Lone Star

  The five of them were alone in the fluorescently lit-up compartment, alone with themselves, alone with their thoughts. No one was writing in journals that no longer existed. Blake, his eye and cheek turning black and blue, looked as if he would never write another word in his life. Mason was lost somewhere far beyond the train to Krakow. He was spread out on the seats next to Chloe, his head away from her, his eyes closed. Chloe knew what Hannah was thinking. Hannah’s expression was but a poor mask to the torment inside her, both physical and eternal. Hannah had barely reacted to any of it: to the story of Emil, to their escape from Warsaw, or even to the injury to Blake’s face. She looked happy only when Johnny counted out Emil’s stack of dollars, which numbered in the twelve hundreds, before giving Chris seven hundred of it. How Hannah protested! “Without him, you’d have no passports,” Johnny explained. “I owe him more than this.” Though the way Chris genuflected, agog before the inadequate greenbacks, made Chloe think the boy had never held more than a twenty in his hopeless life.

  Chloe wondered aloud why Emil would carry the stolen money on his person. Johnny replied that Emil carried it on himself for the same reason they had carried it on themselves.

  “What’s the moral here?” Mason asked.

  “That you can be robbed anywhere,” said Johnny. “By anyone. So be meek like sheep but wise like serpents. Never leave behind what you can’t part with.”

  Mason made a throaty noise that surprised Chloe; he sounded as if he was about to cry.

  “Mason, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Just tired.”

  Blake pointed out that they had never, not once, been robbed in Fryeburg.

  “Duh,” Johnny said. “That’s because no one gets robbed in the Garden of Eden.”

  For an hour Chloe thought about what Johnny said, while Johnny slept, and Hannah and Mason pretended to sleep. So did Blake. Only Chloe’s eyes were open, engraving the sleeping Johnny Rainbow onto the walls of her lungs so that later on, with every breath, she could exhale him.

  She wanted to be far away from all the trouble, and for Johnny to be far from it, and for both of them to be far from it together. Whenever she thought ahead to Krakow, her heart stopped in her chest, for it didn’t take her long to remember that after Krakow there was no more of anything. He was headed to Italy, and they to Spain. She sat and prayed for the train to break down, to become lost in the untrammeled wilderness. Johnny slept at the window across from her, next to Hannah. His head bobbed back and forth. With every lurch his feet bumped against Chloe’s feet. She wanted to cry, to park on a bench, to ask him to sing, to beg for faith that it would all work out all right in the end, for him, for her, for them. She wanted to climb into his sleeping lap and hold his chocolate head to her breasts. Oh God. You and me, Johnny Rainbow. What else is left? Nothing. Just you and me.

  He woke up after a particularly rough jolt, woke up refreshed and smiling. He stepped out for a minute, and when he returned, he was sociable, friendly, all his cares put away, all the dark days forgotten.

  “It’s amazing what a little sleep can do for a person’s disposition,” he said cheerfully.

  “Maybe that’s what’s wrong. Blake hasn’t slept,” Chloe quipped, and Blake opened his eyes, one of them bruised, and scowled at her as if she had betrayed him. She flushed and was guilty, but also wanted to giggle. She just wanted everything to be normal, to be like it was. She wanted to tickle Blake out of his bad mood that had lasted half of Europe, wanted to shake and joke Mason out of his stupor. Only poor Hannah’s plight continued to confound her. It was unsaveable by comedy.

  Blake asked if Johnny was ever going to give them their money. Johnny handed Blake almost six hundred dollars over Hannah’s lap.

  “We’re still short by more than five hundred,” said Hannah, who was always awake and alert when money was changing hands.

  “Whatever, Hannah, this is fine,” Blake said. “He doesn’t have to get us the rest. We’ll be fine.”

  “No, no,” said Johnny. “I know I’m a little short. I’ll get it for you by tomorrow night.”

  “How? By robbing somebody else?”

  “Nice,” Johnny said. His disposition soured.

  “Blake, stop!” That was Chloe.

  “Yeah, Blakie, I know you think you’re being funny, but you’re not funny,” said Hannah. “Johnny will sing.” She half-smiled, listing sideways against Johnny. “Johnny, I wish you could make everything else in the world all right by your singing, like you did today.”

  Well, yes, singing. Also by high-kicking a fiend in the throat. But by singing, too, sure.

  Amiably Johnny straightened Hannah out.

  “Some things you can’t fix with a song,” he said. “Not many. But some.”

  “That is so true,” said Hannah.

  Chloe watched Johnny watching Hannah. It was as if he knew.

  “Hey, dudes, dudettes, cheer up,” Johnny said with an unperturbed smile. “It has all worked out. We’re out of Warsaw. You still have nearly two weeks left. Everything is almost back to its old self again.”

  “Really?” Hannah said eagerly, and then more skeptically, “You think so?” As if he were a palmreader.

  “I said almost. Wait till you see Krakow. You’ll forget everything. I’ll take you to Oskar Schindler’s factory, if we have time. And the following day, after Auschwitz, maybe you’ll have a chance to visit Katowice.”

  “Won’t be time,” Blake said curtly.

  “Well, true. But if you have half a day, you should visit the great war museum there. There used to be a German prison camp in Katowice. For Soviet officers. Quite a place. Only photographs remain of it.”

  “I think we’re done with many things,” Blake said, “among them war museums.”

  “Except for Auschwitz.”

  Hannah groaned. “Do we have to? Blake is right. I feel like we’ve seen everything in Treblinka.”

  “Auschwitz is not a field,” Johnny said. “There are things there that once you see, you will never unsee.”

  “That’s true of many things on this joytrip,” Blake said.

  “You decide what’s best,” Johnny said, unbaited. “You have a long haul ahead of you to Barcelona. Krakow is a fantastic city, but you’re right, you might want to limit your time there and maximize your time in Spain.” He didn’t look at Chloe when he spoke, and she didn’t look at him. “When you’re in Barcelona, don’t forget to compare your travails to Saint Eulalia,” he went on. “Eulalia was a thirteen-year-old virgin who was put in a barrel by the Romans. The inside of the barrel was lined with knives, and they rolled this barrel around the city. Which is why the tortured girl is the city’s patron saint. Because her innocent blood runs on every street.”

  “Sometimes I feel a little like Saint Eulalia,” said Hannah.

  And Chloe thought, hmm, really? And when she glanced across at Johnny, she saw he was thinking it too. He knows! He absolutely knows. She almost smiled, but Blake was watching her, and she didn’t. She stared away into the darkness past the window.

  Why was it, she wondered, that in books love was the only thread stitching together a narrative, but in real life, it was only part of the tapestry? In real life there was hunger and irritation. There was rejoicing. There was anger, a desire to read, to sleep, to sing, a quest for revenge, physical ailments, much discomfort. Mosquito bites and runny noses, fainting at the worst times, missing trains and buses, being robbed, fighting in alleys, being stoned. There was terror, real and imagined, and a meadow full of ghostly dread. There was living with a baby inside you fathered by a man you didn’t love, riding trains next to another man you didn’t love.

  And there was love, too, galloping like a paladin through the boggy bayou. There was love.

  “Blake,” Hannah said, “why are you so grumpy? Is Johnny right? Do you just need a little nap and you’ll feel better?”

  “Johnny is not right.”

  “So what is it, then? Is it your face?”


  “It’s not my face. Not a lot to be happy about, that’s all.”

  Hannah said nothing. Hannah could hardly disagree. She and Chloe shared a blink, a dim nod.

  “Chloe,” Johnny said, “I noticed that Blake stopped calling you Haiku. Am I wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” She wouldn’t acknowledge either man with a glance that signaled admission or confession. And Blake didn’t justify his lack of teasing moniker usage, which only signaled both admission and confession to everyone. Good thing no one cared.

  “Chloe, did your mother ever tell you any scary Eastern fables as bedtime stories?” Johnny draped one leg over the other, stretching his arms across the long seat.

  “No. Do you mean fables from Pembina? Also no.”

  “Did you ever hear of a fable from the Orient about a traveler chased by a wild beast?”

  She shook her head. The others pretended not to hear, but everyone was listening.

  “Escaping from the beast, the man jumps into the deadfall, a hole in the ground dug out as a trap for bears. But at the bottom of this well, there is a dragon that opens its fiery jaws to swallow him. The traveler clings to the side of the ditch, afraid to climb out and be torn apart by the beast, and afraid to jump down, where the mouth of the dragon awaits him. He grabs on to a root in the earth and hangs on for his life. After a while his hands grow tired, and he knows that soon he will have to let go and surrender to the destruction above or below. Still he hangs on. And then he sees that two mice have settled on the stem of the twig he clings to and are going round and round, gnawing at it. Soon the twig will snap, and he will fall. Desperate and doomed, he hangs on and glances around. He sees nearby a few drops of honey on the leaves of the twig. Leaning sideways, he reaches them with his tongue, licks them and murmurs, ‘Ah! How sweet!’”

  Chloe, heart thumping, waited. The others waited, less patiently. Johnny smiled.

  “My grandfather,” he said, “tells this story once a year at Christmas dinner. He raises his glass in a toast and says to all forty of us, your mother and grandmother, the only woman I have shared my life with, is my drop of honey. Merry Christmas.”

  There was a silence filled with screeching wheels, moaning old women, belches, sniffles, and out of tune laments. Someone was crying as if they were dying.

  Hannah frowned. “What does that have to do with us, Johnny?”

  “Searching anywhere and everywhere for the honey, you don’t think it applies to us?” Turning his head, he locked eyes with Hannah.

  She looked quickly away. “Are you saying that everything happens for a reason?”

  “No,” he said. “But I am saying be careful where you look for it, because no one was made wretched in a brothel.” He paused. “Except maybe my father.” After a shrug, he went on. “And I mean more about the eternal questions. Where is the drop of honey in your life? Are you the honey in anyone else’s?”

  “I completely disagree with your premise,” Blake said. “I don’t think life is a beast above and a dragon below and gnawing mice. Life is walking through a meadow. Occasionally there may be rain.”

  “But is there honey, Blake?” asked Johnny.

  No one spoke for the rest of the ride.

  The train, slow as a sloth and yet not slow enough, finally pulled into Krakow station at six in the morning. With all of Blake’s travel guides gone, they had to rely on Johnny to find them a cheap, clean place to stay. He said he knew just the hotel, safe and reasonable, just off Krakow’s main square, the thirteenth century Rynek Glowny. He brought them to a hotel of roses on a historic street full of shops and cafés. It was a nice place, tall and narrow, in a corner building with a long gray lobby.

  “Thanks,” Blake said to Johnny just after Chloe had signed for the room. “That’s it then. We’ll see you.” Chloe’s sleep had been so brief, the previous day so fraught and long that for a moment she didn’t understand what Blake was saying to Johnny.

  Even Johnny didn’t understand. “Yes, you’ll see me upstairs,” he said.

  Blake shook his head. “No. This is where you and us part ways.” Glowering at each other, they stood with their suitcases in front of the morning clerk behind the tall desk. The young woman eyed them warily, the girls pale, the boys unshaven, all of them miserable. “You said yourself we don’t need you for Auschwitz,” Blake said to Johnny. “And we don’t have an extra day to go on an Oskar Schindler tour with you, no matter how much we’d like to. Auschwitz is all we have time for, I’m afraid. If you want, we can meet up with you later, or tomorrow, for the money.”

  Now it was Johnny’s turn to shake his head. “I’m out of here tonight,” he said. “I have to be in Italy by tomorrow morning.”

  Chloe, now sharply awake and aware, wanted to cry why, but managed to keep her mouth shut.

  “Whatever,” Blake said.

  “Bro, wait,” Mason said, pulling Blake away, and then quieter, “What are you doing?”

  Yanking his arm away from his brother, Blake shrugged. “Saying goodbye to him. What are you doing?”

  “He’s got to sleep somewhere, like us. What, we’re going to split up now, after everything?”

  “That is exactly right,” Blake said, enunciating every word. “We’re going to split up now. After everything.”

  “Hold on, Blakie,” Hannah said. She made a gesture to Johnny as if to say, don’t worry, it’ll be fine, he’ll calm down. “Be reasonable.”

  “I am being reasonable.”

  “Why should he rent a separate room, pay more money? It makes no sense.”

  Blake was quiet, breathing deeply. “It doesn’t matter to me if he sleeps on the street,” he said coldly. “We were robbed, Hannah. Because of him.” He turned to Johnny. “All of our things were stolen, because of you. We still don’t have over five hundred dollars of our money, because of you. Our irreplaceable things, the ones no money can buy, are gone forever—because of you. There is no fucking way I’m sleeping in the same room with you. I know you understand why.” Blake and Johnny stared mutely at each other. “Trouble is, they don’t.” He glanced at Mason. “He’s bound to open our throats, Hannah, and take off with what’s left, though granted, there isn’t much. He pretty much took everything.” And then Blake stared at Chloe.

  Chloe would never look at Blake again!

  Johnny stepped away, bowing his head in assent. “It’s fine,” he said. “I got stuff to do all day. Don’t forget, if you want to get to Auschwitz, the buses leave at 8 a.m. You don’t have much time to get ready. It’s almost seven.”

  “Wait,” Mason said.

  “Wait!” Hannah said.

  Chloe wanted to cry wait, but she couldn’t find her voice. This can’t be how it ends! He can’t just walk out of her life like this. No. No. Please. No.

  Blake stepped away too, from Johnny, from Hannah, from his brother, and he was already far from Chloe. “No more waiting,” he said. “You choose, friends, brother, girlfriends. Him or me. Because the two of us are not staying in the same room. That will never happen.”

  “Bro, it wasn’t his fault,” Mason said. “He just got mixed up with the wrong people. And he helped us. Give him a break.”

  “Yeah, Blakie, come on.”

  Chloe said nothing.

  “This is so fucked up,” Blake said, taking another step away from them. “Him. Or. Me.”

  Stepping forward, Johnny raised his hands in surrender. “It’s absolutely fine. Blake is right. You’re right, dude. I know how you feel.” Johnny looked sad and guilty, but he didn’t look away. “I’m really sorry for the trouble I caused. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I liked you guys and only wanted to have fun with you. No sweat. Really. Oh, and don’t even worry about meeting up with me later. As soon as I have it, I’ll leave five hundred dollars in an envelope behind the front desk. Is the room under Chloe Divine?” He cast her a gaze of stormy despair. “I’ll leave it for Chloe Divine, then.” He hugged Hannah. “Take care, girl,” he said to her. ??
?Don’t be too hard on yourself. But do try to hold yourself to some standards. If only so you can tell when you fail.”

  “What does that mean?” Hannah said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Blake said, but Johnny was already shaking Mason’s hand. He didn’t shake Blake’s hand, obviously. Nor did he come near Chloe.

  “Don’t forget to visit the Temple of Sagrada Familia,” he said to them. “It’s the most visited place in Spain.”

  “Yeah, we got it,” said Blake. “I read all about it in the books your chum stole from me.”

  “The temple rises nearly a thousand feet above sea level,” Johnny went on with a last tormented glimpse at Chloe. He nodded to her and smiled, hoisting the green duffel onto his shoulder. “As God made the mountain, the saying goes, so man made the structure. Be well, all of you. And so long.”

  30

  Instead of Auschwitz

  THEY DIDN’T GO TO AUSCHWITZ. THEY CLIMBED TO THEIR tiny room on the fourth floor, sat down for just a sec on their hard beds with the itchy blankets, and didn’t open their eyes until late afternoon.

  For a few absent-minded moments they teased each other for falling asleep before Hannah ran to the bathroom and Chloe remembered Johnny. Her chest and stomach and legs went numb, numb, numb, stabbed with a kind of Novocaine through which sorrow seeped. It was impossible! She didn’t give him her home address. She didn’t even know his real name! This couldn’t be. The teasing stopped.

  They showered and dressed, stared at the Krakow newspaper, hurried each other along, complained of life-ending hunger (not Hannah). Around six, they walked out of the hotel of roses, hair brushed, faces clean, denim clad, except for Chloe who, while brushed and clean, wore the coral minidress she’d bought in Warsaw, bought to wear for Johnny, while he was in Majdanek and she roamed the streets, trying to make herself look pretty. Here she was, with her bejeweled sandals and exposed bare legs and halter necklines, hair shining, lips glossy, and no Johnny. She wished for a cardigan to cover herself. All she had on was the sleeveless coral dress and her new small backpack that contained in it all the things she couldn’t part with. Except for him.