For Tom by F Lee Miller
By: Backhand Stories
Tags: Trauma, Fiction, Fiction Writing, Short Story, Creative Writing

We couldn’t sleep for most of that first night and so we passed the time talking about the things we’d miss about home and planning what we would do when we reached California . I had heard that a young man could always find work in the strawberry fields or logging camps and since we were not keen on hard labor, picking strawberries seemed our best option. Some time in the early hours before dawn, we ran out of words and slept.

For breakfast, in honor of our father, we ate oranges. They were warm and sweet, and for a while their smell was stronger than the smell of dirt and oil. We ate nearly half of the bag Tom had stolen and made a contest of spitting the seeds across the length of the boxcar. During the night, the train left Oklahoma , passed through the Texas panhandle, and we were well into New Mexico by midday. When we pulled into Albuquerque and the train stopped, we huddled into the corners of the empty boxcar and prayed no one would discover us there. As we began to roll again, we stood in the open door and marveled at how dirty and dry this part of the world seemed to us. In the short time the train had stopped, the boxcar became unbearably hot, so we stayed in the doorway and let the air cool us.

As we neared the edge of town, and the buildings changed from brick to unpainted wood, we could see men running to hop the train. From both sides of the train, maybe a dozen men altogether, in pairs and alone, clamored for the open doors, few with any possessions to burden them. Finally, as the train neared untenable speed, one last man appeared and ran to catch the very boxcar my brother and I occupied. When he was close enough to reach, Tom grabbed his collar, as he had done mine, and pulled the man safely into the car with us.

I had never in my life seen a man as filthy as our new fellow occupant. His clothes were black with soot, as if he’d just come from work in the coal mines, and his face hadn’t been washed in ages, as far as I could tell. When he spoke, he had no teeth and his words were a jumble of curses and unidentifiable sounds more spat than spoke. He was unshaven and his hair unkempt so that he looked as wild as he sounded. Tom and I were speechless, and I know I was more than a little afraid. He mumbled a few more curses, looked around the boxcar, and seeing the bag of remaining oranges, sat down and began eating them.

Tom, clearly not as afraid as I was, made a motion to stop the man from eating our oranges, but I held him back. Looking outside I judged that the train was now moving too fast to safely jump, so I pulled Tom to the other end of the boxcar and suggested that we should just let the man have the oranges and we’d jump out the first time the train slowed enough. Tom’s suggestion was that we put the man off the train instead. Unable to restrain Tom, I watched as he approached the man.

Still sitting, with half an orange in his mouth, our fellow passenger pulled a pistol and pointed it at my brother’s chest. As he pulled the hammer back, he stood, and Tom raised his hands, stumbling backwards, eyes set on the end of the barrel, retreating to stand next to me. Together, we backed to the opposite end of the boxcar and didn’t breathe again until the man sat down and continued eating our oranges.

What happened next haunts me to this day. I know that soon I will go to my rest and need not have ever told the events of that day, beyond what I reported all those years ago. Because I couldn’t bear to tell my mother what really happened in that boxcar, I’ve carried the terrible secret of cowardice all my long days. I tell it now, not in hope of absolution either in this life or the next, but in confession and payment to that beautiful boy I abandoned in my youth.

For some time the train clanked and rocked its way across the desert wilderness of New Mexico , and Tom and I huddled together and watched the man as he ate everything he could find among our things. When he finished eating, he rummaged through our clothes and, apparently finding nothing that suited him, rose and came toward us, pistol drawn. He pointed it at Tom and motioned for him to stand up. Tom stood, and the man, motioning with the pistol, told him to take off his clothes. Tom at first shook his head and refused, but the man cocked the pistol again, and with my urging, Tom undressed and tossed his clothes on the floor of the boxcar at the feet of the man.

As Tom stood there naked and I sat on the floor behind him, the man undressed, never taking the pistol or his eyes off of us. It wasn’t until he suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Tom by the hair, holding the pistol to my brother’s head, that I realized it hadn’t been Tom’s clothes he was after. I stood suddenly, but the man pointed the pistol and fired, the bullet entering the wooden floor of the boxcar only inches in front of my feet. I watched, paralyzed with fear, as the man forced my younger brother face down onto the filthy floor, with the pistol pressed to the back of his head, and raped him.

When he finished, and while he was still lying on top of Tom, he released the hammer of the gun. Then, as he pushed up onto his knees, he struck Tom in the head with the barrel and Tom splayed, unconscious. I sank to my knees and wept as the man sat back and cleaned himself with pieces of our clothes he had scattered before.

I don’t know how long I knelt there crying, or for whom I was crying most; my brother, so young and so defiled, or myself, now face to face with my cowardice. I don’t know how long the man sat and watched me cry, or how much pleasure he took in it, but eventually he rose and came to me. He stood before me, still naked, and with the gun once again in my face, told me to take off my clothes. In that moment, I lost my sense of immortality. Drained of tears and content to know my life was going to be over soon, I began to remove my clothes. I ripped the buttons on my shirt as I pulled it off, angry that he couldn’t just kill me first. I pulled my undershirt over my head and stood to remove my pants. While I fumbled with my belt and avoided looking at the man who would soon violate me as he had my brother, I saw movement behind him. Tom, so fast it was done before I realized what was happening, grabbed the man and spun him backwards, away from me. The gun exploded and I was deafened. My cheek and ear burned, but the bullet missed me and I saw the gun fall to the floor. I had it in my hand and was turning to help Tom when I saw the man standing in the door, arms flailing for balance. Tom took the gun from my hand, walked over to the man who had recovered his balance, and shot him in the face. The man went limp and fell like a tree out of the boxcar, head first into the gravel below. Above the noise of the train and the ringing in my ear, I could have sworn I heard the man’s neck snap. Maybe I just hear it now.