John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

I’m sorry to stare, said Sina. I just want to look at you for a minute.

The boy leaned back against the black-and-white seismometer, facing the Pacific. His skin got lighter as the sun rose over Whangakeno Island. Sina didn’t turn to face me when he said, Did we eat yesterday?

We ate avocados, I said.

We should do that again today, he said. We watched the sun sneak up behind a cumulus of gray. Every cloud was racing toward us. The boy’s mother clicked her camera, and now in a rectangle of color in Oceania I’m forever watching Sina watch a nameless boy with a pale, chiseled face.

Come with us, Sina said to him. We can go down the steep side, through the gorse. We’ll leave on a boat.

We’re not going to leave on any boat, I said as the boy gazed uneasily at the shipless sea that brewed no waves.

The three of us, said Sina.

No, not the three of us, I said. We stood on the easternmost point of land in the world, where a hundred miles out to sea it was the day before and Sina held three fingers up — we’d been the last three people in the world to see darkness.

The boy’s parents drove us out to the highway. We waited at their little car at the bottom of the hill looking helpless, and they squeezed us into the back. At the highway they dropped us by a creek where a single sheep had wandered to the water. The boy’s head bobbed above the back seat as they sputtered away toward Napier. The sheep bleated. When the family was gone, Sina declothed right beside the road.

What are you doing?

Juat give me a minute, he said.

A car will come. We’ve got to get a ride. Sina was pulling his belongings from his bag. He stretched his arms up to the blue tuft above his head that fell across him and became his dress, and he knelt to a deep pool between two rocks in the creek and dipped his head beneath the water. His hair now touched his shoulders with its added weight of liquid, and he toweled it there with his old shirt.

What do I look like?

You look like a boy in a dress, I said.

That’s not what you really think, he said. He brushed his hair with his fingers, and he leashed a string of silver around his neck. I was walking up and down the ditch. You’re uncomfortable, he said.

It makes me nervous.

You don’t think I’m pretty? he asked, his face awash in sunlight, and I wondered if it even mattered to him whether I said yes or no.

I think we’ll have some explaining to do.

We’ll get more rides, anyway. Men stop for a girl. He laughed as he applied his ruby lipstick, and he spread his arms and shrugged. When I was fourteen I was at war, he said as I kicked at fern leaves. He padded his chest with toilet paper and slid his slender shoes onto his feet. He knew how to balance on the raised black heels, and we stood on the highway beneath the sun, clouds, the sun again.

Wait, he cried, I forgot my eyeliner.

He rummaged through his rucksack for the pen. I don’t have a mirror, he said when he found it. You’ll have to do it for me.

I can’t.

He tossed the pen to me and said, It’s easy. Just draw a straight line.

I hesitated.

Hurry, he said, before a ride comes.

He presented me with his eyelids. They were shut, but it felt like he was staring at my own eyes, and I decorated him to match the bright, faded land. I wondered if it tickled. You know, he said, I never get thirsty here, not once, and he was bejeweled, a gypsy princess, his olive skin now cindery with rouge. His earrings were gold inlaid with turquoise; they glistened when he turned them to the sun. He kissed me, and my face filled up with blood.

You should have painted your nails last night, I said as he brushed the ruby color on. They’ll take forever to dry.

It won’t matter.

What if you have to shake somebody’s hand? I said. My stomach churned when we heard an engine coming right then, as if I’d placed it in our distance with my words.

Two men stopped their dirty old ute on the sandy pull-off by the bridge. The passenger rolled down his window and grinned at us, revealing chipped teeth. There’s a pretty picture, he said, and Sina stroked his eyebrows once apiece.

Climb in, the driver called to us. He wore an All-Blacks jersey. Their truck had an extended cab, and their voices were difficult to understand. I was sweating. I’m Logan, said the driver. This is Gass.

Sina introduced us. Where are you going? he asked the men.

The quarters.

Where’s that?

The shearin quarters. Got to open er back up.

Logan took an uphill bend too fast and I said, Holy shit.

I’ve done these curves a thousand times, Logan said to me. Your lady friend ain’t scared there.

I’m not scared, I said.

If you’re not now, you will be.

Gass burst into laughter and turned to Sina and said, We’ll take you on a wild ride.

Where you from? asked Logan.

America.

I wasn’t asking you. I can tell a Yank when I see one.

Iran, Sina said, softening his voice. I remembered I could hold his hand now, so I squeezed it. The wind played with his hair.

Iran, said Logan. What in the hell are you doin down here? How’d you two meet?

At a bar, said Sina.

You ever shear a sheep?

I looked at Sina, who didn’t answer. Logan snorted and said, You think I’m talkin to her, Yank?

Huh?

Shearin’s man’s work. They sensed things about me subconsciously, as I did about them, a smell or the shapes of their cheeks and noses in the sunlight. I felt behind myself for a seat-belt but didn’t find one.

No, I said, I’ve never sheared a sheep.

Gass took Logan’s can of Speight’s and chugged it. Logan spat on the windshield and then turned around to Sina while he drove. You want you a man that can shear you a sheep, he said, and Sina smiled politely.

Why don’t we drop this poofter off in Raukokore, and I’ll take you back to the quarters, Logan said. He and Gass looked at each other and burst into laughter as I held Sina’s hand. Logan twisted his arm around his seat and slapped me on the knee. I must be awful drunk to say that shit out loud, he shouted, cracking up again. We were all over the road. Cheers to that! he cried, clicking cans with Gass, who whispered in his friend’s ear, and they laughed harder.

Should we give them a beer?

We ain’t got no pink drinks.

I’ve sheared a sheep, said Sina. Oh God, I thought. Sina’s smile was childlike as Logan and Gass fell silent, turned around. I was in the war, said Sina. Gently he brushed his bangs away from his eyebrows.

What war? Logan sneered.

She said she’s from Iran, Gass said, drawing out the hard I. They’ve got heaps of wars.

There aren’t girls in those wars.

I was in it, Sina said.

Bullshit you were, said Logan.

Everyone was in it, said Sina. It was a terrible war.

Air soared through the truck and blew the sleeves of his flowery dress, the land beyond him crisp and green. His moons of ruby lipstick stretched apart. For six months I picked up bodies, he said. When the battles were over we burned them in a heap. The dead soldiers weren’t too heavy; they were my age — fifteen or sixteen. Sometimes they still seemed to move.

Two kereru scurried across the road to disappear beneath a crop of ferns. We skidded along the gravel by the sea, causing dust to billow up behind us. Logan had been in some fights before. In admiration he recounted them, and Sina listened, smiling. In pubs in Nelson, Gore, Dunedin. They had all ended the same way.

Once we were without water for three days and nights, Sina said. I used my knife to dig for toads. We squeezed the liquid out.

Do you know how many people you killed?

Twenty-two, said Sina. His voice didn’t sound like a girl’s to me, but Gass and Logan didn’t seem to notice; they wanted him. They did it with their eyes. I could tell from watching them, how Logan pushed the gas pedal with his whole body.