John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

He rolled his window down and thrust his hand into the humid air, accelerating quickly. He swerved around a cyclist. The car lurched forward violently when he shifted into fourth. Don’t worry, Froggy said, that don’t mean nothing, and Ben tried to match his slouching posture. He decided not to be nervous. Above the tops of stunted pines he saw the bay; across the dunes an amber sun rose on the gulf. I had another dream that Mama died, he said.

So? said Froggy.

What do you mean, so? She was dead. That’s what’s so.

I don’t care about your dreams. They’re boring.

Froggy drove faster. Ben wanted to tell Froggy that it wasn’t boring at all, but terrible, and they were lucky to be awake. They drove down to the gated community whose guard refused them entry. Froggy made a three-point turn and honked the horn and loudly screeched away. Hell, yeah, he yelled, and he blew a sphere of cherry-colored gum and flipped another driver off. We could cross the bridge to town, he said, and he hit two orange traffic cones on purpose, knocking them on their sides. When Ben laughed, Froggy said, That wasn’t funny. It’s a very serious thing. The cars they passed shrank quickly in the side view mirror, on whose glass a moth had landed, and then they were alone on the road when Froggy swerved and shouted, Shit.

What’s wrong? said Ben.

Take the wheel, yelled Froggy, grabbing at his eye. I can’t see.

Don’t joke like that.

I’m not joking, Froggy shouted as they drifted into the wrong lane. Take the wheel. He blinked his watering eye and felt his shirt in a panicked hurry, and then his lap, and Ben obeyed; the car’s left tires had crossed the shoulder line when he steered them back onto the road, jerking the wheel left and right to try to keep control. It was too heavy. They moved too fast.

Tell me what’s wrong, he yelled again as Froggy scoured his clothing frantically.

I lost my contact.

I don’t know how to drive, Ben yelled. Put on the brake.

I can’t see.

You don’t have to see, Ben said. Just step on the brake.

I can’t.

We’re speeding up.

No we’re not, Froggy shouted, breathing fast.

I can’t find it.

Just stop the car.

Shit. Oh shit.

The trees shot by like bolts of grounded lightning. The road was going to end. Ben pushed at Froggy’s leg to move it off the gas, and their speed finally began to fall. Keep us on the pavement, Froggy cried, his eyes shut desperately, and he screamed when they hit a bump, which was a dove, dead beneath their tire.

Ben steered them onto a pulloff made of sand as Froggy pressed the brake and found his contact lens and placed it back against his eyeball. The bird they’d killed looked like a pirate’s skullcap in the mirror. Ain’t that a bitch, said Froggy, grinning now, already calm. He drove them back to the rental house with the parking brake on. He just wanted to see if the car would still move that way, he said. He liked the smell of burning rubber.

You got any cash for gas? he said.

Ben shook his head, which made him dizzy, and he shut his eyes.

That’s too bad, Froggy said. I was gonna drive you to Mexico and sell you to the taxidermists, so they could stuff you full of cocaine.

* * *

They were on the panhandle. Their great-aunt Celeste had paid for a beachfront house with a private boardwalk for an entire month. She sat in her rocking chair on the screened porch, talking to Mama, when Froggy and Ben got home. You kids sleep too late, Celeste said, watching the girls from next door float in the gulf in pink inner tubes. You miss the sunrise.

There’ll be plenty sunrises left to see when I’m as old as you, said Froggy.

Celeste smiled at him as Mama said, You take that back.

Okay, I take it back, said Froggy. There won’t be any sunrises left at all.

You won’t be able to see them through the wrinkles, Celeste said.

Mama sighed, and said to Celeste, You don’t have many wrinkles for your age.

I’ve got at least three hundred, said Celeste.

Mama shook her head, said, Well. She cracked a boiled peanut open and tossed its oily shell aside. Froggy sat down in a wooden rocker and drank RC Cola and played his Game Boy, and Ben sat down beside him, and Celeste crocheted and watched the girls drift down-sea in their inner tubes. Ben read his book until Froggy stood up and said, That’s our ocean. Get back where you belong.

The ocean belongs to everybody, Mama said without looking up from her novel.

They’re right in front of our house, said Froggy, and he turned to Celeste and added, Aren’t they, and she nodded. See? he said to Mama, who continued reading as the wind picked up and rippled the checkered tablecloth. The air began to smell more like the bay. The girls floated like dolls beneath expanding clouds, riding bigger waves now, never moving independently of their tubes.

I hope they get struck by lightning, Froggy said.

Celeste smiled again. Ben tried to think of how to make her smile himself, but maybe she couldn’t see him. The sky grew darker as the sun got higher. Ben sat still and waited for someone to speak to him, and every half a minute he turned a page to make it look like he was reading. He hated his book. He wished he weren’t already thirty pages into it, because now he had to finish it before he could start the next one. There’s a cloud hanging over us, Celeste said somberly, and Ben looked up. It squatted above the gulf like a mass of coal, and Mama nodded. There it is, said Celeste.

Hmm, Mama murmured into her orange juice. We ought to go inside soon.

We are inside, Ben said.

The screened porch isn’t inside, Mama and Celeste said at the same time, and then Celeste said, It’s one of the long ones. They have a name.

Storm clouds, Mama said.

Have you ever heard of anvil-shaped clouds?

Mama shook her head.

They’re scientific.

I guess you could have any shape of cloud.

Celeste nodded. But I mean something that’s been named before.

Anchors dropped from it, too short to hit the water. The anvils changed into a horse’s heart that palpitated wildly, its shadow threatening the water. Sand blew up into the air as the sun’s last rays were blocked, and the girls floated beneath a sky charred black as chimney soot. Celeste sipped lemonade. It looks like Central America, she said. If there was just a volcano.

Have you been there? Ben asked her.

There’s a war, she said, looking at Froggy. Nobody goes there, because of the war.

But there hasn’t always been a war, Ben said.

I don’t have the slightest idea how long there’s been a war, she said. But there have always been mosquitos.

You talk so much I can’t hear the birds, said Mama, looking at her book.

They’re perpetual, said Celeste to Froggy. The mosquitoes, not the birds.

Birds are perpetual too, Mama said.

Of course they are, Celeste muttered.

You said they weren’t, said Mama, so I’m just saying that they are.

So are a million things, said Celeste. So are bird droppings. All over your car, forever.

Mama turned the page of her book.

Maybe they don’t have legs, said Froggy.

The birds? Mama said.

Those girls.

Birds have legs.

In that direction, Celeste said as she pointed across the gulf with her glass in her hand, is a war. Straight past that storm.

How close? said Ben.

I certainly don’t know.

Can’t you estimate?

Good Lord, she said and finished her lemonade. Too far for a mosquito. The girls’ tubes no longer shone as bright a pink, because the sun was gone. Ben wondered where their mother was. Celeste’s fat cocker spaniel trotted out onto the porch, and Celeste reached down to pet her. Ginger’s a good dog, she said, patting Ginger’s head and neck as lightning flashed, and Ben flinched for the trembling noise that shook his ears a second later. A funnel formed above the water, merging so its separate spirals called up water from the sea and formed a spout. Celeste gasped. Look, she said. It’s spinning.