Peace

Peace

From the day Morgan had turned fifteen, she knew she needed to run. She needed to get away from her mother, who hadn’t changed a bit since spending two months in rehab, and from her father who had such a large stash of alcohol that it would be enough for the entire population of Botswana. Her brother, Robert, had never returned from the army, and from then on she had been feeling hopeless. She wanted out of her life, to be free. She wanted people to like her for her, not just because they felt she was a charity case. She wanted to do something, become someone, and not just be stereotyped as the girl with the messed-up family. She wanted to go someplace where she could start over and not automatically be judged. So when her parents had gotten into a fight, one of their worst yet, Morgan took thirty dollars and simply left. The second she hopped onto the back of a train car, she felt free. The one hundred pound weight was lifted off her shoulders as she watched the world as she knew it get left behind in the dust. She pulled her sweatshirt around her and huddled into a corner. With every bump and whistle of the wind she knew she was getting farther and farther away from home. The damp smell of grass and dirt filled her nose. A crack in the side of the train let in a strip of light, which revealed a stack of hay in the opposite corner. It looked old and dried out. A pair of eyes stared at her from on top of the hay. It was a boy, about Morgan’s age. She nearly screamed. He was shaggy, with blonde hair covering the tips of his ears and slight stubble across his chin and cheeks. He wore overalls with a torn, gray tee shirt underneath. His ragged sneakers were a size too small and missing the laces. His troubled blue eyes looked at her, surprised. Morgan stood up and pressed her back against the side of the train car.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
He just sat there, like he was deaf. Not a muscle in his rigid body moved. There was silence for a long time, Morgan not daring to speak again. She considered jumping out of the car, away from the strange boy. She slid open the door, looking down at the ground thundering past underneath her.
“Don’t jump. You’ll kill yourself.”
The words came from the boy from behind her, the one Morgan had thought, up until now, was a mute. He still sat there calmly, legs crossed, hands resting on top of his head. A smile twitched onto his face, but quickly vanished. He seemed amused at her foolishness. Morgan closed the door and turned to the boy. From the look in his eyes, she wondered what he thought of her.
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“James Gordon,” he finally replied, like she ought to know exactly who that was.
“I’m Morgan,” she said.
James nodded.
“A runaway?”
It was her turn to nod, but she looked at him curiously.
“How did you know?”
“You think girls like you hop trains that are going to another state just for fun?” His eyes seemed to laugh at her. He crossed his arms over his chest, obviously liking the feeling of being superior.
Morgan shrugged. She stared at his tennis shoes and wondered if he had ever owned another pair.
“Are you running away, too?”
“I’m not running away. I already did that months ago.” His voice held a slight southern twang. Morgan had only ever heard someone with a southern accent before in those lame cowboy movies her dad used to watch. “People are looking for me, but they’ll never think to check some train all the way up here in Indiana.”
It hadn’t occurred to Morgan that people might look for her, too, once she had been gone long enough.
“Where are you from?”
The boy kicked his feet against the barrel of hay, almost like he had to think about the question.
“Tennessee.”
“You’ve been on this train that long?” Morgan stared at James in disbelief.
“Naw, not really. I’ve gotten off a couple times. I’m not even sure this is the original one I started on.”
There was uneasy silence. Morgan sat back down again. She put her eye up to a crack and watched the blur of the trees outside.
“It’s too dark in here,” Morgan finally said. Already, she longed for brightness, to feel the sunshine on her skin. She missed the warmth of it.
“You’ll get used to it after awhile,” James answered. “It’s only a matter of time before the days and nights blend and you lose a sense of time and place all together.”
Morgan stared at this boy in front of her and wondered how he managed to stay alive. He was doing fine on his own; he didn’t seem like the type to get lonely. She asked the pressing question she had been longing to ask,
“Why did you run away?”
James hesitated. He became tense and eerily still. He walked toward Morgan and glanced through the hole she had just looked out of. The pants of his overalls brushed against her leg. The smell of manure and dew smothered her. She wrinkled her nose.
“Come on, quick.” His hand reached out to her as he opened the car door with his other. She couldn’t help but notice the tanned muscles in his arms as he swung it open. He was awfully strong. She gave it a second thought before finally grabbing his dirt-encrusted hand. They jumped out together, the wind whipping Morgan’s face so hard she lost her breath. Morgan landed face first in the grass and tumbled down the small hill. By the time she managed to sit up and look around, James was already standing above her, offering his hand. She gladly took it, wiping mud from her cheek. While her ankle throbbed, he looked apparently unharmed.
“Why’d we jump?” Morgan asked breathlessly. James walked a few steps away and peered to see what was on the edge of the forest. She quickly learned he was a boy of little words.
“There’s a creek down here. Come get a drink with me.” He beckoned to her as he started walking down the side of the hill. Morgan worriedly glanced back at the train tracks. It was silent and would soon become dark. The sun was already starting to set. The reds and oranges streaked across the sky, blending so perfectly together. She turned back to James, not yet sure if she could trust him. She decided to stay where she was. She glanced down quietly at James, who was eagerly slurping up water into his mouth with his hands. He was bent down facing the water, reminding Morgan of her brother catching tadpoles in the creek by their house when they both had been young. A sense of longing and sadness settled deep in her stomach. She sat down in a patch of grass, looking out at the tracks and the sky. She wished with her whole heart that the pinks and oranges and reds and yellows would swallow her up in a whirlwind of colors. She didn’t want to have to deal with anything anymore. She wanted to sit under the sun and sleep forever, not thinking one thought at all. She wanted to know what peace felt like.
“You ain’t thirsty?” Morgan was pulled out of her daydream as James came up and sat down beside her. She shook her head.
“Not really.”
“Suit yourself.” He plucked a thick blade of grass out of the ground and put it in his mouth between his fingers. For a split second, Morgan thought he was somehow going to smoke it. But, surprisingly, he blew into it and it made a whistling sound. Morgan, coming from as big a city as Indianapolis, had never seen someone do this before. She was in awe.
“How do you do that?” she asked.
He picked another piece of grass and handed it to her.
“Hold it like this.” He put his thumbs together and pressed the blade of grass between them. He blew into the space between his thumbs where the piece of grass lay. It made an obnoxious squawking sound.
“And to change the pitch of the noise, do this.” He moved the tips of his thumbs back and forth and as he did, the sound became higher and lower.
Morgan did as he said and pretty soon, she could whistle through the blade of grass just as well as James. They sat there for a few minutes, whistling freely up toward the sky.
“My pop taught me that,” James finally said, breaking the silence. He put his piece of grass down next to him, so Morgan did the same. “After hours of work in the fields everyday, we sat against the side of the house and whistled away like our lives depended on it.”
Morgan didn’t say anything. She didn’t think anything needed to be said. She had had her little rituals with her brother, too. He had walked her to school every morning, even when she was in high school. He said he didn’t trust those crazy drivers and people rushing to work every morning. Before she went inside, they always did their special handshake, which took about a minute to do. She couldn’t remember a day when he was home that they hadn’t done it. And then there were the times when Robert was on leave and came back home to visit. He would gather her up in a bear hug, enclosing her with the fresh smells of his cologne and shampoo, and say, “Nice to see you again, Morgie,” because he knew she hated it when he called her that.
“My pop was never the loving type of person,” James admitted. He brushed an insect off his shoe absentmindedly. “Let’s just say he didn’t treat my mama and sisters very well.” Under his breath he added, “Not very well at all.”
It caught Morgan by surprise when he referred to his mother as ‘mama.’ He had seemed like a tough guy to her.
She nodded like she understood.
”Then there was that one day a few months back when I just snapped. He hit them, all three of them. And I couldn’t take it, you know? Just sitting back and letting my father do what he wanted to them. I needed to protect them, so I called the police. It was on impulse because I was just so angry and all the feelings were boiling up inside me.” He stopped to glance at the fading colors of the sky, which were turning a dark blue. “I knew it would take them awhile to come out to our house, because we lived in the country. So before they got there and before Pops could find out I had called the authorities, I ran. I don’t think I’ve ever ran as fast as I did then. I had told Mama I was going out to the fields to bring in the tractor, but when I turned the corner, I sprinted the opposite way. It was the only lie I have ever told Mama in my life.”
James wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. Morgan thought he was secretly glad it was getting dark because she didn’t think he wanted her to see him crying.
“I just hope the police hauled Pops off to jail. I loved my old man so much, but I couldn’t stand the way he treated Mama and my sisters.”
James hung his head, whispering that last part. Morgan wanted to reach out and comfort him, but she wasn’t sure how. He brushed the hair from his eyes and abruptly stood up. She stood up with him and gently touched his arm. His breath was shaky and uneven and she could tell he hadn’t ever told anyone what he had done.
“Do you ever miss your life?” Morgan asked. James leaned against a tree, deep in thought.
“Sometimes, I guess. I wonder what it would be like if I hadn’t run away. How my mother and sisters would be trapped and helpless. But then I think of everything I could have accomplished. How I would inherit the farm when I’m older. How good my future could be. Maybe, with that small amount of money I had been saving, I could have made a life for myself.”
He slouched down and covered his face with his hands.
“How long have you been gone?” he asks. It was the first question he had asked her this whole time.
“A day,” she responded. “I left this afternoon.” She wondered if anyone really noticed she was gone yet. “My life, it was just, it was really messed up,” she stammered. “My dad is an alcoholic and my mom just got out of rehab.” Morgan paused, not sure if she could say the last thing. “And my brother…he’s dead.” She choked on her own words as James surprisingly put his arm around her.
They sat together, staring up at the moon.
“We’re pretty screwed up,” James said into the blackness.
“Yeah,” Morgan laughed. “Kinda.”
Even though she couldn’t see him, she could feel James’ warmth next to her. His body heat radiated to her and kept her warm in the September air. For the first time in a while, she leaned her head back against the rough bark of the tree and let every muscle in her body relax.
She didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted to stay here with James forever, because he was the only person who didn’t talk down to her. He treated her equally. But she was afraid of the regret. The regret of never going back, never being able to see her family again, always wondering what could have happened if she had stayed.
Morgan looked over at James, whose eyes were closed and hands settled in his lap. He looked so calm right then, like nothing could disturb his peace. She stared into the night sky at the twinkling stars, listened to the crickets chirping in the bushes, and smelled the wet dew of the moss around the trees. She had never really been at the edge of a wood before, never saw these sights, heard these sounds, or smelled these smells. The buzzing of the city had always been the norm for her; the buzzing of car horns, the lights inside the buildings, the rushing of people getting from point A to point B. Now that she was experiencing this new environment, she liked it. No, like was the wrong word. She loved it. She felt like this was where she belonged and she could stay here, under this sequoia tree, forever.
Morgan wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to do the next morning, whether she would stay out here with James or somehow make her way back home. But for now, she would sit here under the stars. The buzzing of the crickets and bullfrogs would surround her. She would put everything out of her mind, even if it was only for just one night. She wanted to enjoy these precious moments with James because she wasn’t sure how much longer she had with him. Tomorrow was the time to worry about what to do, where to go, who to turn to. Not now. Now was the time for peace.