My Heart for Yours

9. Tobin

9

Tobin

I pull up to my house and park next to Eamon's black Jeep. I'd gone to Traive's house to pick it up yesterday before the visitation. I wonder what my parents are planning to do with it—if they've even noticed that it's back. I pause at the front door, unsure of what I'll be walking in to. It's late; my parent's would normally be long asleep by this hour. But can you really sleep the night before your oldest son's funeral?

The mail is piling up on the small table in the entryway. I'll have to go through it in the next day or two before something is turned off for not getting paid. I hang my keys on the hook next to Eamon's and pause outside the kitchen, listening to my parents' hushed voices.

"I just don't understand how this happened," my mom says, her words weighted with drowsiness.

She isn't going to understand. Ever. I don't know why she's even trying to. Nothing that happened that night will ever make sense. Not to her and not to me. I know he was crazy as hell, but playing chicken on the railroad tracks?

Leslie said he had his back turned. It didn't seem like he heard the train. How is that possible? And if he did hear it, why didn't he move? He had nothing to prove to anyone. We all got it. You're a badass. How the fuck could you not hear it? How could you not feel the tracks vibrating beneath your feet? How could you think it was worth it to stand firmly there—until you weren't?

~ ~ ~

I was on my way home from work when I saw Leslie on the side of the road. There was an ambulance and a cop car parked a little ways up. It took me a minute to process what I was seeing, so I had to slam on my brakes and pull off to the side and run back toward her. She was on her hands and knees, dry heaving onto the asphalt in between wails of agony.

"Tobin?" Leslie said when she saw me walking toward her. "Tobin, they told me to wait up here. You shouldn't go down there."

I stared down into the ditch, looking for whoever 'they' were, but the trees and grasses were too thick there. I couldn't see anything but light behind the woods.

"Leslie, what's going on?" Her long hair was stringy and damp with tears. She either didn't hear me, or she didn't know how to respond. "Leslie, where's Traive?" Traive and Leslie had gotten married while they were still in high school. I don't think I'd ever seen one without the other. She gulped loudly.

"The train..." gulp, wail, cough, "he didn't move when the...the..." She crouched back down and I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere with her. I pulled off my hoodie and wrapped it around her shoulders. I wasn't sure if she was shaking because she was cold or not, but I had to do something before I left her sitting there.

I jogged down the hill and through the trees. The branches whipped across my arms and the bushes scratched at my legs. When I got to a clearing, I was blinded by the spotlight from the train stopped on the tracks. I had to step over piles of beer bottles that littered the ground. There was a cop talking to the driver of the train. I could tell by his uniform that he worked for the railroad. His hand was on his shiny forehead and he just kept shaking it back and forth. It was then that it finally dawned on me. It hadn't been more than two hours since I'd last talked to Eamon.

"Wanna get a beer after I get off of work?" I'd asked.

"Nah, man. I'm meeting up with Traive and Leslie. We're gonna have a few drinks, maybe go sleep out at their camp. You game?"

I passed. I had to work in the morning. So where was Traive now? What the hell happened here? I made my way toward the cop.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The gravel near the tracks crunched under my heavy boots and alerted him that I was coming. He looked up.