The Thunder of Giants Page 7

  “Elionor!” her father called. “Elionor!”

  With pained silence, Andorra turned away. It was just as Manuela had said: nobody wanted them there. Because she believed this, it was that much easier to leave.

  SIX

  A Clean Slate

  City of Los Angeles, 1937

  THEY ESCAPED DETROIT by train only to be delayed in Chicago—Rutherford the Traveler was eternally misreading timetables. The train for California didn’t leave until Saturday, forcing them to spend three awkward days in the Windy City, wandering down Michigan Avenue as if they were friends when they hardly knew each other at all. At last they boarded the City of Los Angeles, a great locomotive which held a compact world of domed dining cars, observation rooms, lounges, and sleeping berths that folded into the walls. Andorra did not have to suffer the indignity of riding coach, but the moment she saw the tiny sleeping car, she knew it would be a test of endurance. She had thirty-nine hours and forty-five minutes ahead of her; she would spend every minute packed as tightly as a wrapped gift.

  Rutherford’s brother-in-law had refused to pay for a flight. “I’ve waited for her for years,” said Chester Smith. “You think I want to risk putting her in one of those death traps?” Andorra thought the producer’s name made him sound like a little boy, but there was no youth in the man: he was an ancient sixty-six. He had made his fortune in silent film and was the star player in a dozen legends, from being the man who had discovered Errol Flynn to adopting the dog that had mothered Rin Tin Tin.

  “Most of the stories aren’t true,” said Rutherford. “He’s really his own myth. He’s a bit of a tyrant but he'll probably be a pussycat to you. For all he’s done, he’ll think you’re the peak of his career.”

  He laughed as he spoke. He was laughing at everything now; Rutherford the Traveler had become Rutherford the Victorious. After years of exile, he was finally returning home. He waxed poetic about the joys of the Pacific Ocean and the glorious food they would eat at places like the Brown Derby and the Armstrong-Schroeder Café. Andorra could only guess at the other joys Rutherford was looking forward to. He was, after all, on his way to a reunion with his wife. He struck her as being as loyal as her faithful Manuela and she imagined that until now he had been living a chaste and sexless life.

  The longest part of the ride took them through the Midwest, which was such a blight on the eyes that the porters suggested they pull down the shades. Omaha and Nebraska were wastelands where the faces of the people on the station platforms were wizened like rotted fruit. In places called Happy Creek and Bright Meadows, children ran alongside the train pleading for food. Somewhere in Utah, the train came to a violent stop because a man was lying facedown on the tracks—this was unique, Andorra learned, not because of the man, but because the conductor had actually stopped the train in time. At last, Andorra obeyed the porters and pulled down her shade; if she had wanted to see desperation, she would have stayed in Detroit.

  She tried to distract herself with books and magazines, but there was a brutal impatience to her thoughts. In a notebook stolen from Rowena, she turned to writing to her lost mother. It was a habit she had started after Elionor’s death, an embarrassing business made worse each time she dropped the letter in the mail. Rowena was forever recording her surroundings, and so was Andorra—but while Rowena dreamed of being the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, Andorra wanted only to be a girl who could speak to the past. The letters almost certainly ended up in some dead-letter office—she never provided a return address—but she wasn’t ready to stop any more than she was ready to stop carrying her husband’s blue shirt, which even now sat inside her blouse, carefully nestled against her skin.

  She wrote furiously in Catalan, and the train jostled her pen.

  This trip reminds me of when Tata and I went to America. We rode third-class on a ship called Amsterdam. I wasn’t nearly as big as I am now, but poor Tata grew thin from giving me all his food. He developed a terrible cough and became terrified the border people would think he was diseased, but when we got to the border, nobody was looking at him. You ever want to sneak into a country, bring a lady giant! No one noticed Tata was sick, and they let him in. It was the first time I was grateful for my size. Now I am again. The thing that shamed Noria and made you flee in terror when you saw me—that thing is now saving my life.

  She glanced over at Rutherford the Savior. She had thought he was asleep, but in fact he had been watching her as she worked. She recognized the look on his face: he was lost in wonder.

  “Sorry,” he said, glancing away.

  “Best to get it out of your system now.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Oh, sure. After two or three years, you won’t even notice.”

  He grinned. “Do you ever get used to it?”

  “Depends who does the staring.”

  They were in the dining car, and the coffee cups rattled as the train wound its way through Nevada. At least she thought it was Nevada; she had not dared to lift the shade. The clock was closing in on midnight, but neither of them could sleep. Rutherford lit a cigarette and sucked on it with the grandeur of a movie detective. God, he was small. And so compressed! He was sharper and cleaner than he had been in Detroit. They must have wired him money. There was something of her husband in Rutherford. Same eye color. A similarity in the face. She was surprised to find him handsome. Not devastatingly handsome, as her husband had been. More like casually handsome, as if even he was unaware.

  He said, “Can I ask you the question that everyone asks?”

  “Seven-eleven. Three-hundred and twenty-two pounds.”

  “And how often do you wish you were smaller?”

  “I don’t know. How often do you wish you were taller?”

  He laughed. “Touché.”

  “Can I ask you the question everyone asks?”

  “Five-two. About one hundred and twenty pounds.”

  Andorra smirked. What they must have looked like, sitting side by side! They were a tower and a shack, a mountain lording over a stone. “Listen,” she said. “While we’re revealing things, I think you should know: I tried performing once, a long time ago. It didn’t go well.”

  “You survived your screen test.”

  “That was just you and me. The truth is, I get terrible stage fight. My husband was the same way. He could deal with it, but I never could.”

  “He was an actor?”

  “Five-six. One hundred and fifty pounds. Devastating good looks.”

  “He must have been successful.”

  “Not really. The truth is, he was never very good.” She added sugar to her coffee and gave it a rhythmic stir. Dat. Dat-dat-dat-dat-dat. Dat …

  “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,” sang Rutherford.

  “What?”

  “You were playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  She glanced down at the spoon in wonder. “My husband liked baseball. The way he talked of it, he could have played for the Tigers.”

  “Can I ask how he died?”

  Oh, that? I killed him.

  “Some men beat him up. We think they were trying to rob him. They roughed him up, and he hit his head.”

  “We should change the subject.”

  “Yes, we should.” She fought to find a new topic. “Was Anna Swan ever in Halifax?”

  “When she was young. They took her there on some sort of tour.”

  “My great-grandmother claimed she touched a lady giant in Halifax.”

  “What do you know! It was probably her. Not a lot of lady giants in the—”

  There was a sudden jolt, and the scream of the breaks swallowed his voice. Andorra flew forward. The legs of the dining car table buckled, and Rutherford’s ashtray rolled to the floor. The train ground to a stop. She and Rutherford exchanged looks. Another suicide on the tracks?

  A portly porter ran into the dining car. “Just a small fire in the engine room,” he said. “They’re putting it out now. There’s no
reason for alarm.”

  Rutherford wrung his hands. “We better not be late getting in. You’re already slated to meet some important folk tomorrow at four o’clock.”

  But Andorra would not keep that appointment: when the sun rose the following morning, the City of Los Angeles was still in the middle of Nevada, two miles from the town of Caliente. Rutherford, whose anxiety had not allowed him to get a drop of sleep, was belligerent when he finally tracked down the portly porter as he waddled through the train, unhappily mopping the sweat from his brow.

  “How long until we get under way?” demanded Rutherford.

  “No way to tell, sir,” said the porter. “A few folk are walking into town to send telegrams. You may want to do the same.”

  Rutherford removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Is it really so bad if we’re late?” asked Andorra. “Can’t we just meet the men at the studio another time?”

  “Some of the studio heads are headed to Europe,” said Rutherford. “We would need their approval for the budget. If we miss them, the whole film could be delayed.” He sprang to his feet, returning the glasses to his face. “I’m going to find the telegram office. Why don’t you come? You can send a wire home.”

  Andorra wasn’t really interested in writing home. She was still smarting from the cold attitudes that had surrounded her departure: the twins’ hurried embrace, her father’s biting words. But she was equally tired of the cramped quarters and a ceiling that brushed the top of her head. She followed Rutherford into the desert air, passing the portly porter, who goggled at her even as he reminded them to return as soon as they could.

  The Nevada air burned the inside of her throat. Rutherford was a terrible sweater; for such a small man, he produced a rainfall that trickled down his cheeks. She was a terrible sweater, too, and the addition of her husband’s blue shirt didn’t help. Secreted beneath her blouse, it was another layer that locked in the heat. Discreetly, she reached through her buttons to shift the shirt around. She didn’t dare take it out, not wanting to suffer through the explanation of why she had a man’s shirt under her own.

  Caliente proved to be the sort of small town where all the necessities could be found on a single main strip. Andorra immediately began to draw the eye, after which it wasn’t hard to find the telegram office—people practically leapt at the opportunity to help the sweaty giant and her equally sweaty companion find their way. The telegram office was inside Gower’s Drug Mart, a tiny piece of heaven, thanks to its being “air-cooled to perfection,” just as the sign in the window claimed.

  They each stood dripping at the postal counter, lording over a blank telegram slip. Rutherford wrote with a fury—he seemed to not care about the expense—but Andorra paused over hers, the pen sliding around in her large sweaty hand. For a woman who never stopped writing to her dead mother, she found herself at a loss for words. She toyed with what to say but felt her power over language slipping away. So she turned to Shakespeare—he is our voice, she thought, whenever we don’t know what to say.

  TRAIN DELAYED.

  “I AM EVEN THE NATURAL FOOL OF FORTUNE!”

  She sent the message even though it left her unhappy. But why should she be surprised that she couldn’t write a telegram? She hadn’t known what to say to her family in two years, six months and—what was it now? Fifteen days? Sixteen? The train ride was playing havoc with her mourner’s clock. But she still felt the same gnawing fear that had gripped her ever since her husband’s death, that unwavering certainty that she might, at any moment, reveal her crime. So she had reverted to silence. Now it was a habit. When it came to the family, she could scold, discipline, and command. But simply talk? That talent had left months ago.

  “We’d better leave tomorrow,” Rutherford remarked. “That’s all I’m going to say. I’ll push the train if I have to. Odysseus took ten years to reach Penelope—I’m not nearly as patient.”

  “I haven’t seen my home in years,” said Andorra.

  “Then it was never your home,” said Rutherford the Philosopher. “If it was your home, you’d have gone back.”

  They headed back for the door, but she was loath to step back into Nevada’s inglorious heat. Rutherford seemed to hesitate, too, pausing by the entrance to wipe the sweat from beneath his glasses. At the drugstore counter, a swarthy soda jerk was fixing phosphates and ice cream sundaes. “Do we have time?” she asked, motioning to the counter. Rutherford looked like he was about to object, but then he too was taken by the snow-white balls of vanilla as they dropped neatly into a glass. The soda jerk—and everyone else—marvelled at Andorra as she took her place at the counter. She had to sit sideways on the stool, and when her ice cream float came, she had to concentrate to make sure the glass didn’t slip from her hands. As for Rutherford, he ordered two floats, one of which he tried to swallow in a single gulp.

  “Do you like being a talent scout?” she asked.

  “It’s a little piece of hell. All you do is make promises you know they won’t keep.”

  “Like the one you made me?”

  He shook his head. “You’re different. You’re not going out there to be an actress. I promised you one film, and you can bet your last dollar it will be made. If it wasn’t for Anna, Chester Smith wouldn’t even be here. She’s the reason his parents met. That’s what the movie’s about, you know.”

  “I thought it was about Anna Swan.”

  “It’s about how Anna Swan brought Chester’s parents together. Everyone loves a love story.” Rutherford checked his watch and then took another long gulp of his phosphate. “Chester Smith isn’t his real name. That’s just his nom de film. His real name is Gavin Clarke Junior. Gavin Clarke Senior knew Anna in Tatamagouche. But I’ll tell you the other reason they want to make this picture, if you promise to keep it between us. My wife’s a foundling, but nobody knows it. After having Gavin Junior, their mother became a little touched. Not insane, just feeble. She died in an asylum.”

  “What does that have to do with Anna Swan?”

  “The official story, or rather the official unofficial story, is that my wife was found in an outhouse.”

  “And what’s the unofficial unofficial story?”

  “That her real mother is Anna Swan.”

  Andorra nearly choked on her soda. It bubbled up into her nose, and she quickly grabbed a napkin to cover her face. “Is that even possible?”

  Apparently it was. At the time his wife was discovered, Rutherford explained, her parents had been living in Seville, Ohio—the same town where Anna retired toward the end of her life. The couples had been friends, making it easy for the Foundling to spin a compelling fantasy: perhaps not surprisingly, she had seen the whole thing like a movie in her head. Fade in on the Giantess who wants children. Cut to the Giant Husband who keeps giving her children that die. Dissolve to Another Man who finally gives the Giantess what no one else can. Quick cut to him “finding” a baby in an outhouse.

  “Is there any evidence that Anna Swan was pregnant a third time?”

  “No, but so what? There’s not much evidence of anything except a tiny handful of the truth. My wife thinks she was given to the Clarkes after Anna’s husband guessed the truth. Anna’s first two children died because they were enormous. The moment Anna gave birth to a normal child, her husband probably knew he had been betrayed. At least, that’s how my wife sees it.”

  “What does Chester think of all this?”

  “Like me, he has decided that silence is the better part of”—and again a sound drowned out Rutherford’s voice. He was destined to always be interrupted by that Hollywood-bound train. This time, it was the whistle. Faint and distant but all too clear.

  “Son of a bitch!” said Rutherford Simone.

  They were gone in a moment, leaving only money and half-finished sodas in their wake. What a sight they were as they raced through the desert wind! Rutherford the small, Andorra the immense! They weren’t the only ones tearing through the town.
Other passengers ran, too, and the stampede seemed to delight the locals, who stopped in the street to gape and point. But in the race to the train, Rutherford and Andorra were easily left behind. He had short legs and was out of shape; as for Andorra, she was too cumbersome to ever be fast. Each movement was more like a thunderous hop.

  At last, full of pants and grunts, they broke the crest of a hill and saw the train in the distance. Other passengers were already leaping on board. Then, just ahead of her, Rutherford toppled over his ankle and crashed to the ground. He rolled twice and came to a stop. Another blast from the train whistle, another warning of what was to come.

  She stopped over Rutherford the Heap. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Go. Run.”

  So she did, and Rutherford, hobbling a little, was soon once again at her side. As they closed in on the train, she caught sight of the portly porter standing near the back of the car. He was watching them with a great big grin on his face, wide as the desert itself.

  His voice reached her. “You didn’t need to run. Don’t you think we’d notice if you weren’t on board?”

  His laughter taunted them even as Rutherford and Andorra, nearly exhausted, reached the edge of the train, holding the stitches in their sides and sucking Nevada’s cooked air into their lungs. Rutherford’s pants were torn, and his face was full of sand and grime. As for Andorra, her brazier had snapped open, and her hair had come loose. She ran her hand through the tangle of her blouse to tuck it back into her skirt, and that was when the hot breath died in her throat. Her hands scrambled even as she glanced back at the desert behind her. Nothing. It was true. The blue shirt was gone.

  “All aboard!” said a voice from the front of the train. And that whistle went again.

  “Wait,” said Andorra. “Can you wait?”

  The portly porter frowned. “We gotta get a move on, miss, now that everyone’s here. What’s the trouble?”