The section gang came in behind Wade. Marvin Riley stood at the back with his satchel. And Jane Newman did the thing that nobody in that room expected, including the men who were braced for it. She did not ask for her seat. Philip Craig had already sent the porter forward to move Pauline's things out of seat one.
And when Jane understood what he was doing, she told him to leave them where they were. Then she said, "I want to know how it happened." Philip said it had been a misunderstanding about the assignments. "Bring me the car diagram," Jane said. "There was a pause you could have driven a wagon through." Philillip brought it. She opened the stiff card and the ticket shelf where the light was, and she read it out loud to the room.
She had learned something about records in the last hour, and she wanted 22 people to hear it at the same time. Seat one, the name struck through in pencil. Mole right name written above it and beside it in a small clean hand four words at passenger's request. Whose request Jane said Philip Craig did not answer. I am the passenger she said.
Did I request it? No, Mrs. Then who wrote those words? I did. Jane set the card down.
Mr. Craig, she said you were rude to me in front of a car full of people and I have been rude to people myself and lived. That is not what this is. You wrote down a thing that did not happen on a paper this road keeps so that a thing that did happen would look lawful. Do you understand that those are not the same offense?
Philip Craig had been standing at attention for 4 minutes and that was the sentence that took the starch out of him. Dwight Hopkins stepped in and said in a voice meant to close a subject that he took full responsibility for the operating decision and would look into the rest of it personally at Grand Island. You have looked into it personally 11 times this year, Jane said. Dwight's face did not change, but something behind it went still. The complaints book in that drawer, she said, nodding at the office door.
How many entries in it since January? I could not say off hand. How many of them are marked settled? Dwight Hopkins said after a moment that it was a busy road. It was the closest thing to an admission anybody got out of him all day and the room heard it.