Not this conductor, though. This one hasn’t finished his rounds. As we approach the station, he regains his awareness of his surroundings. Exhausted, he rises from the floor and, unsteady on his feet, slides open the compartment door.
“Wait,” says Cora, “your clothes.”
We gather his things together. He doesn’t seem to pay any attention. We no longer exist for him. He staggers out into the corridor, Cora tottering along behind him, us in her wake.
“Get dressed,” she says. “You can’t let them see you like this.”
We wrap his pants, socks, shirt, tie, glasses and leather pouch in his jacket, tie the sleeves together, and press the bundle into his arms. He gazes at us blankly, as if he’s just been handed an orphaned child in a blanket.
Thank goodness there’s no one else in the corridor. We hustle back into our compartment — this isn’t our stop. Our excited bodies huddle close against each other as we press our noses to the window and watch the conductor leave the train.
Quite a few passengers are waiting on the platform. They step aside for the naked traveler.
He strides forward through the crowd with the little bundle of clothing held to his chest, staring solemnly before him as if he is carrying his first-born son to the baptismal font.
Copyright © 2009 by Tessa de Loo
Translation Copyright © 2009 by Josh Pachter
Famous Last Words
by Doug Allyn
This month, between the same covers, we have EQMM’s two great multiple Readers Award winners: Clark Howard and Doug Allyn. There are some big differences between them: Clark Howard usually writes of prisoners, ex-cons, and others on the fringes of society; Doug Allyn more often focuses on men and women in a line of work, be it construction, the music business, medicine, or, as in this story, teaching. But they share an uncanny ability to make those characters come alive and to lace their stories with just the right amount of action and adventure.
Ever wonder what you’d say? If you knew that the next words you spoke would be your very last?
Would you try to justify your life?
Would you say I love you? Or say a prayer?
Could you even assemble a coherent sentence?
I couldn’t. And I had my chance.
A golden autumn evening, dusk settling on our little college town like a flannel comforter. Linette had picked me up after my last class and we were stopped at a busy intersection, bickering cheerfully about whose turn it was to cook dinner, waiting for the light to change.
It suddenly dawned on me that the headlights in the rearview mirror were growing larger and brighter. Much too quickly.
The large truck coming up behind us wasn’t slowing down at all. Speeding up, if anything. I expected him to pull around us but he didn’t. Just kept coming, straight on. And then it was too late.
Sweet Jesus! He was going to hit us! And I turned to Linette, wide-eyed, and said... “What the hell?”
Famous last words.
Not very profound. But then, I’m not the one who died.
As Linette swiveled around to look, the truck slammed into us. Instantly smashing our world into a whirling, mind-shredding maelstrom of shrieking metal, exploding airbags, and howling rubber. Blasting my boxy little Toyota hybrid out into the flashing steel river of rush-hour traffic, triggering a horrendous chain-reaction accident. Panicked commuters slamming on their brakes, desperately cranking their wheels, swerving to avoid us.
And failing. My new Toyota Prius, with its state-of-the-art hybrid engine, rearview parking camera, and electric cup warmers, was banged around like a ping-pong ball, hammered by at least three other cars before being literally smashed in half by a flatbed truck hauling twenty tons of rolled steel.
Our gas tank ruptured and spewed. And my clever little car exploded like a napalm bomb.
I hope to God Linette was already dead before the flames reached her.
But I don’t know. And maybe that’s best.
I woke slowly in a world of white. White tiled walls and ceilings. Even my pain felt white. My memory, too. A white blank. Empty as an unwritten page.
All I could remember were my last words to Linette. “What the hell?”
“Professor Frazier?”
I swiveled my head slowly. A woman was standing beside my bed. Tall and lanky, sandy hair cropped short as a boy’s. Wearing a black suit and turtleneck. She was holding out an ID folder but I couldn’t focus on it.
“I’m Sergeant Shane Kovacs, Professor,” she said, slipping the badge back inside her jacket. “Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.” I coughed, dry-mouthed. “University?”
She nodded, scanning my face like a form she had to fill out. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Somebody... rear-ended us. A truck, I think.”
“What kind of a truck was it?”
“Never saw it clearly. Only the headlights. Not a car or a pickup truck. The lights were too high. That’s... really all I know.”
“What about before the accident? Did you have trouble with anyone? Cut somebody off, blow your horn, flip ‘em the finger? Anything at all?”
I stared at her, trying to make the words compute. “Road rage, you mean? No, there was nothing like that.”
“It doesn’t take much these days, Professor. If—”
“I teach History of Western Civilization at Hancock U., Sergeant. Linette’s a librarian. We don’t... squabble with strangers. Is she all right?”
Kovacs hesitated. “They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“What was your relationship with Miss Rogers?”
“We... live together,” I managed. “Two years now. Is she—?”
“I’m very sorry, Professor Frazier,” Kovacs said, looking away to avoid my eyes. “Linette Rogers didn’t make it. She was pronounced dead at the scene.”
“God,” somebody said quietly. Me, I suppose.
“Look, I’m sorry to have to push this, Professor Frazier, but a half-dozen other victims were seriously injured in that accident. One of them may not survive the night. Several witnesses saw a gravel truck plow into your Toyota without slowing, so if anything happened earlier that—”
“I told you, there was nothing! Why don’t you ask the guy who hit us?”
“We haven’t located him yet. After ramming into your car, the truck fled the scene. We found it abandoned a few hundred yards down the highway. It was stolen from a public-works site. Maybe a drunk, maybe a joyrider. So if you can think of anything at all that could have triggered this—”
“I have no idea, Sergeant, but it had nothing to do with us. Linette and I were going home for dinner, forgodsake, trying to decide between pasta or Chinese. That’s all I can tell you. End of story.”
But it wasn’t.
I checked myself out of the hospital at noon the following day. My left arm was in a sling, badly sprained, apparently when I was thrown from the car. I was bruised and battered, with a bandage covering an abrasion on my forehead. Beyond that, I was more or less intact. From what Sergeant Kovacs said, I was one of the lucky ones.
I didn’t feel lucky.
I didn’t feel anything. I’m a methodical sort, a scholar by trade and by nature. A bit of a plodder, I suppose. Linette used to tease me about being born with an old soul. Perhaps she was right.
I know students sometimes take my History of Western Civ class to catch up on their sleep. I’m not an inspired lecturer, or even very good at casual conversation.
But now I would have to say them. Famous last words. Linette’s eulogy. The final synopsis of her life. She had no family, so the responsibility would fall to me.