LAST TRAIN TO WORCESTER
FEBRUARY 9, 1942
J. Jackson Jackson awoke to the screech of railcar brakes, the swaying vibration of the train slowing down. Opening his eyes, he looked out the frost-rimmed window beside him to see the lights of a small city coming into view. The night was overcast, the moon hidden by dark clouds, but in the glow of streetlamps he caught a glimpse of narrow streets blanketed by fresh snow.
“Worcester!” The conductor walked down the aisle, calling out the place where the train was making its next stop. “Worcester, Massachusetts!” He pronounced the name in a nasal Yankee brogue that silenced the “ch” and dragged out the “er.” Woostah, not Wore-chester, the way Jackson had been pronouncing it all along; he made a mental note of this.
Jackson’s fellow passengers stirred from the uncomfortable naps they’d been taking since the previous stop in Hartford. Everyone here was black, including the conductor. Their car was just behind the locomotive, with the baggage car separating it from the rest of the coaches; it was an antique, the seats’ upholstery old and faded, the windows grimed with engine smoke. Since Washington, D.C., where Jackson had transferred from the train that carried him from Alabama, the aisles had steadily collected discarded sandwich wrappers and pop bottles, the refuse of the only meals they’d been able to eat en route; the dining car was off-limits to coloreds. At least the baby girl making the trip in her mother’s arms had finally stopped crying although a lingering fecal stench told him the reason why: With no washrooms in this car, her mother had had to change the child’s diapers in public.
The train lurched again, and Jackson returned his gaze to the window. Union Station was just ahead, its twin towers looming above a Gothic edifice of white limestone. As the train clattered the rest of the way into the station, Jackson reached beneath his seat to pull out the battered cardboard suitcase that held all his clothes. It appeared that nearly everyone in the colored car was traveling on to Boston because only a couple of other people stood up.
The train finally came to a halt, and Jackson joined the disembarking passengers as they shuffled down the aisle to the door. The night was cold, a stiff wind from the northeast spitting fat snowflakes into his face as he stepped out onto the platform. This was the first time J. Jackson Jackson had been anywhere above the Mason-Dixon Line; in that frigid moment of first contact with New England, he imagined that he was somewhere just south of the Arctic Circle. He paused to put down his suitcase, pull up the lapels of his wool overcoat and clamp his fedora more firmly to his head, then he picked up the suitcase again and followed the signs to the station entrance. Someone was supposed to be meeting him there…
“Lieutenant Jackson?”
A young white man stood just inside the door, a snapshot photo in his gloved hands. Jackson nodded and the other man put away the picture. “Hillman… Corporal Max Hillman,” he said quietly. “Glad to see you made it, sir. How was the trip?”
“All right, I suppose.” Jackson wasn’t surprised to see that Hillman wasn’t in uniform or that he hadn’t saluted him. Apparently he’d received the same orders to dress and behave as a civilian; Jackson had left his uniform in Alabama and instead worn his best suit on the train. He looked around at the handful of other passengers. “Am I the only person you’re picking up?”
“Uh-huh… I mean, yes, sir. You’re the last guy in. Everyone else is already here. This way, Lieutenant… the car’s out front.”
They walked down a circular staircase to the ticket foyer and passed through another pair of doors leading to the station’s main hall. The Washington train must have been the last one in for the evening; the wooden benches were nearly vacant, the luncheonette and newsstand closed. Jackson took a few moments to find the COLOREDS ONLY restroom; Hillman was waiting for him in the lobby when he came out. Just outside the front door, a Plymouth sedan was parked at the curb. Jackson tossed his suitcase in the backseat while Hillman slid in behind the wheel. The corporal cranked up the cold engine and turned on the windshield wiper, and the Plymouth rumbled away from the station, its tires crunching through the slush in the street.
“We’ve got you staying with the rest of the group, sir,” Hillman said as he switched on the heater. “You’ll be sharing a boardinghouse just a few blocks from the Clark campus.” A quick smile. “I’ll be there, too. My job is to act as your military liaison… sort of a go-between for you and…”
“I know what a liaison is.” Even on a dark winter night, Jackson could tell that Worcester wasn’t much larger than Memphis, his hometown. The tallest buildings were the clock tower of what he assumed to be City Hall and a couple of church steeples; all the others were low redbrick buildings no more than six stories tall, sparsely illuminated by cast-iron streetlamps. Not a pretty city. “Where’s the colonel?”
“Colonel Bliss? We’ll see him only every so often. He’ll be dividing his time between here and Alamogordo, with occasional visits down to Washington to report in.” A wry chuckle. “If I were him, I’d stay in New Mexico as much as I could. A little warmer down there.”
Jackson nodded, preferring to say as little as he could get away with. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t have been here either, and not just because of the climate. He had been just a few weeks away from earning his wings and joining the 332nd Fighter Group when Colonel Bliss had come to see him at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, along with a nameless FBI agent who’d spoken little but had regarded him with the skeptical eyes of a man who couldn’t believe that a Negro would be interviewed by a member of the War Department’s command staff. Bliss wanted to know about Jackson’s engineering degree and the interest he’d shown in rocket research; he’d said little concerning what this was about except that it involved a classified project being undertaken by Robert H. Goddard. The subsequent offer to join the project wasn’t entirely voluntary; although the colonel didn’t come right out and say so, he had given the young lieutenant the distinct impression that, if he didn’t agree to go on detached duty, he’d spend the rest of the war sweeping hangar floors, not in the cockpit of a P-51 Warhawk.
Working on a military project with Dr. Goddard intrigued Jackson. All things considered, though, he’d rather be flying.
Hillman drove past the town commons, then turned left at City Hall onto Main Street. The stores were all closed; only a few restaurants and bars were open. Almost no traffic except for a trolley making its way up the street, its bars sparking as they touched the electric lines overhead. Leaving the town center, they entered a leafy urban neighborhood of apartment buildings and small houses, until they came upon a collection of ivy-decked buildings clustered along the right-hand side of the street.
“Here’s the Clark campus,” Hillman said, as if it could be anything else. Turning right onto Maywood Street, he slowed down as they came upon a four-story redbrick building close to the sidewalk. “That’s the Science Building, where you’ll be working.”
Jackson noticed that its windows were dark. “I take it we’re not going there right away.”
“No, sir. We’re going straight to the boardinghouse. That’s where everyone else is… except Dr. Goddard, of course. I think he and his wife are staying home tonight to unpack.” Hillman gave him a sidelong glance. “Have you ever met either of them? Dr. and Mrs. Goddard, I mean.”
“I haven’t met anyone except the colonel,” Jackson said.
“That so? Well, you’ll meet them soon. Incidentally, you’ll be the only people staying there. We’ve rented the whole place for your group, just to make sure that you’re left alone.”