by Brad Cook
He didn’t even want to think about it, but in the back of his mind he knew it was inevitable. Folsom wasn’t that far away. Those nights when he’d imagined taking off and finding his father, it had always seemed a distant impossibility, not something that would actually happen. Yet here he was.
“A change of topic, then. It would be helpful to know your destination.”
Funny, Leroy thought. It was less a change of topic than Ant realized.
He leaned back on the wall behind him, obscuring Ant from view. Leroy forced the words out. “I’m headed to Folsom.”
“Oh boy. Nothing good ever came from that sentence.” Ant peered around the metal divider. “I assume you are referring to the prison.”
With a nod, Leroy sighed. Might as well get it all out.
Ant recessed into his mind, gazing off. A moment later he was back. “That would be why you have not seen him in a long time. Your father.”
“Thing is, I don’t even know why he’s in there. Last time I saw him I must’ve been, like, five. Momma wouldn’t talk about him, ‘cept to talk bad about him.”
“I must ask again: did you run away? Because if you plan to visit your father in Folsom prison, they are going to run a background check.”
Leroy must’ve looked the way he felt, because Ant burst out laughing. “My apologies. So you did run away. How long has it been?”
“Two days.”
Ant raised his eyebrows, stretching his face. “I see.”
“I got till friday, though. She thinks I’m at a friend’s house.”
Leroy realized he felt better after talking to Ant. Each detail he let slip reduced the pressure of the vice grip on his mind. The process was a bit painful, though, akin to popping a pimple, he mused.They both laid back and, for the first time since they’d gotten on, there was silence. An enduring silence, not one broken by Ant’s repeated remembrances of an event or person he thought Leroy simply must hear about. But to Leroy’s surprise, that wasn’t what he wanted anymore. He wanted to get it out, talk things over, pop some pimples.
“Smiley.”
Ant peered around the metal divider again. “Pardon?”
“Leroy Smiley. You asked about my name earlier.”
“Well then, it is a pleasure to finally meet you, Leroy. You know, for a kid named Smiley, you do not often smile.”
“Haven’t heard that one before,” Leroy lied. A short time passed, then he said “If I had a reason to smile, I would.”
“Why are you visiting your father in prison, Leroy Frowny?”
“Because he knows.”
“How cryptic. What does he know?”
“He knows about her.”
“You have a penchant for dramatics, no? Who is she?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Wow,” Ant’s eyes opened wide. “Is this a comedy routine?”
“Hey, I didn’t ask you to come.”
“It was not a complaint. You piqued my interest. What I meant was, who is she to you? How do you know of her?”
Leroy sat back again, grateful for the cast metal confessional between them. “She… never mind. It’s gonna sound dumb if I say it. I can’t risk that.”
“Not much of a risk, is it? I will not judge. Promise.”
“I can’t risk it seeming dumb to me. This’ll all be for nothing.”
“If you genuinely want it, it could never be dumb.”
There was silence again, aside from the rumble of the train.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You just did,” Ant said.
“How did you know the train was about to leave?”
“Fred told me.”
Leroy crinkled his brow. “We were the only ones there.”
“F-R-E-D: flashing rear-end device. The red light at the tail of the train.” Ant tapped it with his outstretched foot. “When Fred starts blinking, it is time to go.”
He’d have to remember that. As the little town beside the train tracks streaked by, an overwhelming feeling gripped his chest. He felt as if his heart was bound to explode with the words if his mouth wouldn’t. He had to let it out. Drawing a deep breath, he said “She was my babysitter.”
Ant kept quiet and hidden.
“A family friend. It was so long ago. Can’t remember her face, her voice, her name… But I remember the little things. Her hand on mine as she taught me how to paint. How she’d lift me up to climb the big tree behind the apartment. How safe I felt with her.”
“That is not dumb. She sounds wonderful. Your father knows her location?”
“I hope so. It’s all I got to go on. I’d be happy with just a name.”
“Tell me more of this woman.”
“Like I said, it’s fuzzy. Happiness… lived in her. She was the opposite of momma. Not really sure how they were friends, now that I think about it. In some ways, she was more of a parent to me than my own.”
“How did you lose contact with her?”
Leroy rubbed his knuckles. “Parents got home late one night. Momma was yelling, daddy was angry. Things got real bad. She sat in my room with me, smiling. Told me she’d always be there if I needed her. Then daddy came in and threw her out the front door, and I never saw her again.”
When Ant didn’t answer, Leroy glanced around the divider to find Ant wearing a troubled expression, his eyebrows arched, eyes narrowed.
It took him longer than it should have to notice Leroy staring at him. When he did, he spoke softly, yet loud enough to be heard over the engines. “There is always a reason to smile, Leroy. I will not hear anything to the contrary.”
Leroy absorbed that. He nodded.
“So, your plan is to find this woman and show up after… how long?”
“Like, ten years. And yes, that’s my plan. See, this is why I didn’t wanna bring it up. The more I talk about it, the less realistic it seems.” Leroy folded his arms. “I’m already out here. I can’t just go back.”
Even if Ms. Stacey would take him back, he’d feel like a failure. Between that, the undesirable surroundings, and the notion of what could’ve been, it would all be too much to bear. The thought put a knot in his gut.
The train’s thrum grew louder, as if someone was steadily turning up the volume knob. But it wasn’t just the volume that increased. There was a depth to it, a reverberative quality. The sound swelled until it was all around them.
Leroy looked side to side, then darkness encapsulated them.
“A tunnel,” Ant shouted. “Luckily, it is a short one.”
He felt silly. Tunnels had only existed in pictures for him previously. Once his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he could see the walls carved from sandstone. It was beyond him how the rock formation didn’t collapse in on itself, but he figured if it hadn’t yet, it wasn’t likely to now.
“A long tunnel can be a death trap. Diesel fumes tend to linger if it is not well ventilated. Prolonged exposure is unhealthy, to say the least.”
There was, now that Leroy thought about it, a smoky, acerbic scent on the air. As he drew a harsh breath, sunlight washed over him, and a breeze dispersed the fumes. He coughed out what was left in his lungs, then pulled in cool, fresh air. If that was a short tunnel, he had no desire to experience a long one.
Leroy shifted his weight and changed position when he noticed a pressure in his midsection, and the strong urge to urinate. He turned to Ant. “So, if I had to go to the bathroom…”
Ant was slightly taken aback. “One or two?”
“You’re in luck,” Leroy laughed. “Get it? Like urine. Any, uh… tips?”
“Lock your arm around the ladder, find your balance, and blast off.”
Leroy grasped the bar beside him and rose, taking a wide stance. He peeked around the divider. Ant wasn’t looking. Slipping his right arm through the ladder, Leroy wished the two of them were on opposite sides. His left hand, which had never taken on this job before, fumbled with his shorts, then he let it rip.
Ant was right, it was satisfying. As he sat back down, he watched the sparse golden surroundings grow green and mountainous. The tracks spanned dunes and hills, winding, climbing, and then the land went flat again, as if the earth had grown grumpy momentarily.”How much further to Folsom?” he asked.
Ant leaned forward to face him, wrapping his arms around his tucked up knees. “The tunnel back there was the Tehachapi loop,” he said with a strong accent, “which would put us a few miles out from Keene. So a few hours, yet.”
“So what’s your deal?”
Ant pressed a hand to his chest. “My deal?”
“Your turn to spill the beans.”
“I think you spilled enough for both of us back at the jungle.”
“Don’t dodge the question.”
Ant waved a hand. “I am simply an old fool. Let us leave it at that.”
“No,” Leroy answered, “Let us not. Trust works two ways.”
“Very well. What can I tell you to satisfy your curiosity?”
“Start simple. Where are you from?”
“Although my father was Italian, I was born in Beirut.”
Leroy sat expressionless.
“Lebanon.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It is a magical land, where wine flows as river and golden clouds rain coins,” Ant said, hands gesturing wildly.
“Oh,” Leroy rolled his eyes. “That rings a bell. For real, where is it?”
“I could tell you it borders Syria and Israel, but would that be of any use?”
Thankful he couldn’t be seen blushing, Leroy shook his head.
“Geography is one subject I have never taught, but you might be in need of some lessons. To put it simply, Lebanon is above Africa.”
So he had been a teacher. That would explain the way he talked, his didactic nature, his wealth of knowledge. “What did you teach?”
“Philosophy, drama, art. The cushy stuff.”
The word ‘art’ shot through Leroy like Woods had threatened to a day prior. Of all the people he could be stuck on a train with, this guy happened to be an art teacher. It was almost too good to be true.
“I like art. I mean, I like sketching. But paintings are dope, too.”
Ant cringed upon hearing that. “Nothing is dope. Cannabis, perhaps. Paintings are fascinating, captivating, illuminating,” he said. “Paintings are beautiful. Terrifying. Do not undersell your intelligence, or their profundity.”
“Ain’t, dope… anything else?”
“Yes. Finna, whatever that means. You are not ‘finna’ do anything. You are either going to, or gonna if you are being informal.”
“I don’t think I’ve said that, ever. Definitely not in front of you.”
“An unrelated gripe,” Ant shrugged. “What do you sketch?”
Suddenly embarrassed, Leroy drew a blank. “I dunno. Anything, really.”
“Do you have something I can look at?”
“Not with me. It’s all at Ms. Stacey’s. None of this was planned.”
“I am starting to see that,” Ant grinned.
“So can you teach me?”
“Teach you what?”
“Art.”
With a chuckle Leroy took a little too personally, Ant asserted with confidence that “Art cannot be learned.”
“You just said you were an art teacher.”
“Professor. And I was. One must have a profession. But despite what they paid me to say, creativity is not tangible or quantifiable. Art has neither formulas nor rules. I can show you examples of it, and explain why they qualify as such. However, the capability to produce art is inherent. You have it, or you lack it.”
The claim shook Leroy to the core. The one thing he loved, his one aspiration, was potentially a futile endeavor. What if he didn’t have ‘it?’ He’d be doomed to live as so many other poor souls, working jobs they hate to make just enough money to scrape by.
“Do not look so down! Plenty of people completely devoid of talent have made millions as artists. Just turn on the radio.”
“I don’t care about millions. I just wanna live comfortably.”
“Unfortunately, that is harder to achieve than it seems. Life cares not about status; she hesitates to pull the rug from under no man.”
“You make growing up sound great.”
“Nobody said it would be,” Ant declared.
Leroy found himself tired of talking, and slid back again. Ant must have sensed Leroy’s sudden apathy or felt the same, as he, too, went silent.
And so they sat, each pretending the other wasn’t there, as greenery painted sections of the brown landscape like a patchwork picture. Small towns, if a handful of local businesses and a few roads qualified as such, came and went every so often, not much more than sand and shrubs between them.
As the train emerged from an awe-inspiring gorge of rolling bluffs, a blood-red length of land came into view, seeming to stretch on forever. Whether it was dirt or plant material that caused the coloration, he didn’t know, but it was a neat sight. Just when he became convinced it would continue forever, the red tide broke, and lush fields of vegetation flashed by on either side, sectioned off into simple divisions of land like a puzzle for a toddler.
Evidently, this part of California was used for farming. Leafy plants lined the ground in single file, proceeded by apple and orange orchards, the trees in tidy rows. There was something strange to him about seeing vegetation conform to regulation like that. It made nature seem unnatural. Leroy was confident, for once, they were planted that way purposely.
* * *
A quaint town came into view, each business bearing the word ‘Edison’ in its title. Ant looked on in fondness as the old fashioned buildings passed.
It was time to tell him, Ant decided. He would require time to absorb the situation, plan his next move. The rest of the ride, four hours, at least, would be more than adequate.
Squeezing his eyes shut hard for just a moment, Ant inhaled. “Since you are a minor, you will need an adult to visit your father in prison. I am afraid I can not be that adult.” He paused, his mouth agape, face strained. “It… was my fault, a crime of passion I fled long ago.”
Then, adjusting his tone and volume, he got a hold of himself and said “We are approaching Bakersfield. There is a decent chance we will pass through it, in which case you would be well advised to try to make yourself inconspicuous. It is a big town with plenty of security.”
Ant waited to hear back, but Leroy said nothing. Afraid he had upset the boy, he scooted forward to gauge Leroy’s reaction, but found his eyes closed, head propped against his backpack, out cold.
Disregarding his own advice, Ant stretched out and relaxed, resting his bare feet on the raised border of the platform, a reckless smirk on his lips.
* * *
“Wake up.”
“Baron?” The name escaped Leroy’s lips subconsciously. He twitched awake, rubbed his sleepy eyes, then shielded them. Blurry shadows and sunlight alternated as if he was watching an old movie projector. “How long was I asleep?” He didn’t give Ant a chance to answer. “How far to Folsom?”
Ant blew air through his loosely pursed lips. “Let me see… we just left Stockton, so at this rate, could be within the hour.”
Leroy felt his stomach churn. That was supposed to be good news. But as he thought about it, terror seeped into him. The next few steps in his plan would not be enjoyable, or easy. He had to get into the prison. This would be intimidating in itself. The place housed murderers. People who had killed people. He cringed at the thought. And that was assuming Ms. Stacey hadn’t reported him, which was out of his control.
Then, if he got in, and this was the worst part, he would have to deal with his father. Leroy didn’t know why the man was in jail, and he wasn’t interested in finding out. His father had been absent for the majority of his life. Nothing would change that. All Leroy needed from him was a name.
He pushed it out of his mi
nd, a skill he’d become adept at in living with Adalynne Smiley. Sometimes, he’d learned, it was better to just deal with the situation as it happened, not before.
As his emotions settled, he mulled other topics. He turned to Ant. “So what’s there to do on a ride like this? Seems like it can get pretty boring.”
Ant shrugged. “To some, perhaps. To others, it is no less than the pinnacle of the human experience.” Passion flashed in his eyes. “The breathtaking grandeur of the American countryside, the liberty to live as one wishes, and good company with which to share it all.” Ant spread his arms wide, gesturing to their surroundings: plush waves of wheat for miles on one side, and a marshy river with a rapid current racing the train on the other. “If you sought freedom, you have found it.”
Ant let that set in, then went on. “In response to your inquiry, we mostly do this.” He gestured back and forth from himself to Leroy. “Conversation.”
That was a letdown.
“The marvelous landscapes alone should be enough to ward off boredom.”
“When you’re not locked in a boxcar,” Leroy quipped.
“Right. Oh! And, of course, drinking. Which reminds me…”
Ant produced an unopened bottle of whiskey from his pack.
If there was one thing Leroy hated more than the harsh scent of cigarette smoke, it was alcohol. Cigarettes just smelled bad; alcohol actually affected him. He’d long suspected his mother’s blood was more amber than red.
Ant cracked open the bottle, stared at it fondly, then lifted it in a silent toast before knocking back a few swigs and drawing a harsh breath.
“They say not to catch out while intoxicated, but we are already on the train.” He chuckled and drank more, grimacing as it slogged down his throat. He held the bottle out to Leroy. “Eh? Eh?”
Leroy held up an open palm. “Nope.”
“Is this not every teenager’s fantasy? To be offered free alcohol?”
“Not really. Not mine, at least.”
Ant screwed the cap back on. “In Lebanon, the drinking age is eighteen, but we often start earlier. There is no stigma attached. Which is precisely why everyone here wants it. People will always desire what they cannot have.”