olbigjim

A Piedmont Porchlight Story

Nobody in Piedmont could say exactly when the suitcase appeared.

That was the first peculiar thing about it.

The second was that everybody seemed to have an opinion about who owned it.

And the third, which didn’t become apparent until considerably later, was that the suitcase had been waiting for somebody who’d been dead for thirty-seven years.

Now, I don’t want you thinking Piedmont was the sort of town where an unattended suitcase caused a great deal of excitement.

Back when the Silver Comet still came through, suitcases were as common around the depot as gossip at the Coffee Cup. Folks carried them aboard trains, dragged them off trains, sat on them when the benches were full, and occasionally forgot them altogether.

But the Silver Comet hadn’t stopped in Piedmont since January of 1969.

The passenger platform had long since fallen quiet. The ticket window was boarded up, and the old waiting room had become a place where the town stored Christmas decorations, folding chairs, and things nobody could quite bring themselves to throw away.

The freight trains still came through, of course.

Lord, did they ever.

They’d come roaring through town at all hours, shaking the windows and making conversations pause until the last car rattled past.

But nobody got on.

Nobody got off.

And nobody had any reason to leave a suitcase on the old wooden bench beneath the depot awning.

Yet there it sat.

A small, brown leather suitcase, scuffed at the corners, with a brass clasp and a cracked handle.

And tied to that handle was a yellowed luggage tag.

On it, written in careful blue ink, were four words.

Miss Evelyn Grace Mercer.

Beneath the name was a date.

October 17, 1958.

The suitcase was discovered by Earl Ponder, who had stopped at the Coffee Cup for breakfast and decided to walk off half a biscuit before going home.

Earl was a retired railroad man, which meant he possessed two qualities that made him particularly well suited to discovering unusual objects near railroad tracks.

He was observant.

And he had absolutely nowhere he needed to be.

He stood looking at the suitcase for several minutes.

Then walked around it.

Then sat down on the opposite end of the bench.

“Well,” he said.

The suitcase offered no explanation.

Earl considered it.

Then got up and went across to the Elevated Grounds coffee shop.

Five minutes later, he returned with Curtis Pope and Brandon Moore, who’d been persuaded to leave his coffee shop long enough to investigate what Earl described as “a situation.”

Curtis looked at the suitcase.

Brandon looked at Earl.

“What kind of situation?”

Earl pointed.

“That.”

Brandon stared.

“It’s a suitcase.”

“I know what it is.”

“Well, then, what’s the situation?”

“It ain’t supposed to be there.”

Brandon considered this.

“Maybe somebody left it.”

Earl looked at him.

“That’s generally how things get left, Brandon.”

Curtis chuckled.

Brandon folded his arms.

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing. I just thought you ought to see it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s unusual.”

Brandon looked at the suitcase again.

Then at Earl.

“Earl, yesterday you called me outside to look at a squirrel eating a French fry.”

“That was unusual, too.”

Curtis bent down to examine the luggage tag.

He read the name.

And stopped smiling.

Now, Curtis Pope had been cutting hair in Piedmont long enough to remember when a haircut cost fifty cents and a man could get a shave, a shoe shine, and an unsolicited opinion about his marriage for considerably less than two dollars.

He remembered names.

Faces.

Who married whom.

Who ought not to have married whom.

And who had been seen coming out of whose back door at an hour when respectable people were supposed to be asleep.

But there were some names Curtis hadn’t spoken aloud in years.

Evelyn Grace Mercer was one of them.

He touched the tag with one finger.

“Evelyn,” he said quietly.

Earl looked at him.

“You know her?”

Curtis didn’t answer immediately.

He straightened up.

Looked toward the tracks.

Then said, “I did.”

Brandon waited.

Earl waited.

Curtis took off his glasses.

“Lord, I ain’t thought about that girl in years.”

“Who was she?” Brandon asked.

Curtis sat down.

For a moment, he looked every one of his years.

Then he began.

Evelyn Mercer had been twenty-two years old in the autumn of 1958.

She lived with her mother in a little white house on the north side of town, worked as a secretary at the mill office, and possessed a singing voice that could make the congregation at First Baptist forget whether they were supposed to be standing or sitting.

She was pretty, but not in the way that made people stop and stare.

Her beauty was quieter than that.

Dark hair.

Brown eyes.

A smile that appeared slowly, as though she wanted to be certain you deserved it.

And she had a habit of listening to people with such complete attention that even the dullest fellow in town came away believing he’d said something worth remembering.

Curtis had known her all his life.

They’d gone to school together.

Attended the same church picnics.

And once, when they were children, she’d broken his nose with a softball.

“Accidentally?” Brandon asked.

Curtis considered that.

“She said so.”

Earl smiled.

“Did you believe her?”

“Not entirely.”

Curtis looked down at his hands.

“Evelyn was going to Chicago.”

“Chicago?” Brandon repeated.

“Yes, sir. Had herself a job lined up with some big insurance company. Good money, too. More than she could’ve made around here in three years.”

“Well, what happened?”

Curtis glanced toward the tracks.

“She never got on the train.”

The story, as Curtis remembered it, was that Evelyn had purchased a one-way ticket for October 17, 1958.

She’d packed her belongings.

Said goodbye to her friends.

And arranged for her mother to drive her to the depot.

But when the train arrived that afternoon, Evelyn wasn’t there.

Her mother had fallen ill that morning.

Nothing serious at first.

A little dizziness.

Some pain in her chest.

By noon, however, she was in the hospital.

And Evelyn, who had spent her entire young life dreaming of leaving Piedmont, found herself sitting beside her mother’s bed instead of boarding the Silver Comet.

“She missed the train?” Brandon asked.

Curtis nodded.

“And the job?”

“Gone. They couldn’t hold it.”

“That’s awful.”

Curtis shrugged.

“That’s life sometimes.”

Earl leaned forward.

“But she could’ve gone later.”

“Maybe.”

“Did she?”

Curtis shook his head.

“Her mama never really got well again. Evelyn stayed home to look after her.”

“For how long?”

“Near twenty years.”

Brandon looked toward the suitcase.

“Twenty years?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened after that?”

Curtis was quiet. He looked up into the sky as he absent-mindedly scratched his chin.

Then he said, “Let’s see… her mama died in seventy-seven. Evelyn stayed on in the house. Worked where she could. Sang at church sometimes.”

“And she never married?”

“No.”

“Never left Piedmont?”

“Not that I know of.”

Earl studied him.

“What happened to her?”

Curtis swallowed.

“She died in eighty-nine.”

The three men sat in silence.

Across the street, somebody laughed inside the Coffee Cup.

A truck rolled past.

Farther down the tracks, a locomotive sounded its horn.

And the suitcase sat between them.

Waiting.

By lunchtime, half the town knew about it.

By two o’clock, the other half had improved the story considerably.

Mabel Jane insisted the suitcase had belonged to a woman who’d disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Lorene claimed she’d heard that Evelyn Mercer had been engaged to a railroad conductor who never returned from Chicago.

Beulah Mae said the suitcase was probably haunted.

And Mr. Blackwelder, who had been asked for his opinion while purchasing a sandwich, declared that the whole business was foolishness.

“Somebody found an old suitcase,” he said. “Ain’t exactly the Second Coming.”

Nevertheless, he walked down to the depot after lunch to look at it.

Just to be certain.

Curtis returned that afternoon.

Alone.

He sat beside the suitcase for a long time.

Then, carefully, he lifted it onto his lap.

The leather was stiff.

The brass clasp was tarnished.

He hesitated before opening it.

Not because he was afraid of what might be inside.

But because there are some things a man can leave undisturbed for sixty-eight years and still remember exactly how they felt.

The clasp opened with a little click.

Inside were several neatly folded dresses.

A pair of white gloves.

A hairbrush.

A small Bible.

And a blue envelope.

Curtis picked it up.

Across the front, in Evelyn’s careful handwriting, were three words.

For Curtis Pope.

He stared at the envelope.

Then opened it.

Inside was a single sheet of stationery.

He unfolded it.

And began to read.

Dear Curtis,

If you’re reading this, I reckon somebody finally found my suitcase.

I know this is a foolish thing to do, but there are some things a person can’t say out loud, even when they’ve had a lifetime to practice.

Do you remember the night of the church social in September of 1958? You walked me home. We stopped under the streetlight by the old Methodist church, and you asked whether I was really going away.

I told you I was.

You asked if there was anything that might make me stay.

I laughed and said no.

That wasn’t true.

Curtis stopped reading.

He looked toward the street.

For a moment, he could see it.

The warm September night.

The sound of crickets.

Evelyn standing beneath the streetlight in her blue dress.

And himself, twenty-three years old, trying to find the courage to say something that had been waiting in his heart since they were children.

He looked back at the letter.

I wanted you to ask me to stay, Curtis.

Not because I needed somebody to decide my future for me. I wanted to know whether there was a future here worth choosing.

But you were so determined not to stand in my way that you never told me what you felt.

And I was too proud to tell you what I felt.

Then Mama got sick.

And everything changed.

I kept thinking there would be another chance.

Another church social.

Another walk home.

Another evening under that streetlight.

But the years have a way of slipping past while we’re waiting for the right moment.

Curtis lowered the paper.

His hands were trembling.

He remembered that night.

He remembered every word.

And he remembered watching Evelyn walk up her front steps, turn once, and smile.

He’d almost called her back.

Almost.

But he’d told himself she deserved Chicago.

A better life.

Something bigger than Piedmont.

And he’d let her go.

Except she hadn’t gone.

She’d stayed.

And somehow, they’d both spent the next thirty-one years pretending that September evening had never happened.

Curtis unfolded the rest of the letter.

I don’t regret staying with Mama.

She needed me, and I loved her.

But I do regret all the things I never said afterward.

You were always kind to me, Curtis. You always asked how Mama was doing. You always made me laugh when I came into your shop to leave something for your sister.

And you never once asked whether I was happy.

Maybe you were afraid of the answer.

Maybe I was, too.

I kept my ticket.

I kept the suitcase packed.

Not because I still wanted Chicago.

But because I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit that the journey I’d imagined had become a different kind of journey altogether.

If there’s one thing I hope you’ll understand, it’s this.

Sometimes the place we were trying so hard to leave turns out to be the place where our whole life was waiting.

I wish we’d been brave enough to find out what ours might have been.

With love,

Evelyn

Curtis sat very still.

He read the letter again.

Then folded it carefully.

And placed it back inside the envelope.

Now, you might reasonably wonder how a suitcase belonging to a woman who died in 1989 came to be sitting on a depot bench in 2026.

Curtis wondered the same thing.

So did Earl.

And Brandon.

And eventually Sheriff Lyle Booker, who was called in after Mabel Jane suggested that somebody ought to investigate before the suitcase “started doing something.”

The answer came two days later.

Evelyn’s old house had recently been sold.

The new owners had discovered the suitcase in the attic while cleaning out the last of the belongings.

A young man helping with the cleanup had recognized the luggage tag.

He’d heard his grandmother speak of Evelyn Mercer.

And he remembered her saying that Evelyn had once planned to leave Piedmont by train.

So, he’d taken the suitcase down to the depot.

Set it on the bench.

And walked away.

He hadn’t meant to cause a commotion.

He’d simply thought it belonged there.

“Well,” Earl said when he heard the explanation, “that’s the most sensible foolish thing I’ve heard all week.”

Curtis kept the letter.

The suitcase was returned to Evelyn’s family.

And life in Piedmont went on.

The Coffee Cup opened every morning.

Mr. Blackwelder complained about the price of nails.

Mabel Jane continued improving stories that hadn’t needed improvement in the first place.

And Curtis Pope went back to cutting hair.

But something had changed.

Every now and then, he’d find himself looking toward the depot.

Remembering a girl in a blue dress.

A September evening.

And a question he’d never quite managed to ask.

One afternoon, Brandon found him sitting on the old bench.

“Everything all right, Curtis?”

Curtis nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

Brandon sat beside him.

For a while, neither spoke.

Then Curtis said, “You know what the trouble is with being young?”

Brandon smiled.

“What?”

“You think you’ve got forever.”

He looked toward the tracks.

“And the trouble with being old is you finally understand you didn’t.”

Brandon didn’t answer.

There wasn’t anything to say.

A week later, Curtis brought a small brass plaque to the depot.

He’d had it made at a shop in Jacksonville.

He mounted it on the back of the old wooden bench.

It read:

EVELYN GRACE MERCER

1936–1989

For all the journeys we never took,

and all the places we never left.

Nobody made a fuss about it.

There wasn’t a ceremony.

No speeches.

No newspaper photographer.

Just Curtis, standing beside the bench with his cap in his hands.

He stayed until the afternoon freight train came through.

The locomotive sounded its horn.

The rails began to sing.

And for a moment, as the long line of cars rolled past, Curtis imagined another train.

A silver one.

With polished windows.

And a young woman standing on the platform, holding a brown leather suitcase.

Waiting for somebody to call her name.

He opened his mouth.

And this time, he said it.

“Evelyn.”

The train rolled on.

The sound faded.

And Curtis stood alone beside the tracks.

Now, I’ve heard folks say that the suitcase appeared by coincidence.

I’ve heard others say it was fate.

And Beulah Mae maintains that Evelyn herself had something to do with it, although Beulah Mae also believes her washing machine is possessed, so you might want to take that opinion with a grain of salt.

Me?

I don’t know.

But I do know this.

There are things we carry through life that weigh considerably more than a suitcase.

Words we never said.

Questions we never asked.

Roads we never traveled.

And people we loved without ever finding the courage to tell them.

Sometimes those things stay packed away for years.

Sometimes for a lifetime.

And sometimes, when we’re least expecting it, somebody sets an old suitcase on a bench, and all those years come tumbling out.

I reckon that’s why Curtis kept visiting the depot.