Train Ride

Through cracks in the boards of the boxcar's door, light fell on the old man's body in horizontal lines. The train he rode was in Kansas heading south, and the morning sun, unhindered by obstacles on the long, flat fields and small hills in the distance, woke the old man silently. His name was Joe, or at least that was what he called himself. He was an orphan whose mother had left him on the steps of St. Patrick`s Cathedral with a short, desperate note attached which included his given name, tucked in the old picnic basket that served as the cradle, believing that the size of the church reflected on the benevolence of the people within.

  He thought the name she had given him, and the name he had been called in those early years, was Michael, though he could no longer remember clearly. The church had given him to a childless couple in their congregation, assuring them that raising him would be an act of charity pleasing to the Lord. They, after seven years of charity they felt resembled penance, and discovering they would produce twins after the doctor had declared them barren, gave him to a poorly kept boys' home connected with the church. His name wasn't given to the director, the only instruction being that they were too poor to keep him. The director called him John.

  At the home he was teased and bullied as most of the younger boys were, and though it offered a bed and food, and the director had no diseased appetite for his wards, it was not a life for any boy. After three years, he and the only friend he had made there, Benny, planned to run away on a winter night. The director slept in a small room connected to the large one where they all slept in two long rows of beds facing each other on seperate sides of the room. Benny's bed was next to the only window large enough to allow them to climb out, and they waited to hear the deep breathing and occasional snores of sleep. Sure they were dreaming, Joe took his meager belongings wrapped in a bed sheet and scampered like the rats that infested the building to the window. Its latch was broken and it slid up quietly enough, letting Joe toss his things and then himself out with the light dexterity possessed by ten-year-old boys. He looked up to the window after landing in the snow, seeing Benny`s sack fly out and hit the ground next to him. Then, two small, white hands appeared on the window sill as he prepared to jump. Without warning, and what Joe thought to this day had been more than just bad luck, the heavy window came down hard on Benny's hands.

  Joe remembered the crunch of bone and the scream immediately after as Benny tried to wrench his hands free. Lights came on and Joe saw the director haul his friend back in one tremendous pull, his hands leaving blood to drip off the sill and freeze on the wall. He was still for a moment, unsure of what to do and ready to cry, till he heard the thunderous footsteps on the floor inside all charging for the door to hunt him down. He ran then, weeping, down streets and alleys, then caught sight of an abandoned distillery as snow began to fall. Finding a hole in a boarded-over doorway, he crawled inside. There Joe had stayed, hiding under a ragged tarp, hour upon hour. Once, he heard two of the boys and the director call out angrily for him. They must have been close, judging from the way their voices echoed loudly off the bare walls inside. Joe hid deeper under the tarp, and they seemed to pass the building by, the shouts fading gradually. 

  He was glad for the snow that began to fall during his escape, now coming down thickly, driven by wind, making vision nearly impossible, as he ventured a look out of a corner of one of the filthy window panes that the grime had not covered. Under the tarp it was warm. He wanted to cry again, but his small body had no energy for it, so he fell asleep listening to the snow hit the window in a relentless drone and the scuttling of vermin around him. The rest of his life had been a repeat of that night, not precisely but in spirit.

  Now, the trains rocking movement provided him a strange comfort, recalling something like a half-dream. His eyes opened and he blinked, wrinkled brow and heavy head moving. A little smile rose on his mouth because it was good to wake up this way; and because, as he slid the door open enough for the sun to hit him directly, he envied no one when the warmth touched him and the soft colors of the hills and fields radiated life to his hard eyes. The train moved on to Kansas City and Joe sat, waiting to arrive.