Luce, I have friends in that business too.”
The prospect of heading out on a booze ship did not seem appealing to me, but I knew that our chances were infinitely greater that way than on a cruise line. We could always bribe our way out with federal boats if we encountered them. That was commonplace on the sea. I settled again onto the bench, and he wrapped an arm around me, eyes shinning like pennies. Then another whistle of the train could be heard coming closer by the second, and the rumbling of the engine was felt through our shoes.
“I love you Luce,” He said suddenly, eyes on the approaching train. It’s headlamp very much a beacon of hope for us.
“I love you too Cal.”
“We’ll get through this.”
“I know we will, darling.”
I kissed his cheek again.
....................................
As it turns out, we did not return to Blue Ridge for a long time. When the Prohibition Act was finally repealed in 1933, it was the Depression. We could not afford to get out of England, much less make it in the U.S. In the 40s Cal was called off to war. Four terrifying and miserable years followed, and by the time it was 1950, Cal and I were old. We had four children, and already three grandchildren. (The youngest of which Cal can still entertain with his harrowing tales of Rum-running along the east coast.) The middle one, a small beautiful girl who has Cal’s eyes asked us to write down the story of our elopement a few days ago, for a class project. When I finished she asked me if I knew if Lancing did indeed run his mining business into the ground, and if everyone in Blue Ridge was so poor that we could be considered wealthy. I had laughed. But that night, I wondered… and so I had resolved to write a letter to a few of my friends, and see if any still resided there.
Only one did, the rest were married off in the neighboring town of Helsing. I remembered Helsing, and the baseball games we sported in their field. Her family implored us to come visit, and so Cal and I bought tickets on a nice boat, legal this time, to visit the place of our escape. It hadn’t changed much. I saw John Lancing, but he didn’t see me. He was a widower, still thinking himself handsome at fifty-four, and eating pie in a diner. His coal business was booming, I heard. It would really grow around the sixties, but Lancing would not own it then. He died of food poisoning a couple monthes after our visit. I was around fifty at that time as well, and Cal around early sixties. He was still the most handsome man around.
We visited, laughed, and said goodbyes and promised to write. But Blue Ridge wasn’t home any more. The only thing of comfort in that country for me was my mother’s gravestone, which I visited before I left. Engraved letters were starting to wear away, and weeds had taken over that portion of the cemetery, but I recognized it well enough. It sat, eroded and off kilter but still loved, at the fringe in the family plot. My father lay beside her, but I paid no attention to him.
“You were right mama.” I whispered, my voice crackly like an AM radio with age. The sky was an everlasting blue, perfect for a time such as this. “Trains do bring change. Wonderful change.” I smiled and turned away to join my husband, who still loved me dearly after all this time, and I he, back at the car. I was still missing my heart, and Cal still missed his.
