Malorie(56)

bare-handed.

“She’s really gotten into your head, man,” he says.

But maybe what Malorie speaks is the truth. In a world without shared experiences, who knows what laws she’s discovered on her own?

He begins to close the lid. But he hasn’t felt the head yet.

He doesn’t know why this matters. But it does. As if, in the end, it’s the head that separates sanity from madness.

One hand on the lid, he reaches in with the other, his fingers covered in wool. He touches the tip of the nose first and imagines something other than a face, something that looks back up at him.

Something with fingers that can touch.

He moves quick, running his hand over the rest of the face.

Satisfied, or something like it, he pulls his arm out and lets the lid slam closed.

Then he hears what can only be commotion in the hall. Nobody hurrying this time. He heard voices. More than one. Possibly even somebody yelling.

Eyes closed, still anxious, Dean lowers himself from the first coffin and makes his way back to the door. He’s moving too fast, and he knocks another box to the ground, but this time doesn’t bend to retrieve it.

In the hall, the door closed behind him, he opens his eyes.

And sees a familiar face walking toward him.

“Gary,” he says. “Hi.”

Gary’s silver hair and gray stubble glisten under the car light, and he looks momentarily insane.

Then Gary smiles and wipes his hands on his sweater.

“Needed some air,” he says.

Dean, still shaken, nods. He likes Gary. Gary has ridden the train before. Numerous times. He always gets off at Indian River.

“Close to your stop,” Dean says. It’s supposed to be funny, as the train doesn’t actually stop for Indian River, but Gary will get off all the same.

“Yes,” Gary says, stopping a few feet away. “Can’t wait.”

“And Nathan?” Dean asks.

Gary thumbs toward the train’s back door.

“He just got off. Gonna walk the rest of the way himself. Knows of a man who makes his own ice cream around here. He has a sweet tooth.”

Dean nods again. He can’t tell if it’s because Malorie has piqued his mind with her talk of boxed creatures or it’s because he literally just searched two dead bodies in storage, but he doesn’t feel right about this encounter. It feels like Gary is hiding something.

“Wanna walk with me back to my room?” Gary says.

Dean doesn’t want to, but doesn’t know exactly why.

“Thanks, but I got some work to do,” Dean says. He thinks of Malorie, no doubt waiting for word on what was in the coffins.

Gary smiles. “If I don’t see you again, thank you,” he says. “It’s a pleasure as always.”

“Be careful getting off,” Dean says. It worries him. And maybe that’s it. It worries him that Gary and his friend Nathan get off the train whenever they feel like it. At this speed, it’s not unsafe, but Dean worries.

“Always am,” Gary says.

He passes Dean, and Dean watches him go, vanishing into the next car.

“She’s really gotten into your head,” he says.

He brings a hand to his head, to run his fingers through his hair, but feels wool against his skin instead. Wool that just touched dead bodies.

He shakes the hat off his hand and thinks how crazy it is that for a second there he felt like he’d been touched after all, like he’d somehow ended up in the presence of real, actual madness.





TWENTY-TWO


When Gary reaches the spot between cars where Tom sits, cross-legged, eyes hidden behind strange glasses, looking as content as any teenager ever has, he pauses.

“Tom,” he says, loud over the wind. “Are you enjoying the ride?”

Tom looks surprised for having been caught. No doubt shocked that Gary is looking at him, here, between cars, without a fold.

“Yes, what are you…how are you…”

Gary smiles.

“Helluva thing. A train.”

Tom gets up.

“Henry,” he says, “how are you—”

But Gary interrupts him.

“Hey, I’d love to show you something. Come to my room?”

To Gary it looks like Tom hears his mother’s voice in the deep, dark distance. She’s telling him to put on his gloves. His sweatshirt. His blindfold. She’s telling him not to go into the room of a stranger.

But in a way, Gary has watched this boy grow up. Numerous trips to Camp Yadin fortified his belief that Malorie would never move again. Once he stayed three winter weeks in the shed that housed the boating equipment. Once he even entered Cabin Three as they slept.

He was there when Tom asked the census man to leave the papers on the porch. And he knows what Tom’s going to say now before he says it.

“Sure, Henry,” Tom says. “I’d love to.”





TWENTY-THREE


Tom isn’t used to the motion of the train yet, and he can’t imagine he ever will be. This is his first time in the big world and, here, now, his first time sitting with a stranger without Malorie perched on his shoulder.

Screw Malorie.

Henry looks like a big child to him, the way he’s sitting just barely on the edge of the mattress on the lower bunk. The way his big hands lay flat on his knees. The sparkle in his eyes, too. It’s the first time Tom has ever thought this way about an adult before.