Seven

Elliott tried not to groan at the jangle of the alarm clock on the floor beside the couch. The ringing meant it was now a quarter to seven in the morning. He had fifteen minutes to wake up and prepare himself to take notes on the daily schedule, as John had instructed him to do.

His eyes burned from lack of sleep. He tried to rub it away, but the contact only made them water.

He sat up, but then flopped his head back and stared at the ceiling in the early morning light.

He didn’t remember it being this way the previous night, but then he’d been so exhausted he would have slept through an earthquake.

But then, an earthquake would have been quieter. Every few hours, all night long, another train rumbled past. Not only did the trains shake the house, and therefore the couch, but the noise would have awakened the dead.

Not that he was dead, though. And with thanks to the Demchuck family, he wasn’t likely to be dead soon. He hadn’t realized until he’d actually begun to travel just how dangerous riding the freight trains could be. Knowing now what he didn’t know then, the promise of a ticket was more than an answer to prayer.

Once more, he blinked hard, then stood, stretching his arms over his head, trying to wake himself. Slowly, he moved his head from side to side to work out the kinks in his neck, when he spotted the same jacket he’d worn the day before hanging over the back of the chair at the desk. He smiled and slipped it on and, as quietly as he could, made his way out the door. Indoor plumbing was nice, but the trip to the outhouse in the cold morning air would serve to wake him up like nothing else, including the all-night trains.

When the time came for him to pick up the phone and take notes, he was alert and ready. Exactly as he had been warned, the reception was poor. Every once in awhile he heard banging and other noises, probably made from the other people in their various sections along this rail line as they, too, listened and made their notes.

Out of curiosity, he continued to listen after the clerk in the faraway dispatch office in Kenora finished reading the schedule. Some of the men made reports that they needed rails replaced, and therefore required special equipment; others mentioned particular supplies they needed. One mentioned a problem with a switch, and then the clerk in Kenora confirmed that all things mentioned would be handled by the main office.

Overall, Elliott found the procedure fascinating. He couldn’t imagine the organization or the teamwork for all those section gangs to keep the line running perfect with no downtime, yet they did. He wondered if the section foremen down this line ever got together for social activities or if their association was strictly business, at precisely seven o’clock every morning, seven days a week.

Unfortunately, he would never find out. Today, after the church service, he was leaving.

The house was quiet, although he couldn’t imagine how the Demchuck family managed to sleep through the racket of the trains.

Elliott continued to sit in the chair, reading the schedule. While straining to hear, he had written as quickly as possible, not paying attention to actual content or meaning. He only wrote numbers for the sake of accuracy. Now, he could put all his notes into perspective.

It was with sadness that he read that the train he would be leaving on would be departing at half past four. He laid the paper down and counted on his fingers. Nine short hours.

He wanted to spend those nine hours with Louise, but he couldn’t. Soon John would need help down the stairs and outside. Following that, they would do the morning’s track inspection, which would take them to lunchtime. After lunch they would attend the Sunday worship service, and then Elliott would have less than an hour before the freight train arrived. It would stay for a short ten minutes, then depart.

Elliott suddenly froze as he found himself unconsciously stroking his beard. Now aware of what he was doing, he paid attention to what his fingers were telling him and once again touched his chin. The hair had grown soft and was no longer completely untidy, but he still didn’t like it. As a barber by trade, Elliott frequently shaved other men. By the nature of his job, it was of utmost importance that he not be in need of a shave himself and that his own hair was always well trimmed.

If he shaved, he would be properly groomed for exactly one day, because he had no means to shave again until he reached his destination. Therefore, he had no alternative but to keep the beard while he traveled. When Elliott received his first paycheck, the first thing he would buy besides clothing would be a new razor.

Still, Elliott wished Louise could see him as he really was, not as an unkempt vagrant off the freight train. After he arrived at his destination, provided the job was still available, he wondered if he could get his picture taken and enclose it with a letter, telling Louise how much he missed her.

Abruptly, Elliott stood in order to rid his mind of such foolishness. He’d only had a few hours alone with Louise and known her for under two days. He could only reason that his odd attachment was in some way related to the circumstances he now found himself in.

Under normal conditions, he would have had more time to get to know her better, perhaps even court her as she deserved to be courted. However, conditions were not normal. He had no job, no assets, and no home.

His thoughts were interrupted by voices at the top of the stairs, followed by the gentle thuds of John’s crutches and the heel of the cast echoing on the floor.

Without waiting to be asked, Elliott bounded up the stairs and removed the crutches from John’s hands. Very slowly, one stair at a time, he guided John down while John held the handrail with one hand and supported himself on Elliott’s shoulder with the other.

Once he was at the bottom and properly balanced on both crutches, John turned to Elliott. “Praise the Lord, I’ll only have to do that once a day.”

Louise and Mrs. Demchuck slipped behind them without speaking and scurried into the kitchen.

“Let me help you down the steps outside, and I’ll wait for you.”

Upon returning to the house, Elliott could already smell bacon and eggs cooking. He sat in the kitchen with John to go over the daily schedule while the women busied themselves making breakfast and setting the table.

Elliott glanced up at the clock on the wall. “According to this, we have three quarters of an hour before the next passenger train. Then we will have two and a quarter hours to do the inspection before church.”

John nodded as Mrs. Demchuck and Louise set the plates on the table in front of them and poured the coffee.

Since they were in no rush, Elliott found it pure pleasure to be able to linger over their breakfast and enjoy their time together. It had been many years since he’d shared such a time with his own family, and it served as a pointed reminder of how much he missed it.

Mrs. Demchuck leaned forward on her elbows, cradling her coffee cup in her palms. “Please forgive me for asking, but we’ve all been so curious about you. All we know about you is that you’re a barber by trade and you come from Katona Falls in Ontario. Do you have family somewhere? Of course, we’re happy that you have a job to go to. What kind of job is it that you have to travel so far?”

Elliott forced himself to smile as the unspoken question hung in the air—what was he doing riding the freight trains?

Mrs. Demchuck’s question was reasonable and expected. He’d stayed with them two nights; he’d eaten their food. Mrs. Demchuck had even washed and repaired his clothing. It seemed wrong to be in this situation, being treated this way by an employee of the railroad after essentially stealing a ride on the train to get there. However, not only did they welcome him as their guest, they welcomed him as their friend.

So far, he’d successfully avoided giving them the more personal details of his life, even fooled himself into believing he could get away with it. Now, he could no longer avoid their curiosity.

He stared into his coffee cup. He would have preferred to share his hopes and dreams with these fine people, not the details of his failures.

“I’m not sure where to start. My father owned a barbershop in Katona Falls. Our house caught fire in 1933 when I was away at university. Both my parents died in the fire.”

Mrs. Demchuck lowered her cup to the table, and rested her fingers on his forearm. “Oh, Elliott. . .I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you for your concern,” he muttered. “It’s been five years, and I still miss them, but as Christians, they’re in a better place than I am.” He paused, snapped his mouth shut, and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry; that came out wrong. Being here with you now is wonderful.”

Louise and her mother smiled at him.

“That’s okay, Elliott,” Mrs. Demchuck said, patting his arm as she spoke. “I don’t think our small home in the country could in any way compare to the golden gates of heaven.”

John quirked up one corner of his mouth and nodded. Immediately, Elliott relaxed, feeling better about his poor choice of wording.

Elliott cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, like so many other people, in order to cut back on expenses my parents had canceled the house insurance. I was only twenty years old and had just entered university. When they died I had to quit school. First, I couldn’t find a job to support myself while I continued my schooling. Also, with our dad gone, my brother Ike needed a partner for the barbershop. So, I left school and started working with him. Since I had nowhere to stay and the house was gone, and since I’m obviously single and don’t need a lot of room, we converted the storage area in the attic of the barbershop to living quarters for me. We made it into a one-bedroom suite, which suited my needs, as long as I didn’t mind sharing my living room with the supplies.”

His cup had long since been empty, but Elliott swirled the last few, cold drops around in the bottom and then drank them. “Ike is a few years older than I am, and he’s married and has a family to support. Business for the barbershop continued to drop off, and then a couple of months ago the bank foreclosed on Ike’s house. Since he needed a place to stay, he and his wife and their two children moved into the suite with me. As you can guess, it became very crowded very fast, with three adults and two children living in a one-bedroom suite above the barbershop.”

They all nodded.

“We can only imagine,” Mrs. Demchuck mumbled.

“By then things were so bad, we were forced to admit that the shop couldn’t support all of us. Ike wasn’t going to kick me out or dissolve the partnership, but then I received an answer to prayer. A letter came from an old friend, saying that if I was interested he could give me a job in a logging camp in British Columbia. He said the work would be hard, but. . .” Elliott paused to grin weakly and shrugged his shoulders. “He said that the wages were good. For now, any steady work would be good, regardless of the amount. So I wrote him back to tell him I was on my way. I’d already sold most of my furniture. I gave what was left to Ike, packed everything I owned in two suitcases, and left.”

He could see their eyes widen at the thought that he could carry everything in the world he held valuable. Even he had struggled with it when it came time for him to pack. Once he’d laid everything out on the bed, he couldn’t believe that everything he owned, except for a couple of pieces of furniture and a few other small items, could fit into two suitcases. As it was, he had to sell his watch in order to have enough money to pay for the bus and train tickets.

With the promise of a job, he’d considered the opportunity a new start, even though he had mixed feelings about moving away from the only place he’d ever known to live in parts unknown. In a way, he felt like one of the three little pigs out to seek his fortune. He had hoped that in the end he would liken to the little pig whose house was made of bricks.

“I bought my ticket for the bus to Ottawa, where I planned to buy a train ticket to Vancouver. The plans were that once I arrived in Vancouver, I was to contact a friend of Edward’s, who would in turn contact Edward up at the logging camp, and then Edward would come and get me. But, on my way from the bus depot to the train station, a gang of men attacked me and robbed me, leaving me with nothing except the clothes on my back.”

Louise gasped, and her mother covered her mouth with her hands. “That’s horrible! Were you hurt?”

He rested his fingers on his neck. It didn’t take much imagination to still feel the cold steel of the knife blade pressed to his throat. Fortunately, the tender spots and bruises from the beating they had given him were now healed, although his left arm still hurt when he moved it a certain way. “I wasn’t badly hurt, no. But I had to decide if I should go back with nothing, knowing that Ike could barely support his own family, never mind having an extra mouth to feed. I prayed about it, and rather than take the food out of the mouths of my brother’s children, I decided to carry on. And here I am. Apparently, the Lord does provide our needs, just as I was taught in Sunday school.”

Silence hovered over the table and John spoke first. “That’s quite a story, Elliott.”

“Actually, my story is not much different than many of the men I’ve met along the way. Traveling like this is quite lonely. When you have time to talk to someone else in the same situation, there’s an instant bond. I’ve always found it easy to talk to people, and this last week has been no exception. I’ve spoken to many men who needed the hope that you can only have with Jesus Christ in your heart. I only pray that my words have had a lasting impression on some of those men. Unfortunately, I’ll never know, because I’ll never see a single one of them again.”

He only meant to glance up quickly, but his attention became glued to Louise. Her eyes opened wide and she appeared to be staring at a blank spot on the wall behind her father. Her eyes became strangely glassy, then she swiped her hand across them before turning to him. “We’ve felt that same way when we’ve given food or clothing to the men who pass through Pineridge. A few will listen openly to what we try to give as a message of hope, but most of them only listen to be polite because we’re giving them something. We’ll never know which of those we’ve spoken to will ever receive the message of hope and eternal salvation.”

Elliott opened his mouth, about to say he understood perfectly, but a long whistle sounded in the background.

Mrs. Demchuck rose quickly. “Goodness! How the time has flown! You’d better get outside, because the train will be through in a few minutes and you have to get that inspection done quickly. We’ll have a quick lunch when you’re done. We don’t want to be late for church.”

John turned toward him. “We should try to make it across the tracks before the train arrives. We have to get the speedster out of the toolhouse.”

Elliott rose, wondering if he should have been trying to help John stand. He hated to see the man struggle, but he didn’t want to continuously offer help when none was required. He wanted to allow John to retain as much dignity as possible in a difficult situation. Instead, he thought about the work involved in pushing the speedster out of the toolhouse and lifting it onto the tracks. He could still feel yesterday’s efforts in his back.

“I must say that speedster is a strange contraption, but it seems quite efficient for its purpose.”

“Yes. But as you no doubt found the hard way, it’s meant to seat only one person.”

Elliott nodded. He’d barely managed to stay on the unit, and the two of them had jostled for position, both of them being quite uncomfortable for the entire time it took to travel down the tracks to do the inspection. He’d also seen the larger jigger in the toolhouse, which would have been more appropriate for more than one person. However, John had told him that it took four able-bodied men to put the jigger on the tracks every day, implying those four men were accustomed to hard work. One look at the huge jigger told him it was not a task for a man with one leg in a cast and another man whose heaviest lifting job until then consisted of occasionally lifting boxes of shampoo.

By the time they were ready to move the speedster, the train had already passed. As Elliott pulled the unit out of the toolhouse and struggled to line it up on the tracks properly, he thought about how difficult the next few hours would be.

It wasn’t the track inspection he was thinking of. The track inspection was a new experience, even if it did mean a rather uncomfortable journey on the speedster. However, compared to riding the boxcars as he had been, trying to maneuver around John on a unit that was really meant for one couldn’t compare. On the bright side, as different as it was from what he was used to doing, he found the experience rather interesting.

As for attending church with the Demchucks, he very much anticipated going. He tried to think of what their service would be like and couldn’t. He’d always attended the same church at home, a grand old stone building with polished oak pews and ornate stained glass windows. He couldn’t imagine a church service being conducted in the small wooden building where the entire structure could have fit into his own church’s Sunday school room.

Regardless of the setting, the purpose of getting together was to worship God with other believers, and that was exactly what he planned to do. While trying to imagine the order of the service, he wondered if Louise would be playing the organ. Part of him hoped she would, because he wanted to hear her play, but part of him didn’t. He didn’t want to participate with her from across the room, no matter how small he knew it would be. He wanted to worship God with her at his side.

Suddenly, the reason for his apprehension about leaving hit him with the force of a tornado.

The reason he didn’t want to leave was because he didn’t want to say good-bye to Louise.