Chapter 1: Evelyn

Evelyn,

I was ten years old when I met Evelyn. When we were fifteen, she looked at me with solemn curiosity and said, “Do you know, I have figured out that there is a common thread that runs through all of these books I have been reading.”

“What’s that?” I asked, coincidentally pulling at a loose thread on my worn plaid button down.

“Well, the plot almost always centers around a protagonist who, one way or the other, is miserable. Take James from James and the Giant Peach, for example, or Wilbur from Charlottes Web, or Meg from A Wrinkle in Time. Each one is positively miserable: James’ aunts call him a nasty brute and forbid him from leaving his house; Wilbur’s owners keep him penned up, so he grows completely lonely; and Meg’s a social outcast who spends her time insecurely musing about the way she looks and the way other kids condescend her, and how her family is perceived as being so abnormal. They all are living a somewhat miserable life, and then (and I love that there is always an ‘and then’), as if the world has heard the deepest desires of each of their hearts, something extraordinary happens that changes everything: a peach the size of a house grows in the backyard and sweeps James to the ocean; a spider whispers down to Wilbur, “I’ll be your friend”; and an old woman shows up in the kitchen on a stormy night and asks for Meg’s help to rid the world of evil.”

“That’s pretty interesting actually,” I said, tipping back in my chair and staring at the grungy rafters lining the ceiling. My damned sleeve really wanted to play tug-or-war it seemed, so I wrapped the thread around my finger a few times and tried to rip it. “Do you think,” I began as I tugged, “anything like that ever really happens, though? I mean, you sometimes say that you are pretty miserable. Has anything ever happened that kind of whisked you away and made your life better?”

“Well I am miserable sometimes, ya I guess,” she said, “I mean I am not nuts about my family, but I make do with it. And I guess I sorta doubt anything will ever show up and whisk me away. But then again I don’t think Roald Dahl’s intended remedy for a difficult life is to sit around and wait for an old man to hand you crocodile tongues.”

“Ya I agree…”

“So a giant peach like that must be a symbol for something….something good.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she said sadly, as though the end of a line of thinking required a funeral-like lament.

She brightened up after a brief pause and asked, “You think I look miserable or what, why’d you ask that?”

“No I don’t think you look miserable. What the hell,” I said chuckling. “You have said you’re miserable. I wouldn’t know either way. You are always so damn cheery all the time.”

“Yea well a girl cannot afford to air her complaints like a guy can.”

“That sounds like bullshit.”

“Whatever.”

A pimple-laden high school freshman came over and asked if we wanted desert. We declined; I stretched mightily and theatrically. My display of fatigue gave me some sort of license to switch subjects I felt.

“Well that’s cool you are reading more,” I said, “I remember when I was the one who read the most.”

“Ya, me too,” She said laughing a bit, “But you still read a lot. We read different stuff I guess.”

“Ya.” I said. “that’s true.”

And then, as if out of nowhere, Evelyn looked at me and said, “Oh Huckabee….” She said the word as though solemnly orating an epitaph. She then brought her top eyelids down a touch, as if they were kneeling gently to lay down flowers at a grave.

Any person alien to Huckabee would interpret these two words as being a random outburst, a conversation filler perhaps. But I knew just what she meant. “Oh Huckabee” summarized things just fine.

You see, Evelyn and I grew up in Huckabee, Missouri. It’s a small town now—a real small town—but it used to be what adults constantly refer to as “economically vital.” I think by that they mean it used to be a little easier on the eyes, but I am not really sure. I have never looked it up.

Either way, old, worn photographs show good-looking people wearing suits and holding briefcases, businesses and houses with smoke billowing from the top, front yards that are green, brick that is red, and an assortment of other colors floating about the city, that, if not aesthetically pleasing, are at least refreshing signs of life.

At some point, as you may have guessed, the business left. I am not sure where they all went but I assume they took a certain amount of verve with them, leaving a song with no cadence. But one has only to look down these barren streets with the sun setting or rising at just the right moment over the drooping streetlights to know there is still a melody drifting tenuously throughout Huckabee, not colorful or eye-catching, but its there. We just need a hero to put the right notes in the right places again.

Now without a doubt, the most notable artifact of Huckabee’s past vitality is an overgrown train track that used to rattle with life nearly all day long—or so I hear. Many say the train that ran over these tracks literally never stopped, traveling all day and all night, every single hour, and every single minute—producing an interminable hum that seeped into every quarter of the town.

So relentlessly did this train carry on that story has it the ground would constantly rattle, all day and all night, every single minute. In fact, the shaking was such a constant that coffee in Huckabee is still served in the most ridiculously high-walled mugs, for otherwise, at least back then, you were sure to spill all over as soon as you placed your cup down on the nearest table. At the time, school kids’ handwriting was known for being the messiest anywhere in the entire country (for obvious reasons). And they say parents with little babies had the toughest time keeping the food in their kids’ jiggling little mouths (which I always thought was a rather funny thing to imagine myself). Many of my very own relatives swear that nobody could ever move away from or into Huckabee: for the unfamiliar silence of any other city, and the unfamiliar buzz of Huckabee would nearly kill a person.

One day, when I was no older than seven years old, I asked my grandfather where this train was going. “After all,” I said, “this train seems to have been going and going and going, and so it must have been going somewhere awfully important, right?”

I’ve never forgotten, and will never forget, the way his face changed as he heard the question. His pupils distended; he leaned back and brought his right leg above his left shin; the vein above his left eyebrow bulged a bit (as it used to do only when he was angry), and one bead of sweat dripped slowly down his bearded face. He paused for many seconds and the tick of the clock hanging on his grey wall beat like a heart. He leaned back far in his chair, and I wondered for a second if he had even understood my question.

“Did you—“

“Business!” He jarringly exclaimed. “There was an awful lot of business at the time, you see.” And then he breathed out desperately as if he had just been held under water. My mother screamed at precisely the moment he finished gasping for air: “Ethan,” She exclaimed, “It’s time for dinner. Get down here.”

“But Grandpa…" I began. “How…”

“And make sure you wash your hands. Last time…”

“You had better get down there,” Grandpa said seriously. “And so should I.”

Now, as much as I have heard about this train, I have never actually seen it. For as the business fled from Huckabee so too did this endless buzz, and the endless rattle, and the train that produced it all. In this way, perhaps my grandfather was right, without business, there was no need for a train. And so the track stands totally idle today, and babies can keep food in their mouths just fine.

But that train track, that remnant of such a relentless, life-like hum, always beguiled me. It’s overrun today with weeds and shrubs and all that prickly shit that sticks to your clothes, and it’s mainly used as a place where troublemakers meet up and do things that trouble makers do near abandoned anythings. But that image of my grandfather’s bulging pupils flashes into my mind every time I see those tracks, and I am left feeling eerily frightened and excited at the same time.

Well, whatever Huckabee was back then in those worn photographs, it’s nothing like that now. The only vitality I have ever seen in this town emanates from Evelyn. And there she was, sorrowfully laying flowers with her eyes.

She paused for a few seconds and whispered, “This place is so odd isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I mean…I have never really been anywhere else, so I don’t know.”

“I know, I know,” She said, “But think about it. It’s gotta be the greyest city in the whole world. I mean for real. Look around you. There are literally no trees. The grass is a brownish color year round. The houses are run down. The stores are run down. The people are tired and bored and just…you know…like not good. Shits just not good here, but its not a normal not good. It’s really, really not good.”

“Ya, of course I know what you mean. I often rationalize it all by just saying this is a small town, and this is what small towns are like, and yet there is a sort of pace and colorlessness here that defies normalcy. But yet by the same token, and as I have said before, I do think there is something beautiful here that hides behind the surface. The city intimates that it’s there, but never yields more than a brief glimpse. I have always felt all you have to do is—“

“Ya I know, observe the sun setting over the dangling street wires. I have definitely never felt that way.

“Well do you know anywhere else you would like to go…to travel?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I would just love to go somewhere else. I feel like I need to go somewhere else. Maybe another city or town or school or group of people would be my giant peach.”

I chuckled. “Ya maybe. But I don't know. Maybe those towns would offer you nothing but a little glamor, a little outward appeal, but nothing real inwardly. I mean, maybe its a whole lot of fluff and no substance. And perhaps Huckabee is precisely the opposite. Maybe the city itself is like the one city in America with absolutely no veneer, absolutely none.”

“I have heard that argument a million times. I don’t buy it. A person’s environment does effect how well they live. It’s not everything, but it has to effect it, and I think there are environments a bit more uplifting than Huckabee.”

“Ya ok. Obviously I agree, but…look…you told me about the common thread you have found in young adult books, and I think thats cool. But I read a decent amount too and you say I read boring adult books where nothing ever happens.”

Evelyn smirked and slyly remarked, “Ya that’s true. They’re boring as hell.”

“Ok. But maybe that is exactly the point. Maybe that common thread you found in children’s books is gone by adulthood—gone by the adult books—for a good reason. Maybe adults realize there is no giant peach coming to save them; nobody is going to whisper down, ‘I will be your friend.’ Maybe that’s why nothing ever really happens in quality adult books, because nothing ever actually happens, at least, not in any big, revolutionary way.”

Evelyn eyes were searching for something up in those rafters. “Well then what the hell are we doing? I mean, I feel like if that is true, if nothing ever really changes, then Huckabee is, indeed, the most honest place there is, for at least the town has recognized there is no color beyond gray and the people realized there is no sentiment aside from boredom and exhaustion; the whole town sings such a pitiful, honest tune, but if that is all there is then am I supposed to sing along or what? I mean if you are right, then what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“Ya well I don’t know. Battling the day is, in and of itself, difficult and tiresome and, dare I say, somewhat noble. Maybe people in Huckabee are just battling the day, and not trying to glamorize it.”

“But what is the goddamn point of battling the day? Why would I want to live my life in order to battle, struggle, and, dare I say (and she said this in a rather mocking tone), endure. I want to enjoy. I want to actually taste the world.”

“Taste what, though? I mean there is tons of commercial bullshit for you to chew on. I imagine not that, right? You can spend your time getting drunk and ‘living it up.’ You can become super successful and buy tons of shit. Or you could always become a nun or something. That would be classic. Which one of these is going to allow for you to taste the world in the way you want to taste it?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know.” Evelyn was a very passionate person, and I realized I had, in my inability to admit defeat in an argument, pushed her a tad over the edge. “but I am not going to sit around here in Huckabee, like you seem content with, and wait for someone or something to convince me what the right answer is in life. You can only figure that out by living.” Then, oddly enough, she laughed.

Evelyn laughed.

And when she laughed it was always more of a jovial burst, and her eyes lit up, and it made you feel good.

“You know you have always needed a reason for everything, right?” She asked, “Do you remember when we were kids how you were?”

Of course, I remembered. Both of our mothers volunteered a lot at my school, so they would talk for what seemed like hours about nothing. They would say how our teachers gave too much homework or not enough homework or never answered their phones or called home too often or taught the bible too conservatively or too liberally.

They often said things like, “I sure hope that principal doesn’t start making us pay for field trips,” or, “Who do you want Evelyn to have for 5th grade?” or, “Oh please, do you believe they hired the Johnson’s daughter to teach seventh grade. She dresses like a harlot.” My mom used to lean over and whisper pleadingly, “Why don’t you go and play with Evelyn in the parking lot while her mother and I chat for just a bit.” Yea well, just a bit was never just a bit, but I guess it didn’t matter because even then I was ok with being alone and just thinking and imagining. I usually drew pictures while Evelyn played on the playground or jumped rope or things like that that girls love to do.

Anyways, one day Evelyn approached me as I was doodling and said, “You wanna play?”

I looked at her somewhat suspiciously and responded, “Not really. I just like hanging out. Plus my mom just ironed and pressed these pants.”

“That’s super lame,” She said with a stifled giggle.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It just is. You’re not the type of person who needs a reason for everything, are you?”

“Well, I don’t require one, but when people…” I said.

“Ha!” Blurted Evelyn. “I knew it. Well I don’t have reasons. Too bad. I just do things.”

“That’s a bit ridiculous.

“You’re a bit ridiculous.”

“That’s an even more ridiculous thing to say. You…”

“Byeeeee,” She screamed tauntingly as she ran to the playground.

Evelyn and my relationship went on pretty much like this for a few years: she would run up to me occasionally and ask a question or two, make fun of my response, I would make fun of her response to my response, and then she would run away tauntingly. It would have carried on like this, but I know now that when you have mothers way too opinionated about things that don’t really matter you are bound to spend just enough time together to actually form a relationship, and this is exactly what happened.

Evelyn eventually sat down next to me and said, “Alright, show me what you are drawing.”

“I am not drawing, I am reading a book,” I said curtly, expecting her to get up and run at any minute.

“Ok well let me see what you are reading then,” she pronounced, snatching the book out of my hands. “Ohhhhh, pretty cover!” She exclaimed. “Ha ha. I am just kidding. You probably think I am some do-do because I am a girl. Well I read as well, you know?”

“What do you read?” I asked.

“All types of stuff. What do you read?”

“Well this book is called ’Gone With the Wind.”

“It’s huge.”

“It’s good.”

“You ever write?”

“I am probably too young to write.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well to write you kind of need something to say—preferably something intelligent, and although I read a lot, I do not think I have enough to say yet.”

“I don’t think that is how it works,” She said confidently. And I noticed something changed in her demeanor. She all of a sudden became quite serious, as though this was something she cared deeply about. “I think you start writing and then you come up with something important to say as you write.”

“Well that is another way to do it I suppose, but that’s probably not for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is this painful period in the beginning and middle where you don’t know even what you are saying and you just feel like your writing is complete crap and you are being derivative and cliche and then you have to go through and rewrite everything later on and I would rather just have something smart to say and direction and march confidently in that direction. I would rather have a reason…”

“Ha! I knew you were the type who always needed a reason. Well I don't have reasons.”

“I know. I remember you said that like a year ago.”

“Anyways, I need to go play. You keep drawing,” she said with a smile. And then she was off. But this time was different, she knew, as well as I, that we had just formed a connection. And while I would have denied it then, I know now that I undoubtedly had a crush on Evelyn at the time, the most innocent and profound of crushes.

“You know,” she began…”

I looked up again at the gringy rafters and breathed a sigh of relief. Remembering all of those times Evelyn had run away made me nervous she might do it right now in the middle of our conversation.

“I hate my dad. Last night, he hit me so hard my earring fell out. I thought it ripped through my ear, but it just broke.”

“Lemme see,” I said peering at her left ear. She was right. “Why did he hit you?” I asked.

“Well, he was drunk and said some nasty things to my mom. I don’t even really remember what he said. Probably about how he is bored with her, with the life they have, and how he needs something else. I said some nasty things back, so he grabbed me by my hair and threw me down. The side of my head hit the ottoman.” Evelyn found a way to discuss the most traumatizing experiences with the most emotionless expression.

“I am really sor…”

“You know in a weird way I understand why my dad is so unhappy. He really didn’t have parents who cared about him. They never pushed him to do well in school, never made him sit down and do his homework before playing, never grounded him for getting bad grades or anything like that—the things good parents do. And by the time he was seventeen or eighteen he began thinking about what came after high school, and, understandably, he just felt like he didn’t have any options. His grades were bad; he had none of the character traits successful people have; he had no plan or vision or guidance and didn’t even know how his life’s horizon became so bleak. And now his life is just as colorless as his upbringing. He has a job that is boring as fuck and married my mom because she actually cared about him—one of the first people to ever do so. But he doesn’t really love her I don’t think. I mean, just imagine waking up, going to a job you don’t like, and then coming home to a wife you don’t love. That kind of thing kills a person. And of course he is bitter. He doesn’t know how it came to be this way! I don’t know…in some ways I understand why he is so pissed off all the time.”

“But that doesn’t vindicate him for all he has put you and your mom through.”

“I know she said. I just hope my life isn’t as shitty as his.”

“Well, you have a lot going for you. You are fun as hell, smart, popular, cool. I mean. I think if you want a particular life, you should be able to get it…no problem.”

“I am not free like you.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I mean you are actually free. You really don’t seem to care about the objects of most people’s desire. You don’t care about girls; you don’t care about being popular; you don’t care about being handsome; you don’t care about your hair or your clothes; you don’t even care about your grades really. You are actually free, and this affords your mind a certain license to explore in a wild terrain that few ever approach, let alone venture into.”

“Well, you know if I were handsome, I would care about my hair and my clothes. If I liked people I would care about being good with people. If I were a bit more charming, I would probably spend time trying to get with girls. And if my parents had any money, I would care about my grades so I could go to college. I am free and would give anything for chains.”

“Oh shut up. If this table weren’t so long I would punch you in your face. Well I want to be free. But I have an overbearing, abusive father and a mom who never taught me how to be confident. I live in this shit hole town. I care too much what people think and can’t stop. I want to get good grades just to feel like I have control over something in my life, which is a bullshit reason. I look at all the jobs available to adults and see nothing all that gratifying. I see nothing that lets a person be free. And I know I am going to end up staking my happiness and excitement in life on a marriage that will probably get old. I will probably get bored like my dad. I will probably become numb like my mom. And I will fall into the traps that all humans fall into, and I will be completely and utterly miserable. Who knows what kind of shit I will do to make myself feel better. I will probably become obsessed with all the surface bullshit that makes those people who have fallen into the traps forget about their despair and suffering and depression and neediness. and I just feel like its all fucked. Like what the fuck. Maybe I should just become a fucking nun like you so kindly suggested.”

“Well you know I have always believed a truly great book…” I stopped for a second because something peculiar happened: Evelyn’s facial expression changed instantaneously from indignation to something far more hopeful. She looked positively beautiful and curious and inquisitive and it seemed so random and sudden that I couldn’t help but freeze.

And then another peculiar thing happened, a very peculiar thing indeed: Evelyn knelt down quickly and held her hand to the ground. “Do you feel that?” She whispered.

I stooped down and placed my palm flat on the ground right next to hers.

“I am not sure I…”

“Shhhhhh.” She interrupted. “The ground is vibrating a bit. Feel it. Feel it for yourself,” She said excitedly.

I closed my eyes and tried to feel as sensitively as I could, and after a few seconds I realized Evelyn was right. The ground was, I guess you could say, pulsing a bit. Up and down and up and down like a beating heart. It was a touch frightening. And then, my coffee, my cup of coffee, began to rattle. I held it tight to stabilize it.

And then Evelyn stood up quickly, completely straight, as if dragged up by some invisible force. Then…a sound…faint at first, very quiet, and very far off presented itself. It was a hum, and it grew a bit louder every second, and then…a smile. Evelyn smiled larger than I had seen since she was a child who knew nothing about her parent’s marriage or the town she lived in or the challenges of the soul she would struggle with, and she leaned in close, so close that her lips were practically touching my ear, and she whispered, “Do you hear that?”

Her eyes were on fire now. She reached towards the sky as if trying to grab something, or I suppose, as though she was finally receiving something.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“Oh don’t you know. Don’t you know! It is marvelous. It is the most marvelous thing that has happened here.

“I don’t know if I recognize…”

“Listen, she exclaimed. Listen closely. Do you know what that is. Come on now you absolutely must know what that is. Come on.”

“I closed my eyes and there it was: a buzzing sound, a rattle, a clanking, a hum, and at certain times, when all the noises seemed to overlap perfectly, a melody could be heard, just barely, floating throughout the diner.

“Oh don’t you see!” She exclaimed. “that’s the sound of a train. A train is here.”

“But how?” I screamed, now a bit frightened, “those tracks have been barren for forever. The metal is rusted and the bolts busted. A few pieces of the rail line itself have been torn up and sold for scrap metal money. It would be impossible for a train to ride safely on the rail. It would be thrown off and crash. Everyone on board would die!”

But there it was…a train.

“Let’s go.” And before I knew it, Evelyn had turned and started running at a full speed.

“Where are you going?” I yelled. But I knew.

“Come on,” she called through choked back tears.

And right then and there, at that precise moment, I had this peculiar feeling that some strange, indescribable adventure was just beginning. I felt excited and frightened at exactly the same time.

I took and deep breath and started running.

I was entirely out of breath as we finally reached the gravel slope leading up to the tracks. They were precisely as I remembered them: rusty, tired, busted up, crooked, cracked in all sorts of places. It must have been some terrible mistake, this train being sent through Huckabee. Terrible things would happen once the train arrived. While my thoughts were doubtful and pessimistic, Evelyn never seemed happier. Her arms were outstretched and she spun around uncontrollably. “You know we are getting on this train,” she said. “We are absolutely getting on this train.”

“But how?” I asked. The sound of the train was growing louder and louder.

“It doesn’t matter,” Evelyn said forcefully. “You always told me to run away, and I always told you to write a book. And we are going to do both, together, as it was meant to be.”

“I was a kid when I said—“

“I don’t give a shit.”

The sound of the train grew louder and louder. There were people now standing on the deck’s of their houses looking and pointing, for the noise was unbelievably loud, piercing through the air. I would have cringed and plugged my ears if it weren’t for the fact that the sound was oddly pleasant, despite its sheer volume.

The train began to round the corner. And like its piercing sound, the lights were nearly blinding. And yet, the lights too offered something pleasant, like a rising sun.

As the train approached, it was traveling way too fast to catch, like a silver flash, we could hardly even discern its details.

“We have to get this train” Evelyn shouted over the noise of the train.

And as if the world had heard the deepest desires of Evelyn’s heart, the train began slowing, steadily until it was traveling barely a few miles per hour.

I began thinking of all sorts of reasons why taking this train would be a terrible idea.

Evelyn must have sensed it because she leaned over, with her lips nearly touching my ear once again, and she said, “Do you think James ever doubted for one second that he was going to sneak into that giant peach and go exploring?” And with that, she jumped, putting one leg on the side of the train and one arm through a metal rung that jutted out from the side of the train, and with her right arm she reached for me. “Come on,” She shouted.

At this precise moment two images flashed through my mind: one was of my grandfather, gasping for breath as he answered my question many years ago, and the other, was that look in Evelyn’s eyes as she felt the floor rattle. I breathed in deeply, understanding now that perhaps Evelyn’s epitaph—“oh Huckabee”—may have foreshadowed not a death, but a rebirth. I jumped, grabbing Evelyn’s hand and bracing myself on the side of the train. As I spun around, the sun was just setting over Huckabee, dangling wonderfully over the dropping electrical lines.