Orphan Train

the farmer woke him with a beating one morning because a raccoon got into
     the chicken coop. In pain, half starved, with a tapeworm and an eye infection, he
     collapsed on the road to town and was taken to the infirmary by a kindly widow.
    But the farmer convinced the authorities that Dutchy was a juvenile delinquent who
     needed a firm hand, and Dutchy was returned to him. He ran away twice more—the second
     time in a blizzard, when it was a miracle he didn’t freeze to death. Running into
     a neighbor’s clothesline saved his life. The neighbor found him in his barn the following
     morning and made a deal with the farmer to trade Dutchy for a pig.
    “A pig?” I say.
    “I’m sure he thought it a worthy trade. That pig was massive.”
    This farmer, a widower named Karl Maynard whose son and daughter were grown, gave
     him chores to do, but also sent him to school. And when Dutchy showed an interest
     in the dusty upright piano the widower’s wife used to play, he got it tuned and found
     a teacher to come to the farm to give him lessons.
    When he was eighteen, Dutchy moved to Minneapolis, where he took any work he could
     find playing piano in bands and bars. “Maynard wanted me to take over the farm, but
     I knew I wasn’t cut out for it,” he says. “Honestly, I was grateful to have a skill
     I could use. And to live on my own. It’s a relief to be an adult.”
    I hadn’t thought about it like this, but he’s right—it is a relief.
    He reaches over and touches my necklace. “You still have it. That gives me faith.”
    “Faith in what?”
    “God, I suppose. No, I don’t know. Survival.”
    As light begins to seep through the darkness outside the window, around 5:00 A.M ., he tells me that he’s playing the organ in the Episcopal Church on Banner Street
     at the eight o’clock service.
    “Do you want to stay till then?” I ask.
    “Do you want me to?”
    “What do you think?”
    He stretches out beside the wall and pulls me toward him, curving his body around
     mine again, his arm tucked under my waist. As I lie there, matching my breathing to
     his, I can tell the moment when he lapses into sleep. I inhale the musk of his aftershave,
     a whiff of hair oil. I reach for his hand and grasp his long fingers and lace them
     through mine, thinking about the fateful steps that led me to him. If I hadn’t come
     on this trip. If I’d had something to eat. If Richard had taken us to a different
     bar. . . . There are so many ways to play this game. Still, I can’t help but think
     that everything I’ve been through has led to this. If I hadn’t been chosen by the
     Byrnes, I wouldn’t have ended up with the Grotes and met Miss Larsen. If Miss Larsen
     hadn’t brought me to Mrs. Murphy, I never would’ve met the Nielsens. And if I weren’t
     living with the Nielsens and attending college with Lil and Em, I would never have
     come to Minneapolis for the night—and probably never would have seen Dutchy again.
    My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is
     the first one that feels, instead, like fate.
    “S O ?” L IL DEMANDS . “W HAT HAPPENED ?”
    We’re on our way back to Hemingford, with Em stretched out and groaning on the backseat,
     wearing dark glasses. Her face has a greenish tint.
    I am determined not to give anything away. “Nothing happened. What happened with you?”
    “Don’t change the subject, missy,” Lil says. “How’d you know that guy, anyway?”
    I’ve already thought about an answer. “He’s come into the store a few times.”
    Lil is skeptical. “What would he be doing in Hemingford?”
    “He sells pianos.”
    “Humph,” she says, clearly unconvinced. “Well, you two seemed to hit it off.”
    I shrug. “He’s nice enough.”
    “How much money do piano players make, anyway?” Em says from the back.
    I want to tell her to shut up. Instead I take a deep breath and say, breezily, “Who
     knows? It’s not like I’m going to marry him or anything.”
    Ten months later, after recounting this exchange to two dozen wedding guests in the
     basement of Grace Lutheran Church, Lil raises her glass in a toast. “To Vivian and
     Luke Maynard,” she says. “May they always make beautiful music together.”

Hemingford, Minnesota, 1940–1943
    In front of other people I call him Luke, but he’ll always be Dutchy to me. He calls me Viv—it sounds a bit like Niamh, he says.
    We decide that we’ll live in Hemingford