CHAPTER NINE

Julia thought she would not have slept well, but she was out like a light until Mr. Petticord tapped on the door and awakened her to the heavenly smell of breakfast cooking. The day was glorious, she noticed as she looked out at the sunlit landscape. The serenity of the deserted railroad yard, the tall, swaying pepper trees and the birds chirping gaily seemed to be omens of the happy future that she knew was waiting for her. She luxuriated in the peace and tranquility that embraced her. The dark days lay behind; from now on all her tomorrows would be as bright and as glorious as right now, she thought.

Her beautiful mood almost slipped away from her when thoughts of Meg and the dreary orphanage began to plague her. She reminded herself quickly that she had survived the terrible ordeal of growing up in that orphanage and if she had survived, Meg would survive.

She felt sad saying good-bye to Mr. Petticord. She would never return to Rossmore; both of them knew that. She would never see the old man who had been so kind and helpful. She kissed his cheek. She was bidding farewell forever to everything in her old life. All her lonely years were finished. She’d never go back to her furnished room in New York; there was nothing there she really needed or wanted. She’d never go to that chrome-and-glass office. She’d never venture anywhere near anything that might remind her of her old existence—her life as Julia Carson. Julia Carson ceased to exist.

Julia saw old Mr. Petticord blink back the tears that glistened in his eyes. “I ain’t crying ’cause you’re leaving here, Miss Julie,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. “These here are tears of happiness for you.”

The train gave a warning blast of its whistle.

“Now, you get yourself out of here and I don’t want to see you around this place again, hear?”

Not finding anything to say, Julia kissed his cheek again and got on board. She turned at the top of the metal steps and waved. The train gave a lurch and she grabbed the handrail for support. The wheels began to turn. The train moved forward, slowly at first, but gradually increasing its speed. Julia stood, leaning out, waving at Mr. Petticord until he and Rossmore were nothing more than names in her past.

Mr. Petticord’s railroad schedule proved to be very out of date, Julia found. It was necessary for her to change twice before arriving at the Salem station. At Salem she made a convenient connection to Peabody, but at Peabody she was told there weren’t any such places as Weaver or Belham.

“Of course there are,” Julia insisted. “There must be. I was born in Belham,” she told the young station agent. She felt her heart swell with pride.

He scratched the top of his head. “Well, I never heard of either of them,” he admitted. He shook his head slowly and turned to an older man who was bent over a ticket desk. “Hey, Bill. Ever hear of any towns around these parts called Weaver and Belham?”

“Heard of Weaver,” the man named Bill said. “Not sure I ever heard of Belham though.” He thought for a moment. “Wait a minute. Now that I come to think of it, Belham is up near Weaver. Check the map, Andy.”

The younger agent pulled out a large map and began scanning it. “I don’t see any town called Belham listed.” His finger moved down the listings. “Here’s Weaver, though. M-5.” He leaned closer over the map. “Yeah, here’s Weaver all right.” He scratched his head again. “Funny, I never heard of that town before.” He looked up at Julia who was waiting patiently. “Are you sure the town you’re looking for is Belham?”

“Yes. B-e-l-h-a-m.”

He shook his head. “No such place. Here, see for yourself.” He turned the map around so Julia could see the index.

She ran her eyes down the B’s. He was right. No town of Belham was listed. “But the other gentleman said Belham was near Weaver.”

“Hey, Bill. Are you sure about Belham being near Weaver? It isn’t shown on the map.”

The older man came over and glanced at the index.

“That’s funny. I’m positive it’s up there,” he said. “I guess they most likely didn’t think Belham worth showing. It’s just a little place.”

“But it is near Weaver?” Julia asked anxiously.

“Yep, I’d swear to that. I’ve never been to Belham, but I know it’s pretty close to Weaver and I’ve been to Weaver. Not much of a town, though.”

“How do I get to Weaver?” Julia asked, not letting herself seem too impatient.

“There’ll be a shuttle going out of here for Weaver in about two hours,” the older man said.

“Two hours? How far is Weaver from here?”

“Oh, about eighty miles.”

“Do you have a bus going there?”

“Yep, but that only leaves once a day, at nine o’clock in the morning.”

Julia resigned herself to spending two hours in Peabody. She was sure that once she reached Weaver, she’d find some means of transportation into Belham. She prayed that the older agent was right in his belief that Belham was near Weaver. He had to be, she told herself as she waited for the shuttle.

It was after six o’clock when she started out for Weaver. Thankfully it was summer and night fell slowly.

The shuttle was a rickety old thing that chugged along at no more than thirty or forty miles an hour. Night fell just as Julia pulled into Weaver.

The town, she saw, was no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. It was quiet, though a bit run down at the heels. Wherever she looked she saw something that needed repair. Roofs sagged, paint peeled, windows were either missing, cracked, or broken. The people themselves—few as she saw of them—seemed to be in as bad a state of repair as the town itself. Even the younger children looked old and withered. It was a depressing kind of place. She wanted to get out of it the moment she saw it. She watched a stray dog crossing the dusty street and noted that the poor animal had never learned to wag its tail.

“Excuse me,” she said to a rumpled old man sitting on a straight-runged chair outside the train depot. “I’d like to make a connection for Belham. Is there a train that goes there?”

He looked up at her, eyeing her suspiciously. “Nope,” he said curtly, looking away and spitting out some chewing tobacco.

Despite the answer, she felt somewhat relieved knowing that the man at least knew where Belham was. “Well, how do I get there? Is there a bus?”

“Nope.” He spat again.

“Well, how do I get there?” she asked a little too harshly.

He turned and eyed her again. “What do you want to go there for?”

“I was born there,” she said, although she’d been tempted to tell him it was none of his business.

“Oh, one of them, huh?”

“One of whom?”

He didn’t answer her question. Instead he said, “Old Jerry Crow might be willing to drive you for a fee.”

“And where might I find old Jerry Crow?” Julia asked, letting herself feel the satisfaction of sounding a bit sarcastic.

The sarcasm went unnoticed. “Over at the café, yonder.” He pointed, which seemed to be a great effort on his part.

She thanked him curtly, picked up her luggage and started to cross the dusty road. Her muscles ached and her bags felt heavier than ever. It had been a long, long day and a long, long trip, and all her thinking had somehow managed to erase the glorious mood in which she’d awakened. She had spent too many long hours thinking about all that had happened to her. She knew she was doing the right thing because there was an invisible something telling her so, pulling her forward, luring her like a siren to the town of Belham. The black, ominous gloom which had haunted her all her life was dissolving. This had been the first day she felt totally free of everything, even herself. Despite her weariness, she could not stop, she found. She had to go on until she reached Belham.

“Where might I find Jerry Crow?” she asked a man leaning up against a sagging roof support.

“You’re lookin’ at ’im, Miss.”

He was a tall, gangling man with dull, lifeless eyes and sunken cheeks. He looked as though he needed a good square meal as well as a shave and a hot bath. His jeans were hanging in tatters; his feet were bare.

“I was told you might drive me to Belham,” Julia said.

He snapped his head around and stared at her. “I might. What do you want to go there for?”

“That’s where I was born.”

He gave her a suspicious look. He didn’t seem to believe her, but she didn’t care whether he believed her or not. “Will you drive me?” she urged.

“Ain’t got no gas.”

“I’ll buy the gas.”

“Plus forty dollars,” he answered, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on hers.

“How far is it?” Forty dollars was just about every cent she had left on her.

“Oh, maybe twenty miles.”

“Twenty miles? Forty dollars plus gasoline seems a bit steep to me. I’m not a millionaire, as you can see.”

“Forty plus. Take it or leave it. I ain’t all that keen on drivin’ to Belham, especially at night.”

She fumbled in her bag and handed him two twenty-dollar bills and a five. “There, that should cover everything,” she said.

“The gas’ll run about seven bucks,” he said, fingering the five lightly.

“Well, only buy five dollars’ worth. That’s all the cash I have.”

He kept eyeing her in that suspicious way he had. He thought for a moment and then slipped the bills into his pocket and nodded toward a sagging garage across the way. “Car’s in there. I’ll fetch the gas. You sit in the back and wait. I won’t be long.”

He was very long. Julia fidgeted and drummed her fingers on her handbag for almost half an hour before Jerry Crow arrived with a rather small can of gasoline, which Julia reminded herself had cost her five dollars.

No matter, she told herself as he poured the gas into the tank. She’d be in Belham soon and that was all that was important.

“If’n your folks are from Belham, how come they let you get away?” Jerry Crow asked while he steered the car none too carefully over a road that was no wider than a hair ribbon.

“Get away? I don’t know what you mean.”

He chuckled. “Oh, you know, all right.” he said, eyeing her in the rearview mirror, the corner of which was chipped. “You don’t have to play foxy with old Jerry Crow.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Julia said.

Jerry Crow chuckled again and before Julia could ask him to explain himself, he turned a sharp curve in the road and they were in Belham.

Belham was charming. The little shops and houses looked neat and strong and solid. It was dark and the lighted windows gleamed in a rosy welcome. Julia could see the straight brick chimneys jutting up against the sky, the well-tended outline of trees and shrubs. The people of Belham took obvious pride in their little town. It was no wonder the Weaverites were resentful of them. Now she understood the pointed slurs against Belham. It was plain and simple: the Weaverites were jealous, Julia decided as she mentally compared the two towns.

Jerry Crow, she noticed, looked sulkier than ever as he inched the car over the smooth, even street, brick-paved and clean-swept. “I’ll take you to the inn yonder and no farther,” he announced. “It ain’t good for anybody to linger in Belham,” he added, giving Julia a glance by way of the rearview mirror.

She merely smiled at him. She felt a wonderful sense of pride in her birthplace. “They have an inn?” she asked pleasantly.

“Yep. but they don’t take no guests there. It’s where they hold their meetings.” He cast Julia a wary eye. A moment later he pulled the complaining old sedan up in front of a gabled building with shimmering windows and a wide door that stood fully open. He made no move to help her out or to tote her luggage, so Julia managed for herself.

She was no sooner out of the car than Jerry Crow rammed it into gear and sped away with a squeal of tires and a billow of exhaust smoke. She saw him make a wide, dangerous U-turn and race out of town with the accelerator pedal jammed to the floor.

The sound of the squealing tires and the zooming car brought several men into the doorframe. There were three of them in all, silhouetted in the light, eyes turned in the direction of Jerry Crow’s fleeing automobile. As the car receded into the darkness the three pairs of eyes turned on Julia. Their stares were so frank and open they embarrassed her. She shifted her weight as she stood between her suitcases. “I’m looking for a room,” she managed to say. “Mr. Crow said this was an inn.”

“Aye, that it is,” one of the men said, “but it don’t cater to lodgers.”

“At least it hasn’t for a long time,” another of the men said.

The third man turned his head back toward the inside light and called, “Hey, Rose. Come see what old Jerry Crow dropped on your doorstep.”

A woman’s shape appeared in the light. She stepped in front of the three men and stood there, hands on hips, studying Julia’s face. She was a strong-looking woman, broad-hipped and gray-haired, which she wore in a tight bun at the very top of her head. The hair seemed so tightly knotted that it pulled up the corners of her eyes. The corners of her mouth, however, were pulled in the opposite direction.

“Yes?” she said sharply. “What do you want?”

Her rough manner made Julia think of the matrons back at the orphanage. She took an involuntary step backward. “I was told this was an inn,” Julia stammered. “I’d like a room.”

“Well, it isn’t an inn. We don’t take lodgers. Go away.”

Julia felt panic starting to build up. Go away? Where was she to go? “But I have no place to go,” Julia argued.

One of the three men peered around the heavyset woman and asked, “Where did you come from, Missy?”

The woman, Rose, spun around and gave him a withering look. “Never mind where she came from, Harold Hastings. Wherever it is, let her go back to it.” She turned to Julia again. “Get away with you, girl. We want no strangers from Weaver snooping around here.”

“But I’m not from Weaver. I lived in New York.”

“Then go back to New York,” the woman said, flinging the name at her as though it were something filthy. She planted her feet firmly beneath her and crossed her thick arms across her ample chest, ready to defend her inn against any attempt at invasion Julia might launch.

Julia stared at her, not knowing what to do. She looked toward the men, but saw there was no help in their eyes. Then she recalled a little ploy that had always worked whenever she needed to get her own way at the orphanage. It was cheating, but she had no other alternative, she decided.

“But I’ve come such a long, long way,” she said softly, raising one hand limply to her forehead. “I’ve been traveling all day and without anything to eat.” She let her eyes roll in her head. “Please,” she said, almost in a whimper. “Please help me....”

She let her knees buckle and, as gently as she could, she let her body fall to the ground.