Evening Train

May 31, 1933

Kansas

The train lurched and Iris Hazelwood opened her eyes.

It was not a station stop, just another of those mysterious bumps familiar to regular railway passengers. A trifle to hardy souls who traveled by train across America’s vast western prairie. But Iris hadn’t boarded a train for years and she was unaccustomed to unexpected jolts and irregular motions.

Each new bump was an unwelcome shock—alarming to her as a cannon shot. It was an apt metaphor because she seemed to be at war with the railroad. She’d begun her trip by battling timetables, grappling for balance, foraging for food and drink, and longing for sleep. Between Tucson and Oklahoma, she barely slept at all.

Then, gradually, as her two days on the railway stretched into a third, she’d become accustomed to the motion and able to nod off for hours at a time. At last, after several hundred miles, Iris made peace with the Union Pacific Railway and that company’s lumbering Pullman cars.

She felt the moving railcar sway for a moment more before it settled into a steady rhythm. When it did, Iris closed her eyes again and slept.

After an hour, a further jolt shattered her sleep, but this time her eyes remained closed. She’d been dreaming and her dream had been unsettling. Echoes of it seemed to linger in the confines of the rolling railway car. In her dream, she’d heard an unearthly howl which had forced her awake with the feeling that she’d cried out in her sleep. Or had she imagined these things? Despite her disinclination to revisit her dream, she found herself unwilling to open her eyes. But the Pullman car swayed again and she felt her journal slide from her lap, so she sighed, reluctantly opened her eyes, and bent down to retrieve it.

“Please, allow me,” said the man in the seat opposite.

The unexpected voice startled Iris. Why hadn’t she noticed him before?

She sat back while the man abandoned his seat and knelt to recover the errant journal. His movement was graceful. His hands were gloved. Crouching at her feet, he picked up the journal and offered it to her, his arm outstretched, his head bowed. Instinctively, she looked beyond the kneeling man and then behind her. All the other seats were empty. She and the genuflecting man were the only occupants of the otherwise uninhabited Pullman car.

A woman traveling alone should be cautious of strangers, but something about the situation summoned her native confidence. Ordinarily a man crouching so near might seem a threat and yet she wasn’t frightened. Instead, his submissive posture made her feel ridiculously regal, like a queen receiving a courtier.

“Careless of me,” Iris said. “Thank you.” She received the journal with a nod and then regarded the stranger as he rose. She sought to see his face, but its features were hidden beneath the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat—not quite a sombrero, but definitely not a Stetson. The man kept his head down as he brushed his trouser leg and resumed his seat.

“You are traveling far?” he asked without looking up. His tone was polite. She detected an accent, Spanish she decided.

“To Sharon Springs,” Iris answered. “Sharon Springs, Kansas.”

“Ah,” said the man with an air of recognition and yet he did not look up to meet her gaze. “Business or pleasure, if I may be so bold to ask?”

“Family business,” she said without hesitation. She’d been asked this standard “business or pleasure” question three days ago when she boarded the first train in Arizona. Again, she received a similar inquiry yesterday when she changed trains somewhere in Oklahoma and now, she’d answered a third time.

Why repeat her “family business” answer to strangers? Of what possible interest could…?

“Me as well,” the man interrupted her thoughts. “My business is also with family and, I am sad to say, it is a death. I hope that your business is not so unfortunate.”

“A death you say? I’m sincerely sorry to hear it,” Iris said.

“You are too kind,” responded the man. “But for my manners, I am sorry. We have not been introduced.” At last, he raised his head. “I am Miguel Jesus de Valdez and I am at your service.” Though he remained seated, his deferential nod seemed sincere as he added, “And I am enchanted to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m Doctor—um…” she couldn’t stop herself saying doctor in time, so she found it necessary to amend her introduction by saying, “I’m Iris Hazelwood.”

“Mucho gusto. You are the medical doctor?” he asked with apparent interest.

“Afraid not,” Iris blushed. “I’m a doctor of…” she decided not to say metaphysics and so instead she said, “a doctor of ideas.”

“There are such doctors?” Valdez inquired.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Please—can you tell me one?” the stranger asked.

“Tell you an idea do you mean? Oh my—where to begin?”

“At the beginning perhaps?” he suggested.

She thought for a moment. Is this inquisitive stranger merely passing the time or was he seriously interested in my work? When introducing himself, he’d touched his hat, then tilted his head back to reveal his face. He was not attractive. His head was large and smallpox scars mottled his dark complexion and yet he had a distinctive face with penetrating eyes, a broad nose, a fair mouth, and a neatly trimmed moustache.

How old? At least seventy, she guessed, so thirty years my senior. Is he flirting? What an idea—a man his age—and yet did a man ever outgrow such inclinations?

Despite his advanced years, she was flattered by his attention and experienced an unexpected stirring of youthful passion. So, she considered him again, was more charitable this time, and pronounced him ruggedly handsome. His long sideburns were streaked with a patina of luminous silver. He was probably someone’s grandfather or maybe a mischievous uncle. Good speech, well-dressed, virtuous manners. He might be a professor himself.

“Do you know the axiom?” Iris ventured, probing his understanding.

“Axiom?” he considered the word. “For the wood, no?”

She laughed and would have continued, but a Harvey Girl arrived with a tray of apples and sandwiches. Traveling has upset my clock, she thought, is it lunchtime already or is this meant to be supper?

Valdez insisted on paying for both meals and Iris accepted the gesture.

Valdez?

Iris had fallen into the habit of labeling others by their last name, a protocol from her professorial days. Are my campus days behind me now, she wondered?

The girl returned with drinks.

“No wine I see.” Valdez frowned as he examined the choices.

“Not in Kansas, sir. We’re dry here. Tea or coffee only, I’m afraid,” said the girl who was freckled and clean and twenty.

“A pity,” he removed his gloves and reached inside his jacket to extract a huge wallet. It was then that Iris noticed his right hand was missing the uppermost joints of two fingers. The girl noticed too. As Valdez paid and politely refused the change, he seemed to sense their interest, for he addressed an explanation to both women: “A hazard, I regret to say, of my profession. God be thanked, I still have my thumbs.”

As the girl departed, Valdez produced a knife and motioned for Iris’ apple. “If I may assist,” he said.

She handed it over and he balanced the crisp fruit in one hand as he used the knife to section it into fours and carve out the pips and stem. Completing this dexterous surgery, he handed the edible pieces back to Iris. Then he skillfully sliced his own apple, wiped the blade with his handkerchief, and folded the knife into his pocket.

It was a very sharp knife, Iris noticed.

The train was running late and the day advanced as they ate in silence.

“Do you travel much this way?” asked Valdez after the girl had returned to collect the empty cups, apple cores, and crumbled rectangles of waxed paper. At least Iris had surrendered a crumpled sandwich wrapping. Valdez had neatly folded his into the shape of a butterfly which he presented to the beaming girl.

“I’ve only made this trip once,” she answered. “But what I mean is only once in this direction. To be precise, I’m making a return trip. I’ve been away for twenty years.”

My god, she thought, has it been twenty years? Yes—my last trip was 1911—so twenty-two years then. How the time has flown.

Iris was young in 1911, younger than the freckle-faced Harvey Girl. All those years ago she’d been traveling east on her way to Kansas City, bound for college. Leaving Sharon Springs behind that day had been a thrilling journey—her first trip alone. Excited to be going, she’d been blissfully unaware that she’d be away so long. She’d meant to come back to the farm at every term break, but before she knew it, she’d spent four solid years at the university without a single visit home.

Why not?

Was she distracted by the exhilarating freedom of campus life? Did she object to the rural limitations of West Kansas? Iris was unable to recall the reasons she’d stayed away.

While at school she’d tried to maintain connections with home. She’d posted letters to Alice, but the old woman was an infrequent correspondent. There’d been even less contact with Iris’ brother who never answered. At last, when Alice’s letters ceased to come, Iris too stopped writing and the farm faded from her consciousness.

So that was how it went. She left the farm and went to university and then on to more study and an academic career in Arizona. Iris never returned to West Kansas and her brother Ham and their guardian Alice stayed behind.

Twenty-two years, and in all that time, Ham had never answered her letters. Then abruptly he’d written twice. The first letter had reached her on the day she was scheduled to rehearse her role as philosophy faculty marshal for The University of Arizona’s graduation exercises. The envelope had arrived as a special delivery, coming to her doorstep in the early morning. Rushed for time, she’d slipped the letter into her jacket pocket and only found a moment to read it at noontime.

The message was brief. Ham had written two lines containing the unvarnished news that Alice, their elderly guardian had died. Then a month later another letter arrived—this time a plea for his sister’s help.

Ham’s second letter sounded urgent and Iris wired back to say she would come. She made hasty arrangements and boarded the train. And, the instant she took her seat in the Pullman car at the Tucson station, she began to have doubts. So many doubts that, as the train pulled out, her mind overflowed with questions.

Why go back after two decades? Ham may be in need, but he’s a stranger to me. He writes that the farm has fallen on hard times, but it was never much of a farm to begin with and he’s never asked for my help before. Why go now? Do I miss my brother? Do I regret having stayed away so long?

She had to admit that she did.

She should’ve gone back earlier—should’ve gone to Alice’s funeral—would have gone had she not been immersed in graduation. A train ticket was expensive and money was tight and Iris was lucky to hold a tenured position. How would it look if she dropped everything, abandoned her responsibilities, spent her meager reserves and hopped on a train to rush home to Kansas? How would it look to leave when she had obligations in the desert?

After all, Alice was not family.

And besides, even if Iris had gone to the funeral, what could she have done there? Crumple a fistful of dirt and sprinkle it on the old woman’s coffin? That was a meaningless ritual. Death was the ultimate axiom. It was the philosopher’s self-evident first principle, the most self-evident of all. The axiom of Death was irrefutable and final.

“Death,” Iris said aloud without meaning to. Valdez was dozing, but he seemed to hear her because he raised his head and picked up the thread of their earlier conversation.

“My niece. The death is my niece,” he said. “I am her—how do you say it—at her baptism?”

“Her god father,” offered Iris, still chagrined that she’d spoken indiscriminately. Best not to shout ‘death’ at anyone, she thought, let alone a casual traveling acquaintance.

“Si.” Valdez grinned. “God-father. That is the very word. She is—I mean to say she was—my sister’s youngest one. A sad death.”

“Sad,” agreed Iris.

“The same as you,” Valdez commented as he discreetly removed a thin flask from his suit pocket and tilted it toward Iris.

“No thank you,” she said. “But I don’t understand.”

“It is liquor. I apologize if I have given offense.”

“No, not at all. I understand the drink. I meant your niece—you said ‘the same’?”

“Ah. With your permission.” Iris nodded and Valdez took a sip, then replaced the flask. “I meant to say that your name it is the same as that of my niece, Avellano, you understand? You would say ‘hazel’ as with your last name.”

“A coincidence,” Iris smiled.

“Ah—but how is the saying? Perhaps as a doctor of ideas you have heard of it?” Valdez stared out the window at the passing prairie, his lips moving, his gloved hand tracing the air, apparently composing a sentence. After a moment, he turned to Iris and recited: “They say that, a coincidence—it is a miracle of which God desires to remain the anonymous author. Do I remember the saying correctly? Ah, I am sorry. I see you are in need of resting.”

Despite her efforts to remain attentive, Iris was beginning to nod. “Yes, thank you. I am feeling quite tired, I’m afraid.”

“You must sleep,” he smiled. “I will stand the guard.”

“Obliged,” Iris mumbled as slumber overtook her.

When she awoke, the seat across from her was unoccupied. Valdez was gone and the long summer day was dissolving into dusk. Instinctively, she glanced over her shoulder, but the Pullman car was empty.

She felt the weight of that emptiness. It seemed to press upon her, as if her world began and ended with the dimensions of the vacant railway car. The darkening prairie outside was absolutely blank. She sensed she was in motion, but the impression was indistinct. The swaying car suggested there was a locomotive somewhere ahead and there should be a caboose following behind, but there was no way to know for certain. She took it on faith that she was on a train, on the prairie, in Kansas. She tried to remain alert, but the rhythm of the train captured her and she closed her eyes again.

An hour later, she imagined herself awake, but knew she was dreaming. In her dream, she seemed to glance out the Pullman window and see a large wolf standing unexpectedly close to the rails. The animal’s gray head was down, but it raised its snout and looked directly at her before its outline was lost in a fleeting blur of passing prairie. She had seen that look before.

“Valdez?” she seemed to ask.

Iris stirred in her sleep, striving to wake but unable, as is the way of dreams, to open her eyes. At last, she surrendered to her dream and was transported back to her campus where she seemed to be regaling her students with an academic lecture.

“Valdez is a mysterious figure and a wolf is a powerful omen,” she told her class. “Taken together, the man and the animal are messengers. Seeing a wolf—real or imagined—offers a glimpse of the future, but the sighting can foreshadow vastly different fortunes. The same wolf can symbolize protection or danger and predict anything from the acquisition of wisdom to a descent into chaos. Are there any questions?”

In her dream, a young man raised his hand and asked precisely what she imagined he would ask: “Will this be on the test?”

When she heard the conductor announce the next stop, Iris awoke and stretched luxuriously. She’d been dreading a return to her girlhood home—a return to Kansas to face her past—but Valdez and the wolf had altered her perspective. The past had vanished. She would look to the future. She’d traveled far, but this was not the end. Sharon Springs was merely a destination. Her journey was yet to come and it would begin the moment she stepped off the evening train.