J'ai trouvé la caille, assise sur son nid
J'ai trouvé la caille, assise sur son nid
Je lui marchai sur l'aile et la lui rompis
Au chant de l'alouette je veille et je dors
J'écoute l'alouette et puis je m'endors
I found the quail lying on her nest,
I found the quail lying on her nest,
I stepped on her wing and I broke it.
To the chant of the lark, I'm awake and I sleep,
I listen to the lark then I fall asleep,
Half and hour and counting, in the open air, on the platform under a torrent of warm rain. The short rimmed fedora kept his golden-rimmed, thin, round eyeglasses functional, with only the occasion drop racing and snaking over the lenses, with kaleidoscopic randomness. Michel could manage the flow of water by tilting his head forward, remaining still and making peace with the elements. The doctor was late. The Boston station was an explosion of light and motion. He clasped their tickets tightly in his left gloved hand, buried deep in his pocket. The Red Wing, the night train counterpart of the Alouette, destination Quebec City. They had business in the morning. If the doctor would oblige him with his appearance, they might still make the train, which would join with the Connecticut Yankee to complete the trip. Michel was in no sense upset and certainly not angry, rather enjoying the collective madness of humans and their plans. The doctor was always late so it was simply a matter of looking as impressive and determined as possible, drawing poetic drama out of a moment that would frustrate a lesser traveler. It hurt just as much to look determined as to look beaten and broken, and with his ulster overcoat keeping him mostly, or moistly, warm and dry, the choice was easy. The coat was rather long and roomy, and double breasted with his preferred eight buttons, all done up. He dropped his suitcase in his right hand, gently beside him, so that it touched his leg. Thus freed, he tightened the adjustable half belt. “Now would be a good time doctor.”
The Alouette was a passenger train jointly operated by the Boston and Maine Railroad and the Canadian Pacific Railway between Montreal, Quebec and Boston, Massachusetts. Michel and the doctor had arrive on the Alouette only the day before. Again, on “business”. The Alouette began service on April 26, 1926, operating on a daytime schedule with coach and parlor car service. For passengers originating from Boston on the night train, like our friends, the counterpart north was the Red Wing (either#325/#302). Michel noted it was the #302 this time. This car featured the open-air platform and illuminated drumhead. Given the late departure, and inclement weather, a warm cabin and book would be adequate amusement.
“Terribly sorry!”
Michel responded, “de rien”, then corrected himself, “no trouble!” He bent over to pull up and reposition his bag, the victim of the offence. The back of the gentlemen, and what was almost surely a black Inverness cape, melted in between two young shapely women, evidently in their early 20s, by the contrast been the blood red of their lips and those alabaster cheeks — all that Michel could make out — dressed in identical black midi dresses, evidently in mourning. “Sisters?” They folded around the gentlemen like cabaret dancers, caressing each shoulder of his cape as he passed, their faces mostly concealed by black silk-ribboned cloche hats. “He’s in a hurry?” Michel glanced over towards the rear car of the train and still no sign of the doctor, but was amused to see a large exposed oak coffin lumbering and rattling towards him on a rolling dolly with one bad wheel, manned by two sodden attendants. “Well, that explains that,” observing that the ladies in mourning were now nowhere to be seen. “They are where I should be … boarding”.
Draped over his left black Saint Laurent Oxford shoe rested a flyer. Michel bent down to pick it up, shook it and raised his nose to adjust his sights: “Boston and Maine Railroad! Illustrated Descriptive Pamphlet containing complete maps have been issued under the following titles and will be mailed upon receipt of 2 cent in stamps for each book …” at which point the sheet severed in two from the impact of a gush from his fedora. Michel tossed the top half away and read on: “All Along Shore, Lakes and Streams, Fishing and Hunting, Among the Mountains, Southern New Hampshire, Merrimack Valley, Valley of the Connecticut and Northern Vermont, Summer Tourist Book Giving List of Tours and Rates, Hotel Boarding House List…” He thought, “That would be lovely in the fall.” North America is endowed with such splendid trees, music to the eyes, which is why Michel loved fall the best, when the forests of the northern and eastern areas, the maples, oaks, and sassafras of the country, display colors that are unsurpassed, leaves being the “flowers of autumn”.
“Mr. Caron?”
He turned, and was startled by the seemingly illuminated face of one of the mourning sisters, deep green eyes radiating darkly in the shadows of the cloche hat. “Not a drop of water on those cheeks,” he thought, regaining a smile. He was right about their age, about 20. She had an elegant beauty close up, the kind he liked, with a gracefully designed nose, distinct, piercing, not overly broad, and not so small as to suggest immaturity. Her neck was thin and easily circumnavigated with two hands and little effort. There was not a speck of white on the whole of her person, save her evidently over-powdered skin, and save again for the thin sliver of what was likely the white of her blouse under the dress emerging only slightly. Proximity suggested familiarity, but he had never seen her before. Revulsion will cause you to withdraw from a nose positioned only three inches from yours, but Michel was not revolted and remained still, with a slight grin, leaning inwardly and imperceptibly.
“You SHOULD be boarding!” she giggled, “We all have!” Michel noted the coffin must be aboard. She tore away from the suggestion of a locked gaze before it was in fact locked, or even fully studied and before even completing her words, cutting through space like a school girl, skipping and swaying, up kicking her heals, with that particular motion females make in a dress or skirt that restricts the free movement of the thighs, across the platform, onwards towards a graceless hop onto the first step, remarkably awkward under the circumstances, catching both hand rails, her elbows bending clumsily, crouching as if to prevent a fall backwards, having perhaps under estimated the leap, pausing, turning to expose only the right cheek and blood red lips, but not the green eyes. Frozen, to accept the gaze of others, for what must have been a milli-second, then vanishing into the car, the space she having previously occupied filled by other less captivating passengers rushing aboard. Her laughter had to that point been unbroken, fading and eventually replaced by an acid, vinaigry train whistle, and the hiss of steam and rush of bodies, or rather hats, coats, disembodied arms, legs, torsos, faces and voices.
“Sir!”
“Oh the undertaker I presume?” The attendant was a slight person, thin, no more than 5’9”, in tight pants and jacket with his cap in hand, fully exposing the head and face to the elements. Michel noticed the thin moustache gave clear evidence of excessive grooming and attention that would occupied by far most of his time that morning at the mirror. “Sir, I’ve reserved a compartment for you and the doctor. It’s in this coach here, the day coach,” pointing back, “just ahead of the luggage van. It’s where we take care of the overflow.”
“Good, but I may be travelling alone as it seems. Could you take my bag? I want to wait a bit longer for the doctor.”
“Certainly. It will be in compartment G.”
“Yes. Much obliged.”
Michel turned back to have his view of the rear of the train blocked by a rather large, and wide, blue capped coach attendant, checking his watch, as the vinegar of the whistle sounded again. He leaned back, “Ready to go, Sir.”
“I suppose so.”
“We always leave on time.”
Michel boarded slowly, pausing to look out an open window. “AH!” There was the doctor running, brief case in hand. “No luggage?”
“Come on, I have a compartment!”
Gasping for air as he leapt aboard. “Bloody taxi left with my luggage in the boot. Bloody idiot. I chased him two blocks I’ll need to telegram when when get to Quebec”. The doctor hunched over, coughed violently, as his bowler hat fell to the steps below. Michel caught it by the rim on the first bounce and smiled.
The Red Hawk was moving at this point, steam hissing, the chiming of metal, entering into its natural rhythm of speed and motion. The pair moved silently to compartment G. “Excuse me madam, pardon me,” Michel worked his way in and threw himself into the seat. “Truly remarkable,” blurted out the doctor, as he tossed his coat carelessly in ball into the corner. “It won’t dry that way,” mumbled Michel.
“Oh never mind, we call it the ‘arithmetic pill’.
“Nonsense,” said Michel, “There is no pill for bad behaviour or stupidity.”
“That’s what I thought, that’s what I thought too! But there is no denying it. We’ve looked at the data and it’s true! This could revolutionize our understanding of right and wrong, the good and the bad, the healthy and the sick…. truly!”
Michel rolled his eyes. The doctor had always been one for hyperbole, but his heart was in the right place. To be sure, it was never about money or fame. He could already have both by now, and not find himself riding the Red Hawk to Quebec, soaked to the bone with lost luggage, and accompanied by a travelling companion who thought very little of his work, assuming of course there wasn’t some money to be made. “One cannot ignore a business opportunity, should it arise.”
The doctor grew up in Providence. As a child, his seven-year-old sister fell ill with encephalitis. Their parents were of considerable means, his father being a physician, and able to convert their estate into a hospital with a full-time doctor, nurses and other staff. The doctor had witnessed first hand the futility of the efforts of these medical practitioners of the day to alleviate his sister’s horrible and lingering suffering. She died at age 27, physically and mentally devastated by the disease. As a pediatrician who had studied neurology during his residency at “Baby’s Hospital” in Boston, he became director of the hospital. He conducted extensive, neurological workups on children, including developing the pneumoencephalography, a study which often led to severe headaches — which the doctor assumed resulted from the loss of spinal fluid. In an attempt to stimulate the choroid plexus to produce spinal fluid, he turned his attention to a curious compound called Benzedrine, the effects of which were little known. Benzadrine was first synthesized in 1887 and was available without prescription as a decongestant inhalant under the trade name Benzedrine. The doctor’s research and anecdotal evidence indicated it may be useful in combating the pneumoencephalographic headaches. He politely requested permission to administer the drug to the children to address the headaches, which requests were politely rejected, for reasons that are not clear.
The doctor chose to administer the drug to twenty of his patients anyway, without consulting their parents and without approval of the board of directors. Considering the drug was available without a prescription, he thought nothing of it. The tests were a complete failure. Benzedrine had no impact at all on the crippling headaches suffered by the children. When the unauthorized trial came to the attention of the Board, and then to the parents, a chain of meetings, discussions and inquiries ensued that ended with the doctor’s resignation. A complaint was made to the college, which resulted in the doctors license suspension. The doctor determined that this was an opportune time for his sabbatical.
“I tell you sir, what I have seen is truly astounding! Amazing beyond belief,” spoken with the doctor’s usual total indifference to his precarious situation. The doctor had received a confidential communication from a friend, Emma, a nurse, to return to Boston, with all due haste. He had asked Michel to join him. Michel agreed on the understand they could return via Quebec. Emma showed him the data. “It was incontestable. The teachers and nurses, who cared for the children, had recorded that the patients who had received Benzedrine in MY trial showed an improvement both in behavior and in academic performance. This was apparent even to the children themselves, the ones I interviewed. They had even begun to call the medication “arithmetic pills” as a result of the improvement in their academic performance. Imagine that, ‘arithmetic pills!”
“Utter nonsense,” Michel rolled his eyes again, but then thought better of it. “Well, why not then,” pausing, “there is your chance …yes why not? I know some people in Montreal you can talk to. Perhaps you can continue your research there and publish. Who knows, there may be an opportunity, with a little luck, for an early reinstatement of your license to practice medicine. Who knows?”
“Who knows indeed,” muttered the doctor drifting off in thought.
“At the very least, the “arithmetic pill” sounds like an opportunity doesn’t it,” Michel meditated. “If only it were true.” Michel tossed the idea around several times, but kept coming to the same conclusion, that the notion of medicating children to improve their math skills, or their behaviour, or attitude, or anything else, is so utterly absurd, so fiendish, so beyond the boundaries of morality, that such a thing would never be permitted in a civilized society, never happen I am sure.”
“Oh, I almost forgot to mention, they rolled a coffin past me on the platform. There is at least someone else on the train worse off than you!”
The doctor froze: “a body!”
“Dead serious.”
“Oh ‘Tonio! Voyons donc! We have to get going. Stop admiring your car, papa.” Antonio, paced slowly around his 1935 Ford deluxe convertible, oblivious to the rain; oblivious to his two daughters in their their fur coats standing still behind him; oblivious to his wife smiling proudly next to him, also in wet fur. He had worked hard to save those $750 dollars! The four-door convertible sedan had a trunk and windshield wipers, which would come in handy tonight. “Can we at least pull up the roof, the seats are already soaked? We have to get to church!”
Irene the youngest of the two siblings got in first, and squeezed over to the left-rear passenger seat, her sister Claudette snuggling in beside her. “Oh, let me drive!” said Jeanne his wife. “Oh, why not,” said Antonio, “It’s only 15 minutes.” They backed out of the darkly lit driveway in the shade of the oak trees, and then off down St. Jean Baptiste, the wipers hammering out of steady chorus to the chatter within. Irene was starting grade 11 this year. Claudette was off to normal school. She was going to be teacher like her maman. As they approached Vanier, the last rays of light disappeared behind the horizon as the rain fell more intensely. “I can’t see a thing!” “Go slow.”
The car suddenly heaved up as if hitting a pot hole, tossing Irene and Claudette out of their seats. But this was no pot hole. “Oh, we are at the tracks',” commented Antonio matter-of-factly, as the vinegar shriek of the train whistle coldly pierced the night. “KEEP GOING!” But Jeanne braked hard, instinctively, terrified by the sound, bringing the sedan to a dead stop across the tracks. “Back up!” yelled Antonio as the girls in the back went mute, the car invaded by a eruption of light.
Jeanne put the car in reverse, but hit the gas with such force that the wheels spun and the sedan remained frozen, suspended in time. “FORWARD!” Switching gears at the inopportune moment the car finally lurched back and off the tracks. Jeanne succeeded only in having the car leap forward violently to a deadly stop, as she hit the brakes for the last time, her mind lost as if in a dream where you cannot run, cannot move, cannot breathe, cannot get away. The sedan came to its final rest perfectly placed across the tracks as the Red Hawk slammed into her passenger side, in a perfect T-bone, driving the mangled carcass 300 yards forward, to the howling of braking train steel, to its final resting place, driven into the gravel along the tracks.
“That’s four more coffins,” commented Michel, standing by the edge of the train, hanging onto the railing, as he and the doctor looked over towards the would-be rescuers and what remained of the sedan — through a fog of their cigarette smoke.
“One of them is alive! Is there a doctor!”
“Here! Here!” The doctor ran forward through the lantern lights and haze and engine steam, and panicked screams, and the night air, sopped as if in a mix of vinegar and terror.
Three simple wood coffins on the station platform. Each perfectly spaced, six feet apart, each perfectly parallel to the other, with one anonymous dark figure standing behind each, like a sentinel. That was the photo on page one of the Tribune. The headline read, “Three Family Members Dead in Tragic Train Accident.” The subheading noted, “Youngest daughter remains in critical condition, but expected to live.”
This is a work of fiction. Although its form, content and narrative may at times suggest real people, real documents and records, autobiography or that the work is historical non-fiction, it is a product of the imagination. Space and time have been rearranged to suit the convenience of the book, and with the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.
to be continued ….