by Kyp Harness
One day as Tim was waiting for his mother to drive him to the library, he was surprised to have his father volunteer to give him a ride instead. Dirk was going to the Ex-Servicemen’s Club and it was on the way. As they drove into the city, Tim watched his father from the corner of his eye and saw him turn his head slightly from side to side, sighing heavily through his nostrils at intervals and making periodic clicking noises with his lips, as if he were about to speak. Tim watched these motions with rising dread, for he knew they were the signs that his father was about to say something significant to him and was rehearsing it in his mind.
It took Dirk until they were within five minutes of the library to dart his head forward suddenly as if to shake the words from his mouth, make the clicking sound with his lips for the final time and turn to fix his eyes on Tim: “So, you’re still hurtin’ pretty bad about that girl, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” said Tim.
His father nodded his head with a grave frown. “Well, I’ll tell ya somethin’ I learned,” he said, poking his finger and narrowing his eyes as if giving out a piece of confidential information, “and that’s ya can’t let ’em get to ya. You gotta be cool. Back when I was single, I had this one, and one night she says she wants to break up, and I said, ‘You wanna break up, let’s break up,’ and hey, she was really built, no foolin’,” he confided. “So I said, ‘Alright baby! See ya later! Bye!’” Dirk waved his hand and assumed an expression of kingly indifference.
“Then she comes to me a couple of months later and what does she say? She says, ‘We gotta problem—I think I might be pregnant.’ Oh shit, I’m thinking.” He bowed his head and shook it. “‘Will you come with me to the doctor?’ she says.” They arrived outside the library and Dirk brought the car to a stop, turning to face Tim in his seat. “We go to the doctor—they didn’t have none of them home pregnancy tests like now,” he explained. “And the doctor says, ‘Yeah, you’re pregnant, three months gone.’
“Well, shit… We walk out of there and out to my car. She’s crying and she says to me, ‘What’re we gonna do?’ I says, ‘What’re we gonna do? Whaddaya mean what’re we gonna do? Look at your calendar, baby!’ I says to her,” said Dirk, leaning forward and grinning with triumphant vehemence. “‘That can’t be mine—we weren’t foolin’ around three months ago—I know right when we broke up…’” he said, emphasizing each word with a jab of his forefinger, “‘and that was two weeks before three months ago! So don’t ask me what we’re gonna do,’ I told her, and I opened the car door for her. ‘It ain’t my problem!’
“‘So long,’ I told her,” he said, waving his hand again, and smirking with satisfied vengeance. “‘See ya later!’ See, that’s what I mean,” said Tim’s father, a vague gesture of his hand indicating how easily his hypothesis had been proven. “You can’t let ’em get to ya. You gotta be cool.”
With time, Tim was able to bear his days without entertaining thoughts of his own destruction—or rather these thoughts lessened to the rate of prior to Russ and Sherrie’s union. There was a definite point several weeks into the summer, though exactly when was unclear, when existence crept back into the realm of the bearable, and his voice and spirit returned, both changed.
As the summer wore on, Russ and Sherrie even came over to visit his home one afternoon. Tim still looked on Sherrie’s small, childlike body and her high-cheekboned face with adoration. She sat in an easy chair in the living room that swivelled from side to side, and Tim would always remember how Russ, sitting in the chair beside her, kept his stockinged toes on the side of her chair, spinning it from side to side with a sort of playful, easy propriety that Tim knew to be so far beyond himself that it didn’t even make sense to envy it.
The visit had in part come about because Tim had written a novel over the summer about a dystopian world in which to safeguard humanity from war, people were denied the ability to gather into countries or to unite in any form at all. The mad dictator left over from the society that had existed before laughed at the vain spectacle of the people from atop a hill of broken glass. A young teacher, however, was moved to teach his students about connection and intimacy in violation of the laws of the global state, and in the end was martyred for his efforts, as the old mad dictator laughed. Tim had given it to Russ to read and with Tim’s permission, he gave it to Sherrie. She had sent a note expressing appreciation for his work, which opened the channels between them again. I really liked it! she’d written. I could see you in every one of the characters.
“I’m not really a fan of stuff that tries hard to be profound,” was Russ’s verdict.
Finally, Tim’s last day at the variety store came, and it was time to leave. At one time, the trains leaving for the large metropolitan city ran four or five times a day. Now, after budget cuts to the rail system, you could only leave before dawn or in the early evening. The night before his early departure, Tim’s mother helped him pack. They should have been sleeping but there was still so much to do, and at eleven the phone rang. It was Sherrie.
“Russ told me you were leaving tomorrow, and I realized oh my God, he’s leaving for good tomorrow! I’m gonna miss you!”
Tim was thrilled and charmed by her voice all over again, and although he knew it made no sense, he felt the old flood of warmth across his chest to think that she had called him.
“I don’t think it really struck me till just tonight that you were leaving!” she exclaimed.
Mona approached Tim. “Who’s that on the phone? You can’t talk all night! We’ve got a lot to do! Your train leaves in the morning!”
Tim put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Shut up!” he shouted at her.
The warm, calming tones of Sherrie’s voice continued to flow into his ear. They talked for some time more, despite his mother fuming and pacing as she smoked her cigarette. Sherrie reiterated how much she would miss him, how she couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be around anymore. “You have a really nice voice,” she said suddenly. “Did I ever tell you that before? No? I just realized it now. You have a really nice voice.”
Mona, Dirk and Tim pulled out into the dark with several suitcases in the back seat and a large cloth bag containing clothes in the trunk. The bag was a linen sack from a company that used to supply the barbershop. Tim’s mother blacked out the name of the company on the sack with a magic marker so the company wouldn’t see it and want it back. They drove through the quiet streets over to the train station. The night before, Dirk asked Tim to sit in the living room while he watched The Rockford Files, giving him the rundown on the plot so far. As Tim was heading to bed he heard a sobbing coming from his brother’s bedroom and Tim went in and asked what was wrong. “Well, it’s kinda sad you’re leavin’ tomorrow, ain’t it?” Jason had asked.
They came to the station all lit up with golden lights and entered, squinting at the other sleepy-eyed travellers blinking in the harsh fluorescent glare, and soon they were moving with them out to where the train stood, black and majestic in the dim light. They were in the line, moving to the ticket-taker when Tim said to his mother, “Thank you.”
His mother said, “Oh, you’re welcome,” with tears in her eyes.
Dirk said, “Remember pal, you can come back anytime you want. Anytime you want, just get on the train.”
Tim sat and watched his parents out the window as they slowly moved from view like small, shrinking figures on an unrolling scroll passing by as the train lurched into motion, gliding smoothly, slowly down the tracks from the station, picking up speed. The pitch black had lessened to grey, and the backs of garages, garbage bins and junkyards fluttered past in dim sepia. The humble houses on the outskirts of the city passed by, the occasional lit window signifying those making coffee before heading off to work, and then there was a lumberyard and some industrial buildings. The bleak wastelands and the sparse cars on the parallel road kept pace then floated back as the train’s speed grew and for the brief
est moment Tim’s house was visible between a car dealership and a sheet metal place.
Back it was spun, spiralling into the past, and pressing his forehead to the window glass, Tim could see the sun rising in the east, bleeding light across the black sky, ragged patches of red slashing out above the rapidly passing fields, the crossings, the barns and hydro towers. As the train charged through the small town, it sounded its baying whistle, roaring its bellow across the countryside. Soon Tim’s eyes were smarting as the sun took its final dominion, glaring with prickly, white rays that bristled on the madly passing leaves of the field, the train speeding through the back acreage of his grandfather’s farm as it bellowed again and flew in the direction of the sun.
Photo credit: Ava Harness
About the Author
Kyp Harness is an acclaimed singer-songwriter who has released over two hundred songs on thirteen independent recordings. Ron Sexsmith calls his work “every bit as powerful as the best Dylan, Cohen and Lennon combined.” His debut, Wigford Rememberies, won the 2017 ReLit Award for Best Novel. He is the creator of the webcomic Mortimer the Slug. He lives in Toronto.
