IT WAS EVENING when I opened my eyes to the clanging of a single pan on the stove. Night had set in over Nebraska and the only light for miles was coming from Henry’s kitchen. Other than that, the house, the yard, the fields, the whole state was going dark.
Finally, my head felt normal; my twenty-four-hour headache had eased and my temples no longer felt like they were slamming together to the cadence of a Kendrick Lamar beat.
When I came around the corner, Henry nodded to the table without speaking. He had set two places, one with his only fork and only plate, overflowing with too many scrambled eggs, eight pieces of toast, and three glasses of milk. I sat, and he brought the pan to the table for himself, drinking from a full gallon. I must have been his first company in years.
“Easy.” He stopped me as I picked up my fork. “No manners in California?”
He bowed his head, cupping his hands and closing his eyes, and, to be polite, just as I always had, I did the same and half shut my eyes, watching as he spoke slowly and directly to God.
“Thank you, Lord God, and Jesus,” he said, his voice softer, almost as if he was nervous to have their audience. “Thank you for the Earth. Which gives me what I need. Thank you for the corn. And for the eggs. For the pigs and chickens, and all their blessings. Thank you for the prairie. Thank you for Nebraska. Thank you for my mom. Hope you’re taking care of her. Thank you for my home. For the sunset in the evening. And for the train in the morning. I live this life for you. Amen.”
I pursed my lips. This was the problem with religion—other than a few animals in a shitty barn and $22,000 in debt, Henry had nothing, but the idea that it was given to him by God made him content to live this muted half existence. My grandfather had always done the same with his illness, reading the Bible and living in accordance with it as though God had given him the divine gift, and not the horrible burden, of memory loss.
We ate in silence. I wanted to ask about my grandpa, about the times he’d stopped here, about his last trip, but Henry didn’t give me a single chance. He never lifted his head from his pan, shoveling eggs from pan to fork to mouth at twice my speed, then washing them away with quick sips from the gallon bottle. When the eggs had dwindled to nothing, he leaned back on his stool, sighed loudly, and spoke before I could.
“Why are you here?” Both of his hands were resting atop his stomach, a small gut protruding below the brown coat that he wore even inside.
It was a surprisingly complicated question. “I’m taking the train route that he used to take,” I decided.
“He?”
I swallowed. “My grandfather? Your brother.”
“Huh.” He used his tongue to clean some loose egg off his teeth and turned to look out the window behind me. His body shifted, but his expression didn’t change. He gave nothing away. Just like my grandpa.
“I was actually wondering—”
“Why you doing that?”
“Why am I . . . retracing his train route? I . . . I guess I’m hoping it might help me to learn more about him. I’m trying to understand more. About his life.”
“Huh.”
“Do you mind . . .” I took a deep breath and decided to test the waters. “Do you mind if I ask you about some places I’ve been? Just to see if you know any more about them?” He didn’t say no, so I continued. “Well, first, I went to Elko, and I met Sue Kopek. Do you know her?” He didn’t react. “And Green River, with Big Ray’s—”
Henry exhaled sharply and loudly again, like the snort of a pig. “Sorry to disappoint,” he said. “Don’t know much ’bout my brother.”
I set my fork down. The way he ignored the questions reminded me of my grandpa as well, except Henry wasn’t battling memory loss.
“He did stay here, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Once. In forty years.”
I knew the answer before I asked, “Five years ago?”
He shrugged.
“But he used to come here more often, right? He used to stop here—”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Every couple of weeks, right, in the sixties, or seventies? He was coming through all the time? Because the place I stopped in Green River said he used to stop every couple of weeks, so I’m assuming his train route was—”
“That was a long time ago.” Henry began to clear the table, an excuse to walk away from me.
“Why did he stop?”
Henry paused at the sink. Night had fallen completely and he was looking at nothing, but I followed his gaze anyway. The barn, the grass, the corn, the prairie, the pigs and chickens and cats, his whole life was out there, but it was invisible in the dark. His face was empty, the flickering light of the stove bouncing off the soft white porcelain of the sink, lighting his features from below, blank and unquestioning, desperately vacant, just like the brother he seemed eager to forget.
I changed course. “What was he . . . like? As a person?”
Again, Henry grunted to deflect the question. “You’d know better than I would.”
“Not really,” I said, and it surprised Henry. “His disease was pretty bad by the time I was old enough to talk to him. Most of my life, he . . . he wasn’t himself.”
Henry took another long pause, leaning himself against the sink, before asking, “How’d you know that?”
“What?”
“How’d you know that wasn’t himself?” He swayed back up to his full height. “How’d you know that wasn’t just him?”
“Because, I—” I dead-ended, again. “He couldn’t have been. He must have been different. When he was younger? When he had more of his brain? When he wrote the book?”
“Never read the book,” Henry mumbled.
“Me neither.”
“Some family we are.”
It hurt to look across the room at him.
He returned to the table and slouched onto the stool, his entire frame collapsing onto it like sinking into the dirt. It reminded me of the way he’d stood in front of the train that morning, his hands outstretched as if there was no separation between the grass and the soil and the snow and wind and the edges of his skin, like he’d been there so long that he was a part of that world and it was a part of him.
I’d envisioned this moment in my head before, but with my grandpa. Henry spoke as my grandpa, moved as my grandpa, ignored questions the way my grandpa had, stared forward with the same unflinching, unexplainable nothingness as my grandpa, carried on his shoulders the weight of an entire, unexamined life like my grandpa, and yet here in front of me, there was nothing to reconcile them. If they had ever had a life together, Henry had left it behind.
But that didn’t stop me from pushing forward in frustration. “What about when you were growing up? Didn’t you do anything then? What was he like?”
He ignored me.
“Can you at least tell me what he was like? Before the disease?”
Henry didn’t respond and my frustration finally boiled over.
“Jesus Christ! What happened between you two?”
Glacially, he curled upward, sitting at his full height.
“No,” he said slowly. “We did not talk. And if we did, it does not matter now. I’m sorry to disappoint,” he said, sucking down a deep breath and turning to face me, “but other than the direction we slithered into the world, my brother and I got nothing in common. I didn’t see him then. I don’t see him now. And if you use the Lord’s name in vain one more time, you will be sleeping on the side of County Road 15. And begging, begging for His mercy.”
From where I sat, the stove lamp was directly behind his head, casting light out around the outline of his face, sliding down all of his wrinkles. I didn’t hear the threat. I didn’t hear his anger. But I heard him, loud and clear. He said now. I swallowed softly and spoke softer. “Why were you at the train this morning, Henry?”
“Told you. Waiting.”
“For what?”
The house groaned in the wind, its aged foundation pushing and pulling as the prairie tried to bring it down. “Just don’t wanna miss him.”
My heart collapsed into the very bottom of my stomach.
No one had told Henry that his brother had died.
He looked up, and I felt the crushing weight of his sadness. I saw him holding it, his arms spread, face calmly examining every window of the train, just as he had today, every day, for how long? Five years? Ten years? Forty years?
Neither of us spoke for ten minutes. I listened to the sound of his stool rocking against the wood, not a soul around for it to reverberate off of. He stared, unmoving, at the center of the table. Three times, I opened my mouth to tell what had happened, but no sound came out.
Finally, he looked back up at me. “When you see him, tell him I’m still waiting.”
I swallowed. “Of course,” I whispered. “I . . . of course.”
Without speaking, he pushed his stool out and stood up from the table, disappearing into the living room.
I sat alone at the table and watched the doorway where Henry had just left.
There must have been a moment in his life when he’d wanted more than this. Maybe he’d been married, maybe there were friends that had come and gone, maybe my grandpa’s trips through had given him a life more than the one he was living now, but he couldn’t have been this alone all along. I wondered what had led him to this point, driving to the train every day to watch for a man he must have known by now was never coming back. I couldn’t imagine the mistakes he must have made to get himself here, or how often they must have replayed themselves across his empty existence. I couldn’t imagine the way that regret must pile up upon itself after decades in isolation. No wonder he continued talking to God. Even if God had abandoned him.
Unless this was what he wanted. Maybe he liked the chickens, and the eggs they gave him, and the single plate he used to eat them, and the giant fields of corn that insulated him from the rest of the world. It was hard to imagine, but there was purpose here, a different kind of purpose, and comfort, and meaning. There were things that relied on Henry, and Henry relied on them, and that was all that it had to be; the circle of life could be that small and uncomplicated. Maybe the life my grandpa had lived wasn’t the life he’d wanted.
Or maybe this was the life my grandpa would have wanted as well, if he hadn’t accidentally ended up with a family. Maybe I was the thing that got between my grandpa and living Henry’s perfectly isolated life.
Henry came back through the doorway with a newspaper clipping.
“This is his,” he said. “He had it last time.”
Henry must have understood the significance of what he was handing me, because my grandfather had cut it out of a newspaper and circled it several times, especially the byline, a name I recognized from the logbook in Denver. I could feel my heartbeat creeping into my throat as I read:
OMAHA: THE ANTIPOLITICAL HUB OF THE MIDDLE UNITED STATES.
BY LOU THURMAN
MAY 1, 1970—Resiliency! In the
good people of the Midwest, afraid to
see their country sold to the highest
bidder, when the currency being traded
is young lives, poor lives, black lives!
From the Midwest they see the full
portrait of America, or whatever that
means. The Midwest brand of
compassion extends to all people,
regardless of creed, color, or
pocketbook; the Midwest brand of
compassion is what will end this war!
From the Midwest will come the
revolution, the revolutionaries already
sharpening their pitchforks of
nonviolence, readying cannon blasts of
ideas, a conversational protest.
Join us, Tuesday, May 2, in the back
room of the old Westwood Library, to
speak softly of revolution, and prepare
our rally cry!
“You finished?” Henry asked, and I nodded, still gaping at the clue.
Without a doubt, this had been left for me. I don’t know what clue I’d missed in Denver, but he’d wanted me here. And Omaha was only four train stops away.
“Did he tell you?” I asked. “To leave this for me?”
Henry took the newspaper clipping back. “Didn’t say nothing.”
I nodded, feeling my chest swell with affection for Henry. “I’ve found some journals,” I told him. “Some stuff he’d written, during that last—uh, the trip he made, five years ago. Since the book.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t have them now, but I can show them to you when I get them back. I think you’d really like them.”
“No, thank you.”
It wasn’t rude, but Henry was uninterested. “It’s just, because we all thought he never wrote again, I figured you might wanna read . . . I don’t know. It might help.”
Henry squinted at me. “Never wrote again?”
“Yeah, after the book. When he got . . . the disease, you know? He stopped writing altogether. Except these journals.”
Henry stared at me for another moment, then got up from the table and left. If he was upset, he’d hidden it, but it wouldn’t be hard; his face revealed almost nothing.
I sat in silence in the kitchen for five minutes, poring back over the newspaper clipping. The back room of a library would be easy to find, almost too easy. Again, I’d be looking in plain, public sight for a clue placed five years earlier, but a library was the perfect place. Bibles, encyclopedias, books my grandpa had talked about—all of them could serve as a secret language that only he and I spoke. And there were rumors about my grandpa and libraries—the Great Library. I wondered if the Westwood had anything to do with it.
When Henry returned, he dropped a thick stack of envelopes in front of me. He didn’t sit, instead fixing his eyes over my shoulder on the creased and ripping paper.
“What is this?” I asked, but he didn’t respond.
Carefully, I pulled the first envelope open. The paper was old and the ink was disappearing, but I recognized the handwriting.
february 15, the 1968.
dear henry,
heavy hearts this month—not sure if she’s written you, but mum’s getting sick. if you’ve anything you’d like me to pass along, i’d be happy to bring it my next trip through. coming in from omaha next month, i’ll see you at the tracks, as always.
feels like i’ve been around the world & back this year already. this mum thing might be a nice chance to take a break from it all. don’t know if that will ever be possible though—the more i learn of the world, the more i realize it needs help, & i’m afraid i may spend every day to my death going hoarse shouting up at waterfalls from the bottom, begging them to reverse their course. ah well, this is the life i’ve chosen & the life i love.
jeffery sends all his love, & duke; everybody out here does. what a fantastic bunch we’ve put together. you’d love them.
hope this year’s crop has been plentiful. i’ve been watching the weather reports & they said lots of rain in nebraska. i hope you’ve been doing our dance, & if it’s not helping your crops, i trust it’s helping your soul. even ugly shits like us deserve to dance.
by the way—the old bastard saw his shadow. as you know, i’m a man of my word, so i’ll honor our agreement until the day i die. the check’s enclosed. tell those blowhards at the bank they’re going to have to work a lot harder if they want to take what’s ours.
—your brother, arthur
There was a small photograph enclosed: identical teenagers, holding each other up, both of them leaning forward against the railing of the McCook station, a train track stretching off into the horizon behind them.
There were dozens of envelopes, postmarked through five years ago.
“He wrote you?” I asked.
“We had a bet.”
I looked up.
“Punxsutawney Phil.” For the first time, it looked like Henry might almost be smiling. “The groundhog. Every time he sees his shadow, I get a thousand dollars.”
I traced back through the letter: the old bastard saw his shadow. “And if he doesn’t?”
“Well.” Henry looked out the window behind me. “My broth—Arty didn’t want no thousand dollars from me.”
“What did he want?”
Then Henry smiled fully. It was foreign on his face, and the wrinkles tried to resist. “A poem. Son of a bitch. Said it was worth more than money.”
All of it made sense—the foreclosure notices in Henry’s kitchen, my father’s fury at discovering my grandpa had been sending thousands of dollars away in random checks—all for a bet about a groundhog. All of it told a story of a grandpa I didn’t recognize.
“I know he don’t remember much,” Henry continued. “I seen it. Couldn’t barely remember my name.” Henry blinked several times at the envelopes. “But he wrote. Every year, he sent that letter. Always remembered the goddamned bet.”
He gave one firm inhale, as if to suck the words back in, and disappeared into a small door in the corner of the kitchen. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.
The house was full of loose boards that snapped around, creaking and groaning. All night, rain drummed against the outside walls in a pattern that became musical and comforting, soft percussion to complement the wind’s howl.
I sat awake at the table, listening to the sounds of Nebraska, reading the letters my grandfather had sent to Henry over their forty years apart. It was a story I’d watched my whole life but had never truly been told. The story of my grandfather, the slow progression of his life, and, tied inextricably to it, the progression of his illness.
The second letter, dated april 25, the 1970, was as inspired as the first, shimmering with clarity and tales of recent adventures, as if they’d just seen each other. I’d never heard my grandfather speak like that, but the characters were all recently familiar, and another year brought “another shadow, & another goddamn check for your brilliant & loyal groundhog.”
After that, the letters started changing. Starting with march 2, the 1971, the awareness and information stopped, coming only in waves that broke and scattered into sections of chaos. They read like his clues—the only details were cryptic, the stories had no beginnings or endings, and the writing itself seemed to pain him to the point of difficulty. Even the rules of grammar escaped him. still can’t, place pain, he wrote in one, writing & sometimes it makes me forget but usually just makes me remember.
After a few years, he seemed to stop trying altogether. The letters became short and cordial, no more than a few sentences reminding Henry that he was still in California. The most important details of his life came and went in small paragraphs, his pivotal moments covered like basic details in a plot summary. When he met my grandmother, on march 21, the 1975, it received two sentences: i’ve met a woman, josephine. she’s very lovely, & we’re marrying in a few weeks.
Often, I could trace a hint of remorse for the life he’d given up, or at least a yearning to understand. why, when i think of nebraska, am i filled to sorrow, he wrote in 2002. why can’t i bring myself to the thought?
The letters grew shorter and shorter. The final letter, dated in 2010, was a single sentence, four words long: i’ve seen my shadow.
In the yellow light of the single bulb above me, I read through them again, and again, and again. They confirmed everything I thought I had learned, and nothing more. They fell short of even telling the story of his life, missing so many significant moments it was as if my grandpa himself hadn’t been there.
And still, they came. Every time the “bastard groundhog” saw his shadow, Henry received his check.
One letter broke the pattern. In only one letter, in one specific year, did he seem to rediscover clarity. It was the final letter I found, out of order and stuck to the bottom, its postmark softly fading off the front: March 16, 1997.
march 16, the 1997.
dear henry,
writing to you with so much joy in my heart
i can feel it, like a little joyous tumor—my son has just had a son of his own.
he named him arthur,
plagiarizing bastard.
but still it doesn’t feel like i deserve to have my name on such a beautiful piece of creation.
when he opened his eyes, i saw the world again for the first time. he looked at me & i saw myself in his eyes as everything i wanted to be for him. everything was possible again.
i thought i knew & understood love in an old life. as it turns out, i had no idea.
check’s enclosed.
—your brother, arthur