Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #25

I was afraid when the train slowed. We had endured so many false starts, so much false hope, to be dramatic, that I was sure we were preparing for another delay. When the conductor announced that Helper was just 30 minutes away, I heard many people shout even though most of us had many hours left before we reached our respective destinations.

"I'm going back to my seat," I said as Steven, Margie, and my father remained in their seats in the observation car.

My father wrapped his long fingers around my forearm and looked into me. "Don't get lost, okay?"

"It's not that far, Dad," I said.

I opened the Rhodia again and flipped through the pages to where I'd written my entry. I underlined the names of the brothers. I even wondered where they were, if they even remembered that night when they had me pinned down in that pup-tent. I considered tearing the page out of the notebook but instead found another blank page on the backside of what looked like Ophelia's last entry. I wrote this.

History

When I was ten years old I jumped from a low tree branch and felt something sharp go deep into my foot. I'd landed on a board hidden by some leaves, and a long nail went up through the sole of my PF Flyer. I lifted my foot up and the board came with it. I was in the woods not far from our house, and there was nobody to help so I put foot down, stepped on the board with my other shoe, and lifted up with my leg until the nail was pulled clear. I sat down, pulled off my shoe and sock, and saw that there was no blood. I limped home but never told anyone about it, but I was scared for weeks that I would get the lockjaw we'd heard so much about and come to fear. This wasn't long after Luke and John, and for some reason afterward--after not getting lockjaw or going to hell because of what those brothers did--I began believing in a lot less than I once had.

There is something about the desert I've come to need. Maybe it's simply the open space. Once Peggy and I drove every paved road in Nevada, and even hundreds of miles away from anyone or anything we'd find cinder-block homes and double-wide travels where people lived. Peggy didn't understand such voluntary isolation, and I tried to explain it wasn't any more voluntary than living in a city or a suburb. People need things, I said, and those things are always abnormal to those looking in from the outside. Besides, "normal" has a way of changing over time, doesn't it?

I hope Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriett are buried well. They've had to endure this trip too, I suppose. And I wish that Cousin Mark could bury his grief when he buries his parents. Grief, though, doesn't really start until someone's in the ground.

"Helper," the conductor announced as the train jerked and got slower, then jerked again. I got out of my seat, looked at the Rhodia, bent the corner of my two pages as a kind of marker, and stuffed the notebook into my sister's small duffel. When we'd boarded the train, Margie had insisted that we keep our luggage together so that we'd all be able to find it. I don't know why I left the Rhodia--maybe I hoped they would read it. I grabbed my own bag, walked down the steps to the car's lower deck, and waited for the doors to open. Waiting for that final stop, I thought of all the things I should've told someone, and I even wished my mother had been there. When the doors opened, I stepped outside into the cold desert air and stepped back away from the train. Only two other people got off. When the doors shut again and the train started forward, I looked through the observation car's windows and saw my family sitting there. They looked happy. My father seemed to press his forehead to the glass like he was looking for something, and maybe he saw me there. When the train was gone I crossed the tracks and walked to the bowling alley. The doors were locked. Wind worked its way through town, and I crouched in the doorway out of the wind. Sunrise wasn't far away, and I sat on the cold concrete and watched part of the sky turn pink. I knew again that something was about to happen.

- finis -

Warm Whiskey in a Cold Ditch: #24

Steven lurched forward with the train. He'd slept through the conductor's announcement that we would be moving. When we shared a room as kids, my brother would often spring up in his bed and yell. He'd even once whistled so loudly that our dog whistled back. My anxieties have always followed me when I've been awake, but as relaxed as he seems during the day, Steven at night he has always been restless. Now he just relaxed into his seat, into the rhythm of the train.

"It's hot," Steven said.

"I know," I told him.

"We're finally moving."

"We've 'finally been moving' a dozen times since Grand Junction, Steven. I'm not feeling hopeful."

"You're never hopeful."

That wasn't true--I had just come to hope for different things. "The people in the next car seem to be celebrating."

"We all should be celebrating. I'm going to go find Dad and Margie."

I told myself that the relief I felt when he was gone was because I was glad the train was moving, but I knew that was only half true. If Peggy had been sitting beside me instead of Steven, she would have touched my shoulder with her small hand and said she was going to leave me alone for awhile.

The train picked up some speed, and for the first time in many hours I believed we were done waiting. I had once read that passenger trains are limited to 79 miles an hour, though I could not remember why. The train rocked as though it were moving at least that fast. I found the Rhodia and Margie's pen, and opened the notebook to a full blank page. I knew that something would be happening soon, so I wrote.

For Ophelia

I am tired of this notebook. I wish I knew who you are, Ophelia--or were. You seem lonely, and I want to tell you that there are good reasons to feel lonely, but that you will be fine. We have been stuck on this train and in this desert for much too long. I can see how a man could spend 40 days in a desert and go crazy. Or, 40 days on a mountain and come down believing he'd talked with God. Maybe the time in Winnemucca with Susan was enough to put me over the edge.

I feel that I should thank Uncle Frank and Aunt Harriet for getting the family together for this trip. I haven't spoken with Margie, Steven, and Dad this much for a long time, and I realized how much I have missed them. They are good, patient people. If Mom had come along, I would've asked her and Dad about Dr. Fay, about what she might have told them after all those visits. I don't think it was fair of them to make Steven talk to Dr. Fay. I'm sorry he had to do that.

My first wife, Peggy, was a good woman. No, she is a good woman. She's the one person I think about every day even though we've been apart for so long. But everyone has that one person--and not always the person they end up with. The boy or girl in high school, the first person we think we love, maybe. Steven once confessed that the girl he dated just one time in high school was probably the person he had always loved the most--more than his wife, in some ways. "Maybe it's false love," Steven had said. "Something that never quite gets completed, you know?"

I wonder what Peggy would write now if she had this notebook. I wonder what Susan and Ellen would write, too. When Dr. Fay had me write my thoughts down between our visits, she always seemed disappointed when I wrote nearly nothing. I'd scribble something like "it snowed today." Maybe I should give a page to everyone in my family and have them describe lifetimes together just to see how the plot unfolds.

One thing I never told Dr. Fay about was what happened between me and the neighbor kids one night. Luke and John--the names seem ironic now--were a couple of brothers a years older than me. They'd been raised in Missouri or some place where rules are different, and one humid night when we were camping out in a small pup-tent in their back yard, I woke up with one of their hands over my mouth and another hand somewhere else. If I'd written that down for Dr. Fay, she might have been ecstatic. But that was a long time ago, and sometimes I am not sure that I remember everything right. The next morning Luke and John acted as though nothing happened, and so did I because I couldn't be sure.

The train must be up to 79 miles an hour now. My father is waving me up to the front of the car where he stands with Steven, Margie, and cousin Mark. My father mimes that he's eating, and I realize that I'm quite hungry.

We ate some snacks in the observation car, and everyone seemed happy. We were all happy to be moving. We would soon be stopping in Helper, the conductor announced, and I was happy about that, too.