Counting down (feel free to visualize sheets flying off a day-by-day desk calendar) toward the release of What Wakes the Heart -- so here's a third excerpt. If you missed the first or second excerpts, just scroll down or follow the links.
As this excerpt from Chapter 3 begins, Susannah Shepard is traveling by train from her home town of St. Louis to Cowbird Creek, where she will be the one-room schoolhouse's first teacher.
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She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, hoping she might be able to nap. Surely the chugging of the engine, the clicking of the railway ties, could lull her to sleep. That steady rhythm . . .
. . . reminded her of watching a steamboat recede down the Mississippi River, its big red paddle wheel going round and round, churning the water into a wide wake, while up on the deck carefree people in white linen and straw hats listened to the music of a brass band, the sun winking off its instruments . . . .
She fished for her handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and almost jumped to hear a knock at the entrance to the car. Hastily she picked up her book, abandoned on her lap, and called up a smile as a well-dressed gentleman peeked in. He hesitated, looking at her intently, before saying, “I beg your pardon. The travelers in the car I occupied previously are filling it with enough smoke that I began to find it hard to read. May I intrude?”
Susannah gestured to the bench across from her. “Of course! And it’s a pleasure to meet a fellow reader. What are you reading?”
The man reached into the small satchel he was carrying and produced a new-looking copy of Finney’s Sermons on Gospel Themes. “I find train travel lends itself to contemplative reading matter.”
Susannah could not help but find it faintly disappointing that the gentleman had not chosen something purely literary. It might have been something she’d read, and if not, she could have asked him how well he liked it and whether he would recommend it. She smiled politely and returned to her novel, Hoosier Schoolmaster, which she hoped would provide useful (if vicarious) experience as well as entertainment.
She soon forgot her companion, and indeed her surroundings, in the story, though in shifting on the bench to relieve an aching hip, she happened to notice him withdraw a pipe from his waistcoat pocket and then hastily shove it back out of sight. She wondered briefly at the sensitivity that would send a smoker out of a smoke-filled car, but the thought did not occupy her long.
She had reached a rather exciting scene when she noticed a change in the sound of the engine, and then the slowing motion of the view out the window. They must be approaching Cowbird Creek’s station. Suddenly, she found it as difficult to breathe as if she were in the smoke-filled car the gentleman had fled.
The small railroad depot at which they were arriving looked as if a simple wooden structure had been updated to resemble a standard design, as a less expensive alternative to new construction. The roof, newer than the building itself, had the steep pitch of the Victorian style, and some white gingerbread trim had been nailed to the tops of the dark red walls. As the squeal of brakes filled her ears and the train came to a stop, her companion stood up and gestured toward the upper shelf on which her case lay. “May I fetch your belongings down for you?”
The offer was more civil than she had been, declining conversation to bury herself in her book. “Thank you very much. That would be most helpful.” She expected that he would hand the case to her as soon as he retrieved it, but instead, he gestured for her to precede him out of the car and trotted along behind.
Looking ahead to the platform, she saw a man in perhaps his early forties with brown wavy hair, a neatly trimmed beard, a clean frock coat, and well-polished boots. He caught her eye, smiled in a friendly way, and bowed. That must be Dr. Joshua Gibbs, town doctor, who had placed the ad she had seen. Susannah carefully descended the iron stairs and turned back to thank her fellow passenger and take her case — but in an instant, he had pushed past her, almost knocking her off the bottom stair, and was walking briskly toward the back of the train.
Susannah gasped, which delayed by precious seconds her ability to cry out — but when she could, she outright yelled. “STOP THAT MAN! Please! He took my case!”
Dr. Gibbs, and a portly man who appeared to be with him, looked around to follow her pointing finger. The fact that her hand was shaking may have made their task more difficult. But a younger man, muscular, who had been helping the porters unload people’s trunks, looked up at her shout. He spotted the thief, who was moving more quickly than anyone else on the platform, and ran after him. Susannah watched with her hands clasped tight, still on the bottom step until the conductor sounded the warning whistle. Dr. Gibbs came forward to take her hand and help her down, an attention she would have considered quite unnecessary if she had not been trembling.
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