A Lite Too Bright

by Samuel Miller

  “No,” he said slowly. “We did not talk. And if we did, it does not matter now. I’m sorry to disappoint,” he said, sucking down a deep breath and turning to face me, “but other than the direction we slithered into the world, my brother and I got nothing in common. I didn’t see him then. I don’t see him now. And if you use the Lord’s name in vain one more time, you will be sleeping on the side of County Road 15. And begging, begging for His mercy.”

  From where I sat, the stove lamp was directly behind his head, casting light out around the outline of his face, sliding down all of his wrinkles. I didn’t hear the threat. I didn’t hear his anger. But I heard him, loud and clear. He said now. I swallowed softly and spoke softer. “Why were you at the train this morning, Henry?”

  “Told you. Waiting.”

  “For what?”

  The house groaned in the wind, its aged foundation pushing and pulling as the prairie tried to bring it down. “Just don’t wanna miss him.”

  My heart collapsed into the very bottom of my stomach.

  No one had told Henry that his brother had died.

  He looked up, and I felt the crushing weight of his sadness. I saw him holding it, his arms spread, face calmly examining every window of the train, just as he had today, every day, for how long? Five years? Ten years? Forty years?

  Neither of us spoke for ten minutes. I listened to the sound of his stool rocking against the wood, not a soul around for it to reverberate off of. He stared, unmoving, at the center of the table. Three times, I opened my mouth to tell what had happened, but no sound came out.

  Finally, he looked back up at me. “When you see him, tell him I’m still waiting.”

  I swallowed. “Of course,” I whispered. “I . . . of course.”

  Without speaking, he pushed his stool out and stood up from the table, disappearing into the living room.

  I sat alone at the table and watched the doorway where Henry had just left.

  There must have been a moment in his life when he’d wanted more than this. Maybe he’d been married, maybe there were friends that had come and gone, maybe my grandpa’s trips through had given him a life more than the one he was living now, but he couldn’t have been this alone all along. I wondered what had led him to this point, driving to the train every day to watch for a man he must have known by now was never coming back. I couldn’t imagine the mistakes he must have made to get himself here, or how often they must have replayed themselves across his empty existence. I couldn’t imagine the way that regret must pile up upon itself after decades in isolation. No wonder he continued talking to God. Even if God had abandoned him.

  Unless this was what he wanted. Maybe he liked the chickens, and the eggs they gave him, and the single plate he used to eat them, and the giant fields of corn that insulated him from the rest of the world. It was hard to imagine, but there was purpose here, a different kind of purpose, and comfort, and meaning. There were things that relied on Henry, and Henry relied on them, and that was all that it had to be; the circle of life could be that small and uncomplicated. Maybe the life my grandpa had lived wasn’t the life he’d wanted.

  Or maybe this was the life my grandpa would have wanted as well, if he hadn’t accidentally ended up with a family. Maybe I was the thing that got between my grandpa and living Henry’s perfectly isolated life.

  Henry came back through the doorway with a newspaper clipping.

  “This is his,” he said. “He had it last time.”

  Henry must have understood the significance of what he was handing me, because my grandfather had cut it out of a newspaper and circled it several times, especially the byline, a name I recognized from the logbook in Denver. I could feel my heartbeat creeping into my throat as I read:

  OMAHA: THE ANTIPOLITICAL HUB OF THE MIDDLE UNITED STATES.

  BY LOU THURMAN

  MAY 1, 1970—Resiliency! In the

  good people of the Midwest, afraid to

  see their country sold to the highest

  bidder, when the currency being traded

  is young lives, poor lives, black lives!

  From the Midwest they see the full

  portrait of America, or whatever that

  means. The Midwest brand of

  compassion extends to all people,

  regardless of creed, color, or

  pocketbook; the Midwest brand of

  compassion is what will end this war!

  From the Midwest will come the

  revolution, the revolutionaries already

  sharpening their pitchforks of

  nonviolence, readying cannon blasts of

  ideas, a conversational protest.

  Join us, Tuesday, May 2, in the back

  room of the old Westwood Library, to

  speak softly of revolution, and prepare

  our rally cry!

  “You finished?” Henry asked, and I nodded, still gaping at the clue.

  Without a doubt, this had been left for me. I don’t know what clue I’d missed in Denver, but he’d wanted me here. And Omaha was only four train stops away.

  “Did he tell you?” I asked. “To leave this for me?”

  Henry took the newspaper clipping back. “Didn’t say nothing.”

  I nodded, feeling my chest swell with affection for Henry. “I’ve found some journals,” I told him. “Some stuff he’d written, during that last—uh, the trip he made, five years ago. Since the book.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t have them now, but I can show them to you when I get them back. I think you’d really like them.”

  “No, thank you.”

  It wasn’t rude, but Henry was uninterested. “It’s just, because we all thought he never wrote again, I figured you might wanna read . . . I don’t know. It might help.”

  Henry squinted at me. “Never wrote again?”

  “Yeah, after the book. When he got . . . the disease, you know? He stopped writing altogether. Except these journals.”

  Henry stared at me for another moment, then got up from the table and left. If he was upset, he’d hidden it, but it wouldn’t be hard; his face revealed almost nothing.

  I sat in silence in the kitchen for five minutes, poring back over the newspaper clipping. The back room of a library would be easy to find, almost too easy. Again, I’d be looking in plain, public sight for a clue placed five years earlier, but a library was the perfect place. Bibles, encyclopedias, books my grandpa had talked about—all of them could serve as a secret language that only he and I spoke. And there were rumors about my grandpa and libraries—the Great Library. I wondered if the Westwood had anything to do with it.

  When Henry returned, he dropped a thick stack of envelopes in front of me. He didn’t sit, instead fixing his eyes over my shoulder on the creased and ripping paper.

  “What is this?” I asked, but he didn’t respond.

  Carefully, I pulled the first envelope open. The paper was old and the ink was disappearing, but I recognized the handwriting.

  february 15, the 1968.

  dear henry,

  heavy hearts this month—not sure if she’s written you, but mum’s getting sick. if you’ve anything you’d like me to pass along, i’d be happy to bring it my next trip through. coming in from omaha next month, i’ll see you at the tracks, as always.

  feels like i’ve been around the world & back this year already. this mum thing might be a nice chance to take a break from it all. don’t know if that will ever be possible though—the more i learn of the world, the more i realize it needs help, & i’m afraid i may spend every day to my death going hoarse shouting up at waterfalls from the bottom, begging them to reverse their course. ah well, this is the life i’ve chosen & the life i love.

  jeffery sends all his love, & duke; everybody out here does. what a fantastic bunch we’ve put together. you’d love them.

  hope this year’s crop has been plentiful. i’ve been watching the weather reports & they said lots of rain in nebraska.
i hope you’ve been doing our dance, & if it’s not helping your crops, i trust it’s helping your soul. even ugly shits like us deserve to dance.

  by the way—the old bastard saw his shadow. as you know, i’m a man of my word, so i’ll honor our agreement until the day i die. the check’s enclosed. tell those blowhards at the bank they’re going to have to work a lot harder if they want to take what’s ours.

  —your brother, arthur

  There was a small photograph enclosed: identical teenagers, holding each other up, both of them leaning forward against the railing of the McCook station, a train track stretching off into the horizon behind them.

  There were dozens of envelopes, postmarked through five years ago.

  “He wrote you?” I asked.

  “We had a bet.”

  I looked up.

  “Punxsutawney Phil.” For the first time, it looked like Henry might almost be smiling. “The groundhog. Every time he sees his shadow, I get a thousand dollars.”

  I traced back through the letter: the old bastard saw his shadow. “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Well.” Henry looked out the window behind me. “My broth—Arty didn’t want no thousand dollars from me.”

  “What did he want?”

  Then Henry smiled fully. It was foreign on his face, and the wrinkles tried to resist. “A poem. Son of a bitch. Said it was worth more than money.”

  All of it made sense—the foreclosure notices in Henry’s kitchen, my father’s fury at discovering my grandpa had been sending thousands of dollars away in random checks—all for a bet about a groundhog. All of it told a story of a grandpa I didn’t recognize.

  “I know he don’t remember much,” Henry continued. “I seen it. Couldn’t barely remember my name.” Henry blinked several times at the envelopes. “But he wrote. Every year, he sent that letter. Always remembered the goddamned bet.”

  He gave one firm inhale, as if to suck the words back in, and disappeared into a small door in the corner of the kitchen. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.

  The house was full of loose boards that snapped around, creaking and groaning. All night, rain drummed against the outside walls in a pattern that became musical and comforting, soft percussion to complement the wind’s howl.

  I sat awake at the table, listening to the sounds of Nebraska, reading the letters my grandfather had sent to Henry over their forty years apart. It was a story I’d watched my whole life but had never truly been told. The story of my grandfather, the slow progression of his life, and, tied inextricably to it, the progression of his illness.

  The second letter, dated april 25, the 1970, was as inspired as the first, shimmering with clarity and tales of recent adventures, as if they’d just seen each other. I’d never heard my grandfather speak like that, but the characters were all recently familiar, and another year brought “another shadow, & another goddamn check for your brilliant & loyal groundhog.”

  After that, the letters started changing. Starting with march 2, the 1971, the awareness and information stopped, coming only in waves that broke and scattered into sections of chaos. They read like his clues—the only details were cryptic, the stories had no beginnings or endings, and the writing itself seemed to pain him to the point of difficulty. Even the rules of grammar escaped him. still can’t, place pain, he wrote in one, writing & sometimes it makes me forget but usually just makes me remember.

  After a few years, he seemed to stop trying altogether. The letters became short and cordial, no more than a few sentences reminding Henry that he was still in California. The most important details of his life came and went in small paragraphs, his pivotal moments covered like basic details in a plot summary. When he met my grandmother, on march 21, the 1975, it received two sentences: i’ve met a woman, josephine. she’s very lovely, & we’re marrying in a few weeks.

  Often, I could trace a hint of remorse for the life he’d given up, or at least a yearning to understand. why, when i think of nebraska, am i filled to sorrow, he wrote in 2002. why can’t i bring myself to the thought?

  The letters grew shorter and shorter. The final letter, dated in 2010, was a single sentence, four words long: i’ve seen my shadow.

  In the yellow light of the single bulb above me, I read through them again, and again, and again. They confirmed everything I thought I had learned, and nothing more. They fell short of even telling the story of his life, missing so many significant moments it was as if my grandpa himself hadn’t been there.

  And still, they came. Every time the “bastard groundhog” saw his shadow, Henry received his check.

  One letter broke the pattern. In only one letter, in one specific year, did he seem to rediscover clarity. It was the final letter I found, out of order and stuck to the bottom, its postmark softly fading off the front: March 16, 1997.

  march 16, the 1997.

  dear henry,

  writing to you with so much joy in my heart

  i can feel it, like a little joyous tumor—my son has just had a son of his own.

  he named him arthur,

  plagiarizing bastard.

  but still it doesn’t feel like i deserve to have my name on such a beautiful piece of creation.

  when he opened his eyes, i saw the world again for the first time. he looked at me & i saw myself in his eyes as everything i wanted to be for him. everything was possible again.

  i thought i knew & understood love in an old life. as it turns out, i had no idea.

  check’s enclosed.

  —your brother, arthur

  6.

  THE 7:00 A.M. sun gleamed off the tracks in front of Henry and me, casting a sharp beam of light into our eyes. I didn’t need to ask him to bring me to the train in the morning; he was already up and scraping the ice off his truck by the time I got outside.

  Through every moment I’d ever spent with him, from our best trips together up to Truckee to the worst arguments, I couldn’t remember a time when my grandpa seemed truly happy I was there. We didn’t talk like that in my house, him especially. He didn’t say “I love you,” not because he didn’t appreciate the semantic value of it, but because I don’t think he knew whether he loved me or not. After all, the only things he seemed to love were his incorruptible concepts, like Jesus, like Dickens, like baseball; the things that could never let him down or leave him or die.

  My existence seemed to only matter to him in pieces: on good days, I was two ears to hear whatever he felt like talking about; on bad days, I was a mouth, full of unholy and inappropriate words. Either way, I existed in proximity to his needs. It was inconceivable that something as small as me could affect something as large as him.

  But I was wrong, and the proof was tucked into my backpack. On the day of my birth, he had loved me, he had wanted me, he had needed me; I was his sign that everything was possible again. This single letter rewrote the story of our thirteen years together. I pictured the silent moments, but they weren’t indifference; they were exploding with unexpressed sentiment. The terrible moments and nasty conversations weren’t anger, they were just a disease, getting in the way of his relationship with a grandson that he loved, that he wanted, that he needed.

  And now he wanted me to keep going. He needed me to find him.

  “Few minutes late this morning,” Henry grumbled from the driver’s seat, leaning forward to examine the west end of the train tracks.

  I’d considered telling him his brother was gone, but every time, the image of Sue Kopek collapsed on her living room floor came swimming back into view, the cat in the box and the value of not knowing, and I decided not to. Henry needed the train in the morning.

  So instead, we listened to the rumble of the truck, the pop of the radio, the steady recycling of our breath, and a few moments after seven, the California Zephyr came pouring over the horizon. Henry trudged across the melting snow in the ditch, over the tracks, and took his place beside the train, eyes closed, arms raised, hair blowing across his face as the trai
n pushed wind over it, his body rumbling like it was him, not the Zephyr, shaking and shuddering down the tracks. A smile curled across his face.

  I followed him out, but by the time the train reached us, he’d forgotten I was there. Patting his back lightly, I turned and walked across the grass to the platform. “Thank you,” I whispered under the roar of the train. He didn’t hear me and didn’t need to. I didn’t look back.

  Today’s attendant had a mustache. “Getting on in McCook, that’s rare, kid!” I dragged myself through the door and up into the nearly empty coach car. As the train pulled away from the station, I sped up, almost running to the back window.

  Henry was still planted firmly in the grass, the same warm air rushing over him and leaving him behind.

  Every morning, the train arrived, and with it came a new day that would be exactly the same as the last. With every train that passed, he was twenty-four hours further from his brother and twenty-four hours closer to God. And he couldn’t stop it or slow it down. It was true for me as well; with every day, I was further from the time we’d spent together and closer to the myth he’d left, fact writing itself into fiction as even “I love you” came five years too late.

  But that was everyone, I realized. As sure as the sun rising over it, the train ran, day after day, year after year, an immovable and unstoppable force across the country,

  past my auntie and uncle, who watched it and wished it was better,

  past Sue Kopek, who watched it and wished it wouldn’t forget her,

  past the men in Green River, who watched it and wished it would leave them alone,

  past Mara, who watched it and wished it would take her somewhere far away,

  and past Henry, who watched it and wished it would turn around.

  But it never did.

  Still, he fixed himself like a statue, sacrificed himself to it, standing in the exact spot he’d stood for forty years; calloused hands reaching, weathered face smiling toward the train as it sped too quickly away from him.

  And I knew that tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and every morning after that, he would be in the same spot, feeling the same rush he’d felt for decades, with an immovable and unstoppable faith that as long as he waited patiently, one day, he and his brother would be reunited.