The Root Cellar (16 page)

“There’s so many people, Rose!”

Rose was about to reply that there were a
lot more people in New York City when she was interrupted by a familiar, rasping voice.

“All right, now, boy, you just move away and let the little lady and me have a nice talk.” A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and she was lifted out into the aisle. It was the drunk from the seat behind them in the Syracuse train. He reached past her and took Susan by the arm. There was a nasty smile on his face.

“Rose,” gasped Susan. Without stopping to think, Rose grabbed Susan’s arm and yanked. The drunk was so surprised he let go of her other arm, and Rose fled with her from the car.

They ran down the platform, through the station, and out onto the street beyond. There they crouched down behind a carriage that stood waiting to pick up passengers coming from the train.

After a few minutes, Rose had caught her breath. “We have to go back, Susan. Our stuff’s in the train.” She stood up resolutely. Susan was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. “I can’t,” she whispered, “I can’t. I’m afraid of that man.”

“Then you stay here.” But Susan would not stay alone so they went back into the station together. Rose had completely lost her bearings in their flight and had to ask directions all over again for the train to New York.

“Better hurry, son.” The man at the information desk looked up at the clock. “I’m not sure that train’s still here.”

They started to run, bumping into people, tripping over baggage, frantically making their way around vendors’ stalls, and reached the platform just in time to see the last car pull away from the station.

Susan started to cry. Rose swallowed her own threatening tears and thought furiously.

“It’s all right, Susan. The suitcase will go to New York and we can get it at the ‘lost and found.’ I’ve done that with my grandmother. We still have our tickets, so we can stay here until the next train comes. Even if it doesn’t come until tomorrow. We can wait.”

“We can’t,” wailed Susan. “The tickets and our money are on the seat of the train. We don’t got nothing at all!”

Along the River

“D
on’t be silly, Susan, you must have the money. How are we going to get to New York without the tickets or the money?”

“I don’t know,” Susan whispered. The frightened expression in her big black eyes made her look like a dog that expected to be hit. Rose wanted to hit her. She stamped across the platform and into the station in a high rage, a rage that, although she did not realize it, was masking her own terrible fear of being lost, stranded in a time and place she did not know. She had to lash out at Susan to give herself strength.

“How could she have?” she muttered angrily. “How could she have been so stupid? Well, she’ll just have to figure out a way to get us there, that’s all. I’m not going to.” She pushed her hot sticky hair back from her angry face and jammed her hands into her pockets—and
realized that she had money. She pulled it out, the twenty cents change from the lemonade at Syracuse. She went straight to the buffet and bought a meat pie, an ice cream, and a glass of lemonade. Greedily and speedily she ate it all. She found a washroom, but it cost a penny so she left, muttering crossly to herself, “I suppose they expect you to wet yourself.” All the same, the food had made her feel better and she went looking for Susan.

She found her out on the platform, huddled in a corner behind a baggage cart. Her face was red and streaked with grime and tears, and her bonnet had slipped to one side. At the sight of her, Rose felt a twinge of remorse. The ice cream and the meat pie flip-flopped uneasily in her stomach. She found she did not want to look Susan in the eye; neither could she tell her what she had done. Putting her hand guiltily to her mouth to feel if there were crumbs, she swallowed to cover her nervousness.

“Now, then.” She cleared her throat. “What we have to do is figure out what to do next. Do you have any ideas?”

Susan looked at her blankly.

“You know, for getting to New York.”

“We got nothing but our own two feet, Rose. I don’t see we got much choice.”

“No.” Rose’s bluster wilted. “I guess not.” She hitched herself up onto the baggage cart and
looked down at her coal-black hands, wriggling her toes in her running shoes. Albany? Where was Albany? And how were they going to get to Washington from Albany with no money? She closed her eyes and recited mechanically: “Albany is the capital of New York. It’s a hundred and forty-five miles from New York City and it’s on the Hudson River.” Once again she was grateful for her grandmother’s lessons. “So I suppose what we have to do now is find the river and follow it to New York.” She brightened for a moment. “When we get there everything will be okay because I know New York. A hundred and forty-five miles isn’t so far, is it? I bet we’ve come that far already today.”

“Yes, but we was in the train, and now all we got is our feet and no place to sleep for the night and nothing to eat.”

At the word eat, Rose winced. “We’ll manage,” she said quickly, “we’ll manage. Maybe we can just stop somewhere and ask for some supper and the people will let us sleep in their house.”

“Rose! I ain’t no beggar. We’ve got to start up like you say and hope by tomorrow morning there’s going to be folks who’ll let us work for ’em so’s we can get breakfast and maybe earn a bit to get us going. We just got to pray we don’t run into no one with no nasty notions.” She shuddered.

“I suppose so,” Rose grimaced. She didn’t like the idea of working for somebody. The picture Susan brought to mind was of having to live for weeks or months in an attic, like poor Sara Crewe with only crusts of bread to eat and stale water to drink, and she didn’t like it even though it was romantic to read about. She wished fleetingly that she was back at Hawthorn Bay, and sighed. “I guess we might as well find the river.” She hopped down from the baggage cart and went into the station building once more.

By this time the band, the soldiers, and their families had left, the crowds had thinned, and some of the vendors were shutting up their stands. Rose asked the man at the information desk how to get to the river. He guffawed loudly and said, “Why you just use your two feet, sonny, just use your two feet,” and pointed east.

They left the building and looked east and there below them, not two hundred yards away, was the Hudson River glinting in the afternoon sun, the blue hills of the Catskills in the distance.

“This way to New York,” said Rose. They started down the hill past shacks with little gardens of cabbages, tomatoes, and beans, thickly covered with coal soot (“I wouldn’t want to eat none of them,” whispered Susan as they hurried past), and came, at last, to the deep mud flats, the docks, the warehouses, and the river, wide
and green, flowing deeply, steadily toward New York City.

They walked until they had put the busy docks and warehouses of Albany behind them. They sat down to rest on a small deserted fishing wharf and watched the gulls and sandpipers and listened to the steady lap, lap of the water against the wooden pilings. Susan took off her bonnet, leaned over the edge of the wharf, and with her cupped hands brought water to her face to wash. She dried her hands on the cattails that grew at the edge of the river. She was still streaked with black, but she looked brighter. Wordlessly, Rose followed suit.

“Why don’t we take off our things and get in?” she suggested.

“Rose!” Susan was scandalized. “Just because we got no money don’t mean we ain’t still decent folks. Look at all those men out in the boats.”

Out on the river, barges and fishing boats were headed toward shore, the men shouting good-natured banter at one another as they prepared to come in for the night.

“I think we’d better get on,” Susan said, uneasy.

“All right.” Wearily Rose got to her feet. The tide was low and the muddy shore was full of shells, dead fish, and horseshoe crabs, as well as bottles and old boards, so they walked
well back, along the fringe of river weeds and tough grass. Now and then a fisherman on his way home said, “Good evening.” Sometimes a dog barked, a cow mooed. Voices in the distance called to one another as the day settled into evening. The hills grew dark, looming over them like giants huddled in black cloaks, watchful, mysterious.

The mud gave way to a different shoreline, sandier, and along the high-tide line there were trees—poplars, dogwoods—and occasionally bare sandy patches. Cautiously they picked their way through the dusk. Every time they heard a small animal rustling in the grass, or a startled bird flutter in the trees, they started and then, more cautiously than before, moved on.

“We got to stop soon.” Susan’s voice sounded exhausted. They halted by a large tree.

“Maybe we can find a barn or something. I don’t like it right outside like this.”

“Ain’t nothing out here going to hurt us near as bad as what might get us if we start hanging around in somebody’s barn.” Susan made a move to start up again. Suddenly, she stopped. “Rose! What’s that?”

There was the sound of someone thrashing around not more than three feet from them. They froze.

Rustle, rustle, stomp, stomp, the sound of heavy breathing. Susan began to laugh shakily.

“Soo boss,” she said softly, “soo boss.” In answer there was a long, drawn out, “mooooo.”

They walked around the tree and there, its white patches glimmering in the twilight, was a large black and white cow.

“Soo, bossy, soo.” Susan stroked it gently between its eyes and behind its ears. It nuzzled happily against her.

“We could stay here with the cow,” said Rose, hopefully. “We could have some of its milk. You can milk a cow.”

“That’d be stealing. This here’s someone’s back pasture. We ain’t staying here.”

Away from the crowds, back in the countryside, Susan was again her own capable self. Nothing Rose could say would persuade her to change her mind, so they proceeded in glum silence.

They had been pushing their way through dark bushes for almost half an hour when they smelled cooking.

“Chicken,” said Susan.

“Doesn’t that smell wonderful!” Rose sighed.

“Don’t pay no mind. We got to steer clear. We don’t know who it is.”

Susan put her hand nervously on Rose’s arm. They crept slowly, step by step, along the shore. They were edging their way around a thick clump of bushes when they almost fell
into a small clearing where a chicken, spitted on a stick, was cooking over a low fire. There was nobody in sight.

“Doesn’t it smell good?” breathed Rose.

“Don’t you set one foot near that there bird! The Lord knows who’s cooking it or what he might do if he was to catch us here. Let’s get going.”

There was a rustle in the bushes behind them. “Hands up or I’ll spit you on this knife and add you to my dinner,” growled a harsh voice.

Rose felt the hair on the back of her neck stand straight out and her heart lurched in terror. Susan gasped and leaped aside. They both raised their hands.

“Now you just move along so’s I can see what I got here.”

Something sharp pricked Rose in the shoulder. Terrified, she stumbled into the clearing, half shoving Susan before her.

“Youngsters,” said the voice contemptuously. “You alone?” he asked suspiciously.

They nodded.

“Where you from?”

They were both too afraid to speak.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you,” said the soldier, for the man who came around to stand before them was dressed in the faded blue uniform of the Union army. He was gray-haired, small, and thin as a coat hanger, with a face that was worn
into two lines on either cheek, so deep they were clearly visible through his untidy gray beard. He had only one arm.

“I ain’t gonna hurt you,” he repeated in an aggrieved tone, “and what’s more, I expect I’m gonna have to share my dinner with you. You hungry?”

Rose had almost recovered from her fright. The roasting chicken which the soldier leaned down to turn smelled like a banquet. She nodded. “We’re very hungry.”

“I suppose you might as well set,” the soldier said glumly. “I didn’t mean to give you such a scare”—his tone softened—“but you see, I’m like you. I suppose you’re waifs with no money and no place to go. I lost all my money to a card shark down to Washington. I’m on my way home to Hoosick Falls, but there ain’t nobody’ll give work to a one-armed soldier—or a soldier of any kind, for that matter,” he added bitterly. “We was just fine and wonderful, and it seemed the whole United States was dying to weep over us and sing out ‘Glory Hallelujah’ and ‘Johnny Come Marching Home’—until we started to come home. Then, bang, the doors was shut against us. Seems the whole world is afraid of us. I warrant folks are even afraid of the little drummer boys, nine, ten years old. Killers, they say. Trained killers. You’d think we all been having fun. Gettysburg. Chancellorsville. Cold
Harbor. I was at all them swell places. And while I was having me such a good time, my wife took off with another fella. ‘I’m afraid I have to make other arrangements, Joe,’ she said, ‘because there isn’t no money comin’ in.’ Of course there wasn’t no money. The blessed government wasn’t givin’ us none for all that fun we was having, not regular they wasn’t. But we stuck with old Abe, God rest his soul. And now there ain’t nobody wants us.” His rough, angry voice ceased abruptly and he poked the fire with a stick.