It’s a woman at Olympia’s knees. A knife in her heart. Her own fingers on the handle.
“We don’t even know if they still drive people mad,” Tom says. But there is less force behind this.
“We what?” Malorie asks. “What does that even mean?”
Olympia removes her glove. The blood is caked, hardened by the sun. The way it climbs up the woman’s neck it feels like fingers.
“Olympia!” Malorie yells.
Olympia stands up.
“Right here, Mom.”
Silence then. As if, by mentioning Olympia’s name, Malorie has added some element of balance.
“No more,” Malorie says. Olympia knows she doesn’t only say it to Tom. She says it to everything. To the creatures. To the fact that she’s searching for people she’s already grieved.
Olympia cocks an ear ahead.
“Guys,” she says. “I hear an engine.”
She doesn’t think it’s a car. It sounds more like a generator, the steady hum of an amplifier. A big one.
“Ahead?” Malorie asks.
“Yes.”
“It’s not a car,” Tom says.
“No,” Olympia says.
“Tell me more,” Malorie says.
“It’s…wider than a car…” Tom says.
“It’s the train,” Malorie says.
Olympia blanches. Is Mom right? Is this what a train sounds like?
It sounds huge.
“We gotta move fast,” Malorie says. “Two miles?”
“A little less,” Tom says.
“Now,” Malorie says. Tendrils of hysteria present. “Now.”
The train.
Is it, though? Or is that, as Olympia has read in so many books, only what they want it to be?
Malorie and Tom are gaining distance on her. Olympia turns once, back to the dead woman in the tall grass on the side of the country road.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Sorry I didn’t acknowledge you at all.”
But she knows this was the right thing to do. Her mom and her brother are working together, ahead, neither any darker for a dead body.
An omen.
A portent.
Not now.
And sometimes, again, keeping secrets is the right thing to do.
She hurries to catch up with them. The unfamiliar engine hums steady in the distance, and she imagines a machine bigger than the house she was born in.
She moves.
She catches up.
She keeps secrets.
TWELVE
Malorie’s mind is ablaze.
She thinks it’s a train. She wants it to be. She can’t tell. She’s never focused so hard on a sound, any sound. What does a train actually sound like, from this distance, from this state of mind?
She moves fast. Too fast. Yet Olympia is a step ahead. Her daughter calls out when there are dips in the road, and more than once she’s reached back to take Malorie by the arm.
It doesn’t matter that she fought with Tom. Nothing matters right now but the incredible hum in the distance. Every few feet the source sounds like it’s coming from a different place. To her right; no, left. It’s got to be less than a mile now, no, more like three. At times, the sound vanishes altogether, and Malorie imagines a train vanishing, like a trick on television, the whole giant thing fading until, just when she thinks it’s gone, it appears again, over a horizon that could be near or far.
“Tom?” she asks.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
She doesn’t need to ask after Olympia. Her daughter is leading the rush, like she’s done so many times before. Malorie remembers the trip from the school for the blind to Camp Yadin. Even then, little Olympia took charge.
“Watch out,” Olympia calls. “Big turn in the road.”
Malorie moves toward her, her daughter, while thinking of herself as a daughter, daughter to Sam and Mary Walsh. She suddenly can’t tell the difference between who’s who here, and then Olympia’s hand is at her elbow, guiding her.
Olympia says something about the train, how it might not be leaving, might not be there at all. But Malorie’s mind is so gorged with the possibility of seeing her parents that she’s mistaking the train for them, as if it’s Mom and Dad idling in the distance.
“I can run ahead,” Tom says. Because he doesn’t worry about falling. Because he’d bounce back up. Because he’s sixteen.
“No,” Malorie says. But maybe this is one time she should say yes. “You can’t get hurt. Not now.”
Her voice is breathless, the syllables broken by heaves. Is she panicking?
It strikes her that Sam and Mary Walsh could be standing by the monster that idles. If the train goes to Mackinaw City, and if her parents had, at one point, worked their way downstate, doesn’t it stand to reason they could’ve taken the train south? Even as Malorie runs to take it up to them?
Reason.
The word sounds wholly out of place here. Reason in a world gone mad. A world gone dark. A world where she could conceivably be passing her mom and dad right now, the two of them quiet for the sound of three people running toward them, the two of them still working their way downstate, the two of them looking for her.
It’s not a train, Malorie thinks. Because it can’t be. Because the idling engine of a train doesn’t go quiet, then rise again. It doesn’t sound exactly like this. And because it would be too unfathomably good for her if it is there.
If there’s one thing Malorie hasn’t had, it’s breaks.
Has anyone?
But she moves toward it still. Nearly running now.
Both teens are ahead; Olympia calls out the dips in the road, Tom says they have less than a mile to go. Malorie’s legs scream. Her chest is too hot. Her head is swelling with memories. Mom and Dad taking her and Shannon to the zoo. How the sisters followed the painted elephant prints to where the brilliant leviathan stood in a large enclosure, but nowhere near big enough. How Dad picked Malorie up and told her he wished he could sneak the animal out of the park, put it under his coat, walk it all the way back to Africa. Malorie remembers laughing at this, then understanding what he meant, then understanding that her dad was a nice man. She remembers Mom, at a store, standing in line to buy the sisters jeans. How the woman in front of them was two dollars short. How Mom gave her those two dollars.
Oh, how Malorie wants to see these two people again. The yearning has conquered her body. The hope, the rush, the possibility…
But she won’t let herself do this, won’t let herself commit. It might not be a train at all.
And even if it is…who drives it?
“Come on!” Tom calls excitedly. Malorie hears him nearly fall over and regain his balance. She feels Olympia’s hand at her elbow.
“Come on!” Tom yells again. And he sounds sixteen. So does Olympia. Two teenagers living, right now, a memory, a thing they will never forget, Malorie knows; she has memories of her own. Mom and Dad laughing with the neighbors at the kitchen table. Dad wearing a funny wig on Halloween. Mom stringing lights up on the roof in December.
She thinks, suddenly, of Ron Handy. How the man must be thinking of his sister, now, pining to touch her hand again, hurting to hear her voice.
“It might not—” Malorie starts, short of breath. “It might not even be—” She can hardly get the words out. “It might not even be a train!”
On cue, a whistle blows.
It shatters Malorie’s personal darkness, the black sky split up the middle by a cloud of white metallic steam, billowing with the force of a bona fide train.
Oh my God, she thinks. Oh my God oh my God oh my God.
And she’s running, her mind wild, fresh colors in the dark, one the color of belief.
It’s a train after all. There’s no doubting that now.
/>
“COME ON!”
Did she yell it? Was it Tom? No, Olympia. Olympia is leading again. She’s calling out what to watch for. Like she’s a cat, able to react faster to the drops and curves than Malorie ever will be able to again. And it’s working. Branches strike her arm, and her knees almost give out as the road begins to unspool downhill, but Malorie is running, no longer simply moving, running to a blind train, a train that heads north, to where her parents have been listed as survivors.
The sun is hot and still high and because the road is downhill, she can hear the engine idling, much louder than it was before. She can see the image, as if the whole insane scenario is a Norman Rockwell painting; creamy white steam rising from the head of a black train, its wheels shimmering in the summer sun. She imagines men and women with parasols on the platform, engineers and ushers taking tickets, children afraid to board, pets tight on leashes, bags and cases, shoes on creaking boards, the tracks leading off into the future, north, like a secret door to Mom and Dad.
Sam and Mary Walsh.
Malorie falls.
She bangs her knee hard on the road and realizes it’s not soft dirt anymore, it’s packed, possibly pavement. She’s hot beneath the hoodie and gloves, sweating behind the blindfold. And it strikes her, as she’s getting back up, as Olympia’s hands settle on her shoulders, that the reality of the moment is nothing like a fabled painting of the old world. The train doesn’t glisten, it sits, most likely rusted out in parts, probably dangerously wired for electricity. There’s no way the machine has passed any safety codes, this much she knows. The windows must be painted black, and it’s easy to imagine that paint dripping down the sides of the train’s body, reaching the giant wheels. She would bet money there are boards missing, spaces along the twin tracks that lead north, yes, but not the north it used to be. Here, the train will ride into blackness, all its passengers blindfolded, even the engineer unable to look outside. And what would he see if he did? There are no families saying goodbye, no pets to be sure. And the luggage the passengers take with them are only bags stuffed with canned goods and batteries, extra shoes and black cloth.
Who else would ride a train like this? And why?
Malorie is up, moving again, her knee be damned. The idea of the train leaving now, before they get there, is almost too cruel to comprehend. How long would they have to call this area home, waiting for it to return?
“We’re so close,” Tom says.
And Malorie knows they are. Her son’s voice is nearly inaudible among the roar of the big engine. She imagines Tom sucked up into a new world, where industry reigns once again, where jobs are wanted, workers needed, professions opening onto infinite paths, journeys her teens might’ve taken two decades ago.
“Stay close,” Malorie calls.
She can’t be sure where Tom and Olympia are. How far ahead? Olympia’s voice emerges from the noise, a semblance of assurance, but only near for long as a bat might have been, flying low over the blindfolded woman attempting to run this last bit of road.
Will Malorie and her teens be protected, safe from whoever else is on board? Is there food? Water? Bathrooms? Beds?
And what does it cost to ride?
“Guys!” Malorie calls. A hand is at her elbow, then gone.
The whistle shrieks again.
They’re so close.
“Tom!” she yells. “Olympia!”
But it’s the voice of a man that answers.
“You’ve got seconds,” the man says. “You better hurry!”
It feels, momentarily, horribly, like the man means she has seconds to live. And maybe that is what he means. And maybe she does.
But she rushes, arms up. Hands take her own, smaller hands, Olympia.
The sound of the train changes, and Malorie knows it’s starting to move. The deep exhale of machinery waking up.
“Oh, no,” she says, breathless.
“It’s still here,” Tom says.
Tom! Tom is here, too.
But the train is moving. Malorie is sure of this now.
And other people are yelling, calling out, something about clearing the way, clearing the tracks.
The engine roars. The whistle blows.
Steam. A train. So close.
But it’s moving.
“Come on!” Olympia says.
“It’s leaving!” Tom yells.
But they do not stop. They move. Upon creaking boards now. The platform? The station? Malorie cracks shoulders with someone else, someone who shouts out at her to be careful. The old-world phrase sounds like a harbinger of things to come.
“We gotta leap onto the back,” Olympia says. Malorie imagines her daughter read that in a book. Characters, train hoppers, hoboes. She can’t believe she’s agreeing to this. There’s no way she can justify this idea. It’s not the mother she’s been for sixteen years.
“Mom!” Olympia calls.
Malorie reaches for her, doesn’t find her. The train sounds like it’s moving faster, too fast, the engine no longer exhaling but breathing, steady, rising to face the north.
“We can’t do it,” Malorie says. She sees Ron Handy in his service station, a dirty glass of old whiskey in hand. She sees him crying, now, grappling with the horror of choosing not to go to his sister.
Malorie tries to close her mind’s eye, the eye behind the eyes that are already closed, all of it behind the blindfold she lives by. She doesn’t want to think of Ron Handy or Camp Yadin, Tom the man or Olympia the woman, the Jane Tucker School for the Blind, Annette or Gary. She wants to focus on the sound of the train, moving, the rolling wheels, the squealing of metal, the pumping, the steam, the machine. Yet her mom and dad appear, standing as they were at the end of the dock on Twin Lakes, deep in the Upper Peninsula. They’re smiling her way, encouraging, you can make it, swim, come on, you’re so close. Dad’s hair is still brown and Mom doesn’t yet wear glasses, and they’re the people they were when Malorie was a child, swimming for the first time.
Only they’re wearing blindfolds suddenly, their hands extended. They can’t see Malorie, and it feels like nobody knows how to connect. They call to her, just as voices call to her as she runs, and Malorie flails, hot from the sun, unsure she’s going to make it, sensing something huge in the water with her, sensing something huge (and moving) in the darkness with her now, as she runs, as the toes of her boots connect with the tracks.
Tracks!
Malorie is running for a train!
Come on, Malorie!
Shannon. Even her sister is encouraging her from the dock. The same sister who expressed jealousy and said but the lake was hers to swim in and had to be consoled by (Sam and Mary Walsh) Mom and Dad. Now Shannon calls to her, her voice high and energized. She’s rooting for Malorie to make it just as Malorie once rooted for Shannon to make it in the new world, just as that new world was replacing the old one, even as Shannon believed in the creatures before Malorie did.
Come on, Malorie!
And Malorie reaches for the dock, blindly, the water and the darkness above her head it seems, so that she might be running sideways now, might be running toward the earth or even away from the train.
Mom and Dad are laughing, and Malorie knows it’s because she’s going to make it.
A hand grips her own.
The train isn’t moving fast. Can’t move fast. Blind.
She’s pulled forward, and a second hand takes her second hand, and Malorie’s feet are suddenly dragging. Her shin connects with something metal and the sound of the machine is so loud, so terribly loud, that she feels like it’s falling from the sky, falling directly above her.
“Step up,” Tom says.
It’s Tom who has her. Tom holds her, guides her to a set of metal steps.
Malorie raises a leg, puts it down, but her boot connects with nothing an
d she’s dragged again.
The teens are talking fast, yelling at each other, trying to pull Malorie to safety.
Malorie lifts her leg again and this time, when she lunges, the tip of her boot is supported by the first metal step.
“You can do it,” Olympia says.
Malorie pulls herself up, all the way, onto solid footing. She’s standing—standing!—gripping metal bannisters, already thinking that, however long this trip takes, she will not take off her fold for the duration.
They are moving without walking. In the new world.
A man’s voice breaks her reverie.
“You got her?”
“Yes,” Olympia says. She sounds like Shannon did on the dock.
“Who is that?” Malorie asks. But the thunder that usually accompanies these inquiries from her is absent.
They just made a moving train.
The man is talking again, but his voice grows distant. Malorie understands he’s heading deeper into the train. She hears a door slide closed.
She climbs the remaining steps.
Olympia and Tom are there. She hugs them in turn, as the three exclaim brief hollows of relief. Then she turns to face the darkness she just ran through, wondering if this was the right decision, if this isn’t the most dangerous thing she’s ever done.
She has put her teens’ lives in danger. There is no rationalizing this. No pretending she hasn’t.
“We did it,” Olympia says. She sounds ecstatic. Alive. Like a teen who has begun the biggest adventure of her life.
Malorie faces the train’s back door, the world of dirt roads and Camp Yadin fading out behind her.
She breathes in, she holds it, she breathes out.
Who knows what kind of people are inside this train.
Or how many.
She thinks, If it gets bad, we can leap.
“Okay,” she says, flecks of mania in her voice. “Keep your folds and hoodies on. Gloves, too. We’re going in.”
She feels a pat against her bag. Is it Tom trying to hug her again?
Malorie steps between her teens and finds the handle for the sliding door. She thinks of her mom and dad because she can’t not think of them. Their names, emblazoned on the pages in her bag, their names that got her on this train.
Malorie Page 11