Excerpt
Leaving Home
Rose gripped the edge of her chair seat to steady herself. The train had onlyjust begun chuffing away from the depot, so there wasn't any rocking of the carto make her dizzy. It was only her mind spinning.
Moments before, she had left behind the life she'd known as long as she couldremember. She'd just had her last glimpse of her short plump mother, standing onthe brick platform below the train window.
Mama's gentle face had craned up from under her hat. Her cheeks had shone withtears in the morning light. Her shimmering eyes had searched the windows to blowone more kiss. Her hand had held up her handkerchief, ready for one last wave.
Rose fought back a fresh wave of tears. A painful lump lodged in her throat. Thepitifully yearning look on Mama's face broke her heart. Rose hadn't gotten tothe window fast enough for Mama to see her one last time. Mama had looked forher, but Rose wasn't there.
Rose turned her face to the dust-streaked window and held her own handkerchieftight against her eyes. She was sixteen years old, a young lady and too old tobe carrying on in public. A silent sob wracked her body so hard that she couldfeel the eyelets on her corset jabbing into her back.
She managed a few deep breaths, mopped her face, and slumped down in the plushchair seat, hoping no one had noticed her.
After two months of waiting for this day to come, suddenly nothing made sense.She fought a strong urge to run down the aisle and jump off the train before itgot to moving too fast. She caught a final glimpse of the backyard of her houseas the train pulled away from town. There was poor old Fido, asleep on hisfavorite patch of cool earth under the oak tree. A pair of Papa's overalls hungdrying on the clothesline. The place looked so forlorn and lonely from thetrain. And then it was gone, and the telegraph poles whizzed past her windowfaster and faster.
Oh, how could she leave Mama and Papa alone like that, with boarders to feed andkeep house for? How could she leave them to run the farm? Who would fetch thewater? Who would milk the cow? Who would bring in the stove wood?
She had pestered Mama and Papa every day of the last two months, badgering themwith questions and doubts.
"If you miss the work while you're away, we'll be pleased to hold it all for youuntil you get back," Papa had joked.
"Don't you worry about any of it," Mama had said. "It is only 'til next summer.Why, You'll be back home before you know it. We'll manage."
But these were the very first moments of the biggest adventure of Rose's life.Nine months stretched before her as vast as the sea. She must cross it alone,without Mama and Papa, far from all things familiar. The thought both terrifiedand exhilarated her.
The train lurched and picked up more speed. The car began to rock. Rose blinkedaway her tears and tidied her dress. It was a simple dark-blue figured ginghamwith a lace collar and cuffs. Rose had complained, and begged to wear herfavorite white lawn, but Mama insisted she wear the blue one. Mama had said itwas extravagant to wear white on a long train journey: "It soils so easily. Blueis more practical. It'll stay looking fresh 'til you get there."
Rose wrinkled her nose against the sharp smell of coal smoke drifting back fromthe locomotive. Maybe Mama was right, she thought, as she watched the gray tailof smoke writhing away across the fields. Through the soles of her new shoes shefelt the rhythm of the wheels clattering over the rail joints.
For nine years?ever since her family had moved to Mansfield, Missouri, from DeSmet, South Dakota?she had heard that sound. She heard it no matter where shewas, or what she was doing. Many trains passed through Mansfield, and she couldeven tell from the sound when a train was an express and when it was a local.
The railroad had a language of its own: the clattering of wheels, the whistles,the thunder of steam escaping when the locomotive had stopped at the depot intown.
These sounds came to Rose at her desk at school while she listened to thedroning of the teacher; in the henhouse as she fed the chickens their mash; inher bed at night as she drifted off to sleep. The steady drumming of the wheelsagainst the rail joints was the heartbeat of her daily life.
For nine years the mournful whistle had called to her. Sometimes she imaginedshe was the only one to have heard it. She would often stop in the middle ofhoeing the garden to listen to it echo through the hollows of the OzarkMountains. The trains had sparked Rose's dreams about the great world beyond,the world the trains came from, and the places to which they rushed. The whistlebeckoned to her, telling of bustling cities, of buildings tall enough to touchthe clouds, of streets filled with laughter and parades and sophistications Rosecould only imagine.
Now, finally, her day had come. She didn't have to wonder who was on the trains,and where they were going. She was one of those passengers herself. And she knewwhere she was going.
The sudden shriek of the locomotive's whistle made Rose flinch.
"Your first time on a train?" The conductor was smiling down at her from underhis blue cap. He held her carpetbag in his hand.
"Oh!" Rose cried out. "I forgot!" In the confusion of departing, she had set herbag down on the vestibule floor and left it there.
Excerpted from On the Banks of the Bayou by Roger Lea MacBride. Copyright © 1998 by Roger Lea MacBride. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Copyright © 1998 Roger Lea MacBride.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-06-440582-6
