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He wished it didn’t have to be this way. He wished he could roll back the clock three years, do things differently, take the gray out of her hair and the pain out of her eyes. But he couldn’t. It was just too late.

You had to play the cards you were dealt, no matter how lousy they were. The only thing that made it tolerable was that sometimes, on certain hands, you could find ways to stack the damn deck.

Night Freight

He caught the freight in Phalene, down in the citrus belt, four days after they gave Joanie the divorce.

He waited in the yards. The northbound came along a few minutes past midnight. He hid in the shadows of the loading platform, watching the cars, and half the train had gone by before he saw the open box, the first one after a string of flats.

He trotted up alongside, hanging on to the big gray-and-white suitcase. There were heavy iron rungs running up the side of the box. He caught on with his right hand and got his left foot through the opening, then laid the suitcase inside and swung through behind it.

It smelled of dust in there, and just a bit of citrus, and he did not like the smell. It caught in his nose and in the back of his throat, and he coughed.

It was very dark, but he could see that the box was empty. He picked up the suitcase and went over and sat down against the far wall.

It was cold too. The wind came whistling in through the open door like a siren as the freight picked up speed. He wrapped his arms around his legs and sat there like that, hugging himself.

He thought about Joanie.

He knew he should not think about her. He knew that. It made things only that much worse when he thought about her. But every time he closed his eyes he could see her face.

He could see her smile, and the way her eyes, those soft brown eyes, would crinkle at the corners when she laughed. He could see the deep, silken brown of her hair, and the way it would turn almost gold when she stood in the sun, and the way that one little strand of hair kept falling straight down across the bridge of her nose, the funny little way it would do that, and how they had both laughed at it in the beginning.

No, he thought. No, I mustn’t think about that.

He hugged his legs.

What had happened? he thought. Where did it go wrong?

But he knew what it was. They should never have moved to California.

Yes, that was it. If they had not moved to California, none of it would have happened.

Joanie hadn’t wanted to go. She didn’t like California. But he had had that job offer. It was a good one, but it meant moving to California and that was what started it all; he was sure of that.

Joanie had tried, he knew that. She had tried hard at first. But she had wanted to go home. He’d promised her he would take her home, he’d promised her that, just as soon as he made some money.

But she had wanted to go right away. There were plenty of good jobs at home, she said. Why did he want to stay in California?

He’d been a fool. He should have taken her home right away, like she’d wanted, and to hell with the job. Then none of it would have happened. Everything would be all right, now.

But he hadn’t done that. It had started a lot of fights between them, her wanting to go home and him wanting to stay there in California, and pretty soon they were fighting over a lot of things, just small things, and he had hated those times. He hated to fight with Joanie. It made him sick inside; it got him all mixed up and made his head pound.

He remembered the last fight they had. He remembered it very well. He remembered how he had broken the little china figurine of the palomino stallion. He hadn’t wanted to break it. But he had.

Joanie hadn’t said much to him after that fight. He’d tried to make it up to her, what he’d done, and had gone out and bought her another figurine and told her he was sorry. But she had gotten very cold and distant then. That was when he knew she didn’t love him any more.

And then he’d come home from work that one night, and Joanie was gone, and there was just a note on the dining room table, three short sentences that said she was leaving him.

He didn’t know what to do. He’d tried everywhere he could think of that she might have gone, the few friends they had made, hotels, but she had simply vanished. He thought at first she might have gone home, and made a long-distance call, but she was not there, and no, they didn’t know where she was.

A week later her lawyer had come to see him.

He brought papers with him, a copy of the divorce statement, and told him when he was to appear in court. He had tried to make the lawyer tell her whereabouts, so he could see her and talk to her, but the lawyer had refused and said that if he tried to see her there would be a court order issued to restrain him.

He quit his job then, because he didn’t care about the money any more. All he cared about was Joanie. He could remember very little of what happened between then and the time the divorce came up.

He hadn’t wanted to go to court. But he knew he had to go, if only just to see her again.

And when Joanie had come in, his heart had caught in his throat. He had stood up and called out her name, but she would not look at him.

Then her lawyer had gotten up and said how he had caused Joanie extreme mental anguish, and threatened her, and caused her to fear for her life. And how he would go off his head and rant and rave like a wild man, and how he should be remanded by the court into psychiatric custody.

He had wanted to shout that it was all a lie, that he had never said anything to cause Joanie to fear for her life, never done any of the things they said, because he loved her, and how could he hurt the one person he truly loved?

But he had sat there and not said anything and listened to the judge grant Joanie the divorce. Then, sitting there, it had come to him why Joanie had left him, and told all those lies to her lawyer, and why she wanted a divorce and didn’t love him anymore.

Another man.

It had come to him all of a sudden as he sat there, that this was the answer, and he knew it was true. He did not know who the man could be, but he knew there was a man, knew it with a sudden and certain clarity.

He had turned and run out of the court room, and gone home and wept as only a man can in his grief.

The next day he had gone looking for her, through the entire city, block by block. For three days he had searched.

Then he had found her, living alone, in a flat near the river, and he had gone up there and tried to talk to her, to tell her he still loved her, no matter what, and to ask her about the other man. But she would not let him in, told him to go away and would not let him in. He had pounded on the door, pounded...

His head had begun to pound now, thinking about it. His mind whirled and jumbled with the thoughts as he sat there in the empty box.

He lay down on the floor and pulled the suitcase to his body, holding onto it very tightly, and after a time, a long time, he slept.

He awoke to a thin patch of sunlight, shining in through the open door of the box car. He stood up and stretched, and his mind was clear now. He went over to the door and put his head outside.

The sun was rising in the sky, warm and bright. He looked around, trying to place where he was. The land was flat, and he could see brown foothills off in the distance, but it was nice and green in the meadows through which the freight was passing. He could smell alfalfa, and apple blooms, and he knew they had gotten up into northern California.

As he stood there, he could feel the train begin to slow. They came around a long bend. Up ahead he could see freight yards. The freight had begun to lose speed rapidly, now.