“Hell, I guess,” she answers, never taking her eyes off the television. “Tell him I ain’t giving him more than ten minutes though.”
I yell out the screen door for Wayne to come in. Darna turns off the television and goes into her “reading” room.
“In there,” I direct Wayne.
Darna is lighting candles and closing blinds. In the center of the room is a card table covered with an orange tablecloth decorated with the silhouettes of black cats. Darna turns on a lamp in the corner that glows with a red lightbulb. I stand in the doorway curious, but she pushes me into the hallway and shuts the door in my face.
They talk quietly. I press my ear against the door but can translate nothing. Darna does most of the talking. Wayne offers one- or two-word sentences when she pauses. Though interested, I’m also tired, and go into the kitchen for a beer. Before I’m halfway finished, the door opens and Wayne leaves, and Darna sits down again in front of the television.
“So?” I say.
“So what?” she answers.
“What’d he want?”
“You know I can’t tell that.”
“C’mon, Darna. It’s just Wayne.”
“I don’t care who it is. He’s a client and I ain’t telling,” she says.
“Client-smient, Darna. It’s just Wayne.”
“Same for everybody,” she says.
I give up and walk to the back room. I stretch my thin body as long as it will go, straight out across the hardwood, visions of sheetrock dancing in my head, as I feel their weight even in relaxation, heavy on my shoulders. The exchange with Darna is the only one of the night, and long before the late news I’m fast asleep.
The warning whistle and thunder roaring closer awaken me. It’s the early a.m. and a tremor grows in the ground. I go into the kitchen for some water. My mouth is dry and as I bend over the sink and guzzle from the faucet, the train whistle blows ceaselessly. I make my way to the porch and the whistle continues to scream as if the train were frightened of its own tracks, the sound of the weight thumping stronger and teeming with the whistle to blare and roar like an approaching war. I see the reason for its loud arrival when I look ahead: standing almost on the tracks are two shadows. They are side by side, ornaments of black in the night, when the train light hits them, and there’s Wayne with a firm grasp on the neck of Hero, Hero squirming up and down but being held in place by the strong, solid grip of his father.
The light whiter on their faces and the whistle stronger and louder, the train rushes toward them, but Wayne won’t let them move. I yell but it’s lost in the train’s roar. It’s too late for the train to slow as the light grows wide on the ground around Wayne and Hero, spotlighting the boy’s struggle.
Off the porch and I’m running toward the tracks. The ground bounces and I use it to spring forward with each step. I dash into the growing light and snatch Hero away from Wayne as he never hears me coming in all the noise. Hero stumbles and falls when I whip him around, and in the train’s light Wayne’s eyes are scattered. The muscles in his neck are bulging and it appears as though there is so much pressure in his head that his hairs might start popping off one by one. An instant after I yank Hero away, the engine blows past.
The train light disappears from our faces but Wayne’s crazy eyes still show. He takes a step toward me, raises both fists over his head. “What the hell are you doing!” he screams over the clicking of the rails.
“Jesus Christ! What am I doing?”
He drops his hands and turns away from me, stomping toward his house. I go after him and he stops at the road and jerks around. I take a step back. The train is quieter now that the engine is down the tracks.
“Goddamnit! What’s wrong with you!” he screams. I can only shake my head back and forth. “Shit! I’m out here trying to get him to talk and you butt your ass in and screw it up!”
I stare at him.
He’s so furious he’s doing a little dance and his fists are balled up. “What do you think? Hero! I’m trying to scare something out of him! Anything!”
“My God, Wayne, it’s not the hiccups. You can’t get him to talk by making him think he’s about to die.”
“How do you know? Are you a doctor? He ain’t never gonna say another word, your witch-ass wife said so!”
“What?”
Wayne raises his arm and points toward our house. “Today! I asked Darna if he was ever gonna talk again and she said no!”
“Wayne, you know that nothing she says is—”
“Just screw it. To hell with it all. I don’t give a shit if he ever says another word. He don’t do nothing but take up space,” he says, then storms toward his house, throws open the front door, and slams it behind him.
I turn to look for Hero but he is gone, and in the lights of the street running parallel with the tracks is a skeleton kicking up its heels, trying to keep pace with the train. I walk back to my porch, sit in the recliner, and count cars passing by. I never get tired of the trains passing in the night.
When I come outside the next morning, the checkerboard is lying on the seat of the recliner. I pick it up and written across it in black magic marker is, I am gone. Feed Spur.
Wayne bursts through his front door and yells, “C’mon, let’s go! If we get there early enough maybe we won’t have to haul sheetrock.”
I fold the checkerboard and slide it under the recliner.
For once, I’m happy to be assigned to sheetrock because it’s too exhausting of a job to spend your time talking, giving me time to think about Hero — where is he, what he’s doing, and what I’m going to do or say.
On the ride home Wayne asks if I’ve seen him.
“Not since last night,” I answer.
“Little shit didn’t come home. You sure he didn’t sleep on your porch or something?”
“I’m sure. I sat out there until late and then was out early.”
“Just like his momma. Never know where the hell he is.”
I sit on the front porch all night watching for Hero. Nobody has visited Darna by eleven o’clock and she turns off the hand, relieving the neon strain on my eyes. The moon is hidden by the clouds and everything is extra black. No sign of Hero.
The next evening, Haley sits with me. Spur lies in the dirt next to the steps.
“Two nights now,” I say.
“I know it. Sad, ain’t it?”
“What pisses me off is if Hero were to walk up, he’d ring his neck and call it tough love. His problem is, all he wants is something to hate. Without Hero around he doesn’t have a cause.”
Haley gets up from the recliner and sits down with me on the edge of the porch. Our feet swing back and forth out of sync and our shoulders rub together.
“What’s gonna happen to him?” Haley asks. Her voice is soft, like it arrived on a breeze. “You swear you don’t know where he is?”
“All I know is what I showed you on the checkerboard. I swear. But my guess is, if he’s really gone, he probably hopped on a train sometime during the night.”
Wayne’s front door opens and closes and he comes over to us. Spur shrinks when he walks up.
“Where’s Darna?” he asks, and I point a finger toward the door. “Is she with somebody?”
“Not now,” I answer.
He goes inside and I hear the door to the reading room close. Haley hops from her seat and stands in front of me. In the blue neon she looks ghoulish and strange.
“Why don’t we do something?” she asks, face full of adventure.
“Like what?”
“Like getting up and going after Hero, that’s what. A manhunt, the big chase, you know, something exciting.”