THE 7:00 A.M. sun gleamed off the tracks in front of Henry and me, casting a sharp beam of light into our eyes. I didn’t need to ask him to bring me to the train in the morning; he was already up and scraping the ice off his truck by the time I got outside.
Through every moment I’d ever spent with him, from our best trips together up to Truckee to the worst arguments, I couldn’t remember a time when my grandpa seemed truly happy I was there. We didn’t talk like that in my house, him especially. He didn’t say “I love you,” not because he didn’t appreciate the semantic value of it, but because I don’t think he knew whether he loved me or not. After all, the only things he seemed to love were his incorruptible concepts, like Jesus, like Dickens, like baseball; the things that could never let him down or leave him or die.
My existence seemed to only matter to him in pieces: on good days, I was two ears to hear whatever he felt like talking about; on bad days, I was a mouth, full of unholy and inappropriate words. Either way, I existed in proximity to his needs. It was inconceivable that something as small as me could affect something as large as him.
But I was wrong, and the proof was tucked into my backpack. On the day of my birth, he had loved me, he had wanted me, he had needed me; I was his sign that everything was possible again. This single letter rewrote the story of our thirteen years together. I pictured the silent moments, but they weren’t indifference; they were exploding with unexpressed sentiment. The terrible moments and nasty conversations weren’t anger, they were just a disease, getting in the way of his relationship with a grandson that he loved, that he wanted, that he needed.
And now he wanted me to keep going. He needed me to find him.
“Few minutes late this morning,” Henry grumbled from the driver’s seat, leaning forward to examine the west end of the train tracks.
I’d considered telling him his brother was gone, but every time, the image of Sue Kopek collapsed on her living room floor came swimming back into view, the cat in the box and the value of not knowing, and I decided not to. Henry needed the train in the morning.
So instead, we listened to the rumble of the truck, the pop of the radio, the steady recycling of our breath, and a few moments after seven, the California Zephyr came pouring over the horizon. Henry trudged across the melting snow in the ditch, over the tracks, and took his place beside the train, eyes closed, arms raised, hair blowing across his face as the train pushed wind over it, his body rumbling like it was him, not the Zephyr, shaking and shuddering down the tracks. A smile curled across his face.
I followed him out, but by the time the train reached us, he’d forgotten I was there. Patting his back lightly, I turned and walked across the grass to the platform. “Thank you,” I whispered under the roar of the train. He didn’t hear me and didn’t need to. I didn’t look back.
Today’s attendant had a mustache. “Getting on in McCook, that’s rare, kid!” I dragged myself through the door and up into the nearly empty coach car. As the train pulled away from the station, I sped up, almost running to the back window.
Henry was still planted firmly in the grass, the same warm air rushing over him and leaving him behind.
Every morning, the train arrived, and with it came a new day that would be exactly the same as the last. With every train that passed, he was twenty-four hours further from his brother and twenty-four hours closer to God. And he couldn’t stop it or slow it down. It was true for me as well; with every day, I was further from the time we’d spent together and closer to the myth he’d left, fact writing itself into fiction as even “I love you” came five years too late.
But that was everyone, I realized. As sure as the sun rising over it, the train ran, day after day, year after year, an immovable and unstoppable force across the country,
past my auntie and uncle, who watched it and wished it was better,
past Sue Kopek, who watched it and wished it wouldn’t forget her,
past the men in Green River, who watched it and wished it would leave them alone,
past Mara, who watched it and wished it would take her somewhere far away,
and past Henry, who watched it and wished it would turn around.
But it never did.
Still, he fixed himself like a statue, sacrificed himself to it, standing in the exact spot he’d stood for forty years; calloused hands reaching, weathered face smiling toward the train as it sped too quickly away from him.
And I knew that tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and every morning after that, he would be in the same spot, feeling the same rush he’d felt for decades, with an immovable and unstoppable faith that as long as he waited patiently, one day, he and his brother would be reunited.