"What about Gerrington?” asks Mrs. Lacey. “I've got a daughter living down that way I haven't seen since the road got cut after the last big rains."
I never realised so many people would have a use for our train.
The Chairman turns up, wanting to know what's happening and sniffing around for a ride in the car. He talks to Harris. I stare at his back and will him to die.
The crowd finally thins. I've done a good day's trading, worth more than the wood we used to fire up the car, Jem is buying a honey crunch with money Harris gave him.
"You lied.” I say to Harris, “You know the engine won't work."
"Sometimes a lie is just a truth that hasn't happened yet,” he says and winks like I'm his best friend.
Late in the afternoon Old Ma turns up with Jenna Ridge.
"Harris?” Jenna's voice is soft, uncertain.
He looks at her with a smile on his mouth and a question in his eyes.
"It's me, Jenna,” she says.
"Of course,” he says kisses her cheek. “How could I forget?"
"I married John Bates,” she says with a blush.
"Congratulations. He's a good man."
She looks puzzled, “You always hated each other at school."
"Just goes to show what good sense he had.” They all laugh then, even Old Ma. “You're more beautiful than ever,” he says, sucking up.
* * * *
* * * *
There are raised voices up at the house that night. Jem and I are sitting on the steps of our carriage when it starts. We sneak across the train lines and into the paddock to listen.
"We should open up the shed and get the Tableland Express running again,” Harris says.
"So you can take off for another twenty years?” Old Ma sounds angry.
"I'm not going to look after those strays of yours after you die!” he yells. “The train would give them something they could call their own."
Old Ma starts to cough. It takes her a long time to stop. When she finishes there is silence.
"There's a train in the shed,” Jem says.
"It's past your bedtime."
Later, I hear the creak of the door up at the house, and a muffled woof from one of the farm dogs. I look out the window. Old Ma is carrying a lantern down to the big railway shed. She tinkers with the lock for ages, then there's a muffled screech and groan of wood and the door opens just enough for her to slip inside.
I climb out of bed and follow her. When I get to the doorway she is standing in the middle of the shed, lantern casting a yellow pool of light on the floor. Towering over her is a steam engine. Black snub nose and funnel, boiler cylinder duck egg blue, wheels polished to a dull sheen. Old Ma walks around it, hand touching the fender lightly. As she picks up the lantern to leave I catch a glimpse of her face, tears reflecting in the glow.
* * * *
Old Ma sends the three of us out to plant tomatoes the next morning. She needs, quiet she says, to make goat cheese and butter.
Stiff-faced Harris spears the spade into the earth. There's no talk today. Jem and I follow him in silence, planting seedlings in neat rows, cold dirt wedging up under my nails.
"Could we attach a plough to the car?” Jem breaks the silence. Harris snorts and keeps shovelling.
"You'd have to chop wood for it,” I say. “So what's the point?"
"When we get the engine going we're going to need a heap of wood,” says Jem.
"You'll never get that engine going!” snaps Harris. “The guts are rusted out of it."
Jem's face crumples.
"Yes we will,” I say, wishing I could make Harris undo those words. “We don't need your help either. We were fine before you turned up.” I want to hurt him. He raises his hand.
"Go on,” I say, staring him in the eye. He glares at me, then his shoulders relax, hand dropping back to his side. Dumping the spade, he walks away.
I pick up the spade. “Come on Jem, let's get these damn things planted."
He nods and moves forward stiffly, face white. He's hurting but if we don't plant, we won't eat.
* * * *
"Where's Harris?” Old Ma wants to know.
"Walking,” I say and dish up the evening stew. There's meat tonight, Old Ma killed the hen that wasn't laying. I'm glad she did it while we were out.
When dinner's over Old Ma sends Jem out to make sure the dogs are chained then stares at me, waiting.
"I yelled at Harris,” I say.
She nods.
"He told Jem the old steam engine would never go."
"It won't,” she says. “I thought you kids knew that."
"It was important to Jem,” I say helplessly. “He wanted something that was ours."
"You've got this place."
"They'll give it to Harris, or allocate it to someone else when you're gone, like they did with our place."
She doesn't disagree with me. Her coughing has grown worse the last few months, we both know it. The door bangs. Jem is back and we don't talk anymore.
We are in bed when the dogs bark up at the house.
"He's back,” says Jem in the dark.
* * * *
Jem is a ghost of himself. He does his chores, speaks when he's spoken to, and doesn't listen to a thing I say. When he's not working he's looking towards the rail yard, staring at an old engine that he's never going to drive. The dogs don't understand why he's not throwing a stick for them, or rolling around on the ground, wrestling with them. I wish he'd do something silly or misbehave.
"I'm sorry,” says Old Ma to Jem after dinner that night. I didn't think she knew that word. “I shouldn't have promised you something based on what I knew couldn't be done. I've got something to show you."
Old Ma leads us outside, across the meadow, past the decaying engines to the railway shed. The key is stiff in the lock. We roll back the doors and hold up our lanterns.
The Tableland Express is larger than I remember from the other night. Brass fittings glinting. Jem walks around it, stopping here to touch a pipe, there to blow a cobweb away. He's tiny beside it, his chin on the same level as the driver's cabin floor.
The rest of the shed is a workshop. Large shelves, drills, pipes, pulleys, and a forge.
"She'll need a bit of work, but she should be sound. She'll get you to town."
Jem hugs Old Ma. She stands stiff in his arms for a moment, then hugs him back, her body awkward, unwinding. When they pull away they both have shiny eyes.
"It was Garrett's,” she says. “He'd like to see it back out on the track."
Harris pounds Jem on the back. “We'll get her going in no time,” he promises smiling.
* * * *
After breakfast Harris tells us he's going into town.
Old Ma sniffs. “All very well for some!” she says and orders Jem and me out to do more weeding.
Harris is back at lunchtime, eyes crinkling as he beats the dust out of his hat.
"How did it go?” asks Jem.
"The Chairman is organizing volunteers to work on the track and send word down the line by foot, letting them know the train's coming back. They'll mill new sleepers and salvage the side lines to give us one track all the way through."
Jem's eyes widen at that.
Harris laughs, “This is the biggest thing the Tablelands have seen since the War began. We're going to have to work hard."
Then he starts ticking off jobs to do, lubing, flushing lines, doing pressure tests, cutting wood, fixing the siding track and carriages for the train to pull on its first run.
A bell tinkles and Sam Neeson rides down the track on his pushbike. “Pa says to tell you there's a couple of men seen,” he tells us, cheeks red from the exercise and excitement. “Nationalists probably looking for supplies."
"Friends of yours?” asks Old Ma as the bike bounces away.
Harris flushes. “I've left all that behind,” he says.
I think Old Ma's going to say something more, but she just coughs, holding
an old hankerchief to her mouth. There's a cool wind blowing and she's sweating.
* * * *
I help Old Ma keep the farm going while Harris and Jem spend more and more time on the train and out on the tracks. Jem starts eating like Harris, asking for seconds and clearing the pot.
Old Ma does less everyday, resting between chores. People come and go. We feed a work crew for a week while they mend the rail lines straight out of the shed.
Listening to Old Ma's cough I hope Jem's dream will happen soon, before it is too late.
I'm in the kitchen with Old Ma when there's a loud whoosh of steam and a whistle blows in the rail yard. We go out onto the verandah and there she is, the Tableland Express, out of the shed, smokestack sending lazy wisps into the air, the sun shining off her blue boiler.
Jem waves from the driver's seat and I see his grin all the way across the yard. I start cheering, tears wet on my cheeks.
The train rolls forward, smoke and steam rising. Jem chugs it to the end of the siding, then brings it slowly back, Harris feeding the fire.
"Go on,” says Old Ma. I leave the preserves and run down to help.
It's dark when we stop but the train is ready; carriages hitched and wood box filled, waiting for morning and our first run to town.
* * * *
Jem wakes me at dawn.
While he eats breakfast I build a fire in the engine. By the time Harris comes out the chores are done and the train is eating up wood, ready to be gone. Harris walks unsmiling across the lawn.
"Get down!” A strange man with a gun is standing next to the train.
"What's going on?” A fog settles on my brain.
"They're stealing the train,” says Jem.
Why isn't Harris stopping them?
"No!” says Jem.
"It was never for us,” I say as Harris walks past. “It's for the fighting isn't it? For the Nationalists?"
He doesn't speak, he just climbs up into the train.
There's a noise like a whip crack and the first stranger falls over, a red hole in his forehead.
"Drop the gun!” It's Old Ma standing on the front stairs of the house, rifle raised.
"I'm taking the train,” says Harris. “You won't shoot your own son."
"No,” she says and fires. Harris stumbles and falls over the side of the driver's box, a dark stain forming on the front of his shirt. Behind me the third man starts to run, dodging between the couplings, trying to get out of range.
Jem picks up a rock and hurls it at him. It hits him in the back of the head and he staggers, landing face first, his head hitting the tracks.
Old Ma is still standing where she first fired; her face the colour of porridge.
"Are you all right?” I run across the paddock.
"He wasn't my son,” she says. “My son left twenty years ago and never came home."
"What?” There's too much happening.
"I wanted it to be him,” she says, looking over my shoulder beyond the train.
Jem comes over, face pale. “What are we going to do?"
Old Ma looks at him, eyes coming back to life. “You're going to drive that train of yours all the way into town."
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In the Name of the Mother
Jodi Lynn Villers
My daughter fell in love with religion—Noah's animal sets, disciples, Jesus who died for our sins—because of a radio show. I was only listening as a joke; we were stuck in traffic, and it was hilarious. Suzy, a little girl about Mabel's age, found God and converted her whole family through good deeds. Suzy mowed the lawn without being asked. She skipped a volleyball game to help her sister study multiplication tables. Then her sister asked for a Bible, and mom and dad agreed to go to church. The radio show ended by offering a free Bible to all the little kiddies out there and jingled out into harp music, redemption.
Now, I try to tempt Mabel, bring her into the world of sin with me. At her eleventh birthday party, I pass soda and candy out to her guests and set up a game of spin the bottle. You kiss in the closet, I tell them. You touch in the closet because it is dark. When Mabel redirects the party, leading them in a prayer for me, I unwrap my present to her, the Ouija board, and summon evil spirits that throw me into convulsions and move the party upstairs where it's safe.
When Mabel needs new sneakers, her first bra, I tell her she should shoplift. It's so easy to take the things you need. It's a commandment, she says. Thou shalt not steal. Wear Jesus rags, then, I say. When she doesn't buy a ticket for prom, I make fun of her for being a virgin, saving herself, as she says. I tell her how good sex feels, she couldn't even imagine, and then I buy a vibrator and place it on her bed, ready with batteries, while she's in the shower. All night, I lie awake, waiting to hear the buzz. Whore, I shout, when her name is called at graduation. I bake a drugged cake that says Welcome to the Real World in icing, but she won't eat because of the green color. And when Mabel forgives her father, makes peace with the bastard, I kick her out of the house, and she becomes a nun.
There are still nuns? I ask, amazed when she calls with the news. I thought you'd become a hooker when I threw you out. I thought you'd finally have sex, for the money. And then start using. I imagined visiting you in prison, sneaking contraband in, mothering you again. I'm married to God, she says. I have a new family. That's what being a nun means, and the phone clicks dead.
I want to understand, so I take some pills and drive to a church; they're everywhere. It's quiet inside. Light filters through windows colored with angels. I sit down and sing old-fashioned words I find in the hymnal: thou, thee, deliverance, sanctity. Then I see a painting of Jesus behind a podium. His arms are stretched out and he's not wearing a shirt. His muscles bulge in all the right places even though he is skinny. His hair is long like he fronts a band, and his eyes are so open, looking up, like he needs a mother.
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Holden Caulfield Doesn't Love Me
Daniel Lanza
Dear Journal,
Freshman year of college my friends and I used to play a game. We'd go around picking which literary character we'd marry or, given the current political climate, spend the rest of our lives with. Our answers changed as the years went on but, thinking myself to be some youthful discontent, the first love I ever picked was Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. After all, I've always had a penchant for younger men and when I was 18 the age difference seemed surmountable, if not endearing.
It's been years now since we graduated and scattered ourselves across the map, ending the game. I had almost forgotten about it before Holden walked in the front door this morning.
When he asked, I directed him to drop his stuff in the guest room. I tried to introduce myself but he shook his head and told me he already knew who I was. He looked so young standing there, more like a child than a lover. I took him out to dinner and he marveled at the emptiness of the landscape as we drove. Bakersfield, California, I said, is in an entirely different world than New York.
The heat has begun to leave the house now and I've opened all the windows, letting the darkness and empty space seep in. As sleep nears, I can hear him in the next room, unpacking his things. I can't help thinking of the way his face looked across that dinner table, diasporan and vacant.
I wonder if he won't be gone tomorrow. Part of me hopes he will.
* * * *
Dear Journal,
When I woke this morning, Holden remained. I found him in the kitchen, searching the cabinet for breakfast. When I entered he walked up and kissed me, as if it were a greeting between lovers. He took my hand just before it happened.
Afterward, he looked up at me and dropped my fingers from his own. I couldn't help thinking of his teacher—what was his name again? The one who came on to him on the couch? I can't help wondering if he felt the same way, seeing those young eyes so close, beautiful and resistant.
We both sit in the living room now. I offered to let him tak
e a look through my bookshelf and he picked out Pride and Prejudice, saying he'd always wanted to read it. He read the first couple of pages in a rush before setting it down on the couch cushion in favor of the television. Friends banter across the screen and he smiles but won't laugh.
He hasn't looked me in the eye since this morning. Maybe I should have given more thought to sexuality before using my pick on him but when you're young you never do.
* * * *
Dear Journal,
It started out yesterday when I asked him if he resented me for bringing him here. He hesitated before conceding that he may. I reminded him that the world I'd taken him from wasn't much better. That he'd made a mess of his life there.
He thought about it for a moment before answering me. When he did, he seemed suddenly more severe than he'd been before.
Things may be rough there, he said, but there's always meaning in it. I mean, sure my life has gotten pretty shitty in the past couple of weeks, he continued, but there it's my life. That means something.
But we've got each other now, I said.
No, he said, you chose me, but I didn't choose you. I've got nothing.
The statement held until I grew brave enough to speak. Who would you want instead?
I don't know, he paused, someone of my own. Someone like Eliza Bennet.
From Pride and Prejudice? You haven't even finished the book yet.
I don't need to. I know what I want, he said, suddenly resolute.
Fine, I said.
Fine, he said.
Eliza arrived at the front door the next day, dolled up in petticoats and taffeta. They drank tea while he explained the situation to her. I sat with them, considering the mess I'd made.
Soon it was decided. Holden moved his things into the closet downstairs and Eliza settled into the spare bedroom.
It's slouching toward midnight now and I can hear them shifting through the walls, Eliza next door and Holden on the living room couch. The TV's loud enough to edge in around the door frame and fill my room with a babble of distant conversation.
If I could do it all over again, I wonder who I'd pick. Chabon's Sammy Clay, maybe. A creative type and queer, at least.
I can hear Eliza's door opening now and her footsteps down the hall. I wonder if she'll kiss him like he did me. Maybe if he's lucky.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 23 Page 4