The Rail

by Howard Owen

  Neil told her to stop, tried to grab the steering wheel, but she pushed him off and managed to avoid the trees on both sides of the drive. No more than a minute after Lacy Haithcock was struck and killed, she was sitting in her wrecked car, safe outside her own home.

  She opened the garage door from the car, but then Neil finally got control of her hand, turned off the ignition and wrested the keys from her.

  “Blanchard,” he said, grabbing the other hand, too, “we can’t do this. We can’t.”

  She said nothing, but she finally got out of the car, and he followed her.

  The flood lights revealed the extent of the damage: a broken headlight, dents and scrapes running down the whole right side of the car, and a large, round dent across the front.

  Neil looked up from where he kneeled, by the part of Blanchard Penn’s Lexus with which Lacy Haithcock’s body had collided.

  She was standing in the middle of the paved parking lot, looking off into dark, searching for something. And then she started whistling, and calling her dog’s name.

  Neil knew, then, what came next.

  He might have acted differently at a different stage of his life. If there had been a wife or children to protect. If he had still been the Virginia Rail, feared by American League pitchers, beloved by a city. If he had not, long before, slipped into the Time of Letting Go, when he had come to feel that some kind of punishment for Neil Beauchamp was long overdue.

  Had he driven Blanchard back to the scene, from which he could already hear a siren approaching, he had no doubt that she would have taken the blame. If nothing else, she was too drunk to do otherwise.

  “Stay here,” he told her. He still had the key in his hand. She half-turned toward him and nodded, then looked back to the darkness.

  Neil Beauchamp stepped into Blanchard’s guilty, damaged gray Lexus, and he drove it back to the accident scene. He did not refuse to take the breathalyzer test, which showed him to be well past the limit for legal drunkenness as determined by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He did not offer, from then through the sentencing, anything except regret and sorrow.

  He saw her once while he was awaiting trial. Neither of them acknowledged what happened on that June night. Blanchard has only hinted at it, alluded to it, until now. She would tell Neil, over and over, during prison visits, how sorry she was, never really saying for what exactly, as he shushed her and told her it was OK.

  When Blanchard is through, she sits, hard and suddenly, in the largest chair in her living room. She is crying, great streaks of water running down her face, which is unadorned and suddenly old in the dreary morning light.

  TWENTY-ONE

  They are sheltered just inside the large, open front doors of Penn’s Castle, looking out at the soft, steady rain. It will make it easier, David thinks. No lingering goodbyes, just a mad dash across the gravel and away from the Virginia Rail.

  “So,” he says to his father, “it’s settled, then. I’ll talk to Carly, and you’ll have two weeks to square things with Blanchard. OK?”

  Neil turns.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” he asks, again. “I don’t even know if they’ll let me, the parole office and all …”

  David walks the long step toward him and takes him by the shoulders, a strangely physical move for his son, Neil thinks.

  “Again: Let me worry about that, Dad. We’ll get it done.”

  Neil nods again.

  “Two weeks,” David says again, and then he runs into the rain. In seconds, he’s headed north.

  They’ve had time enough to talk already.

  After Blanchard left the room “to make myself presentable,” they were alone for an hour.

  At first, Neil only wanted to deny that any of it had happened the way Blanchard said.

  “If you’ve got any sympathy,” he told David at last, “save it for that state trooper. Isn’t anything going to bring him back. I’ve got some time left, at least.”

  He had never tithed, never gone to church after adults stopped making him go, not even when Kate was taking David. Now, though, his goal was to give 10 percent of anything he could make, signing autographs, bagging groceries, whatever he could do to earn money, to Lacy Haithcock’s family. He still had a life insurance policy that he had somehow managed to keep during all the letting-go years. Blanchard had made the payments for him while he was at Mundy. Before he went in, he had changed the beneficiary to Warren Haithcock.

  “It isn’t anything,” he said when he told David what he planned to do. “It isn’t anything next to losing a son.”

  David looked at him, but Neil spoke first.

  “I know. I’m a fine one to talk about losing sons, when I gave you up so easy. Kate and I should’ve had you when I was 40. We could’ve done things together …” He had to stop there.

  “Hell,” David told him, “we still can.”

  And he made up the plan for the rest of their lives, right there in Blanchard Penn’s living room. He did it without asking for Neil’s input, without consulting Carly, without considering his own unsettled future.

  He and Carly consulted on everything. He never made a major decision without getting her approval. But a golfing buddy of his had told him once that no marriage is secure unless both people can declare a state of emergency and assume dictatorial powers when the need demands it.

  “But it can’t be one or the other, it’s got to be both,” he had said. “You can’t do it but maybe once every five years. And if you play that trump card, you can be sure she’s going to have one that she’ll play down the road, and you better be ready to grin and bear it when she does.”

  David hoped, as he explained his plan to Neil, that Carly would understand the depth of his need to do what he was planning to do.

  There were one-bedroom apartments near them, not far from the river, that Neil Beauchamp’s baseball pension might pay for. There were surely more opportunities for a legend in the Washington suburbs than in Penns Castle.

  He knew what Carly would say, at first, about how poorly Neil Beauchamp had cared for his only son when he had truly needed care, how he was coming around now with nothing to offer but old age.

  And David was prepared to tell her that he didn’t care. Screw the past. We’ll start with now and see where it goes.

  When Blanchard came back down, looking almost as good as she had when they had arrived on her doorstep on Monday, David told her his plan.

  Neil was silent, not offering so much as an encouraging glance or nod. He was in no way sure that what David envisioned could happen. He still remembered the look on Carly’s face the last time they had seen each other. And he was certain he did not deserve such kindness as his son was offering. He also wondered what would become of Blanchard, still smelling of smoke. He knew, though, that he would not refuse his son’s offer, did not in any way want to.

  Blanchard argued that there was no way the parole board would let him leave the Richmond area. David pointed out that Alexandria was, after all, in the same state.

  “This is his home,” she said. “He’ll fare a hell of a lot better here than in some big, scary city.” David argued that Neil had spent most of his adult life in “big, scary cities,” and that Alexandria wasn’t Washington.

  She saved her best ammunition for last.

  “Who was there for him, when he went to prison?” she asked. “Who visited him?”

  David was silent.

  “I want to take care of him, David.” She was pleading now. “I owe him that. I’ve sworn I’d spend the rest of my life taking care of him, like he’s taken care of me.”

  “Wait.”

  David and Blanchard had both forgotten Neil was still in the room, until he spoke.

  “Blanchard,” he said, turning to her, “let’s see how it goes. If David wants me to come with him for a while, I think I’m going to give it a try. For a while.”

  David started to speak, but Neil held up his hand.

  “We’ll
spend a couple of weeks here together, and then I’ll go up there for a little bit, just to see how it goes. They probably won’t let me do it anyhow, and David’s family’ll probably ship me back here in a box in under a week when they see what a horse’s ass I am.”

  “Don’t try to jolly me,” Blanchard said. She turned away.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and pack?” Neil told David.

  Once they were alone, Neil took Blanchard’s hands in his.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he told her. “I feel like I’ve landed on another planet. Last Sunday, I was wearing blue denim with a number on it. But he’s my son, Blanchard. He’s my son.”

  “And what am I?”

  “You’re my best friend. I’m going to spend the next two weeks with you, and then we’ll just see what happens. Like I said, they’ll probably be damn glad to have me back down here inside of a week.”

  They sat in silence for a long time. She moved next to him on the couch, sliding under his arm, leaning against him so close he could feel her heartbeat.

  “Always come back here, Neil,” she said.

  He nodded.

  Tom drops by and seems genuinely sorry to have missed David.

  “I hope he’ll come to see us more now,” he says.

  “He’s coming back in two weeks to take Neil away,” Blanchard tells him.

  “Up north?”

  “Just Alexandria,” Neil says, “and probably not for good.”

  Blanchard is biting her lip.

  Tom sits with them for a few minutes, talking about the fire, but the weather seems to have put a damper on conversation.

  When he gets up to leave, Neil walks with him as far as the front door.

  He looks at Tom, short and wide and happy, never outstanding in any endeavor except endurance.

  “Maybe you’d like to go deer hunting with us next week,” Tom tells him, and Neil, who has never cared for hunting, says that would be fine, as long as they don’t expect him to shoot anything.

  Tom is standing, watching the rain drip from the overhang.

  “You know,” he says, jamming his hands in his pockets, “I don’t think I’ve ever really thanked you for all you did for us, you know, back then.”

  “I didn’t do anything for you. I left home and sent a little money. You’re the one that stayed and made everything work.”

  “Well,” Tom says, as he prepares to dash for his truck, “if I’d have been you, been able to do what you did, I’d have done the same thing. Might not even have sent any money home. Might’ve changed my name.”

  He laughs and, pulling his jacket up over his head, leaves Neil standing in the doorway.

  Back inside, he sits for a while with Blanchard, who has convinced herself Neil will soon be gone from her forever.

  “Blanchard,” he says, “there have been years when I didn’t see you once. Whole years. This won’t be as bad as that, will it?”

  “Yes, it will,” she says, and then she begins to cry. “This time, I thought I had you back. I thought we would be together.”

  Neil wonders if Blanchard Penn even sees him, the 1997 Neil Beauchamp, when she looks his way. He wonders if what she sees isn’t some apparition from the past. It occurs to him that he might be, to her, inhabiting the same world as Cully.

  He is very tired. The one thing he did get enough of in prison was sleep; he’s used to nine hours a day, and he is far behind that since coming back to Penn’s Castle.

  He stands up, aching like the old man he supposes he is now.

  “I’m beat,” he tells her. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a little nap. If I’m not up by four, wake me up.

  “We’ll have a good, long talk then.”

  She nods her head.

  “Please, Blanchard,” he says. “Give me a smile. I’m not going for good. I promise.”

  It seems to be an effort, but she does smile, and tells him to sleep tight.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Inside the McDonald’s, 30 miles away from Penn’s Castle, David finds himself in the line from hell.

  He had expected the lunch crowd to be long gone, but he forgot that it was the day after Thanksgiving.

  There must be a mall nearby, because tired women and crying children surround him. The restaurant has made no allowances for this special shopping day, apparently, because only two lines are open, and they move at a maddeningly slow pace. David looks around to see if he is the only one going insane, but the rest just seem to be numb. Even the children’s crying has a sameness, a lack of real effort, as if they are crying in their sleep.

  When he finally arrives at the front, he gets into an argument with a young man, slack-jawed and unapologetically ignorant, who seems unable to get his order right, despite David’s repeating it twice, or make change, despite the computerized cash register.

  David snatches the tray of Coke, Quarter Pounder and french fries, spilling some of the soft drink on his sleeve. He can hear the young man laugh behind him, and he wants very much to return and slap him, actually stops for a second intending to do that before he gets a grip on his temper and finds a ketchup-stained table.

  He is out of sorts, and he can’t really lay it all off to hunger and lack of sleep, or on long lines.

  He called Carly before he left and talked to her and the girls. He has not told his wife yet that the famous Virginia Rail soon will be living in their very own neighborhood. That can wait. Talking to the three of them made him all the more eager to get back, and he supposes that part of his impatience is the anticipation of seeing them again soon.

  “Easy,” he says to himself. “Easy. Home before you know it.”

  But there’s something else. He feels as if he has just awakened from a powerful dream, the kind that leaves him nearly in tears while the particulars of it fade by the second.

  He is back on the road five minutes after he sits down to eat, having spent four times as long waiting for his food as he did eating it.

  He is still bothered, and it takes a conscious effort to keep from converting his discomfort into road rage. He repeats his new mantra: “Home before you know it. Home before you know it.” He finds the Richmond public radio station, and the music soothes him.

  He hasn’t been back on the interstate for more than 10 minutes when the dog appears in front of him, on the shoulder of the road.

  He’s gotten into one of the blessed interludes that appear out of nowhere on I-95, a stretch where there’s not one car or truck for half a mile in front of him, no need to tailgate or switch lanes for at least a couple of minutes.

  And then the dog is there, snuffling its way across the highway, maybe tracking deer or rabbit. He checks his rearview mirror and slows to 60, easing into the slowest lane, but the dog goes forward, now one hundred yards ahead, ambling out of David’s lane and into the middle one.

  Out of nowhere, the low, black car with D.C. tags appears in his rearview mirror, going at least 100, David estimates, when it hits the dog just as it reaches the fast lane. The car never even slows, and the dog is pitched into the air, dead before it hits the pavement. And in that split second, David sees that it is a beagle.

  Now he remembers.

  It happened before he left Blanchard’s, in the very few minutes when he was alone with her. He was uneasy, like a man who is about to steal his host’s silverware.

  While he was sitting there, she got up and went to the kitchen. He heard her banging around as if she were looking for something, and then she came out and headed for the back door.

  He asked if he could help, and she waved him off.

  “No. I’ll be back in a second. I’ve just got to take care of Cully.”

  He heard her call the dog, and then lower her voice, as if Cully had actually come to her.

  “That’s OK, boy,” he heard her say. “It’ll be OK now. Good boy. It won’t be much longer. Good boy.”

  It hadn’t seemed worth noting.

  And, until now, he had not
thought about the thing that has been nibbling into his brain since he left Penn’s Castle, the thing that finally reveals itself to him now, makes him swerve in front of another driver into the slow lane and then onto the exit, going 70 and braking hard, angry horn blasts trailing him.

  He had gone into the kitchen, just before he left, to get a glass of water. And there it was, only mildly strange to him then.

  There was dry dog food spilled on the floor. He hadn’t known that Blanchard carried it that far. And on the kitchen counter, directly above the dog food, was the still-open container of rat poison.

  In his dream, Neil is back in William Beauchamp’s house.

  The house was heated by gas, which they also used for cooking. One of Neil’s chores was to light the stove before breakfast and before dinner. He hated that stove, with its pilot light that had to be re-ignited every time they cooked a meal, the “whump” that always jarred his nerves when he reached in with the match. The smell of the gas before he lit it had a sickening odor, one he has always associated with danger.

  Once, when he was 12, he saw the remains of a house blown up by leaking gas. There was nothing left except sticks.

  He would never let Kate have gas put into any of their homes.

  Now, he wakes up to that smell from long ago, only stronger. He finally realizes that he is not in his stepfather’s house.

  He wonders if he is dreaming, but the stench seems too real. In the distance he can hear a woman’s voice singing something he can’t quite make out.

  He raises himself out of his bed and listens. The hairs on his arms are standing up. He knows he is at least 60 feet from the front door, and that the window behind him is closed.

  He sees only one option. He drops as silently as he can to the floor, and he runs. He has not run in more than two years, and he is 62 years old. But he has heard enough; and the singing seems to be getting nearer. It is a pleasant voice, the voice of a once-beautiful woman who has reached and passed some crisis, whose mind is made up.