Page 20 of The Harvey Girls
Fourteen
Charlotte tried to convince herself that this was good, this strange, remote place.
It wasn’t “high iron,” as the railroad men called it: the main line, where it would be terribly easy for a passenger looking for someone to get off, conduct their search, then board again and repeat the process at the next stop.
Low iron , she thought, staring out the train window at the endless desiccated bramble of scruffy-looking pines, branches reaching at odd angles as if uncertain about the exact location of the sky. About as low as one can go.
She knew about the Grand Canyon, of course.
Copies of a painting by famed western artist Thomas Moran often hung in post offices.
She’d heard of people going on a Southwest tour when the standard Grand Tour of Europe became old hat.
It had never held any particular interest for her.
From the pictures, the canyon seemed to have only its vastness to recommend it, as if size alone was an acceptable selling point.
She imagined gazing into it, thinking My, it certainly is big , and then facing many grueling days of travel to return home.
Alternatively, she could simply leave her house on Beacon Hill, take a twenty-minute stroll down to Boston Harbor, and look out at the ocean.
It was big, too, and she’d be back by lunch.
Why did I ever agree to leave home? A question she’d asked herself more times than she cared to remember in the last two years.
The train slowed and began to curve into a settlement unlike anything she’d ever seen.
To her right, the train rolled past several rustic buildings made of logs or stone, surprisingly large, like those new Lincoln Log toys, but made for giants.
On the left, other structures sat at the top of a slight incline, most obscured by trees until the train had come almost to a complete stop.
There above her, an enormous brown building dominated the skyline.
El Tovar Hotel , she thought. My newest prison. At least this one has a view.
She stepped down onto the platform and stared up at the depot. More logs. For goodness’ sake, what was this obsession with dead tree trunks? Had the architect been a lumberjack on the side?
Porters and baggage handlers scurried for trunks and suitcases as passengers patted the wrinkles and dust from their clothes, exclaimed over the rustic grandeur (an oxymoron if she’d ever heard one), and were generally all aquiver to see it.
“It” being the canyon, of course. A gouge in the earth with a river at the bottom. Charlotte was not aquiver in the least. To the contrary, she suddenly felt as if her veins had been filled with sand.
This was where she would spend her days until…
when? Until she’d saved up enough money to travel on to some even more remote place?
Until either she or Simeon died? Because she knew with a leaden certainty that he would feed his obsession until he’d found and captured her.
She might be able to beat him at this deadly little game of hide-and-seek…
or she might not. And either way, what was the point?
What is the actual point to any of this?
The thought stopped her cold.
Someone jostled by her, and her gaze instinctively flicked upward. It was then that she noticed the only other motionless being in all the commotion around her. A man. Standing just beyond the passengers near the depot building. Eyes trained right on her. Waiting.