Flight

I

The long train rumbled and swayed, whistle blowing intermittently, screeching discordantly, past smoky factory and office buildings, through rows of one-storied, two- or three-room cottages, outside which on hard packed clay earth played here towheaded white children or there black or brown or yellow ones. It plunged suddenly into cavernous darkness under a bridge, thick acrid smoke pouring into the open windows of the wooden coaches.

“Union Station—Atlanty. All out for Atlanty,” bawled a grinning Negro porter as the train rolled into a long, dingy shed with low-hung roof. Eager, laughing Negroes matched boxes and bundles of varied shapes from the racks over the seats or pulled mates to them from under the seats. Mimi awoke with a start as Jean shook her gently.

“We’re there, petite Mimi,” he told her. Through the throng, peering vainly through the murky air, redolent of stale banana and orange skins and of bodies in need of washing, she made her way to remove the worst of the soot and grime from her face.

“My father’ll be here to meet us,” Mary told Jean.

Though he disliked Mr. Robertson intensely Jean was happy to receive the news. He felt bewildered, lost, a malady bordering on nausea at the hubbub around him. Methodically he obeyed his wife’s commands to gather their bags and parcels. Then with Mimi, refreshed, alert, her weariness dropped from her as she would have discarded a cape, they made their way out of the coach in the van of the surging throng.