The train from Cleveland to Montreal chugged to a stop at the border between the USA and Canada. The woman near the front of the car picked up the Plain Dealer she’d bought before she got on. The war news from the Low Countries and France was just as lousy now as it had been when she first looked at it a few hours before. She frowned and put the paper back on the seat beside her.
She’d just fished Gone with the Wind out of her purse instead when two uniformed American customs men walked into the car from the one ahead of it. They paused in the aisle by her. “Let me see your papers, ma’am,” one of them said.
“Oh, for Chrissake, Otis!” the other one exploded. “That there’s a dame, case you didn’t notice. She ain’t gonna run off to England to fly planes for the stupid King.”
“Never can tell,” the first customs man—Otis—said. “She kinda looks like Charles Lindbergh, know what I mean?” He turned back to the woman. “Your papers.”
Without a word, she handed him her passport. She’d heard the comparison with Lindbergh before, and didn’t care for it (she happened to know he didn’t, either). She liked his isolationist, America First politics even less.
Otis opened the passport to the page with her name and photo. “Putnam, Amelia E.,” he read, and scribbled on a sheet in his clipboard. “Purpose of visiting Canada, Mrs. Putnam?”
“Visiting friends,” she answered, looking up at him over the tops of her reading glasses. Except on a few formal documents like this, she didn’t use her husband’s—now her ex-husband’s—last name. It came in handy here; her own would have caused problems.
“‘Visiting friends.’” Otis wrote that down, too. He handed back the passport. “Enjoy your stay.”
“Thank you.”
As the customs men walked down the aisle, the other one said, “See? Told ya so.”
“Ah, shut up,” Otis told him.
They checked more passports, and lingered longest with two men in their twenties: one tall and carrot-topped, the other medium-sized, with a Clark Gable mustache.
The customs men gave the young Americans a much tougher time than they had the woman.
Amelia Earhart—the name she used almost all the time—smiled to herself. If the smile seemed sour, then it did, that was all. Those young fellows weren’t dames, after all. It was reasonable, even to a customs man, to think they might know something about flying.
They had to get their suitcases down from the overhead rack so the inspectors could paw through them. They passed muster, though; the customs men went on to inflict themselves on the next car back from the locomotive.
Pretty soon—not soon enough to suit A.E., but pretty soon—the train got rolling again. The redhead and the guy who wished he were Clark Gable both let out muffled whoops when they crossed into Canada. “They aren’t as smart as they think they are!” said the guy with the red hair.
They sure aren’t, A.E. thought. She picked up Gone with the Wind again. Scarlett was eating grits and dried peas with Aunt Pittypat, and swearing to herself she’d never touch them again once she had money. A.E. kept reading as the train rolled on to Montreal.