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13. Train Heading East
- University Press of Mississippi
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13 Train Heading East Picture a land half again as wide as the United States. A massive land like something in a trick mirror, broad at the base, its head narrowing, snow coming in to blind its distant northern brow. Snow blowing southward, shifting and slanting out of the jetty, dark beyond the windows of the Trans-Canada Express. Jeff Blaise sits close to the windows, hearing the muffled passage of the wheels, glimpsing at times the red-and-black striped engine curving inward, miles ahead. He turns his face toward the windows, or thrusts a pillow against them to sleep a little. He keeps the end of the pillow twisted across the lower half of a face somebody passing might see and call out to. "Hey, Jeff!" He might awake, answering before thinking. Darkness and the car lights on. Now he sometimes sees his own face reflected in the glass, framed in hair darkened with dye. But, half dozing, he sometimes starts to consciousness thinking that there in the glass is the face of Leon Reed. The face is seeking him. And that's not fair. "Not fair," he says once, quietly. But it comes back. Its eyes are engaging him, the lips are moving: "My daddy got burnt up in this tank. It was over in APica. I been told about it. They throwed this bomb. His tank done cooked him like a live turkey in a red-hot oven. Oughtn't do that to nobody. I usta dream about it, that I was him. I wasn't even born yet. This here war they got now's too far away. If somebody was trying to run us off where we are, down in Georgia, or somewhere else in this country, then we'd all join up and have us a war, I reckon, but the way they talk about this one, it's worse'n Af'ica in someplace I ain't never heard about—so I jes' don' know. If they said it was right, maybe I ought to abin there." 289 2 9 0 T H E N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S He vanishes. The puzzled eyes, seeking Jeff's, and what did he answer? Lots. Encouraging, too. They could talk. The only two in that misbegotten bombed-out crew who could find anything really to say. A brother feeling. A brother Jeff never had. A sister longed for, who died as a baby, appearing just over the pasture fence at twilight. Open gaze, "What y'all doing?" Trust. He remembers in those days coming back from a walk in the dark, the only exercise he could get. "Where's Leon?" "Leon? Who's that?" "Leon the lion?" says Hairy Moment. "Panthers shit on lions." A sad little bundle in the corner, and Jeff going over, whispering, "Yeah, I know they think all that stuff, but you don't have to." A bruised cheek. "If they ast me I'm sho going to tell 'em. I don't hate no fam'ly. My mama's this real sweet lady." "I know, Leon, I just know she is. Mine was, too." "What happened to her?" "She died." "I'm real sorry to hear that, Jeff." "Leon, go on out of here. It's not for you. Go join up. I'll tell you where. They're easy out here, easier than most. You don't have to tell them anything. Say the mail was just now catching up to you. Say you don't know any of us. Say you lost your draft card, didn't burn it at all. They'll write your board back home. If they ask about that plant blowing up, say you never heard of it. They won't believe you, but they won't bother to doubt you." "Then I'd have to go on over there to the war?" "This might be worse for you than the war." "I just don't hold with fighting if I don't know nothing about it." "Leon, listen. They'll explain it to you. And if you still don't hold with it, then you just have to tell them that. You'll fill out some papers. You might have to go somewhere they say. But you won't have to fight." "Aw, naw. It don't work that way. Once they got you, they got you." "I'd go with you...