The Conductor

There were times on the train, late at night or just before dawn, when Theodore felt innocent, as if he and all his passengers were smooth, unhatched eggs riding inside a huge, slithering reptile. He loved being a stranger among all those strangers, and he loved all those strangers. He also loved his dark blue uniform with its garden row of buttons, which made him feel both anonymous and known.

Tonight these feelings were strong. The train stopped for passengers in Carlinville and, as usual, Theodore hoisted them aboard, welcomed them to his train—the Number 7, from Chicago to St. Louis. He collected their fares, as the ticket office was closed at this late hour, and then, with everyone settled at last, he took his seat, too, at the rear of the last car. He closed his eyes for just a moment, better to feel the train surge to life beneath him—that first quick shudder that leveled into a rocking motion, the car heaving left and right, and the passengers shifting like rag dolls in their seats, until all effort and movement converged as the train gained speed, and speed became momentum, and everything rolled forward toward a destination.

It was late; everyone slept but Theodore. A few passengers had fallen asleep with their reading lights on, like children needing the bedroom door ajar. He looked to his left into the window and saw his long hawklike face caught in the glass between the warm, sleepy car and the cool spring night outside. Leaning back in his seat, he slowly opened his moneybag, carefully counted out forty-two dollars, and placed the cash in his wallet over his heart. Then he sorted through the cash receipts, removed exactly forty-two dollars worth, and wadded the receipts into a ball. He spit on the ball and placed it in his pants pocket. He put the remaining receipts into the moneybag with the remaining cash.

There. That was done.

He turned back to the window. Motion and darkness blurred the cornfields that rolled on indistinctly, mile after stubborn mile, on the other side of the glass. But his face, white and calm as a full moon, held steady through it all. Wonderfully calm, he thought, wonderfully steady. He stared into the dark and saw the brass buttons on his jacket scintillate in the wavering glass like the studs in Orion's great belt.

The next day in St. Louis, Theodore Godwin Metz, passenger conductor on the Chicago and Alton Railway for twenty-one years—through the Great Depression and now, into the war—got fired for poking his boss, Lloyd Firestone, in the nose. Though he had no evidence, Lloyd called Theodore a thief. Theodore took offense. Stories varied, but the upshot was universally acknowledged: The last time Theodore Metz ever rode the train was from St. Louis, Missouri, to Clayton, Illinois, his hometown; he did so as a passenger, and the trip was "on the house."

That's how he ended up at the Dickey Institute the following fall, babysitting rich drunks. The Dickey Institute was the old Dickey Estate converted into a hospital for alcoholics who could afford the three-thousand-dollar cure. Raymond G. Dickey had made his own millions in Chicago real estate, developing the lakefront. When he retired, he and his wife built a large house in Clayton, where they spent most of their time entertaining friends from Chicago. For three months each year, usually in the winter, the Dickeys left Clayton and traveled to Africa for safari. People said Mrs. Dickey hated safaris and began to drink. One year, when the couple was in New York preparing for the trans-Atlantic crossing, Mrs. Dickey went into Abercrombie and Fitch, gathered together a complete hunting outfit, entered the ladies' dressing room, took off her street clothes, put on the safari clothes, removed a pistol from her purse, and shot herself right between the eyes.

Mr. Dickey blamed himself, and so did most of Clayton. To make amends, he established the Dickey Institute, hiring the best doctors from as far away as Paris and Vienna to devise a...