Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

The train left the station headed for nowhere, its destination also its point of embarkation, its purpose not to transport its passengers, but to feed them.

By early March, western Washington neared the end of the rinse cycle, a nearly perpetual curtain of ocean rain that blanketed the region for the winter months, unleashing in its wake a promise of summer. Dark, saturated clouds hung low on the eastern horizon. Well to the west, where the sun retreated in a violent display, a glimpse of blue cracked the marbled gray, as welcome to the residents of Seattle as any sight alive.

Arrival at the dinner train surprised Doris Shotz. She had thought her husband Paul was taking her to Ivar’s, one of Seattle’s more popular fish-house chains. A simple dinner date had presented her with a test of sorts, being that it was her first evening leaving her four-month-old baby girl, Rhonda, with a sitter. She’d finally decided she could handle an hour or two a few blocks away from home. But an entire evening stuck on a train in the woods was unimaginable, unthinkable!

“Surprised?” he asked, displaying the tickets proudly.

On the verge of total panic, Doris reminded herself that Julie was an experienced sitter, having taken care of Henry for the last year, as responsible a fifteen-year-old as one could ask for. Better to give Paul his moment than to start a fight.

They’d been talking about the dinner train for years. And Doris had to concede that over the last nine months, Paul had been a saint. She owed him.

“I can’t believe it!” she said truthfully.

“I know. You didn’t guess, did you?”

“Not for an instant. I promise: It’s a complete surprise.”

“Good.” He reached down and took her hand and squeezed. She felt flushed. She wanted to be home with the kids.

“All aboard,” he said.

The train lurched. Doris Shotz shifted to avoid spilling the cheap champagne that Paul had ordered. Although she didn’t want to drink while nursing, she knew Paul would consider it an act of defiance to say no to any part of the celebration, and given that she had already gone this far to please her husband, she wasn’t going to let one glass of champagne ruin the evening. When the train turned east, the frosted mountains flooded crimson with the sunset, Paul said with obvious satisfaction, “This is a long way from the backside of a computer.”

Paul repaired PCs for Micro System Workshop, a name his employer had invented because it could be reduced to MS Workshop, and in an area dominated by Microsoft those two initials meant dollars. Paul drove a blue MS Workshop van around the city, crisis to crisis, fire to fire: hard drives, networks, IRQ ports-Doris had heard all the buzzwords enough times to think she might be capable of a repair or two herself.

Paul provided for them adequately. He loved her in his own way. She loved him too, though differently than she once had. Now the children absorbed most of her time and much of her love, too. She wasn’t sure exactly how to categorize her love for Paul; she simply knew that she would always be at his side, would attempt to put up with his moods. But the truth was that she lived for her children, Rhonda and Henry. She had never before known such a complete feeling. It warmed her just thinking about it.

She politely refused a refill of champagne as she watched her husband’s cheeks redden behind the alcohol’s effects. Clearly carried away with happiness and the light buzz that came from the champagne, he talked at her, but she didn’t hear. Boys and trains, she thought.

“Do you think I should call home?” she asked him.

“Call?”

She motioned to the rear of the train car. “There’s a pay phone. Cellular. I could call them.”

“You know how much those things cost? Fifteen minutes, Doro,” he pointed out, checking his Casio and saying sarcastically, “we’ve been gone a whole fifteen minutes!” He leaned closer and she could smell the sweet alcohol on his breath, a smell that reminded her of the occasional drunken violence that Paul had sometimes brought with him to their bed. “They’re fine. Julie’s perfectly capable.”

“You’re right,” she said, offering him a fragile smile. He nodded and stared out the window. She felt sick with anxiety.

It occurred to her that in a few minutes she could excuse herself to go to the bathroom and use the phone. Paul would probably never know. The champagne bottle’s white plastic cork rolled noisily at his feet. The train clattered past condominiums that reminded her of a Monopoly board. A few of the couples had dressed for the occasion, though most wore jeans and sweatshirts. It wasn’t exactly the Orient Express.

It soon became clear that Paul’s romance was with the train rather than her. Flushed cheeks pressed to the glass, his right foot tapping quickly as it always did when he drank in excess, her husband disappeared into the alcohol and she retreated into thoughts about her children.

Ten minutes passed with minimal conversation. Doris excused herself and made the call home. It rang and rang, but there was no answer.

Wrong number , she decided. At those prices-$3.95 for the first minute, $.99 each portion of a minute thereafter-Paul was certain to catch the charge on the credit card bill. But so what? She pressed NEW CALL. She redialed, again suffering under the weight of its endless ringing. She could envision Julie busy with a diaper, or in the middle of feeding. It didn’t necessarily mean trouble. …

A fire, she thought. Paul’s home entertainment center-a sports center was more like it-crowded the outlets with far too many wires. What would Julie do in a fire?

The knot in her stomach twisted more tightly. Her fingers went cold and numb. Julie might be in the bathroom. Nothing more than that.

But her imagination wouldn’t let it go. Perhaps Julie had a boyfriend with her in the house. In that case, she wouldn’t be paying attention to either the kids or the phone. Doris stole a look around the corner and down the shifting train car’s center aisle to the back of her husband’s head. She had already been gone a few minutes, and it would ruin everything if he caught her at the pay phone. She had promised him she would wait to call until after dinner.

She hung up the receiver, deciding to slip into the washroom and then try again when she came out. But she emerged only to find someone else using the phone, ironically a mother happily talking to her children.

When the woman hung up, Doris tried again. This time the phone’s endless ringing seemed a kind of punishment for trying at all. She glanced up the aisle at Paul, but now all she could think about was that there was something terrible going on. She decided to call her neighbor Tina, who answered on the second ring.

Doris concentrated on removing any panic from her voice. “Tina, it’s Doris. I have a really weird favor to ask of you. …”

In her mother’s heart she knew: Something was dreadfully wrong.

Hope sprang eternal. For Lou Boldt, who lived in a world of innocent or guilty, alive or dead, where the patrol officers drove cars painted black and white, hope rarely surfaced though always lingered, teasing and enticing.

A woman’s rail-thin body lay in the hospital bed before him, dressed not in the familiar hospital gown but in the pink seersucker he had brought her two weeks before their fifteenth anniversary. Beneath that gown, as well as on the exposed skin, not a single hair. The chemotherapy had claimed the body fat, the hair, even any expression of joy from her sunken eyes. Her alien looks signified either a preparation for death, or a rebirth. The vomiting and complete lack of energy left Boldt with the impression of a woman half-dead. Despite his hope.