Rock Island Line Read online

  Table of Contents

  ALSO BY DAVID RHODES

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  MORE FICTION FROM MILKWEED EDITIONS

  Copyright Page

  ALSO BY DAVID RHODES

  The Last Fair Deal Going Down

  Easter House

  Driftless

  To Nelson and Steve

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Rock Island Line story would never have emerged without the patience, advice, and bedrock human kindness extended to me by many, many people. Although their names do not appear, their voices and spirits run like wolves through the narrative. Mention should be made, however, of my agent Lois Wallace who took the original draft to Harper & Row, where editor Frances Lindley found something worth encouraging and guiding forward. For the republication of the current edition I’m grateful to Philip Christman for his indefatigable enthusiasm, to Milkweed editor Ben Barnhart, and the rest of the Milkweed staff. They heard the wolves and understood the need to preserve the story entirely in its youthful form without the niggling intrusion of a more mature perspective. My thanks to all.

  ONE

  The old people remember Della and Wilson Montgomery as clearly as if just last Sunday after the church pot-luck dinner they had climbed into their gray Chevrolet and driven back out to their country home, Della waving from the window and Wilson leaning over the wheel, steering with both hands. They can remember as if just yesterday they had driven by the Montgomerys’ brownstone house and seen them sitting on their porch swing, Wilson rocking it slowly and conscientiously back and forth, Della smiling, her small feet only touching the floor on the back swing, both of them looking like careful, quiet children.

  Della’s hands were so small they could be put into small-mouth jars. For many years she was their only schoolteacher, and, except for the younger ones, they all had her, and wanted desperately to do well with spelling and numbers to please her. Without fail, screaming children would hush and hum in her arms. It was thought, among the women, that it was not necessary to seek help or comfort in times of need, because Della would sense it in the air and come. The old people don’t talk of her now but what a shadow is cast over their faces and they seem to be talking about parts of themselves—not just that Della belonged to the old days, but that when she and Wilson were gone it was unnatural that anything else from back then should go on without them.

  Wilson owned and managed a small grocery store in the middle of Sharon Center, where now old Highway 1 intersects with the blacktop to Hills at a three-way stop sign. (It has fallen in upon itself in neglect, bought finally by Eldon Sehr, an old German who would neither sell it, rent it nor use it, and who lived like a ghost in the house across the street.) The store front at that time extended by one oblong room out to the road. The Montgomerys lived in the house part in back for twenty-three years.

  Della was in the store sometimes, but mostly it was just Wilson listening to his radio behind the counter. After several years he had noticed that on Saturday evening it was increasingly difficult to close the store, for the great number of people who came then to buy cereal and coffee, milk and such, and who all knew one another and were not the least hurried in leaving. They came in families. Taking note of this, Wilson hung up a new sign declaring that the store would be closed at three o’clock Saturday afternoon and reopened at seven, after dinner. At first no one would come at the later time, but Wilson had bought nearly a dozen chairs at an auction and scattered them here and there around the room and porch, and slowly those who would come found they could sit down and stay quite comfortably talking to their neighbors without feeling the least obligation to leave or buy anything they didn’t need. And besides, Della was there too and there was always something the women would want to talk to her about, and it was so easy to lure her away from straightening the things on the shelves. Wilson too was easy to draw aside and a quick exchange with him could bring you up to date on the current events of Sharon Center and vicinity, and a lengthy discussion was maybe more than you needed to know. But mostly he was behind the counter with his radio as the talking went on farther out in the room. And it was for that reason that it worked so well, because it wasn’t going visiting—imposing—it was going to the store. Yet even in winter, when only those within walking distance could really justify coming, it was just as full.

  Della and Wilson had come to Sharon five years earlier in search of two of their relations—Nelson Hodge and David Montgomery, both by that time departed. It was assumed by George Barns, when he first saw them in his tiny store beside the doctor’s house, that they were hoping to acquire money by inheritance, and he treated them to his usually hostile personality. He explained that Nelson Hodge and David Montgomery, two confirmed and dedicated bachelors who had lived together for as long as anyone could remember, were dead, and that their small farm, along with whatever livestock and implements, had been sold for debt at a state auction. And if he were ever to meet them in the hereafter he might present them with an unpaid balance of $4.78 from his own meager business.

  But the truth was that Della and Wilson were not after an inheritance. They were young and looking for a place to settle, and it was in their minds that their relatives might provide them a wedge for getting nestled in a new place. Neither was well traveled. Nelson and David had been their last hope of this plan’s success. Of course not all their relatives had been dead, but those who were living had proved to be better as springboards for moving on than as wedges.

  So with the plan dissolved, they decided to go no farther, at least for now. They visited Wilson’s uncle’s farm and talked to the family that lived there, who insisted that they stay, if not in the little room upstairs, then in the barn—as it was still early September and not unduly cold. So it was from these people’s barn that Sharon Center began to learn of them—Della, whose soul seemed always to be reaching out, and Wilson, whose soul was like a net around the two of them, keeping hers from escaping. And by the time they rented the building from Stuzman across the road and almost next to George Barns’ store and began adding on a long oblong room, many people had already heard about them. George Barns, when he learned Wilson intended to start a grocery store, told everyone that they wouldn’t last long—and that even if Wilson’s father had been a grocer, there was more to running a business in a rural community than met the eye. What he meant by that of course was that Sharon Center would not allow outsiders to come in and take money away from solid community members. But it was just that attitude—Barns’ belief that everything and everyone was fixed—which made him so unpleasant; and it was more his unpleasantness that finally forced him out of business than the competition. The new couple was more accommodating. Even the meat man would rather deliver there because of the absence of complaining and because of Wilson’s keen interest in fishing and politics.

  Some time during those first years, before Della was asked to teach school, Wilson built swinging doors and compartments in his wagon, and a place for ice. Once a week he filled this huckster with food and delivered to nearly every house in Sharon Township, and two houses farther away (those of Floyd and Marvin Yoder). At the same time he would pick up the cream and eggs, dried beans and fruit, homemade foodstuffs like noodles and rolls, to carry back and sell. The coming of the Montgomerys’ huckster was something on the
order of an occasion, and the full delivery route was seldom completed until long after dark. In the winter, in order to make his stops fewer, several families would gather at one home, bringing with them their butter or eggs and cream. The children hoped their fathers would be in festive moods and buy something more than what was absolutely necessary. And though it would take a very long severe winter to daunt the spirit of those Iowa women, this once-a-week social occasion offset many otherwise lonely, house-prisoned hours, and many days wherein no confessions were held to acknowledge secret morning terrors and evening tensions, where people lived together like enraged animals and the sound of families arguing and cursing wailed unobstructed over the frozen land, howling into other homes through brown cracks in the walls.

  Wilson was young then, and was never known to be quick-tempered, threatening or anything short of good-natured. In fact, it was for the reason that he seemed so one-sidedly good-natured and so very careful not to consort with any of the darker emotions that he was looked upon as a bit of a mystery by those who believed a person should be more rounded out in temperament and that an occasional outburst of any kind was a healthy thing, which in Wilson’s history, so much as could be known, had happened only once, while delivering groceries in the winter.

  Perry Bain and his family were being visited by relatives. A man who enjoyed nothing better than solitude, saving money and working himself into the ground, Perry found little pleasure in his new company and would have preferred walking all the way to Marvin Yoder’s house to meet Wilson’s huckster by himself, so that he could get down into the ditch and walk in the knee-deep snow, testing his endurance. But everyone wanted to go, and jumped at the chance to breathe fresh air; bundled up, the whole crew marched over to Marvin’s to meet the huckster, despite the bitter cold. Even the two young ones came, carried by rotation from shoulder to shoulder.

  The Montgomerys’ wagon was there before them and they hurried inside, where nearly thirty people were gathered in the large kitchen and living room. There was much joking and talk of the ungodly weather. The Perry Bains and their visitors were quickly absorbed into the hubbub. The children played games on the kitchen table. The men occupied the living room, centered mostly around Wilson. It seemed so festive that Wendy Salinger went out to the wagon with Della and brought in a box of hard candy, put it down on the table and distributed one fat stick to each child. Della had one too, and they all began sucking on them with great relish. Soon thereafter the men came wandering back in to settle the matter of exchanging food and money. They progressed halfway to the table and stopped to talk again about the tax structure and the special benefits people had who didn’t really work for a living. Then Perry Bain broke away from the conversation and rushed across the room. Five-year-old Timmy Bain had just time to look up as his father jerked the candy from his hand, threw it back into the box and said, “Don’t you ever take nothin’ that don’t belong to you!”

  The room began to shudder. Bain’s wife looked down at the floor. Timmy was trying not to cry. Everyone wished to heaven that they weren’t there. Della had taken her sucker out of her mouth, then put it back in and sucked on it, trying to pretend she still enjoyed it. No one talked. The room seemed electrically charged.

  But then the character of the silent tension changed and changed, until everyone was aware that it was coming from Wilson’s eyes, which seemed to be seething with hate, and his face was completely white. He walked across the room and over to the box, took out the partially eaten piece of candy, threw it on the floor, busting it into many pieces, took out another and slid it across the table to Timmy, who was crying now. Then he looked over at Bain and the look in his eyes was so murderously hateful that no one there ever forgot it. “I’ll pay for that one,” he said. Bain walked back into the living room.

  This was the first time Wilson ever outwardly displayed an intense or violent emotion. Many people talked to him about it later—hoping to find some glimmer of the hatred resounding behind his eyes—and he talked to them calmly and in his serious but shy fashion, explaining how suffering and injustice, although real, were wrong and were loathsome, and especially children, who everyone would admit had done nothing to deserve pain, should not have to endure it because of corruption and vanity, or even stupidity. Yes, everyone agreed to this. Jacob Amstide went one step further and maintained that not only children, but everyone was innocent and undeserving of suffering—which originated from mistakes and fears . . . and hell.

  “But assuming that’s true,” said Wilson, “then it was wrong for me to interfere. Isn’t that what you mean?”

  “No,” Jacob answered. “You’re innocent too.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Wilson, “about suffering coming from hell, or from mistakes, or from anywhere. It’s merely here, and we must deal with it. There’s right and there’s wrong.”

  Naturally, everyone believed that. For instance, Merle Brown had compiled a mental list of atrocities that he felt proved the absurdity of the world, and after loosing these examples on his neighbors like a swarm of biting flies, asked how could God be just. That’s not the issue, they told him. They were concerned with Wilson’s character. Here was a man who everyone thought had no dark side. Then it was reported that he did—to the extent that he would shame another man before his family—challenging him physically almost . . . and then the next day have not the slightest trace of the emotion left in him. It was like a man possessed by something and then turned loose. It interested them.

  But it was for the most part soon forgotten. After all, how odd is it really to have a momentary temper flare, where all the petty grievances of several months come together in a perfect pinnacle of outrage, actualize, exorcise, and afterward leave no trace? How odd is that? Not so very. Indeed, what would married life be without just such instantaneous outbursts, where a few spoken words become a symbol for absolute, incorrigible evil? It was Wilson’s sameness that was of more interest. It seemed he had no alternative selves and was either completely open or completely closed (depending on how it seemed to you) toward everyone. Even the government, how it was conducted and the quality of the laws that managed to squirm out of it, didn’t seem to alter his outlook. He had no interest in women other than his wife.

  Della began teaching school jointly with old Mrs. Fitch, the two of them making a comic pair standing side by side in the schoolyard supervising games; small Della, pretty, and quick as a yellow warbler, looked as though she were about ready to run off and get in the circle, her hair and clothes buffeted around her by the wind, while old Mrs. Fitch, dressed in heavy gray cotton, her hair coarse, bound into tight curls, did not seem as if she could ever move.

  All the children were taught in the same room, through the eighth grade. The only difference between the younger and the older ones was that they carried different books. So while talking out loud with the fifth-graders about history, it was necessary to have the others busy with something that did not demand the teacher’s attention. It couldn’t always be done, and Della, as a way of learning the profession, quietly (and sometimes, under Eleanor Fitch’s disapproving frown, not so quietly) watched over those grades of students and answered their individual questions.

  Some things could be communicated to all, like reading stories of pirates and buried treasure, animals that could talk and dark forests. These times they traded off, though mostly they belonged to Eleanor, who seemed to Della to be possessive of them and only let her read the books of little emotional consequence.

  While Eleanor read, Della sat in the back of the room next to the doors, and once, as the old practiced voice told of the death of Brighty of the Grand Canyon, she began to cry, and hid her face in her hands. Eleanor looked up and saw her, then quickly looked down again to the book, thinking privately between the next sentences that there was nothing wrong with it in itself, but it was something to be kept from the children, who could not understand that some people never completely grow up but that that didn’t make the
m less than grownups. Except Eleanor suspected that in some way it did—in some way there should be a drawn line between feeling like crying when the burro dies and outwardly doing it. Later, in her house, she pondered this question, and decided that feelings had a reality of their own and that actions had little to do with them. Remember, she was very old, and soon retired from teaching, leaving Della there by herself.

  But Eleanor came back for visits, and would arrive at the schoolroom unannounced, usually in the morning, bursting in through the door as though she owned it, and begin talking right away. Sometimes she brought her two canaries, Ebeneezer and Melissa, and talked about their habits. These visits saddened Della, because she knew Mrs. Fitch was lonely and that she needed a place where there was life—where she could talk of dress, and manners, and the great scholars, nature, numbers and the romantic imagination—a place where things mattered and were of consequence—a place full of meaning.

  Eleanor had tenacity, and her brittle old bones hung on to life and refused to give up; and her mind refused to be dissolved into spirit and fastened like a many-tentacled bloodsucker onto reason. Her thinking remained clear, her memories intact. She continued her visits to the school, even when all of the students who could remember her as a teacher were gone into high school and, bashing in through the front door with her canaries, they would look up and think, Here she is again, the old weird woman. And Della was saddened, and many evenings took Wilson with her over to Eleanor’s house to visit. But Eleanor didn’t care about that. She loved children.

  One morning she arrived in her buggy while Della and her students were sitting in a corner of the schoolyard, picking along the ground as though searching for a lost ring. Eleanor tied her horse (named Perseus, and left her by her husband, who had bought him because he was afraid of him, and there was no faster or more high-strung horse in Sharon Township) and hurried over to take control, in case they were not aware of the proper way to hunt for lost things in the grass—everyone not to move, and to look carefully around him. Moving around causes the grass to be trampled and it is possible for the object to become pushed down into the dirt, where it will be impossible to find. What she found was that they were engaged in searching for four-leaf clovers, all of them down on their hands and knees, pushing their fingers through the green clover heads. They said hello to her, and Della began to get up, but Eleanor motioned for her not to bother—that she would simply watch for a while. It was a lovely day, and the warm, fall air felt good on her face, and she thought privately, Ah, only we old ones know what it is like to breathe this and feel fully alive. Then she was taken up with watching the hunt. One of the youngest girls had the classroom dictionary, and it was her job to press the lucky clovers in between the pages. The hunters fanned out and began covering more ground, finding very few, though searching with a solemn devotion. “We’ll never find enough for all of us,” moaned one child. “Here’s one!” screamed another. “Look! There’s a snake!” “A snake!” “Leave him alone and he won’t hurt you.” “He won’t hurt anyway. I catch ’em all the time. Where is he?” “He’s gone.” “Here’s one!” “Let’s see.” “That’s not a real one. It’s just busted.” “It is too.” “I can’t find any.” “Here’s one! Oh, never mind.” “Go look in your own place.” “Don’t step there.”