John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

I think I might know why she died, said Wayman.

She didn’t die till we find the frost.

She looks kind of dead, though.

Forbus’s hands were beginning to bleed.

I’m sorry. I know she’s important to you.

But Wayman had to find a new place for his family. This storm would kill Kip too soon, and Wayman clutched Kip’s chest to a chest in his mind. It was the drugs giving him the disease in the first place. He didn’t believe in the theory of evolution. He rammed trains together head-on as he waited on the porch for the thunderstorm to end.

We got to put her in the dirt, said Forbus.

Wayman shook his head. I can’t help you with that.

That’s alright. I’ve got just the one shovel, anyhow.

He’d been telling Cobby the same stories over and over, because he’d never create again. He understood why dying men killed their families. It was a selfish act, but the selfishness sprang from a deep pool of love. A story he desired to tell Cobby was of a lonely boy whose father made him work long hours in the tobacco fields. The tobacco would always dry up and rot, because the father would stay gone for months at a time. To stifle his desires, the boy imagined each body part with which he might express his longings severed: his tongue, if he would speak to the saddler’s son, his hand if he would touch the tanned skin of the saddler’s son. The story went on for many years and even now wasn’t quite over, but Cobby wouldn’t feel it from within, because he had no loneliness save what their lifestyles had given him. In six months God would cleave their inadequacy in half again. Poor Cobby! thought Wayman, and Cobby appeared from the trees with Kip in hand in thunder so near it was concurrent with the lightning.

You got to carry her yourself, said Forbus sadly.

You don’t want to wait for somebody? said Wayman.

Won’t nobody come, said Forbus. It’s lucky you showed up or I would have had to get the engineer.

How would you have done that?

I reckon I’d just stood there till they stopped.

Is this a funeral? said Cobby.

The rain hit Forbus broadside when he turned to see who’d joined them in the yard. The grave had grown quickly, thanks to the softening effects of the rain, so Cobby stood as high as Forbus.

Mr. Forbus’s mother just passed away.

You were right, Cobby said to Kip.

What was he right about? said Wayman.

She loved the sweetgum tree, said Cobby. She told us all about it.

I guess I wasn’t paying attention, said Wayman. The strangest things could cause his waves of sadness. He and Kip were sterile forces upon the earth. They were the ends of their lines, and they were death. He averted his eyes from Cobby and thought of being a mother. Everyone was a girl in his mother’s womb until the third month, but Wayman had taken a wrong turn, which was affecting everyone. Forbus drove his weapon spade into a tree root and began to cry again. Wayman, who wept a lot himself, knew how his son would react, and he moved around the grave and held the boy.

You asked him about the funeral, said Kip.

No, I want what you want. I said nothing.

How would he even know the word? said Kip.

Cobby seemed to want to answer, but could not, and Wayman knelt.

Isn’t it rude to argue while someone is crying? his son whispered.

It seemed Forbus would never be able to go on.

Let me dig, said Wayman.

It has to be at least three feet deep.

Why did you come here? said Wayman.

Why three feet? said Cobby.

The water was almost up to the sockets, said Kip.

The ghost world is three feet higher than the real world.

He needed to be saving Kip from the diseases of the driving rain. He wished he weren’t a fool! He wished he were living in the middle of the Great Depression, kicking into dusty towns whose names he didn’t know. He asked his son to remain with Forbus while he led Kip inside the trailer, where he wrapped Kip’s shivering body in green quilts. Call Cobby in, said Kip, who was still afraid. Instead they sat together clinging until Kip was asleep and all Wayman wanted on earth was to sleep, too, because they dreamed each other’s dreams sometimes, and Kip saw Wayman’s apparitions but remained an atheist, and Wayman woke from the miserable visions of the one man who’d promised never to leave him and found himself squeezed tight and lay awake hours that way, till all his earthly thoughts had disappeared.

He needs you now in the grave, said Cobby.

Wayman opened his eyes. I’m sorry we’ve brought you here.

It’s okay. She was so old.

What were you talking about out there?

Dad, you have to carry her outside now.

Why? said Wayman.

He can’t touch her.

I don’t see why not.

He just can’t, said Cobby. Wayman knew Cobby was fearful he’d refuse. Cobby understood how strangers could hurt him, and Wayman hoped his boy was glad they lived the way they did. That he liked to experience life vicariously through his books, through Wayman’s stories; there’d be plenty of time to suffer later, when they were too old to be a family anymore. The whole time Wayman lay thinking of his son’s precocity, he wasn’t sad about Kip. The reprieve continued for twenty seconds, until Wayman, to ease his boy’s fears, brushed ghost white forelocks from Virginia’s eyes and took her like a baby in his arms.

The rain had stopped. A train was screeching past. Wayman tried not to slide in the mud as he knelt in the grave and bunched folds of Virginia’s dress beneath her body.

Is this okay? he asked.

Forbus peered into the grave. I don’t know.

I mean, in these clothes, and all?

Forbus looked at the treetops. Things can get wrinkled, he said.

He walked around the perimeter of the grave. Wayman leaned against the mud wall, averting his eyes from the corpse, smearing his jeans with earth.

Will we have the ceremony now? said Cobby.

What kind of a ceremony? said Wayman.

Where we fill in the dirt and stuff.

That’s not a ceremony.

Cobby leaned into the grave. Dad, he whispered.

Wayman’s eyes welled up. What’s the matter? he said.

Don’t say those things. Can’t you see how sad he is?

Wayman considered that Forbus had a disease of the mind. It would be nice to forget things. He’d been standing in the hole too long, having forgotten the need to move away from the corpse.

Do you want to hear a riddle? Forbus asked.

Kip appeared on the porch.

Brothers and sisters have I none, said Forbus.

Kip walked out into the drizzle.

This man’s mother is my brother’s son.

We should cover her up, Wayman suggested.

It doesn’t make sense, said Cobby.

Forbus scrunched his face up. I was just trying to think of what to say, he told Cobby. People are always telling each other things, so I figured I’d see how that goes.

Where are we going to live? said Wayman.

Stop it, Dad, said Cobby.

My partner is ill. We have to be dry.

How tall are you? said Cobby.

Cobby, will you leave me alone?

Was it at least up to your waist?

What in the world?

It has to be three feet!

Stop sounding so desperate!

Cobby was breathing erratically as if to induce a panic attack. Kip was lowering himself into the grave, shrouded in green, hovering like a specter, feigning calm, outdoing Wayman, who could try to list these things that made his love seem illusory, and he breathed normally again, if only out of impotence to induce a different thing from what was happening. That’s my mother’s quilt, said Forbus. It’s not yours. I see how it is with you. Who are you and what are you doing with that boy? Where are you taking him down that track? But Forbus was backing up. He was trudging away toward the trees and he was gone, and Kip measured the grave against the inseam of his jeans. It’s three and a half feet. What is it about Cobby you can’t answer him? said Kip. Why are you the only one who gets to be illogical? Why can’t anyone else be illogical? If Cobby doesn’t want her ghost to escape from the ground, why can’t that be enough?