The Station

The Station: A Short Story

He sees a patch of grass amidst an ocean of mud and human flotsam, grass with that mirror like residue as if touched gently by the rain. Nameless soldiers are strewn in corrupt intervals over the land, but his grass is an oasis. There's fluttering in his chest that makes him feel like he's losing breath so he deliberately sucks air. It tastes like burnt wood and sulphur. Smoke envelops him.

His name is Corporal Heath Clayton. His face is one easily lost; there's scant peculiarity save one thing: discomfort he wears like acid. He twitches, and he shifts; his eyes blink too frequently as if attempting to curtail their vigilance, scanning, always scanning.

He runs his fingers through the wet grass. He removes his boots, his toes and heels caked with black blood on blistered skin. He lets his feet rest, fall as they may. He sits there awhile. Others go running by, figures blurred, becoming the same as the faceless wind.

*****

There's a man on the train sitting opposite. Clayton doesn't notice him.

"You dropped this," the man says.

"Dropped what?" Clayton says, seeing the man now, bringing himself to.

"Your notebook, it fell off your lap." The man is thin and hawk-faced with a sharp, angular nose. He's tall even as he sits. His fingers are like tentacles; they extend disproportionately from his too-small palms.

"Thanks," Clayton says, after a pause. He reaches out to take the notebook. The man holds it in suspension for a moment, long enough for Clayton to feel as though he's violated some unspoken etiquette.

"I fell asleep." Clayton says. He feels the vain in his neck start to twitch. 

"Do you sleep with your eyes open?"

"Sometimes."

The man nods as if in understanding. He stares. His eyes are mere slits in leathered skin. Outside the window fields course by. Clayton prefers motion, going somewhere. Speed feels safe. Somehow, speed feels clean and new.

"I read some. I hope you don't mind," the man says. Clayton doesn't respond. "I'm Whelan."

Clayton regards him with one eye before looking away quickly. "Clayton," he says.

"You're a Corporal?"

Clayton nods.

"Were you—"

"Yes."

"My son—"

"Look, I ain't much of a talker," Clayton says abruptly.

"But you're a writer and what-not?"

"They're just ideas. You know. I write sometimes to—"

"Go on son, you write sometimes..."

"Look, I ain't much into..." he pauses, starts again: "your son...what's his name?"

"Colin. He was a Private."

"Colin Whelan? Private Colin Whelan? No, I don't know him."

"He was about your age too."

"Did he..."

Whelan shuts his eyes and lowers his head.

"I'm sorry." There's a quick silence, then Clayton asks, "was he in France?"

"He was. He was killed by a German boy, they say. Stabbed. But I can't picture that. What I don't understand is those two boys getting so close, so close they can reach out and shake hands, or they can reach out and stab each other. When I close my eyes, try as I might, I can't see it, I can't picture it. It's like my old brain won't let me. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to hug him. Tell him I was proud of him. I thought maybe I'd find him in McAdam, at the Station."