The Train of Small Mercies

by David Rowell

  “This is your car today, young buck,” Hayes said. “And the man behind the bar over there we call Big Brass, but you will call him Mr. Trent. You’re going to be helping Mr. Trent serve drinks and snacks and whatnot. We’re expecting maybe a thousand people on this train, and I figure seventy-five percent are going to stay in the snack cars. There’s three of them, but you stay assigned to the one.”

  Hayes introduced the two, and he told Big Brass the same story he told Mr. Chalmers about Lionel’s supposed knowledge of the train, and Big Brass appeared equally troubled. But Lionel knew there was no point in offering a defense. He could see that this was all part of the experience for the new man. “You do your job the way you’re supposed to, and you can count on your crew members for everything,” his father had told him. “Porters always have to have each other’s backs.”

  Lionel planned to save virtually all the money from his paychecks, since he was staying with his parents. At night he would focus on his artwork, not spend his money at the bars or jazz clubs or on women. Adanya was in North Carolina, and they might go the whole summer without being able to see each other.

  “You’re in Mr. Trent’s hands right now,” Hayes said. “I got to go to my own station, but you give Mr. Trent your full attention, and he’ll take care of you. Remember this, young buck: you’re going to have a few hundred bosses today, in addition to Mr. Trent. And by serving them, you are doing your small part to serve your country today. Am I overstating things, Mr. Trent?”

  “No, sir,” Big Brass said. “That’s Senator Kennedy we’re talking about. And God rest that man’s soul.”

  Hayes stuck out his hand, and Lionel grabbed it and tried to squeeze harder than before, but this time Hayes’s grip was twice as hard, as if he had anticipated Lionel’s impulse. Hayes smiled broadly—for the first time. As Hayes walked back, he was whistling the same tune as before, though more fully this time, so that it swept through the car, ringing off the glass windows. Then he stopped abruptly and headed back in their direction. “Mr. Trent, you hear the news?”

  “What news is that?”

  “They’ve arrested the man they think shot Dr. King.”

  Big Brass barely let his lips move. “Well, that’s good. What’s it been, two months now?”

  Hayes said that was right.

  “How long did they take to nab the Kennedy assassin—about two seconds?” Big Brass said.

  “Well, Sirhan didn’t even try to get away,” Hayes said. “Dr. King was killed by a sniper. It’s a little different. They caught him in London, in fact. This just came over the news a little while ago. They said the name, but I can’t remember.”

  “London,” Big Brass said. “The American authorities couldn’t catch him, but the English could, huh? The only question I have is, what shade of white is he?”

  He and Hayes let out a knowing laugh as Lionel looked on. He hadn’t heard the news, either, but Buster Hayes wasn’t exactly sharing it with both of them, and Lionel wasn’t sure if he was supposed to pretend to not even be listening. He had felt the ache of King’s death like any other black American, crowding into a dorm room with a dozen other students as they whaled and pounded the plaster walls with their fists. Lionel certainly knew what it was to be called nigger, to be followed by salesclerks as he shopped for a present, and he knew the fear of being passed by a car full of white men craning their heads at the sight of him, the brake lights suddenly blooming in the night air. But he understood that as men of an earlier generation, Hayes and Big Brass shared a history of indignities, injustices, and probably far worse than he was likely to ever experience.

  “Anyway, just wanted to pass that on,” Hayes said, and ambled back through the cars.

  “I thank you,” Big Brass called out, and then he looked at Lionel as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing there. Then he said, “Okay, son. Here’s what I need you to do.”

  New Jersey

  Michael’s mother appeared in the doorway, and Michael quickly let his feet come off the wall. He looked at her upside down.

  “So you want to play with your friends, then?” she said. She was trying to sound carefree, but both of them could hear the flutter in her voice.

  “We’re just going to go to the field,” he said.

  “Walt and Ty?” she asked.

  “And Daniel.”

  “Right, I spoke to his mother earlier in the week.”

  She sat down on the edge of his bed and ran her fingers through his fresh haircut. His hair was what she noticed first when the police brought him to the door. Like a hippie, she thought, with his overgrown cowlicks.

  “What do you boys like to do in that field, anyway?” she asked.

  “We climb trees,” Michael said, hoping that would suffice. That Friday morning Ty Weldon heard his father say to Ty’s mother that the train would be passing right through town, and Ty knew that meant it would first bisect their field; when no one was looking, Ty studied the little diagram in the newspaper that showed the train’s route from New York to Washington. During lunch, he told Michael, Daniel Gregory, and Walt Pluncket that they should go see it, but not to tell their parents. “If they think we’re interested in seeing it,” he said, “they might want us to go with them or something.”

  “Well, just don’t climb too high,” Michael’s mother said, and wished she hadn’t. But she also knew that Michael wouldn’t hold it against her.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He waited on the steps of his front porch for his friends. Next door he watched a man climb a ladder, a cigarette clinched in his lips, to inspect the shingles on the roof. Every time the man reached over to tug on a piece that concerned him, he paused first to mop his brow.

  “You wouldn’t catch me up there,” Ty called out as he strolled up the walkway. “Not on a hot day like this. Black attracts the heat, you know. Like a thousand times.”

  “I don’t mind the heat that much,” Michael said. “I like being up high like that. Gives you a good view.”

  Ty sat down next to him and looked over his shoulder to be sure they were alone. “We’re going to get a good view where we’re going.”

  “Yep.”

  “My parents were watching the funeral on TV,” Ty said. “They didn’t say anything about seeing the train, though.”

  Both of them sat and tried to imagine what was ahead of them. In a few minutes Daniel and Walt arrived. Michael’s mother looked out the screen door and came over to stand with them. “They say this might be the hottest day of the year so far. You boys be careful not to get overheated. Stay in the shade as much as you can.”

  They offered a low murmur of polite response.

  Michael stood up and said to the ground, “I guess we’ll be going.” He began to move toward his mother to put his arms around her before he caught himself, but the other boys didn’t seem to notice. She did, though, and smiled. She squeezed his shoulder and said, “Don’t get into any trouble over there.”

  Ty looked at Michael quickly, wondering what else he had told her, but Michael didn’t acknowledge him.

  Out by the street Ty said, “Does she know we’re going to see the train?”

  “Yeah, a dead body,” Daniel said.

  “He’s in a coffin, dimwit. It’s not like you’re going to see his flesh rotting off or anything.”

  “No,” Michael said.

  “Hey, my mom’s been crying ever since he got shot,” Walt said. “She goes for hours and keeps saying, ‘What is this country coming to?’ ”

  “Tell her to ask Michael the professor,” Ty said, not with resentment, but pride. “Michael always knows the answer, don’t you? Mr. Honor Roll Hotshot.”

  Michael could only smile. He was so grateful to be back among his friends that nothing else mattered.

  Maryland

  Roy Murphy was looking at his three ties, trying to decide which might look best with his pale-striped seersucker suit. He had worn the yellow tie the previous day, but no one from the office w
ould see him, except the weekend editor, and Roy hadn’t seen him yesterday, so he chose the yellow one.

  As he tied it, he studied himself in the mirror. He studied the way his cheekbones failed to rise, the way his ears jutted out too low on his head, the handsome green of his large eyes, his brown, wiry hair cut short. He wondered what Jamie West would make of his face now and whether Jamie would think that Roy looked more like a man than when they saw each other last.

  They weren’t friends in high school, but Roy was a close confidant of Jamie’s high school girlfriend, Claire Payton. In this arrangement, since Roy and Claire were such close friends, Roy knew a great deal about Jamie, and Jamie knew little about Roy. Claire understood early into their courtship that Jamie didn’t like to hear much about Roy—or any other boy, for that matter. She also understood that Jamie seemed to dislike Roy, perhaps only because he was another boy who knew Claire well, but also, Claire believed, because Roy and she had much more in common. They both liked to write—poetry and also editorials for the school paper. They both loved J. D. Salinger and Robert Frost and had a fondness for music, for string quartets and Benny Goodman’s small combos, and preferred the Kinks over any of the other British bands. They liked looking for constellations up in the night sky, and they compared notes on the various birds—mostly yellow warblers and red-winged blackbirds and orioles—they saw in any given week.

  Roy appeared scrawny next to Jamie because he was. And Jamie didn’t trust Roy’s intentions with Claire. How could a guy spend that much time with Claire and not want to kiss her?

  Claire was at the University of Virginia, and Roy had heard that she had since become pinned to a student there from Richmond. He wondered if Jamie knew, or cared. He wondered how much they would talk about Claire, if at all. Roy was no longer in touch with her.

  As a reporter, Roy was already becoming confident. His first week, when one of the sheriff’s deputies tried to dismiss him by saying there was nothing the paper needed to report about an arrest made that night on a local arson case, Roy replied, “With all due respect, Mr. Tillman, we’d like to be the judge of what there is to report.” Roy reenacted the encounter for his parents that night at dinner, and he replayed it in his mind for the better part of that week, when he was back to covering a Boy Scout Jamboree and a property dispute story between two dairy farmers.

  The drive to the Wests’ took just a few minutes, and he parked his car—his mother’s sedan—in front of the neighbor’s house. He was running early, as he always was, but it helped him relax and let him review in his mind how he wanted to start. How long would he talk to Jamie before bringing up the matter of being on the record? Would he ask that he and Jamie have some privacy, in case the parents wanted to listen in? What if the sister, whom he only vaguely remembered, thought it would be neat to watch?

  He’d keep it simple with Jamie in the beginning. How did it feel to be back? What were his plans now? Had he gotten fully used to his injury? And then, depending, he’d attempt to more fully explore Jamie’s psychological state. How did he see his life now? In what ways did he feel changed, besides missing the leg? He’d also ask him, since the funeral train was passing right through town, did he have any thoughts on the Kennedy assassination—perhaps as a way to gauge Jamie’s view on the politics of the war. Kennedy had made passionate arguments for America’s withdrawal from Vietnam, and Roy wondered what Jamie thought of that. That summer Roy had already learned that questions that weren’t obvious could have their own payoffs, and he had become skilled at moving a subject into offhand lines of questioning with little difficulty or awkwardness.

  On the Wests’ front door—dark green and peeling—was a little wooden plaque that said “Welcome,” the lettering slightly crude; Roy wondered if this was something Jamie had done as a kid with a wood-burning set. He knocked once, then stepped away.

  Mrs. West pulled the door back, balling up her apron. “Hello, hello,” she said brightly. “Come in. I’m Ellie West. Welcome.”

  “Roy Murphy,” he said, putting his hand forward. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. West.” By the way she turned her head, he could see that she recognized his face. He let her study him as he stepped in, and before he could speak again, she said, “You look very familiar. I don’t know if I’ve seen you in town before or what it is. You’re not new in town?”

  “No, ma’am,” Roy said. “In fact, I went to Burton.” He took a moment to scan the long hallway. He could hear someone listening to the radio in one of the back rooms.

  “Well, how about that?” Ellie said. “Then you know Jamie? And his sister, Miriam? She’s four years younger. She’ll be a senior next year.”

  “I did know Jamie,” Roy said. “I mean, I knew him just a little bit. We didn’t have any of the same classes, I don’t think. I was a friend of Claire Payton’s.”

  “Oh, Claire,” Ellie said in a wistful tone. “Pretty Claire. We were so fond of her. We were just heartbroken when she and Jamie broke up. We loved Claire to death.”

  Roy smiled in a way that said that he wouldn’t offer anything more about Claire, and when he could see that Ellie was done thinking about her, he moved his notebook to the other hand as a way of reminding her why he was here.

  “Well, come on in,” she said, finally. “Jamie’s here, Mr. West is here. I know Miriam’ll come out at some point.”

  As she walked toward Jamie’s room, Roy studied the framed photographs lined up on the wall. Here was Jamie in his early teens, his hair worked into a ducktail. Here was Miriam in pigtails and an unself-conscious grin of snaggled teeth. Here was the family portrait around the same time, Mr. West and Mrs. West standing behind their children, their hands firmly clamped down on their shoulders, Mrs. West’s hair swirling upward as if part of a science project. Perhaps the photograph for the church directory, Roy thought.

  Roy could see Mrs. West leaning into Jamie’s bedroom, but her voice was suddenly hushed. She looked peculiar leaning her head so far in, and it occurred to him that if she leaned any farther in without moving her feet she might topple forward. Then she turned and smiled—a smile of some relief, Roy thought. Roy could hear the sound of wooden crutches, and when Jamie moved out into the hallway, he seemed to consciously look away from Roy, conferring quietly once more with his mother. She nodded, then eased toward the young reporter.

  “Let’s have you and Jamie move into the backyard for a while,” she said. “Miriam has the radio on so loud, it might be a distraction. I know it’s already so hot out, but we have plenty of shade out back.” She took him gently by the arm, as he watched Jamie let himself out a side door.

  “That sounds just fine,” Roy said. “Whatever is convenient for everyone.”

  From the kitchen window Roy watched him now as he settled into a lawn chair under a large oak tree whose trunk bore the faint traces of an old rope swing. Jamie put his crutches on the ground next to him and pushed himself out of the chair once to better adjust himself. He was still looking away. There were two other chairs next to him, and at the end of the spacious lawn Roy saw two big archery targets pocked with holes.

  Mrs. West led Roy out. “Here we are then, Roy,” she said, and turned one of the chairs to face Jamie. “Well, how about this as a little Burton reunion? You two don’t even need any introduction. Jamie, did you know that Roy was working at the paper? Roy says he hasn’t seen you since graduation. Isn’t that what you said, Roy?”

  She had confused what Roy had said about Claire, but there was no need to correct her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Hey there, Jamie. It’s good to see you.” Roy jutted his hand out again, as if sprung from a coil. Jamie studied Roy’s small, delicate hand for a moment before shaking it, and when he stuck his hand out in return, he let a sly smile spread across his face. It looked out of place on him, Ellie thought, and in that moment she barely recognized him.

  “Murphy,” Jamie said.

  Roy had consciously not glanced at the missing leg since Jamie had stepped
out into the hallway, and he was careful not to now, though it was much harder standing over him like this.

  “Do sit down here,” Ellie said to him, and when he did, she couldn’t yet bring herself to step back into the house.

  “How about this,” she said again. Her eyes eventually drifted past them, and when they went to the railroad tracks she said to Roy, “Oh, did you know that the funeral train is going to pass right by?” She pointed out past the edge of their yard, where there were a few more weathered lawn chairs, to the gravel-lined tracks. Beyond the tracks was an expanse of woods, spindly pine trees mostly, half of which were bare.

  “There are a lot of people who’d loved to have a view like that today,” Roy offered. He looked over to the neighbor’s yard for comparison. A good part of it was taken up with liriope, and there were clothes drying on the line, rippling in the breeze like ghosts.

  “It’s all so terrible,” Ellie said. Roy thought that if he didn’t reply, she might have no choice but to leave them alone. He nodded once quickly, then glanced back over to the tracks.

  “Well, I’ll let you talk, then,” she said, and she squeezed Jamie’s shoulder before excusing herself.

  Roy opened a page of his notebook and took in Jamie’s face for the first time. There was a watery sharpness to the lines of his jaw now, and he was broader through the shoulders. His hair was growing out from his military cut. Even Jamie’s hands looked bigger, meatier.

  “So, thanks for agreeing to talk to me,” Roy said.

  Jamie’s sly grin had faded, and for the first time he appeared to Roy the way he had back in high school. Handsome, confident, unimpressed by everything around him.

  “So how’s Claire?” Jamie said, in a voice meant to convey his indifference.

  “Oh, you know, I really wouldn’t know,” Roy said, and tried to make a laughing sound. “I haven’t talked to her in over two years, probably. Yeah. After high school, we just kind of fell out of touch, really. You get into different colleges, and it’s just harder to keep up. And, too, you get into college, and, well, you’re different, you know? Or maybe it’s just that you’re older. I don’t know if she’s the same girl anymore. Maybe.”