Fall Down Seven. C. E. Edmonson

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СКАЧАТЬ end of the car opened and a man entered, then closed the door behind him. He began to walk up the aisle toward us.

      I shook Mom awake. “Someone’s coming.”

      Mom turned to look then said, “It’s the porter.”

      Only then did I recognize the man who’d pushed the snacks cart along the aisle after we’d boarded the train in San Francisco. He walked straight up to us and took our luggage down from the rack.

      “Come with me,” he said.

      Charlie woke up at that moment. “What? What?”

      I felt like screaming out loud. Hadn’t we been put through enough? Now we were about to be evicted, dumped on a train platform in some town in the middle of nowhere. And with no explanation either. The porter simply marched off, our bags in hand, leaving us no choice except to follow.

      We trailed behind like whipped puppies, but not to the platform. The porter led us to the car from which he’d come—a first-class car. He opened the door to a private compartment and put our bags on the luggage rack. Several blankets lay on the seats. A plate of sandwiches rested on a small, fold-out table.

      “Y’all be more comfortable here, I believe,” he said.

      The oddest part was that his grave expression didn’t change. The man’s full lips might have been molded from clay, and his firm jaw remained steady. His dark eyes stared straight ahead.

      “Holy cow,” the Whizz said. “This is great.”

      Mom had other ideas. “I’m so sorry,” she said with a little head bob. “We don’t have first-class tickets.”

      “Don’t you worry. This time of year, the line runs pretty quiet. Ain’t but one compartment in use.” Then he smiled for the first time, a broad, mischievous grin that might have come from the Whizz. “Be right amusin’ tomorrow morning when them soldiers wake up to find you among the missin’.”

      “What about the conductor?”

      “Ol’ Simon? Bein’ as he’s already on probation for drinkin’ on the job, I don’t ’spect he’ll make no trouble. Fact, right now as we speak, Simon’s in the first-class compartment behind us, drainin’ a bottle of gin.”

      “What’s your name?” I asked as he retreated to the door and the train pulled out of the station.

      “Amos,” he said, tipping his hat. “Enjoy your trip on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

      Charlie was at the sandwiches before the door closed. I can’t say I was far behind. Even Mom ate. Afterward, I wanted to ask her why Amos had helped us, but I thought I knew the answer. That sign in San Francisco—the one about this being a white man’s neighborhood—excluded Amos and his fellow porters too.

      What really mattered was my relief. I felt like I could breathe again. I felt as if I might float off the seat and hang in the air. Mom too. I could see it in her eyes. I wasn’t surprised when her practical side re-emerged. After we finished eating, she locked the compartment door, kissed each of us, and turned out the light.

      The Whizz and I knew what she expected, but we didn’t go to sleep right away.

      “Hey, look,” the Whizz said. “Snow!”

      We’d been climbing the Sierra Nevada mountains since we’d left the station, and our view over a deep valley was as beautiful as it was foreign. A nearly full moon at the top of the sky bathed the cold, white peaks in the distance with a light so pure it took my breath away. Black in the moonlight, the pine trees in the valley huddled together as if defending against the cold, while clusters of stars framed the jagged peaks like diamonds in a royal tiara. At the far end of the valley, a light burned in the window of a house half buried in the snow.

      “I bet it’s cold out there,” the Whizz said.

      “Yeah, Whizz, it’s definitely cold.”

      “Freezing cold?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I bet nothing can live up there.” He pointed at a distant, snow-covered peak.

      “What about the ghosts?” I asked.

      “Ghosts?”

      Mom spoke up then. “The ones that will get you if you don’t go to sleep.”

      The Whizz took the hint. He drew a blanket to his throat and stretched out beside me. A few minutes later, he was asleep. For me, sleep was a long time coming. I couldn’t take my eyes off the vista outside our window. Every piece of it was foreign. The peaks of the Koolau Mountains on Oahu are covered with rain forest, not ice and snow, and they’re a full-time home to hundreds of species of birds. A thousand unnamed streams spill over cliffs to fall hundreds of feet to canopied pools choked with fish.

      You’re not going back, I told myself. You can only go forward.

      Forward toward what? I was thirteen years old. Growing up was challenge enough. Dad had instructed me to be strong. Fall down seven times, get up eight. Only there’s a difference between falling down and being knocked down.

      “Emiko.” Mom reached her hand out to take mine. “Come, sit by me.”

      Five minutes later I was asleep.

      Chapter 4

      Except for trips to the dining car and the bathroom, we remained in our little refuge all the way to Chicago. There wasn’t much to do, and the Whizz and I spent most of our time staring through the windows at the changing landscape. The mountains seemed to go on forever, but eventually we began to descend. The view, whenever the train rounded a curve that looked east, was entirely new.

      The landscape was as unlike the Sierra Nevada mountains as the mountains themselves were unlike Oahu. This was a land of flat earth, a vast prairie dusted by lacy snow and punctuated only by the occasional farm or ranch. Brown dots sprinkled over the grasslands grew larger as we dropped through the passes, eventually resolving into herds of cattle that turned to look at the strange monster we called a train. Vultures and hawks, their wings motionless, swept across cloudless skies in long, slow circles as they searched among the rocky outcroppings and spiny cactus for the day’s meal.

      “See that? See that? See that?”

      Beside himself, the Whizz bounced on the seat next to me. His index finger remained in constant motion, pointing at every jackrabbit that tore across the barren landscape, at abandoned ranches with their collapsed barns, at a lone antelope feeding on dried brush. A herd of bison drinking at a narrow stream sent him into a frenzy.

      “Look, look, look.”

      I might have joined him if Amos hadn’t brought us a newspaper every morning, and if the news hadn’t been so universally bad. It seemed those traitorous Japanese living on the West Coast had challenged their internment in court. In the opinion of the Omaha Journal-American, whether immigrants or citizens, adults or children, the Japanese were being treated leniently. In a more just world, they’d have been shipped back to Japan.

      Mom popped the Whizz’s bubble when she pulled out his arithmetic book and a pad, then put him to work on a set of multiplication problems. I staved off an assignment СКАЧАТЬ