Orphan Train
“Don’t let anybody tell you different.”
Mr. Sorenson’s vehicle, parked in the driveway behind the Model A, is a dark-green
Chrysler truck. He opens the passenger door for me, then goes around to the other
side. The interior smells of tobacco and apples. He backs out of the driveway and
points the car to the left, away from town and toward a direction I’ve never been.
We follow Elm Street until it ends, then turn right down another quiet street, where
the houses are set back farther from the sidewalks, until we come to an intersection
and turn onto a long, flat road with fields on both sides.
I gaze out at the fields, a dull patchwork. Brown cows huddle together, lifting their
necks to watch the noisy truck as it passes. Horses graze. Pieces of farm equipment
in the distance look like abandoned toys. The horizon line, flat and low, is straight
ahead, and the sky looks like dishwater. Black birds pierce the sky like inverse stars.
I feel almost sorry for Mr. Sorenson on our drive. I can tell this weighs on him.
It’s probably not what he thought he was signing up for when he agreed to be an agent
for the Children’s Aid Society. He keeps asking if I’m comfortable, if the heat is
too low or too high. When he learns I know almost nothing about Minnesota he tells
me all about it—how it became a state just over seventy years ago and is now the twelfth
largest in the United States. How its name comes from a Dakota Indian word for “cloudy
water.” How it contains thousands of lakes, filled with fish of all kinds—walleye,
for one thing, catfish, largemouth bass, rainbow trout, perch, and pike. The Mississippi
River starts in Minnesota, did I know that? And these fields—he waves his fingers
toward the window—they feed the whole country. Let’s see, there’s grain, the biggest
export—a thrasher goes from farm to farm, and neighbors get together to bundle the
shocks. There’s sugar beets and sweet corn and green peas. And those low buildings
way over there? Turkey farms. Minnesota is the biggest producer of turkeys in the
country. There’d be no Thanksgiving without Minnesota, that’s for darn sure. And don’t
get me started on hunting. We’ve got pheasants, quail, grouse, whitetail deer, you
name it. It’s a hunter’s paradise.
I listen to Mr. Sorenson and nod politely as he talks, but it’s hard to concentrate.
I feel myself retreating to someplace deep inside. It is a pitiful kind of childhood,
to know that no one loves you or is taking care of you, to always be on the outside
looking in. I feel a decade older than my years. I know too much; I have seen people
at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary.
So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I
am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.
Hemingford County, Minnesota, 1930
After about half an hour, Mr. Sorenson turns onto a narrow unpaved road. Dirt rises around us as we drive, coating the windshield and side windows. We pass
more fields and then a copse of birch tree skeletons, cross through a dilapidated
covered bridge over a murky stream still sheeted with ice, turn down a bumpy dirt
road bordered by pine trees. Mr. Sorenson is holding a card with what looks like directions
on it. He slows the truck, pulls to a stop, looks back toward the bridge. Then he
peers out the grimy windshield at the trees ahead. “No goldarn signs,” he mutters.
He puts his foot on the pedal and inches forward.
Out of the side window I point to a faded red rag tied to a stick and what appears
to be a driveway, overgrown with weeds.
“Must be it,” he says.
Hairy branches scrape the truck on either side as we make our way down the drive.
After about fifty yards, we come to a small wooden house—a shack, really—unpainted,
with a sagging front porch piled with junk. In the grassless section in front of the
house, a baby is crawling on top of a dog with black matted fur, and a boy of about
six is poking a stick in the dirt. His hair is so short, and he’s so skinny, that
he looks like a wizened old man. Despite the cold, he and the baby are barefoot.
Mr. Sorenson parks the truck as far from the children as possible in the small clearing
and gets out of the truck. I get out on my side.
“Hello, boy,” he says.
The child gapes at him, not
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