Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
There’s a gentle tug at my elbow, startling me from a fitful sleep.
The overnight train journey connecting Seattle to San Francisco had been largely uneventful. I had spent most of the evening counting the number of abandoned buildings dotted along the railway line and watching fields whizz by as dusk settled on the land. The loneliness of the journey was compounded by the fact that I was the only one in my carriage. Or so I thought.
Again, the soft tugging brings me swimming back to reality. Turning around in the obscure light, I see a little boy with big moon shaped eyes.
“Hey Mister. You awake?”
The boy, no older than seven years old, is carrying a little red backpack slung over one shoulder. His bright blonde hair is matted with globs of thick gel giving a spiky punk look. A thin trail of snot runs off his nose, which he mops away with a shirt sleeve that becomes more luminous with each swipe. I peer around the cabin, eventually spotting a woman in a dark corner, asleep under a blanket. Two young children, also asleep, nestle against her chest.
“Is that your Mom?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he replies, looking back over his shoulder. “We just got on and they already fell asleep. But I can’t sleep, Mister. I’m bored!”
“Well it’s getting late, maybe you should stay with them in case they wake up.”
“My mama just had her pills,” he sulks, hopping on the empty seat beside me and fixing his backpack on his lap. “They make her sleep real strong. I’ve got to stand guard until we get to Safran-cisco.”
“What happens when you get to Safran-cisco?” I ask, pleased for the conversation.
“That’s where Daddy is, silly!” he says, smiling broadly.
The boy begins unzipping his backpack, carefully emptying the contents onto his lap. A sketch notepad is opened and he fishes out a big red marker from a side pocket. I turn my attention away and out again to the landscape. It is still dark and I can only make out several buildings nearby, barely visible like underwater rocks, shining dimly in the moonlight. Head leaning against the window, I feel the vibrations of the train – the ripples strangely comforting.
I close my eyes and begin to think of her. About what I’d say. She would greet me at the station with a warm embrace. Perhaps there would be tears. I couldn’t be sure. It had been two months since we last met, but this time she would be different. She would be carrying a child inside her. I hated myself for being so stupid. A child was the last thing we needed, but she insisted it would bring us closer together. Strengthen a connection which had been weakened with my job transfer to Seattle. I wasn’t ready for a child. It was difficult enough trying to keep a long-distance relationship together, let alone bringing a child into the world.
“Hey, Mister?” Again, that pull on my elbow. “You asleep?”
Despite my worsening mood, I smile. To be a child again without worry.
“No. Not asleep. Just…thinking.”
“Oh.” Then suddenly remembering something, the boy’s eyes light up. “I drew you a picture! Do you want to see it?”
“Sure.”
The boy opens his pad to the centre pages and holds it up so I can see.
“It’s you! Do you like it?” he quickly sucks back a slug of snot that had threatened to fall off his lip and blot his artwork.
The giant red figure is mostly head, decorated with a scruffy beard (not entirely inaccurate), and sausage fingers (seventeen in all, I count) on a stick body. A rectangular box houses the person, with an adjoining smaller box carrying another tiny shape.
“That’s me,” the boy says proudly, pointing to the figure in the small box. “I’m driving the train to Safran-Cisco!”
In spite of myself, I laugh aloud, and the boy suddenly looks at me, face souring. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re laughing at me. You don’t like it.” His face begins to cloud and I can see he is close to tears.
“That’s not true! I really like it. You made my day.”
“Really?” he asks, with some caution.
“Really. It’s a great picture.”
The boy beams delight at his new creation and smoothes out the creases on the page. Looking closer, I notice the expression on my character’s face.
“Why do I have a frown?”
The boy looks at me and shrugs his tiny shoulders. “I dunno. I just drew you, and you seemed sad.”
“When? Just now?”
The boy nods, and goes back to his drawing, shielding a hand around his work so I can’t see.
“I’m not sad,” I say, “It’s just that I’m going to see my girlfriend and our wee baby, and we need to make a big decision together. And. It’s just. Scary. And. I don’t know what to do.”
The boy pauses, looks up at me and then goes back to his drawing.
I stare out the window again, seeking distractions in the landscape that can quieten the voices in my head.
“I guess, I just need to…I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
I sigh before trying to manoeuvre a comfortable groove out of the rigid seat. After a short while, exhaustion finally takes over and I fall asleep.
When I awaken, light filters through the curtains. Its invigorating glow bathes me in a gentle warmth. I feel my spine aching to stretch itself out after the rocking, buffeting motion of the train and hours sitting idly. I turn and notice the boy is still seated beside me, fast asleep with the red marker dangling from one hand. His head hangs loosely on my shoulder, shallow breaths of air whistling out his only unblocked passageway. A loose page peeps out of his sketchpad, threatening to fall to the floor.
I slip it out of the pad and hold it up to the dawn light. It is drawn with more detail than the last effort. Inside a rectangular box sits a woman and two small children. A row of zzz’s stream out of their mouths, suggesting sleep. Like the last picture, the boy driver takes the wheel – outstretched hand waving to a group on the platform.
There, stood a familiar tall man with a beard and a woman. Sandwiched between them, a little child in a pink skirt. There are smiles on the faces of the parents, and I begin to cry.
Perhaps it was going to be alright after all.
This story was written for the ambitious creative project, ‘The Weekly Kook’, where I release a brand new short story every week for a year, totalling…yep, you guessed it – 52 stories.
Check all the stories here as I release them.
