Homecoming, a story (i)

My first attempt at writing grew out of a quest for identity. We'd just left Arizona and moved to Iowa. I'd left a teaching job in an all-American suburb of Phoenix and decided to try to figure out who I was, what kind of background I was from. I'd always known I was Dutch-American, but other than the experience of being that, I had no thoughtful sense of what that meant. 

Once the three of us arrived, I told myself I wanted to know. In Chamberlain, SD, at a truck stop that sold buffalo burgers, I found Hollanders of Charles Mix and Douglas County, a memoir by a man named VanderPol, a housemover and fine story-teller. Loved it. Just loved it. It's still somewhere around here, been with my for almost fifty years. 

Among a host of other things, in that book I discovered the story of Albertus Kuypers, a Dutch immigrant who'd come here with a whole circle of people, come south to north actually, to South Dakota. Back then, I changed the name from Kuypers to DeKruyf, but don't be fooled: Kuypers is the man I'm thinking about.

The story is fiction. What's history is that Kuypers, like Joshua and his men, once visited the Land of Canaan--for Kuypers, that was northwest Washington--with the goal of determining whether the colony he'd brought over with him from the Netherlands, and still lived with, close to the Missouri River, whether the whole bunch might move, lock, stock, and barrel, to the Pacific Northwest. He had reason.

But he also had reason to stay in South Dakota. What I was interested in was how that played out in his life and in his heart. conflict--how he saw the question, how he understood opportunity, and how he made it back and forth on Great Northern railroad, a man who knew so very, very little about a whole new world in South Dakota.

I hope you find it interesting. It is itself a half century old.
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Almost unconsciously, Albertus DeKruyf flicked the ashes from the bowl and dropped his pipe, still warm, into his breast pocket, while his eyes held fast to the mountain range and the grace of the majestic Yellowstone River meandering vein-like down the musculature of the Rockies. For nearly two hundred miles his perception had been owned by the view from his window; ever since Livingston, the Northern Pacific had courted the wily Yellowstone, crossing  it  once, twice before Billings, contented thereafter to follow the river through a backdrop of snow caps and jagged cliffs.

Downward, slowly, elegantly, the train slid, leveling out here and there for a prairie, or, while the river waited politely, rising momentarily to follow the sloping hills. DeKruyf rested on his bench, one arm propped beneath his chin as he held the view and juxtaposed it, kiddingly, with the devil's offer to Christ in the wilderness. Israel was barren, a desert, he remembered, but had Christ been offered this. . .he scolded himself for such mockery. Besides, his land was unproductive.

Then there was blackness. The lamps burned faintly in the Pullman, but the sudden switch from sunlight to tunnel darkness rendered only blindness. The coach lurched as DeKruyf squinted into the dark, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Then he felt a thudding jolt on his bench, and tried to catch some glimpse of the intruder.

"Excuse me, sir. Been working for this railroad for close to ten years. Been up this way three, maybe four times before, but I'm so dumb I couldn't remember the tunnel. Shoulda’ chosen another time to visit the convenience. Shoulda’ remembered the tunnel is what I shoulda’ done."

DeKruyf grunted lightly, shook his head and snapped back his hand from the back of the bench, folding his arms together in a fluid motion which he hoped would convey some sense of ease.

"Tunnels are something, eh? Them Irishmen bully their way through mountains, ‘zif all that rock wa'nt nothin'."

DeKruyf's eyes adjusted slowly to the glimmering wall lamps until the American man who shared his bench. The man was dressed in a brown striped suit, buttoned tightly through the chest over a matching vest and a white shirt with a turned-up collar that pointed simultaneously into two bushy black sideburns. His right arm draped over the bench, and in his left hand he held a brown derby. A thick black mustache fanned over his lip and straightened into his sideburns, forming a kind of cow-catcher over a thin pointy face.

"No wonder the Union was first. Ever been to Nebraska? Nothin' but flat land. Lay in' track's easy as cut­tin' butter. Just roll along." His right hand pushed snake­-like toward the front of the car. "Don't cost as much either." He pointed out the window.. "You imagine how much blastin' them Irishmen had to do through here? Couldn't lay no more than a few feet a day. Mountains look gorgeous, but they make for tough roadbed.” He turned suddenly. “Where you from?"

DeKruyf adjusted his weight to better face the big man. "My home is in South Dakota now."

"Dakota?--then you know. The Northern had to deal with winters, too. You know about winters--and Indians. I'll tell you, Dodge never knew how easy it was to the south. Why we just passed Custer; go south about fifty miles and you could still see the blood of the general, I’m sure. The Sioux are a rough bunch. Don’t get the message easy. Cost Villard a fortune to get ‘em moved outta' the way—darn near broke the company.” The derby jumped into a gesture with each sentence. “The name is Stevenson—George Stevenson. Been working out of Seattle. And you? He held his thin right hand out, cleaned to lily white, palm upward.

“Albertus DeKruyf.” Albertus watched the man’s hand disappear into his, but the grip was tight and energetic.

“DeKruyf, eh?—Hollander.” Stevenson said. “You going back to get some family?”

Stevenson’s eyes were dark, set far back in his head, and when he squinted, his thick, black eyebrows nearly hid them. His nose pointed downward, straight and rigid as a roofline, nostrils hidden in the underbrush beneath.

DeKruyf folded his arms again and crossed his legs. “I have been to Washington to look at land there. I am thinking of moving maybe.”

“Washington, eh?” Stevenson raised the black mantle above his eyes, forming two separate brows.

“North—Whidby Island maybe—or farther.”

“Never been there. Beautiful country though. All of it is up there. Got it all over South Dakota, that’s sure." He laughed as if the comparison was perfectly nonsensical. "Ever notice that no companies push through there? No sir—Union took Nebraska. Northern takes North Dakota, even Hill chose North. Yessir, that’s some country you got their—downright inhospitable. Gonna’ be movin’ soon?”

DeKruyf found Stevenson engaging and warm. The natural antipathy he felt toward Americans faded in the company of such a man. He rested an arm over the bench.

“I must yet decide if we will leave,” he told the man.

          “Well, tell me why in God’s name wouldn’t you?” Stevenson said. He didn’t really mean it as a question.

          The train emerged from the tunnel as quickly as it had entered. Sunlight splashed into the Pullman, dousing the lamps in its wake. Stevenson visored his eyes with his hands. “That’s a whole lot better, eh?” He turned slightly away from the window. “Beautiful country this. Like to have me a cabin here someplace. Do some fishing and hunting. Right there maybe.” He pointed out the window with his right hand. “Right there on the old Yellowstone.”

          DeKruyf looked from his window. It was beautiful. “A cabin?” he said.

          “Some place to go sometime when it gets busy, a little home away from home.”

          Made no sense of DeKruyf. “Mr. Stevenson—” he said.

          “I don’t take with formality—call me George.”

          “—you are working now for the railroad?”

          Stevenson fingered his mustache and bit, and tightened his lips. “No--don’t work for the railroad anymore. Don’t like what’s goin’ on, see? Decided to get myself out. Got a family some place in Minnesota, I think. Ought to get back there if they’ll have me.” He shrugged his shoulders.

          “Your job? —what was wrong?” He’d read about the scandals. He had seen the giant paintings of America when they had all lived in the old country. People from all over Europe had been cheated. He knew many who had come to this country with nothing but a picture from a lantern slide in their hearts, thinking themselves somehow heirs to the riches of the new paradise.

          “Double-dealin’--railroads do some lyin’, my friend, some lotta’ lyin’. Just couldn’t live with it no more, no sir, shouldn’t do it, you know, cause one day all them lies are going fall in like wet circus tent, and everybody that’s under it—especially the little guys like me—is going to get squashed--if you know what I mean.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t take them lies no more. Didn’t see no kind of advancement in front of me no more either—no future, and if a man can’t be moving up in life, I mean, well, that’s something. Then when I just know the whole business is going to be fallin' in, why that was it, you know what I’m saying’? I just took what I could get and cleared the heck out.” Once more, he shook his head. “A man’s gotta take what he can get when he can, right?”

          DeKruyf said nothing.

          “You know what I mean otherwise you wouldn’t be looking for no Washington paradise for you and yours.”

          Albertus smiled and nodded politely. Stevenson settled back on the bench for a moment, then slid forward suddenly. "Well, seems to me I was on the way to the convenience. 'Sides, I been stealin' your attention from the Yellowstone. Been on this trip myself, what-- three, four times now­--gets old, you know?" He pointed to the window.

"You're welcome to stay, Mr. Stevenson."

"Call me 'George, if you please.'"

"Yeah--George."

Albertus watched his new friend march to the end of the car. He reached for the tour guide and located the position of the train. Next stop would be Miles City, at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Tongue.

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What I remember very well about thinking my way into this story is the seeming shock of discovering that Albertus Kuypers took a train to Washington. What you'll discover quickly is that almost all of the story happens on this old, steam-belching passenger train, circa 1890.