The whistle gathered itself inside the kettle before its voice peaked at the tip of the pour spout. Peter let it whistle for a moment unwilling to take his hands away from the proximity of the stove’s flame. His body was hunched slightly towards the small appliance. Eventually the scalding water was poured into a tin mug. He held it in both hands even though it was uncomfortably hot. Peter gazed out the large window and down to the low brick buildings and cobblestone street. He looked past the scene disregarding details only noting gray angular shapes and empty spaces in the early morning light. He was looking into his thoughts.
Peter turned them over and over in his mind. It was difficult to hold them still. One side of his thoughts felt lightweight, easy to handle, optimistic. But just as they seemed to take root and fix his view the thoughts turned over. The other side became unbearably heavy and oozed through his mind’s grasp. It spread out and folded behind itself. He lost the whole view and parts began to blur. He could feel his insides sinking. He turned from the window.
A lamp flicked yellow across a haphazard table. A small meal of cold meat, pickled vegetables, and stale cheese alongside a small collection of letters interrupted its featureless surface. The handwriting with its familiar long, angled strokes activated his body and Peter moved in close to the letters sitting down and lowering his head till face and the upturned fold of the top letter almost touched. There was intimacy being so close to the words and phrases. It stirred his insides. Peter shifted in his seat. The food was a satisfactory distraction. He nibbled at the vegetables and gulped the cheese and meat down. His warm drink washed his mouth of the pungent tastes and thick grease.
Her father was still. His body rigid under the many blankets and quilts. His gaze was fixed to the ceiling as if the movement of his eyes might alert the day to begin. His ears pulsed in the silence of the predawn. He could hear the cold hanging in the air. His wife lie motionless next to him, her warmth small and persistent. The room was getting slowly lighter, shades of cool gray were melting away and the browns of the little wooden mantle awoke. The cream of the walls began to appear. A sliver of yellow slid across the window pane. For a few moments the room was bathed in an orange hue. But the cold refused to relinquish its hold and the orange faded away. Now the shadows began to evaporate as the day’s light slid into the room.
He refused to move, his thoughts fixed on his daughter. Their love was not in question. He recognized its familiar sounds and motions as well as its silence and stillness. Had he not loved his wife so he might have diagnosed his daughter with an illness. But there was no mistake. Thought it could be a mistake. The world could be mistaken. Certainly none of it would pause and adjust for these two youths. He arched his back and clenched his fists.
He accepted Peter. He even justified Peter. The young man would alleviate her father’s own failing body. No longer could he punish his frame with relentless hours of toil to produce what his family needed. Nor could he rely on orders to come as they always had. The effortless momentum of his world was stumbling and swirling in eddies of unrest. Peter might be the able hands and sturdy back that could allow him time to think. Allow him time to unpack it all and put it back together. With great effort he rocked himself up and onto the edge of the bed. His wife’s eyes opened and watched him quietly. He would need to hurry he thought to reach the station on time. There were tasks to complete. Today Peter would arrive on the train and tomorrow… Maybe he could put it all back together again.
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His head rolled back and forth with the swaying of the passenger car. Its watery weight felt detached from the rest of himself like a large melon inside a sock. Maybe it was the roof rocking back and forth. Puffs of frosty breath spurted erratically from his open mouth. His back skewed a ridge between two worn valleys in the wooden floor. Bits of something floated aimlessly in the air. At first he thought it was snow, but a bit perched on his swollen tongue and didn’t melt. The sound of the train rolling along the tracks seemed strangely muffled from his low vantage point. The train’s pace responded to invisible terrain. Steady, then slowing, then quickening, quickening more–his eyes widened and he felt the extremities of his limbs awake and react on their own. As the train steadied they fell asleep once more. He was beginning to shiver from the cold.
On the platform a few soldiers stared at him in the absence of the train. Their gaze was naked–they had nothing else to possess them. Eyes gray and round. Puffy red noses. Lips stuck to pathetic looking cigarettes. Their cold stare was meaningless. The pitiless cold of winter was far worse. His eyes looked out across a gray scene of formless clouds and comatose fields with dark stands of trees. Nothing out there moved. He swayed a little, but the fabric against his skin was too cold for him to move much. The whistle from the train split the air, but then the cold swallowed it up. People began to shift. A weathered, hunched woman gathered her tattered fabric bundles. A mother pressed the backs of two small boys gripping her heavy overcoat around her thighs. And the soldiers moved their weight from the wall to their rifles.
He couldn’t tell what time it was. The bits in the air seemed to have stopped moving, suspended and lit by brighter light that moved over and around and behind them. He heard a whisper. It was something like newsprint crinkling, but then it was gone. Time was making the passenger car go in circles. It ran down the rails only to follow the car ahead back to those same parallels. He heard the whisper again. It was like silver shimmering. It rose and fell like water. His eyes finally closed. The muffled sounds moved farther away and the train kept circling. He felt his lips moving and heard the whisper again, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying. And then it stopped.
The nests of men crying revolution had riddled the train with bullets. Their machine guns had showered the engine and passenger cars and box cars so that wood splintered and glass shattered and iron perforated. The upholstery had popped and puffed sending bits of stuffing into the air. But the dynamite never heaved the final blow. The train bumbled past the ambush with its handful of passengers slowly dying or dead. It stumbled through the terrain as if looking for a place to collapse and sleep though it had no mind to know how to stop. So it kept going. Past vast browned fields. Past dark sober trunks with arms and fingers spread out achingly in the cold. Gaining speed down mild slopes and slowing as it neared the crest of small ridges. The formless gray clouds and wide flat horizon seemed to suck the train forward towards no destination. It was a restless procession of emptiness.
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