Mercy Train by Rae Meadows Read Free Book Online Page A

now?
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    Iris awoke on the couch, her book fanned across her chest, a black, meaty fly buzzing in a circle around the room. Her joints ached. Her head felt too large for her body, blood pounding behind her eyes, and she felt she could not lift it. She lay for a moment trying to fill her lungs, knowing she was late for her pills by the way her skin hurt.
    She had awakened thinking of her mother at her father’s funeral, one of the last times Iris had seen her. It had been so windy at the graveside. That was the most visceral memory Iris had of that day in 1965. She had to keep one hand around her hair, to keep it from whipping across her face, and the other on her skirt. She couldn’t hear the old Lutheran minister’s slow, hushed words above the rush of air, the rattle of poplar leaves. For such a stoic man, her father sure knew how to make an exit.
    Iris stood next to Glenn—solid as a tree trunk in his dark suit as leaves whirled around him on that early fall afternoon. Her mother stood alone, dry-eyed and stolid, her hands clasped in front of her dress, an ill-fitting black jumper she’d bought in town the day before. Glenn tried to urge Iris forward.
    â€œIt’s her husband’s funeral. She’s your mother,” he said, right into her ear so the wind wouldn’t carry his words away.
    â€œIt’s not her way,” Iris said, dried salty streaks crisscrossing her face. She knew how uncomfortable all the attention and well wishes and country hugs were for her mother. She knew she wanted to be alone.
    Iris grieved for her father, but it had been so long since she’d been home or even talked to him—he didn’t talk on the phone, his wife acting as the go-between—he’d been a distant figure for most of her adult life, and it felt like she had been mourning him since she left Minnesota. Later, at the farmhouse, she traded tight smiles with old neighbors as they circled the dining room table laden with hotdishes and lutefisk brought by the Sons of Norway. Mrs. Ingebretson, the ancient church secretary, had made a kringle. Iris had bought two apple pies on the drive up from Chicago, which sat untouched on the sideboard. She overheard Glenn talking to the mailman, who’d asked, “What will she do now?”—as if being alone made one’s life stop, which annoyed Iris even as she knew it was a genuine concern—and went looking for her mother. She waded through the rooms of the house she’d grown up in, glided through them really, knowing the layout in the memory of her muscles, and then she ventured outside behind the house. The wind had died down some, the day mild and clear with the smell of woodsmoke, old hay, and pig shit in the air. She found her mother in rubber boots, a large canvas coat over her mud-splattered dress, raking out one of the pig stalls.
    â€œMother?” Iris stepped on her toes in her pumps, trying to avoid the soft rain-soaked patches in the yard. “Did you get something to eat?”
    â€œI don’t know why I bother with this,” she said. “He’s just going to kick it all up again as soon as I let him back in.” She stopped, leaned the rake against the wall, and brushed off her hands. The two pigs snorted, and then one of them, pinker and hairier than the other, threw its weight into the pen divider. “Elsie, you behave.” She looked squarely at Iris. “I wish you’d brought your boy. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen him.”
    â€œHe’s with Glenn’s mother,” Iris said. “I thought it best.”
    Her mother nodded and wiped her wrist across her forehead. “I have something for him. A scarf. Make sure I give it to you before you leave.”
    â€œOkay. Do you want to come inside?”
    â€œLord, no,” she said.
    Iris rubbed her arms, aware that in her chic black sheath she looked profoundly out of