Stay a Little Longer (5 page)

And my own life would have been so different…

Mason’s death had changed all of their lives… but none more than hers. The burden of raising Charlotte had largely fallen
on her; Eliza had found demons that prevented her from being much use to anyone, and Otis had only slid deeper into his bottle.
Mason’s family had promised to help, but… that was yet another matter. The fact remained that nothing in her life was as it
was supposed to be… nothing. Yet she found that the worst burden to bear was that she was failing Charlotte. Failing miserably.

Though he was already dead, Rachel hated Mason Tucker more with every passing day.

M
ASON TUCKER WOKE
with a sudden start, his eyes immediately trying to adjust to the darkness of the train car. The boxcar creaked and groaned
mightily as it swayed, clickety-clacking across the iron rails, but he could have sworn that he had heard a footfall. Little
light came through a crack in the car’s door from a full moon shining in the fall night beyond, and he hoped it would be enough.
He knew that his life was in danger.

They mean to kill me!

When he had climbed into the boxcar just south of Milwaukee, there were two men already inside; a beastly ox whose raggedy
shirt was nearly bursting at the seams and whose jowls were streaked with grime, and his companion, a wisp of a man with a
porkpie hat perched atop carrot-orange hair. No words had been spoken between the three of them, no offer to share what food
they might have had, but simply a nod of each of their heads, the traditional greeting of fellow travelers.

But there had been something in their demeanor that spoke of trouble.

Mason lay on his blanket, the cloth sack that contained all of his belongings clutched to his midsection. Slowly, he raised
himself from the floor and strained for another telltale sound… There it was… another creak.

Two figures passed the illuminated door before once again being swallowed by the darkness; one large silhouette leading a
smaller one. For the briefest of instants, something glinted in the larger man’s hand, twinkling as if it were a star in the
night sky. Mason knew instantly that it was a knife.

“Is he sleepin’, Horace?” a reedy voice asked; it must have been the smaller man.

“Shut yer hole, Del!” a deep baritone hissed. “Are you wantin’ to wake him?”

“Naw!” Del whispered back, ignoring Horace’s advice.

“Goddammit! I said hush!”

Mason tensed, readying himself for the fight that was about to come. The life that he had chosen to lead, the life of a hobo,
was certainly not without dangers: roustabouts for the train companies wielded wooden clubs with reckless abandon, the police
never gave a damn about what circumstances drove a man to live in such a way, and getting off in the wrong community could
be hazardous. But mostly there was the trouble caused by other riders.

More than once, Mason had been forced to defend himself. Most of the time, the attacks were the last acts of desperate men,
feeble older men incapable of providing for themselves any longer, starving or sick. But occasionally it was something much
more dangerous.

This was one of those times.

There was no doubt as to why the men were after him; they wanted to pilfer his belongings. His cloth sack didn’t contain much:
a couple of mealy apples, a change of clean, well-worn clothes, a broken pocket watch, and, concealed in a couple of socks,
a handful of coins. But it was plenty to a couple of desperate men, more than enough to kill for. Little did they know that
his true treasure wasn’t kept in the sack but next to his heart; someone would have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers
to get it.

Another creak of a floorboard… the attack would come soon.

“Do him! Do him quick!” Del barked.

Mason sprang to his feet. The suddenness of his movement momentarily surprised the attackers. In the time since he was awakened,
his eyes had sufficiently adjusted to the darkness so that he could see both of them clearly. Taking measure of the knife
in the larger man’s hand, he wrapped his blanket around one fist and forearm.

“That ain’t gonna be enough to help you.” Horace grinned wickedly.

“Think not?” Mason grunted, biding for a bit more time.

“We’ll see,” Del snarled.

Far more quickly than would be expected of a man his size, Horace lunged forward and swiped at Mason with his knife, clearly
a well-practiced move meant to disembowel his victim, but he found that his prey was nimbler than he’d thought. Mason sidestepped
and threw a punch that snapped the man’s head back and bloodied his nose.

“You son of a bitch!” Horace spat angrily.

Mason could see that his blow, while hard, had done no real damage other than to make the man angrier.

“Get ’im, Horace!” Del cheered, moving along the edge of the fight.

Bellowing like a bull, Horace charged Mason in an attempt to use his larger size to his advantage. This time, he was more
successful. As Mason once again attempted to move out of the way, the big brute managed to snag him with one meaty hand, pulling
him in as if he were a roped calf. Mason landed an elbow to the back of his attacker’s head, a blow that would drop most,
but the huge man barely wobbled.

Horace’s humongous hands clutched fistfuls of Mason’s coat and he found himself lifted up off the floor of the boxcar. He
was about to kick out with one of his dangling feet, to drive a knee into the man’s gut, when he was hurled through the air
as easily as a doll thrown by a child. He slammed into the unforgiving side of the car and crashed hard to the floor, the
air driven almost completely from his lungs.

Without pausing, Horace came at him with the knife. Somehow, Mason managed to get one end of his blanket free from his arm
and looped it around the hand clutching the knife. A struggle of sheer strength ensued, as each man strained against the other.
With his feet having regained sure purchase on the well-worn floorboards, Mason managed to take a quick step behind the other
man’s shoulder and then slammed one foot into the back of Horace’s knee, driving him down toward the floor of the boxcar.

Maybe… maybe I can…

Just as Mason was about to throw a vicious blow to Horace’s chin, his other opponent darted in and jabbed his ribcage, stunning
him. Even as pain shot wickedly across his body, Mason was grateful that the little bastard didn’t have a knife of his own;
otherwise he would have been a goner. Still, it was enough to take away his advantage; Horace pivoted and pulled Mason down
to the floor, where they began to wrestle.

“You ain’t gettin’ away,” Horace panted, his face inches away.

“You’ll not get my plunder.”

“Oh, ain’t this fun!” Del hooted from the side.

The two men rolled first one way and then the other, all the while the knife remaining clutched in one of Horace’s hands,
constantly threatening to find its intended mark. Sweat stood on Mason’s brow, the muscles of his arms nearly shaking with
the strain, but finally he found an advantageous position. With a heave, he pushed up from the floor and Horace fell away
from him, his weight carrying him to the open door.

“Oh, my sweet Lord, no!” he screamed.

As Horace scrambled for any handhold he could find, his face was a mask of raw panic. Forgotten, the knife fell from his hand
and clattered onto the stones that raced across the ground below. He clawed at the edge of the boxcar until somehow his fingers
managed to grip its rough edge.

“We wasn’t gonna hurt ya,” he protested in desperation. “Honest, we wasn’t!”

“He ain’t lyin’, mister,” Del added.

“Yeah, and it snows in July.” Mason walked over and smashed the heel of his booted foot down onto the man’s clinging fingers.
With a yelp of pain, Horace fell back from the train and was lost to the night.

Turning swiftly on his heel, Mason found Del wide-eyed behind him, his face a mixture of fear and disbelief at what had happened
to his companion. Shaking hands rose to his small chest in a plea for mercy.

“Now… now wait just a second…” he begged.

“Not so tough now that you don’t have your friend to protect you,” Mason snarled, his anger growing with every step he took
toward the man.

“You don’t… don’t gotta do nothin’ to me, mister… I weren’t gonna…”

Before Del could utter any more words of protest, Mason grabbed him by the front of his wretched coat and slammed him hard
into the side of the boxcar; the man collided with such force that his rheumy eyes seemed to rattle in his sunken head. Up
close, his mouth and body reeked of rot and decay, roiling Mason’s stomach.

“No doubt this is something you’ve done before,” Mason accused.

“It ain’t,” Del said with a severe shake of his head. “Honest! We was just a bit hungry is all!”

Mason knew that he was lying; it was hard for him to imagine that a man Horace’s size maintained his girth from the meager
scraps he found traveling the rails. It was far more likely that the two simply preyed on the weaker men and women who were
unlucky enough to encounter them. If they had been successful that night, there would have just been another body somewhere
down the long road…

“Don’t hurt me none, mister,” Del continued to plead. “I won’t—”

“Preying on folks who are down and out isn’t right,” Mason shot back angrily, cutting the man off. “It isn’t honorable. You
don’t deserve any less than what your friend got.”

“No, mister! Don’t—”

With one swift motion, Mason hurled Del out into the night to share the same fate as Horace. The man’s plaintive screams filled
his ears for only an instant before being lost to the whistling winds.

Back in the corner nearest the open door, Mason bent down and snatched up the rucksack that the two men had brought with them
onto the boxcar. For an instant, he considered doing to them what they had intended to do to him; to take their things as
his own. Just like anyone unfortunate enough to find himself on the rails, there were things that he needed. But then his
conscience got the better of him and he instead tossed the sack out of the train. Who knew… with a little luck, someone else
would find it at first light.

“I’m getting fed up with this life,” he muttered to himself.

Mason stood for a long while, looking out of the train at the landscape that flashed by. Under the full moon and brilliant
blanket of stars, it was beautiful; freshly harvested fields disappearing in a blink, turning into thick groves of elm trees
or the shimmering surface of a placid lake. For a brief moment, a pair of loons could be seen gliding through the night air.

Wisconsin in the fall gave Mason pause; the seasons were too much like those back in Minnesota, back in Carlson, back in his
hometown. Though more than eight years had passed since he had last laid eyes upon it, memories of the town sprang to his
mind as clearly as the very stars above him. Rather than getting weaker with time, his recollections gained strength with
each elapsing year. If he were to close his eyes, he could still see the bright flowers that lined Lake Carlson, William Hamilton’s
grocery, the look on his father’s face as he sat behind his desk and patted his ample stomach, but especially…

“Alice,” he whispered into the night. “Do you love me still?”

Carefully, Mason withdrew the photograph of his wife from inside his battered coat. Though it had become well-worn over the
years, all its edges rounded and a light crease running down one side, he still found its beauty and elegance without equal.

But as beautiful as the faded photograph was, Mason knew that it paled in comparison to memories of the real woman; the way
that Alice’s blonde hair grew curlier during the spring rains, the sweet smile that she gave him when he told her how much
he loved her, the soft feel of her skin against his as they made love. None of this could be seen in the photograph, but he,
her husband, knew that it was there just the same.

Or it was there… until I destroyed it…

Before Mason could further contemplate what he had done, a racking cough raced across his chest. A wet, sticky discharge rose
from his lungs and he had to struggle to release the phlegm. Bent over with discomfort, he finally managed to spit the mucus
out of the racing train. This sort of coughing seemed to be happening more and more often. As the days grew colder, a growing
weakness settled in his bones; the life of a hobo was hard.

With his hands at his face, Mason ran a gentle touch over the black beard that covered his cheeks. When he was a younger man,
when he was courting Alice, he’d kept his face clean-shaven, but the beard he now wore wasn’t for fashion; it was necessary.
Though he could no longer touch what lay beneath, he knew that it was there nonetheless… a burden that he could never erase
and never share.

Closing his eyes, Mason remembered the fateful day that had changed his life at once and forever. There had been mud and blood
and then an explosion and then…

All his memories since then had been about running, running from his past, as far and as wide as the rails could take him.
He’d been to Paris, to Bordeaux, New York, California, and even the swamps of Louisiana. He had dug wells, strained on the
end of a chain uprooting tree roots, whitewashed fences, and even begged to get what he needed to survive. He’d lived a lie,
allowing those who loved him to believe that he was dead, because he believed it was better that way.

But still, he couldn’t completely erase the thought of Carlson… of Alice…

“A man is made up of his past, his present, and even his future.”

Speaking the words that his father had told him so many years before sent a shiver up Mason’s spine. Every day that he had
spent running from what he had been was also a day spent running away from what he was meant to be, what he had been destined
for. Much of what had lain before him the day he boarded that long train for the war, for France, was still there. As long
as he drew breath, it would be there.