Short Story: The Depot

Editor’s Note: The Iowa City Press-Citizen has run a short story every Christmas since 2011. Tom Gingerich of Kalona, whose work was selected by a panel of readers, has penned those stories since 2014. Since 2018, Iowa City artist Hani Elkadi has created original artwork to accompany them.

Snowflakes were in the wind and signs of Christmas were everywhere. However, this year would be very different from the few others she had known.

Her name was Cleola and she was five years old– but her Irish-German family and all her childhood friends called her Coly. She had long auburn hair and freckles and was her father Newell’s favorite. He loved all his children, but she held a special place in his heart. She was his youngest, and along with his wife Maggie, and Coly’s two brothers and four sisters their family was bonded by love.

Each night he would come trudging through the doorway and she would run into his welcoming arms. It was a routine they seldom failed to follow.

“Papa!” she would cry.

“How’s my little Coly girl?’ he’d whisper.

They lived on Main Street of a small Iowa town in a turn-of-century, two-story, red brick building so commonly found in settlements across the Midwest. Newell Grady had purchased it years before when he and Maggie had moved from the east, establishing living quarters on the upper floors and raising their family there– renting out the lower level to several businesses.

Her siblings knew how he felt about his youngest daughter, but they were older and understood. Everyone loved the little girl and the adoration she continually expressed for their father.

More: Short Story: The Emissary

Newell’s ambitious nature had always served him well. So, the locals weren’t surprised that the livestock-buying station he created had become successful. He’d realized its potential and had built it adjacent to the depot on the rail line that served the town. It was a spurline that ran 70 miles through 12 small communities, providing much-needed goods and services for the early 1900s settlements and enabled the Grady’s to ship their livestock directly to Chicago markets by connecting to the main Rock Island line.

From the age of three, Coly had spent many happy hours at the stockyard office and at the nearby depot to be near her father whenever her mother had errands to run or places to go. She loved it when the train came through on its usual twice daily run, and would run excitedly outside when hearing its approach. The…