The Promise Page 3

  My father had designed bridges and if this were one of his, I would have faith in its piers and bracings. Instead, I kept my gaze on my lap, unable to look at the other rickety wood train trestles that ran parallel to us, the waves breaking against their thin wood piers.

  ‘Smelling salts,’ the woman said. ‘That’s what I suggest if this is your first crossing.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  The train shimmied. Low murmurs filled the car, the passengers reassuring one another. My seat was second class, and I rode with my back to the front of the car. The woman facing me swayed. The man on the other side of the aisle held himself still as if his least movement might tip the train. Feeling ill, I closed my eyes.

  I had left Dayton three days ago with Oscar Williams’ last letter in my cloth purse. He had not referred to the wedding nor had he mentioned where I would stay. Instead, there were details of train schedules and railroad routes. The journey from Dayton to Galveston called for changing trains in St. Louis, Little Rock, and Houston. In each station, I was surrounded by strangers while I spent long hours sitting on benches waiting to make my connections. After eight months of being shunned, I was disconcerted by the suddenness of being in such close quarters with so many people. I held a novel open on my lap but the words ran together, and I couldn’t recall the sentences I had just read. On board, the trip was a series of frequent stops and delays at small-town depots. Beyond the exchange of brief pleasantries with my fellow passengers, I kept to myself and watched the blur of farmlands, the river crossings, and woods that existed along the railroad tracks. Each mile traveled took me farther west and then south from Dayton. Each one brought me closer to a life so different from what I knew.

  I opened my eyes. We were still crossing the bay – three miles, I thought – and now a crowd of steamships, tugboats, and schooners had come into view.

  ‘The last time I crossed the bay, it was storming,’ the woman across from me said. She wore a wedding band and her fingers were plump. ‘Gracious, that was quite the adventure. But today, we have blue skies and as for this breeze, why it’s little more than a puff.’

  ‘How fortunate,’ I said. I imagined the train tumbling off of the trestle, the car sinking and filling with water. The window, streaked with grimy water, was locked closed. I’d have to unfasten the locks and pull the window down. I might escape, but I didn’t know how to swim. Even if I did, my heavy plum-colored skirt would wrap and drag around my legs.

  ‘Nearly there,’ the woman said, putting on her gloves.

  The train floated above small islands of tall rippling grass and low dense bushes. We crossed over shallow reedy marshes where long-necked white birds stood motionless. The train sloped down. We bumped off of the trestle and onto land held firm by the occasional grove of listing short bushy trees.

  I leaned as far back in my seat as my bustle and the brim of my hat allowed.

  The train slowed, passing rows of storage sheds, warehouses, and grain elevators where Negro men unloaded wood crates from unhitched railroad cars. We passed along a wharf, the train running parallel to steamships and sailing ships held secure to the docks with massive ropes. Cranes hoisted containers from these ships, the straining men slick with perspiration.

  I was in Galveston, Texas, a thousand miles from home.

  The high arched granite walls and the turrets of Union Station shaded the platform, where I stood beside my two traveling trunks and column of hatboxes. People swirled around me, some of them hurrying up the stairs to catch the train on the other side of the platform, while others greeted passengers who had just arrived. Negro porters maneuvered through the crowds pushing dollies weighed down with trunks and bags. Up and down the tracks, trains hissed and black steam poured out of smokestacks. The air was thick and sultry, and smelled of oil, metal, and brine. I searched the faces of the men, but none of them were familiar, not even those whose glances lingered on me. I will Meet your International and Great Northern Train. Oscar had written in his last letter. I will be on the platform at Union Station, Galveston, Texas the Morning of August 29, 1900. Perhaps it was my hat that confused him, the upper portion of my face hidden in the shadow of the brim. Or perhaps it was the vagueness of memory. It had been twelve years since we’d last seen one another.

  I left my trunks and my hatboxes, and walked along the platform looking for any man who was alone, then looking for one accompanied by a small boy. The heat was oppressive and rank from so many unwashed people, their wool clothes splotched dark with perspiration. Black-haired unshaven men in mussed shirts and trousers herded their families around the platform, the women in brown and gray dresses and headscarves, some of them carrying babies while other children clung to their skirts.

  I returned to my trunks and hatboxes.

  The crowd on my side of the platform began to thin. A few tracks over, passengers boarded a train from the opposite platform. I straightened my hat; a young man jostled me. ‘My apologies, ma’am,’ he said without looking at me.

  I found Oscar’s letter in my cloth bag and checked the date. August 29, 1900. Today. I smoothed loose strands of hair into place and pinched each earlobe, securing my black crystal dropped earrings. To my right, a girl with her hair tied back with a yellow ribbon held a child, shifting him from hip to hip. Farther down, a man in a suit and hat stood near the edge of the platform smoking a cigarette while checking his pocket watch, the chain looped from his vest.

  My white shirtwaist was damp from the heat, and I longed for a drink of cool water. I found my handkerchief in my cloth purse and patted my forehead. Something must have happened to Oscar; something had delayed him.

  The girl with the child left. Two men jumped down from the platform and began to unhitch the engine car from the train I had arrived on. Their faces were red and streaked with perspiration as they worked, the metal hitch screeching, grinding, the bolts loosening.

  Oscar had changed his mind. Someone from Dayton had written to him; he had heard the ugly rumors about me. Perhaps his sister or one of his brothers had told him. I had seven dollars, enough for a few nights in a modest hotel. I could find a rooming house and make the money stretch a week. I would have to sell my earrings, a gift from Edward. In Dayton, I could not bear the thought of parting from them, but now, if Oscar had abandoned me, they were all I had.

  I dabbed at my forehead with my gloved fingers.

  At the far end of the platform, the man with the pocket watch looked my way, the cigarette between his lips and his head tilted slightly as if asking a question. He was cleanshaven and his face was brown from the sun. The brim of his bowler hat was wider than most, but I was able to see that his hair was light brown. Like Oscar Williams’. But this man was bigger than I remembered him to be; this man was broader. He was tall, though, like Oscar.

  I looked away, then back. He slid the watch into his vest, dropped his cigarette onto the platform, and put it out with the toe of his boot. He began to walk my way, his footsteps loud on the platform.

  Relief rushed through me. I averted my eyes, needing to reclaim my poise, and all at once, I heard the parlor room whispers. ‘The coal man.’ ‘The dairy farmer.’ ‘Catherine Wainwright has gotten what she deserves.’

  He was just a few yards off. A beating sound pulsed in my ears. I felt myself teetering. The instant I spoke to him, the person I was, Catherine Wainwright the pianist, would disappear. Something began to shift and splinter inside of me. I turned away and as I did, I was once again in Dayton. The oaks were leafing and the air was mild. I was on the trolley, and Edward had walked past me.

  ‘Miss Wainwright?’

  The dairy farmer. The man who had written that his son was in need of a mother and he was in need of a wife. The man who said he would be a good husband and provider. The man who had once attended my piano recitals.

  I turned to face him. He had taken off his hat and held it to his chest. I forced a smile and looked up past the brim of mine. ‘Mr Williams,’ I said, putting out
my gloved hand. ‘I am so very pleased to see you once again.’

  We stood on the station platform, neither of us saying anything, our glances flickering over and around the other. I had seen the surprise in his eyes when I greeted him. I was thirty now, not a girl of eighteen. Oscar had changed, too. Lines fanned out from around his green eyes. His face was fuller, the gauntness of his boyhood gone. He wasn’t handsome, not like the men I was accustomed to with their hair parted just so and who wore their tailor-made suits with ease. Oscar’s jacket was tight through the chest and the cords showed in his neck. The sun had weathered his skin. This man did not earn his living by sitting at a desk. Oscar worked outside, and he worked with animals. He relied on his strength.

  ‘Mighty hot,’ he said.

  ‘My yes,’ I said. ‘I quite agree.’

  ‘How was the trip?’

  ‘Very pleasant, thank you. The scenery was lovely.’

  ‘These here are yours?’ he said, referring to my two trunks and stack of hatboxes. His voice did not match my recollection. It was deeper, and there was a draw, his years in Texas telling.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All mine.’

  ‘My wagon’s at the livery, Mallory’s, three blocks up and two over.’

  A wagon, not a buggy.

  He said, ‘I’ll have your things sent on. We’ll walk to the hotel, it’s quicker that way.’

  ‘A stroll would be refreshing after such long days of sitting,’ I said. A hotel. I had only seven dollars. I had assumed that Oscar had made arrangements with friends, people who would welcome me to stay in their home while he and I grew accustomed to one another.

  Oscar hailed a Negro porter. I ran my gloved fingers along the drawstrings of my purse. Oscar said something to the porter about a hotel on Market Street, then the two of them began to load my trunks and hatboxes onto a dolly. I couldn’t afford a hotel past a day or so, and I certainly could not assume that Oscar would finance my stay. The wedding could be weeks from now, perhaps even a month. There would be meals to consider, too. I would have to sell my earrings.

  The porter left, wheeling away everything that I owned.

  ‘You hungry?’ Oscar said. ‘I surely am.’

  ‘A little something would be lovely.’

  ‘We’ll have dinner at the hotel.’

  ‘Lunch,’ I said, the word seeming to leap out of me.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I believe it’s close to noon. Lunch, wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘Here we call it dinner.’ Oscar nodded toward the pair of tall arched doors that led into the station. ‘Ready?’ he said. He put his hand on the small of my back, and just like that, my concern about my lack of money disappeared.

  I came to Galveston expecting Oscar to be an older version of the boy I thought I had known. In my memory of him, I had exaggerated his shyness. He had stood off to the side at Lakeside Park; he had admired me from afar. That may have been true, but he had had the courage to speak and to write to me. Now, as we walked toward the tall arched doors, I realized I had been mistaken to believe that Oscar would stammer with shyness and perhaps be awkward and unsure in my presence. There was nothing unsure about Oscar Williams. Or about the hand on the small of my back.

  Union Station was cool, dim, and filled with commotion. Voices ricocheted and echoed off of the high ceiling and the marble floor. Rows of polished wood benches were filled with men, women, and children, their bags at their feet. Oscar steered me around lines of people who waited to purchase tickets. We walked past the shoeshine stands where men read newspapers while Negroes shined and buffed their ankle-high boots. We passed through a high doorway and we were suddenly outside on a city street, the late morning sun blinding me.

  ‘Oh my,’ I said.

  ‘That’s Texas for you,’ Oscar said. He put on his hat and tugged the center of the brim, settling it into place. ‘The sun takes some getting used to, but you will.’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Five years from now you won’t hardly notice.’ He smiled as though he had said something amusing but I did not have a smile in me. The wind that had rocked the train as we crossed the bay was little more than a slight stirring here. Heat rose like vapors of steam. Overhangs attached to the buildings covered the sidewalk, but the red and black tiles were so hot that they burned through the soles of my shoes. On the street before us, teams of horses pulled buggies and wagons in all directions. Drivers whistled and shouted, urging on their horses. Piles of dung rotted in the sun. Men crowded the sidewalk, the smell of their wool suits striking me in waves.

  ‘We’ll go this way,’ Oscar said. ‘Show you the sights.’ He indicated the street before us. It was lined with three-story buildings, their stone façades shades of cream and red. ‘This here’s the Strand.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s the name of the street. The Strand. Some folks call it the most important street in Texas.’

  ‘Most impressive,’ I said as we joined the flow of pedestrians. I felt ill and lightheaded, repulsed by the sight of straining, lathered horses, and the faces of the drivers slick with perspiration. On the sidewalk, there were far more men than women, the women, I believed, having the good sense to stay out of this heat.

  ‘Over there, across the street,’ Oscar said, pointing. ‘That’s the Hutchings-Sealy building. It’s just a few years old.’

  Squinting against the sun, I looked up to where he directed my attention. That building and all the others had carved cornices and elaborate brickwork that rimmed their flat roofs. Signs identified dry goods stores, the offices of attorneys-at-law, insurance companies, and banks. I tried to see something of Dayton here or of Philadelphia but this was unlike any place I had been before. Sailors stood at corners, talking to one another, their ribboned caps set at angles and their dark trousers flaring below the knees. Painted shutters framed high arched windows on the upper floors of buildings, and at some, white wicker chairs clustered around tables on iron balconies. Draperies fluttered as if there were a breeze. At street level, men and errand boys passed in and out through tall propped-open doors.

  We stopped at a corner, the traffic in the intersection a dense knot of delivery wagons and horses. ‘Look over there,’ Oscar said, pointing to his left. A steamship sat alongside the wharf. Black smoke poured from its stacks, and the deck was as high as a one-story building.

  ‘Sails from Cuba,’ he said, raising his voice above the shouts of drivers as they tried to untangle the traffic. ‘Carries bananas and suchlike. That flag’s a common sight here. Same for the German flag. England’s too. We have ships coming and going, day and night. It’s the busiest port on the gulf, outshines New Orleans by a mile.’

  ‘Cuba,’ I said. ‘Good heavens.’ I could not place Cuba, not at that moment. It could have been on the other side of the moon.

  ‘It’s all rather unexpected,’ I said. We were still at the corner, the traffic at a standstill. ‘There’s so much more to it than I had imagined.’

  ‘It’s a little too busy, if you ask me. Suits me just fine to be down the island.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s where we are, on down the island.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said as if his words made sense.

  ‘Here we go,’ Oscar said, the traffic clearing just enough to cross, the pedestrians now flowing into the intersection. He helped me down the three cement steps to street level. ‘Sidewalks are raised on account of floods,’ he said. ‘Newcomers most always are surprised by that.’

  His words were part of the city noise. My ankles bowed on the uneven blocks of pavers as we avoided the horse dung. I held up the front of my skirt, sure that my train was sweeping up all manner of filth. We climbed the steps on the opposite corner. ‘We’re prone to hard-driven rains,’ Oscar said. ‘Then too, tides can get high when it storms. Can come from the bay or from the gulf. We aren’t but nine feet above sea level.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. His words took shape in my mind. ‘Mr W
illiams. Are you saying that water from the gulf comes into the city?’

  ‘It’s been known to. That’s why the houses are up on brick pillars. These overflows give the streets a good washing, that’s what most folks say.’

  My smile was wooden.

  ‘But where we are, down the island, we have the sand hills. And we’re on the ridge.’

  A cliff, I thought. I imagined myself on the edge, looking down at the water.

  We walked, the sultry air as dense as cotton. My shirtwaist was even damper than before, and my corset and undergarments dug into my skin, chafing. I wished for a cool place where I could sit and think. Things were happening too quickly.

  We turned a corner so that the Strand and the wharf were behind us. A hotel, the Washington, was a block up. Its sign was elegant with black curlicue script, and a Negro doorman in red uniform and white gloves stood under the canopied entrance. The brick building was painted white, the sidewalk was covered with a black carpet, and I could not remember the name of the hotel Oscar had given to the porter.

  I couldn’t stay there, I thought. It was too fine; I could not afford even one night. ‘Mr Williams,’ I started to say, but before I did, two women came out of the hotel. They were young, perhaps in their very early twenties. Everything about them was fresh and carefree: their pale pink and yellow skirts, crisp white shirtwaists with sleeves that came to their elbows, and straw boater hats. Unlike me, I thought, wilted in my plum-colored skirt and long-sleeved cream shirtwaist.

  They didn’t notice. It was Oscar who caused their chatter to pause when we drew nearer, the two of them under the canopy, the doorman off to the side now and standing in the sun. It was Oscar who they assessed when he gave the brim of his hat a quick tug, his way of acknowledging them. Oscar nodded to the doorman as well, who then tipped his own hat in return, saying, ‘Sir. Ma’am.’