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“Thank you. Much obliged,” Bill said.
Henry swallowed a bite of sandwich. “Say, why do they call you George if your name is Nelson?”
Nelson snorted. “Lot of these passengers don’t bother to ask our names. They just call us all George, as in Mr. George Pullman, owner of these trains. It’s become, you might say, a bit of a rueful joke we all share.”
Memphis’s jaw tightened. Henry could feel his anger across the table. Though Nelson hadn’t said it, he understood that the passengers in question were white like him.
“We take their tips, though. Their money’s green enough,” Nelson said and winked. “All right now. We’ll bring you whatever you need. Just try to stay in here. I’ll look in on you later,” he said and shut the door behind him.
Memphis and Bill sat on one side, Henry on the other. Henry kept eating his sandwich. He was sensitive enough to know that some private communication had passed between Bill, Memphis, and Nelson, something that wasn’t for him. Henry didn’t know what to say, only that he felt vaguely guilty about Nelson’s comment.
“I’ve never called anybody George unless it was his name,” Henry said, trying to lighten the mood. Memphis crossed his arms and returned to his window gazing.
“Hmph,” Bill grunted.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?” Henry asked.
“Just that there are lots of ways of calling somebody George.” Bill didn’t explain further. He finished his sandwich and closed his eyes again.
The only way for Memphis to stay sane was to write. He watched the little houses peeking up between the trees. A poem began to take shape. Within a half hour, it was done. He was proud of the work, but to what end? No magazine would publish a poem by Memphis Campbell, anarchist agitator. He titled the poem “Scenes from a Window” and signed it The Voice of Tomorrow.
He had an idea.
There was paper on the train. He wrote out the poem on another sheet. Then he folded it and shoved it between the bed and the wall, where it could be found by a stranger.
The train traveled down the eastern seaboard and into the night. In the wee hours, Memphis, Henry, and Bill played cards with some of the porters. Their sleeping compartment was close quarters and thick with cigarette smoke, but, as Nelson had promised, it passed the time and kept their minds from their troubles for a while. The porters were loose here, Henry noticed. They talked freer. None of that “Yes, sir,” “No, sir” radio-soft talk. It was like when the porters stepped outside this room and put on their hats, they’d become themselves once removed, characters in a play. Sometimes you had to become a different version of yourself to move safely through certain spaces in the world. Henry knew something about that.
After the same pot of money had been lost and won and lost again, Nelson dealt a new hand. “Say,” he said, tossing down cards with a practiced agility. “Tell me something ’bout being a Diviner. See now, I heard y’all could read a man’s thoughts from a mile away. Go on, then. Tell me: What am I thinking now?”
“Probably dirty,” Coleman said, laughing through his nose.
“Definitely dirty,” one of the other porters, Philippe, said, throwing down a two of diamonds.
“I can’t read anybody’s thoughts,” Memphis said.
“Me, either,” Henry chimed in.
Nelson fixed his eyes on Memphis. “You can heal, though, right? The Harlem Healer?”
Memphis nodded.
“Oh, oh! If I cut myself right now, you could fix me up? Is that so?” a porter named Roger said. He was reaching for his pocketknife. Memphis put up a hand.
“I probably could, but I don’t believe we should test that,” Memphis said, and the man put the knife away.
“Last thing we need is you bleeding all over this carpet,” Nelson said, shaking his head. He looked at Henry. “And you? What can you do?”
“I can dream walk,” Henry said.
“Dream walk?” Coleman said, making a face. “What on earth is that?”
“I can walk in people’s dreams,” Henry said, blushing. He felt stupid. His power suited him fine, but compared to Memphis’s healing or Theta’s fire, it did seem kind of paltry.
Coleman waggled his eyebrows. “Ladies’ dreams?” The others snickered at this. Henry blushed again, though this time it had nothing to do with his Diviner ability. “Sorry. We don’t mean any harm. Just don’t seem like much.”
You have no idea how much you can come to know about a person when you see inside their dreams, Henry wanted to say. But it didn’t seem like the time or place.
“Y’all see ghosts, though. Am I right?” Coleman said, changing the subject, much to Henry’s relief.
