John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

Melissa, she said in her sleep.

Jason closed his book in a hurry. He didn’t know a Melissa. His eyes burned as he watched for signs of consciousness. Maybe it would have been his name if he’d been born a girl, or maybe she was real. Mama had smiled when she spoke the name. Jason looked around for her diary, but his hands were tied to metal fists that rose like inverted trivets from the crane. Shawn’s face twisted up with every breath, stretching all its shadows into pieces. There, Mama repeated like the words were snores, her scratchy voice masculine and deep. Her face was a hybrid of many faces; somewhere in the world was a boy with her real eyes, and she had his, and someone’s nose and Adam’s apple. Jason wondered how his own face had turned out the way it did when Mama’s was so harsh and sharp, and he felt evil for having wished she’d die, even though it was for her happiness; she always wanted to.

He pinched his nipple tight until his face clenched up and she wasn’t in his head. Harder, he whispered. It excited him to know he’d feel ashamed when it was over. Shawn’s skin was twitching everywhere like stinging wasps. They breathed together like two chimneys of the same burnt-down house exhaling their last smoke into the frozen night.

Two suns rose into the sky that morning. He didn’t even know how to explain it. They hovered in the vacant space above the quarry: not a sick moon or some exploded star, but two distinct and shining balls of fire.

Mama was still snoring at eleven. She hated watching the soaps by herself, but this way they’d have something to say to each other, because she could tell Jason what had happened.

He tied his tennis shoes in double knots. His bones shrank when he stayed awake so long. He turned on the humidifier and closed the blinds and locked the door and in the yard a white splat fell from a tree and barely missed him. He wished he could shit straight back up at the bird for revenge, but it was already gone. Everything became a dream as long as he was alone. Shadows were falling opposite their usual paths. In twenty minutes he was at the service station. Shawn cast a narrow shadow from a ladder against the marquee. A plastic number nine lay on gravel below him. The sun bathed his hair and skin in a coppery glow like burnt celluloid. He dropped a two. He dropped a one. Jason gathered the numbers.

There’s bird shit on your head, said Shawn above him.

Jason rubbed his hair quickly with both hands.

Psych, said Shawn.

What’s psych?

It’s a lie.

Jason looked at his hands. He squinted up at Shawn, who was descending the ladder now. Did the price go up? he asked.

We ran out of that kind of gas.

Don’t you get more?

It sank down into the ground, Shawn said.

He stepped off the ladder and took the numbers from Jason and tossed them onto a trash pile of planks and oil cans. So you better watch out, he added, or you’ll blow up. He took a lighter from his pocket and held it up to Jason’s face and flicked it.

Boom, he said. He laughed when Jason flinched.

I was thinking of applying for a job, said Jason.

He turned red when his words came out in a quick mumble, but Shawn understood him anyway. You ain’t afraid of gas inside the ground?

Should I be? said Jason.

Boom, Shawn said, louder than before, and Jason flinched again. He waited for Shawn to hit him; flinching was two fists on the arm. His voice sounded high, transparent next to Shawn’s, and he wanted not to be embarrassed anymore. He wanted to be eighty years old, so everyone who’d ever heard his voice would be too old to remember. He followed Shawn into the minimart, where four men were playing poker on a three-legged table. Did I stutter? said a bald man sipping Coke that dripped onto his beard and glistened there. Saw two, up three. The sloe-eyed man laid down his cards and glanced across at Shawn and up at Jason, who stood now in the doorframe blocking sunlight. The man tugged his overalls, and he was tall above the others; tobacco bulged in his jaw.

Are you still hiring? said Jason, and the men laughed at the lurch in his voice.

How old are you? said the tall one.

Sixteen, said Jason.

My boy wudden shit for it till seventeen.

For what? said the bald man.

For gas, he answered.

All the men at the table laughed, and the bald man nodded his head at Shawn. Eighteen Sairday week ain’t you.

Pumps good gas now.

They all chuckled. Jason chuckled too, but he didn’t want there to be a father. He watched them watching his reflection on the freezer window. The tall man told him what kind of job it was, how he’d mop the floor and scrub the bathrooms down. Jason nodded, but the man coughed and said, I’m the one that does the okay.

A woman in bleached overalls called out, Mosby, are you runnin a store?

The man who did the okay went to the counter and bagged her beer. When she was gone he sent Jason out to sweep the lot with a broom as wide as Mama’s wheelchair. We’ll see how you do with that. Jason took it out into the heat and stood there looking across the mashed bottle caps and dried-up gum. He was proud to be holding the broom when a truck passed by on the highway. Tomorrow he’d wear a white V-neck shirt like Shawn, who was pumping a GMC Savana full of mid-grade. He pumped five dollars’ worth into an old Impala. He pumped pressure into the hissing tires of a Talon. The air was sticky; everyone was sweating. Men in their cars were sweating. When Shawn spat a loogy across cracked concrete he looked satisfied to have reached the grass.

You see the sundog?

Where? said Jason.

In the sky.

Jason looked at the sky.

Not now, dumbass.

When? said Jason.

When it was there.

When was it there?

You could just say no.

No for what? said Jason.

No you didn’t see it.

A moving van pulled up to the diesel pump. Sundog. Sundog. Jason wanted to dribble the word onto the asphalt with gasoline so he’d remember it until he could write it down. The diary was on the floor. He pictured it there. He realized it was on the floor by Mama’s bed. The rope was wet and fragrant from the dew. Shawn wasn’t pumping gas; he was watching Jason’s face go white. Life at the quarry was simple. You’re the only one, he would repeat to Shawn. Sometimes he felt an empty sadness where Mama had been. The rope was creaking in the wind so loud, shut up, shut up. It made him want to stab himself.

You froze? said Shawn, who looked so calm he didn’t seem real anymore. Jason felt his cheeks go red from heat and now this voice that pointed to his turquoise ring and said, You got a girl up at that mile and a quarter house?

Just Mama, he said.

He imagined her eating his stomach lining with her antacid pills. He continued sweeping so that he could look away, so Shawn wouldn’t see inside his head.

Shawn shrugged and said, I let my mama wear her own ring.

Jason nodded with his back turned to Shawn.

She the one that drinks up all that milk?

Most of it, said Jason.

She a cow or somethin?

No, said Jason softly.

A cow don’t even drink milk.

So why’d you ask?

You know who drinks a lot of milk?

Jason shook his head.

Loretta Lynn, said Shawn.

I thought she’s dead.

Then watch out for your mama then.

She’s all right, said Jason.

She sick? said Shawn.

Mostly she just coughs.

It helps her throat.

To cough? said Jason.

Naw, Loretta Lynn’s throat.

Do you listen to that? said Jason.

All I listen to is metal.

Like who? said Jason.

It don’t matter, said Shawn. Long as it’s loud.

Jason tried to keep talking in spite of all the teeth embedded in his heart. He shut his eyes and told himself his words were coming out clear, clear, clear.