John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

Dad?

What?

What’s an APB?

All Points Bulletin.

Can it blow up if there’s a bomb?

Everything can blow up if there’s a bomb.

The sky was growing. Sam drew the last seven on the last bill and everything was done.

Sam, what are you doing to the money?

His father kept the car completely straight as he reached back for the bag. He took it from Sam, who held his breath as his father filtered through the seven-dollar bills. He watched his father’s face in the rearview’s narrow band. The old face was curious, but Sam couldn’t tell whether the new face was angry or sad or both or what until he heard words.

Do you realize what you just did?

Sam thought he did until he said, No.

This was really stupid, Ground Control.

Don’t tell him he’s stupid, Sam’s mother said, although she sounded hesitant.

I’m telling him the thing he did was stupid.

You told him to keep on. You fostered the environment.

Sam’s father’s words came out so twisted up in his teeth that Sam could barely make them out. Do you want me locked away? Is that why you cry so much? The car went back and forth with his shaking hands, and Sam wondered if he’d be mad forever, if his face would never get smooth.

We’ll get the markings off with wax or something, said his mother.

That’s what a crayon already is, said his father.

It doesn’t matter, because of the sky.

It’s not going to make the sky any better for you to sit there and scream about the sky, the sky, the sky, like we forgot it’s there.

We should ask somebody, she said.

You know what they’ll say, he said.

This isn’t about us. The sky isn’t pink just for us.

Sam waited for them to look at each other. They hadn’t looked at each other for the whole conversation, and he wished he had a blindfold. Holding his breath conserved energy. He wondered if they’d used up all the oxygen inside the car, and that was why his mother looked so tense. Thinking about oxygen made him feel like fainting. He imagined flying over cliffs. Other planets were pink and had no air, and maybe that was happening now to earth. It might have been a sunrise, but the time was just three-thirty in the morning, and Sam’s father moved too late to block Sam’s mother’s arm from turning the wheel left toward the pulloff, trusting him to brake before the guardrail at the cliff’s edge. The Dumpsters were green, the sky was pink and black; it was so peaceful. He held his mother’s hand and watched it burn.

There’s gonna be a roadblock, she said.

Prove there is one, said Sam’s father.

Prove there’s not.

You’d be fine anyway.

She nodded. I’d keep getting finer and finer until it was too late.

Sam wondered if he knew what she meant; he could hear two voices in her voice. His baby brother was very strong to make her think with both their brains like that. Someday he’d be wonderful. Fallout made mutations. It was probably too late for Sam, but the baby could grow an extra arm. Its rosy skin would glow like the sky. It would have the three arms, but Sam would have the power, because he’d always know the story of why.

You have to name the baby soon, he said, because fallout might make her forget names. It could change the shape of people’s hair. It bent everyone’s knees up so they could hide beneath the furniture. It probably did ten times as many things as he knew about.

I don’t want you talking to the kids at school about this, his mother said.

Why would I want them to name the baby?

Don’t talk to them about babies.

There won’t be any school anymore.

She shook her head. That’s the problem. There wouldn’t be anything.

There’d still be things, said Sam, but all he could think of was Dumpsters. All the dark trees were bent like they were whipping one another. He thought of them too.

The doctors would all be closed, or dead.

We never get sick anyway, he said.

I can’t tell you. I’m just gonna let you watch.

They don’t let people watch, his father said.

Not with his eyes, she said. Not right there at a specific time.

Why are we stopped? said Sam.

We have to think about ourselves, she said. We don’t want to starve.

Sam wondered if radiation did anything to the food. If someone had to die, he hoped it would be the policemen who were out somewhere in the night searching, and he kicked the money beneath his father’s bucket seat. A skunk walked by with its tail raised and didn’t spray a thing. The air made Sam light-headed, but only because he knew it could, and he looked out at the twinkling lines like grain elevators carrying bits of the black hills up to hidden stars. His mother was fiddling with the revolver. She didn’t quite know where to point it. The sky, the Dumpsters, her waist, the sky, her belly again. She was laughing, running a hand nervously down her long brown hair, and it scared him, because what was funny about the gun?

This would be the cheap way, she said.

Cheap for you, said his father. Might cost me and Sam some money though.

Sam hoped his brother wouldn’t get the gene that had said that. The two sides of the pink light tugged each other like magnet powder. He could feel it pulling him like it was the moon and he was the ocean. He tried to levitate above his seat but made it only an inch. Magnets were dangerous; what if they melted him right out of the car? He’d never find his family again, because he wouldn’t be allowed to tell what his father had done. He’d ask for his mother instead, because she hadn’t done anything, but she wasn’t talking to him anymore.

Maybe she was still counting. By now she was probably above a million.

Sam held her freckly wrist tightly with his hand. She looked happy and sad and alive and dead, all at once, because she was two people. He wondered what her knowing frown was knowing as she stared at wisps of light caressing the plateau. He waited for it to explode; it was just a matter of time until there’d be nothing to get out of the car for. They’d move forever. His little brother would feel the highway blood too. When he came to life, they’d be moving.

Why are we still stopped? said Sam.

They were still mad at him about the marked bills, because they were blocking him from their minds. His mother didn’t need money if everything was dead. Maybe he could use it all on batteries, so the walkie-talkies could last forever. He punched Morse code with his toy’s red beeper. Dash dash dot dot dot, seven times. His mother kept opening her mouth to talk to him, but she wasn’t ready yet. The sky was getting darker. She closed her mouth and opened it. He couldn’t wait to hear what she would say. He wanted to be driving again. She opened her mouth wider, like she was using it to decide something. He handed her a walkie-talkie to help her talk, and he looked out at the fingery lights that had shriveled like mimosa blossoms groomed for dusk. He hoped he wouldn’t forget what they looked like as soon as the next unlucky thing happened.

Froggy wore tight jeans in which a wallet with his newly issued learner’s permit bulged. Let’s go for a drive, he said to Ben. I could shit, I’m so bored. He twirled the keys on his finger as they snuck out of the rental cottage and downstairs to a driveway made of oyster shells. Shut the door real soft, he told Ben when they got inside the Buick, even though the engine roared when Froggy revved it, and he yelled with excitement now, which made Ben happy. Shells shot into the sea oats. Ben wondered what he’d be excited about when he reached his brother’s age. Cars, cigarettes. Froggy lit one, and Ben warned him that their great-aunt Celeste might smell it later, but Froggy just laughed. Old people can’t smell, he said. Didn’t you know that? Your smell dries up when you get old.