Ch.3 Beautiful Drifter
She sat in the open doorway of the railway cattle car and leaned against the edge of the sliding door. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she cried. “Roger,” she whispered, “oh, Roger. Why did you have to die?” She fingerpicked the guitar in her lap, the notes rising from the lamenting strings, weaving through her words like a dirge, a talking blues, an offering to the dead.
”It was so good, helping you run the shelter, helping you love and care for those lost children, loving you. Waking in the morning to fresh joys, fresh problems, fresh sorrows, fresh triumphs. Oh, Billy, Jon-jon, little Susie, where are you now? Have you made a new home, or are you still heart-lost?
”And Roger. So kind and gentle until the memories overcame you and you curled around your hurts like a muscle cramp, drinking to numb the pain. In the months I shared your life, I could never get into the pain that festered in your soul. You could not talk about it, could not let me in, and you died in a car wreck, too drunk to drive. Why, mon Dieu, why?
”I thought I had found my heart’s desire, a man to love, whose work was helping others, and in whose work I could share. Now you are gone and I am back on the road, running from the pain. Will I ever find another man like you, Roger?”
She continued to think of Roger and the children of the shelter. The memories brought sadness and loneliness, but the devastating pain of his death and the loss of the children she had grown to love had eased during the past four months of travel. She played softly on her guitar.
The train had left Gainesville, Texas, and was traveling south. Wheat fields slid by on either side. The bright afternoon sun shone through the open slats of the car and the early November air felt unusually warm. She started another song in French, her voice a warm, rich contralto, her long black hair blowing in the wind. Finishing the song, she sat and watched the dark clouds massing in the sky ahead. She could see rain falling. “When we reach the rain, I will have a bath,” she told the guitar. She spoke in French, plucking the strings softly. She looked again at the wheat fields slipping by and mused as she picked idly on her guitar. Her face, fine-boned with delicately-sculpted, distinctly French features, was pensive.
A drop of rain struck her face and she laughed. She stood, balancing against the sway of the train, put the guitar away and stripped off her pullover blouse and skirt. Placing them on her duffle bag, she turned to the door. Rain poured down now, heavy enough to hide the ancient diesel locomotives at the front of the train. She took careful hold of the six-inch wide slats and swung outside as she climbed naked to the roof. She settled herself in the center of the roof as the train swayed along at a steady thirty-five miles per hour. She closed her eyes, arched her back, and raised her arms as she reveled in the feel of the driving rain on her bare golden-brown skin. The warm rain washed across her slender dancer’s body. She ran her fingers through her thick thigh-length mane of black hair, washing it out in the downpour.
She was glad this was not one of the new mag-trains. This line of track had not been reworked with powerful magnets fastened to concrete cross-ties every ten feet. She had ridden on mag-trains. They were much faster, too fast to ride where she now rode. No, this was one of the old privately owned railroads that carried loads in to the main hubs, still riding wooden ties and even older steel; so different from what she knew in France.
When the rain began to slacken, she climbed down and swung back inside. The wheat fields had given way to scrub brush and tall, dried out grasses. She took a hairbrush from her duffle and returned to the open doorway to sit in the warm sun. She watched the passing landscape and let the wind dry her hair as she brushed it. The sun felt good on her body. After a while, she lay back in the pool of sunlight on the floor. Lulled by the rhythmic vibrations, she fell asleep.
She awoke with a gasp and a start and sat bolt upright. For an instant, the world was black and white, her mind a chaotic jumble of impressions. She rolled over on her side and clasped her knees in her arms, taking deep breaths as she calmed herself. Ah, non, she thought. I have had another night-mare.
Four years previously, her father and his friends had tried to rape her. When she had fought back, they had tortured and tried to kill her. She’d fled, her mind swallowed up in a red madness. She had regained awareness miles away. Nightmares of chaotic alien violence, hunting, and death had haunted her sleep for months afterwards. After three years of peace, the nightmares had begun again.
