THIS NOVEL IS SET IN AN ALTERNATE HISTORY
William Deacon was about twelve years old when his mother
succumbed to her sickness on the trans-national rail road. It was as the train car passed from Colorado
to Utah that she began frantically and painfully coughing into her fist. The typhus had hit his father about a month
ago, and his mother had kept well to hide her symptoms from her son. Of course the entire time William had been
aware of her deception. Somewhere in his
young heart he wanted to believe her lie more than anything, but it was not to
be as easy as all of that. It didn’t
take long for the doctor on board to realize what afflicted her and she was
immediately moved to the storage cars to rest on a crate of hay next to the
stink and staleness of the goats just behind her. William was ordered to stay away from her as
they opened his jaw and had him stick out his tongue. They peaked inside his ears with odd
contraptions and used their thumbs and forefingers to open up his eye lids as
they aggressively held his face. As
they did all this the twelve year old hugged his arms over his bare chest and felt
awkward just standing there in his skivvy’s.
They finished eventually and told him to put his clothes back on. William did so rather coyly asking them if
they would mind waiting outside the box car as he did so.
He
dressed quickly and moved to his mother’s side and held her hand. Her palm was soaked in sweat, and her eyes
were rolling back into her head, and her lips were dried, the flesh up on them
flaking and white. “Momma, I know you
may not hear me momma, but please tell me I’ll see you again,” He paused a
moment attempting to swallow the sadness down, “With Jesus. I’ll see you with Jesus right momma?” He used his other hand to tilt her head
toward him as if seeing him may spur her back to life, but no such event
occurred. The sound of the box car door
opening was then followed by the rush of footsteps as the doctor put his arms
under the boys arms and pulled him up to his feet and backward out of the
car. William wanted to scream, he
wanted to kick his feet in a broken hearted fit of rage, but as he saw her arm
dangling over the edge of the crates, he soon realized there was no point in
it.
There
was an old widow woman whom he was forced to sit next to. In her arms she crocheted what looked like a
pair of mittens. She mostly had her head
tilted down while the thin frames of her glasses rested at the edge of her nose
as though they may just slide off onto the floor at their feet. William watched her hands move in strange
motions as the mittens in her hand began to take shape, and her hands looked
the same way his grandmothers did when he saw her in her casket. Once in a while William would tilt his head
into the isle of the car and look at the door that led toward the storage cars
but then his gaze would return to the old woman who was always looking at him
by this point as if knowing the thoughts that were going on in his head. The last time he did this she said, “There’s
nothing you can do dearie. Once in a
while it’s something we must all learn.
It is a sad affair, but it is a part of our existence.” William didn’t know if the words were supposed
to be comforting, they certainly didn’t seem so, but her frail old all-knowing
voice made it sound as if they were supposed to make it all make sense. William nodded at her half-heartedly. “Do you have family you are going to
see?” William nodded in the same manner
again. She stopped her crochet and
sighed, “Well who is the family that awaits you, boy?”
“My
Uncle Thaddeus. He’s my mom’s youngest
brother. “
“And
what does Uncle Thaddeus do?”
“I’m
not sure, I never knew of him until we boarded the train.” He turned his head down the aisle again, this
time he didn’t care to meet her eyes, and he just stared and then sat back in
his seat. He closed his eyes and as the
tear tried to escape under the lid he looked toward the window to obscure it
from the old women’s vision. He hoped
the ride wouldn’t be much longer.
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