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How does he mean that? A
The ride back to Fort Worth took close to three hours. A blowout halfway there didn't help. J.B.H. Norris fixed it with the aplomb of one who'd done it many times before-and what driver hadn't?-but it still cost a half hour A
Before the war, she would have had a colored servant, or more than one, taking care of her. No more. And she didn't miss them, either. She'd discovered she was more efficient than anyone whose main aim was to do as little as possible. That had proved oddly liberating, where she would have expected losing servants to do just the opposite.
But the time lost to the blowout rose up to haunt her at the station. "Sorry, ma'am, but the eastbound express pulled out of here about twenty minutes ago," the clerk in the ticket window said. "Next one doesn't leave till ten tonight."
"Damnation," A
"I understand, ma'am. Let's see what I can do." The clerk flipped through schedules so complex, God would have had trouble understanding them. People in line behind A
"Damnation," A
"Sure will." The clerk handed her a ticket and several brown Confederate banknotes. "Your train will be leaving from Platform W. It's over that way." He pointed. "Follow the signs-they'll take you straight to it. Hope everything turns out all right for you."
"Thanks." A
It was late. By then, A
Unable to sleep herself, she stared glumly out the window at the night. Only blackness met her eye, blackness and an occasional handful of lights burning in the small towns at which the express didn't stop. She almost resented the lights, which put her in mind of fireflies. Blackness suited her mood much better.
The express did stop at Dallas. A
Marshall was the next stop, near the Louisiana border. By the time the train left, the sky ahead was getting light. Morning had come by the time the express got into Shreveport, on the Red River. The Red was flooding, too, but not enough to delay the train any worse.
Monroe, Louisiana, on the Ouachita, was the next scheduled stop-by then, A
"What do we do now?" A
"Don't rightly know, ma'am," he answered. "I reckon we'll back up and try and find a way around-if there is one. Don't rightly know about that, either. Only other thing we can do is wait for the water to go down, and Lord only knows how long that'd take."
Trying to hold in her anger, she snapped, "Why didn't you find out in Shreveport that the way would be flooded?"
"On account of it wasn't when we left Shreveport," the conductor said. "Ma'am, this here is a… heck of a bad flood, worst anybody's seen since Hector was a pup. An' it just keeps gettin' worser an' worser."
He'd fought not to swear in her presence. Now she fought not to swear in his. After what seemed a very long time, the train shuddered into motion-backwards. It crawled that way till at last it came to a cross track. A
But it didn't go far. Before long, the encroaching floodwaters blocked its path again. This time, A
Yet another tent city sprouted like a forest of giant toadstools outside the whistlestop hamlet of Anabell, Louisiana, where the express was balked again. "How are those people going to eat?" someone asked. "If trains have trouble getting through…"
It was a good question. It got an answer even as A
"What about your luggage?" he asked, blinking.
"To hell with my luggage," she said. The conductor tapped the side of his head with his index finger, but did as she asked. She ran over to the aeroplane, waving and calling, "Can you fly me over the Mississippi and past the floods to where I can catch another train east?"
"Maybe I can, lady," the pilot answered, shifting a plug of tobacco in his cheek. "Why the devil should I?"
"I'll pay you three hundred dollars," she said. "Half now, half when we land."
That wad of tobacco shifted again. She wondered if he'd swallow it, but he didn't. "Lemme finish unloading," he said around it. "Then you got yourself a deal." Half an hour later, the biplane bumped across the soggy field and threw itself into the air. A