Sissy was the older daughter. She was supposed to be getting married first. The fact that Jim hadn’t asked her, the fact that she hadn’t seen him in ten days, didn’t enter into the argument. She was five years older than Jenny and it was ridiculous, and ridiculous that they were letting her have a white wedding. Not that Amber’s wedding gown was worth wearing, not that it was even white, but they shouldn’t have been letting her wear it anyway. Jenny wanted photographs too, and they were giving her anything she asked for. And it was ridiculous her wanting it. Anyone else would be hiding their head in shame, and a lot of people were saying the same thing too, not just Sissy. It was worse than ridiculous. It was disgusting, and if anyone thought that she’d be showing her face at that church, then they had another think coming to them.
She prayed for a cloudburst, timed to drop its load on Woody Creek at eleven thirty on Saturday morning. Perhaps that was being too specific, so she prayed for it to arrive any time between Friday midnight and Saturday at eleven thirty. Jim was coming in on Friday to take her and Margaret to a dance. She didn’t want rain on Friday. Didn’t want a pea soup fog either, but she’d raised one by Friday morning and it hung around all day.
By four thirty, Woody Creek was a white-out. Jim telephoned his father asking him to pass on to Sissy that he wouldn’t be attempting to drive in through this fog. Vern rang Norman at the station, who forgot to tell Sissy until Amber had started on her hair at six thirty.
‘He can go to hell,’ she said. ‘And so can she. She’s a slut, and if you think I’m embarrassing myself by going within a mile of her wedding, then you’ve got another think coming.’
By six thirty, visibility was down to nil. Gertrude told Jenny that she wasn’t going out in that fog, told her it would be like feeling her way through a bag of cottonwool. Jenny walked every night. She knew that road. Tonight, she didn’t turn back when she reached the fork but continued on into town.
Vern was peering out his living-room window when he saw a dark-clad shape walk by. He couldn’t tell if it was man or woman.
She was wearing the black overcoat Gertrude had taken from the stranger. It reached her ankles, near wrapped her twice, but it kept her warm. She’d crocheted a beret from wool leftover from a pale green sweater she and Gertrude had spent a week in knitting. She wore it pulled low, her hair tucked beneath it — though not so low it hid her pearl in a cage earrings. She was wearing her pendant too.
Her walking shoes were new and comfortable, though she resented the seventeen and sixpence Gertrude had paid for them. Norman had given her ten pounds for shoes and the necessary. Nothing else was necessary, or not as necessary as the eight pounds of change she’d tied into the corner of a handkerchief and pinned to her bra. Touched it for luck as she walked by the hotel and crossed over the road to the big old peppercorn tree leaning low over the railway yard fence. The night was clammy cold, the fog clinging to her face like damp sheeting, but it was hiding her, as was that black coat.
She wasn’t scared. Not one bit. Nothing could hurt her now, not the monsters and murderers hiding in Granny’s forest, not the cold, not the fog, not Amber. Nothing and no one would ever hurt her again.
Sometimes the train was late. She’d thought it could be late tonight because of the fog, thought she might have to stand around shivering for an hour, but right on time, she heard it hoot-hooting up beyond Charlie’s crossing. With a glance behind her, she ran through the cottonwool fog to the western end of the station platform where she flattened herself against the wall, her eyes seeking Norman. Couldn’t see him; and if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.
On a clear night if she looked west down those lines, she would have seen the train light coming long before it got to Charlie’s crossing. Only the foggy dark up there tonight. Nothing to see in any direction. Norman’s house had been wiped from the earth by that fog. There was no fence, no road, only the station, which seemed right somehow. So much of her life had been spent at that station, watching the trains come in, watching them go out. Her first memories were all joined to Norman’s station. So many years she’d spent watching all of those people travelling on by to a better place.
An eerie night; the sound of the approaching train wheels down that line was eerie, like a ghost train that wasn’t really there, a ghost train come to get one ghostly passenger. She felt like the ghost of Jenny, or the dust of Jenny, all of her juices sucked away by that thing feeding on her, only Granny’s coat was holding her together.
It came then, out of the dark, came with the strangest light she’d ever seen. A white light, not penetrating, but flattening against the fog, turning it into a glowing swirling wall.
Or a window, a misty, ripply window like the one she’d seen on the day of the mirage.
She’d run so far that day, trying to get through that window to where the trees and the fences could fly, but no matter how far she’d run, she couldn’t get there, not then. Tonight, that window had come to get her and take her away to a land where she could fly.
And she would. One day, when she felt clean again, she would fly.
No passengers boarding. None stepping down. Who’d be crazy enough to end his journey in Woody Creek? This town had nothing to offer, other than its timber. Loaded flatbed trucks waiting for that train.
She sighted Norman, an indistinct figure going about his business down the eastern end of the platform. He wasn’t always so indistinct. He’d been big enough to kill giants when she was small. He’d just . . . he’d just shrunk, just grown ragged in the wash of life, that’s all.
Loved him still, just didn’t like him any more.
She watched him, her back to the wall, watched him until the door of the goods van opened, until the guard walked down to speak to him.
Then she ran across the platform and stepped on board.