Schenectady, Utica and the rest he watched from the window, but he wanted to be awake and alert and ready to jump down when they pulled into Buffalo, where McKinley had breathed his last, and he wanted to see the Canadian border when they crossed over into Ontario for the run down to Detroit. His mother had given him a new Kodak to record the trip for her and he’d dutifully snapped away at the picturesque and the quotidian alike — the meandering stream, the lone horse in the field, the back end of a barn in need of paint — but it was Buffalo he meant to capture and preserve. That and Canada. And the West, of course.
Nick and Pat were at the far end of the car in a pair of red plush chairs, playing cards and smoking five-cent cigars, looking like nabobs on their way out to inspect the tea plantations. Dr. Hamilton was in his compartment, frowning over a leatherbound book that featured pen-and-ink drawings of apes in their natural habitat, and Mart was in the forward compartment, sitting with Mr. McCormick. And since Mr. McCormick was calm — catatonic, actually, his legs crooked at the knee, his eyes locked on the ceiling and his head frozen in the air six inches from the pillow — there was nothing for O‘Kane to do but stare out the window and wait for his turn to relieve Mart at Mr. McCormick’s bedside. He gazed out beyond the flickering ghost of his own reflection and into the neutral wash of the evening and saw the same scrim of trees, hills and creeks he’d been seeing for the last day and a half, scenery served up like something on a tray, too much scenery, a long unbroken visual glut. A town hurtled by like a hallucination, two streets, clothes on a line, a dog sniffing at something in a muddy yard. Then trees. The yawning gape of a farm. More trees.
O‘Kane pushed himself up and stretched. In the back of his mind was an inchoate notion of letting himself out of the car and wending his way up through the train to the diner, where he envisioned the Negro waiter pouring him a cup of black coffee and maybe serving up something sweet on the side, some vanilla ice cream with maybe a bit of that dry Canton ginger sprinkled on it or some Bent’s Biscuits or even a bite of cake. The Mayflower was the last in a train of fourteen cars, plus locomotive and tender, and because Dr. Hamilton felt it was too dangerous to risk bringing a cook along, they were taking all their meals in the dining car — as if Mr. McCormick could do anybody any harm in his present condition. Hamilton wouldn’t even allow a porter to come in and tidy up, and that was one more thing the nurses had to do, though O’Kane could hardly complain since he was the worst offender when it came to generating a private little midden of newspaper, used crockery and the like or forgetting where he’d dropped his socks and trousers in the cramped compartment he shared with Mart. But the food was good, the best he’d ever had, six courses for dinner with consommé to start and a selection of cheeses before the dessert and coffee, real first-class and no limit to the luxury of it. Of course, it ought to have been, for what the McCormicks were paying. Nick had told him they’d had to buy twenty first-class tickets all the way from Boston to Santa Barbara just for the privilege of hooking up a private car.
But he was tired. And he did think he would take an amble and stretch his legs if nobody needed him, and maybe he’d have more than one cup of coffee — he definitely meant to be awake for Buffalo. He folded his hands behind his head, arched his back and stretched again. He hadn’t slept well the past two nights — last night because of the excitement of finally being underway, the rails beating time with his racing heart till he began to think he was part of a drum corps, rat-tat-tat and high-stepping it down the dusty road all the way to Cali-forn-eye-ay. The night before that he was with Rosaleen, their last night together under the roof of the cute little walkup on Chestnut Street that had somehow managed to become a stone round his neck, a big hollowed-out stone full of furniture and baby things and pots and pans and doilies cinched tight round his windpipe and the water rising fast. But it was their last night and she was sweet and wet and pulled him to her with a fierceness that made his blood rise again and again till they were at it all night long. They’d forgotten their differences and made up beforehand and they’d had a nice dinner she fixed of lamb chops and new potatoes with the mint jelly he liked, the baby hot and soft in his lap and sleeping away like a little saint. Who’re you going to choose, and he’d put it to her point-blank, your husband or yourfather?And she’d given him that melting coy down-arching big-eyed look and said, You, Eddie, you, and that was it. She was going to come out in a month or so, with Nick and Pat’s wives and little ones, courtesy of the McCormicks — once everything was settled. And that was all right. He guessed.
The train reared under his feet and he was a kid on skis again, coming down the big hill out back of the glue factory, and then he caught his balance and called out to Nick, “Think I’ll stretch my legs and maybe get a cup of coffee — anybody want anything?”
Nick was in a mood. He didn’t like traveling. He’d traveled once all the way from Washington, D.C., to Boston, for his father’s funeral — and it wasn’t in any private car, either, as he’d reminded them a hundred times already — and by the time he got there his father was six feet deep in the ground and his mother’s heart was permanently broken — and then she went and died three months later. And if it wasn’t for Pat and Mart and his looking out for them to get ahead in life, he wouldn’t be traveling now. He never even bothered to turn his head, and O‘Kane had to repeat himself before Pat finally looked up from his cards and said, “No, no thanks, Eddie — nothing for me.”
O‘Kane stood there a moment, the car rolling and bucking under his feet, the chandeliers swaying to some phantom breeze and the scenery racing along on both sides as if it would never catch up — which it wouldn’t, of course, because they were leaving it all behind, everything, and a whole lot more to come — and then he decided he’d better look in on Mart and the doctor and see if they wanted anything. He’d learned to take smaller steps than usual, adjusting to the movement of the car, but he was awkward on his feet and he wound up shuffling down the long tongue of red carpet like a drunk on his way to bed. He slammed off the wall just outside the doctor’s compartment, but the door was closed and there was no sound from within, so he continued on past till he got to the last compartment on the left, Mr. McCormick‘s, and stuck his head inside the door.
Mart was sitting there beside the bed, the gaslamp glowing, a book spread open in his lap. The book was one of Mr. McCormick‘s — a fat handsome volume called The Sea Wolf, one of two dozen or so pressed on them by Mrs. McCormick just before they left Boston. She’d appeared on the platform fifteen minutes after they’d carried her husband aboard and got him settled in his compartment, and O’Kane was the one she collared, though Pat and Mart were right there beside him in a welter of baggage and porters and the two coffin-sized steamer trunks marked HAMILTON they had to wrestle aboard. “Mr. O‘Kane,” she called, hurrying up the platform in a dress the color of Catawba grapes, her little weasel-faced chauffeur at her side.
O‘Kane was struck dumb. He hadn’t laid eyes on her since that morning at McLean, and here she was, calling out his name in a public place, her face warm and animated, her ankles chopping at her skirts and showing off the dark ribbed stockings and buckled pumps as if there were nothing more natural in the world. She glided effortlessly through the crush of people, and he was surprised to see how tall she was, taller than he’d remembered — five-eight or five-nine even, and that was subtracting an inch for the heels. O’Kane’s smile was slow-growing, stealthy almost, and before he could compose himself she was standing right there before him in her wide-brimmed hat and the clocked veil and her Catawba-colored gloves. He was an idiot. An oaf. He didn’t say hello. He said “Yes?” instead, as if he were a clerk in a shoe store.