Then I leaned out. The wind slapped my face and made a flag of my long hair.
“You can go to hell, Dad!” I screamed. “I’m free!”
A few hours into the day, the clouds began to spit rain. I’d unrolled my sleeping bag as far as possible from the deadly gap between the cars, and now I crawled inside and drew the tarp over. I pulled out the only postcard my brother Russ had sent after he’d run away; he’d mailed it to a friend with orders to pass it along in secret. It was a photograph of Union Station. On the back he’d written, Made it! Job hunting. I’ll be back for you both!!! Much love, Russ.
He never came back.
I tucked the postcard away and propped my chin on my folded arms.
I knew that when I got to Union Station, I’d feel like I was walking into Nirvana. Already I had soaked up every available fact about the place. It was located in Denver’s historic LoDo district; it was supposed to be one of the most beautiful stations in the country; it had been around since 1858 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places; it was the only station in the country that provided bus, light rail, and passenger train service. The immense neon sign, Travel by Train, that hung over the entrance was both a recommendation and an homage to a bygone era.
I rolled onto my back, stared at the dull light filtering through the tarp. The rain carried the sharp-edged stink of coal, which was a thousand times better than the stench of manure.
As soon as I got to the station, I’d take a self-guided tour. Visit all the shops. Eat at the Cooper Lounge on the mezzanine overlooking the Great Hall. Buy a book at the Tattered Cover bookstore. Soak it all in before I made use of the monthly bus pass I’d purchased online long ago, when I’d first decided to run. I’d use the pass to get to the apartment of a friend of a friend where I was going to couch surf, then use it to get around Denver while I looked for work. I’d be seventeen in another two days. Maybe I’d find a job in one of the fancy restaurants in LoDo. Maybe I’d get really lucky and nail a position at the Tattered Cover.
Most importantly, I’d stand where my brother had once stood. And my mother before him.
I pulled out my journal and made a sketch of Russ standing under the Travel by Train sign. My pen skittered across the page with the jittery motion of the train.
I wondered what the kids at school would think if they could see me. Persephone the nerd. The bookworm. A literary dork making her own Huck Finn journey on a river of steel.
I knew what else they called me. The dweeb with T&A. After I turned thirteen, my body betrayed me by taking on the hourglass curves of my mother. Boys who’d been my friends started to look at me with a hunger I didn’t understand. I don’t think they understood, either. They were stumbling blind, driven by an instinct that told them I was something they should own. By high school they’d learned what their hunger was about. And I’d learned to wear loose clothes and walk with my arms crossed over my chest. And to never drink at parties.
Dad had begun giving me the evil eye every time I left the house. He never laid a finger on me. Not in that way. But sometimes I caught the same hunger in his eyes.
After a time I set aside my journal and lay down, using my sweatshirt as a pillow. I fell asleep to the iron lullaby of the train, a long, slow song punctuated by a concussive wind slapping the plastic tarp.
My mother was a classical pianist, and years ago she played at a lot of venues in Denver. Twice she toured in Chicago. If you look up her name on YouTube, you’ll find clips of her performances. She fell in love with my dad when he was a violinist with the Colorado Symphony. That was before he lost three fingers clearing debris from a lawn mower. Long before he decided they should move to eastern Colorado and try ranching. Three months after they moved, Mom had Russ. A year after that I came along. Dad got himself elected city manager and — the way he told it — got back some of his self-respect.
Disappointment turns some men mean, and by the time Russ was in middle school, Dad was a tyrant. Mom said that a man who’d played Vivaldi the way he once had still owned his soul. But Russ and I knew the truth. Dad must have dug down deep to find the kind of cruel he carried. He wasn’t coming back from that.
After I was born, Dad said Mom shouldn’t travel and leave her family. And besides, a city manager’s wife needed to be visible in the community. She stopped touring and took up the church organ. Everyone agreed that she was the best organist they’d ever had at First Faith.
Throughout my childhood and early teens, my brother Russ was my best friend. He looked after me, teased me, shared his cigarettes and books. Took our dad’s punishment for both of us. Then, when he turned sixteen, he left town. Dad notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He had Russ’s name posted in all the places you post those things.
But after that postcard I figured he was probably dead. If he was alive, he would have come back for us, like he’d promised.
After Russ left, Mom sold her piano. She stopped playing the organ as much. And after Dad broke her hand last year in some weird echo of his own loss, she didn’t play at all, not even when the cast came off. Now and again I’d come home from school and surprise her listening to Bach or Schubert on the classical music station. But whenever she saw me, she’d snap off the radio.
One time I asked her why she’d stopped playing. She sat down at the table and said, “Sometimes we start off with the wrong dream, that’s all.”
“Your dream wasn’t wrong,” I told her.
But she just shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Your dad won’t stay like this.”
“Mom.” I dropped my backpack and put my arms around her. “We should leave.”
Her eyes darted to the door and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “There’s no escape, Seph. Not from a man like your father.”
Dimitria Argos used to be beautiful. Lush and earthy, the kind of woman who would have caught Zeus’s attention if the myths were real.
Dad was no Zeus, but he’d changed her life forever.
I woke to the shriek of metal as the train slowed and slack rippled down the line, jerking each car like a terrier shaking a rat. I braced myself as the ripple reached my car and rocked it violently before continuing on down the line.
A short time later, the train stopped.
It was late in the day. I rose to my knees and fumbled in the twilight for my flashlight. I tucked it into a side pocket of my backpack so that the beam shone upward, bouncing off the metal sides of the car, then dug for the cheese and crackers and grapes I’d brought. I made up a plate for myself and perched on my knees so that I could see over the skirting.
It was near dark; the horizon glowed red, as if volcanoes were erupting just beyond the curve of the earth. Darkened farmland stretched like wall-to-wall carpet, with hills rising in shadowy humps in the distance. Beyond them, the Rocky Mountains rose blackly, stars mere pinpricks in the gloaming.
The mountains meant we were close to Denver. That frontier city turned millennial haven, with the most beautiful sunsets in the world, according to my mom.
I leaned out. Nothing but train in either direction.
And, a short way down the line, a small light that bobbed and weaved along the tracks.
I ducked back and switched off the flashlight. My heart took off at a gallop that made my stomach heave. I pressed myself to the floor of the platform.
Was it possible? Had someone spotted me getting on the train and called the sheriff? Could my dad have ordered the train to stop?
I cried out when, from the east, there came a roar and another train shot past. An intermodal with right of way.