Malorie(35)

“Stay close,” Malorie calls.

She can’t be sure where Tom and Olympia are. How far ahead? Olympia’s voice emerges from the noise, a semblance of assurance, but only near for long as a bat might have been, flying low over the blindfolded woman attempting to run this last bit of road.

Will Malorie and her teens be protected, safe from whoever else is on board? Is there food? Water? Bathrooms? Beds?

And what does it cost to ride?

“Guys!” Malorie calls. A hand is at her elbow, then gone.

The whistle shrieks again.

They’re so close.

“Tom!” she yells. “Olympia!”

But it’s the voice of a man that answers.

“You’ve got seconds,” the man says. “You better hurry!”

It feels, momentarily, horribly, like the man means she has seconds to live. And maybe that is what he means. And maybe she does.

But she rushes, arms up. Hands take her own, smaller hands, Olympia.

The sound of the train changes, and Malorie knows it’s starting to move. The deep exhale of machinery waking up.

“Oh, no,” she says, breathless.

“It’s still here,” Tom says.

Tom! Tom is here, too.

But the train is moving. Malorie is sure of this now.

And other people are yelling, calling out, something about clearing the way, clearing the tracks.

The engine roars. The whistle blows.

Steam. A train. So close.

But it’s moving.

“Come on!” Olympia says.

“It’s leaving!” Tom yells.

But they do not stop. They move. Upon creaking boards now. The platform? The station? Malorie cracks shoulders with someone else, someone who shouts out at her to be careful. The old-world phrase sounds like a harbinger of things to come.

“We gotta leap onto the back,” Olympia says. Malorie imagines her daughter read that in a book. Characters, train hoppers, hoboes. She can’t believe she’s agreeing to this. There’s no way she can justify this idea. It’s not the mother she’s been for sixteen years.

“Mom!” Olympia calls.

Malorie reaches for her, doesn’t find her. The train sounds like it’s moving faster, too fast, the engine no longer exhaling but breathing, steady, rising to face the north.

“We can’t do it,” Malorie says. She sees Ron Handy in his service station, a dirty glass of old whiskey in hand. She sees him crying, now, grappling with the horror of choosing not to go to his sister.

Malorie tries to close her mind’s eye, the eye behind the eyes that are already closed, all of it behind the blindfold she lives by. She doesn’t want to think of Ron Handy or Camp Yadin, Tom the man or Olympia the woman, the Jane Tucker School for the Blind, Annette or Gary. She wants to focus on the sound of the train, moving, the rolling wheels, the squealing of metal, the pumping, the steam, the machine. Yet her mom and dad appear, standing as they were at the end of the dock on Twin Lakes, deep in the Upper Peninsula. They’re smiling her way, encouraging, you can make it, swim, come on, you’re so close. Dad’s hair is still brown and Mom doesn’t yet wear glasses, and they’re the people they were when Malorie was a child, swimming for the first time.

Only they’re wearing blindfolds suddenly, their hands extended. They can’t see Malorie, and it feels like nobody knows how to connect. They call to her, just as voices call to her as she runs, and Malorie flails, hot from the sun, unsure she’s going to make it, sensing something huge in the water with her, sensing something huge (and moving) in the darkness with her now, as she runs, as the toes of her boots connect with the tracks.

Tracks!

Malorie is running for a train!

Come on, Malorie!

Shannon. Even her sister is encouraging her from the dock. The same sister who expressed jealousy and said but the lake was hers to swim in and had to be consoled by (Sam and Mary Walsh) Mom and Dad. Now Shannon calls to her, her voice high and energized. She’s rooting for Malorie to make it just as Malorie once rooted for Shannon to make it in the new world, just as that new world was replacing the old one, even as Shannon believed in the creatures before Malorie did.

Come on, Malorie!

And Malorie reaches for the dock, blindly, the water and the darkness above her head it seems, so that she might be running sideways now, might be running toward the earth or even away from the train.

Mom and Dad are laughing, and Malorie knows it’s because she’s going to make it.

A hand grips her own.

The train isn’t moving fast. Can’t move fast. Blind.

She’s pulled forward, and a second hand takes her second hand, and Malorie’s feet are suddenly dragging. Her shin connects with something metal and the sound of the machine is so loud, so terribly loud, that she feels like it’s falling from the sky, falling directly above her.

“Step up,” Tom says.

It’s Tom who has her. Tom holds her, guides her to a set of metal steps.

Malorie raises a leg, puts it down, but her boot connects with nothing and she’s dragged again.

The teens are talking fast, yelling at each other, trying to pull Malorie to safety.

Malorie lifts her leg again and this time, when she lunges, the tip of her boot is supported by the first metal step.

“You can do it,” Olympia says.