The Train

The bitter, crisp air penetrates my lungs as I step out of my car. I grab one of the bouquets of flowers from the backseat and turn towards the iron gate of the cemetery. The fall chill is evident this November morning in each step that I take as I limp across the yellowed grass, erasing the frost clinging to the deadened lawn. The wind slices through my fleece jacket, causing a violent shiver to permeate my body. Or perhaps it’s not the wind. Perhaps it is due to my location.
I intended to be here sooner. The last time I was here was just over eleven years ago. I remember holding my son’s hand as we passed through the cast iron gates. The flashback streams into my mind as I approach David’s grave.
* * *
“Daddy, what are all of these crosses for?”

“They’re gravestones Rylan. They tell the story of people’s lives.” I answer, sticking to the mundane.

“Dad, I thought you said we were going to visit your friend?” Rylan asks with the naivety of youth. He doesn’t fully understand. He is only five years old.

“We are Rylan. It’s just his gravestone now. Remember I told you that Dave died when he was sixteen?”

“Sixteen is pretty old, right Dad?” he asks stealing a glance back over his shoulder at me as he runs ahead.

“Not old enough,” I mumble. I watch Rylan skip ahead, kicking the leaves on the cemetery’s lawn.

* * *

I wish I had grabbed my Gore-Tex jacket from the backseat. This wind is bitter. I edge towards the grey headstone. It is a flat headstone rather than a cross and I recall Rylan asking me why Dave’s parents didn’t get him a cross. He believed that perhaps God wouldn’t want people unless they had crosses as headstones. Back then, I believed that God called people for a reason. At least that’s what I professed to believe as a sixteen year old who had just lost his best friend. It’s what I tell myself again today. It eases the pain to think that God has a plan for us. But it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

I swallow reluctantly and take a deep breath to settle my nerves. I glance at Dave’s gravesite and spot the flowers that have shriveled and dried in the vase leaning against Dave’s headstone. As I stare at the dates, I begin to consciously hear the rumble of a train in the distance. The sound of the train reminds me of thunder and I flash back to David’s last evening and the thunderstorm. Suddenly, in the distance, the train’s horn blares out a warning. The knot in the pit of my stomach unravels and the tension in my body explodes as a wave of nausea knocks me to my knees. Time has done little to ease my pain. The bouquet of flowers in my hand falls beside the vase and my hands move instinctively to cover my eyes as my shoulders undulate in unison with the chugging sound of the train’s wheels as it nears. I wasn’t like this with Rylan when we visited Dave’s gravestone eleven years ago.

* * *

“Dad, how did your friend die?” Rylan asks.

It’s been sixteen years since Dave’s accident. It seems like the images seared into by memories happened only yesterday. I want to tell Rylan everything that happened that fateful night, but he’s too young. He just wouldn’t understand. Yet I want him to know so that he will not follow in Dave’s path. I’ll have to tell him someday. Just not today.

“Dave was a risk-taker Rylan. He took one too many risks and God called him home.”

Rylan ponders my answer for a moment. I see his brows furrow as he recognizes that I have not answered his question. Rylan behaves like Dave in many ways. He questions everything and he doesn’t like authority. If you tell him not to do something, you can bet he’ll try to do it when no one is watching. Dave didn’t care if anyone was watching, so I still have time to work with my five year old son. In fact, Rylan even looks something like Dave did when I first met him.

Dave was six when I moved in next door to his family. Both boys share an olive complexion, dark hair and an athletic build. When I moved next door, I was a year younger than David, but that didn’t matter to him. He was ecstatic to have another boy in a neighborhood of mostly girls.
Dave and I were best friends from the very start. He saw the moving truck, came to my door and asked my parents if it was okay if I came out to play with him while they unpacked. That was just David’s manner. He was blunt and succinct. By the end of my first week in the neighborhood, we were sworn blood-brothers. David’s father’s jackknife was used to cut our thumbs so that we could swap blood to make it official. I remembered feeling nauseous after we mixed our blood. But it was a symbolic bond that melded us together stronger than I would have expected.

Our yards became our hangout. I would often spend my time with David after school. We would get home from school and lay in the grass staring at the clouds until one of us came up with a plan that would keep us occupied until supper and sometimes even into the evening. Usually David came up with the plans. He would always find something mischievous in the everyday events, suggesting risks that would certainly give us both an adrenaline rush. But I hated that feeling. I would often panic and bolt prior to our adventures, leaving David to fill me in on the details of his exploits when we would meet back in the yard. I preferred to sit back and watch as Dave took the risks. I was satisfied living vicariously through David. Rylan interrupts my memories.

“But Dad, how did he die?” Rylan asks again. He is a bright kid.

“Well Rylan, he was in a car accident. Dave took a risk that he shouldn’t have taken.” I say sticking to the bare minimum hoping that it will satisfy his curiosity.

“Oh. I guess your friend shouldn’t have done that, right Dad?” Rylan states as he looks from me to the motion near the fence. A jack rabbit has wandered into the graveyard.

“No Rylan, he shouldn’t have.” I say lost in my memories. “Just promise me that you’ll never take stupid risks, okay Rylan?”

“Sure Dad!” He yells to me as he runs to start chasing the rabbit. He hasn’t heard a word I’ve said since the rabbit appeared.

As I watch Rylan running, I feel a pang in my lower abdomen. I love Rylan so much. I want to teach him to make smart choices and to not be a risk taker. As he realizes that chasing the rabbit is a losing proposition, he turns to the large oak in the corner of the graveyard and starts climbing a tree, I am struck with a feeling that I’ve already failed. Rylan is just like Dave used to be. Risks are a part of his nature.

“Rylan, be careful. Don’t climb too high!” I yell across the distance. There is no reply.

* * *

I have always believed that I could have prevented Dave’s death, if only I’d had the courage to act. In combat it is called “survivor’s guilt” – people who witness a traumatic event and survive to talk about it are consumed by guilt. It is a manufactured guilt that allows them to take ownership of their feeling of guilt. It is easier than facing the distressing reality that matters were beyond their control, that they were helpless. I have never been able to rid myself of the guilt. As I kneel beside David’s grave and retrieve the flowers I have dropped, I cannot help replaying the events of that fateful evening in my mind’s eye. They form an indelible image that recurs as I struggle to compose myself at David’s graveside.

I have been down this road before. Each frame replays in my mind as I scrutinize and analyze my actions in the same manner as a football coach who breaks down film, frame by frame, before the big game. Inevitably, the images haunt me in the night, in the timeless moments before I find refuge in my dreams or in the endless hours before dawn. I see my movements and recall, with clarity, my actions and words as I dissect my steps in that terminal dance. The burden of my past anchors me to that defining moment.

* * *

We had been drinking and the usual male bravado had seized us as we dared one another to take risks that we likely would have scoffed at if we weren’t inebriated. Dave had just dared me to go back out to the bush party and streak through the old abandoned yard. Now I may have been inebriated, but I still had a sense of decency and humility. Caught in the moment and surrounded by a couple of girls we had cajoled into joining us behind the barn, I did not want to lose face.

“I’ll go if you go!” I stated to Dave, hoping that he too had some humility.

“That’s not the way it works buddy! You have to take the dare.” Dave replied.

“What, are you chicken?” I goaded. “Or is it just that you don’t want to show us your skinny pencil?”

“God, I don’t want to see any of this! I’m going for a beer.” One of the girls stated as she ambled back towards the party.

“Wait for me!” Her friend called as she scrambled to her feet to follow. David shot me a dirty look. He turned and fired his empty against the barn. It shattered and fell to the ground.

“Way to go you ass. I had a chance with that girl tonight!” David shot angrily.

“In your dreams Dave,” I stated truthfully before adding, “Now that she knows about your stub of a pencil, you’re done.” I tilted back the bottle and drained the last bit of foam prior to tossing it aside. “I’m going to go get another one.”

“I know what will impress her. I’ll pull a ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ stunt with my old Nova!” David stated as he fumbled for his keys.

“Yeah right!” I laughed, knowing that David loved that corny show. “In your state you probably couldn’t even keep your car on the road let alone jump something with it.”

“You want to dare me?” David asked.

“No I want to get another beer and then we can catch a ride home with the girls. Jen hasn’t been drinking tonight. You know you shouldn’t be driving.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a moment.” David chuckled. “I just gotta let some lead out of my pencil.” He turned his back to me and faced the barn.

I started towards the yard and giggled as I called over my shoulder, “I’ll meet you over by the fire.”

* * *

I didn’t know that that would be my last words to David. If I had known that he was serious, I would have stopped him. He was in no condition to drive, but he was never afraid to take a stupid risk. He hopped in the car and drove it around the yard. At first the kids all thought it was pretty cool as David did a few donuts and drove through the fire. But then he started picking up speed. I recall screaming at him to stop as he yelled out the windows while his car tore past us. I was upset at him. He was endangering all of us at the party. David ignored me and he took his car to the far end of the yard in the ditch and then he turned it to run down the ditch toward the approach leading into the yard.

He gunned the car’s engine and blasted his horn, which played Dixie, before he slid out of his seat, crawled out his window and stood upon the hood of his old Nova. He called out to all of us and told us that the Dukes of Hazzard had nothing on him and that he was going to do a jump better than the Old General Lee car of the Duke brothers could ever do. By this time I was running towards him, pleading for him to stop his stupidity. He either didn’t hear me or he ignored my pleas, for he jumped back through his car window, honked his horn once more and pinned the accelerator. The engine whine overpowered the tune of Dixie as the Nova’s tires tore up the dirt. My gait slowed to a jog as I cried for him to stop it. I smelled the warmth of his engine as his car shot past me in the ditch gaining speed exponentially. As David whooped out the window, my jaw dropped. His seat belt was hanging loose down beside the window. At that moment I knew.

Today, the moments when David’s car hit the embankment and went airborne still replay in my mind like a slow motion horror picture. I can see David pumping his left fist out the window as he arced through the prairie sky during his flight. Thankfully, I cannot clearly recall the ensuing carnage. I can only recall holding David’s body as the life drained out of him once we had pulled him from the wreckage strewn across his landing place.

* * *
*

This part is not finished yet!

Go on to discuss how the memories of David’s accident formed an indelible image and train of thought – Don’t let this happen to Rylan! Discuss how Rylan hated me for what he perceived to be my nagging and meddling. It formed a rift between us as he aged. As a teenager who struggled to assert his independence, he wanted nothing to do with me and my ‘sissy’ ways.

* * *

I quickly replace the old, wilted flowers that were probably brought to Dave’s grave by his mother with the new bouquet I had along with me. I know that the flowers will soon freeze, but I don’t really care. As I rise up off my knees and wipe my cheeks so that the moisture doesn’t freeze in the wind, I stare at Dave’s gravesite. It doesn’t reflect the person I knew. It leaves me feeling that I am missing something. How would my life be different if Dave had lived?

* *
*

This part is not finished yet!

As I head back to the car, the train has passed. I glance in the back of the car and see the flower bouquets and reveal that I am taking them to the funeral. Leave the audience hanging wondering if it is his son. He was only sixteen, but Rylan’s best friend tried to beat the train. Fortunately – due to my insistence that he not take unnecessary risks – Rylan demanded that his buddy let him out before he raced the train. Like me, Rylan will always live with survivor guilt, but I come to see that it is individuals who make the choice – Rylan’s actions serve to show me and free me of my guilt! I open the car door as the train’s whistle blows in the distance. I smile and wipe away a tear of happiness.