The Shoebox Trainwreck

by John Mantooth

  It was better in prison. Now that I’m free, I can’t go an hour, a minute without thinking of them. And the dog. The damned little dog.

  It’s funny how life can get away from you. Thirty years of the good life, eight years in the joint. Now I’m forty and I don’t have anything, just a body that won’t sleep, a mind that won’t rest.

  I see their names when I close my eyes. They are the wild lights that cling to my eyelids, the flash of synapses in my brain.

  Matthew Litton.

  Kevin Funderburke.

  Ann Lawson.

  Demetria Thomas.

  Over and over, I see the names. I hear them. I whisper them in secret to my godforsaken soul. I would rather still be in prison than here, this morass, this flooded valley of guilt.

  Matthew Litton.

  Kevin Funderburke.

  Ann Lawson.

  Demetria Thomas.

  Picture a warm May day. Cinco de Mayo perhaps. You’re a schoolteacher, happy, blissfully unaware of life and its catastrophes. You’re like a child who picks up a snake in the back yard and is bitten. You pick it up because nothing else in the back yard bites; so why should the snake? But it does, and that changes everything.

  You drive a bus. It’s money that you need to supplement your salary, which isn’t much, right? I’m not going to lie to you; it isn’t anything. But you’re happy. Did I mention that you have a wife and a daughter? Don’t worry about their names. Names only make everything harder in the end.

  Are you with me so far?

  Good.

  It’s after school. You’re sitting behind the wheel of the bus. The kids climb on, all ages. It’s a small rural school, kindergartners and high school students all in the same building.

  It’s a good route. Thirty-five minutes in the morning. Thirty flat in the afternoon. For about an hour a day you’re making an extra twelve, maybe thirteen grand a year. There is always something to spend it on: groceries, gas, furniture, bills, your daughter’s college fund.

  Money mattered then. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters. No, that’s not right. You have to understand this before anything else: All that matters is the litany.

  Matthew Litton.

  Kevin Funderburke.

  Ann Lawson.

  Demetria Thomas.

  Those names. Maybe you think of the names so much because you can’t bear to think of the faces.

  Lord, help me.

  I’m sorry. I digress. You would understand if you were me. Maybe you can understand. God, I want you to understand.

  Listen:

  You hear the happy noises of children while the bus coughs and jumps onto the highway. A few years before, each stop had been a test of memory, but now, the drive is automatic.

  Today you are thinking about your wife. It is her birthday. You are in a hurry because you have plans.

  Hurry.

  That’s another word you will turn over and over in your mind one day. What does it mean? Why do we bother? A piece of advice: there are no answers.

  Your wife? She is everything. Go ahead and imagine her, I won’t care. She’s spectacular. Fit and tan. A shine in her hair like the girls in shampoo commercials. Undress her, I don’t care. You could fall in love with her for all I care. You’ll never understand me, because when it’s all said and done, you didn’t kill anybody. I did.

  But let’s pretend. Let’s pretend anyway that you did.

  So, you can’t wait to get home. There’s a babysitter. Your daughter is out of the house. You’ll go out, to a quaint little cafe, then back home for a tumble in the bed.

  No, you won’t.

  But try to pretend anyway. Try to imagine.

  You feel the steering wheel rumbling in your hands. It is never still. You make hard turns and don’t slow down much. Your wife’s at home. You've done this hundreds of times.

  The first stop. Four kids get off. You can’t remember their names. They’ve gone on with their lives. You’ve gone on too, only you had to leave your life behind.

  At the next stop something happens that you will never forget. The dog, a little miniature schnauzer—hell, you think about that dog nearly every day—is under the bus.

  One of the kids says, “Don’t go anywhere. There’s a dog underneath the bus.” It’s Demetria Thomas. You don’t pull away, terrified that you might run over the dog. You have always loved animals, dogs in particular. Your family never had pets because your mom was allergic to them, but your grandmother always had them around.

  You used to love going to your grandmother’s. She always believed in you. Had high hopes. Sometimes, while you were in prison, you could think of the mint tea she used to make and your problems seemed to float away, smooth and soft like sunlight on a hazy summer day.

  None of that stuff works anymore. You think of your grandmother’s mint tea and you think of the names again.

  Please, God. No.

  But they have been written on your soul . . .

  Matthew Litton.

  . . . like verses of the Bible.

  Kevin Funderburke.

  They have their own cadence and rhythm.

  Ann Lawson.

  They do not heal . . .

  Demetria Thomas.

  They only bind.

  I suppose I did it again. You’re no doubt rolling your eyes at me now. Roll them. You won’t bother me.

  I must tell you about the dog. If I get distracted again, simply grab me by the shoulders and shake me as hard as you can. My brother did that to me the other day. He came in to visit me from—

  You didn’t shake me. Are you even listening? Hell, nobody’s ever listened to my side before. Oh, they heard it in court, but nobody really listened. Nobody wanted to know how it was only a mistake, an honest mistake.

  It doesn’t matter. I’m going to tell you anyway. Are you the kind that listens to killers? I’ve heard that you are. Then listen. Listen well.

  The dog. The little dog. He’s under the bus. You put the bus in park. The kids are all standing up, craning their necks hoping to catch a glimpse.

  “He’s clear!” someone shouts. You don’t know who, but later you like to imagine it was Ann Lawson. She is a sweet girl. You can trust her. But you don’t. You are too concerned for the animal. You are too concerned that you might roll over the little thing and kill it, leave it pasted to the road. You climb off the bus to verify that the dog is indeed clear. You see the little thing: shiny silver, a cute face. And your heart breaks. You would never have forgiven yourself if you had run over that.

  Yes, you would.

  In fact, you wish now that you had run over the damn dog twice. Three times.

  But you don’t. Instead, you climb back aboard the bus, buckle up, release the air brake, and put that death trap in drive, rumbling on down the road toward the seconds that will be the most important of your life.

  Imagine a country road: clear, the sun shining bright. You’ve flipped the visor down because you forgot your sunglasses again. You remember hearing somewhere (bus school, maybe?) about a driver that wrecked a school bus because he didn’t have sunglasses. He had been driving west at four in the afternoon; he didn’t see the dump truck coming the other way. That could be me, you think. Except it won’t be. Not now. Because there’s a visor. They put them on all buses because bus drivers forget things like sunglasses. It’s no big deal. People forget. They make mistakes, right?

  Say yes. It’s normal. The best of us make mistakes, all that garbage. Believe me, you’ll need it later. You’ll wear it as if it were a bulletproof vest. But nobody’s shooting bullets and even the best armour can’t stop glances, or murmurs, or a heaviness in your chest that sends your heart into your kneecaps and makes it difficult to walk.

  But you don’t know any of this yet. All you know is your wife at home, waiting for you, just waiting to love you. You know your daughter—God, she’s beautiful. You know the damned little dog, the joy of saving its insignificant life. You know the beauty of the
day, the next turn in the road, which is a doozy—hold on.

  You swing the bus expertly around the turn. Three years of driving and you’ve never had a close call.

  Through your windshield, you see the moon: a ghostly sliver in a clear blue sky. It’s beautiful. The last beautiful thing you remember seeing. See it now. You will need its solemn wisdom later. Even in the daytime, the moon is a good listener.

  And you, too, have been a good listener. I’m sorry for doubting you earlier. We’re here now. We’ve come this far. You can’t turn back.

  You hear the blare of the train before you see it. The sound hardly registers. What’s a snake to a child who’s never seen one? Nothing, absolutely nothing . . . until it strikes.

  One more bend and you see the tracks. A little blue house sits beside the road, and you think of how the trains must shake the walls, rattle the dishes, rouse the children. But also, how it must feel to lie in bed and listen to the trains speed past, like noisy flames, burning, burning, and then . . . gone, extinguished by the night.

  You slow as you approach the tracks, thinking again of your grandmother’s mint tea. Hell, you can almost taste it, but that’s not too unusual. It’s a hot day, you’re thirsty, and you’re in the country. It’s natural you would think of your grandmother. Her mint tea. You realize it’s been a long time since you’ve seen her. You realize you won’t ever see her again.

  And then the train.

  You follow procedure, opening the door as you approach the tracks, and you feel the first tinge of impatience creep into your veins. You really hope the train is not too close. Waiting takes so long. But there it is.

  See it.

  The smoke, coming out white and billowy like clouds. The wheels turning insistently. So many tons of steel. It is a long way off.

  If there is a thought, you don’t even remember it. You only remember a complete confidence. You have done this before. Other drivers have done this before. What are the chances? You close the door and drive over the tracks. Most of the bus clears the tracks before the engine coughs and grinds and sputters and then dies completely.

  You waste far too much time, unmoving, thinking about what just happened. Is it possible, you wonder, really possible that the bus just stalled?

  The first surge of fear grips your body like a hard freeze.

  You force your hands to move, jam the gear shift into neutral, twist the key hard, give a hard stomp of gas.

  Sputters, kicks, dies.

  And so do you. You are stricken immobile.

  Right then. Right there. You don’t believe it could happen like that? I lived it. It happened like that.

  It is the screaming that makes your blood move again, kick-starts your heart.

  You stand. Look at the train. You would never say it was far away now, not with a busload of kids on the tracks and panic coursing through you like adrenaline, but this is not adrenaline, it’s not fight or flight. It’s something more like dying.

  That thought gets you moving again, gets you thinking. Suddenly, you are screaming at kids, directing them off the bus via the emergency exit in the back and through the main door. You plead with them to hurry. They seem to move so slowly. The engineer is blaring that horn like the world is ending, and somewhere behind the screaming kids and the impending steel, you know that it is.

  By the time you think of saving yourself (oh, did you think you were going to be some kind of hero?), the train and the bus are only a dozen yards apart. The kids are still spilling out of the exits, running like water.

  All at once, you know absolutely that everyone will not get off the bus. There is a logjam at the back door. No one in the front where you are. All you have to do is jump off and get clear. You take a long look down the aisle. You see

  Matthew Litton

  Kevin Funderburke

  Ann Lawson

  Demetria Thomas

  at the very back. You shout: “Come to the front! There’s time!”

  But then you look at the train again. These kids are small. Kindergarten, maybe first grade. They’ve panicked. There’s not time.

  And as soon as you realize that they are going to die, no matter what you do, you run for the door.

  Let me make sure you understand this. You should have stayed on. Even though it would have been five dead instead of four, you should have stayed on.

  A train makes a bus seem like a very small thing. The school bus barely slows the train. It tears through the bus, leaving remnants of glass and flesh on either side of the tracks. All you hear is the groaning of steel, the cries of anguish, the sickly sounds of souls escaping from healthy, eager bodies.

  Don’t you look away now. Don’t you dare. See the carnage. See what you have wrought, the effects of a careless mistake. See their faces. Say their names . . .

  Matthew Litton

  Kevin Funderburke

  Ann Lawson

  Demetria Thomas.

  Besides the names, I see the parents’ faces. Their righteous anger still sends chills down my spine. How do you defend the indefensible? How do you tell a parent that their only child died because of your impatience? Does impatience sound better than carelessness? What about foolishness? Does it even matter? Shouldn’t I have just stayed on the bus? At least then I would have never had to see the faces of the parents, heard the names of the children like an endless chant in my head.

  Is there a heaven for people who make mistakes that can never be fixed? That’s what I told the parents. I would fix it if I could. I would do anything. But they didn’t listen. And I couldn’t fix it.

  Can you?

  Sucky

  When Joe was three years old, he pointed at the claw-foot tub in the hall bathroom and said, “Sucky.” His parents laughed. His father was proud, his mother vaguely worried that her three-year-old already used the word “sucky.”

  When he’d been four, he tried to tell them. They’d listened to him then. They listened and smiled and told him he had a great imagination and one day he would do something important like write a collection of poems or an article on tax reform that would win the Pulitzer Prize. As he got older, and was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia—“a damn fatal one-two punch,” he’d overheard the doctor tell his parents when he didn’t think Joe had been listening—his mom and dad said less stuff about poems and Pulitzers and more stuff like, “College is something you have to work for, Joe” and “The world is a cruel place to those who can’t read.” Joe could read. That wasn’t the problem. But it was hard work sometimes because the words turned over on themselves and wouldn’t ever quite straighten out for him and look like words were supposed to look, so much so he began to think of reading as something like walking through a minefield. Every word was a potential bomb. And when he took the tests, those stupid, computerized comprehension tests, he felt like his brain was floating in the middle of some far away ocean possibly getting pecked at by seagulls or sized up by sharks, while the rest of him was sitting in Ms. Fosett’s second period, staring glass-eyed at a computer screen.

  When he’d been seven, he’d tried to tell them again. He even got Dad up there to listen to the drain as he flipped the valve. The noise that usually sounded like a monster trying for all it was worth to suck the whole world through its tiny mouth hole, gurgled softly, nearly silent, like clear spring water sliding through a gap in the rocks.

  Dad frowned. “It’s time to stop being afraid of the bath tub, Joe.”

  Joe nodded, pretending he understood. But he didn’t.

  When he was ten and his mother mounted a showerhead over the tub and Joe took his first shower, he was reaching for the soap and slipped. His bangs had been longer then, and even though he managed to catch himself before he cracked his head open on the porcelain basin, some of his hair dangled dangerously close to the sucky. He heard it throttle down and inhale, a great, heaving, asthmatic groan. His bangs pulled against his scalp and he felt his head going down. He screamed and jerked himself up, cutting his head open
on the tub’s faucet. There was a lot of blood and more screaming. For the next several days, he was allowed to bathe in his parents’ bathroom.

  The sucky got worse. As he neared his thirteenth birthday, he heard it all the time. Sometimes he even found items in the bathroom missing. He lost a toothbrush, a roll of toilet paper, a sock, a page he’d torn out of his sixth grade yearbook showing Madeline Buckhorn’s ass in a pair of tight blue jeans, half a deck of Magic: The Gathering trading cards, and a Victoria’s Secret catalogue he’d swiped from the mail and hidden in the bathroom before his mother ever knew it came. He decided to talk to his parents again.

  By this point, they had their own problems. Joe often wondered if they were going to get a divorce. Samantha, his mother, seemed to be forever rolling her eyes at Danny, his father. Danny never seemed happy about anything and frequently their disagreements spilled over into full-fledged fights.

  Sometimes, after they thought Joe was asleep, they screamed at each other. He caught snippets, mostly, but he was smart enough to put them together. He might have had a “deadly combination” of ADHD and dyslexia, but he could think just fine. The snippets mostly went like this:

  “. . . just want a little space. Is that too much . . .”

  “. . . you’d be better off with somebody else . . .”

  “. . . ever since that woman started working there . . .”

  “. . . I do the dishes. I vacuum the floor, but that’s not good enough . . .”

  “. . . go away for a while. I need space. Room . . .”

  “. . . are you going to drink another whole bottle tonight?”

  “. . . space. Just gimme some goddamn space . . .”

  And worse. Much worse. When it got really bad, he covered his ears because he was sure he would hear his father slamming the door shut and leaving them. He’d been afraid of that almost as long as he’d been afraid of the sucky, ever since he woke up to a brutal fight one night when he was four. He’d cried and cried until his parents both came to check on him and reassure him they would never leave him.

  “But, I heard daddy say he was leaving and never coming back,” Joe said.